“GERM THEORIES”: BACTERIOLOGY IN ELLA HEPWORTH DIXON'S THE STORY OF A MODERN WOMAN

Abstract

Recent commentary on “Number Twenty-seven”, a tubercular character in Ella Hepworth Dixon's novel The Story of a Modern Woman (1894), indicates that she reflects concerns about the scandalous open secret of conjugal syphilis transmission at the fin de siècle. This article elaborates on this claim by arguing that the novel evinces a pervasive interest in bacteriology, and that Dixon sexualizes moments of airborne pathogenesis to condition her readership to recognize her commentary on syphilis. While writing about sexually transmitted disease under other auspices permits Dixon to broach a topic considered unfit for discussion by women, this article nevertheless contends that The Story of a Modern Woman is not simply a coded novel, wherein the circulation of tuberculosis implies nothing other than the virulence of syphilis. The novel's naturalistic settings, which include vitiated airspaces and filthy surfaces in and out of doors in urban London, recall environments deemed liable by nineteenth-century germ theory to harbor tuberculosis bacilli. These pathogenic surroundings critique the harmful conditions to which women were subjected by male-dominated institutions. In tuberculosis, Dixon finds a vehicle through which she can address the open secret of conjugal syphilis transmission, as well as stress threats common to women that necessitated New Woman political consciousness.