Eighteenth-century women poets: a study of female poetic identity

Abstract

The scope of this thesis is to explore the construction of the female poetic self within the eighteenth century, through textual analysis. I include a chapter on conduct literature to ascertain how female social identity was perceived, and how the gendered ideology that these works present, influence the female self presented in poetry. Female social powerlessness within a male orientated power structure is an important issue for women writers. Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft, in their capacity as female conduct book writers, emphasise issues of education and marriage as fundamental social areas in need of reform in order for women to attain an intellectual self and the moral autonomy to become self-defining. Through Anne Finch we are immediately confronted with a poet who challenges restrictions imposed by a male appropriation of femininity and a literary establishment that consistently reinforces both language and poetic voice as male. Thus Finch's construction of poetic identity is formed partially from an intense awareness of the male critic and an unsympathetic audience. Mary Leapor, a working class poet disadvantaged by class, gender and excluded from formal education, affirmed her outsider position, presenting a poetic persona constructed from anticipated criticisms, illustrating like Finch, a strong awareness of an unsympathetic audience. These poets both develop a poetic identity formulated around methods for attaining artistic liberation. Thus defining one's self through female relationship becomes an integral element whereby women can explore shared female experiences and displace masculine poetic values. Mary Jones provides us with an example of the problems associated with the female poet attempting to articulate a poetic self outside the domestic sphere. Her drive for economic independence conflicts with social notions of femininity as she attempts to empower herself with a competent public identity through a revaluation of what constitutes female virtue. I use the relationship of subscription patronage between the middle class reformist Hannah More and the working class poet Ann Yearsley to explore issues of class consciousness as a defining feature of poetic self. I look at how More defines her role and identity through the construction of the other and, in contrast, how Yearsley adapts the public identity of natural genius bestowed on her to articulate her own poetic self. Anna Barbauld provides us with the opportunity to investigate her critical criteria reflecting the literary gender bias which prevented Wollstonecraft from unifying the voice of woman and writer in her advocation for female rights. While a consistent image of the female poet is not presented through the eighteenth century, a female literary tradition was certainly celebrated by many women poets. And women using the process of poetry for self-definition found methods for adding the substance of female experience and artistic expression to an appropriation of female identity offered through conduct literature and oppressive social structures.