![]() ![]() Her first anti-feminist article, “The Girl of the Period”, was published in 1868, recalling nostalgically when ” ‘a fair young English girl,’ meant the ideal of womanhood to us, at least, of home birth and breeding…It meant a girl who could be trusted alone if need be, because of the innate purity and dignity of her nature, but who was neither bold in bearing nor masculine in mind”. Eliza’s enterprise and ambition might suggest a proto “new woman” figure, of the mid Victorian period, as she sought, and won, personal and career freedoms for herself in the predominantly male world of journalism and publishing.Īs she grew older, however, she launched severe attacks on women, especially on younger women, whom she deemed to transgress gender boundaries. She even worked as a foreign correspondent in Paris for three years. – no mean feat for a woman far from home, and with no formal education. She took lodgings, worked hard, made acquaintances, publishing her first novel in 1847, and began to establish herself as a journalist. An intriguing figure, she embodies in her life and works, many contradictions about gender and sexuality.Įliza herself, was a vigorous young woman, leaving her not altogether happy home in Crosthwaite, to shape an independent career in London. ![]() ![]() ![]() In my previous post, I introduced the Victorian author, Eliza Lynn Linton, who spent her early years in Keswick, Cumberland. From the preface to Vol 1 of Eliza Lynn Linton’s novel-cum-autobiography, The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland, 1st ed, 1885. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |