jectivities of the depicted women, all the while knowing that there were not "actual" voices and xix thoughts waiting to be recovered. Introduction At the least, I hope this book persuades its readers that the modernist project of the 18705 and i88os was a gendered one. Though the seams between the two efforts that coexist here — one empiricist and one feminist - probably still show in what follows, I am not concerned. These ragged edges are the signs that this book has itself been through history; that it was produced over time and under fluctuating intellectual and political conditions which exerted various, uneven pressures on the author and her work.