by proving that the religious principles of the Egyptians held merit and truth. Cowed by this perjurious thought, Malcolm reflexively cuts himself off, thinking, "I dared not follow it!”. However, the question of progression is immediately brought up again in Trelawny's equally unnerving theories on science. In particular, Trelawny posits that the Egyptians had discovered electricity and radioactivity long before nineteenth-century scientists. As Hebblethwaite explains, radioactivity had been recently discovered by Pierre and Marie Curie at the time of The Jewel of Seven Stars’ publication, and "electric light was just beginning to be widely used in domestic households…throughout Stoker’s novel, there runs an underlying sense of wonder at modern man’s ability to harness the power of electricity". In light of the fact that these scientific advancements were so recent, the idea that ancient Egyptians had been using this science centuries before is even more staggering. Especially given that The Jewel of Seven Stars was published right at the turn of the twentieth century, Stoker's implications of the power of the past call for a respect for "primitive" nineteenth-century discoveries. Hebblethwaite articulately states: "As a new century began, and Victorian became Edwardian, [the novel] counsels its readers not to utterly reject the past as archaic and non-essential—there were things of value to be learned and remembered". The New Woman At the time of The Jewel of Seven Stars writing, the empowerment and assertiveness of women was on the rise. The fin de siècle was marked by the emergence of the "New Woman", middle-class feminists who espoused the domestic sphere and sought social and sexual freedom, challenging the gender roles that dominated British society. Jusova explains that by "[contesting] and defamiliarizing the hegemonic Victorian definitions of gender and sexual identities, the New Woman further fueled the anxieties and fears that already circulated among the middle-class British population at the time". Stoker's other works, most notably Dracula, are heavily critical of the New Woman, rebuking the characters' progressive sexuality, as in the case of the female vampires in Dracula: "the female vampires in Dracula are [Stoker's] way of responding to the growing equality of men and women, in particular their sexual equality. Not only does he emphasize their voluptuousness and sexual aggression and contrast their behavior to that of his chaste and sexually timid heroine but he has his male characters destroy these threatening women and reestablish a more traditional order". As the