The New Woman in the New Millennium: Recent Trends in Criticism of New Woman Fiction

Abstract

This essay offers an overview of the current state of criticism on New Woman fiction. Starting with a brief survey of the critical perspectives established in the last thirty years of the twentieth century, it moves to a more detailed discussion of three trends since the turn of the millennium. As I argue, critical literature since 2000 has explored the specifically ‘feminine’ aesthetic of New Woman writers, and scrutinized the racialist and imperialist roots of New Woman thought. The recent move away from an exclusive concentration on white Anglo-American New Women has allowed important new insights into the international, ethnically diverse aspects of this fin-de-siècle and early twentieth-century movement.