Critics and biographers have recognized the importance of failure and its many aspects in the life and poetry of E. A. Robinson. For a more complete idea of how Robinson dealt with concepts of failure, it is best to study the poetry itself.

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Issued also as Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University. / Bibliography: p. 145-53.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 2005. / Abstract and vita. Includes annotated bibliographical references (leaves 25-40).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 2005. / Abstract and vita. Includes annotated bibliographical references (leaves 25-40).

In this thesis I assert that Robinson’s theatrical heritage positioned her uniquely to confront the revolutionary explosions of 1790s radical thought. In her writings, Robinson’s onstage experience of gender performativity is transformed into a bold feminist critique of gender roles for women (and men) everywhere. In Chapter 1, I study writings by eighteenth-century theatrical women to argue that Robinson’s feminism must be understood within a theatrical context to appreciate the unique radicalism of her feminist vision. In Chapter 2, I explore how Robinson’s powerful identification with Marie Antoinette lies at the roots of her feminist project. In Chapter 3, I explain how Robinson then turns to the voice of Sappho to develop a radical vision of transcendent genius. In Chapter 4, I demonstrate how Robinson turns her critique of gender on men through the performative space of the masquerade in Walsingham (1797). Finally, in Chapter 5, I explain how this radical feminist critique is moulded to utopian ends in The Natural Daughter (1799), as Robinson rewrites the ending of Wollstonecraft’s Wrongs of Woman in a vision of the revolutionary family. I read three strands into Robinson’s feminism: 1) the rejection of incommensurable sexual difference; 2) the union of rational virtue and benevolent sensibility in the development of transcendent genius; and 3) a radical critique of the anxious crisis in 1790s masculinity. The result of this was a utopian vision of the future quite different from Wollstonecraft’s better-known brand of ascetic feminism. Instead, Robinson’s feminist theory works to rescue the original values of the French Revolution from beneath the ravages of Jacobin corruption. Beyond the limiting categories of incommensurable sexual difference, Robinson envisions a family in which woman would no longer have to renounce her sexual body in order to engage with society, and man could finally accept her as his equal.

The aim of this thesis is twofold: to recapitulate the influences of friendship upon Robinson's life and to explore in depth the theme of friendship as it is revealed in the short poems and in the narratives.

Intrigue and tragedy are inherent in murder. Justice is not. What role does wealth play? At the very least, money buys access to limitless expert witnesses and the best and brightest attorneys. Today, all killings are felonies except those deemed justifiable. But that was not the case in Victoria, Texas, in 1976 when young, handsome and wealthy rancher Hampton C. Robinson III shot young, handsome and wealthy rancher Thomas Traylor Bauer in the back of the head. Criminally negligent homicide was a misdemeanor. And unlike the law today, the judge was allowed to reduce the full range of charges and provide jurors only two: murder or criminally negligent homicide. Convicted of a misdemeanor, Hampton Robinson served less than a year in jail. His crime began a downward spiral that took other lives and led to his self-destruction. / text

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