The New Woman and Technologies of Speed in Fin-de- Siècle Literature

Book excerpt: This is the first literary study on the New Woman's interaction with modern speed culture through use of the typewriter and the bicycle. These technologies of speed are among the earliest to be associated with middle-class women, exposing them to the discipline of mechanized speed while allowing for the construction of a new machine-savvy, sped-up, and energized female subjectivity. Used for women's office work and daily movement, they demand from their women operators a response and adaptation to speed right from the beginning. The ability to catch up with, imitate, adjust to, and finally master this mechanized speed, is the key to the New Woman's enlarged freedom in the modern city. By examining New Woman literature penned by George Gissing, H. G. Wells, Grant Allen, Geraldine Edith Mitton, and Mrs. Edward Kennard, and stories and comments published in popular magazines, this book examines how mechanized speed works on the New Woman typist and cyclist, first as discipline and control (in typewriting), then as commodity and conspicuous display (in cycling), and finally as rejuvenation, stimulation, and active thrill. Being fast, having speed, and adjusting to the shocks, as well as excitement of techno-aided speed, is a crucial part of what makes the New Woman new, as she stakes a claim to modern speed culture.