ABSTRACT
This chapter examines two collaboratively written texts that bait age-old preoccupations with femininity, and women's various relationships to violence, including violence against cherished norms; they contribute to and problematize the contemporary discourse which arose as the Victorian "Woman Question" gave way to fin-de-siecle images of the "New Woman". It shows that how The Tragic Mary and The Real Charlotte negotiate, and in some senses, queer, traditional dualities about the "nature" of femininity: creator and destroyer, angel and demon, victim and agent of violence. The chapter explores how Michael Field's The Tragic Mary and Somerville and Ross's The Real Charlotte retell stories of the powers and dangers of being female, thereby participating in, and altering, such a "chain of historicity". It discusses the feature women with complex and shifting identities but instead evoke figures from the past; this strategy highlights their potential as other models of female existence while rendering their otherness more palatable through the distancing of history.
