Fame, Embodiment and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Women's Poetry

Avery, S. 2024. Fame, Embodiment and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Women's Poetry. Women's Writing. Advanced online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/09699082.2024.2418198

TitleFame, Embodiment and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Women's Poetry
TypeJournal article
AuthorsAvery, S.
Abstract

This article examines the ways in which three women poets of the long nineteenth-century – Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), Emily Brontë (1818-1848) and Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) – represent fame in their work in terms of a tense sexualised dynamic of attraction and repulsion, variously modelled as femme-fatale-like seduction, repressed lust, and the activity in, and consequences of, what Mew terms the “tossed bed” (“Fame”, l. 19). The focusing of fame through the ideas of sexuality and embodiment enables these writers to reflect, explicitly or implicitly, upon the gendered nature of literary creation, public voice and visibility, and thereby to negotiate, at least in part, the complex legacies of the “poetess”. In deploying innovative experiments with structure, form and language, Barrett Browning, Brontë and Mew repeatedly reveal fame’s double-edged nature, as something which may be alluring and enthralling in terms of desire, yet simultaneously silencing and threatening to the intellectual and creative life of the poet. The poems examined here consequently demonstrate that succumbing to fame is something which must be resisted at all costs in order to maintain personal and poetic integrity.

JournalWomen's Writing
ISSN0969-9082
1747-5848
Year2024
PublisherTaylor & Francis
Publisher's version
License
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
File Access Level
Open (open metadata and files)
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1080/09699082.2024.2418198
Web address (URL)https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09699082.2024.2418198
Publication dates
Published online28 Oct 2024

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