The rebel of the family

the long version

'The Rebel of the Family' (1880) is the first New Woman novel by Eliza Lynn Linton. Perdita Winstanley, the novel's protagonist, struggles to balance the competing demands on her snobbish, conservative mother and sisters, her radical friends in the women's rights movement, and an admirable but low-born chemist and his family. [This book] also includes what is perhaps the first literary portrait of the late-Victorian lesbian community in London, featuring Bell Blount and her 'little wife' Connie.