Eighteenth-Century Women’s Poetry and the Feminine Accomplishment

Abstract

Abstract This essay posits that the production and reception of eighteenth-century women’s poetry was shaped by a pervasive cultural paradigm: the concept of the ‘feminine accomplishment’. As the aspirational middling sort began to demarcate certain pastimes as signifiers of polite femininity, poetry was increasingly promoted alongside dancing, drawing, and singing as a genteel accomplishment for young women. However, this association was never secure: poetry always occupied an ambiguous position within accomplishment discourse, and the implications of its inclusion (or exclusion) were regularly contested. In the first investigation of this phenomenon, this essay draws upon early eighteenth-century conduct literature and biographical accounts to explore how women’s poetry was encouraged by some as an intellectually stimulating recreation (and a source of familial and national pride)—but was disparaged by others as a pretentious, frivolous, and potentially dangerous ornamentation. The experiences of women writers including Jane Brereton, Laetitia Pilkington, and Martha Fowke reveal that, although an aura of accomplished amateurism could authorize their poetic production (in both manuscript and print), it could also lead to their compositions being patronized and dismissed. The liminal nature of poetry’s ‘accomplished’ status would make women’s verse composition a locus for broader contemporary debates surrounding gender, class, education, and the professionalization of writing.