The Victorian fin de siècle “New Woman” a Middle-Class Phenomenon Anonymous College

Amy Levy’s The Romance of a Shop demonstrates the Victorian era “new woman” arises primary from a growing Victorian middle class, exploring the plights of such an intersectional position, filled with contradictions and unprecedented difficulties stemming from such an economic, social and gendered fin de siècle position. While class dynamics ultimately create the new woman, these same class dynamics combine to work against her.

It’s clear the women each embody aspects of the Victorian era new woman, representative of the fracture of multifaceted ideals the new woman is meant to embody. “The New Woman as a category was by no means stable… complex, and by no means free of contradictions.” (Ledger 23). Yet, all the women’s journey begins out of middle-class economic necessity after their father’s death, choosing independence, tying into the class conflict and plight of the working middle-class woman of the fin de siècle. Levy paints the crisis of Victorianism at the fin de siècle conflict as rooted in economics. “Both labor and woman are seeking to throw off the slavery arising from economic dependence; both are demanding…education shall be free; both desire equality and opportunity.” (Ledger 39). Indeed, Gertrude describes her...