ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests a sense of unity and volition; regardless of the schisms, personal conflicts and individual socio-political agendas. It explores the social existence of women who did not fit the traditional designations of Victorian femininity, and who subsequently found in Greek fertile soil towards the creation of a 'female' aesthetic, was a reality which warrants scrutiny. Women scholars and artists such as Jane Harrison, Eugenie Sellers, Vernon Lee, or Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, belonged to a group governed and qualified by a discourse, a cultural rewriting if they like, which could be understood by its 'members', and acknowledged by internal or external socio-cultural commentators, as 'distinctive'. In Greek mythology, 'maenadism' was associated with the forces of nature, menacing forces beyond masculine control; 'a community of women with the power to create and destroy, dedicated not only to song and dance in honor of Dionysus, but to darker acts of destruction like sparagmos and omophagia'.
