Abstract
In November 1893, the women’s advocacy journal Shafts published a letter to the editor Margaret Sibthorpe enquiring about the moral of Sarah Grand’s notorious New Woman novel The Heavenly Twins (1893). The writer wanted to know ‘what view is taken of the book by those specially interested in… “morality” — technically so-called,’ because she remained ‘doubtful’ whether the outcome of Evadne Frayling’s story would further the author’s cause:
Evadne spared herself much suffering and discomfort, lived a singularly self-absorbed, not to say selfish, life, influenced neither her husband nor anyone else for good, so far as appears in the story, and finally, having attained what Mrs Grand appears to consider the summum bonam of existence and married her ideal man, she had two children, and went mad. I write in no sneering spirit, but I am honestly at a loss to see why her life should be proposed as a model for imitation — or even as an advance upon the life of the average woman whom she is to supersede. (A Constant Reader 167)
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Hetherington, N. (2012). The Seventh Wave of Humanity: Hysteria and Moral Evolution in Sarah Grand’s The Heavenly Twins. In: Gavin, A.E., de la L. Oulton, C.W. (eds) Writing Women of the Fin de Siècle. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230354265_12
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