Godiva's Ride: Women of Letters in England, 1830--1880

Front Cover
Indiana University Press, 1993 M09 22 - 181 pages

"Students and teachers of Victorian women's careers will be grateful for [Mermin's] intelligent and equable guidance as they negotiate the paradoxes of Godiva's Ride." -- Modern Philology

"This brief study should be enormously helpful to students seeking an introduction to feminist approaches to Victorian writers." -- Choice

"Mermin's fine book is a work of synthesis that moves across many genres of women's writing... and touches on neglected writers of the period... as well as on the canonized few." -- American Historical Review

"Godiva's Ride is a stimulating and enjoyable study of an exceptionally rich subject... " -- Victorian Periodicals Review

"Accessible, original, and gracefully written, Godiva's Ride is likely to be as engrossing for the general reader as for the expert." -- Victorian Studies

Describes the first great age of women's writing in England. Mermin discusses how women were encouraged to become writers, how they were discouraged and hindered, and what they wrote. The many women entering the mainstream of English literature in this era included the Brontës, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Margaret Oliphant, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Harriet Martineau.

From inside the book

 

Selected pages

Contents

Entering the Literary Market
3
Bibliography
147
Conclusion
162
141
175
Copyright

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Godiva's Ride: Women of Letters in England, 1830-1880
Dorothy Mermin
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ambition Angria Anna Jameson artist Augusta Webster authority Autobiography Barrett Browning Barrett Browning's beauty brother Byron career Carlyle century characters Charlotte Brontë Chicago Press Christina Rossetti culture Daniel Deronda Dante Gabriel daughter desire Dinah Elizabeth Barrett Elizabeth Gaskell Emily Emily Brontë England English Essays experience fame father feelings female feminine feminist fiction Gaskell Gaskell's gender George Eliot girls Goblin Market Godiva Harriet Martineau Harvard Univ heroine Hetty imagination Ingelow intellectual Jane Eyre Jean Ingelow John Lady Letters literary literature lives London Lucy male Margaret Margaret Oliphant marriage married Mary Barton Mary Somerville masculine moral mother narrative Nineteenth-Century novels Oliphant Oxford Univ plot poems poetic poetry political prose published religion religious Review Romola Sara Coleridge sexual sister social story Tennyson tion tradition Trollope verse Victorian vision vols William Michael Rossetti woman women poets women writers writing wrote York young

Popular passages

Page 133 - That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind...‎
Appears in 632 books from 1857-2008
Page 69 - WHEN I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me ; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree : Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet ; And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget. I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain ; I shall not hear the nightingale Sing on, as if in pain ; And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise nor set, Haply I may remember, And haply may forget.‎
Appears in 523 books from 1864-2008
Page 63 - But, first, a hush of peace — a soundless calm descends ; The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends ; Mute music soothes my breast — unuttered harmony, That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to me.‎
Appears in 143 books from 1846-2007
Page 107 - Let your women keep silence in the churches : for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.‎
Appears in 997 books from 1717-2008
Page 36 - Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel, made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions ; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo ! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun.‎
Appears in 91 books from 1873-2008
Page 118 - But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.‎
Appears in 860 books from 1694-2008
Page 64 - Too late for love, too late for joy, Too late, too late! You loitered on the road too long, You trifled at the gate: The enchanted dove upon her branch Died without a mate; The enchanted princess in her tower Slept, died, behind the grate; Her heart was starving all this while You made it wait.‎
Appears in 113 books from 1863-2007
Page 65 - To bear a gift for mortals, old or young: And, as I mused it in his antique tongue, I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware...‎
Appears in 169 books from 1844-2007
Page 15 - Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation.‎
Appears in 278 books from 1849-2008

References to this book

About the author (1993)

DOROTHY MERMIN, Professor of English at Cornell University, is the author of Elizabeth Barrett Browning: The Origins of a New Poetry and The Audience in the Poem: Five Victorian Poets.

Bibliographic information

TitleGodiva's Ride: Women of Letters in England, 1830--1880
Godiva's Ride
Women of Letters
AuthorDorothy Mermin
PublisherIndiana University Press, 1993
ISBN0253116104, 9780253116109
Length181 pages
  
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