Authorizing a self : models of self-construction and expression in the texts of four British Romantic women writers

This work explores strategies of authorship and authorization--of self and text--in Charlotte Smith's Elegiac Sonnets, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Charlotte Bronte's Villette, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh. It examines how these strategies mark each author's text as Romantic and interrogates how these strategies facilitate self-formation and expression.

Issues of selfhood (its formation, boundaries, power) are central to Romanticism, At the center of Romanticism is a speaking "I," a self which perceives and creates, defines and orders, and, often, defies. Does it make a difference when that speaking "I" is a woman? Yes, it does, and the manifestations and significance of this difference are observable in the four works under consideration.

These four authors' central concerns, themes, images, and strategies mark them and their texts as Romantic and, at the same time, suggest the influence of the lived experience of gender difference in a world in which man is Man and woman is Other. Ultimately, what marks these four texts as being written by Romantic women writers is the exploration of issues relating to selfhood which are often left unexplored, or not dealt with as explicitly, in the texts of the most frequently canonized male Romantics. Smith, Shelley, Bronte, and Barrett Browning make gender, class, economic and political deprivation, parental nurture (or, more specifically, the lack thereof) matter when it comes to who and what we are (what formed the self), and who or what we may hope to be or do (what power this self really has).

Reading these four texts together, one may discern a continuum of subject positions available within Romantic discourse for the woman writer. As Smith does, she may find a voice for her victimization. As Shelley does, she may critique/revise some aspect of Romanticism itself. AB Bronte does, she may highlight the difference gender and class make to the Romantic self. As Barrett Browning does, she may lay claim to the position and power of the Romantic bard. Within Romanticism, these four Romantic women writers found self-making--as both narrative theme and narrative project--possible.