The Ballingtons

Frances Squire Potter's 1905 novel The Ballingtons follows Agnes Sydney, a nonconformist within an aristocratic milieu whose ideas about women's rights set her apart. The story is set in the years after the American Civil War, during the late Victorian period, shortly before the First World War would reshape the world.

Agnes chafes against a social order that expects women of her position to accept a deferential, contented role. What she wants is independence: the right to own property, to control money of her own, and to make decisions about her own life. Much of the book's tension grows from the clash between those ambitions and the expectations placed on her.

When it first appeared, the novel was well received. It portrays the struggles earlier feminists fought for while measuring how far women have advanced and how much further they might still go. Its concerns remain current more than a century later.