ABSTRACT
Phenomenally popular fi n-de-siècle celebrity Marie Corelli, in her fi ctional and nonfi ctional writing, repeatedly affi rmed that the era’s iconic New Woman represented not the promise but the threat of “modernity.”1 Modernity, as represented by the New Woman, did not extend the civilizing process. Rather, it jeopardized it. By challenging rules of behavior that were integral to the civilized state, the New Woman threatened a return to a previous state of barbarianism. Indeed, by refusing to allow a proper feeling of womanly shame to regulate her thoughts and actions, this icon of modernity seemed to counter Norbert Elias’s understanding of the symbiotic relationship between advancing frontiers of shame and the progression of civilization. Given that this New Woman’s improper behavior threatened to destabilize English society and interrupt British imperialism-Britain’s international role of bringing “civilisation” to others-as self-appointed “guardian of the public conscience,” Corelli took it upon herself to attempt to shame her. More accurately, she took it upon herself to elicit “proper” feelings of guilt and shame from her readers, particularly her female readers, whose sympathies dared to stray too closely toward the damaging feminist aspirations of the unseemly and unwomanly New Woman, and the decivilizing process she apparently championed.
