George Egerton's Feminine 'Umwerthung Aller Werte'

George Egerton's feminine 'Umwerthung Aller Werte'

Elke D'hoker

In A Leaf from the Yellow Book, Terence de Vere White credits George Egerton with having the “first reference to Nietzsche in English” (1958: 18) and this is confirmed by David Thatcher in his authoritative study of Nietzsche's reception in Britain (1970: 53). Egerton was presumably introduced to Nietzsche's works through her acquaintance with the Scandinavian authors Ola Hansson, Knut Hamsun and Henrik Ibsen, who had 'discovered' Nietzsche in the late 1880s. That she knew German enabled her to read his works before the first English translation appeared in 1896.

While critics have acknowledged Egerton's references to Nietzsche in her Keynotes and Discords and have recognised his influence on her world-view in general terms (see esp. Jusova 2000), the precise extent of Egerton's engagement with Nietzsche's thought has not yet been investigated. In my paper I propose to analyse the way in which Egerton used certain elements of Nietzche's philosophy (while rejecting others) and how she adapted these elements to suit her own (feminist) purposes. In doing so I will pay specific attention to the late nineteenth-century reception of Nietzsche's thought by Scandinavian writers (esp. Hansson and Brandes) and by the fin-de-siècle suffragette movement.

I will then make this general investigation more concrete by a reading of Egerton's "The Regeneration of Two" as Egerton's answer to Nietzschean thought. I will here focus especially on ideas of both Egerton and Nietzsche on women and maternity, on moral philosophy and its revaluation of all values, and on the "Uebermensch" and the will to power.

Biography

Dr. Elke D'hoker, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

I am a lecturer at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. My publications include a critical study of John Banville (Rodopi, 2004) and a edited collection on narrative unreliability (De Gruyter, 2008). I have also published articles on twentieth-century fiction in such journals as Modern Fiction Studies, Critique, Contemporary Literature, Irish University Review, The Irish Review and The Journal of the Short Story in English. I have been a research fellow at the Institute of English Studies in 2006-2007 and a visiting scholar in Boston University in 2008. I am currently working on a book about the short story by Irish women writers and I am also involved in a research project on female short story writers of the fin-de-siècle.

I will not need any special equipment to deliver this paper.