A Daughter of To-Day

In Short

This novel is a compelling, melancholic character study of Elfrida Bell, an American girl of fierce, restless, and largely unformed ambition who attempts to carve out a life as an artist and intellectual in Paris and London. Driven by an intense desire for "expression" and a profound disdain for the domestic expectations of her time, Elfrida finds her dreams consistently thwarted by her own lack of technical discipline and the indifference of the society she tries to master. It remains a piercing, unsentimental portrait of a woman who tries to outrun her own nature.

The Story

The narrative begins in the provincial town of Sparta, Illinois, where Elfrida Bell is already a restless spirit, straining against the suffocating expectations of her parents and the well-meaning but stifling supervision of Miss Kimpsey, her former teacher. Armed with a fragile, amateurish talent for art, Elfrida departs for the cosmopolitan centers of Europe, determined to reinvent herself as a woman of profound intellectual and creative significance.

In Paris and later in London, she navigates the fringes of artistic circles, constantly seeking the approval of men who view her as a curiosity or an object of fleeting attraction. She meets John Kendal, a serious artist whose respect she desperately craves, and Lawrence Cardiff, an older, more established man who is fascinated by her youth and vitality. However, Elfrida’s ambition is brittle; she lacks the patient, grinding discipline necessary for true artistic mastery. Instead, she turns to writing, hoping that the "modern" voice she believes she possesses will grant her the status she feels she is owed. She attempts to live according to a cynical, self-made philosophy that prizes total personal freedom above all else, often at the cost of the genuine friendships she forms, particularly with Janet Cardiff.

Elfrida’s descent is not marked by a singular, dramatic betrayal, but by a slow, agonizing erosion of her illusions. She finds that the world is not as interested in her "soul" as she had hoped. She takes up acting for a time, then returns to writing, always searching for a medium that will finally allow her to speak. Her relationships—with Kendal, with the Cardiffs, and with the hangers-on of the London clubs—become increasingly fraught with misunderstandings and the crushing weight of her own pride.

Ultimately, the isolation proves too much. Failing to find a lasting place in the artistic world she idolized and unable to reconcile her sense of self with the realities of her life, Elfrida takes her own life. In the aftermath, her parents bring her body back to Sparta, erecting a monument that seeks to frame her tragic end as a hereditary quirk. The story concludes with those who knew her—Kendal and Janet, now married—living in a quiet, somewhat haunted domesticity, while Elfrida’s memory remains a closed, misinterpreted chapter in the lives of those she touched.

How It Unfolds

The departure from Sparta Elfrida leaves her small-town life, characterized by the stifling, "perfectly lovely" provinciality of her parents, to pursue a higher artistic calling in the ateliers of Europe. She carries with her a sense of superiority that isolates her from her roots before she has even begun to test her wings.

The struggle in Paris Elfrida attempts to establish herself as an artist, but she is repeatedly confronted with her own limitations. She manages to extract small loans from sympathetic men, but she cannot secure the professional recognition she craves, leading her to abandon painting for the promise of a journalistic career.

The move to London Following the advice of a skeptical mentor, Elfrida moves to London to find an opening among the ladies' papers. She enters the city with a sense of "turmoil" and optimism, yet she remains an outsider, caught between her desire for professional success and her disdain for the "respectable" world.

The entanglement with the Cardiffs Elfrida forms a complex, semi-parasitic relationship with the refined Janet Cardiff and her father, Lawrence. She views their lives with a mixture of envy and contempt, eventually becoming a source of friction between the daughter’s loyalty and the father’s infatuation.

The final realization Elfrida’s hope for a great, defining "voice" evaporates under the weight of mounting rejections and the realization that she has alienated those who truly cared for her. When she perceives that she has reached an impasse in her work and her personal life, the internal pressure becomes absolute, leading to her final, fatal decision.

The People

Elfrida Bell is the book’s restless heart. She wants to be a "type" of the new, emancipated woman, but she is crippled by an inability to distinguish between the performance of genius and the actual work required to achieve it. Her pride is her ultimate undoing, as it prevents her from accepting the modest, steady path.

John Kendal is the artist who serves as the benchmark for Elfrida’s own ambitions. He is talented and grounded, and while he is momentarily captivated by Elfrida’s "prismatic" mind, he ultimately finds his happiness in a more stable, honest union with Janet. Janet Cardiff represents the tempered, thoughtful woman who balances intellectual depth with social and emotional responsibility. She is deeply attached to Elfrida, yet she remains clear-eyed about the dangers of Elfrida’s path, eventually choosing a life that avoids the wreckage of her friend's idealism. Together, these figures create a landscape where Elfrida’s flighty, demanding personality is measured against the reality of lived experience.

In Its Own Voice

"The girl made her way toward Charing Cross with the westward-going crowd."

This sentence captures Elfrida’s lonely, hurried movement through a London that is fundamentally indifferent to her presence.

"She resigned herself to dreams of the most effective arrangement of her material, the selection of her publisher, the long midnight hours alone with Buddha, in which she should give herself up to the enthralment of speaking with that voice which she could summon."

This passage reveals the dangerous disconnect between her meticulous daydreams of success and the reality of her actual, unfinished work.

"I fancy, he is thinking of an art that has slipped away from him, and she of a loyalty she could not hold."

This reflection on the survivors of Elfrida’s life provides a quiet, devastating epilogue to the damage she leaves behind.

What It's Really About

The central argument concerns the high cost of vanity disguised as artistic devotion. The book questions whether a "modern" woman can truly find liberation by rejecting traditional structures, or if, in doing so, she merely trades the old suffocations for a more dangerous, self-imposed isolation. It probes the tension between the "art" of living and the "art" of creation, suggesting that the former requires a humility and connection that Elfrida refuses to cultivate. Beneath the plot lies a sober critique of the "New Woman" archetype as it was perceived in the era—an exploration of how the demand for personal independence can sometimes curdle into a destructive solipsism when not anchored in empathy or objective truth.

Why Read It Today

This book is a rewarding read for those interested in the Victorian transition into modernity and the psychological toll of social shifts. The prose is precise and often biting, capturing the specific, stifling atmosphere of both provincial America and the artistic enclaves of Europe. Readers who appreciate character-driven narratives that refuse to provide easy redemption will find much to admire.

The book is not without its challenges; the prose carries the formal, deliberate weight of its time, and the social attitudes toward gender and class are firmly rooted in the 1890s. Some readers may find Elfrida’s relentless, self-absorbed posturing difficult to live with, and the occasional use of period-specific dialect and cultural references requires a certain degree of patience. However, the emotional honesty of the ending is startling. It leaves the reader with a profound, lingering sense of the waste involved in a life spent chasing shadows. It is a haunting, unsentimental look at the fragility of the ego and the harshness of the world toward those who fail to reconcile their grand ambitions with the simple, necessary demands of human connection.