Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre

Chapter Three: Women and Poetry in the Public Eye

c h a p t e r t h r e e Women and Poetry in the Public Eye Decorum is the Child of Reason, Observing Order, Place, and Season. — j a n e b r e r e t o n The women poets of the first decades of the eighteenth century were a diverse group, but one characterized by having leisure to write and early access to fine libraries. Even more than Finch, her contemporaries set the stage for the first flowering of British women’s poetry. Some of them knew and encouraged one another. Mary Chudleigh and Elizabeth Thomas were friends, and several, including Sarah Fyge (Egerton), Elizabeth Singer (Rowe), and Chudleigh, belonged to circles of literary women; Rowe and Anne Finch knew each other, and Rowe read Finch’s work in manuscript and encouraged her to continue writing.∞ Elizabeth Carter subscribed to the poetic works of Sarah Dixon, Jane Brereton, Mary Jones, Mary Masters, and Helen Maria Williams.≤ Jane Brereton and Judith Madan wrote poems and letters to each other, some commenting on Rowe’s work, as did Brereton and Elizabeth Carter, who were introduced to each other by Edward Cave and then carried on a lively correspondence beginning in 1738. A few of them, including Chudleigh, Egerton, Thomas, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, knew Mary Astell, were influenced by her example, and versified some of her ideas (see, for example, Chudleigh’s To Almystrea). Thomas refuted a range of prejudices against women by invoking Astell, ‘‘Adorned with wisdom, and replete with grace’’: Women and Poetry in the Public Eye 81 Too long! indeed, has been our sex decried, And Ridiculed by men’s malignant pride; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . When you, most generous heroine! stood forth, And showed your sex’s aptitude and worth. (Lonsdale, 43) Never married, childless, widowed young, separated from their husbands, or living largely in retirement, these women were all comfortably affluent or even wealthy. They knew that their role, in Egerton’s words, was ‘‘to know much, and speak little.’’ Modern experts on the individual women have reached conclusions such as Jeslyn Medoff’s on Sarah Fyge Egerton (that she knew ‘‘something about’’ Greek mythology, geography, theology, history, and philosophy) and Margaret Ezell’s on Chudleigh (‘‘Chudleigh’s poetry and prose display an impressive knowledge of classical philosophy, science, and history’’).≥ Elizabeth Singer Rowe’s reading included Shakespeare, Molière, Nicholas Rowe, Otway, Addison, Gay, Thomson, Cibber, Fielding, Berkeley, Shaftesbury, Pascal, Law, and Cowley.∂ A precocious child ‘‘doted on by her father,’’ Rowe learned French and Italian early and ‘‘easily,’’∑ and she translated and imitated a number of Italian forms, including the sonnet, throughout her life. Elizabeth Tollet wrote a number of poems in Latin, including some musical translations of Psalms 29, 79, and 137. Her Anne Boleyn to King Henry VIII shows impressive knowledge of history, and poems such as To Dr. James Sherard On the Hortus Elthamensis, of botany and natural science.∏ They often referred to their writing as ‘‘the innocent Amusement of a solitary life,’’ as Chudleigh did in her preface to Poems on Several Occasions (1703). Sarah Dixon’s preface to her own Poems on Several Occasions (1740) captures most of the themes common to their lives and to their positioning of themselves as poets: ‘‘As to the following Pieces the Reader is to know they were the Employment (an innocent , and, she thinks, no improper Employment) of a Youth of much Leisure. Some little Taste of Poetry, improved by some Reading, tempted our Author to try her Talents, for her own Amusement, and the Diversion of her Friends, in a Country Solitude.’’ Yet these women knew themselves and each other to be dedicated to professional achievement of a high order and recognized it in their predecessors. These poets prepared the way for Carter, whose dedication was admired by many of their contemporaries, and for Mary Jones, who was willing to compare herself to Pope and publish in An Epistle to Lady Bowyer: ‘‘Well, but the joy to see my works in print! / My self too pictur’d in a Mezzo-Tint!’’ 82 Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry Preparing for a new definition and space for women poets, they wrote in the genres respected in their time. Almost all of them wrote in all of the ‘‘Augustan’’ forms—odes, epistles, pastoral elegies and dialogues, philosophical meditations, lyrics, and classical and biblical imitations...