The New Woman did not exist. In fact, the New Woman was a contested and shifting concept of the fin-de-siècle. “The New Woman was by turns: a mannish amazon and a Womanly woman; she was oversexed, undersexed, or same sex identified; she was anti-maternal, or a racial supermother; she was male-identified, or manhating and/or man-eating, or self-appointed saviour of benighted masculinity; she was anti-domestic, or she sought to make domestic values prevail; she was radical, socialist, or revolutionary, or she was reactionary and conservative; she was the agent of social and/or racial regeneration, or symptom and agent of decline” (Richardson and Willis, 2001, xii). This seminar will explore the concept of the New Woman as it emerged in the press and in fiction at the turn of the 19th century. More specifically, we shall examine the phenomenon on a transnational scale. While the concept emerged first in the US, it was quickly taken up in other parts of the world to serve specific social and cultural ends. In order to scrutinize the idea of the New Woman and its many facets, we are going to look at the contested roles of women in different societies, the emergence of feminism and its various forms across the globe and at the cultural, political, economic and social contexts that invariably shaped ideas of “womanhood” in different places. We are not only going to read secondary accounts of feminism and the New Woman but there will be a number of press articles, essays, and fictional accounts to be read and discussed.
