SOURCE: Craciun, Adriana. “The Subject of Violence: Mary Lamb, Femme Fatale.” In Romanticism and Women Poets: Opening the Doors of Reception, edited by Harriet K. Linkin and Stephen C. Behrendt, pp. 46-70. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1999.

In the following essay, Craciun analyzes the violent and aggressive nature of Lamb's works and of her matricide amid a discussion of the interpretation of violence in female literature.

Would a woman be able to hold us (or, as they say, “enthrall” us) if we did not consider it quite possible that under certain circumstances she could wield a dagger (any kind of dagger) against us?

Nietzsche, The Gay Science

Mary Lamb's career as a writer may not have been possible had she not murdered her mother in 1796.¹ This possibility presents an intriguing problem for any gender-complementary model of writing, and of Romantic period writing in particular, that would align...