The 'New Woman' undermined traditional views of the feminine. Many men found the idea of women making their own way in the world both sensible and yet some women were passionately against female emancipation and the threat it posed to the status quo of marriage and motherhood. Either way, whether viewed as a free-spirited, independent, bicycling, intelligent career-minded ideal or as a sexually degenerate, abnormal, mannish, chain-smoking, child-hating bore, the New Woman was here to stay and, admired or despised, she remained a force for change throughout the late-Victorian and Edwardian periods.