Masquerade, sisterhood and the dilemma of the feminist as artist and woman in late nineteenth‐century British women's writing

Abstract

Fin‐de‐siècle feminist writers solved the dilemma of having to “defy the cultural definition of artist or woman if [they were] to remain artist[s] and wom[e]n” (Stewart, 1979, p. 14) by braving patriarchal notions of submissive femininity and male‐engendered art in their own artistic lives, and by re‐asserting their feminist beliefs in the personae of their protagonists. As women intending to create rather than be created by male society, their heroines sought to overcome gender boundaries, either by masquerading as men, or by replacing heterosexual power structures with the idea of an all‐female community. Both cross‐dressing and sisterhood necessitated an abnegation of (hetero)sexuality.