The New Woman in Nowhere: Feminism and Utopianism at the Fin de Siècle

摘要: Reviewing a reissue of Olive Schreiner’s Dreams in 1912, Rebecca West revealingly wrote that ‘The worst being feminist is one has no evidence.’1 The ‘evidence’ for which she was foraging took the form female ‘genius’ — particular literary prodigy whose very biography or life’s work could point towards those human possibilities abolition patriarchy would surely realize future. This suggestive starting-point discussion politics women’s movement at end last century, years Schreiner struggled to articulate personal and social desires. For West’s invocation an alternative, epistemology, her embattled appeal heuristic proleptic (rather than empirical) type political ‘proof’, resonates with search emancipated interpersonal relations initiated by certain feminists fin de siecle.