The Rise of the Woman Poet: The Anxiety of Authorship in Thomas Hardy’s “An Imaginative Woman”

Abstract

This article examines Ella Marchmill, the protagonist of Thomas Hardy’s “An Imaginative Woman” (1893), as an embodiment of the anxiety of authorship to explore her artistic aspirations and the narrative strategies for confronting and overcoming anxieties surrounding female authorship in the Victorian era. Set in the fictional seaside town of Solentsea, the story portrays Ella’s attempt to establish herself as a poet within the patrilineal literary tradition and her obsession with the fictional poet Robert Trewe, whose work she admires but whom she never meets. Studies on the story largely focus on Ella’s aspirations in relation to marital and maternal aspects, as she is a mother and wife confined to the domestic sphere. Yet, there is a lack of critical attention to her authorship anxiety and her resistance specifically. As her obsession triggers and intensifies her poetic impulse, which is ultimately curtailed by Trewe’s symbolic presence and by her husband Mr Marchmill’s male chauvinism, Ella as a rising poet faces societal barriers. Using the penname John Ivy, she attempts to overcome her anxiety and to navigate the restrictions imposed on her creativity and imagination. Drawing on Gilbert and Gubar’s conceptualization of authorship anxiety, Bloom’s anxiety of influence and melancholy, and feminist scholarship, this study contends that Hardy’s portrayal of a rising woman poet exposes the strategies of Ella’s becoming as a Victorian woman. Ultimately, the study concludes that Hardy uses Ella’s attempt at writing as a trajectory for critiquing the gendered literary history, illustrating how the female creative impulse is frequently and forcibly diverted from its imaginative power.