A Passionate Demonstration of Masculinity: New Men in New Woman Novels. Mary Ward’s Marcella (1894) and Helbeck of Bannisdale (1898)

Second-wave feminist critics dismissed the novels of Mary Ward as insufficiently feminist. As a consequence, her work remains under-read, despite recent promising signs to the contrary. This paper argues for a reconsideration of Ward’s New Women novels of the fin de siècle. In the period’s search for the New Man, Ward offers a nuanced and sensitive picture of an equal partner who accepts and appreciates the radical New Woman, and the inevitability of the changes she heralds.