Canadian scholar and writer Grant Allen held many progressive views, and he saw himself as a proponent of women's rights. He penned the novel The Woman Who Did as a means of shedding light on the many social strictures and constraints facing women in the late nineteenth century. The story follows a middle-class young woman who deliberately flouts convention and eventually bears a child out of wedlock. Met with a firestorm of criticism in its day, The Woman Who Did remains an intriguing read more than 100 years later.