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In an exploration of the complex relations between women and the modernity. She also calls into question those feminist perspectives that have either demonized the modern as inherently partiarchal, or else assumed a simple opposition between men's and women's experiences of the modern world. Combining cultural history with cultural theory, and focusing on the fin de siecle, Felski examines the gendered meanings of such notions as nostalgia, consumption, feminine writing, the popular sublime, evolution, revolution and perversion. Her approach is comparative and interdisciplinary, covering a wide variety of texts from the English, French and German traditions: sociological theory, realist and naturalist novels, decadent literature, political essays and speeches, sexological discourse, and sentimental popular fiction. Male and female writers from Simnel, Zola, Sacher-Masoch and Rachilde to Marie Corelli, Wilde and Olive Schreiner come under Felski's scrutiny as she exposes the varied and often contradictory connections between femininity and modernity. Seen through Felski's eye, the last fin de siecle provides parallels with our own. And Felski's analysis of the matrix of modernism offers insight into the sense of cultural crisis brought on by postmodernism.