Introduction. 3 I chaptergilman's story

CONTENT
INTRODUCTION.3
I CHAPTERGilman's story
1.1 Feminist author and social reformer Charlotte Perkins Gilman? 4
1.2The methods used in the story 13
II CHAPTER The struggle of women writers in late 19th century America
2.1 WOMEN'S LITERATURE IN THE 19TH CENTURY: AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS ? 21
2.2 Works written by women against injustice in society
CONCLUSION39
REFERENCES....40

INTRODUCTION

Like the minority writer, the female writer exists within an inescapable condition of identity which distances her from the mainstream of the culture and forces her either to stress her separation from the masculine literary tradition or to pursue her resemblance to it.
Lynn Sukenick (In: Miller 1985, 356)
Could madness have been a means of liberation for 19th century female writers? Goodman et al (1996, 110) raise this legitimate question while leaving open the question of whether or not the writer herself is considered mad or if she is writing about madness. No matter which approach one chooses, the question remains why women of this century should apply such drastic methods at all. Why would madness be considered a means of liberation for female writers?
In this paper I will explore the reasons why 19th
century women may more likely have become mad than men in the same time period. I will discuss the issue of mad female writers as well as the appearance of madness in their texts, and finally focus on strategies that female writers applied in order to be heard (or read) in a male dominated literary environment.
During the mid-19th century a kind of a fascination about lunacy appeared among English psychiatrists and physicians. Famous English psychiatrists were almost proud of the high number of mad people in England and their modern lunatic asylums. But the reasons why so many men and especially women were sent to those asylums are tragic when considered from todays The Writing Madwoman - Challenges for 19th Century Women Writers perspective: Moral insanity was one of them, meaning a deviance from socially accepted behavior. Such behavior could have meant for women: the refusal to marry, the request to work in a male dominated career, masturbation or any other form of non-feminine acts or longings. But who decided which behavior could be declared as socially accepted? In the male dominated society of 19th century England, men made those decisions.

I CHAPTERGilman's story

1.1Feminist author and social reformer Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Feminist author and social reformer Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860C1935) was well known in her day, then largely forgotten until modern scholars generated renewed interest in the woman who is perhaps best known as the author of the short story?The Yellow Wallpaper?(1892). The acquisition, made by the RBSCP in 2017 with the support of the?Friends of the University of Rochester Libraries, consists of 52 personal letters from the 1880s. Around the same time, the RBSCP also purchased an inscribed first edition of?The Yellow Wallpaper.

Among those celebrating the acquisition is?Brianna Theobald, an assistant professor of history at Rochester, who specializes in American womens history and is planning a course on Gilman.
Gilmans writing is significant?for the bold utopian futures she imagined, says Theobald, referencing other famous works by Gilman, such as?Women and Economics?(1898) and?Herland?(1915).?She advocated womens economic independence and believed that womens maternal instincts, once liberated from the confines of the nuclear household, could transform the world.
Jessica Lacher-Feldman, assistant dean and Joseph N. Lambert and Harold B. Schleifer Director of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, sought the Gilman collection to add to the RBSCPs already rich holdings in related areas.
Because of our strengths in womens history and womens rights, her letters seemed like a natural addition to the collection, says Lacher-Feldman.
Gilman was part of a well-known literary and suffragist family. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, the original Charlotte Anna Perkins was the daughter of Frederick Beecher Perkins and Mary Anna Fitch Westcott.
We acquired the letters not long after getting the?Isabella Beecher Hooker papers. Charlotte happens to be Isabellas grand-niece, the granddaughter of her sister, Mary, says Lacher-Feldman.It was Isabella who paid for Charlottes college education.
Gilman had one brother, Thomas Adie, two years her senior. The family moved frequently after Frederick Perkins abandoned them in 1867. After her father left, her aunts played a critical role in helping the family.
Growing up in relative poverty, she had an irregular formal education, but developed her artistic skills at the Rhode Island School of Design where she took classes for a year. Afterwards Gilman found sporadic employment as an art teacher and illustrator.
Arguably her most famous work,?The Yellow Wallpaper?is told by a female first-person narrator who is suffering from postpartum depression. The central character is longing to write and return to her work but is told by her physician husband, as well as other men around her, to abandon all creative undertakings, and instead rest at a rented colonial mansion, mostly inside a nursery with peeling yellow wallpaper.
What adds to the eeriness of Gilmans storytelling is the backdrop against which she wrote. In 1885, shortly after the birth of her only child, Katherine, Gilman herself sank into whats now recognized as a postpartum psychosis, a fact she alludes to in the inscription of the Rochester first edition: Being a warning to those who have the care of?neurasthenics,?a term used as early as 1829 to describe those suffering from a condition that manifests itself in anxiety, fatigue, high blood pressure, heart palpitations, and depressed mood.
We know many of the emotional details of her despair through the personal letters in the recent acquisition, the bulk of which are made up of Gilmans correspondence to her close friend, Martha Allen Luther Lane, during the period of 1882 to 1889. In her letters to Lane, often spaced barely two days apart, she minces no words when it comes to her work, marriage, motherhood, and depression.
Her descriptions of her experience with depression are so raw, succinct, and vivid, says?Andrea Reithmayr, special collections librarian for research and collections, who processed the Gilman acquisition.
In 1884, Gilman married her first husband, the artist Charles Walter Stetson. The pair separated three years after Katherines birth and divorced in 1894.
After Katherines birth Gilman writes in a letter to Lane on?July 8 and 15, 1885, that shes very illtempered at times; and almost always morose and melancholy. My very voice changes, and I feel as if I had little option in saying or not saying things. She assesses her own mental descent as drifting open eyed into insanity.
Sometimes Gilman drew scenes, people, and items in her letters. For instance, she sketched a sapling tied down in her?August 28, 1895?letter to Lane, describing her feeling trapped in a marriage with an incompatible husband.
According to Reithmayr, the feminists writing cuts straight to the core of many womens struggles in the late 19th century.
Gilman is so clear that while the love of others is welcome and needed, so, too, is her?need?to work, says Reithmayr.?Gilman wrote to Lane on?August 22, 1885?that she asked her treating physician if he would give up his ambition when he tells Gilman to forgo writing and painting as part of her recovery process. (Ironically, today, people who suffer from depression are often advised by mental health experts?to keep a diary.)
No amount of love can keep me happy while I am hindered from my workWhen Dr. Knight spoke in the same way about my present duties and the importance thereof, I admitted all that he said and simply asked him if?he?would like to give up his business, his education, his ambition, etc. and do the same thing? Being an honest man he laughed and said no.
A rather different, giddy side to Gilman emerges in her?January 24, 1884 letter?to Lane in which she mentions recently published work.
My various poems are printed and if you want to buy a Womans Journal issue of Jan. 12th, you may have the proud joy of seeing my illustrious name therein.
The Universitys collection also contains 15 of Gilmans advertising trade cards, which she illustrated (unsigned) for several businesses in the Northeast, most notably for the maker of household soap, Kendall Manufacturing Co.
?
Reading her letters, ?you can seealmost hearsome of Gilmans spunk and self-deprecating humor.
Im trying to paint lots of cards for Xmas but I dont get on very fast. Well its vacation!, she tells Lane in a?July 21, 1884 letter, shortly after her marriage to Stetson. Housekeeping flourishes. I kin cook. My appetite fails not. But O my power of writing letters?does. I havent a word to say to you, dear, so Ill stop.
The letters have attracted the attention of researchers such as?Todd Gernes, who places them in the context of young womens literary culture in 19th-century America.
Rochesters collection greatly extends and enhances our understanding of how a close, literary friendship that lasted a lifetime provided emotional support and intellectual nourishment to two women of talent and ambition who, though very different in temperament and outlook, strove to engage the world around them in significant ways, says Gernes, an associate professor of history and American studies at Stonehill College in Massachusetts.
The rawness, intensity, and?dailiness?of the letters highlight her strength, vulnerability, and complexityin a word, her humanity.
The inscription inside Rochesters first addition of?The Yellow Wallpaper?alludes to Charlotte Perkins Gilmans postpartum depression.
1.2 The methods used in the story

Gilman created a world in many of her stories with a feminist point of view. Two of her narratives, "What Diantha Did", and?Herland, are good examples of Gilman focusing her work on how women are not just stay-at-home mothers they are expected to be; they are also people who have dreams, who are able to travel and work just as men do, and whose goals include a society where women are just as important as men. The world-building that is executed by Gilman, as well as the characters in these two stories and others, embody the change that was needed in the early 1900s in a way that is now commonly seen as feminism.

Gilman uses world-building in?Herland?to demonstrate the equality that she longed to see. The women of Herland are the providers. This makes them appear to be the dominant sex, taking over the gender roles that are typically given to men. Elizabeth Keyser notes, "In?Herland?the supposedly superior sex becomes the inferior or disadvantaged?..."?In this society, Gilman makes it to where women are focused on having leadership within the community, fulfilling roles that are stereotypically seen as being male roles, and running an entire community without the same attitudes that men have concerning their work and the community. However, the attitude men carried concerning women were degrading, especially by progressive women, like Gilman. Using?Herland, Gilman challenged this stereotype, and made the society of Herland a type of paradise. Gilman uses this story to confirm the stereotypically devalued qualities of women are valuable, show strength, and shatters traditional utopian structure for future works.?Essentially, Gilman creates Herland's society to have women hold all the power, showing more equality in this world, alluding to changes she wanted to see in her lifetime.
Gilman's feministic approach differs from?Herland?in "What Diantha Did". One character in this story, Diantha, breaks through the traditional expectation of women, showing Gilman's desires for what a woman would be able to do in real-life society. Throughout the story, Gilman portrays Diantha as a character who strikes through the image of businesses in the U.S., who challenges gender norms and roles, and who believed that women could provide the solution to the corruption in big business in society.?Gilman chooses to have Diantha choose a career that is stereotypically not one a woman would have because in doing so, she is showing that the salaries and wages of traditional women's jobs are unfair. Diantha's choice to run a business allows her to come out of the shadows and join society. Gilman's works, especially her work with "What Diantha Did", are a call for change, a battle cry that would cause panic in men and power in women.?Gilman used her work as a platform for a call to change, as a way to reach women and have them begin the movement toward freedom.
Gilman called herself a?humanist?and believed the domestic environment oppressed women through the patriarchal beliefs upheld by society.?Gilman embraced the theory of reform?Darwinism?and argued that Darwin's theories of evolution presented only the male as the given in the process of human evolution, thus overlooking the origins of the female brain in society that rationally chose the best suited mate that they could find.
Gilman argued that male aggressiveness and maternal roles for women were artificial and no longer necessary for survival in post-prehistoric times. She wrote, "There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver."
Her main argument was that sex and domestic economics went hand in hand; for a woman to survive, she was reliant on her sexual assets to please her husband so that he would financially support his family. From childhood, young girls are forced into a social constraint that prepares them for motherhood by the toys that are marketed to them and the clothes designed for them. She argued that there should be no difference in the clothes that little girls and boys wear, the toys they play with, or the activities they do, and described tomboys as perfect humans who ran around and used their bodies freely and healthily.
Gilman argued that women's contributions to civilization, throughout history, have been halted because of an?androcentric?culture. She believed that womankind was the underdeveloped half of humanity, and improvement was necessary to prevent the deterioration of the human race.?Gilman believed economic independence is the only thing that could really bring freedom for women and make them equal to men. In 1898 she published?Women and Economics, a theoretical treatise which argued, among other things, that women are subjugated by men, that motherhood should not preclude a woman from working outside the home, and that housekeeping, cooking, and child care, would be professionalized.?"The ideal woman," Gilman wrote, "was not only assigned a social role that locked her into her home, but she was also expected to like it, to be cheerful and gay, smiling and good-humored." When the sexual-economic relationship ceases to exist, life on the domestic front would certainly improve, as frustration in relationships often stems from the lack of social contact that the domestic wife has with the outside world.
Gilman became a spokesperson on topics such as women's perspectives on work, dress reform, and family. Housework, she argued, should be equally shared by men and women, and that at an early age women should be encouraged to be independent. In many of her major works, including "The Home" (1903),?Human Work?(1904), and?The Man-Made World?(1911), Gilman also advocated women working outside of the home.
Gilman argued that the home should be socially redefined. The home should shift from being an "economic entity" where a married couple live together because of the economic benefit or necessity, to a place where groups of men and groups of women can share in a "peaceful and permanent expression of personal life."
Gilman believed having a comfortable and healthy lifestyle should not be restricted to married couples; all humans need a home that provides these amenities. She suggested that a communal type of housing open to both males and females, consisting of rooms, rooms of suites and houses, should be constructed. This would allow individuals to live singly and still have companionship and the comforts of a home. Both males and females would be totally economically independent in these living arrangements allowing for marriage to occur without either the male or the female's economic status having to change.
The structural arrangement of the home is also redefined by Gilman. She removes the kitchen from the home, leaving rooms to be arranged and extended in any form and freeing women from the provision of meals in the home. The home would become a true personal expression of the individual living in it.
Ultimately the restructuring of the home and manner of living will allow individuals, especially women, to become an "integral part of the social structure, in close, direct, permanent connection with the needs and uses of society." That would be a dramatic change for women, who generally considered themselves restricted by family life built upon their economic dependence on men.
Perkins-Gilman married Charles Stetson in 1884, and less than a year later gave birth to their daughter Katharine. Already susceptible to depression, her symptoms were exacerbated by marriage and motherhood. A good proportion of her diary entries from the time she gave birth to her daughter until several years later describe the oncoming depression that she was to face.
On April 18, 1887, Gilman wrote in her diary that she was very sick with "some brain disease" which brought suffering that cannot be felt by anybody else, to the point that her "mind has given way".?To begin, the patient could not even leave her bed, read, write, sew, talk, or feed herself.
After nine weeks, Gilman was sent home with Mitchell's instructions, "Live as domestic a life as possible. Have your child with you all the time?... Lie down an hour after each meal. Have but two hours' intellectual life a day. And never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live." She tried for a few months to follow Mitchell's advice, but her depression deepened, and Gilman came perilously close to a full emotional collapse.Her remaining sanity was on the line and she began to display suicidal behavior that involved talk of pistols and chloroform, as recorded in her husband's diaries. By early summer the couple had decided that a divorce was necessary for her to regain sanity without affecting the lives of her husband and daughter.
During the summer of 1888, Charlotte and Katharine spent time in?Bristol, Rhode Island, away from Walter, and it was there where her depression began to lift. She writes of herself noticing positive changes in her attitude. She returned to Providence in September. She sold property that had been left to her in Connecticut, and went with a friend, Grace Channing, to Pasadena where the recovery of her depression can be seen through the transformation of her intellectual life.

"The Yellow Wallpaper"

In 1890, Gilman wrote her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper",?which is now the all-time best selling book of the?Feminist Press.?She wrote it on June 6 and 7, 1890, in her home of Pasadena, and it was printed a year and a half later in the January 1892 issue of?The New England Magazine.?Since its original printing, it has been anthologized in numerous collections of women's literature, American literature, and textbooks,?though not always in its original form. For instance, many textbooks omit the phrase "in marriage" from a very important line in the beginning of story: "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage." The reason for this omission is a mystery, as Gilman's views on marriage are made clear throughout the story.
The story is about a woman who suffers from mental illness after three months of being closeted in a room by her husband for the sake of her health. She becomes obsessed with the room's revolting yellow wallpaper. Gilman wrote this story to change people's minds about the role of women in society, illustrating how women's lack of autonomy is detrimental to their mental, emotional, and even physical wellbeing. This story was inspired by her treatment from her first husband.?The narrator in the story must do as her husband (who is also her doctor) demands, although the treatment he prescribes contrasts directly with what she truly needsmental stimulation and the freedom to escape the monotony of the room to which she is confined. "The Yellow Wallpaper" was essentially a response to the doctor (Dr.?Silas Weir Mitchell) who had tried to cure her of her depression through a "rest cure". She sent him a copy of the story.
Gilman's first book was?Art Gems for the Home and Fireside?(1888); however, it was her first volume of poetry,?In This Our World?(1893), a collection of satirical poems, that first brought her recognition. During the next two decades she gained much of her fame with lectures on women's issues, ethics, labor, human rights, and social reform.?Her lecture tours took her across the United States.?She often referred to these themes in her fiction.
In 1894C95 Gilman served as editor of the magazine?The Impress, a literary weekly that was published by the Pacific Coast Women's Press Association (formerly the?Bulletin). For the twenty weeks the magazine was printed, she was consumed in the satisfying accomplishment of contributing its poems, editorials, and other articles. The short-lived paper's printing came to an end as a result of a social bias against her lifestyle which included being an unconventional mother and a woman who had divorced a man. After a four-month-long lecture tour that ended in April 1897, Gilman began to think more deeply about sexual relationships and economics in American life, eventually completing the first draft of?Women and Economics?(1898). This book discussed the role of women in the home, arguing for changes in the practices of child-raising and housekeeping to alleviate pressures from women and potentially allow them to expand their work to the public sphere.?The book was published in the following year and propelled Gilman into the international spotlight.?In 1903, she addressed the International Congress of Women in Berlin. The next year, she toured in England, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and Hungary.
In 1903 she wrote one of her most critically acclaimed books,?The Home: Its Work and Influence, which expanded upon?Women and Economics, proposing that women are oppressed in their home and that the environment in which they live needs to be modified in order to be healthy for their mental states. In between traveling and writing, her career as a literary figure was secured.?From 1909 to 1916 Gilman single-handedly wrote and edited her own magazine,?The Forerunner, in which much of her fiction appeared. By presenting material in her magazine that would "stimulate thought", "arouse hope, courage and impatience", and "express ideas which need a special medium", she aimed to go against the mainstream media which was overly sensational.?Over seven years and two months the magazine produced eighty-six issues, each twenty eight pages long. The magazine had nearly 1,500 subscribers and featured such serialized works as "What Diantha Did" (1910),?The Crux?(1911),?Moving the Mountain?(1911), and?Herland. The?Forerunner?has been cited as being "perhaps the greatest literary accomplishment of her long career".?After its seven years, she wrote hundreds of articles that were submitted to the?Louisville Herald,?The Baltimore Sun, and the?Buffalo Evening News. Her autobiography,?The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, which she began to write in 1925, appeared posthumously in 1935.
II CHAPTER The struggle of women writers in late 19th century America
2.1 WOMEN'S LITERATURE IN THE 19TH CENTURY: AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS

In the following essay, Simson argues that the small amount of literary output available by nineteenth-century African-American women is deserving of scholarly attention.

As long ago as 1893 Dr. L. A. Scruggs in his book?Women of Distinction?(a work discussing noted Afro-American women) made the observation that it was "a painful experience to see how little is known of our great women and their works."1?This neglect is echoed in the words of contemporary scholars. Bert Lowenberg and Ruth Bogin in their recent work,?Black Women in 19th Century American Life,?commented: "If the black male's words, before the most recent period of ferment, were recorded only spasmodically, those of the black female were still less frequently set down on paper."2?In their introduction to?Sturdy Black Bridges,?an anthology containing works by and about Afro-American women writers, the editors state:

Only slight attention has been given to Black women in creative literature, thus evoking grave concerns among female artists and scholars. Recently a number of Black Anthologies and major critical works have been published. It is unfortunate, however, that in most cases, attention accorded Black women writers is sparse.3
This condition of neglect is particularly true of the works of nineteenth-century Afro-American women authors. Their autobiographies, poems, short stories, and novels are not only unread today, but they are virtually unheard of. This situation becomes doubly unfortunate and absurd when we consider the rather uniform inclusion in?American literature?anthologies of such literary luminaries as Mary Rowlandson, Anne Bradstreet, Sarah Kemble Knight,?Harriet Beecher Stowe, and?Julia Ward Howe. The editors of the fourth edition of the well-known?Norton Anthology of American Literature?concluded their discussion of Anne Bradstreet by stating: "When all has been said, the principal contribution of Anne Bradstreet to posterity is what she revealed, through herself, of the first generation of New Englanders."4?Based on the obvious omission of nineteenth-century Afro-American women authors from our literary anthologies, we must assume that the editors of these anthologies have felt that Afro-American women did not make meaningful revelations about American society during the nineteenth-century. Perhaps Addison Gayle was correct when he made the following observation in 1975 to Roseann Bell, an editor of?Sturdy Black Bridges.
We can go back to the eighteenth century in?English literature?when criticism first begins its large impetus and males always wrote condescendingly about women writers. This is historic among Black male critics and, I think, all males have probably done so. I suppose the big chance will come when women begin doing critical work of their own on women writers.5
Even though Gerda Lerner, when discussing the "black female literary tradition" in?Black Women in White America,?skips from Phyllis Wheatly to Frances Harper and mentions no other black female poets of the nineteenth-century, black women were making meaningful literary contributions during this period.
It seems safe to say that the earliest works written by nineteenth-century Afro-Americas were not issued primarily to create a body of literature nor to entertain readers, but rather to arouse a sentiment that would work toward the abolition of slavery. In this category can be placed many slave narratives and pre-Civil War?novels such as?Clotel, The Heroic Slave, The Garies and Their Friends?and?Blake.?These works were promoted by the abolitionists of the North and thus gained a relatively large white audience. During this period relatively few blacks were educated, and so these early pre-Civil War?works were initially read by more whites than blacks. The only black women to achieve widespread recognition during this period were Francis Harper and Harriet Jacobs. While none of the works just mentioned can be classified as great literature, some of them definitely qualify as good literature and are deserving of far more attention than they have received in the past. The works of these writers reflect their dual position as members of a large society as well as of a specific culture within that larger society. This dualism was best expressed by W.E.B. Du Bois in his book?The Souls of Black Folk.?Wrote Du Bois: "One ever feels his twonessan American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."6?A second class of writers appeared after the Civil War. Freed from an overwhelming absorption in the institution of slavery, they were free to explore and diversify their literary approaches as well as content. Their topics ranged from humorous folk tales to bitter satires reflecting the racial climate of post-Civil War America. The white audience interested in their works was smaller than in pre-Civil War days. Many whites preferred to read about the lives of black men from the pens of white racist romanticists like Thomas Dixon. The Civil War was over and for many whites the "race issue" was settled, and the concerns expressed in the works of black Americans no longer held any interest for them. Black authors like Charles Chesnutt and Paul Lawrence Dunbar found acceptance both with the general white populace and the critics (such as?William Dean Howells) as long as they focused their talents on producing folk tales and dialect verse. However, white readers and critics turned away from them in dismay when their observations about their environment become harsh and bitter. While no Afro-American woman writers of this period achieved recognition comparable to that attained by Chesnutt and Dunbar, many talented black women turned to literature as a means of presenting their views. Most of their works reached a limited audience. They faced not only the handicap of being female writers, a "dd mob of scribbling women" as?Nathaniel Hawthorne?called them, but of being black. A number of them felt it expedient to establish their own journals with black women as editors and these journals formed a major outlet for the stories, poems, and essays of a number of nineteenth-century Afro-American women authors. Among some of the more notable journals of that period were?Ringwoods?(Julia Costen, editor),?St. Matthews Lyceum Journal?(M. E. Lambert, editor),?Virginia Lancet?(Lucinda Bragg, editor),?The Boston Courant?(Josephine Ruffin, editor),?Women's Light and Love?(Lidia Lowry and Emma Ransom, editors) and?Waverly's Magazine?(Victoria Earle, editor). A number of books by Afro-American women were published either privately or by small, relatively unknown publishing companies. For the most part neither the journals nor the books enjoyed a long lifespan, so when they went out of print, the works of many black women were unavailable to the general public and existed only (and still exist only) in the rare bookrooms of specialized libraries scattered throughout the country. This very lack of accessibility has helped to perpetuate the myth that black women of the nineteenth century made few if any contributions to?American literature. Their works are simply not available for general study and examination.
For the most part the work of nineteenth century Afro-American women poets conforms to the poetic standards of the nineteenth century. In discussing Frances Harper, the most prolific of the nineteenth-century Afro-American poetesses, Benjamin Brawley in the?Negro's Genius?observes that her poetry distinctly shows the influence of Longfellow. But Harper's poetry, as well as that of her contemporary Clara Ann Thompson, also shows the influence of black folklore and folk legend; each poetess wrote dialect verse spoken by a wise old narrator. In general, however, most Afro-American poetesses of the nineteenth-century wrote in a style typical of traditional nineteenth-century verse.
While black poetesses concerned themselves about such issues as religion, intemperance, and women's rights, their overwhelming concern focused on racial issues and it was in this area that their poetry achieved its greatest strength. It is true that some of their poetry dealing with racial matters was either overly sentimental and/or melodramatic, but for the most part it was forceful and direct, evoking empathy rather than sympathy for the position of the nineteenth-century Afro-American. In May 1837, Sarah Forten addressed a poem to the interracial Anti-Slavery Free Women of America Society in which she appealed to her audience's sense of sisterhood to unite blacks and whites in fighting for the abolition of slavery.
We are thy sisters, God has truly said,
That of one blood all nations He has made.
O Christian woman! in a Christian land,
Canst thou unblushing, read this great command,

Suffer the wrongs which wrong our inmost heart

To draw one throb of pity on thy part;
Our skins may differ, but from thee we claim
A sister's privilege and a sister's name.
The first book of poetry published by a black poetess in the nineteenth-century, Ann Plato's?Essays: Prose and Poetry?(1841), contained a tribute to England for its abolition of slavery in the poem "To the First of August."
Lift ye that country's banner high,
And may it nobly wave,
Until beneath the azure sky
Man shall be no more a slave.

One of the earliest poems of Frances Harper, "The Dying Fugitive," appeared in 1859 in the?Anglo African Magazine?and is a strong statement in favor of the abolition of slavery. We can share the extreme frustration of a goal unfulfilled, a dream forever deferred.

He must die, when just before him,
Lay the long'd for precious prize
And the hopes that led him onward
Faded out before his eyes.

For a while a fearful madness,

Rested on his weary brain;
And he thought the hateful tyrant,
Had rebound his galling chain.

It is highly unlikely that any literary critic will argue that these three poems are literary masterpieces, but they are strong testimonials to the sentiments of Afro-Americans in pre-Civil War America and thus are as worthy of our attention as the poems of Anne Bradstreet as reflections on early Puritanism.

2.2 Works written by women against injustice in society

Victoria Earle Matthews was one of the most vocal and active African American club-women and social reformers of the last decade of the nineteenth century. She co-founded the Woman's Loyal Union and was its first president, served as chair of the executive board of the National Federation of Afro-American Women (NFA-AW), and as chair of the Committee on Union for the Federation leading to its merger with the League of Colored Women. Matthews was national organizer of the newly formed?National Association of Colored Women?(NACW), and contributed numerous articles to the?Woman's Era,?the official journal of the NACW. She established the White Rose Home and Industrial Association for young working women and, later, the White Rose Traveler's Aid Society.

Matthews was one of only a few women to deliver a formal address at the 1895 Boston Conference of the Colored Women of America. In 1897 she spoke at the?San Francisco?convention of the Society of?Christian Endeavor?at a special program attended by prominent race leaders, including Booker T. Washington. In her speech, "The Awakening of the Afro-American Woman," Matthews recalled past horrors of slavery, including the sexual exploitation of slave women. She indicated how remarkable it was that these women had overcome such enormous obstacles to accomplish as much as they had, with little help from anyone but the white women who traveled South after the war to help educate the masses. She closed with a final admonition that much more remained to be done. Matthews contributed articles to the major?New York?newspapers and leading African American publications. Along with her journalistic writings and speeches, she authored several short stories and edited?Black-Belt Diamonds: Gems from the Speeches, Addresses and Talks to Students of Booker T. Washington?(1898), a collection of excerpts from Washington's speeches.
Racial injustice continued to be an issue of concern which was reflected in the poetry of Afro-American writers after the conclusion of the Civil War. Harper, in?Sketches of Southern Life?(1872), created a wise old ex-slave, Aunt Chloe, who, as narrator, offers the folk wisdom of generations of slaves. Upon the death of Lincoln, Aunt Chloe speculated upon the presidency of?Andrew Johnson:
Then we had another President
What do you call his name?
Well, if the colored folks forget him
They wouldn't be much to blame.
Aunt Chloe felt great disgust with any man who sold his vote, and her friends shared her distress at such behavior on the part of their men-folk.
Day after day did Milly Green
Just follow after Joe
And told him if he voted wrong
To take his rags and go.
But Aunt Chloe had only praise for men
Who know their freedom cost too much
Of Blood and pain and treasure
For them to fool away their vote
For profit or for pleasure.
Like Harper, Clara Ann Thompson created an old character, Uncle Rube, who reflected on the society of his day. In the poem "Uncle Rube's Defense" Uncle Rube expressed his disgust with the stereotyping that white Americans directed toward black Americans.
Ev'ry low truk dat te black man's a doing',
'flects right back on de race, as a whole;
But de low co'se dat de white man's pursuin'
Costs not a blot on his good brudder's soul.
Let de black man do somepin wuth mentionin',
White folks ez still and shy ez a fawn;
Let him do somepin dat's mean and belittlin',
Umph! den de whole race has got it an' gone.
No doubt one of the most outspoken protest poets of the nineteenth century is the little known poetess Josephine Heard, whose single volume of poetry,?Morning Glories,?was published in 1890. In her poem "Black Samson" she made a sweeping indictment of post-Civil War American society in the treatment of its black population. Her bitter words did not show the conciliatory tone of so much of the literature written during "The Age of Washington" as Robert Bone has called the period of late nineteenth-century Afro-American literature. Nor did she seek to camouflage her criticisms in the guise of folk wisdom and folk dialect. Her tone was straightforward and direct, and even the most obtuse reader could scarcely miss her sharp message:
O, what cruelty and torture has he [the Black Samson] felt?
Could his tears, the heart of his oppressor melt?
In his gore they bathed their hands,
Organized and lawless bands
And the innocent was left in blood to wilt.
But the Black Samson of Heard was not going to lie sleeping forever; he was not a pitiful victim, but rather a courageous man ready to lose his life, if need be, fighting for what he believed in. He was not Harper's dying fugitive for whom the reader cannot help but shed tears of pity, nor was he Stowe's?Uncle Tom?stoically ready to die for his principles, but the Black Samson was a fighter:
The Black Samson is awaking,
And the fetters fiercely breaking,
By his mighty arm his rights shall be obtained!

Traditionally whites have had a harder time dealing with black fighters than with black victims, with realistic black figures than with black folk figures, so Aunt Chloe was a lot more popular with nineteenth-century audiences than the Black Samson was.

Heard had great confidence that the Black Samson would be successful and this confidence is reflected in her poem "They are Coming." At the beginning of the poem "they" (her fellow black citizens) are coming "slowly," then "proudly," and finally "boldly." In their ranks
There are Doctors, Lawyers, Preachers;
There are Sculptors, Poets, Teachers
Men and women, who with honor yet shall shine.

This joy of pride in accomplishment is also reflected in Cordelia Ray's two poems "In Memoriam:?Frederick Douglass" and "In Memoriam: Paul Lawrence Dunbar." Published in her collection?Poems?(1910), both poems possess a sense of triumph in accomplishments achieved in the face of what seemed to be insurmountable odds. Ray's pride in Douglass is clearly evident when she writes:

what matter then
That he in chains was held, what matter when
He could uplift himself to noblest heights!

Dunbar's creative genius was an equal cause of celebration of the black race.

Who was this child? The offspring of a race
That erst had toiled 'neath slavery's galling chains,
And soon he woke to utterance and sang.

It was a long journey from the helpless fugitive of Frances Harper to the glorious talent of Paul Lawrence Dunbar, and that journey has been well documented by the pens of Afro-American poetesses of the nineteenth-century. Surely if we can learn of the Puritans from Anne Bradstreet and of the early?Native Americans?from Mary Rowlandson, both of whom are routinely included in American Literature anthologies, then we can learn of the early Afro-American from early Afro-American women writers.

As stated earlier Afro-American women wrote of issues other than race. Christianity played an important role in the lives of the nineteenth-century Afro-American, but it must be clearly understood that this was not the version of Christianity promoted by the white man. Throughout the days of slavery and even after, the white man twisted the scriptures to suit his purposes. His abuse of Christianity was initiated to serve three purposes: first, to soothe his own gnawing conscience about the fact that he was enslaving his fellow man; second, to convince the world that his actions were compatible with the will of God; and third, to convince the slaves themselves that they were inferior beings. His purposes succeeded in diminishing order; he did a good job of brainwashing himself, less of a job in brainwashing the rest of the world, and a poor job of brainwashing the slaves. Even after slavery some segments of the white Christian church continued to preach the gospel of black inferiority. But blacks established their own relationship with the Christian faith. Even during the days of slavery, when it was illegal for slaves to read and write, there were those who managed to learn and they read the Bible and informed the others of the distortions that were being perpetrated by the whites. Many blacks followed the example of?Frederick Douglass, becoming devout believers in the Christianity of Christ, but rejecting the Christianity preached to them by the whites.
This dual concern, devout belief in an honest Christianity and total rejection of a hypocritical Christianity, is reflected in the works of nineteenth-century Afro-American women. This dualism is perhaps best reflected in Clara Ann Thompson's poem, "His Answer."
He prayed for patience: Care and sorrow came
And dwelt with him, grim and unwelcome guests;
He felt their galling presence night and day;
And wondered if the Lord had heard him pray,
And why his life was filled with weariness.
He prayed again and now he prayed for light
The darkness parted and the light shone in;
And lo! he saw the answer to his prayer
His heart had learned, through weariness and care,
The patience that he deemed he'd sought in vain.

The true Christian, according to Thompson, finds his spirituality through God directly and not in his relations with his fellow man here on earth. When he prays for relief from the care and misery imposed by others, his prayers appear to go unanswered, but if his prayers are for spiritual enlightenment he will be blessed. He will not perceive Christ through an intermediary, but will do so directly. It is only in such a perception that Christianity is possible, since any form of Christianity that rooted its faith in God as presented by a people who sanctioned slavery was not acceptable to a black person.

Frances Harper's poetry likewise expressed her faith in the Christian religion. Although she expressed skepticism and downright rejection of the white man's Christianity in her novel?Iola Le-Roy,?she reflected a deep faith in the Christianity of Christ in her poetry. One of her earliest poems, "Gone to God," published in the?Anglo African Magazine?of 1859, is a eulogy of a woman who has died and whose soul has gone to heaven. Subsequent poems, such as "A Grain of Sane," "Go Work in My Vineyard," "Renewal of Strength," "The Night of Death" and "The Refiner's Gold" all attest to Harper's strong faith in Christianity.
This faith in Christianity is also seen in Josephine Heard's lines on the death of?Abraham Lincoln?in her poem "Solace":
The grave no terror hath, and death no sting,
For him who fully trusts in Christ the King.

Nineteenth-century women were frequently the victims of alcohol abuse. Usually unable to fend for themselves economically, they were dependent on their husbands, fathers, or brothers for support. Temperance thus became a significant issue for a number of nineteenth-century women, including a few Afro-Americans. The only black poetess who devoted a considerable amount of her energies to this cause was Frances Harper. She lectured widely on the evils of intemperance, and several of her poems dealt with that subject. In "The Total Pledge," a reformed alcoholic takes a drink when asked by his bride to make a toast at their wedding; it was not long thereafter that she wept over a drunkard's grave. In "A Little Child Shall Lead Them," Harper depicted the death of a drunkard's child as the only factor which could influence him to reform. In "Save the Boys" she illustrated how it was too late to save a drunkard, but not too late to save his sons, and in "Nothing and Something" she chronicled how people become alcoholics and criminals.

Like many nineteenth-century women, black women were concerned about the position of the female in their society. Their poetry concerned itself not only with love and marriage, but also with women's rights. Frances Harper rejected the double sexual standard of her day which "excuses all in the male and accuses all in the female,"21?and she elaborated her views in a poem entitled simply "The Double Standard."
Crime has no sex and yet to-day
I wear the brand of shame
Whilst he amid the gay and proud
Still bears an honored name.

Can you blame if I've learned to think

Your hate of vice a sham,
When you so coldly crushed me down
And then excused the man.
Alice Dunbar Nelson, wife of the famous poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar, in her poem "I Sit and Sew" drew a vivid contrast between the task of sewing, acceptable for a woman, and the task of fighting, acceptable for a man. The narrator of "I Sit and Sew" longs to participate in battle, to live the active life of the male, but her task as a female is to passively sit and sew.
I sit and sewa useless task it seems,
My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams
The panoply of war, the martial tread of men.
Grim faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken
Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death,
Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath
But I must sit and sew.
I sit and sewmy heart aches with desire
That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire
On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things
Once men, My soul in pity flings
Appealing cries, yearning only to go
There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe
But I must sit and sew.
The little useless seam, the idle patch;
Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch.
When there they lie in sodden mud and rain.
Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?
You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream
That beckons methis pretty futile seam.
It stifles meGod, must I sit and sew?

Lest it be believed that nineteenth-century Afro-American poetesses did not write of themselves as lovers, such is not the case. Frances Harper, Cordelia Ray, and especially Josephine Heard wrote some very fine love lyrics. Heard's "The Parting Kiss" reflects a particular charm.

We were waiting at the station,
Soon the cars would surely start,
Hearts beat high with love's emotion,
For we knew we soon must part.
On dark lashes seem to glisten
Tiny crystal tear drops shine;
To the fond voice glad I listen,
While teary eyes look into mine.

Black women writers of nineteenth-century America in their works offer us the opportunity to explore a dimension of understanding offered by no other group. As Julia Cooper pointed out in?A Voice From?the South?(1892), black women face a special dilemma in American society:

The colored woman of today occupies, one may say, a unique position in this country.She is confronted by both a woman question and a race problem.
Her unique position cannot be completely comprehended by either her black brother nor her white sister and certainly not by the white male. Thus if we wish to understand her unique position in American society we must study her own words as reflected in her writings. Few critics will claim literary greatness for any of the writers mentioned in this paper, but much of their writing was good if not great, and as long as we study good literature as well as great literature, our study should include Afro-American women authors of the nineteenth century.

CONCLUSION

I chose to write about female art historians and critics, rather than about nineteenth-century art writing as a whole. By segregating the work of women, it may be argued that I have unfairly denied them a place in the mainstream, almost as egregiously as those cultural historians who have ignored them altogether. The most enlightened of the Victorian women who are my subject would likely deplore my decision on the grounds that women whose work is good need no special pleading. Harriet Grote, Elizabeth Eastlake and Jenny Lind founded the Society of Female Artists in 1855 because women painters were not taken seriously and had diffi culty in finding professional training and exhibiting their work publicly. But art historians such as Hannah Lawrance hamisgivings. She praised the Society's founders for their initiative, but maintained that it was always better for women to exhibit alongside men; establishing an association 'exclusively for themselves', she said, was to risk marginalisation. And other women critics and artists shared her view. Alice Meynell and her sis ter Elizabeth Butler appreciated the value of female networks, but neither favoured all-women exhibitions. Florence Fenwick Miller, like Meynell, would review only mixed shows, because segregated exhibitions of lady artists were often of such low quality that they harmed the reputation of women artists as a whole: "We all know that the feeble, commonplace, timid work that is on the whole what is shown there does not represent in fact the attainment of women in art, yet we cannot clear our judgment of the illusion and the third rate shows give an impression that wom en's work is inevitably third rate."

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