Louisa Stuart Costello and Women's War Poetry

Abstract

bicentenary of the publication of Anna Barbauld's Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812) is an appropriate time to consider women's war poetry the early years of the 19th century. In Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, Bad auld attacks the consequences of British empire-building and the Tory establishment that propelled it. criticism Barbauld faced on publication of the poem focused on the impropriety of a woman's voicing political dissent and writing political satire. This critical reception is instructive, Barbauld (who had after all 1793 published an antiwar prose treatise--Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation [...]) was widely respected as an educator, critic, intellectual and (Behrendt [2009]70). In the unstable social and political environment of the early 19th century, women poets who shared Barbauld's concerns, but who could not afford--either financially or reputation--to endure the same criticism, manipulated the presentation of their war poetry to safeguard publication and commercial success, as the writing of Louisa Stuart Costello (1799-1870) demonstrates. Four years before Barbauld published Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, Amelia Opie had produced The Warrior's Return, a poem with a similar message, which she criticised the bloodiness of the wars with France, and die political vanity that had led Britain to enter unnecessary wars. reviews Opie's but she avoided the censure that Barbauld suffered by using the historical distancing of medievalism. medieval screen to her work is thin and the contemporary references obvious, but it provides the safeguard that the poem is a romance about the Crusades, a sentimental work of the type going out of fashion, which was one of the main criticisms made by unfavourable reviewers. Beneath this surface is an anti-war polemic: Sir Walter returns from the Crusades to die Holy Land after fifteen years away at war to the grotesque discovery that he had unwittingly killed his own son a battle for disputed honours over a fallen Saracen chief. In 1808, when the poem was written, the wars with France had been raging for fifteen years, the age of Sir Walter's son, the son he kills through Opie's italics reinforce this emphasis, He fought like a hero! but vainly he fought. message is clear, that political vanity has caused Britain to enter many unnecessary wars and sacrifice her own sons. Opie's Lines on die Opening of a Spring Campaign, from the same volume but written about the contemporary war, also uses this play on in vain and vanity: here the speaker asks Spring to stay away as it will come in vain amid the fighting and the bloodshed, and not to waste itself on the war-torn world. Repetition of in vain is also a feature of lines 11-38 of Eighteen hundred and Eleven, the frantic man at strife is Bounteous vain, the proud mother is Fruitful vain, nature works in vain against Famine, Disease and Rapine. Opie's use of historical distance meant that, while critical reception was unenthusiastic, she avoided the response Barbauld endured four years later. In doing so she had set a precedent for literary descendents throughout the century. Other women turned to Opie's example the post. Eighteen Hundred and Eleven backlash, and used medievalism to question the wars, and women's political roles. Felicia Hemans, like Opie, demonstrates a particular interest the position of women war, that across cultures and through history women have been the victims of men's power struggles and battles, as she explores most obviously Records of Woman (1828). young poet was fascinated by the war: yet, beneath the apparent simplicity of many of her patriotic eulogies, Hemans's work often manifests the same tension that was apparent public opinion of the day, between the enthusiasm that made iconic heroes of Nelson and Wellington, and the concern about the wars that had dominated the first quarter of the century. …