The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination

Though women novelists of the 19th century struggled to make their voices heard, they generally had an easier time than female poets, whose art was widely considered “incompatible” with femaleness. Historically, male critics have diminished poetry by women for its “triviality” and for its “melodramatic” treatment of intellectual subject matter. R. P. Blackmur, a literary critic and poet, regarded Emily Dickinson’s oeuvre as proof of her skill at a domestic hobby comparable to cooking or knitting. Another leading assumption regarding women poets suggests that their poetry must come from a sentimental romantic experience, or from the lack of such an experience. Though prose writers received similar criticism, particular vitriol accompanied male criticism of women poets; women novelists can create demonic characters as an outlet for their experiences with male hostility, but “the women poet must literally become a madwoman [and] enact the diabolical role” herself (545).

The writing of novels is a very different process than the writing of poetry. Most significantly, the writing of novels has practical earning power; the writing of poetry is a purely aesthetic occupation. Thanks to the limitations of the Victorian education system, women had no opportunity to learn the ancient rules of poetry established by classical poets who wrote in Greek and Latin.