Often when romantic poetry is discussed women poets and their works either overlooked oh

dismissed catering to less intellectual audience. Nevertheless the women poets of this age did not
use pseudonyms or publish anonymously in order to be taken seriously. In fact through the very act
of choosing with genre of poetry, they were attempting to elevate their intellectual merit as well as
social respectability.

But at the same time, many female voices were criticized heavily for leaving behind the qualities
which were ‘lady-like’ and feminine. This criticism was further aggravated by the fact that many of
them where women of ‘loose morals’, like Mary Robinson. Nevertheless, we can identify elements of
proto-feminism and on occasion even anti-feminism in their works which in fact do not break the
conventional notions of feminine experiences of longing or melancholy but rather glorify and exult
them. Unlike their male counterparts’, many of their works praise or long for a domestic life and its
comforts as opposed to the traditional Romantic poet’s craving to escape from the mundane real
world to a subliminal realm.

Moreover, these poets created male characters and attributed emotions of longing, melancholy
and sentimentality in a manner which would be conventionally deemed ‘feminine’. These male
protagonists often display tender emotions in a fashion that befits the School of Sensibility which
attempts to remove the invidiousness and inferiority which are often perceived negatively because of
their traditional and stereotypical association with women and femininity.

This research paper attempts to analyse, compare and contrast the works of three Women
Romantics from a novel perspective . It focuses on the expression and celebration of femininity
through the portrayal of domestic life, melancholy and longing in the works of Anna Barbauld,
Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson who were quite ironically called as “unsex’d females” for
“despising NATURE’S law” (Polwhele, lines 11-14).