Sarah Grand and Social Roles: Close Reading of "The New Aspect of the Woman Question" Sarah T. N. Koki College

Victorian author Sarah Grand, recognized for her work concerning the New Woman ideal, wrote during a time when women were inundated with prescriptive literature on what was deemed the ‘proper’ conduct, appearance, and behavior for women (Frawley, 481). Such writings were a result of prevailing medical myths that believed women were weaker by nature and thus more suited to quiet lives of domesticity (415). Grand answers these mandates with one of her own, ‘The New Aspect of the Woman Question,’ which challenges the practice of condemning and governing women and directs focus toward the state of men. The Woman Question is a term broadly applied to issues about women’s position in society, but these issues primarily applied to the rights of middle class and white women. The excerpt taken from ‘The New Aspect’ indicates that Grand considered the behavior of man to be rapidly declining as a result of his ‘faculty for shirking his own responsibility’ as well as woman’s allowance for him to do as much (Grand, 142-143). The essay serves to articulate the consequences of both men and women avoiding their responsibilities while also proving them to be easily rectified. Grand does this by describing men through offensive analogies and...