First published in 1893, George Egerton's Keynotes was immediately popular, selling six thousand copies in its first year alone. Appearing three years later, Laura Marholm Hansson's review effectively singles out what made the text such a tremendous success: each story offered readers a probing representation of woman's “consciousness” or inner world of emotional and sexual passions, subjects unavailable in any “previous work.” Egerton was, of course, the penname for Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright, and many of the themes covered in Keynotes were loosely modeled after her own life. The volume was uncompromising in its portrayal of women's desires, or those “notes” from which it takes its title. “[T]here are no signs of girlish prudery in ‘Keynotes,’” Hansson continues, “it is a liberal book, indiscreet in respect of the intimacies of married life, and entirely without respect for the husband” (63). Despite this high praise, Hansson also worries whether Keynotes was not “too good a book to become famous all at once” (61). Her hesitation alludes to the mixed reception among readers and literary critics, for to say that everyone loved Egerton's fiction would be an exaggeration and, more importantly, would miss the cultural work of her appetitive characters. As signaled by the second epigraph, taken from Egerton's “Now Spring Has Come,” Keynotes was full of stories focused on “unconventional” women who “hungered” for both food and love; such libidinal desires were unthinkable – and even unspeakable – in a world where the proper Victorian lady was defined in terms of bodily sacrifice. While some readers certainly disapproved, still others like Hansson, as the first epigraph suggests, welcomed this “independent” turn in women's writing and saw in Egerton's characters a reflection of their own “woman's individuality.”

中文翻译：

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乔治·埃格顿的主题演讲：世纪末的食物和女权主义

乔治·埃格顿于 1893 年首次出版主题演讲立即大受欢迎，仅第一年就卖出了六千册。三年后，劳拉·马霍尔姆·汉森 (Laura Marholm Hansson) 的评论有效地挑出了使文本如此巨大成功的原因：每个故事都为读者提供了对女性“意识”或情感和性激情的内心世界的探索性表现，这些主题在任何“以前的作品中都没有”。 ” 当然，埃格顿是 Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright 的笔名，其中涵盖的许多主题主题演讲以她自己的生活为蓝本。这本书毫不妥协地描绘了女性的欲望，或者它取自其标题的那些“笔记”。“[T]在'主题演讲'中没有少女谨慎的迹象，”汉森继续说道，“这是一本自由主义的书，对婚姻生活的亲密关系轻率，完全不尊重丈夫”（63）。尽管得到了如此高的评价，汉森也担心是否主题演讲不是“一本好书，不能一下子成名”（61）。她的犹豫暗示了读者和文学评论家的褒贬不一，因为说每个人都喜欢埃格顿的小说是夸大其词，更重要的是，会错过她有食欲的人物的文化工作。正如第二段题词所暗示的，取自埃格顿的“现在春天来了”，主题演讲充满了关于“渴望”食物和爱情的“非传统”女性的故事；在一个维多利亚时代的女性被定义为身体牺牲的世界里，这种性欲是不可想象的——甚至是不可言喻的。虽然有些读者肯定不赞成，但还有一些读者，如汉森，正如第一段题词所暗示的那样，欢迎女性写作的这种“独立”转变，并在埃格顿的角色中看到了她们自己“女性个性”的反映。