Womansplaining
“The New Aspect of the Woman Question” is a textbook lesson in how to approach essay writing from an ironic perspective. Grand focuses her ironic eye with a laser-like intensity upon the one aspect of masculinity that is so ingrained in social behavior in a way that really, really ticks off women that more than a century later was still so prevalent it was finally given a name: mansplaining.
“Man, having no conception of himself as imperfect from the woman’s point of view, will find this difficult to understand, but we know his weakness, and will be patient with him, and help him with his lesson.”
One just has to figure that if any “Dear-Old-Lady-Men” of her time actually read that line, it might actually have been possible to see steam coming from their ears. Imagine, the effrontery of a woman thinking that anything has to be explained to a man by a…woman!
Middle Class Conversation
The one glaring weakness of Grand’s purview is that she attends too great a reliance upon her own privileged experience and thus assumes that those in the upper class are naturally more progressive than the lower classes. In a piece titled “Conversation” she bemoans the “fact” that while upper class families engage in conversation of important topics with both men and women present, in the middle-class families and friends divide along gender lines, leaving the women little of substance to talk about other than those things trivial, vapid or parochial. One may well argue this line of reasoning, but there is no arguing the comic irony she introduces into this pathetic imagery:
“An earthquake would be a veritable godsend; it would give them something important to talk about.”
Dear-Old-Lady-Men
Grand is not just a convincing voice for women's rights, she is also one of the most corrosively funny writers of the Victorian Era. It is probably not by coincidence that her publications are the exclamation mark ending that particular period of time. The subject of “The Man of the Moment” is the not the New Woman, but the new type of man required to deal with the marching madness of this newfangled type of female. What could be more ironically subversive than a gut punch to the superiority of the type of man who sincerely believed in the inferiority of all types of women than to address them all collectively as “Dear-Old-Lady-Men” which achieves the twin effect of situating them as inhabiting all the traits of the worst possible of useless woman: the helpless little old lady.
Opening Lines
Grand is very good at composing opening lines. And the goodness of these lines is often due to a piercing irony made all the more stinging because of the deceptively understated quality of construction. One of the best is the opening lines of “Man and His Follies.”
“Men individually are nice creatures, quite tolerable. There are some even who may be trusted to do the right thing under any circumstances.”
