The heroines in the fictions at the fin de siècle, who people such novels as Ideala (Sarah Grand) and Esther Waters (George Moore), reflect aspects, if not all elements, of the feminist realist literary aesthetic, as Molly Youngkin’s first book, Feminist Realism at the Fin de Siècle: The Influence of the Late-Victorian Woman’s Press on the Development of the Novel, clearly illustrates (Ohio State UP, 2007). In her Introduction, Youngkin explains that in order for women of the period to triumph over difficult circumstances, their “fictional women needed to assert agency in the same manner real-life women did” vis-à-vis the feminist realist ideal. In other words, “they needed to experience a transformation of consciousness to realize their condition, articulate their condition through spoken word, and use concrete action to change their condition” (7). Encouraged by women’s periodicals of the time, this feminist realist approach to writing, as Youngkin explains, inspired a literary aesthetic that “privileged consciousness over spoken word and action,” which paved the way, as Youngkin and other scholars assert, for the subjective experience privileged by the modernist novel (8).

To frame her study, Youngkin selects eight works from the period in which women are the principal characters. She examines each author’s attention to the characteristics of the feminist realist ideal and the criticism expressed by the feminist press of the period—specifically, Shaftsand The Woman’s Herald. To organize her discussion, Youngkin elucidates perspicuously the manner by which each New Woman writer personifies the feminist realist aesthetic with greater capacity, which, based on this ideal, she separates into four chapters: “Consciousness Raised”; “Spoken Word as Political Tool”; “Feminist Action”; and “Successful Representations of Woman’s Agency and Literary Reputations.” Youngkin utilizes three principal assumptions in order to assert the two objectives of her study: “to analyze previously ignored evidence about the debate over realism and to reconsider the transition from the Victorian novel to the modernist novel in light of this evidence” (14).

First, she identifies Shafts and The Woman’s Herald, and the philosophies they espouse, as particularly liberal feminist, rather than just “feminist,” since “underlying their analysis of women’s issues and literary representations of women is the equality doctrine, the belief that the best route to emancipation for women is the achievement of equal political and legal rights” (8). Her second conjecture is concerned with the term “woman’s agency.” To contextualize the feminist realist aesthetic, Youngkin discusses feminist essentialism, which follows the assertion that women write from a completely different perspective and style than men. Youngkin conceives that a woman’s resistance to cultural norms transpires through language, which consequently shows that while a fictional character challenges social conventions in the story world, her defiance resists the real-life values that advocate the subjugation of women, rather than specific narrative strategies.

Youngkin’s last assumption involves the three methods of asserting agency as defined by the feminist realist aesthetic—consciousness, spoken word, andconcrete action—and their corresponding literary strategies. Consciousness, according to Youngkin, is represented by internal perspective, or “focalization,” while spoken word is best exhibited by the narrative technique of dialogue (11). Youngkin’s application and examination of this ideal corresponds with the feminist press’s concentration on the aesthetic qualities of late-Victorian novels. With these primary suppositions in mind, she creates a coherent and methodical structure by which she achieves a comprehensive and impressively erudite work.

Like the women’s periodicals of fin de siècle, Youngkin summarizes well the triumphs and inadequacies of each novel. She chooses Sarah Grand’s Ideala to establish the foundation for her emphasis on consciousness in The Heavenly Twins and The Beth Book. Through her heroines’ internal perspective, Grand illustrates the ways in which increased consciousness is critical to a woman’s development, especially when her introspection evolves into action. Moreover, while Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Ubervilles andJude the Obscure champion the feminist realist aesthetic of spoken word, Youngkin argues that they fail as New Woman novels because the female protagonists founder before their consciousness develops into concrete action. Their agency, according to Youngkin, is undermined by competing “languages infused with ideologies that support the subordination of women” (57). She includes George Gissing’s The Year of the Jubilee in this category, though his novel, The Odd Women, exemplifies the feminist realist ideal at work.

To this end, Youngkin uses Mona Caird’s The Daughters of Daunus to demonstrate the political qualities of speech, advocating, in a brilliant manner, that “spoken word is the site for expression of agency” (83). Youngkin subsequently elaborates this claim vis-à-vis the works of George Meredith and Mènie Dowie by emphasizing that their heroines, who act as well as think and speak, embody the regard for action prescribed by the feminist press.

Since the writers for Shafts and The Woman’s Herald underscored the importance of the feminist realist aesthetic in literature and explicitly searched for this ideal in books, Youngkin accurately substantiates the influence of women’s newspapers on the development of late-Victorian novels. The relationship between journalism and the literary sphere further verifies her evaluation of George Moore and Henrietta Stannard, who amalgamated and implemented the feminist realist aesthetic within their characters, subverting cultural traditions in “its best expression” (136).

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