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The Response to Fame of British Women Poets

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The Response to Fame of British Women Poets Copyright is owned by the Author of the thesis. Permission is given for a copy to be downloaded by an individual for the purpose of research and private study only. The thesis may not be reproduced elsewhere without the permission of the Author. 'All that fame bath cost . ' : The Response to Fame of British Women Poets from 1770 to 1835. A dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at Massey University Rachel Anne J ones 1996 ii ABSTRACT The years 1770 to 1835 produced a considerable number of famous women poets . They were famous at a time when there was a conflict between the ideology of the feminine and the implications of being a published woman poet . Looking in particular at the most successful female poets of the period , I trace the various ways in which they perceived and dealt with that conflict in their lives and their poetry . I argue that the women poets of the period were a diverse group and cannot be regarded as homogeneous , and as such they responded to fame differently. They did , however , share some of the same ideological pressures , and I contend that they all found fame more or less burdensome . In my first chapter I establish the socio-historical conditions in which the women poets were working , with particular reference to the position of poetry during the period . In my second chapter I examine the women poets (More, Barbauld, Seward , and Williams) who were directly influenced by the Bluestocking group , looking at their experience of fame and how fame is treated in their poetry . My th ird chapter focuses on the most successful women poets of the 1790s -­ Smith , Yearsley, and Robinson . In my fourth chapter I look at the effect that the instability of the 1790s had on the later women poets . I also investigate how fame appears in the works iii of some of the lesser-known , and some of the more conservative , women poets , as well as considering the important figure of Joanna Baillie . My final two chapters concentrate on the two most famous women poets of the period , Felicia Hemans and Letitia Landon respectively . I examine the impact of their phenomenal fame on their lives and trace their poetry 's concern with the effects of fame on a woman . iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My first thanks must undoubtedly go to my supervisor, Dr Greg Crossan. He has always been extremely generous with his time and steady in his encouragement . His thorough reading of my work in progress has been invaluable, and I know I am a better writer for my years under his careful eye . Thank you Greg for your support . I am also grateful to my second supervisor, Dr John Muirhead , who took time out of his busy schedule to read my draft and provide helpful comments, and to Robert Petre , Rare Book Curator at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington . I would like to thank Massey University for awarding me a Doctoral Scholarship, without wh ich this thesis would have been an impossible dream . Thanks must also go to the three departments which have helped me financially by providing me with employment : the English Language Centre, the Department of Linguistics and Second Language Teaching , and the Department of English . Thanks , too , to the staff in those departments who took an interest in my work . My final debt of gratitude goes to C�a ig Woods for always being there when I needed him. Thanks for everything . TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements iv Introduction 1 Chapter One : Women and Poetry , 1770 to 1835 10 Chapter Two : The Early Decades 71 Chapter Three : The Revolutionary Years 122 Chapter Four : The New Century 190 Chapter Five : Felicia Hemans 245 Chapter Six: Letitia Landon 288 Conclusion 335 Works Consulted 349 1 INTRODUCTION Pressed to name any women poets of the Romantic Period , one might come up with Dorothy Wordsworth , Mary Shelley, and , perhaps , Anne Radcliffe, before exhausting one's repertoire , though none of these women were famous primarily as poets. Yet J. R. de J. Jackson 's bibliography lists 1403 volumes , by about 900 women poets, published during what we have commonly termed "the Romantic Period. " 1 Some of these women poets experienced unprecedented contemporary fame , featuring in newspapers , cartoons , portraits , periodicals, and pamphlets, often on both sides of the At lantic. It was an age of increasing literacy , increasing population , and increasing publication . It was during this period that writers first concerned themselves with the idea of a mass audience . It was also during this period that women first entered the literary market in large numbers , both as consumers and as producers . Furthermore, it was in this period that people could achieve fame in their lifetime in the way that we conceive of fame now : Anne 1For the purposes of this study I have decided to use the dates 1770 to 1835 inclusive , in order to encompass Anna Barbauld's first volume and the last major poetical publi cations of Letitia Landon, although realising that this constructs an artificial boundary in the history of women's writing . (Landon died in 1838 but her major poetical works were published before 1835.} These are also the dates that Jackson settles for in his bibliography Romantic Poetry by Women: A Bibliogr aphy, 1770-1835 (Oxford : Clarendon, 1993} . 2 Mellor refers to Letitia Landon, poetess of the 1820s , as one of the first media-created "stars" (Mellor , Romanticism 121) . But what did stardom , "fame, " mean to a woman poet? It is interesting that references to fame commonly express it metaphorically as a rise to some great peak . This choice of metaphor su ggests that fame is a desirable attainment , a positive achievement . There are connotations , too , in the idea of the climb, of hard work and determination to achieve fame , and of rising in isolation above the masses . Also implicit in the metaphor is the eventual descent from the peak , or the fall into oblivion . In fact , the metaphor seems to embody certain Romantic values , that is, the elevation and the importance of the individual and "an ongoing , enthusiastic engagement with the creative energy of both nature and the human mind , an engagement that acknowledges human limitations . bu t nonetheless continues in a dialectical, perhaps ever-to-be­ frustrated , yearning for transcendence and enduring meaning" {Mellor , "Why" 277) . If the metaphor is one we have inherited from the tenets of Romantic ism then it is also a masculine metaphor . Numerous critics have demonstrated that Romantic ism has a gender and that many of the literary practices we adhere to today are founded 3 on Romantic concepts.2 It seems pertinent , then , to ask what experience of fame the woman poet of the Romantic Period had . Did she rise to a great height , elevated above the common person by her own industry? Or was fame for the woman poet in fact more of a descent , a fall from her proper role as a woman? Women poets of the Romantic Period became public figures in a different manner to their male peers. Their persons and personalities loomed larger than their written texts -- something they constantly battled against , or else tried to accommodate , reconcile with , or exploit (Pascoe , Stagi ng 237} . Many women poets were a part of the pu blic discourse of their time , a time that prescribed for women a domestic , private role . Du ring the Romantic Period , women wr iters in general struggled against the social and psychological force of the idea of proper or innate femininity to create their own professional identity (Poovey x) . Poovey names the "Proper Lady" (as constructed in the period's conduct books , periodicals , diaries , novels etc.) as representing the cu lture's definition of femininity , and therefore the figure that women of the period aspired to (xi) . She embodied propriety , virtue, modesty , and other "natural" feminine qu alities . The publishing woman placed herself 2See Marlon Ross 's The Contours of Mascu line Desire: Romanticism and the Rise of Women 's Poetry (New York : Oxford UP , 1989} , and Anne K. Mellor 's Romantic ism and Gender (New York : Routledge , 1993) , for example . 4 at odds with this definition of her femininity because deliberately writing for pub lication jeopardised her modesty , calling attention to woman as sub ject (Poovey 36) . The conflict between the ideology of the feminine and the ''masculine" nature of pub lication informs the women poets ' experience of fame . Because the period was a time of social change , the experiences of the women poets vary over the years in qu estion. The issues this thesis hopes to elucidate , focusing on those poets who were we ll known , are the implications of fame for the lives of the women poets , the construction of fame in their poetry (particu larly poems that focu s on the woman as artist) , and the changes that occur in their responses to and experiences of fame du ring a sixty-five-year period . My first chapter provides an outline of the social and literary climate that the women poets of the period were working in . The sub sequent three chapters look at clusters of famous women poets , the women being grouped together loosely on the basis of chronology and ideological ou tlook . Hannah More , Anna Letitia Barbauld , Anna Seward , and Helen Maria Williams are discussed in my second chapter ; Charlotte Smith, Ann Yearsley , and Mary Rob inson feature in my third chapter ; and the fourth chapter looks at a number of women poets, including Jane West, Anne Grant , Isabella Lickbarrow , and Joanna Baillie . The final two chapters discuss the "feminine poetesses'' Felicia Hemans and 5 Letitia Landon respectively .
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