The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter (The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club, #1)

by Theodora Goss

I can’t stop you from having these adventures, but I insist on keeping a decent house.

What could women accomplish if they did not have to continually mind their skirts, keep them from dragging in the mud or getting trampled on the steps of an omnibus? If they had pockets! With pockets, women could conquer the world!

Clothing is one means of enforcing women’s social and political subordination.

We do not claim the wisdom of Athena, but we identify with her dubious parentage.

This novel began as a question I asked myself while writing my doctoral dissertation: Why did so many of the mad scientists in nineteenth-century narratives create, or start creating but then destroy, female monsters?