Brain Beasts of Blenheim Township
(Rhesus Monkey Press, 1893)

Though all of her works contain strong female characters and overt sexual egalitarianism, Brain Beasts of Blenheim Township could be Emily Chesley's most "feminist" novel.

The story is set in the near future of 1910. A new women's fashion has swept through Blenheim township near London Ontario. This new fashion involves the wearing of gigantic and ostentatious wigs. The women of the township are drawn to the fashion when they notice their wig wearing peers seem to be getting younger and more buxom. The men of the township enthusiastically endorse the new fashion attesting that those who adopt the wig become more able in their duties including (and perhaps especially) the "more delicate and intimate duties proffered by a wife."

All of this is noted with some alarm by Hildegard Williams, a London women of independent means who is visiting her Uncle's farm. When she discovers that nobody seems to know where the wigs come from, Hidegard sets out to discover the truth of these mysterious accoutrements. In doing so she enlists the help of Bjorn Crow, her uncle's hired hand. Together Hildegard and Bjorn discover the frightening secret of the wigs: They are actually strange monstrous creatures "not of this Earth" who arrived in Blenheim county aboard a mysterious airship. These vile creatures feed on their hosts brain and hide their presence by making their victim more physically agreeable and compliant. Bjorn and Hildegard unmask the beasts in a particularly horrifying climax set in a country church where the entire community has gathered.

As a piece of science fiction Brain Beasts of Blenheim Township anticipates an entire genre of latter 20^th century writing that includes everything from Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Robert Heinlein's The Puppet Masters. There is also obvious foreshadowing of Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives. The proto feminism is also clearly presented in the disgust Hildegard exhibits toward the women of Blenheim who have sacrificed their brains (and their lives) for superficial and carnal reasons. The book caused some controversy for passages in which Hildegard demonstrates to Bjorn that one can have a functioning brain and still be quite proficient at a full range of intimate and delicate relations. In fact, as the scene in the uncle's cheese bin demonsrates, the relations need not always be delicate.

--"Scholarship" by Thuder