Abstract
Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay “The Poet,” declared that “the poet is representative. He stands among partial men for the complete man, and apprises us not of his wealth, but of the common wealth.” Within the norms of the nineteenth century, this would seem to relegate women poets to the status of “par-tial men.” In the much accepted division of life into separate spheres, women were barred access to the “common wealth” as public space. Instead, women remained officially restricted to the domestic sphere-what Tocqueville describes as “the narrow cir-cle of domestic interests and duties”-while men found their places in the “public” world.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | A Historical Guide to Emily Dickinson |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 103-132 |
Number of pages | 30 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9780197724484 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780195151343 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1 Jan 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Keywords
- century
- Emerson
- restricted
- sphere
- women