Gender, the New Woman, and the Monster

This book views late Victorian femininity, the New Woman, and gender through literary representations of the figure of the monster, an appendage to the New Woman. The monster, an aberrant occurrence, performs Brechts alienation effect, making strange the world that she inhabits, thereby drawing veiled conclusions about the New Woman and gender at the end of the fin-de-sicle. The monster reveals that New Women loved one another complexly, not just as friend or lover, but both friend and lover. The monster, like the fin-de-sicle British populace, mocked the New Womans modernity. She was paradoxically viewed as a threat to society and as a role model for women to follow. The tragic suicides of monstrous New Women of color suggest that many fin-de-sicle authors, especially female authors, thought that these women should be included in society, not banished to its limits. This book, the first on the relationship between the figure of the monster and the New Woman, argues that there is hidden complexity to the New Woman. Her sexuality was complicated and could move between categories of sexuality and friendship for late Victorian women, and the way that the fin-de-sicle populace viewed her was just as multifarious. Further, the narratives of her tragedies ironically became narratives that advocated for her survival.