Great essay but relies to heavily on the dichotomy afforded by Emily Dickinson’s example, without noting that the myth of the reclusive spinster poetess was one foisted on her by posthumous editors keen on establishing a profitable image for the author. She wore many many masks — I dare say as many as the “Lady Byron,” who seems mainly to have worn just the one. It’s always interesting to learn about the forgotten midbrow writers of yesteryear (and man was Brontë right about fame) but let’s not drag Emily Dickinson — clearly one of the greatest poets of modern times in any language and any gender — down to a fatuous also-ran’s proto-tabloid level.
“How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!”
8
When I saw that historically cute "kitchen slops bucket" remark by a coyly noted "male critic," naturally my irrepressible snooping urge was aroused and quickly satiated by Google.
The trenchant, scullery-aware critic is revealed as one Steve Donoghue, whose reviews have appeared in such like-minded publications as the Wall Street Journal and the American Conservative.
I have not yet upended my own head in the slops bucket of her poetry, so I can't judge it yet, but somehow I can't escape a characteristic scent wafting from Donoghue's review. He tries to straddle the uncomfortable rail fence of appeasing and even praising the living author while safely consigning the dead one to the muck. I do understand the sneering itch and how powerful the urge to scratch it can be against a skeleton who can't kick back.
Nevertheless, I think Mr. Donoghue reveals --- subtly, he believes --- his true agenda, which, for me, places his prose with that of his victim amidst the potato peels, rotten cabbage and other contents of his malodorous kitchen receptacle.
13
Nice article. 'A Room of her Own' by Virginia Woolf was my first real education in this topic, a great read for anyone interested in learning more about the challenges of early female poets and writers.
2
Brilliant article. Not only does it teach the reader about wonderfully talented female poets, but it supplements the reader’s understanding of the arc of gender dynamics throughout history. In today’s world women still must push through double standards, boys’ clubs, and sexualization. And we have made much progress! Think of how challenging it was back then, especially for a female poet writing about the female experience. I respect and admire these female poets whose talent for the written word was so strong that we still enjoy their poems today and still know their names.
3
I did not know of this poet. Thank you so much for sharing. Nicely done article.
3
What, exactly, does "pre post-modern" even mean?
4
@RLiss It just means that a lot of things we associate with late c20 post modernity — in this case the idea that who we are is heavily influenced by the ways we represent ourselves — can be found in an earlier time.
8
Marvelous portrait; fascinating woman; interesting poet; tragic ending.
I thought thus of the flowers, the moon,
This fairy isle for you and me;
And then I thought how very soon
How very tired we would be.
That verse is certainly a contrast to rhapsodic, lyric poetry.
——————————
Yet, it reminded me of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem...
“The Spring And The Fall”
In the spring of the year, in the spring of the year,
I walked the road beside my dear.
The trees were black where the bark was wet.
I see them yet, in the spring of the year.
He broke me a bough of the blossoming peach
That was out of the way and hard to reach.
In the fall of the year, in the fall of the year,
I walked the road beside my dear.
The rooks went up with a raucous trill.
I hear them still, in the fall of the year.
He laughed at all I dared to praise,
And broke my heart, in little ways.
Year be springing or year be falling,
The bark will drip and the birds be calling.
There's much that's fine to see and hear
In the spring of a year, in the fall of a year.
'Tis not love's going hurt my days.
But that it went in little ways.
17
Thanks for the Millay!
But a caution:
Her home, Steepletop, in Austerlitz, New York, is in trouble. It can't stay open without cash.
Edna St. Vincent Millay fans should take note.
She was a better poet than male scholars will admit.
6
"Back in the Utopian 1790s, radical writers like Percy Bysshe Shelley put their faith in the Enlightenment ideal of “truth,” and in the printed word as its conduit. But by the politically repressive, rampantly commercial climate of the 1820s, the public sphere had become a tool for reputation management, spin and factionalism."
This was the backlash caused by the Napoleonic wars, Balzac in France wrote more directly on the subject in his "Lost Illusions", but this article insists on filtering the whole subject through feminism.
2
If you had written an article about Balzac’s “Lost Illusions” and the backlash in the 1820s, would you have included Letitia Landon’s work as reflective of the changing sentiments of that era? If you had not, should we then critique your article as simply written through a masculinist filter?
When an article focuses on the work done by a woman, without including reference to works done by men, it does not mean its feminist, it just means it’s an article focusing on the work of a particular woman. Not everything is about men (or their omission).
9
"Landon’s death was followed by the general retreat by women writers from the public eye. "
This isn't cause and effect. Jane Austen, writing in the decade before Landon, was just as reclusive as the Brontes.
3
Reclusive? Jane Austen? In that welter of siblings, nephews, and nieces? She might have been private in regard to her writing -- but not reclusive.
4
It seems to me that Landon's biggest problem was the same one that made it difficult for most women to be independent back then. When she had sex, she had babies.
Fortunately that is no longer true. She might have had an entirely different life if she had had access to modern birth control.
15
True. One of the most statistically impactful results of the introduction and widespread availability of the birth control pill in the US in the 1960s and ‘70s was the number of women completing their college degree as well as obtaining a graduate degree.
6
@mlbex And this is exactly what the right wing religious zealots are trying to bring back today.
6
The sexist, patronizing responses to this essay by male commenters so far are a telling sign of how far we still have to go before female voices (in this case both of the poet and the columnist) are taken seriously.
27
If you can remember the names of five female artists dating from the last century and yesteryears, a la bonheur!
1
@Miss Ley I’m glad you asked! Ca. 1780-1830 was one of the great ages of women’s poetry in English: along w LEL, Anna Barbauld, Charlotte Smith, Hannah More, Joanna Baillie, Mary Robinson, Sydney Owenson, Jane Taylor, Anna Seward, Felicia Hemans were all household names! Seriously. These are not obscure figures, they just didn’t get taught in university courses until the 1990s.
9
I will grant you that most Americans cannot recall the names Wollstonecraft, Gaskell, Wharton, Chopin, Woolf, Sackville-West, or even Hurston or Walker -- but then, do they know Thackeray, Trollope, Kipling, James, or Howells?
We are not a particulate literate country. Who reads those old guys and gals?
3
I would have more respect for the author’s scholarship if she did not perpetuate outdated and superficial tropes of Emily Dickinson being a dysfunctional recluse, her white dress choice being some marker of psychosis.
Dickinson scholars know these ideas were fueled after the poet’s death by Mabel Todd, the poet’s brother’s mistress, an early spin doctor who never met the poet yet crafted a fictional persona most of us take for granted today.
10
@Holly Gardner, thanks so much for making this point. The author's use of this outdated image of Dickinson in service of her essay does make me want look closer at her scholarship. Otherwise, I am happy to learn of Landon and look forward to learning more about her work.
2
“There is a self-conscious, pre-postmodern atmosphere around them.” Ironic too no doubt. A 21st century mouth dining on early 19th century morsels.
3
Ok let's go over it again. Pre 1980 in this country and in England women were discriminated against big time as mentioned in your story.
It all changed after 1980.
One can certainly go over how women were discriminated against pre 1980. The Times does an interesting continuing series on women who should have been given obits.
What not to do? I am not saying this author is but don't do the following.
1-Carp, rationalize, intellectualize, finger point, ax grind, cherry pick on how horrible today's women in these countries have it.
2-Start groups like the Me Too movements that waist 20 yrs+. to do something about discrimination, only complain when the roles, money, raises stop, accept money from known predators like Weinstein that contribute to your causes or worse start the sexual activity.
3-Don't condemn the 95% of today's men who are not predators for five million yrs. of existence.
When you do this like Hillary, you help elect an ego maniac demagogue like Trump.
1
It sounds as though she had a satirical wit and sense of narrative detachment, much like Byron in his transitional phase. Did she have the reverence for nature and Gothic sensibilities we associate with Romanticism?
3
I am not sure who the "we" is supposed to be in the following sentence by Dr. Miller, highlighted by the TIMES: "We revere the Dickinson model of poetry as a pure channel for personal authenticity. Landon, in contrast, won fame because she was able to wear many masks." While it is probably the case that many readers still do take Dickinson this way, a deeper understanding of her as a radically experimental poet who herself assumes many voices is readily available in the work of many feminist critics, especially including Susan Howe in her brilliant MY EMILY DICKINSON. I am sorry that Dr. Miller felt it necessary to use this outdated and superficial understanding of Dickinson in making her argument for another poet.
8
thank you Ms Miller for researching and providing this wonderful article on Letitia Landon. It is most encouraging that as a young poet she found not only work in publishing but was able to get her own poems printed and admired. I hope your book will be an inspiration to young women everywhere. And perhaps, encourage modern poets that rhyme and meter still resonate.
5
One of these days people will learn new ways of talking about creative work. It is meaningless to say "better" or "great" or "lesser" or "as bad". Layered, complex, universal, come to mind as the kind of critique words that come in handy.
I am surprised that this tale of Elizabeth Landon and her poetry does not make men shake in their shoes, rather they brush her aside by words meant for evaluation of machinery.
8
As the father of two professional daughters, I find LEL moving, accurate and relevant to our very own time, when she exclaims:
I never knew the time my heart
Look'd freely from my brow ...
Since the appreciation of a poem is so subjective, it is easy to vent one’s gender prejudices under the veil of critical appreciation at a high level, but the author of this piece is right, nevertheless.
15
She was no Mary W. Shelley. Her literary masterpiece 'Frankenstein' still shines.
3
Throughout history, there have been two types of women. Those who challenge male supremacy and those who normalize and enable it, morphing dutifully into the "feminine" tropes men idealize while exploiting. The ones who challenge male supremacy are gaslighted, blacklisted, silenced and forgotten with precious few exceptions. And the same has been true for me in my lifetime. We have yet to even begin to know the true, unfiltered, uncensored, authentic voice of half of humanity.
61
@Amy Luna
Amy this so true and well said about our society. It is the extremes, black or white. We now can join together and create a new version for society we live in. Blending Mother earth/Father sky like Yang/Ying.
The challenge for myself and others as we were raised with different role models to evolve and find this new place.
6
Overstated.
Not as bad a poet as your critics claim but I don't accept that her experience closed women off from the literary world, nor is she any kind of trailblazer.
While interesting even compelling history, not really relevant today.
There are lots of wonderful women among or even leading the literary world today- along with a few who make it by having slept with Philip Roth.
1
As I read this, I don't see a cautionary tale about the things this column suggests.
I see a cautionary tale about the use and destruction of a talented woman, because she was a woman, driven to suicide by age 36 despite immense talent, and robbed of her kids and any happy life before that.
This isn't about seeking celebrity. It is about repression and destruction of talent by those using it. It is Marilyn Monroe, not Lord Byron male or female.
54
@Mark Thomason The comparison is, admittedly, a very broad one, and not accurate in every respect. My reading if it is that in terms of her popularity while she was alive, she was analogous to Byron. Unfortunately, unlike Byron, her fame did not survive her. But of course you are absolutely right that hers is a story ultimately of repression and sad destruction of her talent. Marilyn Monroe is a comparison that most modern readers would more readily understand. I imagine the author was trying to stay in the literary vein.
3
The extreme popularity, potential for monetization and uneven personal authenticity of poetry in early 19th century England makes it sounds surprisingly popular music scene of the late 20th century...with all it’s legacy of ripped off artists, earnestly “honest” singer-songwriter deities and unhealthy power imbalance laden Elvis-Colonel Parker-esqe artist vs impresario relationships.
Oh...and they had sexual agency that from time to time produced unwanted consequences.
5
All four Brontes wrote their Gondal and Angria sagas in tiny handwriting in tiny notebooks. Do not try to find pathology there. It was part of the sport.
As for Emily Dickinson's "running away": Hardly running. Dickinson was good to kids and cousins. As for wearing white, she certainly was not the only woman to wear white, particularly in that humid, so-called "Pioneer" valley, and particularly in summer. And staying pretty much on her own grounds, she wasn't obliged to dress up. I wish movie producers and young scholars would stop making her into a basket case.
An interesting thesis nevertheless.
32
@B., agree and all of it seemingly based on her never having married. Imagine if she were, then all those traits and behaviors would be considered charming and quirky and endearing.
3
@B.A
And no prude.
Read "In Winter in my room."
2
To us, she is indeed -- married or single -- all you say.
Hated that movie. Shame on Cynthia Nixon for agreeing to portray Dickinson so inaccurately.
1
Rachel Vorona Cote had a really nice article on L.E.L. recently also, which can be found here:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/149911/persona-non-grata
13
Erinna was not fictional, but a fourth century B.C. Greek woman poet.
15
This was a tragic, common and predictable outcome for any woman of the time who tried to step outside the one lane which was available to women, and which was assigned by men.
37
@Madeline Conant
Isn't it still kinda going on now?
Women's voices are still squashed today.
I say keep talking women. All of you. Ignore anyone trying to silence you.
Anyone who does so is a gutless coward - male or female and there are loads od jealous women trying to silence outspoken women.
5
@Butterfly
Being outspoken is common. Having something truly interesting to say is not, just as was the case in the 19th century.
2
@DaveD The point is men are plenty allowed to be outspoken whether dull or interesting. Women would like the same opportunity.
The real irritant is being quashed while being interesting because of one's gender.
4
I don’t understand why a brilliant artist who achieved widespread fame and commercial success in her lifetime at a time when most women did not and who was sexual rather than virginal is meant to be a “cautionary tale.” At most, the article is a critique of a patriarchal, repressive and hypocritical society in which the sanctity of marriage was honoured in the breach.
38
@Kay Cause she killed herself at a young age, and her work fell into obscurity. That's why it's a cautionary tale.
2
I have a PhD in English and am ashamed to admit I have never heard of Landon. Thanks for pointing her out.
43
This sentence—"But by the politically repressive, rampantly commercial climate of the 1820s, the public sphere had become a tool for reputation management, spin and factionalism."—reminds me, sadly, of our current era.
41
This is an interesting piece, although I agree with one reader comment that Landon is not nearly so forgotten as Miller claims. Her article contains a major historical gaffe. Percy Shelley was born in 1792. He was not exactly in a position to have a strong voice in the “utopian 1790s”. He was precocious but not that precocious.
45
@Warren Breckman It was Shelley's mother and father-in-law who were were utopians.
4
I'm not surprised by a man who would use a dinosaur metaphor to describe Landon. But if ever there were a cautionary tale for women, this is it. And not just for those who don't choose a judicious middle way -- but for all women.
21
Stories like L.E.L's demonstrate how much female talent has been stymied by men throughout history. How many female artists, writers, scientists, philosophers, politicians, architects, doctors etc. have been suppressed throughout the ages? I'm glad for stories like this that shed light on talented women from the past who made a mark despite the callous superiority complexes of men.
96
I find it sad that L.E.L. continues to be exploited in 2019 in a "tell-all" biography and op-ed piece obviously intended to sell more books. To claim, as does Lucasta Miller's book cover, that Landon's life was "lost" and, only now, "brilliantly rediscovered" is completely disingenuous. Miller is puffing her biography as crassly as the literary entrepreneurs her op-ed claims to be warning us against. Romantic scholars have been working on Landon since the 1970s. Thanks to their pioneering work, she is anthologized in the Norton and elsewhere, and is taught as widely today as Byron or Wordsworth.
51
@Patrick Vincent As a former English major, I never heard of her and am grateful for the article. If she is in Norton Anthologies, that’s great. But 20 years ago I read Norton Anthologies and none of my professors focused on her work. This coming from a former NYU student. This article was timely and needed.
18
@Patrick Vincent
What a disappointingly petty comment. Ms. Miller has written a book about a historical figure she admires and thinks is under-sung and now takes it as her mission to promote awareness of the life and contributions of said figure. And you find that “exploitation?” By that standard, all history writing is exploitation.
It is great to hear that L.E.L. is now in the Norton (how recently?—she doesn’t appear to be in the “old but hardly ancient” edition on my shelf) but to assert she is as widely taught as Byron and Wordsworth is just farcical. Perhaps in Switzerland, where you write from, but here in the U.S. I do not know of any public school English curriculum list she appears on. Students are exposed to Byron and Wordsworth in most High Schools and some JHS’s on the other hand.
I went to one of the best liberal arts colleges in America (granted, decades ago, but after the 70s) and never heard of her. Perhaps she is taught now, but, I ask honestly, in Lit classes as a poet or marginalized in Women’s Studies courses as a biography? Byron and Wordsworth have entire semester long classes exclusively devoted to them; how many hours are spent on her?
And beyond the academy, Byron and Wordsworth are household names and Byron a frequent figure in historical fiction. It is ridiculous to suggest that L.E.L.’s fame rivals theirs, and churlish to condemn Miller for trying to get her a little bit more.
26
@Patrick Vincent I join with the OPs in questioning your claim that Landon's work is "as widely taught today as Byron or Wordsworth". As a grad student in English Lit at Columbia in the late '70's there was nary a whisper of her. There were, however, semester-long courses about Byron and Keats, etc. And I was teaching university-level literature course as late as 2004, a number focused on 17th century poetry, and no anthology mentions her, even in a footnote. I checked. And we were using the Norton anthology. I don't have a more recent edition, so I don't dispute that her work may appear in it. I cannot help wondering what motivates your spiteful attitude toward Ms. Miller's biography of a poet you seem to admire. Most scholars would welcome more broad public awareness of someone like Ms. Landon. Or is this the all-too-common and pathetic scorn of the effete academic who resents the encroachment of the crass popular press into their (scholarly) enclave? I, for one, will put Ms. Miller's book on my summer reading list.
8
I didn't exactly get the Byron quality.
22
What a fascinating and poignant essay. The lives of the forgotten have so much to tell us about the full picture of life in the past and the journey to the present day.
23