Unit 2- Revolutions in Women’s Representation
How do these poems limit and focus the reader’s perspective?
It is of but yesterday that women have either been qualified by literary accomplishments or permitted by society, to tell anything to the general public. As yet very few of them dare tell anything, which men, on whom their literary success depends, are unwilling to hear. Let us remember in what manner, up to a very recent time, the expression, even by a male author, of uncustomary opinions, or what are deemed eccentric feelings, usually was, and in some degree still is, received; and may we form some faint conception under what impediments a woman, who is brought up to think custom and opinion her sovereign rule, attempts to express anything drawn from the depths of her own nature.
J.S. Mill The Subjection of Women (BABL 754)
Mill published this book in 1869, one year after the end of his stint in Parliament. He had worked on the book for years throughout his years serving Parliament, during which he aspired to reword much of the legislature passed to remove gendered language, as well as pushing for women’s rights in terms of divorce, property, and suffrage.
Where poetry is the overflow of emotion, where do women come in to play? If, according to Wordsworth some 69 years previous, emotion is the root of poetry and the root of good poetry at that, how are women accepted into this, and how does the man-only perspective limit poetry? Ultimately, the mid-1800s was the rise of women in literature, and therefore showed the perspective broadening for readers of poetry. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was writing Aurora Leigh, Christina Rosetti was writing her poetry and rejecting suitors, and all the while it was becoming just slightly more common to see published women. In this excerpt from The Subjection of Women, Mill is showing his readers just how difficult it is for women authors to share their true feelings- they cannot write anything a man may not publish- and so he illustrates the limitations on poetry. When poetry is taken as an outpouring of emotion as defined by Wordsworth, then to limit the emotion available, and to censor what comes from that emotion, is to limit and reshape the reader’s perspective on who is capable of profound emotion, and then, by proxy, limit who is capable of authorship. By defining poetry as emotion, and then limiting it to men, it becomes a method of control over women. When the only emotions heard are the emotions of men, for whom the oppression of women is a benefit, it suffices to say that the only opinion readers will see, then, is that women are to be subjected.