Shameless Scribblers

Going into any bookstore or library today, we see a rich variety of books by men and women that attest to the abilities of both sexes to communicate all kinds of knowledge through writing. Readers and critics alike further attest to the overall lack of division between male and female writers; ostensibly, both sexes are subject to the same critical standards and scrutiny; it may, therefore, be difficult to imagine the literary structure and marketplace of England during the Romantic period when women faced a notorious double critical standard and a debate raged as to the ideas and kinds of writing by women. Even the propriety of women exercising a literary vocation was (still) being questioned. Poet Robert Southey, for example, made the famous comment to Charlotte Bronte that "literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it not ought to be. The more engaged she is in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation" (Hickok 11). Given the various social, economic, legal and critical forces with which women had to contend in order to write successfully, it may be assumed that Romantic women somehow "wrote back" to their culture. Our group will explore the question of how the consciousness of being a woman affects the processes of the poetic imagination and of writing itself in the Romantic era. In other words, what did it mean to be a woman writer and how did her female sexual identity inform her imaginative and writing processes? I will trace out the larger socio-cultural context for this debate by discussing the Romantic social constructions of Woman and the feminine sphere, as well as the practical and ideological obstacles to women's writing. Laura will look at how specific legal and cultural concerns manifest in women's writing. Lastly, Debra will look at the treatment of Nature by specific women writers and how they relate to this important Romantic imaginative focus.

Before we go any further, however, we want explicitly to set out our analytic approach. We do not want to posit blame on any single institution, person or group of people (i.e. engage in "male-bashing"). We believe a number of variables conflate and create the cultural and literary situation which we found to be complex and fascinating. Furthermore, we will not be doing much comparative work between male and female writers beyond setting some groundwork to enable our feminist analysis. Instead, we will rely upon you to (dialectically) supplement our presentation with the information that Dr. Miall has given us on some of the prominent male writers' interests and stylistic characteristics. Lastly, our analysis oscillates between the general and the very specific, so that, as always, exceptions to our findings are inevitable.

In part one of our presentation, we would like to set the scene visually with a video dramatization of what we imagine the writing process may have been like for the Romantic woman writer.

In that dramatization, we have touched on several issues which will be discussed. I want to initiate part two of our presentation by talking about the Romantic construction of Woman as a means of setting up what cultural and literary standards existed. The point which should be stressed is that this notion of ideal femininity is something which was inherited from previous generations; it is the negotiation of this tradition within our period of focus which is significant. Therefore, Victorian Coventry Patmore's eloquent summary of the ideal Romantic Woman as an "Angel of the House" applies not only to the Romantic period, but also the preceding ages. This Angel is a"pure, charming, sympathetic, domestic, self-sacrificing, subservient [and] selfless" woman who "lacks individual desire or mind, leads an ordinary life, but guides her man to greatness" (Gorsky 27). This feminine ideal was embedded in a "profound belief in sexual difference, according to which men were seen as naturally dominant, active and strong, while women were naturally subordinate, passive and weak" (Burlinson 22). Such "common knowledge" of women's physical and intellectual inferiority was reinforced through various discourses, including manuals, magazines, conduct books, sermons and 'scientific' studies. Given that women's ideal course in life was to be an obedient daughter, devoted wife and compliant widow (as need be), it becomes clear that females were seen as relational beings that could not and should not be independent of men.

Accompanying this Romantic ideal of womanhood and essential sexual difference came the notion of distinct gendered spheres to which men and women were relegated. Patmore's designation acknowledges the female sphere as that of the house or the domestic, in which especially wives ostensibly reigned as angels or queens. They would tend to or oversee the house-keeping and ensure all familial responsibilities were met, with the ultimate authority being their husband. Women "needed the skills of a restaurant manager, dietician, nurse, teacher, cleric, bookkeeper . . . and the strength of all these combined" (Gorsky 27).

The crux of the debate about what and how women should write, if at all, occurs in this social construction of ideal womanhood and the feminine sphere; one's views on the proper place and role of women fundamentally informs his/her critical stance. During the Romantic era, this debate was certainly heating up as more and more women entered the literary marketplace. The reasons for this relative increase are too complex and manifold for me to cover fully, but some factors can be highlighted. Women had been writing as a vocation for a relatively long time by then; the Restoration author and playwright, Aphra Behn, became the first woman to earn her living as a writer (around 1660). Thus, depending on what was written and how, women's writing had become more commonplace and acceptable for Romantic society. Such forces as the influence from overseas colonial expansion, greater socio-economic mobility and rapid industrialization also found women increasingly torn between the ideal of idleness and the emerging cult of work.

Yet women faced numerous practical obstacles to producing texts. As we tried to show in the video, the social ideal of womanhood and femininity left very minimal space for personal time or identity. Woolf's famous phrase for this phemonenon was that there was not "a room of one's own." Many women felt compelled to point out their writing did not conflict with their household and family duties. Generally, women writers also had to negotiate their poor education and their lack of individual legal rights. (Laura will get into these areas in more depth.) Trying to enter a cultural space that was almost exclusively inhabited by male writers was also daunting; women had to negotiate the patrilineal literary tradition and find their own space for expression. However, as Kathryn Burlinson points out,

if women managed to overcome the practical obstacles to their creativity, they had then to endure the notorious critical double standard that was brought to bear once a work had been written, accepted by a publisher, and marketed . . . Women's writing was praised when it conformed to feminine ideals and expressed delicate sentiments, tender emotions and domestic affectations. However, as many women were aware, such praise was back-handed, for the very qualities that were deemed admirable in women's writing also signified its limitations (23).

Thus, women had to brave public opinion and (usually) male critics as to whether their work was feminine enough in focus and delivery and if it possessed the female qualities of "elegance, delicacy, modesty, [moral instruction,] spontaneity and artlessness" (Todd l26). Because many women wrote to support themselves and their family financially, the pressures to conform to popular ideals and tastes must have been immense. All these factors created a paradoxical and paralyzing situation for potential women writers.

To illustrate how critical reception could differ and why, I want to draw upon a Romantic literary paradigm which set Hannah More against Mary Wollstonecraft. Hannah More's conservative ideology was very appealing to many readers and critics; she was seen as a successful intellectual female whose roles as an socially conscious educator and moral reformer made her a worthy prominent figure. Mary Wollstonecraft, on the other hand, was seen as radical, improper, shocking and licentious because of her 'feminist' attempts to level the power politics built into the social system of sexual difference. Rev. Richard Polwhele, to whom we alluded in our video dramatization, writes of Wollstonecraft: "Our unsex 'd female writers now instruct, or confuse, us and themselves, in a labyrinth of politics, or turn us wild with Gallic frenzy" (1; italics added). Polwhele explicitly positions More as an angel and the most virtuous woman writer of her time against the "Amazonian" and "unsex'd" devil, Wollstonecraft. However, note two things about his rhetoric: ultimately, More is still seen as an inferior writer because of her female sex, so that his praise of her only reinforces the double critical standard based on sexual difference. The diminutive paradox thus becomes that 'she is a wonderful writer . . . for a woman'. Also, the religious and xenophobic overtones of his attack show how different, non-literary elements may intrude upon an evaluation of the text and writer. Possible points of attack or support thus went beyond the text's literary quality to issues of politics, religion, nationalism, class, sexuality and essentialism (see italics above). Furthermore, his "critical" positioning of Romantic women writers as angels or devils may point to the instability of social structures based on sexual difference. Polwhele acknowledges that women may instruct or confuse by showing the gaps and fissures in dominant traditions and ideology. This may articulate a male insecurity of women's growing place in the literary marketplace which is also revealed. As George Henry Lewes wrote in 1850, "[i]t's a melancholy fact . . . that the group of female authors is becoming every year more multitudinous and more successful. Women write the best novels, the best travels, the best reviews, the best leaders, and the best cookery books . . Wherever we carry our skilful [male] pens, we find the place preoccupied by a woman" (Burlinson 22).

Again, it is important to remember that both sexes populated each side of the attack. More, for example, also strongly criticized women writers who did not accept and fulfill their socially prescribed role, while John Stuart Mill supported what can now be seen as the Romantic "women's movement" in pointing out the limitations and subjugation women faced. Many Romantic women writers were neither working under the most inviting writing conditions, nor within the mainstream of literary tradition, so that it is significant that some enjoyed contemporary success and all were finding their own literary space. Even Polwhele had to admit that Romantic society was seeing "what ne'er our fathers saw, / A female bond despising NATURE'S law, / As 'proud defiance' flashes from their arms, / And Vengeance smothers all their softer charms" (italics added). Women were getting their voice heard through writing and not everyone liked what they had to say.

In a patriarchal world, and in the male-dominated literary realm, women must create their own sense of themselves as readers and writers. As readers, women must reconcile the portrayal of women by men, and must be concerned with stereotypes as well as the manipulation of women by male writers. As writers, women incorporate their own creativity, history and specific linguistic code into a specialised discourse. When a woman encapsulates her existence in a piece of writing, she gives herself away; as Elaine Showalter writes (Towards a Feminist Poetics) she reveals "the terra incognita of herself, as she [knows] herself to be, not as man like[s] to imagine her" (Showalter xii). In a world where a woman could have so very little to call her own, it must have been tremendously important to hold something of herself to herself. The woman writer of the Romantic age faced special challenges; she had yet to establish a 'room of her own.'

Romantic women lived under very oppressive laws and social expectations. I'd like to give you some sense of the conditions under which women lived, outline the concerns which informed their writing and project some of their challenges ahead to the Victorian age to show the changes they wrought in terms of culture, politics, and education.

Legally, a woman was not a person; she belonged to her father until such time as he passed possession of her on to a husband. In law, man and wife were one person; it was aptly stated at the time: "My wife and I are one and I am he" (Kazantzis VII). When a woman married, she "ceased legally to exist"; (Kazantzis VII) the bride's title of "Mrs." represented that subjugation and the transference of ownership from father to spouse. A husband was entitled to his four conjugal rights: he owned his wife's property and earnings; he could imprison her; he could insist on her company and "services"; he could beat her. Their children were considered by law to be his "absolute property." (Kazantzis) These conditions did not begin to change until the 1830s, when Mrs. Caroline Norton scandalized society by writing pamphlets to expose the injustices she suffered at the hands of her loutish husband, Richard. When the marriage broke down, he refused to let her see their three children, and when she made money with her pamphlets he took it. She was slandered by a newspaper and could not, as a wife, sue to recover her reputation. In 1839, owing to her outcry, Parliament passed the first Custody of Infants Act which gave a mother limited rights of access to her children. Ironically, public opinion still held that women's main function was to marry and bear children. It appears that things had not changed much since the sixteenth century when Martin Luther said "If a woman becomes weary, or at last dead, from childbearing, it matters not, let her only die from bearing, she is there to do it. "

Wives had no right to their earnings until 1870 and could not own property or personal belongings until 1882 (Kazantzis). Although women's legal status got better throughout the nineteenth century, laws were still discriminatory. The Divorce Act of 1857 allowed a husband to divorce his wife solely for adultery, but, until 1937, a woman had to prove both adultery and some other ground. Women were not granted the right to vote in Britain until 1918. (Atkinson, Diane. 39. Women in History: Votes for Women).

The condition of women was very much a concern of women writers, but they had to be careful how they approached the subject. Social pressures contrasted with the workings of an intelligent mind, so that their poetry sometimes seems to be marked by emotional conflict and a struggle against strong parental and cultural repression. The responses of many women readers suggest a shared experience, and that they viewed the expression of that experience as liberating, although among women who criticized women, there was sometimes disagreement. Some women found Barbauld woman-affirming, like "Mira" in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1774:

Hail, charming Aikin, hail thy name inspires
My glowing bosom with congenial fires.
Oh! could the Muse her tuneful aid impart,
And teach to speak the raptures of my heart . . .

Barbauld's use of men's language to disarm male constructions of woman did not endear her to Mary Wollstonecraft, who scorned, in particular, her poem "To a Lady, with some painted Flowers." Barbauld likens the lady of the poem to "flowers sweet, and gay, and delicate", distinguishes flowers, a "luxury", from "loftier forms" to which "rougher tasks are assign'd", and closes by asserting that her "best, sweetest empire is -- to please." Wollstonecraft complains that "On this sensual error has the false system of female manners been reared, which robs the whole sex of its dignity, and classes the brown and the fair with the smiling flowers that only adorn the land. This has ever been the language of men." (Vindication) (It is important to note here that Barbauld's early work predates Wollstonecraft's Vindication by 20 years.)

Anna Barbauld constructs women in her poetry as a sisterhood, sharing the bonds of their sex. She appropriates male language and male constructions of femininity to portray women who identify strongly with women. Her constructions may be read as reactions to previous or contemporary definitions of "woman" that she regarded as misogynist. Her celebration of women's friendships in poems like "Verses on Mrs. Rowe" look like a response to James Fordyce's Sermons to Young Women (1766) where he insinuates that women's friendships are insincere. That particular poem, like many others, also reveals her responses to Pope, whom she most answers.

One way in which she answers Pope is to oppose him; in his essay "Of the Characters of Women" he dwells on the incoherence of the female character as well as women's incontinent energies. For Pope, "female caprice" signified woman's inferiority, not her liberation, it was evidence of the "weaker," "softer" material of which woman was constructed. Barbauld counterasserts feminine integrity in terms used by Pope to describe ideals, such as the "good Critic." Some examples from Barbauld's book Poems include Mary Priestley (poem I) who reconciles Popean opposites by possessing at once "so cool a judgment, and a heart so warm" (26). An unnamed woman's handwriting reveals her combination of strong judgment and easy manner, "correct though free, and regular though fair" (52). Elizabeth Rowe reconciles "the Christian's meekness and the Poet's fire," and like Pope's good Critic in Essay on Criticism, she is "learned without pride" (101).

These "pattern[s] of a female mind" as Barbauld refers to them, reveal an ideal figuring of women. The "pattern" woman, is held up as the epitome of feminine demeanour in satire, including Pope's "Of the Characters of Women." She serves as a rare and scarcely saving exception to the general wreck of the sex. In Barbauld, however, she is the only kind of woman. The satires depend on a dialectic in which pattern women are clubs used to beat their sisters; Barbauld constructs pattern women to reprimand that dialectic. Mary Shelley, too, portrays ideal patterns of womanhood to undermine traditional education and adherence to social codes. Elizabeth in Frankenstein, Clorinda and Teresa in The Bride of Modern Italy and Bertha in The Mortal Immortal, although they are of different social classes, are women who display the preferred feminine qualities of beauty, sensibility and lack of reason. Clorinda, especially, embodies the ideal; Mary's description reveals the socially correct woman, as well as Mary's own acerbic opinion of her:

Clorinda Saviani was indeed handsome, and all her fine features expressed the 'need for love' which ruled her heart . . . She was just eighteen, and had been five years in this convent . . . During this time she had formed several attachments for various youths . . . She had written letters, prayed and wept, and then yielding to insurmountable difficulties she had changed her idol, though she had never ceased to love. The fastidious English must not be disgusted with this picture. It is, perhaps, only a coarse representation of what takes place at every ball-room with us.

Clorinda, like Mary's other heroines, operate from within a framework of emotion, ineffectual in their own right and dependent on their feminine charms for their success, which is measured in their ability to marry. They have no autonomy and do not attain anything on their own. One area where Barbauld and Wollstonecraft are in accord is education. They are joined in their concerns by others like Ann Radcliffe and Hannah More. In the Romantic age, girls generally were not well-educated. Until the 1850's, middle- class girls had governesses and schools were extraordinarily bad. Generally, math, classics and science were not considered departments of "female" knowledge, and were deemed unnecessary for future wives and mothers. The first onslaught on the propriety of education for girls came in 1859 when Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, America's first woman doctor, came to England. With her inspiration and encouragement, Elizabeth Garrett determined to attain the British Medical Degree. After being denied admission to universities in London and Edinburgh, she persevered and finally obtained the legal right to practice medicine in 1867. The fight for education for girls succeeded in 1870, when the first Education Act put elementary education within the reach of all children, regardless of class or gender.

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote that men and women should have equal opportunity for education, and receive the same education, in order to learn how to think and reason. Denying women such an education degrades them. (21). Traditional education of women causes them to be ''artificial, weak characters" and "consequently, more useless members of society" (22). The artificial education given women, to "render women pleasing" results in the "expense of every solid virtue" (22). The result of little or no education is a lack of reason, without which a woman could not be expected to develop moral values, and instead would be induced to develop wit and cunning in order to find a measure of success within the roles allotted to them:

And will moralists pretend to assert, that this is the condition in which one half of the human race should be encouraged to remain with listless activity and stupid acquiescence? Kind instructors what were we created for? to remain, it may be said, innocent; they mean in a state of childhood -- We might as well never have been born, unless it were necessary that we should be created to enable man to acquire the noble privilege of reason, the power of discerning good from evil, whilst we lie down in the dust from whence we were taken, never to rise again. (61)

Mary Ann Radcliffe also wrote about the dire consequences of not educating women in her pamphlet The Female Advocate, or, an Attempt to Recover the Rights of Women from Male Usurpation. Radcliffe's feminism was born of experience and has common sense as its hallmark. She lived the plight of the eighteenth century gentlewoman who, encumbered with the demands of a kindly but ineffectual husband and a swarm of children, strives for independence through employment, only to discover that there is only one occupation which women can easily choose. Thus, her pamphlet is an impassioned plea for the imperative needs of women as human beings. She chronicles the predicament of women left to fend for themselves because of death, desertion and neglect and arrives at the same conclusions as the Jacobin feminists: women are trained for dependence and frailty, morally and spiritually. If they are educated, they will be equipped for independence through gainful work, and they will be able to break the cycle of vapidity and degeneracy which is man's grudge against them. Radcliffe's essay reveals the prevalence of prostitution as the sole "acceptable" means of steady employment for women-even, as she repeatedly insists, for middle class women. Women did not restrict themselves to writing about the need for educational standards; they were active participants in establishing schools. Anna Barbauld and her husband ran a boarding school. She perceived that books which were supposed to teach children were written at a level which exceeded the abilities of young children to understand, so she wrote a primer which began at a level suitable for a child of two or three and continues on to fairly philosophical issues, reminiscent of de Saussure's meaning of the linguistic sign.

Hannah More became part of a controversial movement advocating education for the common person. The opponents of education for the poor thought the results would threaten the sociopolitical status quo and result in revolution such as had been experienced in France. Opponents argued that it was preordained, even necessary, that servants should be ignorant, else they would become lazy and useless. More, ever the pragmatist, went into villages with what she called her "little plan" hoping, she said, to "secure their orchards from being robbed, their rabbits from being shot, their game from being stole, and which might lower the poor-rates." She directed the establishment of one school after another, educating not only the children of the poor, but adults as well.

She may be criticized from our twentieth-century perspective for not promoting a more egalitarian educational system. Her goal was a better existence for the poor, attained through moral and religious instruction, while maintaining their lower social status. She offered methods of self-improvement and practical how-to advice in the management of time and money, as well as boosting self-esteem by teaching people how to recite generous portions of the Bible. She elevated their standards of living and brought them into the church. She also created an audience for her Cheap Repository Tracts, which continued the work of her schools. She launched this literary venture, because she thought teaching the poor to read, without providing them with "safe books" was "a dangerous measure."

It is not surprising that women wrote about their social positions, domesticity and matters concerning children: those issues, after all, directly impact on any woman's life. But these women writers did not restrict themselves to matters which affected them personally. They were also involved in political causes, particularly the effect on Britain of the French Revolution and the abolition of slavery. I suspect, although this is a generalization, that what spoke to women about these issues were the elements they held in common with those involved, namely the oppression of the lower classes and slaves. Using More as an example, at the fall of the Bastille, she was among those like Burke who at first hoped that the "Excesses might subside at length in orderly obedience to a form of government less unworthy of an intelligent people." While she condemned the violence, she at first believed that once the wrongs had been corrected the people would be ready "to submit themselves to the yoke of a monarchy limited by justice and law." Like Burke, she changed her opinion and was numbered among the ardent antagonists of the revolution. She wrote political tracts and pamphlets which introduced Burke's social and political philosophy in a popular vein for the common, nearly illiterate people.

More, like Barbauld, also wrote against the slave trade, applying spiritualism and religious dedication to the problem. She was contracted to write a suitable verse against slavery as a propaganda effort for a demonstration when Wilberforce attempted to present the Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in the House of Commons. Her poem "The Slave Trade" is a passionate expression of feelings toward the plight of the slaves:

When'er to Afric's shores I turn my eyes,
Horrors of deepest, deadliest guilt arise;
I see, by more than Fancy's mirror shown,
The burning village and the blazing town:
See the dire victim torn from social life,
The shrieking babe, the agonizing wife!
She, wretch forlorn! is dragg'd by hostile hands,
To distant tyrants sold, in distant lands!

She argues for the natural rights of human beings and against the corruption of the European traders. Of primary importance to her is the humanity of the African, and the fact that all people are equal because all people have feelings. Her view, towards the slavery issue and towards the treatment of all people, like the other women we have been discussing, is that all human life has value and dignity based on their existence, and all people are, therefore, worth saving. They, like other Romantic writers, write of humanity's natural corruption which has the potential for redemption. That redemption could be attained through as association with Nature.

CONCLUSION

The term 'feminine' has come to signify a specific set of characteristics and word associations. I contend that it is only usage and context which create these femininely-gendered syrnbols. Cultural fictions have created the associations of feminine with passivity and corporeality and masculine with action and abstraction. However, given that cultural associations and language cannot be remade in an instant, it is impossible for terms of femininity not to retain their traditional significations. In terms of Romantic writing, which holds transcendency as a major value, the patriarchal view of poetic expression as a masculine activity requires that women transcend their sexual identity in order to write. However, transcendence of something as intrinsic as one's sexual identity would mean evading or denying it.

A woman's transcendence of her identity as a woman denies her essence even as it enforces the stereotypes and social pressures to which eighteenth and nineteenth century women were subject. Women were pressured to conform to certain patterns of ideal womanhood, none of which included the writer's vocation. It was considered scandalous for a woman to write publicly, and when she did she was judged as a woman, not as a writer.

Women were subject to the cultural belief that women's minds were not capable of abstract thought. Expectations about women's minds were self-fulfilling because women were denied formal education and the experience of public life. Their lives were circumscribed by the domestic sphere, whether they were married or not. The most successful women writers generally led lives that were in some way out of the ordinary.

"Feminine" writing is informed by the "female experience" which contributes to the shaping of poetry by women. The differences in male and female writing are thematic, with bearing on women's social roles Romantic poetry, because it generally minimizes connections with practical experience, excludes women to some extent, because of their socially restricted activities. If, according to the Romantic ideal, the poetic character transcends time and place, it should also transcend gender. Romantic poetry by women should not bear heavily the traces of sexual identity or social experience, yet something often interferes with this poetry's achievement of that Romantic transcendence.

Women poets are also informed by their literary experience -- the experience of reading poetry written almost exclusively by men, and which carries implicit male biases that may not be perceived as such by male readers. What little education girls were given also had a strong male bias. That masculine bias manifests itself as much in structures of thought and language as it does in discussions of gender roles. Wordsworth was burdened by the greatness of Milton's poetry; his feminine counterparts were burdened by the masculinity of both.

Polwhele's The Unsex'd Females states that women writers are: "A female band despising Nature's law. . . " The footnote to this line reads:

Nature is the grand basis of all laws human and divine: and the woman, who has no regard to nature, either in the decoration of her person, or the culture of her mind, will soon 'walk after the flesh, in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government'.

Polwhele believes that Nature has set forth certain laws by which women must exist. He says that women "have no regard to nature", and suggests that their existence is somehow disconnected from Nature, as proven by her artificial appearance, uncultured mind, and impure desires.

To address these criticisms, I looked at the larger view of Nature, that is the natural world, to see if women writers conveyed a sense of their existence being disconnected or somehow separate from Nature -- is the woman poet, as Polwhele suggests, limited to impure thoughts of the flesh? Is her view of Nature significantly different than a male writer's?

The poem I concentrated on was Anna Laetitia Barbauld's "A Summer Evening's Meditation" on page 17 of our anthology. I selected this poem because it is one that influenced both Wordsworth and Coleridge, and for that reason alone its vision of nature is going to be important. There is a deep affection for the natural world in this poem: reverence and fear of Nature are mingled throughout it. Rather than conveying a sense of separateness from Nature, this poem suggests the exact opposite:

                Nature's self is hushed
And, but a scattered leaf which rustles through
The thick-wove foliage, not a sound is heard
To break the midnight air -- though the raised ear,
Intensely listening, drinks in every breath.
How deep the silence, yet how loud the praise!
But are they silent all? or is there not
A tongue in every star that talks with man
And woos him to be wise -- nor woos in vain?
This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars. (42-52)

These lines sound like Coleridge's "Eolian Harp" p. 506, lines 36-40; very pantheistic, not disconnected with Nature at all. she is also concerned with wisdom, whose pronoun is feminine gendered; she is not limited to concerns of the flesh. This poem has a strong sense of connectedness with the natural world, even extending beyond the earth and into the universe:

                Seized in thought,
On fancy's wild and roving wing I sail,
From the green borders of the peopled earth
And the pale moon, her duteous fair attendant;
From solitary Mars; from the vast orb
Of Jupiter, whose huge gigantic bulk
Dances in either like the lightest leaf (72-77)

These are not the musings of a woman obsessed with thoughts of the flesh. Barbauld stresses the importance of wisdom, and has the greatness of mind to imagine Nature beyond the confines of the "green borders of the peopled earth." Barbauld ends her imaginary flight into the natural world and beyond by saying:

    But now my soul, unused to stretch her powers
In flight so daring, drops her weary wing
And seeks again the known accustomed spot
Dressed up with sun and shade, and lawns and streams
A mansion fair and spacious for its guest
And full replete with wonders. Let me here,
Content and grateful, wait th' appointed time
And ripen for the skies: the hour will come
When all these splendours bursting on my sight
Shall stand unveiled, and to my ravished sense
Unlock the glories of the world unknown. (113-123)

Nature need not be a heightened, transcendental experience (see "Verses written in an alcove"), as Coleridge suggests in "This Lime Tree Bower My Prison" p.512, lines 32-43. Barbauld clearly feels an affection and a spirituality toward Nature, but is "content and grateful" to live within the world directly around her; she doesn't need a "Mont Blanc" to feel spiritual or connected with Nature. These lines contain all the imagination and energy of a Coleridge, but also have a deep sense of contentment; she accepts more than questions.

So, this poem shows an emotional and a spiritual connection and affinity with Nature; nowhere does the poet seem uncertain of her place in Nature, nor does she seem to believe that her role is somehow restricted in it. And she certainly is not concentrating on concerns of the flesh.

I thought it would be interesting to look at a husband and wife team, and see if their visions of nature are conspicuously different: Percy Shelley's Prometheus Unbound and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein are two works which have a great deal to do with Nature, and have some significant differences, as well as quite a few similarities.

Percy Shelley's Prometheus Unbound is a dramatic story about an exceptional man whose intelligence and ambition has allowed him some degree of mastery over Nature. Prometheus's control over and gift to man of fire, a natural element, has cost him severely. His betrayal of the "gods" and the misuse of his knowledge results in his downfall.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is also a dramatic story about a similar person. Dr. Frankenstein is also exceptional in intelligence and ambition, and his corruption and control of Nature, in this case the very nature of life itself, also results in his downfall. He too "betrays" the real essence of a Creator, and misuses his knowledge.

The significant difference between these two men is the way in which the author either commends or reprimands his or her character. Percy Shelley admires the actions of his protagonist, seeing Prometheus as a man who bravely frees mankind from the slavery of the gods. The reader is persuaded to view Prometheus as a liberator; a man who has learned the secrets of Nature, and more importantly, has learned to master Nature. The elements are personified, and are subservient to Prometheus. Prometheus (man) is superior to Nature.

Mary Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein is not so admired. Where Prometheus is credited for controlling nature, Victor is cursed for it. Frankenstein is a man who, like Prometheus, brings a secret knowledge to mankind. Unlike Prometheus, however, Frankenstein's mastery of Nature is disapproved of. His ego makes him believe he can handle this great responsibililty, yet in the end the reader realizes his knowledge of Nature is a dangerously superficial one. He knows the "how", but not the "why". This philosophical angle is not explored in Prometheus Unbound. Percy Shelley would seem to suggest that it is an inherent right of man to exploit his knowledge of Nature. Mary Shelley clearly does not agree with this. Frankenstein (man) is inferior to Nature.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein would singlehandedly seem to dismiss Polwhele's comment that women have no regard for Nature, or that their thoughts cannot rise above those of the flesh. Although this is only one example, I think it is a legitimate one, in that these two stories are significant in the Romantic period. Nature is a prevalent theme in much Romantic writing, and its images run throughout a great deal of the literature. While specific images of Nature in the poetry of men and women (Barbauld, Coleridge, and Wordsworth in particular) did not obviously conflict, the stories of Prometheus Unbound and Frankenstein do raise the possibility that men and women in this period did have different opinions about mankind's place in Nature.

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Good video, very good representation of the situation of the times. Excellent, well-rounded format. The reality of the literary world of the time was exposed. Very effective. Inclusion of critics / differences / legal issues / religion and politics / education / pictures of women / Nature and women's relationship -- these issues made for a very fill, well-rounded project. I was very interested. Questioning the sense of women's identity was effective, and a question I'm still pondering.

Very thorough and interesting presentation, raising some great questions and ideas. The video was very entertaining and helped to provide a context for further discussion.

Most noticeable aspect was the range of excellent discussion points. Many bright ideas and arguments involved. They did much research, and knew their work well.

I thought that the focus that each had was very varied and nice to see so many contrasting but related ideas on the topic. I appreciated the gentle approach to the controversial nature of "feminine" and "feminist" -- good background and historical information to back viewpoints.

The video was both entertaining and elucidating -- the best of combinations! Laura's voice carried a genuine weariness as she related the plight of women Romantic writers; this struck me as telling of all that is yet unchanged.

Document revised April 6, 1997