The New Woman and the Land War

Abstract

In the penultimate scene of The Beth Book, Sarah Grand’s protagonist finds her true calling as an orator when she addresses an audience from a feminist platform:

She had spoken that night as few have spoken — spoken to a hostile audience and fascinated them by the power of her personality, the mesmeric power which is part of the endowment of an orator, and had so moved them that they rose at last and cheered her for her eloquence, whether they held her opinions or not. Then there had been some friendly handshakes and congratulations and encouragement; and one had said, ‘Beth is launched at last upon her true career’. (p. 525)

By 1897, Sarah Grand was herself a seasoned public speaker, frequently called upon by the Pioneer Club and other organizations to address their meetings. Her biographer Gillian Kersley tells us that at this point in her career, Grand was ‘torn between her desire to teach and reform … and her equal desire for solitude and the peace of the countryside where she could get on with her writing’.¹ Mangum underlines the challenge posed by a woman entering the public arena in the period, suggesting that Beth’s emergence as a public speaker has radical implications: ‘In a far more immediate manner than the written text oratory depends on collective, communal experience, an immediate responsibility to and engagement with an audience, and a desire to persuade, inspire, and motivate that audience to act’.²