Fantastic Feminist Praxis: Consciousness-Raising in the Speculative Fiction of Lady Florence Dixie

Born in 1855, Lady Florence Dixie was a prolific writer and women's rights activist until her death in 1905. She was a poet, dramatist, novelist, travel writer, children's writer, and war correspondent. She campaigned outspokenly for educational and professional equality, the amendment of divorce and marriage laws, Scottish and Irish Home Rule, animal rights and dress reform. Yet despite this high volume of productivity and public notoriety during her lifetime, her work has been critically neglected in both the Scottish and British literary fields. This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing work by scholars such as Valentina Bold, Catherine Barnes Stevenson, Nan Bowman Albinski, Precious McKenzie Stearns and Taryne Jade Taylor who have endeavoured to rediscover and reaffirm Dixie's life and work. This paper explores Dixie's utilisation of the speculative text for consciousness-raising (CR) purposes. It demonstrates that by combining the speculative text with an overtly political message, Dixie was able to expand the boundaries of literary genre in this period. The examples discussed illuminate Dixie's attempt to explore a more nuanced and fluid conception of gender politics, which moves beyond gender inversion or the invasion of the masculinist 'public' sphere.