The bondage of love: A life of Mrs. Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Hardcover

Critics reclaiming the female tradition in literature find the Romantic period a thorny barrier. Its emphasis on individualism and self-creation virtually demands that "writer" be a masculine noun, and its women are known through their ties to male figures. Dorothy Wordsworth's journals have been used to shed light on her brother's poems, but in Dorothy Wordsworth & Romanticism , Levin undertakes a literary study that uses deconstruction and feminist psychology to interpret Dorothy's works. An appendix collects her poetry and prints a previously unpublished children's story. Levin believes that Romantic ideals suppressed Dorothy's female voice and created enormous self-conflict. Ironically, Dorothy also helped establish the myth that poor Sam Coleridge married a narrow-minded woman unfit to be the wife of a genius. Lefebure's spirited biography of Sara Coleridge shows that Dorothy knew only Samuel's sideand he, like most drug addicts, needed someone to blame. Reconstructing Sara's life with the help of unpublished letters, Lefebure portrays an educated and emancipated woman married to an idealist who assumed any female could flesh out his pattern of docile, supportive wife. But while Dorothy eventually slipped into madness, Sara's pragmatic energy discovered ways to live in an extended, caring household. Lefebure paints a vivid picture of the age; and the two books taken together tellingly explicate the masculinist bias of Romantic literature. Sally Mitchell, English Dept., Temple Univ., Philadelphia
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