Abstract
Focusing on critically-neglected works by prolific writer Netta Syrett (1865-1943), this article reveals her New Woman dialogue with aestheticism and decadence in her short stories writ-ten for the iconic 1890s periodical The Yellow Book: primarily, ‘A Correspondence’ (1895) and ‘Far Above Rubies’ (1897). Together they trace Syrett’s increasingly assertive voice and navigation of the period’s seemingly competing but intersecting aesthetic, decadent and fem-inist movements. I argue that Syrett uses aesthetic and decadent discourses as strategic vehi-cles for the articulation of her evolving feminist ideas that are more fully expressed in her lat-er pro-suffrage works. Specifically, her stories register her response to the male elitism and misogyny of aestheticism and decadence through a critical engagement with their tropes (ex-otic setting; aestheticized interior; femme fatale) and discourses (of mythology; statuary; flo-riography) in order to challenge the objectification and marginalization of women by mascu-linist culture using its own terms of reference. Syrett’s stories are thus discursive spaces through which she articulates anxieties about women’s place in, or exclusion from, aestheti-cism and decadence, asserting her role in these movements as both participant and critic. This article thus offers a more comprehensive understanding of the evolving discourses of, as well as the dialogues and debates enacted by, fin-de-siècle women’s writing, as well as shedding new light on the aesthetic and decadent movements.