11°78 Bf iiss 9” | Moers, Ellen Literary women 809.69287 MoERS sue 2 wé(ORMRAL txomany #76 DATE DUE HLH} 00384 9336 Vara OTT | pec 21 ne with 24 pages of illustrations A brilliant, controversial look at the literary traditions established over the last two centurtes by the great writers who happen also to have been women, In this landmark book, Ellen Moers investigates the lives and works of ‘women writers — all the way from Fanny Burney to Erica Jong —to show that the label “feminine” stands for ‘much more than a single point of view or style. That indeed new genres and new insights were born as female awarenesses and assertions become part of modern literature ‘She explains, for example, why such women as Harriet Beecher Stowe were the fist to write impassioned ex- posés of slavery, George Sand to cham- pion the people and George Eliot the Jews. Why Charlotte Bronté and Louisa May Aleott explored in fiction the harsh realities of earning a living, why Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf paid attention to money. How the Gothie novel has thrived on female (continued on back fap)Some of the mater in thi Nook has appeared in the [New York Review of Books, The American Scholar, St ‘ba Foren. Other material cxiginally appeared in Harpers Magazine a8 Yourg: Woren," and it Commentary as "Monwy, the ich, and ‘copyileht © 1972 by Amsican Jewish Commitee. Liteary of Congres Cotaiogng in Pblication Duta Moss, Elen, 1928- Literary women, Bittioephy: p20. Iles fe 1'Women authors. Tide, PNGTLMGS§UW.39287 ISHN: 0.285.074274 Library of Congress Carslag Card Number 74-33686 Copyright & 1963, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976 by Ellen cers [AIT Righs seve Prot in the Usd State of Ameren Prem Bali, Gratefl acknowledgment made for permision to incade the following: Lines fom “Biavk Isa Worvas" ty Hilegande Planar, from tf There fs Time by Uildenarde Fanner, copyright 1942 ty New Directons, Rerrited by permission of the anther Lines from “Prologue/the Evidence” trom Half-Lives by Brica Joce. Copyrisht © 1971, 1972, 1973 by Exca Mann Jong, Repited by peension of Holt, Rinehart ‘and Winston, Pubishrs. ‘Lines from “Fatal Inerview by Ens St, Vincent Millay, Harper & Row, Pub- lishers, Ine. Copyeabt 1981, 1958 by Esa St, Vincent Milay and Norma Millay Ei Four lines thom “The Exorcist,” trom To Bedlam and Fart Way Back. Copyright © 1960 by Anoe Sexten Reprinted by erminion of the publisher, Howpston ‘Muti Company. ‘Lins trom "The Insatiable Baby” by Cynthia MacDonald, George Brasil, In, From dorpuaions by Cys NaeDooals, Reprited Ht the permission et the publther: Copright © 1972 by Cyrhia MacDowell “Epletam" ty Ama Akhmatova, copyright © 1979 ty Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward: Osigialyappeated 9 Poetry: Frama Poort of AXimatova,Ssleced, Tate laved and Introduced by Sunley Kuali with Max Hayward. BY permision ot Lt, Bown atd Co. fm asacaion with The Aanie Monthly Pres ‘Matecal trom “Decicatry” by Wila Cather, repiied from Apr Zwiighs (1003) by Wile Cather, ted wid an ftodvtion by Bere Slots, copyright © 1962, 1966 by the Univer of Nebeasha Pres. vii cerns from The Profesor’ ttouse by Willa Cather, published by Aled A. Kaopt ns. Copyright 1925 by Wills Cathar. Renewal copyright 1983 by the Exech~ ‘ory ot The Estate of Wil Cater. Encerpt from My Morial Enemy by Will Cather, published by Aled A. Kno, Ane. Copyrizht 1913 and 1943 by Wika itert Caer Excerpts from The Song of the Lark, Copgriht 1915 and 1943 by Willa Sibert (Cater. Reprinted by pexmision ofthe publhber, Houghion Mullin Company. ie rim fre Pm Shi Rath Lady Can” “Stop Dei” and wasteg Hens type tm England in art pobinbes by Faber & Faber, esi © 1965 by Te Hoan a in Th Cooma pbtielby Paber Faber, copie © 1300 by Sybe Pah al © 1967 by Ted Hughes They appeared in the Urited States i three books published ly Hearyer 4 Row, Publishers, In. Arle, ‘opytisht © 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965 by Ted Hughes; Crosng the Maxr, fopyriaht © 1971 by Ted Haghes: and Winter Tres, eopyriht @ 1952 by Tad ‘Mapes, Tine of poetry by Eimiy Diskinan trom poems $312, copyright 1914, 1942 by ‘Martha Dickinnon Bianchi; 599, copyieh, 1935 by Martha Dickson Biasch, 1963 by Mary L, Hamoson: #373 and £405, consight 1929, 1957 by Mary L. Mampron, From The Complete Poons of Emily Dickinson. Eiited ty Thomas M John By permission of Lite, Brewn and Co Lines of poetry by Emly Dickinon, om pocms 875, 9593, aad 9540, Re ‘rnied by peison ofthe publishers and the Trustes of Arberst Colege. From The Poems of Emily Dickinsen, ited py Thomas TH. Fohmion, Combes, The ‘Belknap Press of Harvard Universty Press. Copyright 1951, 1985 by the President td Fellows of Havyand Cols. nuverecnost ‘Gratetal acknowiedgmest {x made to the folowing for permislon 10 use th Huse ‘rations srecife: "Th Jans Aiton Sacinty: Natopal Forvlt Gallery, London: 7%, 10,21, 22,23, 28 ‘The Brooklyn Museum, Carl He Siver Funds Th ‘The Granger Colleton, New York: 1, 16,1726 ‘The Metopotian Mosstm of Art. Baqsert of Grtnide Stain, 1946: 15. ‘New York Publi LitraryPiemte Collection: 18 Rolle McKenna and Harper Row, Publishes, In: 27 raving of Eliteih Barrett in the powsesion of Edward R, Mouton Barr. “Text by Bemice Sloe, photosraphs by Lucia Woods and others. Copyrit © 1973 by the University of Nebraska Prox, Restated by perminion, ‘Selfcarkature, George Sand, Coleen Sposoereh de Lovenjoul,xii PREFACE Jas a the point where the reader grows restive en starts looking forthe sciente bai ef these mascaline/ feminine catepoies, Dr. Deutsh turns ‘Not to seience but to literature: specifically to La Petite Fadewte by George Sand, Her twenty pages of analysis of this novela, while they offer nothing thet could bs called sec pron, are credible work for an amateur literary critic; though marred by imperfect knowledge of George Sand (who wrote a hundred books besides Fatt). Some sence of the scope the varity, the development of women's lier- sure wl be provided, hope, by my book, the boundaries of whiek have ‘been set not arbitrarily but by the subject itself. English, French, and American wemen are ctrl ard coscual fares to any dituason of r= {5 profesonalism fom the rise ofthe Richandconan nove.—dhit store vent which aust once again (ere & to chloe in the mater) be sut~ fmoned to account for change here a change for writing women: thir chance to achieve, to influence, and to be decently paid. In my choice of contemporary writers T have been somewhat more casual; T talk about ‘what T happen to read and wat inarsts me inthe current Iieraryf2en8, mostly American and English writer, There would he more to 895, 1 know, but me, space, and ignorance all hamper me, about the women “writers of today who write in German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, and other Jengoages But for the svend ha ofthe eighteenth, the whole of the nine- ‘tweath, and even the beginning of the twentieth centuries only English, rene and American women en tray be celled major writers * From the start my approach ha deen essentially recial 1 there seomed semethng rew wort saying about Jare Austen a: & Worn wriet (Chere is—her concern ith money) lasead of jest as a weiter, that is ‘what I say ber; that is what detemsines which wocks I aicnss and in ‘what thematic context. The Iterary women themselves, their langue, their concerns, have dove the organizing ofthis book. Fist 1 thovght that rot all that far from all women writs would require or benefit bya c= al approach throagh the fat of thei ex omy sips, any more than T expected came to life for me as women writers #8 ticy had not dose before. Mrs, Gaskell and Anne Bronté had once bored me; Emily Dickin- ‘son was an irritating puzzle, as much as a genius; I could barely read Mary. ‘Shelicy and Mrs, Browning. Reading them anew as women writers taught sme bow to gt excited about these five, and others at well In fact, the greatest surprise has been the richness ofthis approach 10 Titeratare in general, and io much besides literature. Every subject I have hnad to consider-Remantcam, opera, promoans, landecepe, work, chld- ei et ahs act in maf the women po uh twenenty Rosle whom PtaoW ion: tod ‘yi abe of cre Satan ac, hom Trad bel 8 ‘a honorary Anglo Americana, PREFACE >i ‘hood, mysticiam, the Gothic, courtship, metaphor, travel, Tteracy, revola- ‘ion, monsters, education—his brondened and changed inthe light of seme knowledge of the women's issues and women's traditions that have been ‘shaping forces in all modern iterator. "To write a straight history of women’s literature was never my intene tion, though the idea of there being such a history now imignes rather than offends me, and to that end I have erganized one chapter chronclogi- cally (Chapter 2: The Epic Age) 2s a sample of the way such 2 history ‘ight read. Once I thought that seeregating major writers from the general ‘course of literary history simply because of theit sex was insulting, but several thinas have changed my mind, “The great women writers have taught me that the literary traditions shared among them have Jong been an advaniage to theic work, rather than the reverse, They bave taught me that everything special to & wom an’ life, from its. most trivial to is grandest aspects, has been claimed for literature by writers of their sex—writers who share that quality ‘Thackeray saw in Charlotte Bromté: “the passionate honour of the woman.” ‘The suspicion has also grown upon me that we already practice a segregation of major women writers unknowingly, therefore insidiousy, ‘because many of them have written novels, a genre with which therary his toriaas and anthologists are sil il at case. Neither Jane Austen nor Har- ict Beecher Stowe is mentioned (no less included) in the standar¢ anthel~ ‘opies which today are the staple introductions to English and American Titeraturs for students. Thas, where young readers are concerned, English ‘Romanticism is deprived of its greatest non-poet; and all the clichés zbont the American renaissance and about the antisocial American romance tra~ ition go on being repeated without testing ngainst the major Semale exccp- tioa tothe rule, ‘But the main thing to change my mind abovt a history of bterary ‘women has been history itself, the dramatically unfolding, living literary history of the period of my work on this book. If ever there was a time ‘hich teaches that one must know the history of women to understand the history of literature, it is now. ‘The generosity of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which ‘gave me a Senior Fellowship and a Research Grant for this book, cut m Tocse from teaching in 1972, 1973, and 1974. The new wave of feminism, ‘called women's iberation, pulled me out of the stacks and made the writ- ‘ng of this book much more of an open-sir activity than a bockish person Ike myself could otherwise have expected. My table of contents evokes {for me the widespread places whore most of these chapters were first bornxiv PRerace 48 public Jeetares—tecures some of which T would hardly have been asked to give had they not contTbuted to that burning topic of the day, T talked to the New England College English Ascociation, during their ‘noun! mestng at Smith College, about biegrenhy and women’s iterate; to the New York Browaibg Society about Mis. Browning; io the English Institute about Anne Dradstreet; at the University of Wisconsin about Enily Dickinson; at Hofstra University about Hlarvet Beecher Stowe; 10 the Victorian Studies Department at Indiana University about the Epic Age; at the University of Warwick (where Germaine Greer was a supertly scholarly Becker) about Female Gothic; to the American Society for Eignesnth Century Stadiss, during ther annual mecting at the University of Pennsylvania, about Traveling Heroinism; at St. John’s University and again at Brooklyn College about Loving Heroinism; at Harvard University shout Educating Heroism; at the University of Rochester about the landscape metaphor ina lecture celebrating the Will Cather centennial, an oceaion which ako drew me tothe University of Nebraska, and to Red Cloud. My thanks go not only to my many gracious hosts, but to members. ofthe audience, some of whose names T never Iearad, who informed, cor ‘ected, and inpired mo, who mado the writing ofthis book a dialogue. ‘My thanks go als to the many editors who opened pages of thir publications to drafts of most of these chapters, and again to the many readers who wrote me and thus eonttbuted to thelr nal revision. Some were writers who shared their manuscripts and projees with me, among these, Tile Olser, Ruth Ann Lief, and Jacith Johnsoa Sherwin, who have become Iriends. Past ofthe Tradition chapter ran in the Columtie Foren: Rests in ‘Commentary; Female Gothic in the New York Review of Books, where some of the material on Richardton and Stone also fest sppeared; Per forming Heroinism in Harvard English Studies, except for the Taly matedal, whieh appeared In the American Scholr; some of the Cather! Colette material ran ia World. All these articles appeared ia the 1970s, but the first writing I did for this book, seraps of which reappear in the Epic Age chapter, goes back to 1963: an article called “Angry Young Women,” abou the Victorian witers, which Harper's Magazine com- inissioned fora special iaue on Women publisbod atthe end of that year ‘When I take out that article now, T marvel at the change caused by a few years of women's history, for in 1963 T was mainiy irae wich the quiescent spirit of current women writers, and mainly concemed to show the creative power of women's anger in a put age. Th 1963 Beuy. Friefan published ‘The Feminine Mystique, which turned out to be the start of the political organization of feminisis in ‘America. In 1963 Sylvia Plath killed herself and was born again to 2 dom- Farrace w inant role in the world of letters; her autobiographical novel The Beil dar, appeared in 1963, Are, her last great book of poems in 1965, and ther work has been constantly published, debated, followed ever sines. No writer has meant more to the current feminist movement, though Plath ‘was hardly 4 "movement person, and she died at age thily before it he- ‘gan. She provides a first practical lesson in the complexities of chronology that fac: th historian of women's Hterature, which sometimes runs before, sometimes after, sometimes in tandem with the history of feminism, but i fot the same thing Just as we are now trying to make sense of women's literature in the ‘eat feminist decade ofthe 1790s, when Mary Wollstonecraft blazed and died, and when, also, Mme de Stas! come to England ond Jane Austen ‘came of age, so the historians ofthe future will try to order women's iter- ature ofthe 1960s and 1970s, They will have to consider Sylvia Plath a5 a ‘women wter and as a poet; but what will hey make of her contemporary ccompetsot, the playwright Lormine Hamsbeny? Born two years belore Plath, znd dead two year after ber in her early thirties, Hansborry was not a'suicide but a victim of cancer; she eloquenty armed life, as Path beilliamily wooed death. Historians of the future will undoubtedly be satis- fied with the tile of Lorraine Hassbersy’s posthumous volume, To Be Young, Gijted and Black; and they will talk of ber admiration for Thomas ‘Wolfe; bat of Sylvia Plath they will have to say “young, gifted, and a woman.” And when they try to place Plath in the history of women's litera- ture, peshaps they will look back wo the turmol-the-ceatury Russian 1e- Tigious poet Zinaida Hippius, sone of whose poems —if trensltions ace ‘any guide to them—are astonishingly like Plath’s in imagery and tone. Future historians will automaticaly place in the context of women's liberation the young women who first began to publish their pocms and polemics, theie ribald end outrageous fictions in this fominis cra. They Will se the same context to explain much af the change that came over the ‘work ofthe poet Adrienne Rich, whose frst volume, published in the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1951, won praise from W. H. Audea for “good manners”; hers were poems, Auden wrote, which do not “bellow at the reader.” In 1974 Rich won the Notional Boole Award for Diving into the Wreck, the central section of which is alla bellow, called The Phenoae- nology of Anger"; and she accepted the award, jointly with two other ‘women poets, “in the mame ofall the women whee voices have goue and sill go unhesrd inthe patriarchal world.» ‘The women’s movement has brought back dead writers, created new waiter, changed eszblished writers, and summoned old writes 1 fitera- {ure again. Much ofthe exctemeat inthe Mteray seene of the past decade hhas come from the vitality of women ia ther svies and soventics and pethaps elder who have been republished and have begun to rte again,LITERARY WOMEN “Yes, sir if you would be good enough to get it done 85 soon as possible; we are in great need of i.” “T think there's ao hurry. 1 believe we are going to have a dry time now. so that you could rot cateh any water, and you won" need {pimp at present “These negotiations ‘extended from the frst of June to the ft of July, and at last my sink was completed... Ako during thit time good Mrs, Mitchell and myself made two sofas, or lounges, barrel chit, divers bedspreads, pillow cases, pillows, bolsters, matiresses; We painted rooms: we rvarashod furniture; wo--what dan’t we do? “Then on caine Mr. Stowe; and then came the eighth of July and my litle Charley, T was really pad for an excnse to lie in bed, for 1 was San assure you. Wel, Iwas what folks call very comfort able for two weeks, when my muse had 10 leave me. « « During this time T have employed my leisure hours in making up smy engagements with newspaper editors. T have written more han anybody, or T myself wookd have thought. I have taught an hour a day jn our schoct, and I have rend two hours every evening te the children. ‘The children study Englis history in School, and 1 am reading Scott's historic novels in their order . . .: yet Tam constantly pursaed and haunted by the Xdea that 1 don't do anything. Since T began this note 1 have been called off a least a dozen times: once for the fsh-man, to ‘buy a codfish; once to 202 8 man who had brought me some barrels ‘of apples; once 10 see a bock-man; then to Mrs. Upham, to see about 4 drawing T promised to make for her: then to narse the baby: then into the kitchen to make a chowder for dinner; and now 1 um at it ‘guia, for nothing but deadly determination enables me ever to write: it's rowing ngniast wind and tide. . - “To tll the truth, dear, am petting tired; my neck and ack ache, and T mast come to'n close, I: isa letter to Jeave one between laughter and tears, probsbly just the LITERARY LIFE: SOME REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN 5 ‘ts own Tuck Two sineicenth-century women stand cut in this respect, ‘George Sand and Elizabeh Barrett Browning; what positively miraculous ‘beings they were. A magnetism emanates from their life stories, some com- polling power which drew the work to dhem—and all the goods and biess ‘ngs of the kind that faiitate and ornament the woman's life in letters. It ‘was not that their lives were without the diffcultes that plague other ‘women—hardly; but they made those dificlties into resourees with a wave (f the magic wand of their—what shall we cal it: charm? power? egotism? energy? coniidonce? pride? genius? or just plain luck? Whatever it was, ‘Elizabeth Barrett always knew it was hers, as we can see from the ‘Glimpses into My Own Life and Literary Character” that she set down in 1820. Perhaps these pages may never meet a aman eye—and thersfore no EXCESSIVE vanliy can dictate them tho a feeling akin to & SELF LOVE may have prompted my not unwilling pen. + Tyas always of a determined and if thvarted violent dispoxi- ‘ion. My actions end temper were infinitely more inflexible at three ‘yours cld than now at fourtoea, At that early ago I can perfectly re- ‘member reigning in the Nunecy and being renowned amongst the servants for self love and excessive passion... . At four and a half my ‘great delight was poring over fay phenomcnors and the actions of ecromancers. .. . Alive supposed myself a heroine. . . 1 perfectly remember the delight T felt when T attained my sixth birthday. 1 enjoyed my triumph to 2 great degree over the inhabitants fof the Nursery, there being no UPSTART to dispute my author- iy. ‘At four I frst mounted Pegisas but at six I thought myself peivi- leged to chow off feats of horsemanthip, In my sixth your for some fines on virtue which I had penned with great care 1 received trom Papa a ten shilling note enclosed in a lator which war addrest to the effect Mrs Stowe intended, for she was alteady an accomplished writer of Poet Laurea! of Hope End; 1 mention this because T received much sketches and other journalism, the income from which was required by her more plensite from the word Port than from the ten siling nove. T large family. “Now, Hattie,” her sisterinslaw wrote, “if 1 could use a pea sia not understand the meaning of the word teureet but it being ex as you can, T would write something that wou! make éhis whole nation ‘laine to me by my dearest Mama, the ies fist presented iself 10 me feel what an accursed thing slavery is"; but there vias, after all, Title of eclebrating our bihdays by my vere. "Poet Lowest of Hope Ent wots eat te tl CCharcy, st bom, the lst of her seven hides. “As log ax the eby en gt eee Soar ore ee re : N ee en fe Hey of Engl nd Renew fro he Hy or Life Among the Lowly cia in fact appene a litle less than a year ater Peas fol vcl pasa too efvsioms ol cay Hagin Mr. Titcomb took care of Mrs. Stowe's sink. inthe adorned drapery of versfieation.... The subject of ry studies ‘vas Pope's “lad” some passage from Shaksspoare & novel which 1 ‘enjoyed to their full eaten. But there were some fucky ones, lucky by birth, circumstance, phy- At ten my postry wae emisely formed by the syle of written sa operon peli rt ieee ngciam oa ed suthors and T cead at I might write». . At eleven T wise 10 beLITERARY WOMEN considered an auttoress. Novels were thrown aside, Poetry and Essar ‘were my studies & I felt the most ardent desire to understand the Tearned langusges—To comprehend even the Greck alphabet was de- light inexpresible. Under the witioa of Mr. MeSwiney I attained that which T so fervendy gesired. For 8 months during this year T never remember kaving dive! my aiteation to any other abject than the ambition of gaining fare . . and never bad 4 beiter opinion of my ‘wa talenis—In short I was ia infinite danger of being as vain os Twas ‘inexperienced! During this dangerous period 1 was from home & the fever of a heated imagination was perhaps increased by the infoxi- cating guietioe of a watering place Ramsgate whore we then were and ‘where T commenced my poem “The Bate of Marathon" now in pint At twelve T enjoyed literary Tile in all ite plewures. Meta physic wore my highest delight, . . . At this age I was in great danger ff becoming the founder of a religion of my own read Milton for the first time thro together with Pope's Homer... ..1 had now’ attained my thirteenth birthday! T perused all medera authors... Tread Homer in the original with elight expressible, together with Viral... « Tam now fourteen and since those days of my tenderest infancy ry sharacter has not changed — + « My admiration of tterature, especially of poetical terature, ‘can never be subiued nor can it be extinguished but with Life. My views of every subject are naturally cheerful ard light 26 the fist young visions of aerial hope but there have been moments, uty hhours when contemplation has been arrayed in sorrows dusky rote. And yet I hive not felt miserable even then... - My mind i saturally indsperdant end spuras that subsecvieney of ‘opinion which is generally considered necessary 10 feminine soltness. Bat this is a subject on which T must always fee! strongly for T feel ‘within me ap almost proud consciousness of independance which prompts me to defend my opinions & to yield them only to convie- ntti «Better oh how mich better to he the ridicule of mankind, the scoff of society, than lose that suf respect which tho! this heart were bunting would elevate me above misery—above wretchedness & above ‘basement!!! These principles are irrevocable! tis not—T fee it is not vanity that dictates themt i it not—I kaow i i not an encronchment ‘on masculine prerogative but it is « proud seatiment which will never Allow me to be humbled in my own eyes ‘And so ft went; no one and nothing could resist her. She wanted Greek: —there was that tutor; before she was done she read “nearly every word extant ia Greek,” published her translation of Aeschylus, wrote as a spe cialis on Byzantine Greek literature, and also learned Latin, Hebrew, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese without ever going to school. She ‘wanted a learned friend with whom to discuss as an equal the technicalities LITERARY LIFE: SOME REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN 7 fof Greek prosody and such matters; he was provided—it had to be a he— fn.a shape which permitted long hours of intimate converse without scan dal: a blind scholar, She wanted to do nothing but read and write; i has been estimated that her curiously convenient regime as an invalid gave her ‘more time, daily, for those cceupations than any other moder young pet- son has ever enjoyed. ‘Only a woman, perhaps, ean fully appreciate the luxurious scholarly Idleness of Elizabeth Bartet’s life when a young woman, and the female head of a large household (after her mother’s death), Her younger sisters tnd brothers, who all adored her, tiptoed by her doo; while full of effce- tion, so devoid of responsbility was she, that she confessed to confusion about their ages. And so protected was she from even the awareness of omestic responsiilites that ber own room was cleaned only once a year —1 fitual occasion, managed by others so that she need not observe ser- vant industry. Whenever her large family moved house, she herself was transported separately, a precious burden, to the new residence made srady by others for hee convenience, Elizabeth Barrett was not to be cis- turbed. She wanted fame: published in her tseas snd twenties, her poetry was balled round the world, and she was nominated for the lavreateship. She ‘wanted a share in the normal masculine literary life, and without unseemly fect x le pec, ascot without outing Totty she tow iat fo caens to hot: epistolary friendships with writers, assignments from the quarterties, collaborstions on a modernization of Chaueer and on a critical assessment ‘of contemporary writers; even appoiniment as literary exeemor of au im ‘ortant man she had never met. She wonted love as well: what post docs not? Het father did not remarry when her mother died, which is extraordinary, for he was oaly forty-three, and handsome, vigcrous, and rich. All his umatory energies (which bad produced twelve children) were turned to the worship of his brilliant and pretty eldest daughter, who was mecely twenty-one years younger than he. Mr. Barret comes down to us in legend as a patiarchal ‘tyrant of black religiosity; bat what woman can help relishing his style? Those nightly prayers in Elizabeth's room, only the (wo of them; she ‘etched on her couch Ike an invalid queen, and he on his knees before het. ‘She wanted more love; and it came, it eame— O liberal ‘Ani princely giver, who has browght the gold ‘And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold, ‘And id them on the outside of the wall... Robert Browning came for Elizabeth Barrett just the way @ lover ‘should come for every literary woman, out of the blue, fascinated, en-chanted, magnetized by her writing—the two-volume 1844 collestion of her poetry, “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,” this y 1 ‘Ge vec ose and els rsd ut teat tay wile exe ‘nois and disgust with the active life, you were tempted to enter the ages kad coal ckaphiors, GASiBGi Sad A nny attg He "Ae ‘ell of a recluse, you would be received with gratitude and cordiality, togothar. I do, as Tay, love these books with all my heart—and I love you He came. too... To Mussst, to everyone, she was George Sand—asually Madame to come and see ms. 1 stil fear that the somberness of my domestic interior may alarm and bore you. However, if on some day of weari- ‘The rest of their courtship produced some of the finest love poems and love letters in the language. "My letters!” she wrote— My letters! all dead paper, mute and whitet “And yet they seem alive and quivering ‘Against my tremulous hands which loose the string ‘Aad let them drop down on ray knee tonight, ‘This said—te wished to have me in his sight Once, asa fricad: this Gxed a day in spring ‘To come and tach my hand... a simple thin ‘Yet I wept for it!—this, . .. the paper’ light... Said, Deer, I love thee; and I sank and quailed As if God's future thurdered on my past. ‘This said 2 crm dhine—and so its ink baw pled With lying at my heart that beat too fas. And this. . . © Love, thy words have il availed If, what this sad, [dared repeat at lastt Allred de Musset, young, handsome, and a poet, read George Sund's novel Indiana, met her, reread it, wrote her a letter containing much eriti- cal admiration and the poem called “After Reading Indiana”: ‘Sind, quand tw Pécrvais, od done Tavais-tu vue, (Cette scine terible 0 Noun, & demi nue, ‘Sar elt Indiana stnivre avec Raimond? ‘Qui done te la dictit,cete page brutante 63 Tamour cherche en vain d'une min polpitants ‘Le fentime adoré de son ilusion? ‘As-tu rév6 cola, George, ou Mas-tu connu? ‘She answered, in part: «+s IE Twrte literary eritictim in response to your verses, which are 46 beuutiful ia thought and feeling, it is because I am very much at a Joss as to how to answer the questions of the poet who addresses them to me... for Tesnnot forget that the poet is twenty years old, thet ‘he has the good fortune sill to doubt, still to inquire, and it would be ‘bad grace on my part to reveal to him the mournful secrets of my ‘own experience. ‘When I had the honor of meeting you, I dié not dare invite you George Sand. No one could tell the story of the birth of that pen name bet- ter than Sand does herself, in Part IV of the Histoire de ma vie, where she interweaves it with the story of her adoption of male dress when she began her literary life in Paris, 1 yearned to deprovisciaize myself and became informed about ‘he Ideas and the ars of my time... ; L was partially thinty for the theater. ‘Twas well avare that it was impossible for @ poor woman to ia- Auige beret in thewe delights I tock this problem to my mother. + She replied: “.. . When Iwas young and your father was short of ‘money, be had the idea of dressing me as a boy. ... That meant a saving of half our household budget”. « ‘$01 bad made for myself a redmgete-putite (the long, shupeles ‘men's outer coat of the 1830s] in heavy gray cloth, pants and vest t0 match. With a gray hat and a large woolen cravat, I vas a perfect first-year stoden. I can't express the lease my boot gave me: 1 would gladly have slept with them, as my brother dd in bis young, age, when he got bis fst pair. With those litle irom-hod heels, 1 was fold on the pavement, I few from one eod of Pari to the other. Tt seemed to me that T could go round the world. And thea, my clothes, feared nothing. Tran cut in every bind of weather, I came home at ‘every sort of hour, Isat inthe pit atthe theater, No one paié attention ome, and no one guessed at my disguise. «« Myself, Thad the Ideal lodged in a commer of my betia «1 carried it about in the street, my feet on the icy pavement, my shoulders covered with snow, my haads in my pockets, my siomech a Bitholow every now snd then, but my head all the more fled with, ream, melodic, cote, shipes, gleams and. phantoms. T vas 20 longer «lady, but I wasn't « gendeman either. . No one knew me, ‘noone looked at me, no ane found fault with me: Twas an atm lost, in that inmense crowd. No one said 10 me, as they din La Chit ‘There's Madame Aurore going by: she's got the same hat and dress on; not, a they eit in Nobant: “Take a Wook at our tadyship riding ‘0 her big Horst: she's gt to be crazy to ait a home that way." In Paris, nobody thought anything of ms. 1 sould make up a whole novel as I walked from one side of town (0 another without running ino someone who would say: “What the devil are you thinking about?” ‘The year was 1831. She was starting out in the world of letters just as all young Frenchmen from the provinces did in those romantic days, That she was a woman writer rather than a man writer is not the most remark-10 LITERARY WomEN, able fct about Sand’s literary debut, Something else about it, something so remarkable a3 to be almost unbelievable, turned out to be the charac= teristic note of Sands whole literary eareer; and thats is «peed. 'Beloce she came to Paris to earn har way 28 2 writer, she had done a Title seribbling, but had" hardly shown any particular interest in or talent for a writing earcet. Once in Paris, she made contact with lading editors and writers, joined the staff of Le Figaro, and contibuted regularly to the Revue de Paris. To learn her ereft, she’ wrote alone or in coliaboratin numerous articles, tales, and novels; some of this apprentice work was never published, some appeared anonymously, some under various pen names. Rose et Blanche, a five-volume collaborative novel signed “I. Sand,” marked the end of her apprenticeship. Next came Indiana, entirely her own work, the novel Musset read as did many others. (“Very brillant tnd powerful” said Elizabeth Barrett of Indian, “and cloquent beyond praising”) It established the fame of “George Sand,” the pen name she ‘used for the fist time for Indiana, ‘The whole business took some fifteen months, only about hatf of which she was able to spend in Pasis or devote to the literary life, Ske was twenty-six years six months, and five days old when she came to Paris, ‘and when she was done with her debnt—with the contacts and the journal Jism, the hack fiction and sketches, the thousands of pages and dozens of volumes, and dhe writing of Indiana as well—she was twenty-seven years ‘and nine months old. It took her friend Balza, that dynamo of literary ‘eneegy, about tea years to complete a similar apprenticeship in journalism ‘and hack fiction. ‘There fs certainly nothing remarkable about Jules Sandeau, ber lover and collaborator during this period. Ho was a tim, aspiting, unpublished poct of nineteen, from her part of France, when she fell in love with him jn 1830. She swept im off with her to Paris the next year, thereto mother him, support him. introdace him sround, and manage his iterary debut while she attended to her own, From Sandeau she tok nothing but the first sllable ofthe pon name she requireé—for what other name was she to use? Her maiden name was Amantine-Aurore-Lueile Dupin, of which Aurore was the operative fist name (fortunately for Ieratire: from “Aurora” Mrs. Browning derived a heavenly host of images for Awora Leight), Hud she used her maiden name, it woukl bave been an offense to hhor mother, Mme Dupin; and her marsiod name, an outrage to her ‘mother-in-law, the Baronne Dadevant. ‘Her marriage at eightcen to young Casimir Dudevant, which began a a Jove match, had in any case long since deteriorated into marriage of form, with infidtities on both sides; but the form wes extremely impor- tant. She was the mother of two children and the chételaine of Nohant, her LITERARY LIFE? SOME REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN u ‘country estate by birth, her husbane's property by marriage. They made ‘a unusual separation agreement in 1830 uncer the terms of which her lit- ‘ecary carer unfolded. Dudevant mide her a very modest allowanc= (out ff her own money) on which to live part of every year in Paris. The rest ‘of the time she would spend at Nohant, stil officially a wife, stil ed 10 ‘her beloved countryside, still pasionately a mother. But she would have to eam enough by writing to support a Paris establishment including one or ‘both of he children, as their schooling dictated. This she di, witha drive, ‘speed, «versity, and a force that can harly be equaled in literary his- ‘tory, And in addition sho supplied herself with an abundance of the goods ‘of this earch which she so relished—tots of sex, lots of travel, its of fends, lots of wholesome country life, lots of music. ‘The picture of George Sand that stays most in my mind (because she described it often and brilliantly) i that of her typical country evening at [Notant. At the center sits Madame Sand, with the needlework she leved in hhot hands, surrounded by a housefl of fiends, clléren, lovers, guests, neighbors Nokant was e messy household, full of lmghter and games and thestrials and family argumeats and good intellectual talk and tobacco smoke and musio—just ike yours end mine. With Sand, in fact, begins @ litecary life-style distinctly modem in its middle-class informality, and child-, Jn terms of workdwie effet, George Sand was the most important “writer ofthe epic age. What sctual role she played in French affairs, what particular slice of the ideologieal and wtopian thought of early ninetcenth- seatury France she made her own ate subjeeis of some complexity on ‘which much has been and more will be written; bat that she expressed the ‘general revolutionary aspirations ofthe age with a verve, a drama, and an ‘lequence heard around the world we know from contemporary evidence everywhere. She has passed through the erisis of the age,” wrote Mazzini, the ‘alin patriot. “The evil she has cepicted isnot her evi tis our. « ‘She has ered to us: Behold your society.” “George Sand is ininitely more ‘than a novelist,” wrote George Henry Lewes; “She is @ Post . . . wteing ‘the collective voice of her epoch.” Walt Whitman, whose carpeater-post ‘persona owed something to her work, said that George Sand was of the ass of writers much necied “est the world stagnate in wrongs"; and be succambed to her power—"you have to lay down the book and give your motions room.” “George Sand is one of our saints,” seid Turgeaey, and Dostoevsky assigned her “unquestionably the frst place in the ranks” of ‘he great European writers who suddenty burs: on “the Russian idealist of the 1840s, ... proclaiming that the regeneration of humanity had to be radical, complete. ...." The "immense vibration of George Sond’s voice ‘upon the ear of Eurepe” was recorded by Matthew Arnold. And Kact ‘Marx, no mean vertal agitator in his own right, quoted a sentence from George Sand to make the cinging, revolutionary conclusion to his 1847 polemic The Poverty of Philosophy. When Mars first arrived in Paris in 1843 he had been advised by his colleague Atmold Ruge to look up George Sand and Flom Tristan; for the French women, Ruge said, were ‘inthe whole mote radical than the men, A close interconaoction betwoen fetinism and radicalism is 20 new ‘dea to French historians of the nineteenth centary. Proto-socialist ideo- logues in France at the beginning of the century placed a revision of mar- tage laws at the center of their utopias; and 2 female Messi ‘envisaged by Sant-Simon and Enfantin as an essential partner in the revolutionary enterprise, Both Flora Tristan and George Sand were widely ‘mentioned as candidates for this post—a suggestion which the former seems to have regarded scriousy, the latter with characteristic humor. But ‘Georg: Sand comments hersef on feminine access, via a sense of personal Injustice, to the wider issue of social clas injustice in modern society. "George Sand never wrote just ‘0 write,” 2s Taine put it, “but because she was animated by a faith. Taat is the impression all hor work gives,32 LITERARY WOMEN jst ae much a8 the impression (shout whish she wae quite candid) that she wrote for money. Sloppy in form, hasty in execution, sight in inven- tion her works often were, but the convictions behind them ving true. In the dullest and stupldest of her fictions there will come a page of such britiance, « paragraph or sentence of such irresistible and earnest elo- quence that the reader wio thought he was done with ier forever goes on to the end—as Matthew Arnold did, for example, from the 1830s to the 1870s, And Ruskin, who placed her alongside Balzac among “good novel- ists of the second order,” was something of # Sand sddict: “George Sand « « «wll ot lve," he sak, “but she got [er] power from the sense of Jus- fice. The fist impetus to write, in Sand's case, derived as all the world Inows from her own marital situation, And the macriage question, from the unhappy wife's point of view, is the theme of Indiana (1832), which brought George Sand instant prominence asa novelist, and which in some ‘ways—for its lush romanticism and lucid construction arcund a standard adultery motit—she never surpassed. But Indiana it alo, in its simplicity, the least characteristic of Sands works. With her secoad novel, Valentine (iso 1832), she was sieady a messier, a more diffuse, and T think a more interesting novelist; there hee social concerns fantasize her plot and com- plisate her characters “Thus her heroine, Valentine, yearns not only for Ideal love but for an ideal redistribution of property. Issues of women’s education andl men’s careers permeate the “marriage question.” Old people are sct against young people nat merely as agents of conformity, but as highly attractive spokesmen of cass values and philosophical views; the ist of Sand's mar- ‘elous old lady aristocrats appears in Valentine. Loyalties in the novel are ven more regional tian sexual: in Valentine Sand begins 0 do that re- rmarkable landscape peinting which so dazed hor English readers, who tad not, before Sand, found Nature celebrated in the novel. And class bar- tiers, aspirations, and curiosities, as well as marrage Inv, complicate the course of tre female love. There are almost as many types of heroine in ‘George Sand’s oewrre as there are novels; but if one type can be consid cred mest characters, iti the aristoeratic woman lke Valentine™ who Others are Fiamma in Simon, Yseut in Le Compagnon dh sour de France, Marcelle in Le Muunior d'Anatenit, ‘The maeber of Prncem Cesmmanina (186), EPIC AGE! PART MISTORY OF LITERARY WoMEN 2 loves 2 man of the people, and who attempts 10 work out through her female destiny—in its whole gamut, from virginity to matemity and old ‘age—her own commitment to socal justice, But it was also George Sand who touched the extromes of feminine ni- biism in Lelie (1833), that threnody of sexual despair and bitter skepti ‘ism which made the maladie du sigele a female as well 2s a male disease. ‘Léita vas the only one of her works that Sand substantially revised, and ‘through her long strugale to produce a second Lélia (1839) can be traced the development in her iterary ethos from romantic egotism, to mystical Ihumanitaranism, to radicel activism, “T'm redoing Zélia, did Utell you?” she wrote midway in the process to her friend Marie @Agoult (who wrote ‘porels, history, and criticism of Emerson as “Daniel Stem”), “That book brought me tothe depths of skepticism: now itis polling me ont... . Sick= ‘ess created the book, the book made the slkness worse, and i's the same with the cure. To make this work of anger tecommodate a work of genile ‘acceptance, . ..” And she went on to sketch the artickes of her new doc- ‘ine according to which she was reworking Lelia as a social manifesto: ‘To throw oneself on Nate's breast, taking hor truly as mother and sister scolcally and reliiousty withdraw trom one's life everything that ‘ie slsied vanity: etiborly rcs he provid and the wicked t0 be ome bumble ard small with the unfortunate, weep with the poor ia their misery, ané wish for ro other consolation then the fall of the rich; to believe in-no God other than Him who ordain justice and ‘equality among men; to venerate the good, severely judge the strong, lve on almost nothing. pie almost everything away. in order to 1e- sotublsh primitive oquality and reinatitute the divine order—that is ‘the religion TM proclaim in my litle corner, and that I hope to preach to my twelve apentis ner the inden tree in my garden. ‘As to lve, that wil bea book and a course to itself « Had Sand been English instead of French, we would probably think cof her as a Christian Socialist. Marers of religious faith were the frst and always predominant issues in her intellectual Gevelopment, as was the case with her Vietorian readers, who would have been intrigued to lean of her Iifeleng atretion to Protestantism, Thackeray, however, was outraged by her Spiridion (1839), Sind's fantasy of mystical bumanitasanism, be- ‘cause of het female pretension to pronounce on matters spiritual. Ip Madame Sand and the New Apocalypse” Thackeray compared her t0 those tract-writing Engishwomen (among whom he might have meant ‘Mrs. Tonna) “who step dowa to the people with stately step and voio: of authority and deliver their twopenny tablets..." The pri sifesence, Thackeray added ruefully, was Mine Sand's “wonderful power of language”: “her brief rich melancholy sentences. . .. can't explain toEs LITERARY WOMEN you the charm of them; they stem to me like the sound of country bells — ‘Provoking I doa't know what vein of musing and meditation... ‘As.a writer of the epic age, Sand comes closest ‘o her Anglo-American ‘women contemporaries with Le Compegnon du tour de France (1840), which reflects her friendsbip with Agricol Perdiguer, the worker-poet and radical leader who introduced her to the mysteries of le compagnannase, to which the novel is devoted. This was the ancient system of worker's a5- sociations (somewhere between medieval guilds and modom strst gangs) whereby young French workingmen trained in their skills and crats by taking to the road and traveling far {rom their native villages in order to study, work, and especially fight with their fellows. Like Flora Tristan, Sand regarded le compagnonnage 2s a potential foree for social change ‘and eplored its component of civisive working-class violence. But she hhad no interest in or knowledge of the industial proletariat; and she tended to see her carpenters and masons as folk-artsts rather than trae workers. It was when she turned to the peatantry of Le Berry, with whom her ties were lifelong and quesi-fumiial, that accurete observation came together with social idealism in the fiction Sand devoted to le peuple. Radicalism and regionalism are in any case inseparable in Sand's Uter= sry development. Her romans champétres were written as part of a series ‘he plaaned in the 1840s, in a fairly programmatic fashion, to present an ‘pic of the working class: the carpenters builders, shepherds, moleteers, lumbermen, millers, and farmers of Le Compagnon du tour de France (1840), Le Meunier Ansibault (1845), Le Péché de M. Antoine (184), La Mare au diable (1846), Francois te Champi (1847-48), La Petite Fadene (1848-49), and Les Mates sonncurs (1853). In the 1851 pref- 1ace to the popular edition of the first of these, George Sand provided yet another contest, another connotation for the work “epic” as applied to women’s literature in the mid-nineteenth century. Le Compasnon du tour de France brought her the secusation of fst- tering the people and idealizing the working class. Why not? she asks. Why isn’ the water permitted to idcalize that class as he is al the others? Why not draw the worker's portralt in such a way that all inteligent and good ‘workingrien wi wish to resemble if? Why not show « woman in love with 1a man socially beneath her becuse of his mind and character? No one questions ber attraction to such a man because of his good looks... ‘Sond recalls arpuing with her friend Balzac about their cifereat approach to literature. Your Comédie Humaine, she had told him, could jest as wll bbe called the Human Drama or Tragedy. Yes, he had answered, “et vous, vous fates Fépopée humaine”—you ate writing the Humen Epic, In this case, Sand ssid, the ttle would be too high-flown—"mais fe voudrais aire Péglogue humaine, te potme, le roman hurein.” EPIC AGH: PART HISTORY OF LITERARY WoMEN “But I would ike to write the human eclogue, the human poem, the ‘human novel, You want t, and know how to portray man jast athe is, ‘pefore your eyor so be i! But I feo! called epon to portray him as wish him to becomes, as I think he should te.” And as We werea't in ‘competition, we might well azree on our mutual rivhts. ‘The critical debate between realism and idealism, so important in nine= teenibveentury English Tierature, is 1 think meaningless without some Inowledge of George Sands prestige among English literary intellectuals {all of whom read her) as leading exponent of literery idzaliam, Mrs. Gaskell said much in fayor ofthe workers because she was committed t0 sympathetic attention; a decade Inter, George Eliot created the Noble Workingman in the person of the carpenter hero of her first novel, The diference between Joha Barion and Adam Bode bas many sourcss, but ‘one is surely te relatively greater impact of George Sand on the later nov elit. ‘The effectiveness of Sand’ idealization of the Freoch peasantry can be anuged by Matthew Amos reaction. He discounted Sand's “strong lan- ‘guage about equality” (‘The form of such outbursts... will always be Aistasteful to an Englishman”); but he was convinced by her peasants. “The French peasant is relly, so far as L can see," Arnold wrote in 1875 {in his memorial tribute to George Sand) “the largest and strongest ele- ‘ment of soundaess which the body social of any European nation pos- Sand's method of idealization was essentially indizect: through the style she perfected in the 1840s for her peasant tales. The penetration of her Tagguage with the imagery, the chythes, the old-fashioned locations and Syntax of Derrichon speech gives the effect, at its bes, not of the wear some earnestness of dialect writing, but of 2 plafel, sophisticated musi cality, a balance of affectionate warmth, self-deprecating humor, and lye ‘al fantasy. The effect isto charm. Here the ert of women's ltertare ‘must simply abandon principle and, faced with George Sand, call the style of La Mare au diable and La Pete Fadette plain seductive. These bret tales of love and labor in tho flds the woods, and the lanes, which conter ‘on childhood and sport with peasant superstitions and customs, remain the ‘most delicions of all Sand's works to read inthe orginal, because of style; for the same reason, they remain the most resistant to adequate transla- ‘lasses, She protested (inthe preface to Le Compagnon du tour de France) against the litcrature of bitervess and despais, which by presenting only ‘the miseries of the poor simply aroused fear and disgust (and caused the%6 LITERARY WOOTEN ‘wealthy to pay their governments for cannons and police . . .). The true rision of ar, she said, was to bind men togcther with love, not to divide them with fear and hatred, for solidarity was the source of all human prog- ress. Nevertheless, in their shared commitment to voicing the unheard, Sand and Gaskell appear tp stand together as women writers. They shared that heightened feminine sense of the preciousness of language to those ‘who are self-taught, who only yesterday, in the case of women and le ‘euple botb, bad 10 view. ‘The theme of iliteracy is @ major one in al George Sand’s work, and it is plainly a woman’s theme. Not only in her novels. where she attentively ‘explores the thoughts and feelings of illiterate characters, but even in het autobiographical writings the subject of ilteracy is often in her mind. tn her stunning peroretion to the Histoire de ma vie she calls upon the ‘workers and the peasents, those who have only recently learned to read and write, to record their own lives as she is doing, to enter history as unt recenly the nobility alone could pretend to do. For “oblivion is a stupid monster that has devoured too many generations. ... Escape oblive fon. . . . Write your own history all of you who have understood your life and sounded your heart. To that end alone Lam writing my own. .” ‘The link that binds Adam Bede to Sands peasant fiction runs through Bartle Messoy’s night school where “thrve big men, with the marks of their hard labour about them” are “anxiously tending” over their worn readers. ‘The link that binds Harriet Beecher Stowe's “Iliad of the blacks” to George Sand’s “épopée humaine” is made by Sand herself on the fist pape of her review of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Writing in 1852, or only months atter the novel was published in America, Sand was already struck by the immense French public thst was reading Stowe's novel in translation; she ‘was moved to regret that there were many condemned by illiteracy never to read La Case de oncle Tom al all. They too ate slaves, Sand writes, slaves of ignorance. Lt the voice of womea thank Madame Stowe, George Sond went on; let the voice of all the oppressed traverse the seas 10 express esteem and affection for this tnknown woman writer far away. Inthe pride, the excite- ment, and the gratitude with which Send greeted Uncle Tom's Cabin there is 2 characteristic expression of the “Solidarity” among literary women ‘hich is a feature of the epic age. But her last word is pure George Sand. “All honor and respect to you, Madame Stowe,” she conchided. “Some day or other your reward, which i already inscribed in the archives of ‘heaven, will also be of this world.” Uncle Tom's Cabin achieved the greatest sales and the greatest social influence of any novel of the epic age; but it set a standard for women EPIC AGE: PART HISTORY OF LITERARY WOMEN 7 ‘writers because it had the greatest subject: slavery. There is wistfalness as ‘well as admiration in Charlote Bron’ apology to her publisher for the ‘modest purview of the novel on which she was working when Uncle Tom's Cabin appeared. Villetie, she coniessed, contained “no matter of public ine ‘terest... , F voluntarily and sinecrely veil my face before such @ mighty subject a5 that handled in Mrs. Beecher Stowe's work. . Tt is today easier than it was in the 1850s to make high claims for Uncle Tom's Cabin as a work of literature, because we reed Dickens bet- ter than his contemporaries cid, because we can see in Bleak House as in Siowe's novel (they were published almost simultaneously) an organizing Principle which makes tense out of a vast social panorama, and patterns “undertying the apparent slapdash hazards of serial publication, The Missis- sinpi River slashes through the center of Uncle Tom's Cabin: across its frozen northem tritutary, the Ohio, Eliza crosies with her baby; its southern tributary, the Red River, borders the plantation where Simon Legres rules and Tom cies. Downriver is the descent to slavery, death, and bell; upciver, the fight to life and feeedom, whete George Harris sces ‘the blue waters of Lake Erie rippling and sparkling in the tresh breeze off ‘Canada’s shore. Stowe uses the swelling waters of the Mississippi as van- tage points—for Uncle Tom's Cabin is a novel of coatinental destiny as ‘well a5 of slavery, Her gaze travels back to New England and forward to all the broad land between the Mississippi and the Pacific” which may become “one great market for bodies and souls.” Tn its dizzying s60- ‘raphical perspectives, Uncle Tom's Cabin is an epic work in another sense; alas for its misbegotten tit, litle of imporiance to the novel hap- pens inside Uncle Tom's cabin. But it must also be sai that Mrs, Siowe’s novel is proudly and openly ‘a womaa’s work; George Sand was right to take particular delight in its rich variety of women characters and its children. For it was women, specifically the “mothers of America.” on whom Mrs. Stowe squarely ‘paced responsibility for the perpetuation or abolition of slavery. Surely ‘no other woman writer has ever recorded the rate and cluter of domes tic life, the dressing. gardening, and cooking, the household budzeis, the slovenliness or precision of houckoopers, the disciplining of children and ‘managing of husbands, the granting or withholding of sexual favors with such evident confidence that upon these female matters rested the central ‘moral issue before the nati: slavery. For example, Mn. Stove’s ideal of womanhood Is presented by her ‘Quaker mother Rachel Halliday, not only for her religion (eariest and firmest ofall American faiths in opposition to slevery) but for her accord ‘ant domestic poiity. Rachel's household offers ordered serenity, hospita- ble abundance, snd an enviable techique—essential in a society withoat38 LITERARY WomEN either hired or enslaved domestics —for eliciting, without scolding, the vol untary services of the young: busy girls and boys... . who all moved obediently 1o Rachels “Tiyee had better,” or more gentle “Hadn't thee better?” in the work of setting breakfast; for'a breabfasi in the hanuriour valleys of Todiana 45 a thing complicated and multform, and, like picking up the Tose: leaves and trimming the bushes in Paradise, aching other hands than ‘those of the origioal motber, The gitl-children of Uncle Tom's Cabin are more eclebrated: litle Eva, white and golden hired, bearer of the good news of the gospel of love, whom we excuse as a period pieve because she serves to set off ‘Black Topsy, Mrs. Stowe's most brilliantly original creation. In the famous scene of Topsy’s catechism (“I spect 1 grow'd. Don't think nobody never ‘made me.") there is the Christian mother’s passionate attack on an instite- tion that gives children life without the knowledge that gives Life, of the God that made them; leas for this scene seem to have come to Mrs. ‘Stowe from the opening of the great Frederick Douglass memoir. But there {is more to Topsy than tragedy; there is the comedy of the indomitable free spirit of the mischievous, deceitful, troublesome, eternal American child. For Topsy as “limb of Satan” Mrs. Stowe needed to draw only on ‘childhood memories. As family leiters show, litle Hactiet Beecher was the ‘model for Topsy, as well as for litle Eva, Mis. Stowe seems to owe so much as a novelist to the early Dickens ‘hat itis interesting to aot, without making to much oft, that she writes fn her 1844 introduction to Mrs. Tonna that “this lady's delineations of factory fe" were more useful mocels than “the fearfully graphic delineo- tions of Dickens. . . . Our present queation is not which evince the most talent, but which are the best adapted to practical purposes’—by which she meant the purposes of the “auihoress.” “The authoress i,” as she wrote of Mrs, Tonns, “s woman of strong mind, powerful feling, and of no inconsiderable shire of tact in influencing the popular mind”; and the snapehot definition docs nicely for Harriet Beecher Stowe as well “That she stood squarely in the centr of a line of laces committed not to “mere secular literature” (as she said of Mrs ‘Tonna) but to “the simple effort to do poed’ was atthe least a source of ennfidence, if not of the overweening nd finally jastiieé ambition to write that novel sbout slavery which no man would write. And Mrs. Siowe herself set similarly large ambitions for women writers after her. “AS to the Jewish element in ‘Devonda,™ wrote George Elio ia a famous letter about her last novel EPIC AGR: PART HISTORY oF LITERARY WOMRN 30 so T therefore felt urged to teat Jews with sock sympathy and ‘understanding as my nature and knowledge could attain to, Moreover, ‘ot ealy towards the Jews, but towaeds all Oriental peoples with whors ‘we English come in contact, a sprit of arrogance and contemptwoxs ictalerisiress is observable which has become a national disgrace to 1s. Thete is athing I should care more to do, i i were possile, then {0 rouse the imagination of men and women to a vision of buman aims in thore races of their fllow-mon who most differ from ther ia ‘customs and beliefs. “This remarkable statement is well-known because it has often been reprinted as a prefatory statcment to Daniel Deronda, the novel George ‘Eliot daringly devoted to Zionism at the end of her life. Les well-known is the fact that she wrote it in a Ieticr addressed to Harriet Beecher Stowe, ‘whom she honored as hee predecessor in that great feminine enterprise of rousing the imagination “to a vision of human ciaims” in races, sects, and classes different from the established norm. ‘The letter in fact echoes the ‘ideas, even some of the words of Stowe's preface to Uncle Tom's Cabin. George Eliot was Mrs. Stowe's most important dissiple among. later ‘women writers of the epic age. If there really was such an age in women’s literature, it deserved an ‘epic in the classic sease of the term: a Jong narrative in verse of heroic ‘deeds, This idea clearly oscurred to Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “The css sy that eles have dot out With Agamemnon and the goxt-nursed gods: Tl ot beeve it 3 every ans, “roi in proportions, double faced, ‘Looks backward and before, expect & mora And caine an epos ‘Ay, but every age Appears to souls who fie ia (ask Care) ‘Mest wnbercis. Ou, for iastano5 ost “Th thinkers scout ft, and the poets abound Who scorn to touch it with Brae tip: A pewter age, —mined metal sver-washed; ‘Av age of sum, spooned of he scher past ‘An age of patches for ofl gabon, ‘An age of mere transiion. « «« at pons should Exc double vison; should have eyes “To see near things as comprehensively Avil ofr thy tok thes point of sight, ‘And distant things as intimately deep ‘Asi! they touched them. Let sts for thi,0 LITERARY WOMEN So she wrote Aurora Leigh (1856), from the fith book of which this ‘epic eredo comes. The causes to which Mrs. Browning devoted some of heer best and some of her worst poetsy-—in the 1840s, chilé labor, prosita- ‘tion, and abolition; in the 1850s, Taian unifeation—prove her a writer of the epie age. When she met Hartiet Beecher Stowe in Florence, and their ‘correspondence began, they went naturally back and forth in their letters ‘between such female subjects as abolitionist agitation in the Union and ma- tionalist agitation in Italy. “Is it possible that you think « woman has no ‘business with questions like the question of slavery?” wrote Mrs, Browning to a shocked reader of Uncle Tom's Cabin. “Then she had better use 2 ‘pen no more. She had better subside into slavery and concubinage herself, T think, as in the times of old, shut herself up with the Penelopes in the ‘vomen's apartment, and take no rank among thinkers and speakers.” ‘There are sovial causes a-plenty in Aurora Leigh, some of the best lines of which are devoted to factories and slums, but the poem is essen- tially an epic in another sense: it is the epic ofthe literary woman herself, “The heroine's life, which she tells in her own voice—her rebellion against convention and family pressure, her independent career in London, her solitary journey to Italy, her rejection of marriage on the usual cms, and Principally her determined, self-critical hugging away at the work a writer ‘docs—is the heroie matter of the poem. A iitde, but not much self-portraiture entered into the creation of ‘Mrs. Browning's heroine; that is why Aurora Leigh isa post, not a novel- ist But a principal pleasure the work oflers toy I ts Kaleidoscopic view cof nineteenth-century fiction, mainly by women; Mrs. Browning had read it all (Om her tombstone, she once said, should be writen; "Cs the ‘greatest novel reader in the world) There are reminders of de Stal Bronté, Sand, Gaskell, and many more. For example, the heroine’ birth ‘and childhood are returns to Mme de Statt's Corinne. The martiage pro- ‘posal and the blinding of Romney Leigh in the poem ere returns to Jone Eyre, though St. John Rivers, Charioite Bronte’s key missionary, is more {important than her Rochester in providing Mrs. Browning with ideas for the man a literary woman must not marty when he isin his erogant prime, but may marry when he is suitably prepared to accept her guidance in the reformation ofthe world. ‘Why Aurora Leish is not more read by feminists—for it is te feminist poem—puzzled wniters lke Alice Meynell and Virgiaia Woolf, The reason ray be the tte of the work. For if rears require an excuse fornot plung ing into 4 narrative poem in nine books and more than ten thousand lines ff blank verse, they have the vaguely, eddy persistent impression that Aurora Leigh i a silly sentimental poem; and this may well be because of its confusion with “Annabel Lee,” the very short, popula ballad by Edgar EPIC AGE: PART HISTORY OF LITERARY WOMEN a Alllan Poe. People must think they know something about Aurora Leigh because, according io Poe, +t maidca there lived whom you may know ‘By the name of Annabel Leej— And this maiden she lived with no other thought ‘Than to love and be loved by me. “That is just the Kind of sentimental heroine that male posts love to create, and to dispatch, a few quick stanzas later, to “her tomb by the side of the ‘sea." But Aurora Leigh is everything that Annabel Lee is not, inching tough-minded, independent, witty, and long-winded; and if there is a von- fusion between the two herbines, history has played an unfair joke on Mss i her best ertics and most sucezsifal imi- {ators (as “The Raven,” in particala, reveals). Arora Leigh, however, may always be a heroine of limited appeal: the Ikterary woman's heroine, as Mrs. Browning may always be the literary ‘woman's writer. One cannot expect every woman to say with Virginia Wool! that “Elizabeth Barrett was inspired by a fash of true genius ‘when she rushed into the drawing-room and said that here, where we live ‘and work, i the tree place for the poct." Nor ean one expect every woman to relish Mrs. Browning's summons to the writers of the epic age: Never finch, But stil, uaserupulouly epic, catch {Upon thc burning lava of a song ‘The fulveinec, heaving, double-breasted Ave, Sneh an unscrupulous mishmash of images: such brazen, female taste- ‘esenese—for those double bressts are flesh, nct buttons —appealed mainly ‘to eccentric lady writers, like Emily Dickiason, Bat that is another story.B83 WOMEN’S LITERARY TRADITIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL TALENT ‘We dvell with satisfaction upon the poet's diference from her predecesors, expecially her immediate predecessors: we ene denver to find something that can be isolated in order to be ‘enjoyed. Whereas if we approach 2 post without this prejudice ‘ve shall often find that not only the best, but the most in- dividsal pars of her work may be those in which the dead posts, her ancestor, assert theic immortality most vigorously. TS. Bit I To be a woman writer long meant, may sill mean, belonging to a literary ‘movement apart from but hardly subordinate to the mainsiream: an une sdercurrent, rapid and powerful. The word “movement” gives an inaccurate ‘dea of an association eften remote and indirect. To use the word George Sand imposed, and speak cf a “solidarity® of women, would also be mis- leading, for writing woren have never felt much of a sentimental loyalty to their own kind—quite the contrary. The Rarshest criticism of trashy ‘books by lady veriters came from women writers themselves; sometimes, a in the ease of Elizabeth Righy’s famous review of Zane Eyre, they do- ‘nounced books that were not trashy at all. George Eli’ “Sily Novels by Lady Novelists” of 1856 is the classic of the genre, 0s well as one of the funniest pieces of serious criticism ever written; but long before, in 1789, there was Mary Wollstonecraft’ switt dispatch of ane of the worst speci- zmens of female pap that she encountered as a reviewsr with the ling, “Pray ‘Miss, write no more!” ‘Not loyalty but confidence was the resource that women writers drew from the possession of theic own tration, And it was a confidence that WOMEN'S LITERARY TRADITIONS, THE INDIVIDUAL TALENT a ‘until very recently could cone from no other source. Male writers have always bece able to study their crit in university or coffechouse, group themselves into movements or coteries, search out predecessors for guid fance oF patronage, collaborate or fight with their contemporaries. But womes through most of the nineteenth century were barred from the inolated in their own homes, chaperoned in travel, painfully restricted in friendship. ‘The personal give-and-take of the literary life was closed to ther, Without it they stoded with a special closenes the works ‘written by their own sex, and dovelopod a sonse of easy, almost rude f2- miliary with the women who wrote them ‘When fame at last propelled Charlotte Bronté to London and gave her the opportunity to meet her greatest male contemporaries, she exhibited an awkwardness and timidity in iterary society that have become legendary— cacept in one encounter, that with Hlartiet Martineau, to whom sbe sent a ‘brusguely confidcot note soliciting a mecting. “I could not help feeling a “strong wish to see you,” she wrote; “. .. It would grieve me to lose this ‘hance of seeing one whose works have so often made her the subject of imy thoughts.” And George Eliot could write in her first letter to Harriet Beecher Stowe, though thoy hed rot and would not ever meet, that she Knew ber as 2 woman as well as a writer, for she hod years before taken te liberyy, rude but comprehensible, of reading Mis. Stowe's tntimate cor ‘espondence with another woman, Later Stowe and George Eliot would ‘correspond about the souree of Casaubon in Middlemarch; their leters provide tragicomedy of matual misundsrstanding about exch other's married life, but thoy also reveal that there is © human component to liter ture which a woman writer ean more easily dizeus with another woman waiter, even across an ocean, than she can withthe literary man nex: door. Emily Dickinson's literary solitude was breached by the incorporeal ‘presence of women writers she knew exclusively but intimately from read~ ‘ng thei works and everything she could find about their lives. Jack Capps calls it an “intimate Kinship,” and the phrase is excellem, Decause it suggests a family relationship which ean be either hotile or loving, 2om- petitive oF supportive, but is always available. Through the closed doors 4nd narrow windows that so often shut on the literary woman's life seeped ‘2 whole family of literary relationships for her to exploit: patierns © be followed, deficiencies to be made up, abuses to correct, achievements in ‘works by other women to surpass. What was supplied for the nourishment of male Tierary production by simple acquaintance was replaced for ‘women writers by the reading of each other's work, roading for intimate reverberation, for what Gertrude Stein called “a sounding board.” Teke Jane Austen on the one hand, and her contemporaries Words- worth, Coleridge, and Southey on the other. Wordsworth weat to Bristol to ‘meet Coleridge; both were Cambridge men, and they had universitya LITERARY WOMEN, friends in common, At Bristol, Woresworth found Coleridge rooming with fan Oxford undergraduate named Southey: they were planning to emigrate to America. Instead, Wordsworth and Coleridge drew clase. together, settled near each other in the Lake District, and collaborated on a vol- lume which made history, called Lyrical Ballads, Meanwhile Jane Austen, almost exactly the same age and from a similar social miliea (kad she beca a man, she would probably have gone to university), stayed home with her mother at Steventon, Bath, and Chawton. She visited a brother's family now and then, wrote letters to sister and icces, and read Sarah Harriet Bumey, Mrs. Jane West, Anna Maria Porter, Mrs. Anne Grant, lisabech Hamilton, Laetitia Matilda Hawkins, Helen Maria Williams, and the rest of the women writers of er day. “I think T may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity.” she once seid, “te most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress." Scholars have industiously seraped together evidence. that softens if it does not esseatially alter this self-portrait, for Austen of course knew something ofthe major English writers from Shakespeare 10 Johnson end read the best postry of her day. But scholarship has averted its refined and weary eyes from the female fction that Austen’s letters in- form us was her deily sustenance in the years that she became one of the greatest writers in the language. Who wants to associate the great Jane ‘Austen, companion of Shakespeare, with someone nsmed Mary Brunton? ‘Who wants to read or indeed can find a copy of Self-Controt (1810) by that lady, which Austen was nervous about reading while revising Sense ‘and Sensiitey tor publicetion and starting Mansfield Park, nervous be- cause she was “always half afraid of finding a clever novel too clever— and of finding my own story and my own people all forestall.” She did, however, read and reread the Brunton book, and said (jokingly), “I will redeem my credit... . by writing a close imitation of ‘Seit-Control . . «1 will improve upon it™ can be aryued that Jane Austen achieved the classien perfection of her fiction because there was a mass of women's now, etcellet, fair, and wretched, for her to study and improve upon. Mary Brunion and the rest ofthe ladies were her own kind: she was at ease with them. They were thor undergraduate fellows in the novel, her Hiterary roommates and incor- ‘poreal collaborators, as someone lite Walter Scott could never be. Aus- {en's comment on Seott, when she learned he had turned to the then ‘woman-dominsted field of fiction, was wickedly female but also halt- serious, “Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ‘ones. —It isnot fair. He has Fame and Prof: enovgi as a Poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. —I do not like him, & do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it—but fear 1 must" The fact is that Austen studied Maria Edgeworth more attentively than Scott, and Fanny Burney more than Richardson; and she came closer WOMEN’S LITFRARY TRADITIONS, THE INDIVIDUAL. TALENT 45 ‘o:mocting Mme do Stal than she did to meeting any ofthe Hterary men of er The ise of sms worn writers Aten preeminent amore the, ‘women’s literature has been their major tradition; in the ease of others— and I think quality has nothirg to do with the diference—it has mattered Iharaly at all; here Emily Bronté’s mame comes to mind. Inthe case of mest ‘women writers, women’s tracitions have been fringe benefits superadded ‘upon the litersry astociations of period, nation, end class that they shared ‘th their male contemporaries. Tn spite of the advent of coeducation, which by rights should have ‘ended this phenomenon, twenticth-eentury women appear to benefit sill from their membership in the wideapreading family of women writers ‘Willa Cather, exceptionally wel rained to literature inthe educational and journalistic institutions of a man's world, found her literary mentor in ‘Sacah Orne Jewet; i that relationship sex easily canceled out the distance between Nebraska’ and Msine. Even wider incongruiies appear in the ‘prodoctive pairings of Jean Rhys and Chariorte Bronté, Carson McCullers and Isak Dinesen, Nathalie Sarrawre and Ivy Compton-Bumett. And the last provided, in her frst novel, Dolores, the oddest exitit that women's IMereture has 10 offer: 2 groping retrieval of what could be made modern fn Ansten and Gaskell, necetsary to Compton-Burnett's development of ‘ter own apparently idiosyncratic tonal manner, ‘Tho case history ofthe birth of the novelist named George Eliot is par- ticalary interesting, because there was a specialist in attendance, George ‘Henry Leves. Lewes believed in womes’s literature, and he had a' method, ‘thoroughly jastiied by results we know, for its perpetuation. “The appear- ance of Woman ia the field of literature i a significant fac,” he wrote *... The advent of femsle literature promises woman's view of life ‘woman's experience: in other words, a new element.” So Lewes wrote fn 1852, before there was an author named George Eliot, end by that time the had already playsd an important role as critic, advisor, and friend, in ‘encouraging the development of Chaslotte Broaté, Geraldine Jensbury, Harriet Martineau, Eliza Lymn Linton, and several other women writers. Hie was the principal interpreter of Georg: Sand in England, and bis ‘knowledge of her work was estounding, especially to Mme Sand, for she id not take herself s0 seriously as Loves did, “Distinguished” and “ik- ble" were the words Sand applied to Lewes, “and more French than English in character. He knows my works by bear, and knows the Lettres €un voyageur much beter than I do.” ‘The best way to discover what is both distinguished and likable in George Henry Lewes is to read the theater criticism he wrote in the mid ‘century over the pen name of “Vivian; the next best way (as these col-46 LITERARY WOMEN ‘ums are hard to find) is to approach him by reference to “Corno Di Bas- seito,” the persona George Bernard Shaw adopted tor his own brilliant ‘music criticism in 1888. “These articles of Lewes's are miles beyond the ‘eruities of Di Basseto,” Shaw wrote, though the combination of @ laborious eric with @ recklessly flippant manner is the same in both. Lewes, by the way, like Bamctto, was a musical eric. He was an adventurous pervea as cites #0: for he not only Wrote philosophical treatises and feuiletens, bbut went oa the sage... He also wrete plays of the kind which, os cite, he particulary disliked. And he vas siven to singin2—noth- ing will ever persuade me that a certain passage in The Impressions ft Theophrastus Such shout an amaiear vocalist who would persist in wrecking himself on O Ruddict than the Cherry docs not rfer 19 ‘Lowes. Finally he was rash enough (0 contract 2 motgunatic union with the most famous woman writer of the day, a oveit, thereby ‘allowing his miserable afections to triumph over bis critical instincts ‘sands, having devoted some years to remenstrating with pecple ‘who persisted in addressing the famous novelist by her aiden name instad of as “Mr. Lewen” be pevsbod alter proving conclusively in his own perion that “womanly self-sacrifice” is an essentially maniy wwoskness, ‘Shaw's account of the Lewes/George Eliot relationship is so true to its spirit that one regrets having to point out where itis false to fact, but when this most important of all iereguiar unioes began, the woman in the ease was not a famous writer, was not even a novelist. ‘Before she met Lewes, before she took the pen name of George Eliot, the woman whose real mame was Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans had lived ‘over thiny years of a wider and more intellectual life than any English ‘woman before her, but, except for schoolgirl exercise, she had never written a Tine of fiction, never seriously considered becoming a novelist. “September 1836 made a new era in miy life,” she recorded, “for it was then T began to write Fiction." ‘The “new era” actually dawned during the winter of 1854-55, when she read aloud to Lewes in Berlin—they had gone off together to Germany — few pages sho had written “deseribing a Staffordshire village and the life of the neighboring farmhouses.” Staffordshire was her father’s home ‘county, where from the age of six Mary Aun Evans had been taken often to vist his relatives; her early perceptions of the differences between the Evantes of Stafordshire and her mother’s people, the Pearsons of War- weekshire, would eventually inspire the chapters about “the life of the neighbouring farmhouses" that are the best things in her early novel ‘These reminiscent pages gave Lewes for the frst time the idea that she might become a novelist, and with his encouragement she began t0 think of a subject, a tite, for he fst tae, "WOMEN'S LITERARY TRADITIONS, THE INDIVIDUAL TALENT, 47 But there were two article assignments to be vrittn first for the Wesi- ‘minsier Review, and they required: Marian Evans to ponder the highest lowest reaches of female ambition in the field of fiction. In “Silly ‘by Lady Novelists," which appesred in October 1856, she the Kind of fiction that a highly intelligent woman wouid not novelist to write: novels pompous, pedantic, snobbish, sent pious. Her sharpest scorn was reserved for the Evangelical ‘her own religious experience as a young woman had taught her Evangelicalism made its greatest appeal to people of simple and al situation, not to the improbebly elegant societies that Evangel ‘novelists liked co invent, “Why can we not have,” sbe asked, in a apse from mockery to seriousness, “pictures of religious life the industrial ciasses in England, as interesting as Mrs. Stove's pic- ‘religious life among the negrocs?” In embryo, the subject of Bede was here suggested: George Eliot's first novel would provide original and serious pictures of religious life among the working classes, ‘ot of indusirial, but of rural England. ‘The model she had in mind was Dred, Harriet Beecher Stowe's second ‘slavery novel, which Marian Evans reviewed in the Belles Leties vection lf the same October 1856 issue of the Westminster Review. She found Dred a work of “uncontrollable power . . inspired by a rare genins,” not $0 much for is antslavery sentiments (even stronger than in Uncle Tom's Cabin) as for its religious matter: the exhiotion of a people 10 whom what we may call Hebraic Christianity is ail a realty, still an animating belial, and by ‘whom ‘he theocratic conceptions of the Olé Testament are literally applied to their dally Kite. ‘She remarked upon the “wild enthusiasm” of Dred, the rebel slave leader, ‘and such fine scones in Mrs. Stowe's novel as the outdoor camp meeting of na aT ‘odism of Chapter 1 of Adam Rede, But something was to intervene to fuse ‘George Eliot's childhood reminiscences (those pages on “the like of the neighbouring farmhouses") with her ambition to record the religions ia pulses of simple country people—and that was her reading of Jane Aus- tea, Studying Austen's fiction was George Henry Lewes's program to turn Marian Evans into a great woman novelist—for “of all departments of lit- erature,” he believed, “Fiction is the one to which, by nature and experi- ‘ence, women are best adapted”; and of all novelists Jane Austen was “ihe _greatsst artist that has ever writen, using the tecm to signify the most per- fect mastery over the means to her end.” That Marian Evans was an accomplished waiter of remarkable atiain- ‘ments Lewes know vell. When he met her in 1854 she was the anonymous