The ‘Orbit’ of the Feminine Critic: Gaskell and Eliot

• Published in: Nineteenth-Century gender studies 2010-07, Vol.6 (2)
• Main Author: Shattock, Joanne
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 17th century; 19th century; British & Irish literature; Culture; Eliot, George (Mary Ann Evans) (1819-1880); English literature; Essays; Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn (1810-1865); Households; Occupations; Politics; Professional relationships; Women; Writers
• ISSN: 1556-7524

[ 5 ] The place of journalism in the developing careers of women writers and their stratagems in adapting to the literary marketplace of the mid-nineteenth century are brought into sharp focus by the unexpected conjunction, in the summer of 1854, of two anonymous reviews of the same book by two major women novelists, one established and one in the making. Because of the book’s subject the reviews also reveal much about the reviewers’ perception of women’s role in literary culture. [ 6 ] In 1854 the French philosopher Victor Cousin contributed a series of articles on eminent French women of the seventeenth century to the Revue des Deux Mondes. [ 7 ] More than just an interesting coincidence, the two articles on Cousin’s book were written at significant points in the reviewers’ respective careers and are revealing of their authors in a number of ways. Some of this she had learned at the feet of Madame Récamier, the last of the great hostesses, in whose house she had lodged and about whom she later published a book, Madame Récamier: with a Sketch of the History of Society in France (1862).