Sarah Grand, born as Frances Elizabeth Bellenden Clarke in 1854 in Ireland, was a feminist writer and activist of English descent. Grand found little comfort or intellectual nourishment in the educational opportunities available to young women of her time and held a livelong resentment and bitterness against the favoritism shown to her brothers during her upbringing.
After getting married at the age of 16 to a man more than 20 years her senior and feeling restricted and suffocated throughout her marriage, Grand eventually left her husband in 1890. Factors in her decision were newly enacted laws that allowed women to keep their property after marriage as well as the self-publication of her first novel Ideala in 1888 as she intended to support herself as a writer.
With the publication of her second novel The Heavenly Twins, she used the name Sarah Grand for the first time. The novel, though drawing notoriety from the public, was mostly well received by critics. In the wake of the publication, Grand went on an extensive lecture tour through the US. After her separation, Grand became active in local women’s suffrage groups, going so far as to become vice-president of the Women’s Suffrage Society. She died in 1943.
Grand’s writings often featured anatomical knowledge she gained from her husband’s profession as an army doctor, especially in terms of venereal diseases. Grand also drew from her own experience as a woman with little access to political rights, trapped in an oppressive and unhappy marriage, though her initially harsh stance towards men somewhat softened in her later writings. In her works, Grand was a fierce critic of unequal marriages and the hypocrisy that tolerated certain behaviors in men but condemned women for them.
As a feminist writer, Grand is most notable for her part in developing the New Woman, a literary archetype of a strong, educated and independent woman who, for the first time, is an active participant in public life and the workforce, eschewing the life as a quiet wife and mother.
The New Aspect of the Woman Question is an essay first published in 1894 in The North American Review and is seen as one of the first instances of where the term New Woman is used. The article is an excellent example of Grand’s vocal disapproval of the inherent sexism and double standards in Victorian society, especially in Victorian marriages.
