A Challenge to Victorian motherhood: Mona Caird and Gertrude Atherton

Abstract

The article explores a previously unknown episode in the life of New Woman writer Mona Caird (1854–1932): an 1889 visit from American writer Gertrude Atherton (1857–1948). Although both Caird and Atherton actively supported women's emancipation and wrote novels which championed radical views, Atherton disliked Caird, an opinion primarily based on Caird's alleged neglect of her only child. Both women rejected the prevailing view of their time-also held by other New Woman writers that motherhood fulfilled a woman's personal need as well as her obligation to society. By examining the complex views of these women, this article demonstrates how two notorious late-Victorian figures carved out public careers while struggling to place themselves within codes of acceptable female identity.