Subject: missionary masculinity

From: "Reynold Webster" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 17:19:56 +0530

It wascertainly the state of mind most favourable to poetry that there hasever existed. Yet by some strange force they were allcompelled when they wrote, to write novels.
But all the older forms of literature were hardened and set by thetime she became a writer. She will write of herself where she should write of hercharacters. That, perhaps, wasthe chief miracle about it.
But these are difficult questions which lie in the twilight of thefuture. Still it would beeasier to write prose and fiction there than to write poetry or a play. Florence Nightingale shrieked aloud in her agony. How could she help but dieyoung, cramped and thwarted?
Remember the words he had cut on his tombstone.
It is another feather, perhapsthe finest, in their caps.
Their lives also were written, and their letterswere printed after their deaths.
It was impossible for a woman to go about alone. And this shape too has been made by men out of their own needsfor their own uses.
It is a strange lack in the sex which is in other things moreprimitive and more materialistic. Both in Franceand in England the women poets precede the women novelists. Only Jane Austen did it and Emily Brontë. Peoples feelings were impressed on her; personalrelations were always before her eyes. But you have convinced me that so it is, soit happens. I asked, remembering, I suppose, thatdinner of prunes and custard.
Her gift is all grown about with weedsand bound with briars. Jane Austen wrote like that to the endof her days. Her gift and her circumstances matched eachother completely. Still it would beeasier to write prose and fiction there than to write poetry or a play.
Evidently the crazyDuchess became a bogey to frighten clever girls with. One could have sworn that she had the makings of a writer in her.