'Waking the Dead'
Resurrecting 'Lost' Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century'
An analysis of the problems inherent in rediscovering and 'rewriting' the lives of nineteenth century women poets.
‘Waking the Dead’. Resurrecting Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century’
It is perhaps true that an author never really dies; an echo, a shade of them, always remains in the work they leave behind. In recent years, the trend among literary critics has been to ‘resurrect’ numerous nineteenth century women poets who had been considered ‘lost’.
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge; Charlotte Mew; Dora Sigerson and Augusta Webster have all undergone literary ‘resurrections’, and more famous figures such as Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti have also been subjected to ‘rewritings’.
The Act of Deconstruction
However, the process of reconstruction is also one of reinvention, and there have been many ‘Mary Coleridges,’ ‘Christina Rossettis,’et al. Each one is slightly different from its predecessor, and likewise, is a variation of the amalgamation of certain facts and the opinions of friends now long dead, and more recently, critics.
The act of rebuilding and reinvention is also one of deferral. It is never-ending, but is always beginning and is forever in progress. Consequently it is always inconclusive; there is no single, definitive ‘woman poet’, she can only ever be an abstract, a memory, a collection of ideas or an articulation of partialities. Paradoxically, the act of reconstruction is at the same time one of deconstruction.
The figure of the author is always problematic in literary analysis. No matter how often the death of the author is declared, the ghost of authorial presence persists and lingers. Modern critical theories quite correctly insist that the text is paramount; yet while the text stands alone and demands critical attention in its own right, that does not necessarily mean that we ignore the author, nor does it signify that we have to grant him or her supreme authority over any meanings placed upon the text. An examination of the author must take into account those factors of historical and cultural relevance which have affected the conception, writing, publication and dissemination of the work. This does not require an investigation into the psyche of the author and therefore avoids spurious assumptions of knowledge regarding intention.
Poets such as Emily Dickinson and Mary Coleridge use a deliberately condensed style of writing which seeks to avoid the articulation of the personal. This refusal can lead conversely to people wanting to discover more about the author - to find out the ‘truth’. This then becomes part of the process of reconstruction, for what is not known will be assumed or invented and the little that is known will be repeatedly reinterpreted. Therefore, the figure of the author is relentlessly deconstructed and then reconstructed in an incessant attempt to discover the ‘truth’. The process of rebuilding is selective and is simultaneously an act of erasure and suppression.
There is a long tradition of nineteenth century women writers whose personal histories have been re-written and ‘cleansed’ for public consumption. The Brönte women have firmly fixed images in the public consciousness and this is due in no small part to Charlotte Brönte herself who carefully constructed public personas for each of her sisters. Emily will forever be wild and misanthropic: ‘Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her nature stood alone’ wrote Charlotte. George Eliot’s life was also revised and sanitised by her husband, John Cross, and Christina Rossetti was reconstructed in life and in death by her brothers Dante Gabriel and Michael William Rossetti. Such reconstructions of literary women result in ventriloquism – the substitution of the poet’s voice by that of the critic. To retrieve the shadowy ghost of the poetic voice, we must take a journey back to their original work and remain wary of reconstructions.
