ABSTRACT
The tension between the essentialized, passionate woman and her cultural constraints suggests the outsider's critique of dominant British gender codes and a concurrent desire to reclaim essentialism as a space from which she can speak. Positing inherent erotic and/or maternal desires and a female identity grounded in sexuality, Egerton both essentializes female identity and marks it as responsive to social context, repeatedly examining the impact of “culture” on her women's “nature.” Female desire and social constraints upon it are at issue in nearly every story in both Keynotes and Discords, particularly as enacted through marriage. As for so many New Woman writers, marriage represented for Egerton the institution which most forcefully repressed and reshaped female desire, the locale where legal, economic, religious, and social forces intersected to determine woman's position. The introduction of a band of gypsies into the narrative and the story's resolution which follows it further complicate this portrait of the woman by aligning her with the gypsies.
