Augusta Webster's (1837--1894) sonnet sequence Mother and Daughter (1895), twenty-seven sonnets spoken by a mother who is also a poet to her daughter and only child, combines the popular Victorian genre of motherhood poetry with the long-standing and highly codified tradition of the romantic sonnet sequence. Webster's fusion of these genres questions the primary assumption which underlies both traditions, that the poetic object, be it beloved or child, must be distanced from, "other" to, the poet himself or herself. Webster suggests a different, even radical, model of poetic creation and interaction between poet and object, as the daughter becomes an integral part of, and takes an active role in, the development of the mother-poet's psyche and the related writing of the sonnet sequence itself. The mother-daughter relationship which develops throughout the sequence is one of reciprocality and connectivity.
Chapter 1 will provide background to the two genres under discussion, the familiar and often-explored sonnet sequence and the rarely-discussed topic of Victorian motherhood poetry. The second chapter introduces the intersubjectivity theory of feminist psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin as an entree into the relationship of mutuality, then explores the intersubjective nature of selected sonnets. Chapter 3 discusses the breakdown and re-establishment of the reciprocal relationship, while Chapter 4 examines the effects of this intersubjective relationship on the aging mother's poetic confidence and the linguistic maturation of the mother-daughter relationship.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/26455 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Creators | Camp, Cynthia Turner |
| Contributors | Arseneau, Mary, |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 162 p. |
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