eBooks Base 2000

It is disappointing to the agitator to find the question dropping out of
sight in later verse. In the Victorian period it comes most plainly to
the surface in Browning, and while the exquisite praise of his
Lyric love, half angel and half bird,
reveals him a believer in at least sporadic female genius, his position
on the question of championing the entire sex is at least equivocal. In
_The Two Poets of Croisic_ he deals with the eighteenth century in
France, where the literary woman came so gloriously into her own.
Browning represents a man writing under a feminine pseudonym and winning
the admiration of the celebrities of the day--only to have his verse
tossed aside as worthless as soon as his sex is revealed. Woman wins by
her charm, seems to be the moral. A hopeful sign, however, is the fact
that of late years one poet produced his best work under a feminine
_nom de plume_, and found it no handicap in obtaining recognition.
[Footnote: William Sharp, "Fiona McLeod."] If indifference is the
attitude of the male poet, not so of the woman writer.


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