Retrieving fin-de-siècle women poets: the transformative myths, fragments and voices of Webster, Blind and Levy

Abstract

The critical recuperation of late nineteenth-century women poets, most still waiting in the margins of the literary canon, has owed significantly to the renovated interest and study of the poetical works of Augusta Webster, Mathilde Blind and Amy Levy (1860-90) by the postmodern reader. One of the reasons for this ‘salvage’ may be that they represent and embody the profound and extraordinary changes encompassing the British fin-de-siècle, in which the transition from the Victorians to the Moderns implied the transformation or reconfiguration of certain myths or (hi)stories and the critical re-use or ‘recycling’ of major literary forms. If, for Webster and Blind, involvement in radical politics (namely, feminism and socialism) certainly implied a stance as outsiders, Blind and Levy were even more set apart by their foreignness, with Levy’s different religion and sexuality increasing the distance even further. With recourse to close reading and cultural critique, this paper will analyse how these three women poets re-use fragments (‘verbal ruins’) of national and international history, as well as classic myth, in order to question and transform the images and representations of man and woman in their respective connections with the world. It will demonstrate that while Webster’s poetry (Dramatic Studies of 1866 and Portraits of 1870) is firmly grounded on social demands and the exploration and dramatization of the nature of female experience, Blind’s epic and dramatic verse (The Ascent of Man of 1889 and Dramas in Miniature of 1891) creates new myths of human destiny, reclaiming the Poet’s role as the singer of the age’s scientific deeds, and Levy’s lyrics (Xantippe of 1881 and A Minor Poet of 1884) signal the New Woman poet’s role as victim of the pressures of emancipation. With the support of critics as Isobel Armstrong, Helen Groth and Angela Leighton, the paper will furthermore discuss the way in which these poets explore the selves that women inherit and create and the languages that re-define them, often through the expansive, public forms of dramatic and narrative verse; through these hybrid and fragmentary forms, Webster, Blind and Levy literally give voice to unspeakable feelings and situations, in which the anomalous and marginal are made central.