The province of the poetess: Chastity and the poetry of Pilkington, Barber and Grierson.

Abstract

This dissertation explores the poetry of three women included in Jonathan Swift's circle of friends in Dublin. The demands of chastity and related tensions for eighteenth-century women provide a context for the poems and reputations of Constantia Grierson, Laetitia Pilkington and Mary Barber. Chapter 1 provides personal histories and an overview of their relationships to Swift. Chapter 2 explores familial and gender issues alongside the problematic implications of appearing in print. The final chapter deals with the persona each poet created in order to realize her ambitions, and the dubious success with which publication was accomplished. Images of near-saint, coquette and righteous matron have informed speculation about Grierson, Pilkington, and Barber respectively, originating in Grierson's apparent lack of ambition. Pilkington's divorce and audacity in printing her memoirs, and Barber's emphasis that she wrote "to improve the minds of (her) children". Simplified versions of the lives of writing, women are a produce not only of (frequently misogynistic) misunderstandings; they also result from taking these poets at their word, believing the re-creations on the page.