Dicuss Self-Representation in 18th Century Womens Poetry

In this essay I will be looking at how women represented themselves in 18th Century British poetry. I will be focusing on the poetry of three 18th Century women writers Lady Mary Chudleigh (1656-1710), Anne Finch (1661-1720) and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762).

Poetry accounts for a large proportion of women's writing during the 18th Century and offered a rare outlet for self-expression and an opportunity to examine 'complex and troubling matters' (Turner 18). The themes that run through women's poetry in this period concern marriage, in which women consider their role as a wife and question the fulfilment it brings; women's unequal rights to an education; depression - a source of much frustration at a time when Reason ruled and anything unfathomable or illogical was swept aside; and the notion of beauty as an important tool of power for a woman.

Social pressures affected women's writing since 'wit belonged to the masculine province' (Turner 18) as Anne Finch observed in The Introduction (1689):

'Alas! A woman that attempts the pen,

Such an intruder on the rights of men' (Lines 9-10).

As a result of this, women suffered from a fear of 'violating femi

This is a contrast to Lady Mary Wortlet Montagu's attitude to a woman's beauty. In her poem Town Eclogues: Saturday: The Small Pox: Flavia (1715), Montagu notes how the loss of a woman's beauty is also the loss of a woman's power. It concerns the scarring and disfigurement that she endured after suffering from Smallpox. Formerly, Montagu was 'widely celebrated as a beauty and a wit' (Shattock 300). She refers to her now faded beauty as an 'Empire lost' (Line 59) and mourns this loss hopelessly:

Looking firstly at the theme of marriage, both Lady Mary Chudleigh and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu have used poetry to express anger at the institution of marriage. Writing at a time when a man had absolute unquestioned authority over the most important features in life - education, career, marriage and property; the wife's role was expected to be that of a loyal, and preferably silent, supporter. Relations between husband and wife were expressed in terms of duty and obedience and not consultation and consent. "The will of the wife is subject to the will of the husband" stated Lord Chief Baron Hall in 1663, as were the wife's land and goods (Ezell Patriarch 2). Women depended on their husbands as sources of financial support and identity and so it was difficult for them to publish without their husband's permission. Therefore, the earliest women poets tended to be from aristocratic backgrounds and thus financially independent.

'Debarred from Knowledge, banished from the schools

Secondly, also in the Preface to The Ladies Defence, Chudleigh reasons that before they married, such women may have had 'no cares to disturb their Thoughts, no Unkindnesses to resent' (Lines 85-6) but, after marriage, 'the case may be altered; they may meet with a thousand Discouragements' (Lines 87-8). Chudleigh recommends that if men treated their wives better, with 'Kindness and Sincerity' (Line 52), men would 'meet with a grateful return, and have much less reason to complain' (Lines 54-5).

Some topics in this essay:
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