This week in class, my group and I were tasked with creating a timeline entry for Clemence Housman’s The Were-Wolf, a gothic text situated around a monstrous female that terrorizes a remote village. I had never heard of the book before, so I was unaware of the surprisingly progressive feminist narrative, but I was even more astounded by the fact that not only had Clemence written it but she also had a significant role in illustrating the novel. However, this wasn’t always the case, as it was originally published in the Atalanta literary magazine with illustrations by Everard Hopkins. I found his artwork to be more or less along the lines of what I expected Victorian illustrations of the time were, but it was Clemence’s engravings that stood out to me for their failure to conform to the gender conventions I had seen in many other Victorian texts. Her illustrations of White Fell felt neither overly-sexualized nor hyper-masculine, but rather androgynous in appearance. They were indicative of a warring identity and the hybrid perspective of a were-wolf who was neither beast nor man, nor a typical Victorian female character. Gender relations and the conflicting roles that emerged for women during the Victorian period was still a developing issue, so I was elated to find out that Clemence was able to engrave and help design the visual imagery of her own story through her collaboration with her brother. This highlights that illustrations were not just progressive for only the medium, but rather for the advancement of contemporary society as well. Illustrated texts began to evoke different types of thought and allowed for a more diverse range of representation and voices to be excavated.