Women, writing, and fetishism, 1890-1950

"This study investigates the problematic question of female fetishism within modernist women's writing, 1890-1950. Drawing upon gender and psychoanalytic theory, Taylor re-examines the works of Sarah Grand, Radclyffe Hall, H.D., Djuna Barnes, and Anais Nin in the context of clinical discourses of sexology and psychoanalysis." "The result is an 'alternative' theory of female fetishism, challenging the clinical perspective that denies the existence of this 'perversion' in women. In the process, this work identifies a distinctive writing practice: fetishism, as envisioned by modernist women writers, is both sexual and textual. These writers are shown to produce a discourse that speaks of the very 'literariness' of fetishism, bringing to the fore questions of gendered embodiment, women's writing, and sexual difference. At the centre of this discourse is the cross-gendered woman as both the subject and the object of desire."--BOOK JACKET.