| Summary: | The New Woman as a radical female
figure and a controversial literary construct appeared in the works of fin-de-siècle feminist authors in
Britain. Short story was a suitable form for the New Woman to represent new
femininity and express her opinions both in content and form. Her short stories
portrayed a large body of female characters that could be identified with her
smoking habits, masculine outfits and manners as well as strong feminist
arguments. This paper attempts to identify what
the possible meanings are engendered by the constructions of new femininity and
her unconventional personalities that promote women’s artistic creativity,
performance of pseudo-masculinity as well as free act and speech for gender
equality. The stories examined in this paper have been selected from Elaine
Showalter’s book entitled Daughters of
Decadence: Women Writers of the Fin-de-Siècle, which includes a representative
selection of short stories written by female writers. In this selection, it has
also been important to determine in what ways the collection of short stories
in this edition offered a common discourse about these women’s stance over the
issue of female liberties and their personal struggle in their private lives.
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