New woman, new world: Maternal feminism and the new imperialism in the white settler colonies

Abstract

The New Woman, the figure of feminist rebellion who emerged in 1880 and 1890s in English fiction and social commentary, became the focus of a good deal of anxious polemic. In the context of the massive wave of expansionism during these years of the Second British Empire the New Woman-and feminism, as it appeared to undermine woman's reproductive 'duty'-came to be seen as a sign of imperial decline. It was in response to this view that suffragism undertook to transform the New Woman into the feminist image of the woman as 'mother of the race.' In the white settler colonies, this image held a particular iconic value, since both the imperial mother and the 'virgin' territories of the New World were configured as the last hope for the Empire. This article traces the analogy of New Woman and New World, and discusses how Anglo-colonial fictions of woman suffrage re-presented the question of white women's role in the progress of nation and Empire.