Woman and Modernity provides what previous studies of Salomé have in large part neglected to offer—a sustained investigation of the literariness of Salomé's texts and of Salomé as a significant reader of modernity. Focusing on key encounters in Salomé's writings, such as her exchanges with Nietzsche, Ibsen, Rilke, Freud, and late nineteenth-century middle-class German feminists such as Dohm and Stucker, Martin approaches Salomé's life and work as a series of strategic negotiations concerning the place of women and the meaning of femininity.
