The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

120 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

In 1794, she complained to Taylor that her literary aspirations have

turned out to be “false prospects”: “They have led me into the vain

expectation that fame would attend my labours, and my country be my

pride” (7: 303). The adulation she enjoyed from within her professional

networks was as insufficient as her income from her literary labors. Six

years later, nearing the end of her life, Robinson wrote to Godwin,

who apparently had tried to cheer her: “You say that I have ‘Youth and

beauty.’ Ah! Philosopher, how surely do I feel that both are vanished!

You tell me that I have ‘Literary Fame.’ How comes it then that I am

abused, neglected—unhonoured—unrewarded” (7: 320).

The English Petrarch

Although she frequently was hailed as “the English Sappho,” Mary

Robinson actually wanted to be the English Petrarch. No work by

Robinson is more decidedly masculine than Sappho and Phaon, despite

its identification with the pre- eminent woman poet. This is because

the sonnet itself traditionally was a masculine form; and the qualifica-

tion of Robinson’s sonnets as “legitimate” makes the sequence even

more so. The “legitimate sonnet” is the eighteenth- century term for

what we call today the Petrarchan or Italian sonnet; that is, a sonnet

with an octave rhyming abbaabba and a turn, or volta, at the end

of the octave followed by a sestet that concludes the sonnet with a

qualification or resolution. Conversely, in the eighteenth century

and for most of the nineteenth, non- Petrarchan variations, includ-

ing Shakespeare’s, were deemed “illegitimate” sonnets or occasionally

were given the more neutral designation of quatorzain, which sim-

ply means fourteen- line stanza. Robinson thus writes about Sappho,

but she performs as Petrarch. This complicated two- step—or cross-

dressing, if you prefer—involving both gender and form is crucial to

Robinson’s assertion of her poetic supremacy. Eighteenth- century

representations of Sappho, the positive ones in particular, privileged a

feminization of the lyric mode. This is apparent in the many light and

charming newspaper poems that refer to Sappho, that imitate Sappho,

or that claim to be by a modern version of Sappho. Sappho, in the

hands of these writers became, interestingly, a figure for the simpler

forms of erotic lyric poetry, such as the quatrain. The sonnet, how-

ever, itself a “manly” form in its construction, traditionally represents

a rigid poetic culture defined by men for the purpose of delineating

their contrary perceptions of women. From Petrarch’s ideal Laura to

Shakespeare’s carnal dark lady, the sonnet tradition abounds in images

of the hunt, erotic objectification, and female inconstancy—all from

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10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel Robinson

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