"I don't know, of course; but I am no judge of character if she does not prove to be one of the new women, who are just appearing among us, with a higher ideal of duty than any which men have constructed for women."
If she is never known for anything else, Sarah Grand’s place in history is solidly set in place for taking the term “New Woman” which was first coined by Charles Reade in his 1877 novel A Woman Hater and building a movement upon it. Here is where the New Woman really begins, right here with Mr. Price’s observation of what to expect from the “new women.” He goes on to predict that this new woman will resent all efforts to inflict gratuitous misery on top of many of compulsory sufferings women must endure.
“`If women don’t want to be men, what do they want?’ asked the Bawling Brotherhood when the first misgiving of the truth flashed upon them; and then, to reassure themselves, they pointed to a certain sort of woman in proof of the contention that we were all unsexing ourselves.”
It might have been new then, but it certainly isn’t new anymore despite lingering around for a century or so. The entire idea of female empowerment is viewed by many men—which Grand terms the Bawling Brotherhood—as an assault upon their dominance not by women per se, but rather women who are simply angry they weren’t born men. The Bawling Brotherhood was revealed in all their privileged, victim-playing glory at a notorious confirmation hearing for a Supreme Court justice. The very fact that she locates their primary characteristic as being akin to a weeping victim despite holding all the cards is certainly still a major part in their strategy today.
Jim expected Beth to act as a keeper for him, and also to retrieve like a well-trained dog; and when on one occasion she disappointed him, he had a good deal to say about the uselessness of sisters and the inferiority of the sex generally. Women, he always maintained, were only fit to sew on buttons and mend socks.
One gets the distinct impression that his relationship between a husband and wife is pretty much how Grand saw the institution as a whole. The book was immediately attacked upon publication, ostensibly for its then-frank discussion of sex, but it doesn’t take much of a leap to assume that the real danger that was found within by the male-dominated book review business of the time has to do with assertion questioning of the traditions of relations between husbands and wives such as that delineated here.
"Men are so easily managed. All you have to do is to feed them and flatter them."
This assertion is the punctuation to a story Ideala tells about how one day she and some other ladies decided to try a social experiment. They would all agree to banish the current style of necktie for men that was the fashion of the moment. Just a month later, none of those neckties were to be seen, but more importantly, not a single man was ever able to explain why they had decided to give them up. It this power to manage without seeming to have been managed that Grand recognizes as the greatest tool available to making the New Woman the standard ideal.
