How far were women writers of the Romantic period constrained in their choice of topic and form and how did they respond to this?

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Leigh Drackett

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How Far were women writers of the period constrained in their choice of topic and form and how did they respond to this?

Women writers were seen as having constraints on their choice of topic and

form during the Romantic era, although these gender restrictions were

evident women continued to keep writing about all types of topics and in all

genres. In order to understand the women writer of the time it is important

to recognise that their lives were ‘dominated by the bonds of family and the

cultural constraints of femininity’. (Alexander:2) Women were therefore

facing different pressures to men when it came to writing and getting

published. The concepts of what was considered a accepted and respectable

piece of writing was shaped by male writers and there views, consequently

causing women’s writing to be affluent with gender views. By looking at

Mary Wollstonecraft’s The Vindication of the rights of women ‘on lack of

Learning’ and Anna Leatitia Barbauld’s The Rights of woman ‘From

works’. I will be looking at the obstacles that women had to face during this

era with their writing and discussing that their response was to continue

writing and trying to get published.

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Longsdale sees the Romantic period as a time when women lost their

accepted positions as writers and notes that they are absent from influential

poetry anthologies of the period. (Bygrave:92) At a age of political upheaval

and social change there was also a literary revolution that took place many

women were not even considered apart of the Romantic writings, the

patriarchal culture of this time meant that in writing there was a clear

division in what was considered as appropriate for a woman to write as well

as what form she could write in. However, women were continuing to give

out a large output of literary forms at this time, many women wanted to first

and formerly be known as a writer , they did not want to be categorised

because of their sex.

The French revolution brought up many issues over women’s roles in

society there was conflict over women’s roles not just those in literature.

Mary Wollstonecraft was not afraid to challenge the male writer  and did so

in her Vindication of the rights of women. Wollstonecraft’s  view as we

see in the begging of ‘lack of learning’ where she refers to the state as

wanting to ‘enslave women’ by cramping their ‘senses’.  The use of senses

here emphasises what she feels is a constraint on women not wanting them

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to develop in a growing and changing world. Wollstonecraft encourages

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women to develop their minds in the vindication. One way of doing this is

by reading and writing this shows how some women were responding to

being controlled in writing and by writing in forms such as pamphlets and

letters it is apparent that there is a political stance being taken here.

Wollstonecraft is a woman talking to women here she is rebelling against

what women in this society are accepting as that social norm that women

should be passive in the ...

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