Book of Awesome Women Writers. Becca Anderson
seminal text in nineteenth-century feminist studies and a window into the world of invalidism. Nearly forgotten until the mid-1980s, Alice James has recently come to the attention of critics: a volume of her letters and an in-depth biography recognize her as a “silenced” voice of her era and tell a tragic tale of a woman trapped in a time in which the role of wife was the only real choice for women. Her long period of decay and isolation led her to view her eventual death from breast cancer as a respite from a torturous existence that offered no option to exercise her talent or will.
A written monologue by that most interesting being, myself, may have its yet to be discovered consolations. I shall at least have it all my own way, and it may bring relief as an outlet to that geyser of emotions, sensations, speculations, and reflections which ferments perpetually….
From The Diary of Alice James
AMY LOWELL “maker of fine poems”
Sometimes, a strong woman following her own distinct destiny becomes better known for her strength of personality and the celebrity surrounding it than for her actual accomplishments. Amy Lowell is just such a person.
Born in 1874 at the tail end of the Gilded Age, she came from a family of accomplished intellectuals and writers; she was cousin to the legendary New England poets James Russell Lowell and Robert Lowell and nearly every other male running MIT or Harvard. As a girl, she agonized over her weight, and despite desperate and severe diets, she couldn’t surmount that personal issue. Her fears about her ability to fit in led to “nervous prostrations,” but her love of the written word kept her going. “I am ugly, fat, conspicuous & dull,” she wrote in her diary at the age of fifteen. “I should like best of anything to be literary.”
Though she was in her own right a skilled critic and a fine poet, her recognition came in large part for her eccentricities—in particular, wearing tailored men’s suits, smoking cigars, and keeping a pack of dogs. Her original approach to both her appearance and her personal habits certainly extended to her writing, and after her first traditionally lyric book of poetry in 1912, A Dome of Many-Colored Glass, she began working in the pioneering modernist and imagist style brought to international attention by Ezra Pound, H. D., and T. S. Eliot.
Indeed, Amy Lowell cited H. D. as a major influence on her open verse and cadence, what she referred to as “polymorphic prose.” She also had a fascination with Asian art, poetry, and aesthetics, and in 1921 published Fir-Flower Tablets, a group of original poems combined with avant-garde translations of Chinese poetry in collaboration with Florence Ayscough. A powerfully insightful literary critic, she also lectured, compiled anthologies of poetry by H. D. and others, and completed an immense biography of the great English poet John Keats.
Part of her legacy as a writer includes a group of love poems called The Letter and Madonna of the Evening Flowers, inspired by her lover and companion Ada Dwyer Russell. After her parents’ deaths, Amy invited Ada to live with her in their baronial mansion in a manner that caused several to compare them to the Paris-bound duo Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.
Indeed, they had the same relational dynamic, with former actress Russell playing Toklas’s role as cook, nurse, and companion. Ada was no mere muse, however; the two worked together and sparked each other’s creativity. Amy even talked about hanging up a shingle outside her family mansion, Sevenels, saying, “Lowell & Russell, Makers of Fine Poems.”
Amy Lowell also pursued her poetic vision by traveling to meet others and sought out Ezra Pound, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, H. D., Robert Frost, and John Gould Fletcher, with whom she forged lasting friendships. The success of her imagist masterpieces Can Grande’s Castle and Pictures of the Floating World prompted Ezra Pound, ostensibly the founder of that movement, to start calling the radical new style “Amygism.” In 1925, she wrote What O’Clock, which won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry after her death that year from a cerebral hemorrhage.
Little cramped words scrawling all over the paper
Like draggled fly’s legs
What can you tell me of the flaring moon?
Through the oak leaves?
Amy Lowell, from “The Letter”
MARY SHELLEY Gothic greatness
Nearly everyone in Mary Shelley’s life was a writer. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was one of the first feminist writers and thinkers; her father, William Godwin, wrote philosophical theory. Their home in England was a regular gathering place for the radical elite; Charles Lamb and Samuel Coleridge were among their regular visitors. Politically, her parents were revolutionaries who disapproved of marriage, but still went through with the legalities to legitimize Mary upon her birth in 1797. Mary Wollstonecraft died eleven days after the baby was born, and Godwin fell apart, neglecting his daughter terribly, perhaps even blaming her for his beloved wife’s death. He later remarried and let relatives, nannies, and his new wife take whatever care of Mary they chose. Mary recalled learning to write by tracing her mother’s name on her gravestone at her father’s urging.
At seventeen, Mary met the married playboy poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and ran away with him to Europe, returning after a few weeks to London as he was drowning in debt. By 1816, the couple had a more secure financial footing and headed for the continent again, this time to Switzerland’s Lake Geneva, to a party with Shelley’s friend Lord Byron. A bout of ghost stories told around the fire as a distraction from an unusually cold summer inspired nineteen-year-old Mary to pick up a pen. Written in one year, Frankenstein is now hailed as the first Gothic novel as well as a seminal work of science fiction.
In 1818, Frankenstein was published, and Mary and Percy Shelley returned to London and married after the death of his wife. What proved to be a watershed year for the pair because of the publication of her book was an extremely difficult one; Mary’s half-sister Fanny and Percy Shelley’s wife both committed suicide. Their marriage was met with extreme disapproval, and the newlyweds fled to Italy to escape the controversy. Mary had three children; all but one, a son, died. Mother and son survived husband and father when in 1822, an exiled Shelley and fellow rebel poets drowned in the Bay of Spezia in Italy.
His young widow and surviving son were left behind, virtually destitute. Mary managed to scratch out a living to support her father and two-year-old child, but she was an outcast from society. Mary wrote other romances, including The Lost Man, Lodore, and Valperga, but none reached the level of success or acclaim of her first. She idolized her late husband and memorialized him in her fiction, in addition to editing the first volume of his poetry in 1839. Mary Shelley died in 1851 of a brain tumor. Now, more than 150 years after her death, the book she wrote at the age of nineteen continues to inform, inspire, and amaze.
My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me.
Mary Shelley, from Frankenstein
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT feminist firecracker
Though her life was troubled and turbulent, Mary has gone down in history as a major contributor to feminist literature. Her works, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1793), are lucid and forward-thinking and are touchstones in gender studies. Born in 1759, Wollstonecraft worked for a London publisher, James Johnson, which bolstered her independence, but she left for Paris in order to see the French Revolution for herself. As a cover, she passed herself off as the daughter of American captain Gilbert Imlay, with whom she became involved, producing a daughter, Fanny. The affair broke up, and a brokenhearted Mary tried unsuccessfully to kill herself; ironically, her daughter Fanny would later succeed at suicide. She went back to London and her old publishing job in 1795. James Johnson had become involved with an extremist political group comprised of Thomas Paine, William Wordsworth, William Godwin, Thomas Holcraft, and William Blake. Mary and Godwin fell in love, and she became pregnant with her daughter Mary, who later attained enduring fame under her married name, Mary Shelley.
MODERN DUOS
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