Amy Levy: Feminist Friend or Foe?

In the late nineteenth century, the beginnings of modern feminism were beginning to take root. Some people clung strongly, as is also the case today, to the traditional view that men and women were meant to fill different roles in society, and that women should be subservient to men. Some women, including Amy Levy, agreed with this sentiment, at least to some extent. Others started to promote the idea of a “New Woman,” who was independent and did not rely on men for her needs. Amy Levy did not identify as a feminist, but she seems to have some support for the movement, and she explores these complicated feelings in The Romance of a Shop.

More specifically, Amy Levy uses the characters of Gertrude and Lord Watergate to explore some complex feelings about the burgeoning movement of feminism. Levy writes that Gertrude “had told him not to return and he had taken her at her word. She was paying the penalty, which her sex always pays one way or another, for her struggles for strength and independence” (Levy 294). The use of the phrase “paying the penalty…for strength and independence” indicates a disdain on Levy’s part for women who try to achieve such “strength and independence,” because a woman who even desires such things, much less works for them, is portrayed as someone who must be punished. This is a common trope in literature from this time period, the fin de siècle, for example in Henry James’s Daisy Miller, in which a woman is sent away and ultimately dies, and it is suggested that this is her punishment for being too strong, independent, or acting too much like a man. Therefore, this passage can be read as an extension of that tradition, and as a critique of feminism and women’s emerging independence.

Despite the fact that this passage reads as a critique of feminism, there is one phrase that suggests that it might be something more. Levy writes that “Lord Watergate might have loved (Gertrude) more if he respected her less…” and this is a surprisingly critical phrase that one would not expect to see in a passage critiquing feminism (Levy 294). It seems to critique the idea of heterosexual love by implying that a man must disrespect a woman in order to fully and truly “love” her. It would be expected in a feminist critique for a man to be portrayed as able to love and respect a woman while also keeping her in a subordinate and subservient position. However, in the next half of that sentence, Levy writes that Lord Watergate could also have loved Gertrude more if he “allowed for a little feminine waywardness,” which undermines the point that was just made, implying that all women are naturally unpredictable and disloyal. In this way, therefore, Levy uses The Romance of a Shop to explore complex ideas surrounding feminism.