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5 - Romanticism, Sensibility, and Settler Women Poets

from Part II - Networks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2024

By
Katie Hansord
Edited by
Ann Vickery
Ann Vickery
Affiliation:
Deakin University, Victoria
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Summary

This chapter investigates how Australian women poets mobilised Romantic sensibility and the figure of the poetess to navigate the complex dynamic between liminality and voice. It proposes a transnational extension of a female Romantic tradition to advocate for the rights of those disempowered in colonial and patriarchal structures. The chapter explores how writers like Eliza Hamilton Dunlop, Mary Bailey, and Caroline Leakey linked themes of exile and transportation with Romantic tropes such as the ‘fallen woman.’ It demonstrates how their poetry reveals an emotional range that extends the domestic affections into expressions of anger and distress at injustices. It also considers how religion informed their responses to regimes of regulation. The chapter also analyses Ada Cambridge’s critique of marriage in the suppressed volume Unspoken Thoughts, as well as her amplification of a broader gendering of harm and shame.

Keywords

Romanticismsensibilitysympathypoetessreligion
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Australian Poetry , pp. 89 - 100
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

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