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Dear Elizabeth, The collection Gothic Tales, edited by Laura Kranzler (2000), comprises your most famous ghost stories published from 1851 to 1861. Reading those stories is like…… Read more “Solitary and savage had been her life”
Category: Scarlet Letters
I too have my vocation,
Dear Elizabeth, In Aurora Leigh (1856), you push your protagonist to make an impossible choice between two instances of her personality: her womanhood and her art. By…… Read more “I too have my vocation,”
Eat me, drink me, love me
Dear Christina, Your Goblin Market (1862) is a poem which teasingly resists a fixed interpretation. Is it a feminist tale / an anti-capitalist warning / a Christian…… Read more “Eat me, drink me, love me”
Harp of wild and dream-like strain,
Dear Emily, Gondal – an imaginary island in the North Pacific, created by you and Anne and peopled with flawed, implacable characters often driven into epic battles…… Read more “Harp of wild and dream-like strain,”
My Year in Nonfiction 2019 | Victorian women writers
Hi, folks! In 2018, I started a series of posts where I made an overview of my nonfiction reading over the year, and I quite enjoyed the…… Read more “My Year in Nonfiction 2019 | Victorian women writers”
The most wonderful thing in the world must be to be a childless widow
Dear Elizabeth, Irony is your plaything in Diary of a Provincial Lady (1930), to the point where it starts to be slightly subversive. Written as a series…… Read more “The most wonderful thing in the world must be to be a childless widow”
I should be thankful to be called a Fury,
Dear Rhoda, “A woman’s soul is such a small room”, you write at some point in your novel Belinda (1883). You will trap your eponymous protagonist in…… Read more “I should be thankful to be called a Fury,”
Before I knew I had a heart
Dear Charlotte, In Emmeline, The Orphan of the Castle (published in four volumes in 1788), we have a Cinderella-like heroine surrounded by characters who are constantly burning their…… Read more “Before I knew I had a heart”
Impossible to get out of it
Dear Carmen, In Nada, tr. Edith Grossman (2007. Original: Nada, 1944), we have a labyrinth of haunted characters confined in a haunting house in a city haunted…… Read more “Impossible to get out of it”
What if mothers refused to deny their womanhood
Dear Sibilla, A Woman, tr. Rosalind Delmar (1980. Original: Una donna, 1906) is a disturbing novella where rape, depression, suicide, adultery, and domestic violence are packed in…… Read more “What if mothers refused to deny their womanhood”
There might be nothing there
Dear Brigid, Very much like identities are fluid in your The King of a Rainy Country (1956), so the book itself refuses a label. Divided into three…… Read more “There might be nothing there”
I do not know how women do it,
Dear Júlia, In A falência (1901, “The bankruptcy”, not translated yet), I could not help but feel you were constantly hiding something in plain sight, in-between the…… Read more “I do not know how women do it,”
These women, who step out of their sphere,
Dear Margaret, Hester (1883) seems to be a deceptive title: we may be under the impression that what we have in our hands is the coming of…… Read more “These women, who step out of their sphere,”
The most beautiful and most brittle of all human things
Dear Frances, It’s a truth universally acknowledged – or, at least, in the relatively small world of your Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady’s Entrance…… Read more “The most beautiful and most brittle of all human things”
We were overcome with a kind of reverse vertigo,
Dear Annie, Reading The Years. tr. Alison L. Strayer (2017. Original: Les Années, 2008) feels very much like leafing through an old photo album, opening the contents of…… Read more “We were overcome with a kind of reverse vertigo,”
And she listened to the pounding of her heart
Dear Lydia, From the beginning, we already know that we are in for a train wreck with Sofia Petrovna (1994, translated by Aline Worth, emended by Eliza…… Read more “And she listened to the pounding of her heart”
My name, here, is the name of my fracture
Dear Albertine, Astragal (1965) opens with a leap into the sky, from one kind of prison to another – but our protagonist doesn’t know it yet. The…… Read more “My name, here, is the name of my fracture”
I shall have snow on my glassy fingers,
Dear Emily, Somewhere on the threshold of a novel and a prose poem, we have The Shutter of Snow (1930). When the book starts, we are told of…… Read more “I shall have snow on my glassy fingers,”
