Women-writers

New poetic forms.

An even more important development was in the area of poetic form. Through Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892), American poets finally freed themselves from the old English traditions.

Born on Long Island, New York, Walt Whitman was a part-time carpenter and man of the people, whose brilliant, innovative work expressed the country's democratic spirit. Whitman was largely self-taught; he left school at the age of 11 to go to work, missing the sort of traditional education that made most American authors respectful imitators of the English. His Leaves of Grass (1855), which he rewrote and revised throughout his life, contains " Song of Myself," the most stunningly original poem ever written by an American.

In this famous autobiographical essay, A Backward Glance o’er Travel’d Roads (1889), he says, “the time had come to reflect all themes and things, old and new, in the lights thrown on them by the advent of America and democracy”. To do this, he invented a completely new and completely American form of poetic expression. To him, message was always more important than form, and he was the first to explore fully the possibilities of free verse. In his poetry the lines are not usually organized into stanzas; they look more like ordinary sentences. Although he rarely uses rhyme or meter, we can still hear (or feel) a clear rhythm.

Whitman developed his style to suit his message and the audience he hoped to reach. He wrote without the usual poetic ornaments, in a plain style, so that ordinary people could read him. He strongly believed that Americans had a special role to play in the future of mankind. Although he often disapproved of American society, he was certain that the success of American democracy was the key to the future happiness of mankind.

Even the Civil War (1861-1865) did not disturb this faith. Whitman was a strong supporter of the North. Too old to fight, he went down to the battlefield to work as a nurse. He greatly admired President Lincoln and saw him as symbol of the goodness of mankind. Whitman’s greatest poem – O Captain! My Captain! was written about the murder of Lincoln in 1865.

In 1863, when Lincoln met HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (1811-1896) in Washington, he greeted her with “So, you are the little woman who made the book that made the great war”. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1825) united Northern feelings against slavery. As soon as it was published, it became a great popular success. It was translated into over 20 languages and millions of copies were sold worldwide.

EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886) was another New England woman who wrote during the Civil War era. But we find no mention of the war or any other great national event in her poetry. Her poetry is filled with images and themes taken from Emerson’s essays. But almost always she gives them a new and exciting interpretation. In the early 1860s, a rather different theme began to appear in her work: pain and limitation. This new theme in Dickinson was her way of expressing a terrible suffering of the Civil War.

Emily Dickinson is, in a sense, a link between her era and the literary sensitivities of the 20th century. A radical individualist, she was born and spent her life in Amherst, Massachusetts, a small village. She never married, and she led an unconventional life that was outwardly uneventful but was full of inner intensity. She loved nature and found deep inspiration in the birds, animals, plants, and changing seasons of the New England countryside. Dickinson spent the latter part of her life as a recluse, due to an extremely sensitive psyche and possibly to make time for writing.

Dickinson's terse, frequently imagistic style is even more modern and innovative than Whitman's. She sometimes shows a terrifying existential awareness. Her clean, clear, chiseled poems, rediscovered in the 1950s, are some of the most fascinating and challenging in American literature.

New England had another important woman writer, SARAH ORNE JEWETT (1849-1909). All of her realistic stories are set in New England. She was one of the leaders of the “local color” school of realism. In the period soon after the war, “local color” became an important part of American literature. It tried to show what was special about a particular region of the nation. Jewett’s characters are usually ordinary people, living in ordinary little New England towns. The way they speak and the details of their lives give us a strong feeling for New England as a place.

Jewett describes her characters realistically, and deepens them with symbolism. In A White Heron, the heron becomes the symbol of freedom and beauty.

Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli, more commonly known as Margaret Fuller, (May 23, 1810 – July 19, 1850) was a journalist, critic and women's rights activist associated with the American transcendental movement. She was the first full-time female book reviewer in journalism. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States.

Born Sarah Margaret Fuller in an area of Cambridge, Massachusetts, she was given a substantial early education by her father, Timothy Fuller. She later had more formal schooling and became a teacher before, in 1839, she began overseeing what she called "conversations": discussions among women meant to compensate for their lack of access to higher education. She became the first editor of the transcendental publication The Dial in 1840 before joining the staff of the New York Tribune under Horace Greeley in 1844. By the time she was in her 30s, Fuller had earned a reputation as the best-read person in New England, male or female, and became the first woman allowed to use the library at Harvard College. Her seminal work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, was published in 1845. A year later, she was sent to Europe for the Tribune as its first female correspondent. She soon became involved with the revolution in Italy and allied herself with Giuseppe Mazzini. She also met Giovanni Ossoli, with whom she had a child. All three members of the family died off Fire Island, New York, traveling back to the United States in 1850. Fuller's body was never recovered.

Fuller was an advocate of women's rights and, in particular, women's education and the right to employment. She also encouraged many other reforms in society, including prison reform and the emancipation of slaves in the United States. Many other advocates for women's rights and feminism, including Susan B. Anthony, cite Fuller as a source of inspiration. Many of her contemporaries, however, were not supportive, including her former friend Harriet Martineau, who said that Fuller was a talker rather than an activist. Shortly after Fuller's death her importance faded; the editors who prepared her letters to be published, believing her fame would be short-lived, were not concerned about accuracy and censored or altered much of her words before publication.

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