Victorian Literature and Culture (2012), 40, 229244.

C Cambridge University Press 2012. 1060-1503/12 $15.00
doi:10.1017/S1060150311000337

SISTER OF THE TYPE: THE FEMINIST

GRANT ALLENS SHORT NOVEL THE TYPE-WRITER GIRL (1897) opens with a problem. In the
first lines we are introduced to our narrator who, we are promptly told, is unemployed: I was
twenty-two and without employment. I would not say by this that I was without occupation.
In the world in which we live, set with daisies and kingfishers and undeciphered faces of
men and women, I doubt I could be at a loss for something to occupy me (23; ch. 1).
As the second half of this quotation suggests, our narrator is confident that this problem of
employment is quite easy to solve, for all around is a world teeming with life, and as we learn
by the start of the next paragraph, our narrator does indeed have an occupation, something to
fill his/her time. Our narrator is a storyteller: I cannot choose but wonder who each is, and
why he is here. For one after another I invent a story. It may not be the true story, but at least
it amuses me (23; ch. 1). So the real problem, beyond the question of employment, emerges
as a question of narrative subject. Who is this narrator, the subject of this first-person story?
We do not even know if our narrator is male or female. It is as if he/she is lost amidst that
sea of undeciphered faces of men and women. Connected to this problem of subject is
also the question of form. The first-person point of view would suggest an autobiographical
narrative. Yet any expectations of an autobiographical account are immediately undermined
in chapter two when we learn that our narrator is named Juliet Appleton. This narrative
subject does not match the novels signed author, Olive Pratt Rayner. So we are again left
with questions: what kind of narrative is this, who is the real subject of this story, what is the
form of this narrative, and does our narrator find employment?
Leah Price has argued that this problem with the authorial subject is compounded by
the novels repeated emphasis on bonds between women. In Grant Allens Impersonal
Secretaries: Rereading The Type-Writer Girl, she explains how Allen draws on the
autobiographical form to claim psychological depth and autonomy for his protagonist. Prices
argument draws on a model of autobiography advanced by critics such as Philippe Lejeune,
which describes the conventional expectation of the cohesive subject who narrates and thus
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effectively writes himself/herself into being. However, Price adds, The Type-Writer Girls
subplot, focusing on bonds between women, obscures the singular, authorial subject whom
readers typically associate with this narrative form. In particular, Juliets relationship with
Elsie, another typist, leaves readers uncertain as to which type-writer girl the novels title
refers. Indeed, the autobiographical subject is even further obscured by the fact that the novel
itself is signed with a feminine pseudonym that is not the name of either woman in the
story.1 The text thereby refuses to deliver a singular and unified authorial subject, the real
type-writer girl.2
Despite such complications, it is critical that we read The Type-Writer Girl as
autobiography, for the novel clearly invokes and then plays with many of the conventions
associated with this narrative form. For example, the text not only employs a first person
perspective, but the plot itself centers on a story of self inquiry and self formation typical
to the autobiographical genre. In addition, the novels title, which emphasizes typewriting,
invites readers to assume a certain equivalence among the narrator who tells the story, the
narrated subject of the story, and the real author who signs the story. In other words, we are
encouraged to assume that the subject who signs the cover must be one and the same with
the narrator who recounts her experience as The Type-Writer Girl. Nonetheless, Price is
right that there is a persistent ambiguity as to the authorial subject or the real type-writer girl.
The problem is compounded by the storys shift from self-discovery, or the formation of a
coherent subject, to bonds between women and a sort of feminist community.
In this essay I will take a closer look at the problem of the authorial subject in The
Type-Writer Girl by reading the novel within the context of Grant Allens extended writings
on economics and gender. Such a contextual reading will help us to see how the novel draws
on this narrative genre as part of its experiment in a new theory of female subjectivity as
relational, not autonomous. Recent scholars such as Heather Atchison, Lyssa Randolph,
Sabine Ernst, and William Greenslade and Terence Rodgers have demonstrated the need
to think of Allen as a polymath whose work interweaves a wide variety of disciplinary
threads, including economics, biology, evolutionary science, and feminism. With this body
of scholarship in mind, I read The Type-Writer Girls opening scene as clearly promising
a narrative interested in the intersections between economics and gender. What is more,
the novel describes Juliets search for employment in terms of adaptation, a move that
clearly reminds us of Allens devotion to Herbert Spencers work on social evolution. Upon
considering Allens other writings, we can see how The Type-Writer Girl links together and
implicitly compares models of social and narrative adaptation. Just as she struggles to adapt
to the gendered marketplace, Juliet also struggles to find and fit into the appropriate narrative
structure with which to tell her story. It is important to note that Allen himself was rather
conservative when it came to womens role in social evolution. However, there is a way in
which his own theories and, hence, narrative subject exceed his control. Specifically, his
interdisciplinary combination of feminism and economics suggests a new way of thinking
about gender as a social and thus a collaborative formation. By extension, then, we must not
think of The Type-Writer Girl as a failed autobiography but instead as a narrative that begins
and ends with the social subject. Juliets tale of self inquiry and self formation culminates
in bonds between women. As a result, she requires a new autobiographical narrative that
balances the individual and the female collective.
To appreciate The Type-Writer Girls innovations in form, we must first look at the
novels plot, for it is here where we can locate the formation of the feminist subject, the

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catalyst of this new narrative. The Type-Writer Girl traces a significant shift in focus from
a romantic plot to an economic plot and a corresponding shift from the individual to the
feminist collective. This shift in turn contains many echoes of Allens writings on Social
Darwinism and progressive adaptation. By reading Juliets story in the context of Allens
other writings we can also appreciate the unique work of the novels narrative experiment,
its effort to think through narrative representation. In particular, The Type-Writer Girl asks
how to represent the individual who identifies with the social and, specifically, feminist
community. The result is a story of social adaptation, both gendered and economic.
The second half of this essay looks at technologies of self production, including both
autobiography and typewriters. As Price notes, the novel is signed by Rayner, not Appleton,
and as a result the novel does not suggest a reproduction of Juliet, the girl behind the keys;
instead, we have another type-writer girl, a label which could easily apply to any of the
female characters in the novel. The typewriter is a particularly effective symbol for this study:
it is both a means of reproduction of texts as well as the means by which Juliet reproduces
herself, her story. Does this failure to produce a coherent autobiographical subject parallel
the ways in which technologies of mechanical production, like the typewriter, erase the
subject? As I will show, this is not a problem of reproducing an autonomous self; rather,
this narrative reproduces the story of gender and labor consciousness and, ultimately, the
feminist collective. It is important, then, that Juliets tale is titled The Type-Writer Girl,
for this title holds in uneasy but illuminating tension the individual girl and her relationship
with womens labor.
Part 1: the Feminist Collective

DURING THE 1880S AND 1890S, Grant Allen wrote several works devoted to the New Woman
debates. He is probably best remembered for his first New Woman novel, The Woman Who
Did (1895), which created an absolute scandal due to its unabashed advocacy of free love
and womens sexual liberation. His second New Woman novel, The Type-Writer Girl (1897),
is no less radical in its representation of the fin-de-si`ecle woman question. But what makes
this latter work different from the first is its effort to explore the woman question through
economics and technologies of production. His outspoken heroine, Juliet Appleton, boldly
navigates the world of economics, including the competitive marketplace of female typists
and an anarchist commune on the fringe of society. Readers first meet Juliet as she leaves
Girton College in search of adventures and, more importantly, in search of love in the form
of some youthful St. George in celestial armour (26; ch. 1). The novel sets up what readers
expect will be a romance plot culminating in love and the heterosexual union. However,
our heroine quickly abandons the romance plot following her first, intensely disappointing
encounter with the competitive marketplace. During an interview for a typist position, the
employer, Mr. Fingleman, looks her over as if he were buying a horse, making Juliet
feel like a Circassian in an Arab slave-market (31; ch. 2).3 Despite this oppressive and
objectifying gaze, Juliet wonders how she might adapt [herself] to [her] environment and
thereby [fulfill] the whole gospel of Darwinism (32). Hence, the first half of her story,
entirely preoccupied with this struggle to adapt to the marketplace, suggests that economic
forces disrupt if not entirely displace romance.
With Juliets first interview, The Type-Writer Girl foregrounds its narrative investment
in the intersections between economics and social evolution.4 This investment is the result of

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Allens devotion to Herbert Spencers theory of social adaptation and progress.5 Allen was
particularly interested in Spencers discussion of purposive adaptation through functionally
suitable traits. Perhaps one of Spencers best known examples of this concept is his discussion
of the blacksmiths arm:
as surely as a blacksmiths arm grows large, and the skin of a labourers hand thick; as surely as
the eye tends to become long-sighted in the sailor, and short-sighted in the student; as surely as
the blind attain a more delicate sense of touch; as surely as a clerk acquires rapidity in writing and
calculation; as surely as the musician learns to detect an error of a semitone amidst what seems to
others a very babel of sounds; as surely as a passion grows by indulgence and diminishes when
restrained; as surely as a disregarded conscience becomes inert, and one that is obeyed active; as
surely as there is any efficacy in educational culture, or any meaning in such terms in habit, custom,
practice; so surely must the human faculties be moulded into complete fitness for the social state;
so surely must the things we call evil and immorality disappear; so surely must man become perfect.
(Social Statistics 65)

As suggested by the last line, so surely must man become perfect, Spencer absolutely
believes that adaptation and, by extension, the social organism itself tend towards perfection.6
His confidence is the result of his unique model of social evolution, or Social Darwinism,
as described in works like Descriptive Sociology (187381), Principles of Sociology (1876
96), and Progress: Its Laws and Causes (1857). Spencer uses the analogy of the biological
organism to explain what he characterizes as the progressive evolution of the social body and
its composite parts. As with the biological organism, the evolution of the social body is marked
by a trend toward complexity, with its composite parts performing increasingly specialized
yet interdependent functions. For example, in his struggle for survival, the blacksmith (or
composite part), hones his particular talent, in this case his muscular arm, so that he can be
all the more productive and thus contribute to the increasingly complex society (social body).
Interestingly, this process of adaptation is also marked by a distinct trend toward sociality.
The individuals conscience is reactivated and obeyed, and human facilities are moulded to
ensure complete fitness for the social state, ready to contribute to progressive evolution.
Informed by Spencers theory, The Type-Writer Girl explores how alternate economic
arrangements such as a cooperative community might counter the harmful effects of the
competitive marketplace. When Juliet overhears two men discussing the anarchist commune
on the outskirts of town, she idealizes the band of brothers (36; ch. 3) who cultivate in
common; each member of the community receives food and clothes; and at the end of the
week, if any surplus remain, they divide it between them by way of pocket-money (37).7
Juliet then flees the world of competitive labor and joins the commune, hoping she will
finally be allowed to perfect her talent and thus contribute to the social body. However, early
into her stay, Juliet realizes that this commune does not present the opportunity for purposive
adaptation. Members are required to perform tasks incompatible with their specific talents.
As Juliet observes, these laborers toiled hard and inefficiently, and yet [i]n the sweat of
their brow they did very little (54; ch. 7). When Juliet asks Rothenberg, one of the leaders,
how the community would respond to a member who refused to work, he hesitantly explains
that we would be compelled to call in . . . the State . . . to eject him. Disgusted with
such [c]oercive practices (54), Juliet realizes that the anarchists are no better than the
competitive capitalists from whom she fled. Both societies demand that laborers submit to

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the tyranny of those who control labor. Feeling herself to be too individual, too anarchic
for the anarchists, she flees the commune to set [her] face sternly towards civilization,
despotism, and the flesh-pots of Egypt (58).
Yet Juliets brief hiatus in the anarchist commune is not a waste, for this experience
encourages her to imagine an alternative community wherein all members are able to
purposely contribute to the social body. It is this failed attempt to participate in some kind of
community that causes her second encounter with the world of competitive labor to give way
to gender consciousness. Early in the course of her second search for employment, Juliet
realizes that she is competing with specifically female typists. She even emphasizes the
gendered aspect of this competition when she describes her appreciation for an advertisement
that respectfully refers to Lady typists as opposed to female type-writers: I liked that
advertisement. My theory is that a type-writer girl should call herself a type-writer girl;
but that an advertiser should do her the courtesy to speak of her as a Lady Type-writer, or
something of the sort: certainly not as a (parenthetical) female (75; ch. 11).8 What Juliet
thus approves of is a revised advertisement which calls attention to, rather than obfuscates
(through marginal, parenthetical reference), the gender of the applicant.
Juliets insistence upon the label Lady marks the emergence of her genderconsciousness, her awareness of her own position in the competition among, specifically,
women typists. However, her preference for the title Lady immediately suggests a
class distinction, aligning the female typist with an upper-class woman. Juliet wishes that
employers, by addressing typist as ladies, both recognize and respect the gendered dynamic
of this labor; yet this respect must elevate and thus distinguish the female typist from her
working-class sisters. Juliet clearly wishes that womens work as typists be distinguished
from those other forms of public and, more specifically, working-class labor which many
Victorian women already performed. At this point, her growing feminist consciousness is
limited by class.9
However, Juliets limited sympathy toward womens work does not last. With this turn
to gender consciousness, the novel marks a significant shift in the narratives trajectory. Our
heroine now has a whole new set of priorities, which in turn demands a new plot. Early into
this second encounter with the marketplace, Juliet not only finds herself identifying with
other women, but she also takes it upon herself to secure a poor and working-class womens
well-being. The novel again foregrounds the primary importance of the economic plot, but
by this point, the female collective supplants the individual as the narrative subject. Upon
leaving a successful interview, Juliet feels overcome with compassion for another typist, a girl
less strong than [herself], coming down from the office with a most dejected countenance
(75; ch. 11). Juliet recognizes immediately that this woman has failed in her application for
the position, which in turn causes Juliet to ponder, if this were the struggle for life, it made
my heart ache (for her sake) to think I must engage in it (75). Juliet is careful to qualify, in
the parenthesis of her thoughts, how she aches from the emotional pain she experiences
for the sake of another. Her pain is the product of her effort to imagine another human
beings suffering.10 This series of events echoes Allens notion that women, more than men,
are defined by their sociality. So it is not entirely surprising that Juliets story would quickly
morph into a story about a female consciousness, her identification with another female
victim of the gendered marketplace.
As illustrated by his first New Woman novel, The Woman Who Did, Allen is an outspoken
advocate of womens sexual liberation and freedom of choice in selecting partners and mating

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conditions. However, his vision of choice is not without its limits. The ideal female individual,
a kind of biological type, recognizes that her sexual selection, and subsequent reproduction,
ultimately serves the larger social body. No article better illustrates Allens position on
womens reproductive duty than Womans Place in Nature (1889). In this article, Allen
rejects Lester Frank Wards argument that woman is the race (qtd. in Womans Place in
Nature 167). Whereas Ward attributes agency to women, Allen writes that woman is not
even half the race at present, but rather a part of it told specially off for the continuance of
the species. . . . She is the sex sacrificed to reproductive necessities (167).11 Allen sees the
female body as the passive vessel of natural evolution. Clearly, in Allens opinion, this vessel
lacks agency. Women do not influence evolution; rather, evolution exercises its plan through
the females body. Thus, Allen holds fast to the idea that all women, even New Women,
are bound by nature to the social body, destined to bear children and thus perpetuate the
evolution of the species.12
What is odd about Juliet, however, is precisely her consciousness and subsequent
agency. She is not a passive vessel of nature. Rather, her turn to social responsibility
depends upon her realization that womens fates are tied together and hence that womens
perfected adaptation depends upon cooperation. Later when she again sees Elsie, the woman
whom she had supplanted in the struggle for existence (93; ch. 15), Juliet immediately
assumes responsibility for her competitors fate and helps her find employment. Empathetic
identification therefore inspires Juliet to form a cooperative alliance with her fellow female
worker. Juliet no longer recognizes herself in competition with other women; instead, her
compassionate identification with the other woman inspires her to collaborate with women,
melding together her own self-interest with that of the female community.13
Juliets conscious decision to embrace the social body, to assume responsibility for her
fellow female typist, is significant insofar as it suggests that the female individual is an active
agent shaping social not natural forces. This qualification takes on added significance
when we remember Allens source for evolutionary science: Herbert Spencer. Indeed, the
tension between nature and nurture, so to speak, is inherent in Spencers own account of
the supposed natural evolution of the social body. Take for example the analogy of the
blacksmiths arm. Even in this example, Spencers version of social evolution admits that
increased complexity also tends towards increased sociality. The bodys composite parts, or
individuals, must by necessity recognize their social interdependence and subsequent need
for cooperation. Though the blacksmiths arm is perfectly formed for his specific labor, his
ears have not evolved in such a manner as would befit musical tasks. Thus, for music, the
blacksmith must look to the musician, just as the musician must consult the blacksmith on
matters of ironwork. Individuals become increasingly specialized, and this specialization,
in turn, stimulates interdependency and thus social cooperation. In fact, cooperation is vital
to the health of the whole organism. In his 1860 essay The Social Organism, Spencer
explains how Simple communities, like simple creatures, have so little mutual dependence
of parts, that mutilation or subdivision causes but little inconvenience; but from complex
communities, as from complex creatures, you cannot remove any considerable organ without
producing great disturbance or death of the rest (273).
Juliets female-female bond clearly echoes the Spencerian account of the sociable
individual. More importantly, her subsequent adoption of Elsie, the other typewriter girl,
suggests how cooperative complexity is social, not biological. Juliet recognizes how she
supplanted Elsie in the struggle for employment, and in this same moment, she understands

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that womens fates are linked together in the competition for survival in the marketplace.
Following this revelation, Juliet shifts from the competitive impulse and assumes social
responsibility for her fellow female laborer. The bond between the two women is so
strong that Juliet refers to Elsie as her adopted daughter. Indeed, Elsies helplessness
and incompetence inspire[s] in [Juliet] at last that sense of motherliness which we women
love (94; ch. 11). Juliets subsequent adoption of Elsie thereby reminds one of what Allen
characterizes as the maternal bond linking the female with the social body. However, this
maternal bond is not an expression of natural forces, the innate drive toward biological
reproduction; rather, this maternal bond is a social response to social circumstances,
specifically the gender conditions of womens labor.
Juliets bond with Elsie also marks a significant shift in her feminist consciousness and,
particularly, her former classist approach to womens work. We recall her earlier preference
for the label Lady Type-writer (75; ch. 11). However, after befriending Elsie, Juliet
embraces a new feminist consciousness. She no longer privileges upper- or middle-class
women; now she takes all women, including those who are poor and working class, as her
site of sympathetic identification. She recognizes that her own relationship to labor is limited
by all of womens employment opportunities. What is more, Juliets bond with Elsie also
suggests how these social norms or relationships are malleable. Juliet realizes that it is the
gendered marketplace that has placed her in competition with this unfortunate woman, and
through the maternal bond, both women redefine womens relationships as cooperative.14
It is this story of the female collective that henceforth dominates the plot of The TypeWriter Girl. In the last third of the novel, the romance narrative resurfaces only to be displaced,
once again, by the feminist collective. This final clash in plots serves as a reminder of the
interdependent relationship between the female individual and the social body. Juliet has
met and fallen in love with her second employer, dubbed Romeo. When Juliet pursues
him and forces him to respond to her, he confesses that he is already engaged to Michaela
(called Meta by others). Juliet eventually feels sorry for Michaela and tells Romeo to
return to his slighted lover. As Juliet explains to him, Michaela has grown up with your love
inextricably twined by rootlets and tendrils through the fiber of her being; to tear it away
now were to tear her very heart out(132; ch. 21). In Michaelas world, a womans happiness
is entirely dependent upon the love and thus approval of a man, a husband. Juliet identifies
with Michaelas suffering and therefore feels guilty about displacing yet another woman
in the struggle for survival. Even as she breaks the news to Romeo, Juliet is preoccupied
with thoughts of Michaela. She hears, echoing in her mind, and then repeats, Michaelas
desperate plea, the years must count (128; ch. 20 and 132; ch. 21). Emotionally aligned
with her female rival, Juliet demands that Romeo honor Michaelas investment, her hard
work in loving him for five years. Again, Juliets sympathetic identification extends beyond
the specific woman to some larger notion of female community. In the case of Michaela,
Juliet decides that she is fighting the common battle of womanhood. If [she] were to turn
traitor now, [she] should turn traitor to whatever [she] had within [her] best worth calling a
conviction (13334; ch. 21). With this female-female bond in mind, the narrator once again
sacrifices her own story, her love plot, in order to tell a new narrative about the feminist
collective.
But the novel does not conclude with this act of sacrificed love; instead, the novel ends
with Juliets financial debt, a symbol that once again reminds us of the intersections between
economics and gender. In the closing lines of the text, Juliet procures a loan of two hundred

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lire from Michaela (139; ch. 21). Juliet needs this money so that she can return home and
resume her work as a typist. This debt circulates as a symbol that functions on two levels.
On one level, her debt represents her tie to the economic body. As Spencer showed us,
the individual must adapt to and thereby contribute to the social organisms complex and
interdependent web of production. On a second level, her financial debt also suggests the
influence of the social body upon the individual. Juliets debt therefore reminds us of
the tension within the Spencerian model wherein the individual needs and is therefore,
on some level, indebted to the larger social network for his/her very existence. By the end of
The Type-Writer Girl, it becomes difficult even to imagine the individual as independent of
the social body. It is not surprising, then, that the novels final look at economic individualism
returns us yet again to a social variation of the maternal bond. When Michaela asks if this
amount is enough, Juliet answers, [y]es my child. . . . If I work my fingers to the bone
you shall have it back (139; ch. 21). Again, by calling Michaela child, Juliet assumes
the position of mother to another woman. In an interesting twist, Michaela as the adopted
child replaces any biological children Juliet might have had with Romeo. And Juliets debt
emphasizes that this maternal bond is economic, implicating that larger social fabric of work
and productive contribution.15 And even if it destroys her body her physical subjectivity
Juliet will work on behalf of and thus pay this woman, and the womankind she represents.
Part 2: Technologies of the Self

AS SUGGESTED BY THE NOVELS TITLE, technology is at the heart of this story of a modern
type-writer girl. We have technologies of mechanical reproduction in the form of the
typewriter, but we also have technologies of self-production in the form of a fictional
autobiography. From the start, readers are meant to recognize this narrative as drawing on
many of the conventions of autobiography, particularly the interconnectedness of the multiple
narrative Is. In Reading Autobiography, Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson outline many of the
components which comprise the autobiographical act. Some of the most important features,
replicated in The Type-Writer Girl, focus on both the site and subject of the narrative.
Regarding the former, the subjects narrative is located within a specific geographical and
historical location, and so the subjects account must make sense or seem credible and
real within this site (Smith and Watson 56). In the case of The Type-Writer Girl, the
narrative location is late-Victorian England, which witnessed massive shifts in the urban
workforce. Advances in technology, such as the typewriter, translated into an explosion in
new and skilled clerical positions. The middle-class and, more importantly, independentminded New Women, eager for respectable employment and economic self-sufficiency,
flocked to these jobs. Juliets narrative about professional and gendered self-discovery is
exactly in keeping with this movement and thus true to its period.16
Even more important is the novels clear awareness of the intertwined and multiple
uses of I that comprise the autobiographical narrative. As Smith and Watson explain, the
autobiographical I is much more complicated than a speaker or narrator who refers to
herself (58); rather, there is the real or historical I (typically denoted by the signature on
the text), the narrating I (the agent who tells the story), the narrated I (the subject of
the story), and the ideological I (the I as produced via multiple social sites / contestations,
expectations, etc.). The Type-Writer Girl is clearly aware of and also wants to complicate
the way that we think about these multiple uses of the autobiographical I. The first-person

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237

point of view immediately tells readers that we have an intimate and personal account by a
narrator who takes herself and her life as the subject of the story, connecting the narrating and
narrated I. And the feminine signature upon the novels cover would, at first glance, suggest
a further link with the historical I. However, the signature and the subjects name do not
match. We can only make sense of this seeming disjunction between signature and subject
upon further investigation of the narratives investment in the ideological I. This latter I,
Smith and Watson explain, is a product of social interdependency, or relationality: The
self-inquiry and self-knowing of many autobiographical acts is relational, routed through
others, and this concept of relationality, implying that ones story is bound up with that
of another, suggests that the boundaries of an I are often shifting and flexible (64). As
if anticipating the Smith and Watson theory, The Type-Writer Girl recounts Juliets selfdiscovery or self-formation as a process dependent upon her bond with fellow women that
is, the female collective. As I will show, her narrative requires a new autobiographical form
which keeps in play this relational I, the social dimension of the subject.
By refusing to name a specific girl, the novels title invites readers to think about the social
formation of the autobiographical subject. Readers are instead encouraged to remember how
Juliets formation is a product of her self-identification with other type-writer girls like her.
However, for other critics, like Leah Price, this ambiguous title reminds us of the relationship
between and the problems with technology and authorial specificity. Price argues that Allen
fails to give his characters depth and that their superficiality makes them easily reducible
to typewriters, empty and impersonal machines reproducing narratives. For critics such as
Christopher Keep, Victoria Olwell, and Jennifer Wicke, this is a problem that frequently
accompanies representations of the female typist. As these scholars point out, the typewriter,
with its standardized font, erases all trace of the authors original presence, including such
idiosyncratic markers as penmanship and signature.17 What is more, the typists own work
reproducing texts is likewise invisible. There is nothing distinct about her standardized type
set. Indeed, as Keep records, oftentimes female typists were called typewriters, a label
that conflates the human being with the technologies of mechanical reproduction.18 The
typewriter seems both the perfect symbol and even title for a supposedly autobiographical
narrative lacking any kind of authorial specificity.
However, this problem of the authorial subject makes sense once we remember the
novels investment in the feminist collective. Whereas Price argues that Allens characters
are superficial, I claim that Juliets social consciousness demonstrates a certain complexity of
character. Commitment to the female collective can, in turn, explain the titles play on typewriting as a reference both to subject and to labor. By including the adjective type-writer
in its title, the novel reminds us that this is a subject whose identity is inextricably tied to the
conditions of production. Indeed, the typewriter is the perfect symbol for this social subject.
The typewriter (the person who types) mediates between the narrator (who dictates) and the
audience (who then reads the typewritten word).19 Therefore, as a typist, Juliet is already
thrust into an intermediate space, caught between other individuals. And her typewriter, as a
means of mechanical reproduction, also reminds us of her maternal labor of reproducing. As
Mary Ann Doane explains, in Technophilia: Technology, Representation, and the Feminine,
the fin-de-si`ecle typewriter, with its capacity for multiple and indistinguishable reproductions,
displaces the idea of the particular or original subject. Using psychoanalytic theory, Doane
describes how the female typist thereby offers conflicting possibilities. On the one hand,
the transformation of the maternal body into the machine promises to alleviate masculine

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anxiety regarding the unfathomable and castrating female. On the other hand, the masculine
subject needs the maternal body in order to establish sexual differentiation and a notion of
subjectivity rooted in some kind of origin. These two modes of reproduction, the mechanical
and the biological, coexist in a relation that is a curious imbrication of dependence and
antagonism (167). But mens anxiety aside, the new mechanical reproduction perfectly
captures what Juliet experiences as an uneasy tension between the social and the individual.
Juliets problem, by the novels end, is not that she needs to find some mode of autonomous
self-expression, but rather that she must find some way to contribute to and thus reproduce
the female collective. This feminist collective requires a new narrative that can balance both
the group and the individual. This story of and by a typewriter is an attempt to answer this
narrative problem.
From the start, Juliets effort to make her story fit within familiar plotlines reminds us of
the social individual and purposive adaptation. In the novels opening chapter, she imagines
herself as a heroine in search of her romance plot; she needs a Romeo to play opposite her
Juliet. Indeed, Juliet is so committed to this plot that, when she does meet her love interest,
she dubs him Romeo, and at no time does she show any interest in revealing his identity. We
are also reminded of the scene when Juliet first meets Meta, whom she names Michaela in
reference to the play Carmen. This nick-name is ironic, for in the play Michaela and Carmen
will compete for the same lover, and Juliet will soon discover that she, too, is in competition
with Meta / Michaela.20 Such foreshowing begs the question whether character determines
the plot, or if the character is in fact overdetermined by set narratives. In the case of Michaela
and Juliet, their names alone place them within recognizably tragic stories, trajectories
of heartbreak and unresolved love. However, in keeping with his other works, Allens
novel preserves a certain space for the individuals productive contribution. Juliet recognizes
that she cannot fit within the romance plot. Though she does not technically adapt to the
heterosexual love story, she is able to rewrite this plot into a new story of love between women.
Drawing upon conventions associated with autobiography, our heroine also reminds
us that narratives, even the most personal stories, are still social formations. It is even
more impressive to note that, with this gesture, The Type-Writer Girl anticipates late
twentieth-century scholarship on autobiography as social collaboration. Recent scholars of
autobiography, such as Paul John Eakin, have long argued that the autobiographical subject
is produced through social structures and relationships. As Eakin explains, the idea of an
autobiographical subject who writes, says, or creates himself/herself is an illusion of selfdetermination; instead, all identity is relational, and thus the definition of autobiography,
and its history as well, must be stretched to reflect the kinds of self-writing in which relational
identity is characteristically displayed (4344).21 Emphasizing the cooperative above the
singular or competitive, The Type-Writer Girl is aware of this relational subject and its
demand for a new narrative structure. Juliet doesnt see herself as an autonomous entity;
rather, her actions are informed by a sense of responsibility to the social group, the feminist
collective. Her story of gender consciousness and the formation of a feminist identity thus
gives way to a new autobiographical narrative, one that both describes and reenacts womens
relationships with each other.22
With this emphasis on the social subject, The Type-Writer Girl thus negates the problem
of the signature. Instead, the text invokes and prioritizes the multitude of different Is
associated with the autobiographical narrative. Ultimately, the life narrative focuses on the
feminist collective and not the autonomous or real authorial I. Hence, the autobiographical

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239

pact wherein the narrator and signature are one and the same is supplanted by the
ideological or relational I. In their definition of this latter I, Smith and Watson write:
The routing of a self known through its relational others undermines the understanding
of life narrative as a bounded story of the unique, individuated narrating subject; rather,
no I speaks except as and through its others (67). Juliets story and, by extension, her
subjectivity is not bounded but instead forms in relation to and is eventually inextricably
linked with those other women with whom she identifies. We must recognize this novel as
drawing upon conventions of autobiography only to tell the story of Juliet as that of ALL the
other typewriter girls.
Even more impressive, however, is the novels use of technology as a way to draw
attention to the inclusiveness of this narrative of selfhood. In The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin reminds us how art in the age of capitalism must
utilize and also reflect upon technologies of mechanical production. His account of modern
art traces that historical shift away from the auratic theory of art to a new understanding
of modern art as socially engaged. As he explains, because pre-capitalist art objects were
denoted by their rarity, enjoyment of such works was limited to a small group of privileged
individuals. Those able to access the work of art would, through a kind of cultic ritual of
consumption, reaffirm the works aura, that core value which then magically reaffirms
both the art works rarity and the groups elite status. But in the age of capitalism, it is
possible to mechanically reproduce and distribute art widely. While the new technologies
of mechanical reproduction effectively erase arts auratic value, they also enable a new
relationship between the work of art and its cultural context. The new, modern work of art
is self-conscious of its participation in mass culture. Its mechanical reproduction and mass
circulation do not threaten but rather contribute to the works identity as art. In a move that
anticipates Benjamins theory, Juliets narrative takes on the role of a mass-produced art.
When read with reference to the title The Type-Writer Girl, the novels conclusion realigns
Juliet with the category of womens labor, and at the same time it also aligns her with
technologies of mechanical reproduction. Yet her typewriting does not erase her specificity,
her aura; rather it foregrounds her status as a cultural subject, an entity that is produced and
reproduces the social body, particularly the gendered conditions of labor.
As a self-conscious agent of purposive adaptation, Juliet is also able to craft a narrative
that calls attention to and even mimics the technologies of self-production. Indeed, her
repeated reference to familiar romances draws our attention to a mode of narrative production
that would erase the subjects specificity. Calling herself Juliet and her lover Romeo, the
narrators individuality would seem to disappear as she attempts to inhabit a universal story
of love. Within this standard plot, she becomes simply another tragic heroine, a type. Her final
flight to Venice marks one last and desperate attempt to make this romance plot work for her.
But Juliet cannot make this love story fit. Hers is not a story of tragic lovers torn apart by a
family feud. While their respective interests and associates certainly clash, Juliet and Romeo
will nonetheless survive their affair. Instead, Juliet consciously rejects this plot in order to
tell another story; she leaves Italy and the romance story behind, returning to England and
the alternative story of the feminist collective. Her return to the feminist narrative marks a
moment of purposive adaptation. The feminists story cannot be told through conventional
plotlines such as romance. Instead, the feminist chooses the group, accepting and adapting
to a social formation of subjectivity. But her conscious decision to choose the group also
makes this new narrative possible. In The Type-Writer Girl, the feminist narrative tells the

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story of a heroines social conscience and also her rejection of standard romance narrative.
The feminist subject thus plays an active or purposive role in the formation of the group and
its new narrative.
The novels concluding reference to debt further emphasizes the interdependent
relationship between the narrator and the social conditions of reproduction. In the closing
lines, Juliet informs readers that she plans to earn money by selling her novel so that she
might pay back her loan. But whether her story will be a success, whether readers will accept
it, remains to be seen. The only conclusion she can give us is uncertainty: if this book
succeeds I mean to repay Michaela. Meanwhile, in any case, I am saving up daily every
farthing to repay her. For I am still a type-writer girl at another office (139; ch. 21). Juliets
very narrative started with and now ends with that return to social consciousness. Her final
lines of text refuse to resolve her debt to Michaela, choosing instead to leave it open. But it is
important to note that this vision of debt is much larger than a personal loan from Michaela,
for we must remember that Michaela represents to Juliet that larger category, womanhood.
Juliets decision to sacrifice romance in order to work for and pay back Michaela represents,
by extension, her larger debt to womankind. This makes sense when we think of Juliets
earlier economic bonds with fellow typists: Juliet has always worked on behalf of and in the
interest of the feminine group. Her debt to Michaela just represents another variation of her
bond with the feminist collective.
Juliets debt also shows how, through purposive adaptation, the individual might even
rewrite the social conditions of self production. By saying that she is still a type-writer girl,
Juliet signals that she remains committed to her feminist ideals and, in particular, the idea of
gendered labor (139; ch. 21). But this self-applied moniker also indicates her effort to carve
out a space for womens specificity within the marketplace. Moreover, the self-application
of the title girl reminds us of Juliets shift in class consciousness following her bond with
Elsie. By the novels end, Juliet proudly refers to herself as a type-writer girl, not Lady,
a distinction which is reinforced by the books title. By calling herself girl, Juliet signals
her membership within a larger and classless category of womens work. But Juliet, in turn,
does not disappear behind the technologies of mechanical reproduction; rather, even the
title, The Type-Writer Girl, calls attention to this gendered aspect of womens work and,
therefore, wrestles the feminine out from behind the keys. Rather than obfuscate the female
author, this title signals the advent of a new, feminist tale of the uneasy tension between
gender and technologies of production.
By the end, we know how to interpret both the novels complicated title and, by extension,
the gestures of end-orientation contained within its opening paragraphs. This title itself should
tell us to read that opening scene as setting up a story of self-discovery that will culminate
not in an autonomous author but in a story of a girls relationship with gender and the
conditions of production. We recall that opening scene in which our narrator introduces
herself as a nameless even genderless twenty-two year old, without employment
fighting for survival in a world of undeciphered faces of men and women. When read
in connection with the title The Type-Writer Girl, this opening scene suggests that the
problem of gender difference is absolutely connected with the quest for work. As confirmed
by the novels ending, the narrator will not only find employment, but she will also find
her gender and, more importantly, her feminist identity. She will learn to tell the difference
between men and women, and this recognition will inspire our heroines fierce commitment
to bonds between women.

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241

Because this is a novel about the feminist group, it is appropriate that Juliets story
remains unfinished. Both Ann Ardis and Sally Ledger have made convincing arguments about
late-Victorian feminists need to disrupt and thus leave open conventional narratives. These
New Women novels end with the dystopian because their heroines exceed the conventional
plots and, as such, are still trying to find their ending. Juliets novel likewise searches for
an ending. Her final words, if this book succeeds, refuse any notion of finality or even
certainty. It is this gesture of what if that then pushes the text back at us, calling attention to
a kind of dialogue between the text and readers. This dialogue makes us, like Juliet, subjects
of a social narrative. By leaving the ending unresolved, the novel asks us, the readers, to
imagine possible finales for Juliet and the feminist collective. Clarissa J. Suranyi argues
that the reader is comforted by the knowledge that, whatever happens, Juliet Appleton
can take care of herself (16). However, we must remember that Juliets story is part of a
larger narrative about the feminist group, and that story is on-going and can indeed trace
its legacy from second- and third-wave innovations back to these earliest pioneers, New
Women radicals in the nineteenth century. Juliets story will remain open and subject to the
intervention of many more feminists. And we are still, in the twenty-first century, indebted
to the Juliet Appeletons and still looking to see if her book will succeed.
Concordia University (Montreal)

NOTES
1. According to Morton, the novel was never published under the authors real name during Allens
lifetime.
2. Allen used the feminine pseudonym Olive Pratt Rayner to sign the published version of the novel,
further encouraging the assumption that the text is penned by a woman.
3. This equation of the typist with animal echoes Juliets earlier encounter with a young clerk who ran
his eyes over me as if I were a horse for sale (30; ch. 2).
4. Juliets determination to adapt herself to her environment, however, seems more in keeping with a
progressive notion of functionalism rather than the Darwinian idea of variation or imperfect adaptation.
5. Atchison explains how Allen was particularly drawn to Spencers application of biological evolution
to social organizations, and how Allen felt that late-nineteenth-century thinkers failed to recognize
Spencers rightful place among the great scientists. For another example of how Allen applied Social
Darwinism to the New Woman question, see my essay on The Woman Who Did.
6. See also Gagnier, who explains how Spencer biologized the division of labor, calling it the law of
organic process consisting in the change from the homogeneous or simple to the heterogeneous,
complex, unique, or individuated (317).
7. To herself, she muses on her own utopian ideal wherein individuals are free to determine their own
course of actions and regulation: In the Utopia I had framed for myself, every man (or woman)
did that which was right in his own eyes without prejudice to his equal freedom to do that which
was wrong, if he chanced to be so minded (47; ch. 5). Although Allen does use parentheses around
woman here, my essay discusses how Juliets story refuses to limit women to such parenthetical
representation.
8. Throughout the novel, such advertisements always add alongside typist the word female, with the
latter enclosed in parentheses (see ch. 2, pages 28, 29, 30, 32, and 33; ch. 3, pages 37 and 79; and
ch. 11).

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VICTORIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE

9. Such a representation of middle-class feminism is not uncommon in New Women literature at the fin
de si`ecle. For example, in Gissings Odd Women Mary Barfoot and Rhoda Nunn begin a typewriting
business designed to train all of those surplus but, importantly, middle-class women. They deliberately
exclude poor and working class women from their social project. For more on the class dynamics in
New Women literature, see Langland and Ledger.
10. This process of identification conforms to Adam Smiths notion of sympathy outlined in The Theory
of Moral Sentiments. Sympathy, for Smith, describes the human beings ability to imagine or project
himself herself in the position of another human being to experience. This act of imagination is so
powerful that we can feel the victims pain upon torture: By the imagination we place ourselves in his
situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as if it were into his body,
and become in some measure the same person with him (Smith 9). As Smith adds, this experience
can be too much for one to bear: Persons of delicate fibers and a weak constitution of body complain,
that in looking on the sores and ulcers which are exposed by beggars in the streets, they are apt to feel
an itching or uneasy sensation in the corresponding part of their own bodies (10).
11. As Allen rationalizes, women are bound by biology to carry and to suckle their offspring, and therefore
natural biology dictates that the burden of sex must fall much heavier on the female (168).
12. Allen makes this argument in other essays such as The Girl of the Future, Plain Words on the
Woman Question, and Falling in Love.
13. As suggested by Allens argument with Ward, womens role in sexual selection and social evolution
was a popular topic among late-Victorian / Edwardian thinkers. Allen was not alone in his rather
ambivalent stand towards New Womens sexual agency within this process. Others, including H. G.
Wells (Ann Veronica), Olive Schreiner (Woman and Labor), and George Egerton (Keynotes), insisted
on giving the power of sexual selection to women.
14. Given its social contingency, it is no surprise, then, that this reform narrative can at times take a
very ugly even racist turn. Take, for example, the scene where Juliet notes with horror what she
characterizes as the leader Leons grotesque features: I think he must have been built after designs by
Mr. Aubrey Beardsley. He had rufous hair, a nose without a bridge, and thick protruding lips. Those
lips were a nightmare. I set him down as a judicious cross between a Swiss cretin and an albino negro
(50; ch. 6).
15. Juliet consciously decides to ask Michaela as opposed to Romeo for this financial loan. Juliet tells
herself that [t]o borrow from Romeo was now clearly impossible (136; ch. 21). Instead, Juliet decides
to ask Michaela for the money, and in the process of this request, Juliet reminds Michaela of their
history of good credit between each other: I borrowed from you once and repaid you faithfully; if I
borrow from you again I will repay in like manner (13839).
16. Other elements of the autobiographical narrative include occasion / coaxer, the addressee, and patterns
of knowing (see Smith and Watson, ch. 3). One can find all of these elements in The Type-Writer
Girl. Juliet addresses the reader, telling us that the occasion (coaxer) for her narrative is her intent
to repay her debt (to Michaela / the female collective). And, in many ways, her narrative appeals to
familiar patterns of self-inquiry, including the bildungsroman and the adventure romance. However,
the elements most relevant to The Type-Writer Girls innovations in narrative structure and subject
center on the different autobiographical Is, and so I focus on those elements for that reason.
17. See Keeps two essays, as well as Olwells and Prices.
18. For another example of the typewriter girl and the spread of a dehumanizing mechanical reproduction,
see Wickes analysis of Dracula where she explains the odd symmetry between technologies of
reproduction, including Minas typewriter, and Dracula: the social force most analogous to Count
Draculas . . . is none other than mass culture, the developing technologies of the media in its many
forms (469).
19. According to Price, Allen was extremely anxious over the rising literary market and its threat to artistic
creativity or originality. The first-person, autobiographical tone of the narrative is part of Allens effort
to infuse Juliet with artistic originality and authorial or individual depth.

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243

20. We know our heroine is headed for a similar fate, a clash between female rivals, when the next chapter
is titled I play Carmen (ch. 9).
21. For more on the relational subject of autobiography, see Smith and Watson.
22. For more on how the typical autobiographical narrative pushes towards the revelation of the unified
and singular subject, see Lejeune.

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