Rediscovering London in Ella Hepworth Dixon’s The Story of a Modern Woman

This chapter considers how Ella Hepworth Dixon’s The Story of a Modern Woman, one of the pioneering British novels of the New Woman fiction genre at the fin de siecle yet has not been given enough critical attention from literary critics, explores an ingenious relationship a New Woman, Mary Erle, establishes with the city space, London. The middle-class women in late Victorian London reimagined the cityscape by being involved in the philanthropic charity works and by participating in civic discussions and demonstrations regarding contemporary crimes. According to Mary’s explanation, the landscape of London has been shifted from a “geographically bounded” one to a “dangerously transgressed” one, as a result of an economic crisis, a doubtful self-reflection of the bourgeois middle class, and the interference of journalistic reports. The narrator unfolds a panoramic view of London ranging from a sketch of buildings to the movements of the citizens and travelling public before the readers’ eyes.