Melissa Ritts

English 102H CRN84369

Prof. Stansberry

10 October 2010

Amazing Female Poets

History is full of amazingly strong women who have fought to get out of the predefined

box that society has historically prescribed as the female roles of wife, mother, caretaker and

homemaker. In one way or another, each of these extremely gifted female poets broke the mold

of what the woman’s role in literature has traditionally been, as well as what a woman’s role in

society has been. In many cases, the early poets did not have female colleagues or predecessors

to help guide them through finding their voice. Without these literary grandmothers to pave the

way, female literary artists would not be where they are today. In many cases, these early women

poets had to hide in order to educate themselves and read books in secret. Many of them were

chastised by family, friends and the communities they lived for what they were doing – writing

poetry.

One of the earliest female poets on record, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz was born on

November 12, 1651. She would hide in the family hacienda chapel and read her grandfather’s

books every chance she got. At age 8, after her grandfather’s death, she was sent to live with her

aunt and “[s]he longed to disguise herself as a male so that she could go to University but was

not given permission by her family to do so.” (American Poets) Juana continued to study

privately and at the age of 17 she went before a board of scholars who assembled for the sole

purpose of testing her intelligence. The outcome of the board’s findings spread through all of

Mexico. This, along with her “apparent beauty” attracted a plethora of attention.
 Due to her desire to study rather than marry, she joined a convent where she continued to

study and often met with scholars. Because many of her writings were more feminist than

religious, criticism of her work started mounting due to its lack of religious content. The

controversy surrounding her poems and letters led to her “abjuration.” At this time, she was

forced to sell all of her books, scientific instruments and musical instruments. Sor Juana no

longer studied or wrote, dedicating the remainder of her life to deep penance. Without books to

continue her studies or the materials to write, this must have been paramount to the death of a

loved one to her even though women were rarely afforded the opportunity to learn to read in her

lifetime.

Even though Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born in 1806, 150 years after Sor Juana, she

too had a hard time carving out a place in her life for her love of writing and studying. While she

was growing up, girls like Barrett would stay at home and learn domestic lessons while boys,

like her brother, were sent off to school to “dip into cultural tradition and find scads of fathers to

overwhelm or to buoy him up.” (Mermin) Her family, friends and Victorian ideology attempted

to limit the imagination of a child who wished to become the “greatest woman writer who ever

lived.” Barrett outlined her childhood ambitions in a “quasi-autobiographical account of a ten-

year-old girl named Beth who wanted to be ‘the feminine of Homer,” “a little taller than Homer

if anything,” the greatest woman poet who had ever lived” (pg.11). As with the majority of the

early female poets, her influences and role models were male poets. “I look everywhere for

grandmothers and see none,” she wrote in 1845 of her literary journey.

She “escaped the traps of gender” to become the first Victorian poet and the first major

female poet in England. She was the oldest of the Victorian poets and though much of her

writings resembled theirs in many ways, her writings came before theirs did. As for being a
female poet, Barrett did not have issues with self confidence, hope, or courage to pursue her

hopes and dreams. She despised “sentimental young women and the cultivated weakness and

passivity that seemed to be woman’s lot[in life].” Her difficulties came in finding her place with

relation to her poems, her place within them, and “in the imaginative universe of poetic

fiction.”(Mermin) This might not have been such a struggle had she been able to find her

“grandmothers” as her brother was able to find his fathers.

Barrett saw “Aurora Leigh” as her “magnum opus.” Though it was published in 1856, it

took her eight years to write. It was her “novel poem” consisting of more than 400 pages, 10,000

lines and nine books of “blank verse.” (Radley). She saw this as an attempt to “destroy all the

shibboleths once so dear to the heart of contemporary Victorians.” (Radley). Edward Fitzgerald

said of Elizabeth Barrett; “Mrs. Browning’s death is rather a relief to me, I must say: no more

Aurora Leighs, thank God! A woman of real Genius1, I know: but what is the upshot of it all?

She and her Sex had better mind the Kitchen and their children; and perhaps the Poor: except in

such things as little Novels, they only devote themselves to what Men do much better, leaving

that which Men do worse or not at all.” This was however, his private opinion and was published

only after his own death. Fitzgerald was not the only one to have a less than rosy opinion of

“Aurora Leigh” Dublin University magazine found “Aurora Leigh splendid, but unfit for women

to read” […”The function of woman is – not to write, not to act, not to be famous – but to

love”..]. (Mermin). Of course with comments like these, it seemed as though the University

magazine was belittling all female authors of the time, and in fact any female who attempted to

step outside the expected feminine role of the time.

Even though Emily Dickinson was born a short 24 years after Barrett on December 10,

1830, she seemed to have opportunities far beyond what was acceptable in Barrett’s life.
Dickinson attended Amherst Academy in 1840 that had only recently been opened up to girls.

She continued her studies for seven years before switching to Mount Holyoke Female Seminary.

Daniel Fisk, one of her teachers at Amherst described Dickinson as “very bright, but rather

delicate and frail looking.” She impressed him as “an excellent scholar of exemplary deportment

and somewhat shy and nervous.” (McQuade). However, even though her frame might have

appeared frail, her constitution was any but weak. During a Christmas program in 1847, the

headmistress of Mount Holyoke asked everyone in the audience who wanted to be a Christian to

stand. An observer recalled that Dickinson remained seated while the rest of the student body

excitedly jumped to their feet. (McQuade).

After Dickinson left school in 1948 and returned home, she pursued a sometimes social

existence in public. However, she gradually withdrew until very few outside her family regularly

caught a glimpse of her. Even well-to-do visitors were known to have been turned away if the

timing was not right. Neighborhood children would often receive baskets filled with ginger bread

that Dickinson would lower in baskets from her window. If Dickinson had not chose to keep

herself secluded as she did, the conventional roles of life would have meant getting married, the

“dangerous matter of childbirth,” and domestic responsibilities that would have put a stop to her

writing life. We would not have Emily Dickinson to read now had she succumbed to the gender

roles and expectations placed on the women of her time.

Not only would the womanly responsibilities have had an impact on – or even ceased her

writings, Dickinson would have also faced with the “linguistic conventions” of the day. Had she

chosen to be an active part of society, these conventions would have imposed an extreme if not

stifling demand on someone such as Dickinson. Her genius was her use of language, grammar,

diction, and rhythm which did not adhere to these socially acceptable conventions.
 The wheels of changes often turn slowly, but they turn. Gwendolyn Brooks was born on

June 7, 1917. At age seven, Brooks presented her mother with a two-line poem she had written.

Her mother, Keziah, showed unbridled excitement in her achievement and told her she would

“be the lady Paul Laurance Dunbar!” (Brooks) Unlike some of her predecessors her family was

supportive and encouraged her education, writing, creativity, and reading of poetry.

By age 11, Brooks was keeping poetry notebooks with titles and lists of emotions she was

experiencing. She also began associating her emotions with colors. At age 13, she started to

experiment with sonnets, ballads, free verse and other poetic forms she had read. She wrote at

least one poem each day in her notebooks. Her first published poem, “Eventide” was published

in the American Childhood magazine in her thirteenth year.

Despite the changing times, the support of her family and her own tenacity, Brooks

experienced her share of gender role blues. While her husband worked, she worked as a free-

lance writer. However, her neighbors saw her as a “lazy housewife” who did nothing while her

husband worked. More than gender bias, Brooks experienced more of a race bias or

discrimination. Even among African Americans, her darker skin seemed to be something she

found difficulty enduring. She wanted black Americans to take pride in themselves, love

themselves, and see the beauty in their own race. These values were something she expressed

openly in her poetry. In her poem “The Life of Lincoln West,” Brooks’ use of the mother’s

“high-piled her pretty dyed hair” (21) brings her frustration across loud and clear.

She incorporated what she saw in her everyday life into her poetry. In “The Streets of

Bronzville,” she focuses solely on tenement life and how this hard life affected the people who

lived there. She calls them the “living dead” (Nash) because they no longer live life, they just

exist day to day. In the 1960’s her writing became more and more political in tone. She
continued to create portraits of African American life and shares glimpses of Bronzville

residents. “The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till”, deals with the lynching of 14 year

old Emmett Till. He was a boy from Chicago visiting family in Tallahatchie Mississippi where

race relations were very different from his home town. The Jim Crow laws were alive and well in

the south and the U.S. Supreme Court had just ordered the southern states to integrate black

students into their schools. Till, on a dare, went into the market he and his cousins were sitting in

front of and spoke to the woman working there. The poem is written about Till’s mother, Mamie

Bradley. She had to deal with her son being shot, beaten and drowned as well as the knowledge

that her son had endured something so awful. The overwhelming sadness and grieving comes

across even this very short poem. She also writes about the anguish of Carol Bryant, the woman

who was working in the store that day and wife to the man who led the lynching in “A

Bronzville Woman Burns Bacon.” She truly had a gift for placing herself in someone else’s

shoes and expressing their feelings through her pen.

In the mid 1960’s, Brooks was invited to read some of her work at the Black Writer’s

Conference at Fisk University. While the audience’s response to her work was far less than she

had hoped for, the experience served as a catalyst for her to get involved to make a difference in

the lives of black Americans. She was surprised and inspired by the conviction of the other

speakers at the conference. Brooks said, “Some blacks seem to hate themselves. They straighten

their hair, bleach their skin, narrow their noses, [and] wear green contact lenses. In doing this,

they announce: Nature is inferior to Caucasian glory.”(Poet From Chicago). Her strong feelings

about how blacks were hating themselves pushed her toward becoming involved in Chicago’s

Black Arts Movement and the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC). (Nash). She
wanted to be a positive influence on blacks and make a difference in how blacks viewed and

valued themselves..

In May of 1950, Brooks received a letter telling her that she had won the Pulitzer Prize of

poetry for Annie Allen. She was the first African American to receive this honor. This is just one

in a long list of honors she received in her lifetime: Mademoiselle Merit Award, American

Academy of Letters Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, Eunice Tietjens Memorial Award,

Robert F. Ferguson Memorial Award, Thormod Monsen Literature Award, National Women’s

Hall of Fame, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award, Shelley Memorial

Award, Ainsfield-Wolf Award, Kuumba Liberation Award, Poetry Society of America Frost

Medal, National Endowment for Humanities Jefferson Lectureship, Honorary Degrees from

fourteen different universities, and many more honors from magazines and organizations for her

accomplishments.

Adrienne Rich was born on May 16, 1929. She and her younger sister were home

schooled by their mother for several years. Rich’s father treated her as a son and gave her access

to his library. In 1951 when she graduated from college, she entered and won the Yale Younger

Poets Award, and had her first book published. W.H. Auden praised Rich’s first book for its

“modesty [and] respect for [her] elders.” (Keyes). She used very conventional forms in her

poetry and regularly imitated the male poets she had studied throughout her life to include Auden

himself. Because of her perception that literature was written by men, her early poems often took

on a masculine persona.

As she studied more female poets, she was able to write with more authority in her own

identity as a woman. In 1964 Rich wrote, “I am in Danger, Sir” about Emily Dickinson. This was

part of her transformation from masculine poetry to a more feminine, artistic identity. Her poems
became increasingly unconventional in content and concept often talking about the “terrible

sacrifice of womanly power and imagination in a traditional marriage.” (Keyes). What

differentiated her work from female writers before her was her ability to use poetry to speak with

a “public voice.” Beyond feminism, “Rich spoke poetry truth and unabashedly allies that truth

with politics.” (Keyes).

Rich encouraged women to strive for more in their lives and become more than they

were. In the years following college, Rich settled into her new roles as wife and mother. She

found these identities counter productive to her artistic life. In her essays “When We Dead

Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision” and “Woman Born: Motherhood as an Experience and

Institution”, Rich explores how the roles of mother and artist often conflicted. “Being a mother,”

Rich says, “requires a holding back, a putting aside of that imaginative activity.” (Keyes). To be

a mother required one to nurture children and be grounded in order to teach them, and yet her

role as an artist required imagination to flow freely.

Rich often wrote about causes she believed in from the liberation of women to the

Vietnam War. Her poem “Planetarium” was written in honor of Caroline Herschel, a female

astronomer who discovered eight comets in her 98 years of life. She also uses herself and

Herschel in context of other women in history who tried to express themselves and were labeled

as deviants, or witches and burned to death. The burning of witches “she views as an obscene

misperception.” (Keyes) Many times Rich wrote about physical accomplishments that she was

not able to perform herself. She was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis in the early 1950’s.

Her words were able to take her places her body could not.

As she aged, Rich’s poems became more political in nature and more historical in

content. Adreinne Rich is not easy to just pick up and read. She expects us, as the readers, to
know as much as she does about her subjects, and to respect the writers that are important to her

and her work. She often includes notations in her work to dictate what writer she is referring to

in her poems. In her poem “Fox”, Rich is very difficult to keep up with unless you have followed

her works throughout her writing career. She expects a reader to know her and to know what’s

important to her. In “Twilight”, even the well read Rich fan must employ her notes to fully

understand the poem.

Throughout her life Rich has received several awards for her work: the National Book

Award, the Ruth Lilly Prize, the Frost Silver Medal of the Poetry Society of America, the

Dorthea Tanning Prize, the Lambda Book Award in Lesbian Poetry, (McQuade 424), the

Bollingen Prize, the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the Academy of American Poets

Fellowship, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the Academy's Wallace Stevens Award for

outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry, and a MacArthur Fellowship; she is also a

former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. (Academy of American Poets).

In 1997, she refused the National Medal of Arts, stating that "I could not accept such an

award from President Clinton or this White House because the very meaning of art, as I

understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration." She went

on to say: "[Art] means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which

holds it hostage." (Academy).

Rich is not the only amazing female poet whose work is a complex collection of topics,

ideas, and muses. Sylvia Plath wrote about such taboo topics as mental illness and her own

breakdown. The loss of her father at age 8 left mental and emotional scars that never seemed to

heal even with professional help. Her poem “Daddy” has been called “illogical, surreal and

untrue as to the fact.” (Bernard). However, the parallels of the progression of diabetes as a
disease and the events leading up to her fathers death have far too much in common for it not to

be true, or at least based in truth. Her reference to dying and getting back to him fits with her

attempted suicide after receiving electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) after only one session with a

psychiatrist. The ECT was not administered properly and resulted in pain and terror for Plath.

This would not be Plath’s last attempt at suicide.

She had many poems that explored what was going on inside of her and the struggles she

underwent with her own identity, oppression, her frustrations with family, marriage and the

search for love. In 1962, Plath and her husband, Ted Hughs, parted after she found about his

affair with the wife of a young Canadian poet. Her poems often used “vivid imagery and bigger

than life circumstances.” (Gale). In her work “Areil”, the increasing anger and despair were

starting to become more outwardly apparent.

On February 11, 1963, Plath finally succeeded in joining her father. She committed

suicide at her flat in London by preparing the kitchen to contain the gas fumes so her children

would not be hurt, taking a bottle sleeping pills and putting her head in the gas oven.. She

produced works at a feverish pace in the time leading up to her death and in 1982 Plath was

awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for her work.

Her estate was overseen by her sister-in-law, Olwyn Hughs which “seemed to be an

interesting choice. Plath had on more than on occasion written about her dislike for her sister-in-

law and that those feelings were mutual.” (McQuade 87). Bernard’s essay is on the posthumous

happenings of Plath’s work and the biographies written about her. Her husband allowed the

publication of her journals, but only after he had personally edited them. There are lines taken

out of the originals that would have surely shown a very different picture of an event, but with

the omissions it made Plath look more unstable than perhaps she was. “Bitter Fame” is a
biological representation approved by the Plath estate but interestingly, it builds a case against

Plath by accentuating her bad behavior. (87) In order to not violate copyright laws, any writings

about Plath that quote more than a line or two of her work must be submitted to the estate for

prior approval. (McQuade 89).

Similar to Plath, Dickinson’s family published a large volume of work after her death in

1886. But unlike Plath, her work was not edited and blacked out by her estate. In her essay,

“Vesuvius at Home: the Power of Emily Dickinson,” Adrienne Rich points out that not everyone

was a fan of Dickinson’s writing style.

John Crowe Ransom, arguing for the editing and standardization of Dickinson’s

punctuation and typography, calls her ‘a little home-keeping person’ who, ‘while she had

a proper notion of the final destiny of her poems …was not one of those poets who had

advanced to the later stage of operations where manuscripts are prepared for the printer,

and the poet’s diction has to make concession to the publisher’s style book.’ Rich

concludes this is Ransom’s way of saying that “in short, Emily Dickenson did not wholly

know her trade and believes a ‘publishers style-book’ to have the last word on poetic

diction.” (McQuade).

In her lifetime, Dickinson published only seven of her works. However, after her death her sister

found more one thousand poems and letters. Dickinson had organized her work into books and

bound them with darning thread.

Susan Dickinson her sister-in-law wrote her obituary for the Springfield “Daily

Republican.” “Very few in the village, except among older inhabitants, knew Miss Emily

personally, although the facts of her seclusion and her intellectual brilliancy were familiar

Amherst traditions.” Dickinson herself cultivated her legend, not only by withdrawing but by
doing so in theatrical fashion. “Her studied effort at self-characterization, even after her

secession, left potent word of her in wake as the woman in white who tended flowers, baked

bread, cosseted children and fashioned words into unusual artifacts.”(McQuade). While it seems

as an impossible task to do justice to Dickinson’s 1789 poems and letters, numerous critics have

tried and many more are still working on it.

Without these literary grandmothers, female literary artists of today would not be where

they are. It is almost inconceivable to think about having to be disguised as a boy to go to school,

or to be denied the opportunity to read and learn because it was not considered to be appropriate

for their societal position. While this is a very, very small example of the trailblazers that paved

the way for the rest of us, they are some of the most influential and interesting female poets. It

makes one wonder what literary world for women would be like today without Sor Juana Ines de

la Cruz hiding in her family’s hacienda with her grandfather’s books, Emily Dickinson’s

decision not to marry but to write instead, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Aurora Leigh”, or

Gwendolyn Brooks’ tenacity and strength of conviction . Would women today still have the

opportunity to go to school now if these women had not defied tradition? Would Adreinne Rich

have been able to write so openly about feminism and lesbianism? What will tomorrow bring for

us? What new frontiers will our daughters and granddaughters conquer? Will they look at what

we have done and realize without the sacrifices and strength in character of those before them,

they too, would not have the opportunities they will have? There are so many questions as we

head into our own future. But if the past is any indication, the future for women in literature will

be ever-changing and full of wonderful new works of art.

 Works Cited

Academy of American Poets. “Adreinne Rich.” Poets.org From the Academy of American Poets.

Academy of American Poets, n.d.. Web. 25 Oct. 2010.

Brooks, Gwendolyn. The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks. Ed. Elizabeth Alexander. New York:

Library of America, 2005. Print.

--- "Gwendolyn Brooks: Poet from Chicago." Gwendolyn Brooks: Poet from Chicago (2003): 8-

31. Literary Reference Center. EBSCO. Web. 12 Oct. 2010.

"Plath, Sylvia." Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of American Literature L–Q vol. 3. 2009. Web,

14 Oct. 2010.

Keyes, Claire. “Rich, Adrienne.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. 2004. Web.

12 Oct. 2010.

Mermin, Dorothy, Elizabeth Barrett Browning The Origins of New Poetry. University of

Chicago Press, 1989. Print.

McQuade, Molly, "Dickinson, Emily." The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. 2004.

Web 14 Oct. 2010.

McQuade, Molly, “By Herself Women Reclaim Poetry”, St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2000.

Print. Essays used “My Plath Problem”, April Bernard “Vesuvius at Home: the Power of

Emily Dickinson”, Adrienne Rich

Nash, William, "Brooks, Gwendolyn." The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. 2004.

Web. 20 Oct. 2010

O’Rielly, Caitriona, "Plath, Sylvia." The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. 2004.

Web. 20 Oct. 2010

Radley, Virginia “Elizabeth Barrett Browning”, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1972. Print.