Was a woman in your tree known for bicycling, smoking, living independently and earning her own money during the late Victorian or early Edwardian period? If so, she was a New Woman.
The late 19th century saw a major shift in the way that middle-class women were viewed. The New Woman was not waiting at home for a suitor to take over the position previously occupied by her father. She was out in public, living on her own and choosing her own relationships. Her entry into the workplace and her defiant attitudes contributed to changes in literature, fashion, travel, commercial consumption and personal relationships.
The UK had almost one million girls and women in excess of men in the 1891 census, and an extra 1.25 million in 1901. The so-called ‘surplus woman problem’ was caused by the comparatively high male mortality rate, because of their more dangerous jobs, and because so many men emigrated to make a life for themselves in the colonies or were abroad as colonial administrators or soldiers. There were not enough men to go round, even if marriage had been the goal of all women.
This coincided with the working through of ideas of independence that had gained ground during the 19th century. Women had been going to university since the 1860s, and for decades had been working in such fields as medicine and law although usually forbidden professional qualifications. By the 1890s, independence was an expectation for many ordinary women who had to make a living, not just high-flying feminists.
The most obvious evidence of being a New Woman in the UK census records is occupation. They were working in areas of new technology or rapidly expanding workplaces in such roles as telephonists and typists (although the word was not yet coined, so they were known as ‘typewriters’); in photographic studios; and as illustrators for the burgeoning periodicals market, drawing products for sale, and illustrations to accompany fiction. Writing that fiction was another growth industry with cheap magazines meeting an inexhaustible supply of romantic or thrilling stories for a working class that was now, thanks to the 1870 Elementary Education Act, fully literate.
The New Woman also worked in traditional roles such as teaching; there were almost three times as many female teachers as males in 1891. Some New Women like Elizabeth Robins (1862–1952) and Mabel Beardsley (1871–1916) were actors, but mainly women did dull, repetitive jobs. They might have sought employment from agencies such as the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women, founded in 1859 and later renamed the Society for Promoting the Training of Women.
Chavelita Bright (1859–1945) for example, an Irish girl alone in London, called in and obtained work copying manuscripts by hand. She lived in a women’s lodging house in Gower Street in Bloomsbury and wrote a fictionalised autobiography, The Wheel of God. In it, she describes how she “worked all day, came home faint in body from insufficient nourishment and clothes”. As she opens the door of the sitting room, “a puff of hot, close air, the smell of overcrowded women” strikes her. She describes a Saturday night in which the room was full; a long table is crowded with girls who gossip as they mend their garments, while one reads a German phrase book as she sews beads and bows onto a piece of cloth. The residents of this lodging house for ‘respectable’ women include an art student and the daughters of a clergyman, a sea captain and, in Bright’s case, an army captain.
Like the girl doing embroidery for sale while studying German, Bright knew that self-education was the key to advancement. She learnt languages, and found work as a translator. Later she became famous as a writer, using the pen name George Egerton.
The New Woman wore dark clothes which did not show the grime of office life and travel on public transport. Frilly, feminine dresses were replaced by functional styles incorporating a skirt, blouse and jacket – and sometimes a tie to emphasise their distance from non-working women. The Rational Dress Society campaigned against clothing that impeded movement or 'deformed' the body.
Sexual harassment was an ever-present danger for any woman working in an office with men. Female colleagues compared notes on men to avoid being alone with.
They were poorly paid and can be found living in less fashionable areas in the smaller flats in Victorian mansion blocks, alone or with another woman. If married, husband and wife would both have an occupation listed and, very often, be child-free. They believed in ‘free love’ which emphasised the role of personal choice in relationships rather than the Church, state or parents.
They were much less puritanical than their mothers’ generation, but not usually promiscuous, and it was rare for a woman to live openly with a man without marriage. It is a situation explored in the scandalous novel The Woman Who Did by Grant Allen (1848–1899).
The New Woman was attacked for her failure to produce children to run the British Empire and continue the race, and allowing the country to be overwhelmed by the proliferating working class. This fed into the fear of the “degeneration” of society that gripped some commentators.
All or almost all New Women would agree with women having the vote, but most were not particularly passionate about it. There were so many other problems they faced that were of more immediate concern, such as being paid less than male colleagues for the same work.
Smoking cigarettes was a New Woman trope. Reactionary journalist Eliza Lynn Linton (1822–1898) was scornful of the New Woman, taking smoking as a symbol of her defiance: “She smokes after dinner with the men; in railway carriages; in public rooms – where she is allowed. She thinks she is thereby vindicating her independence and honouring her emancipated womanhood.”
A healthier pursuit was cycling, which followed the development of the lightweight diamond frame or ‘safety bicycle’ with pneumatic tyres as an alternative to the penny farthing. This gave freedom not only to travel but to meet other women and men in cycling clubs. Inevitably, the pursuit was disparaged. Physician Arthur Shadwell (1854–1936), writing in 1897, described an unnatural new condition that women were adopting: “bicycle face”, “the peculiar strained, set look so often associated with this pastime… With set faces, eyes fixed before them, and an expression either anxious, irritable, or at best stony, they pedal away.”
More positively, the Northern Echo, a newspaper based in north-east England, reported on a literary lunch for female writers in 1891 for which “A well-known publisher had sent a box of cigarettes, which were duly smoked by several of the ladies. Decidedly the gentler sex is getting on!”
New Woman attitudes continued into the Edwardian period, but women’s work changed with the First World War. The 1918 Representation of the People Act, which extended the franchise to women aged over 30 who met a property qualification, and the 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act, which allowed women to enter professions, together provided more freedom than ever before.