The Forgotten Female Aesthetes: Literary Culture in Late-Victorian England by Talia Schaffer (review)

Abstract

of decadent exoticism in the work of the Indian poet Sarojini Naidu, who was lionized by the male London literary establishment in the I89os, juxtaposing her with Laurence Hope (Adela Nicolson), an Englishpoet in India and author of the famous song 'Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar'.Ann Ardis considershow in the twentieth century Netta Syrett's novelistic evocation of the i89os in Strange Marriage (I930) and AnnePage(I909) manages to dissociate aestheticism from its more scandalouscharacteristicssuch as effeminacyto show how it can be partially assimilated with forms of bourgeois culture to protect and camouflage women's greater sexual and personal freedom. Essays on cultural themes such as female perspectives on male aestheticism (Margaret D. Stetz) and male effeminacy as degeneration (Lisa K. Hamilton) contain useful insights, but the essay I enjoyed most was Alison Victoria Matthews's well-informed and engaging study of the 'politicsof pigment in Victorian art, criticismand fashion',which explains how the impact of vivid and affordable aniline dyes on late Victorian culture induce a fashionchange frombrightto subdued 'aesthetic'colour. Strangely, the figure that haunts this book and yet fails to receive adequate attentionin herown rightisVernonLee. Althoughmentioned bymany contributors and supposedly a focus in two essays, Lee's important contribution to British aestheticism is never properly assessed and this collection cries out for fresh evaluations of her 'anti-aesthetic'novel MissBrown( 884). Denis Denisoff makes a rather feeble attempt to compare Lee's 'Oke of Okehurst' with Woolf's Orlando. There ismuch to be saidaboutthe relationbetween these authors,most importantly one might have thought in terms of style, but this essay is a missed opportunity. Diana Maltz's essayon the sharedaestheticprogrammeof Lee and Kit AnstrutherThomson should have been better. Maltz draws on that under-used resource, the Colby College archiveof Lee'spapers,but heressayis an exercisein hypothesisand wishful thinking. It is mischievously tendentious to describe Thomson as Lee's 'lesbian lover' without carefully explaining the context of Lee's romantic female friendshipswhich were almost certainlynon-physical.This is not to say that these friendships might not have had an eroticism of their own, but that subtle eroticismisnot well servedby Maltz'sattemptto map a conscioustwentieth-century sexuality onto the late nineteenth century. Towards the end of her essay (p. 224) Maltz actuallyadmitsthat she has little evidence for her claims that Kit AnstrutherThomson 's gallerytoursprovided some sort of lesbianperformancefor upper-class women. However, with these exceptions, this is an informative and attractivecollection which will be of interestto anyone workingon Britishaestheticism. QUEEN MARY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON CATHERINE MAXWELL The Forgotten FemaleAesthetes. LiteraryCulture in Late-Victorian England. By TALIA SCHAFFER. (Victorian Literature and Culture) Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia. 2000. x + 298 pp. $55 (paperbound $I9.50). Until quite recently Victorian aestheticism has been seen as the preserve of male writerswith Wilde, Pater,Beardsley,and the poets of the I89os as chief actors,but new scholarship has begun to recover the important part played by women. Following on from the illuminating collection Womenand British Aestheticism (Charlottesvilleand London: University Pressof Virginia, 2000) which she edited with Kathy Alexis Psomiades, Talia Schafferrecovers a number of women writers, highly celebratedin theirday, and considerstheirdiversecontributionsto aesthetic literatureand culture. of decadent exoticism in the work of the Indian poet Sarojini Naidu, who was lionized by the male London literary establishment in the I89os, juxtaposing her with Laurence Hope (Adela Nicolson), an Englishpoet in India and author of the famous song 'Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar'.Ann Ardis considershow in the twentieth century Netta Syrett's novelistic evocation of the i89os in Strange Marriage (I930) and AnnePage(I909) manages to dissociate aestheticism from its more scandalouscharacteristicssuch as effeminacyto show how it can be partially assimilated with forms of bourgeois culture to protect and camouflage women's greater sexual and personal freedom. Essays on cultural themes such as female perspectives on male aestheticism (Margaret D. Stetz) and male effeminacy as degeneration (Lisa K. Hamilton) contain useful insights, but the essay I enjoyed most was Alison Victoria Matthews's well-informed and engaging study of the 'politicsof pigment in Victorian art, criticismand fashion',which explains how the impact of vivid and affordable aniline dyes on late Victorian culture induce a fashionchange frombrightto subdued 'aesthetic...