Maude
By: Christina Rossetti. On sisterhoods ; A woman's thoughts about women / Dinah Mulock Craik ; [all] edited by Elaine Showalter ; textual notes by Penny Mahon.
Contributors: Showalter, Elaine.; Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock, 1826-1887.; Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock, 1826-1887.
Series: NYU Press women's classics
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 1993
Place of publication: New York, N.Y
Language: eng
Number of pages: 223
Subjects: Women -- Literary collections
Other titles: On sisterhoods.; Woman's thoughts about women.
Description: Writing from very different perspectives and backgrounds, Christina Rossetti and Dinah Mulock Craik were profoundly concerned with the problems of single women and female vocation. Maude, written when Rossetti was nineteen years old, reveals, with great clarity, her desires and anxieties about literary achievement within the confines of Victorian values and family restrictions. Although never seriously drawn to convent life, Rossetti became for a time an associate of one of the flourishing and controversial Anglican Sisterhoods. Craik's essay On Sisterhoods, in which she encourages unmarried women to join these organisations, shows that in offering work, responsibility and security outside the family, the sisterhoods presented a challenge to contemporary ideas about the place and duty of women. The immensely popular, progressive and optimistic A Women's Thoughts about Women emerges as an essentially rational work, urging women to act individually, collectively and above all positively, in forging their own destinies.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.