"And Woman's Heart Hath Left a Trace": The Romantic Woman's Elegy as Affective History

Abstract

My project addresses the paucity of criticism on the Romantic woman's elegy and demonstrates that women poets from this era create their own tradition by adapting the classical elegy to reflect their own emphasis on sympathy and community. I draw from the historiographical theories of Mark Salber Phillips to illustrate that the elegies of Romantic women poets may be considered as miniature histories because of their immersion in the quotidian rather than in the idealized classical past. Their elegies may be read as histories in the same way that obituaries are read, according to Phillips, as a valid historiographical genre (On Historical Distance 19). Phillips articulates four ways of mediating the past: formal, affective, ethical, and critical distance. Throughout the thesis I am guided by Celeste Schenck's observation that the female elegy is "a poem of connectedness" (15); therefore, I emphasize the affective dimension of each Romantic woman's elegy. I refer to the historiographical theorists of each woman's era as they are discussed by Phillips, in order to show the historical relevance of these poets' works. My first chapter involves the critical distance yet affective proximity between Phillis Wheatley, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, and their moral exemplars, showing that the women poets' detached perspective is reminiscent of the histories of David Hume and Edward Gibbon. Chapter 2 demonstrates that Mary Robinson and Charlotte Smith are nearer to their subject than were their predecessors; Robinson and Smith resemble the historian James Mackintosh in that they are transitional between the age of abstraction and that of imagination. In Chapter 3, I consider Helen Maria Williams, Felicia Hemans, and Letitia Elizabeth Landon as enablers of sympathy through the monument and suggest that their imaginative approaches are redolent of the historiographical theories of Godwin, Scott, and Wordsworth. Chapter 4 explores the affective response to the death of Princess Charlotte and her child through analysis of the elegies of Barbauld, Hemans, and Landon, together with references to Robert Southey's elegy to the princess. These elegies assess historical distance in contrasting ways. Finally, Barbauld, Hemans, and Landon are invoked yet again in Chapter 5 to stress these elegists' sense of community rather than competition with other women poets. My analysis of all these poems is meant to exhibit the distinctiveness of Romantic women's elegies and to indicate that they fill a literary niche.