Towards the New Woman. Historical and Socio-Political Changes in Britain which Contributed to the Formation of the New Woman and their Reflection in the Selected Novels by May Sinclair and H. G. Wells (STUDIA I MONOGRAFIE NR 570)

The present study is an extensive contribution to the understanding of the portrayals of women in literature written by a male and a female representatives who were in favour of, or actively supported women’s emancipation, or at any rate interested in it. Thus, in the study attention is put on women’s and men’s style in literature as well as the understanding of the portrayals of women by May Sinclair, one of the most successful and respected British women writers, whose work has been read as an important transitional link between the concerns, themes and aesthetics of the late nineteenth century, and those of Modernism; and H. G. Wells, who liked to think about himself as a feminist, but whose feminism often seems more about women’s sexual availability than about their social power. Since both May Sinclair’s and H. G. Wells’s texts concentrate on the position of middle-class women, this analysis is concentrated on certain aspects of their lives, which were also the key issues of the suffrage movement: education, employment, social problems such as prostitution and housing, marriage, sex and divorce; politics and, indirectly, the role of money played in the life of the Edwardian woman and the effect it had as well as the limitations it placed on her freedom.

The book is addressed to literary scholars, but it may appeal to all readers with an interest in feminist literature.