Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Myths of the Modern -- 1. Modernity and Feminism -- 2. On Nostalgia: The Prehistoric Woman -- 3. Imagined Pleasures: The Erotics and Aesthetics of Consumption -- 4. Masking Masculinity: The Feminization of Writing -- 5. Love, God, and the Orient: Reading the Popular Sublime -- 6. Visions of the New: Feminist Discourses of Evolution and Revolution -- 7. The Art of Perversion: Female Sadists and Male Cyborgs -- Afterword: Rewriting the Modern -- Notes -- Index.