Decadent Phelps: New Womanhood and the Decentered Self in Confessions of a Wife

Abstract

Most scholars associate the popular, prolific and respected writer Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911), who was one of the most important American women writers of her generation, with the mid nineteenth century. In contrast, this essay argues for the salience of her late novel Confessions of a Wife (1902) by situating it within New Woman, aesthetic and decadent writing. Although Phelps is occasionally treated as a New Woman writer, it is the political New Woman in The Story of Avis (1877) or The Silent Partner (1871) on which scholars have focused. In this essay, the author reads the decadent New Woman interested in exploring sexual gratification and forbidden emotions in Confessions of a Wife. In this late novel, Phelps advances her critique of marriage and exploration of the divided self by engaging in aesthetic motifs such as an extravagant throwing of the voice, a welter of references from material culture and references to Oriental tales. Such aesthetic motifs enable Phelps to foreground the decentered nature of subjectivity and particularly the subjectivity of women who desire sexual gratification, loyal companionship and intellectual sustenance.