Looking for grandmothers: working-class women poets

Abstract

It is only in recent years that the poems of working-class women poets writing in the nineteenth century have received the attention that they deserve. Marginalised by their class and gender status, the literary and cultural amnesia surrounding the contributions of working-class women to literature and history has concealed a diverse range of poetry that defies traditional assumptions about “women's ” poetry. Excluded from cultural and social history, working-class women poets construct “herstory”, finding inspiration in the orally transmitted tales of mothers and grandmothers or looking at the female victims of history from “above”. Deprived of positive role models in literature and history, poets such as Janet Hamilton identify the courage and conviction of their own female communities, while Ruth Wills, Marianne Farningham, and Millicent Langton celebrate the lives of history's female martyrs. In looking to the past, these women poets refigure the present in enabling terms and break the silence surrounding them.