Some ideas in response -- Tell Me Your Secrets

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Subject: Some ideas in response

Author:
Heather

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Date Posted: 06:20:59 03/27/01 Tue
In reply to: Holly 's message, "You're welcome - and a question" on 19:01:31 03/26/01 Mon

Strangely, a lot of the old English literature has strong female characters (I'm thinking mostly of Chaucer here). The sonnets of the Renaissance (Spenser, Sidney, Donne, etc) are very vague and rhetorical with respect to characterization of the female love object. Interestingly, Mary Wroth was writing not long after the big guys and she reversed the pattern--a female lover and a vague male love object--but she was still bound by convention and got around the "inappropriateness" of representing her desire by presenting the active character in the form of a dream (in Pamphilia to Amphilanthus).

I am writing an essay on Virginia Woolf's _A Room of One's Own_ and was thinking primarily of her ideas when I wrote that poem. Woolf believes that men's writing is far superior to women's but that it is self-centred and blocks the rest of the world with its sense of "I". On the other hand, women's writing lacks clarity and flow, abounding in self-consciousness. Only when one writes with an "androgynous mind" can one avoid these faults, she thinks.

I very much agree with you--there are some strong female characters written by men. I adore Shakespeare, Donne and especially Milton and much of what they have written holds true for me, gender bias or no. ;)

I have a feeling that nothing I've just said has answered your question. *g* Sorry.

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Replies:

Subject	Author	Date
Oh, but you did -	Holly	17:08:39 04/10/01 Tue