diff --git a/requests_html.py b/requests_html.py
index 879ba1d..d752423 100644
--- a/requests_html.py
+++ b/requests_html.py
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ from lxml.html.soupparser import fromstring
 from parse import search as parse_search
 from parse import findall
 
-
+DEFAULT_ENCODING = 'utf-8'
 
 useragent = UserAgent()
 
@@ -95,9 +95,9 @@ class BaseParser:
         else:
             return c
 
-    def xpath(self, selector, first=False):
+    def xpath(self, selector, first=False, _encoding=None):
         """Given an XPath selector, returns a list of element objects."""
-        c = [Element(element=e, url=self.url, encoding=self.encoding) for e in self.lxml.xpath(selector)]
+        c = [Element(element=e, url=self.url, default_encoding=_encoding or self.encoding) for e in self.lxml.xpath(selector)]
         if first:
             try:
                 return c[0]
@@ -250,8 +250,11 @@ class Session(requests.Session):
         """Requests HTTP Response handler. Attaches .html property to Response
         objects.
         """
+        if not response.encoding:
+            response.encoding = DEFAULT_ENCODING
 
         response.html = HTML(response=response)
+
         return response
 
 
diff --git a/tests/test_requests_html.py b/tests/test_requests_html.py
index 6ba02c9..a8a22c3 100644
--- a/tests/test_requests_html.py
+++ b/tests/test_requests_html.py
@@ -11,7 +11,10 @@ def get():
     path = os.path.sep.join((os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)), 'python.html'))
     url = 'file://{}'.format(path)
 
-    return session.get(url)
+    r = session.get(url)
+    r.encoding = 'utf-8'
+
+    return r
 
 
 def test_file_get():
@@ -21,6 +24,7 @@ def test_file_get():
 
 def test_css_selector():
     r = get()
+
     about = r.html.find('#about', first=True)
 
     for menu_item in (
@@ -57,3 +61,6 @@ def test_xpath():
     html = r.html.xpath('/html', first=True)
     assert 'no-js' in html.attrs['class']
 
+if __name__ == '__main__':
+    # test_file_get()
+    test_css_selector()