Essay Questions

How do the final words of Grand’s short story, “The Undefinable: A Fantasia” fit into her larger “New Woman” career theme?

Grand pursues her theme of the New Woman in both essays and fiction. In addition to short stories, several of her novels also a constructed around this idea. “The Undefinable: A Fantasia” tackles the subject from the male perspective in its story of an artist and a model whom he initially rejects but comes to recognize as a force of vitality in his work and his life. The model is the symbol of Grand’s New Woman and her mysterious arrival is matched by an equally enigmatic premature exit.

The artist embarks upon a lifelong search for her among all the faces of the crowd he encounters, recognizing an allegorical quality to their brief relationship. The story ends with his imagining the words she might say to him explaining her departure just as he is on the verge of a evolutionary breakthrough: “…you shall not have perfection until the conceit of you is conquered, and you acknowledge all you owe me. Give me my due. When you help me, I will help you.” The story becomes Grand’s message to the more evolve type of man who exists a cut above the crowd while answering the question of what women want and why it is deserved.

In her essay, “The Man of the Moment,” what does Grand identify as the necessary condition for women to be satisfied enough to leave men alone?

This particular essay begins with the observation that for a woman to dare to say anything less than flattering about men, it must be carefully couched in language making it abundantly clear that the criticism is not intended in any way to be applied to all men. This understanding having been passed down from one generation to the next, women have learned to approach the cautionary circumstance of criticizing men by speaking with the care and precision of lawyers.

It is perhaps a less offensive example of the degradation to which women are expected to submit of the many others which the author could offer, but that hardly excuses its prevalence and acceptance. And so Grand arrives at a theoretical point in time in which the man who is fed up with being bothered by women demanding better can expect to finally relax and enjoy the freedom from such demands: “When woman ceases to suffer degradation at the hands of man, she will be satisfied, and let him alone.”

What unexpected social attribute does Grand suggest is a by-product of those who routinely engage in intellectually stimulating conversation?

In an essay titled “Conversation: Nothing is More Cheering, More Healthy Stimulating” Grand starts off by bemoaning the state of conversation among women in Victorian England. She proceeds to negatively compare the state of conversation in England with that of American women of whom she notes just one “is enough to lighten the gloom of a whole English party.” The cause of this low point in the art of conversation she does not blame on a lack of education or intelligence, but rather a decision by the social mediators British etiquette and manners she terms “the Silly Set” having decided that “chipper” is preferable to “clever” when it comes to conversation.

From this point, Grand outlines why such thinking is contrary to the advancement of society. Intelligent conversation has the effect of stimulating knowledge and knowledge, in turn, has the effect of broadening narrow minds. One of the tangential social consequences of broadening one’s perspective is the development and nurturing of empathy toward others whose experiences are different form our own. Thus, the lost art of conversation results not just in intellectual decline within a society, but the diminution of the capacity to feel sympathy for others.