Women Writers and Nineteenth-Century Medievalism
Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters Series Editor: Marilyn Gaull The nineteenth century invented major figures: gifted, productive, and influential writers and artists in English, European, and American public life who captured and expressed what Hazlitt called The Spirit of the Age. Their achievements summarize, reflect, and shape the cultural traditions they inherited and influence the quality of life that followed. Before radio, film, and journalism deflected the energies of authors and audiences alike, literary forms such as popular verse, song lyrics, biographies, memoirs, letters, novels, reviews, essays, children s books, and drama generated a golden age of letters incomparable in Western history. Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters presents a series of original biographical, critical, and scholarly studies of major figures evoking their energies, achievements, and their impact on the character of this age. Projects to be included range from works on Blake to Hardy, Erasmus Darwin to Charles Darwin, Wordsworth to Yeats, Coleridge and J. S. Mill, Joanna Baillie, Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, Byron, Shelley, Keats to Dickens, Tennyson, George Eliot, Browning, Hopkins, Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, and their contemporaries. The series editor is Marilyn Gaull, PhD from Indiana University. She has served on the faculty at Temple University, New York University, and is now Research Professor at the Editorial Institute at Boston University. She brings to the series decades of experience as editor of books on nineteenth century literature and culture. She is the founder and editor of The Wordsworth Circle, author of English Romanticism: The Human Context, publishes editions, essays, and reviews in numerous journals and lectures internationally on British Romanticism, folklore, and narrative theory. PUBLISHED BY PALGRAVE: Shelley s German Afterlives, by Susanne Schmid Romantic Literature, Race, and Colonial Encounter, by Peter J. Kitson Coleridge, the Bible, and Religion, by Jeffrey W. Barbeau Byron: Heritage and Legacy, edited by Cheryl A. Wilson The Long and Winding Road from Blake to the Beatles, by Matthew Schneider British Periodicals and Romantic Identity, by Mark Schoenfield Women Writers and Nineteenth-Century Medievalism, by Clare Broome Saunders FORTHCOMING TITLES: Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt in 19th Century Literary Culture, by Lynn Parramore From Song to Print, by Terence Hoagwood British Victorian Women s Periodicals, by Kathryn Ledbetter Romantic Literary Families, by Scott Krawczyk Romantic Diasporas, by Toby R. Benis
Women Writers and Nineteenth-Century Medievalism Clare Broome Saunders
WOMEN WRITERS AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY MEDIEVALISM Copyright Clare Broome Saunders, 2009. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-60793-4 All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-37468-7 ISBN 978-0-230-61857-2 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230618572 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: February 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For John
This page intentionally left blank
Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations ix xi xiii Introduction 1 1 Recasting the Courtly: Translations of Medieval Language and Form in the Nineteenth Century 11 2 Though Females Are Forbidden to Interfere in Politics : War, Medievalism, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Writer 29 3 It s Strictly the Woman s Part and Men Understand It So : Romance, Gender, and the Spectacle of the Crimean 53 4 The End of Chivalry?: Joan of Arc and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Writer 79 5 Queenship, Chivalry, and Queenly Women in the Age of Victoria 103 6 Guinevere: The Medieval Queen in the Nineteenth Century 133 7 Rereading Guinevere: Women Illustrators, Tennyson, and Morris 153 Notes 185 Bibliography 197 Index 215
This page intentionally left blank
Illustrations Front Cover: Lilly Martin Spencer, Reading the Legend (1852) 1 Jessie M. King, O golden hair with which I used to play (1903) 164 2 Jessie M. King, And gave the naked shield (1903) 166 3 Jessie M. King, She threw her wet hair backward from her brow (1904) 168 4 Jessie M. King, He did not hear her coming as he lay (1904) 170 5 Florence Harrison, Cover, Tennyson s Guinevere and Other Poems (1923) 172 6 Florence Harrison, Header, Tennyson s Guinevere and Other Poems (1923) 173 7 Florence Harrison, She made her face a darkness from the king (1912) 175 8 Florence Harrison, We needs must love the highest when we see it (1923) 176 9 Florence Harrison, In that garden fair/ Came Launcelot walking (1914) 179 10 Florence Harrison, Guenevere! Guenevere! / Do you not know me, are you gone mad? (1914) 181
This page intentionally left blank
Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude to Fiona Robertson and Michael O Neill, for inspiring supervision and invaluable advice and to Fiona for bringing the image of Reading the Legend to my attention. Thank you also to Marilyn Gaull for her guidance and encouragement with this project. I am grateful to the following individuals and institutions for their assistance: the Editors of Victorian Poetry for permission to reprint those parts of chapters 1 and 4 that appeared in my article in Volume 44:4 (Winter 2006) (pages 14 18, 89 93); the staff of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts for permission to use the cover image Reading the Legend; the British Library and Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru/The National Library of Wales for permission to quote from manuscripts in their collections; and to Wolfson College, Oxford, for being such a supportive academic community. Works by Jessie M. King are reproduced courtesy of the copyright holders, Dumfries and Galloway Council and the National Trust for Scotland, to whom I am very grateful. Thank you to my parents for their inestimable contribution to their daughter s ability to write a book; and to my parents-in-law for the much-appreciated practical help that provided extra writing time. Since my research and writing have to be juggled with the demands of raising three small daughters, this book could never have been written without the constant support and encouragement of my husband, John. That it has been completed owes as much to his commitment to my academic project as my own. This book is dedicated to him, with love and thanks.
This page intentionally left blank
Abbreviations BC LEBB PT PWEBB PWH The Brownings Correspondence. ed. Philip Kelley, and Ronald Hudson. 16 vols. Winfield, KS: Wedgestone Press, 1984 2007. The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. ed. Frederic G. Kenyon. 2 vols. London: Smith, Elder, 1897. The Poems of Tennyson in Three Volumes. ed. Christopher Ricks. 2nd edn. Harlow, UK: Longman, 1987. The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. London: John Murray, 1914. The Poetical Works of Mrs. Hemans. London: Warne and Co. [1887?].