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The Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts THE FIGURE OF THE POETESS IN BRITISH SENTIMENTAL LITERATURE, 1820-1860 A Dissertation in English by Jill Marie Treftz © 2008 Jill Marie Treftz Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2008 ii The dissertation of Jill Marie Treftz was reviewed and approved* by the following: Nicholas Joukovsky Professor of English Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee Paul B. Younquist Professor of English Rachel Teukolsky Assistant Professor of English Vanderbilt University Emily Harrington Assistant Professor of English Philip Jenkins Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies and History Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Humanities Robert R. Edwards Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and Comparative Literature Graduate Director, Department of English *Signatures are on file with the Graduate School. iii ABSTRACT This dissertation considers the development and deployment of the sentimental poetess as a construct of poetic identity in the late Romantic/early Victorian period in Great Britain. Through an analysis of the lives, work, and reception of four ―poetesses‖ publishing between approximately 1820 and 1860, I show how the concept of the poetess was shaped both by external critical forces and by the efforts of the poets who may have identified with that role. Felicia Hemans, Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L.E.L.), Alfred Tennyson, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning each adapt the figure of the poetess as a representation of their sentimental poetic project. Hemans conceived of this figure as a bard charged with the preservation of the feminine experiences of home and loss. Landon saw the poetess as a woman destroyed by the all-consuming poetic gift that she possesses and cannot live without. Tennyson responded to Hemans‘s and Landon‘s concepts of the poetess and then constructed for himself an identity as a male poetess, a man who adopts a feminine voice and subject position in his artistic endeavors. Finally, Barrett Browning reimagined the poetess as a profoundly modern figure whose primary role was to lend her voice and her power to inspiring social change. The argument presented here reclaims aesthetic femininity, characterized by sentimental, domestic, and woman-centered poetics, as a crucial site of much-needed feminist analysis, while rejecting the continuing marginalization of female poets by demonstrating their participation in an ongoing literary discourse with their male peers. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………v Introduction………………………………………………………………………………1 Key Terms Starting Points The Rise of Sentimental Poetry ―Keepsake‖ Annuals Inspirations and Antecedents Reading the Poetess Chapter 1: “Spells O’er Memory”: Felicia Hemans as Bardic Poetess………..……31 Life and Career Fame and Domesticity Landscapes of Memory The Myth of ―Mrs. Hemans‖ Chapter 2: “The Heart that Fed upon Itself”: Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s Consumptive Poetess………………………………...…………………94 Life and Career Fame and Infamy Consuming Passions Consuming Powers The Myth of ―Poor L.E.L.‖ Chapter 3: The Victorian Poet “Lady-Clad”: Tennyson’s Career as Poetess……157 Tennyson‘s Femininity Feminizing Fame Domestic Spaces The Princess Conclusion Chapter 4: “No Perfect Artist . From Imperfect Woman”: Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Confrontations with the Poetess………………………..219 Confronting Her Literary Stepmothers Confronting Fame and Femininity Aurora Leigh Conclusion Epilogue………………………………………………………………………………..284 Bibliography………………………………………………………...…………………292 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Neither this project nor I would have survived the writing process intact were it not for the valuable support and assistance of a number of people. First, my deepest thanks to my advisor and committee chair, Dr. Nicholas Joukovsky, for his patience with my stubbornness, my neuroses, and my dreadful footnotes. I‘m sure I drove him crazy with my ―quilter‘s‖ approach to writing, but I deeply appreciate all of the time, effort, and support he has given me throughout my graduate career. Thanks also to the rest of my committee, including Dr. Paul Youngquist, who offered valuable insights into major theoretical concerns, and who was not afraid to challenge me when I grew too complacent in my own ideas. Thanks to Dr. Rachel Teukolsky, who from the beginning of this project provided me an invaluable sounding board and several times helped me regain my sense of direction when it seemed irretrievably lost. Thanks to Dr. Emily Harrington, who, despite joining the committee well past the eleventh hour, gave me careful feedback on my writing and my ideas, and offered enthusiastic support of some of my more perverse arguments. And thanks to Dr. Philip Jenkins, who went above and beyond the call of duty as an outside reader and brought his considerable wealth of knowledge to the project. Without the help of the women of the Dissertation Writing Group, I would never have completed this project on time. So my deepest thanks to Dr. Cheryl Glenn for her mentorship and to Pia Deas, Rosalyn Eves, Stacey Sheriff, and Rochelle Zuck for their advice and friendship. Thanks also to Dr. Lisa Sternlieb, Jon Olson, Jill Loomis, Dr. Victoria Stout, and Peg Yetter and the rest of the English Department staff, all of whom have offered support of one kind or another as I finished this dissertation. Most importantly, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my family and my friends, especially my parents, Dale and Tina Treftz, who gave me the support—both emotional and monetary, but especially the former—that I needed to get through these past seven years of graduate school. Erica Barnhill has put up with my fears of wasting disease and my inability to talk about much beyond poetesses and Harry Potter, and has somehow managed to remain my closest and dearest friend. Carissa Turner Smith shared with me a tiny, cluttered student cubicle and a love of unnaturally aggressive housecats, and in her husband, Stephen, I discovered a fellow fan of superheroes and terrible Cartoon Network movies. Without Erica, Carissa, and Stephen, this would have been a much lonelier ordeal. Finally, Brett and Amy Treftz helped motivate me to finish by giving me the best reason of all to go home: my nephew, Blake. This dissertation is, in part, dedicated to him. For my family. But especially for Mom and Dad, Because they never doubted me. Or, if they did, they never told me so. I love you. INTRODUCTION But how different the duties of this pink and perfumed page! We breathe the atmosphere of the Boudoir, a voluptuous langour fills the odour-laden air; we dwell in a forest of or molu, intermingled with rocks and caves of buhl; the velvet pillowing that sustains our form belies in hues and softness the flower-enamelled turf. Ghosts—filmy phantoms—of a thousand gentle octavos, flutter into life around us, and as they hover in the caressing air, solicit—roguishly resistless—an approving smile from our venerable visage. There is coquetry in the very play of their leaves, fascination in their gilded bindings, ruin to the peace of man in their vignetted title- pages! —―The Poetesses of Our Day: Contemplations Introductory‖ Dublin University Magazine, August 1837 It is easy to be critical on men; but when we venture to lift a pen against a woman, straight away apparent facies; the weapon drops pointless on the marked passage; and whilst the mind is bent on praise or censure of the poem, the eye swims too deep in tears and mist over the poetess herself in the frontispiece, to let it see its way to either. —―Modern English Poetesses‖ Quarterly Review, September 1840 The late Romantic period in nineteenth-century England saw the rise of a new literary figure: the sentimental poetess, whose complicated reception is reflected in the above quotations from contemporary critics. The Dublin University Magazine‘s ―filmy phantoms‖ of books and the Quarterly Review‘s ―pointless‖ pen represent the combined sense of fascination and fear that greeted these poetesses as they rose to literary prominence in the 1820s and 1830s.1 For their critical audiences, poetesses were exotic creatures—delicate, erotic, and almost mythic—yet, despite their supposed fragility, their very mystery rendered them monstrous and threatening in those audiences‘ eyes. The ―Contemplations Introductory‖ constitute an almost-frantic six-page manifesto supposedly celebrating the ―delicacy‖ and the ―elegance‖ of poetesses, while H. N. Coleridge‘s supposed inability to write critically of women makes manifest the 1 ―The Poetesses of Our Day—No. I. Felicia Hemans. Contemplations Introductory,‖ Dublin University Magazine 10 (August 1837): 123, 126. ―Modern English Poetesses,‖ The Quarterly Review 66 (September 1840): 374. The authors of the articles in question have since been identified as W. A. Butler for the Dublin University Magazine and H. N. Coleridge for the Quarterly Review. 2 emasculation threatened by the over-refined sensuality of the books described. In the ―bower of jasmine‖ that the Dublin University Magazine imagines, men, unmanned by feminine creative power, find their ―pens‖ falling useless from enervated fingers. Despite the Dublin University Magazine reviewer‘s assertion that ―in the primrose paths of Poesie the robed and ringletted sex has in all ages walked more gracefully than grandly . their fancyings have truly been more pretty than profound,‖ there is a profound sense of terror in these essays—and such claims of women‘s inferiority seem designed to soothe the minds of the critics as much as those of their audiences. The anxieties apparent in critics‘, authors‘, and audiences‘ reactions to the poetess indicate the extent to which she became an increasingly contested and contestable figure as the Romantic period faded into the Victorian. From the death of Byron in 1824 until the mid-1840s, the sentimental poetess dominated the British2 literary scene, creating profound anxieties about the feminization of British literature—and, by extension, the national culture(s). Male and female writers alike tackled the issue of the poetess, seeking to celebrate and/or contain her power within the confines of a narrow sphere of artistic influence.
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