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WRITING FOR, YET APART: NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH WOMEN'S CONTENTIOUS STATUS AS HYMN WRITERS AND EDITORS OF HYMNBOOKS FOR CHILDREN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2012

Alisa Clapp-Itnyre
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Extract

When Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar asked in 1979, “How then – since poets are priests – can women be poets?” (Madwoman in the Attic 546), they opened up to debate the predominant ideological holdover from the Victorians that “the very nature of lyric poetry is inherently incompatible with the nature or essence of femaleness” (541). More than thirty years later, while women's poetic contributions are regularly considered by literary scholarship, I would now advocate for the woman hymn writer for children – she who, as hymn writer or editor, surely enacted the role of religious “priest” for countless generations of children during and after her lifetime, but who is all but forgotten today.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 47 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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