Felicia Hemans Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Anthony John Harding

Critical Essay by Anthony John Harding

SOURCE: "Felicia Hemans and the Effacement of Women," in Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices, edited by Paula R. Feldman and Theresa M. Kelley, University Press of New England, 1995, pp. 138-49.

In the following essay, Harding traces a strain of violence and melancholy through several of Hemans's works; he concludes that this element suggests her "recognition that women's reality is an imposed reality. "

The sentiments are so affectionate and innocent—the characters of the subordinate agents … are clothed in the light of such a mild and gentle mind—the pictures of domestic manners are of the most simple and attaching character: the pathos is irresistible and deep.—Percy Bysshe Shelley

Affection, innocence, domesticity, pathos—the passage quoted in the epigraph above could almost be from a contemporary assessment of Felicia Hemans's Records of Woman, but it was actually written about Frankenstein. Percy Bysshe Shelley seems to be reassuring himself and...
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