New Women, New Novels

This book extends the feminist recovery of women writers by focusing on the "New Woman" fiction of the 1890s. Ardis's starting point is her contention that her predecessors in this area, were too blinded by the aesthetic of high modernism to be fair to these late nineteenth century texts. Ardis sets out to examine these marginalized texts in relation to a political rather than an aesthetic agenda. Her study, she hopes, will reveal "the practical politics of modernism" and will also encourage reflection on the omissions and exclusions of "gynocriticism." Ardis thus joins other recent writers whose tribute to the feminist critics of the 1970s takes the form of interrogation and correction.