Heroes and Housewives: Women's Epic Poetry and Domestic Ideology in the Romantic Age (1770-1835)

In the Romantic age, women poets wrote epics to pay tribute to female domesticity, instead of solely to praise masculine and public achievement. These poets were empowered, not repressed, by the idea of separate spheres. They celebrated the domestic woman as a figure of authority. They assumed this authority themselves and drew on it in order to write epic poetry. This book examines a variety of women's epics, from war epics to biblical narratives, from heroic poems to mock epics. It also includes an analysis of the female Gothic in verse, reading it as an alternative epic of fall and salvation for the domestic woman.