The Hysteric's Revenge: French Women Writers at the Fin de Siecle

Abstract Archival evidence of the connection between Alice Stopford Green (1847–1929) and Vernon Lee (1856–1935) is restricted to a handful of letters and a few scattered references in ancillary documents. Extant correspondence provides a glimpse into the conversation and concerns of these two important European intellectuals, demonstrating their nascent interest in questions of social justice. Using network theory as a lens, this essay traces the contours of this connection, initiated during a formative period for both in the fertile context of the salons and dining rooms of London in the 1880s. This connection demonstrates the importance of social networks for women writers, artists, intellectuals and activists during the fin de siècle. By exploring the limited archival remnants of this friendship, this study highlights the Irish and European dimensions of Victorian metropolitan culture. It was because of salon culture that women with strikingly different backgrounds and sensibilities could connect and explore ideas of mutual concern, with reverberations for their political positioning and activism in subsequent decades.

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A CLUB OF THEIR OWN: THE “LITERARY LADIES,” NEW WOMEN WRITERS, AND FIN-DE-SIÈCLE AUTHORSHIP

Victorian Literature and Culture ◽

10.1017/s1060150307051509 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 35 (1) ◽

pp. 233-260 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Linda Hughes

Keyword(s):

Women Writers ◽

New Woman ◽

Fin De Siecle ◽

Political Rights ◽

Labor Conditions ◽

New Women ◽

Life Styles ◽

The Press ◽

Fin De Siècle ◽

The New Woman

THE NEW WOMAN was both a discursive formation and a figure produced by materialist history as a result of debates over marriage, sexualities, political rights, labor conditions, life styles, and fashion. Unnamed until 1893 (Tusan 169), the “New Woman” became a lively topic in the press only in 1894 (Schaffer, “‘Nothing’” 39–40), at which point the rhetoric aimed at actual women quickly transformed into attacks on or defense of a literary phenomenon – in part, Ann Ardis suggests, because a literary controversy was less threatening than the prospect of actual social change (12). The “‘props’” attributed to the New Woman by Punch, the preeminent periodical to construct the literary stereotype, included five defining activities: “She smoked, rode a bicycle, frequented women's clubs, read voraciously and wore bloomers” (Miles 247). Scholars have long acknowledged that the New Woman did not suddenly appear but had a pre-history dating back to the 1880s (e.g., Ledger 23). A crucial part of that pre-history in life and in print was the founding of the “Literary Ladies,” a women writers' dining club, in 1889. The club not only represented significant innovation in fin-de-siècle authorship but also, more crucially, precipitated in the press the “props” (bloomers excepted) that would typify – and target – the New Woman from 1894 onward.

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