The Development Of The Sappho-Corinne Myth In Victorian Women’s Poetry
Sappho, “the tenth muse” of antiquity, gives western culture one of its first lyric voices. The greatness of her work has significantly influenced women’s literature: particularly with the rediscovery of her songs during the 19th century, a time when western female literary voices were struggling to be recognized. Although modern scholars have only fragments of her works, Victorian women idealized and mythologized Sappho’s corpus as a vessel to develop their own unique literary voices. Victorian women’s poetry brims with Sapphic imagery which most often includes the lyre and a watery grave as images of Sappho’s life as a lyric poetess and death by suicide in the Aegean Sea. The work that has had the most influence in propagating the Sapphic myth is Germaine de Staël’s Corinne, or Italy. Corinne struggles to balance a yearning desire for literary fame with her desire for a husband’s love, which would require her to live life as a traditional housewife. Madame de Staël leaves Corinne’s dilemma unresolved and her protagonist, like Sappho, dies unsatisfied in both her love and her career. Published in 1807, Madame de Staël's work was widely read, serving “as both inspiration and warning” to “girls o
In “Last Song of Sappho”, Hemans’ heroic, yet doomed, Sappho is a literary descendant of de Staël’s Corinne. In the poem, the speaker’s voice is that of Sappho, yet Hemans’ voice rings through as a reverberating echo of feminine Victorian attitude and thought. The admission that the speaker’s “weary soul hath sought in vain one echoing sigh [of recognition]” shows the desire for recognition common among female Victorian authors. Rossetti’s Sapphic heroine has such a voice, as evidenced by her poem “Sappho”. The speaker’s several sighs belabor the fact that she has known nothing but melancholy emotion during her lifetime. That her death was an escape becomes evident when she pronounces “Oh! It were better far to die, than thus forever mourn and sigh.” In death she has found an escape from her sorrow of being unloved and unwanted. This is Rossetti’s Sappho: a bitter woman who was unloved in life and points an accusing finger from the afterlife. Immediately she retracts her statement and pronounces that her life would have been devoid of love “had every chord of [the lute] been mute.” She understands that her songs are not to blame for her heartache, but she feels extreme conflict between her lonely sadness and her musical ability and seeks to lay blame anywhere she can. She points to fate as the reason, suggesting “It was my evil star above, not my sweet lute that wrought me wrong.” Then, in a moment of realization, the speaker sees that her lover’s attitudes toward her ambition are the source of her angst. She admits “if song be past, and hope undone, and pulse, and head, and heart are flame; it is thy work, thou faithless one!” Her songs and art define her; yet are worthless to bring her happiness because society expects her to be a servile housewife.
Some topics in this essay:
Rossetti’s Sappho,
Song” Improvisatrice,
Christina Rossetti,
Gage Graham,
Life Sonnet”,
Italy Corinne,
Sappho Hemans’,
Roman Catholicism,
Sappho Sappho,
Eve Sappho,
sapphic myth,
victorian poetry,
sappho-corinne myth,
victorian woman,
de staël’s corinne,
women writers,
corinne-sappho heroine,
sapphic heroine,
sappho figure,
de staël’s,
victorian female,
browning’s “aurora leigh”,
victorian female authors,
victorian women’s poetry,
peace dark sea”,
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Approximate Word count = 3904
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page double spaced)
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