182 The Poetry of Mary Robinsonjealous husband, a farmer, arrives home, the boy innocently tells his
father that the priest is hiding underneath the bed. More domestic
violence ensues: “For, with his cudgel, he repaid / The folly of his
gamesome mate” (2: 66; 86–7). Similarly, in “The Fortune- Tel ler,”
a young woman named Kate deceives her lovesick fiancé Lubin, and
becomes pregnant by a “rustic libertine” (2: 78; 16). When a gypsy
informs Lubin that his future bride, whom he presumes is a virgin,
will give birth in just six months, Lubin decides to test Kate by prais-
ing the wondrous prophecies of the gypsies; intrigued, she seeks out
one who is really Lubin in disguise and asks him to tell her fortune.
When she inadvertently confirms his suspicions, Lubin, after taking
ten pounds as payment, reveals himself to “her dismay” (89). He is
rewarded by the revelation of her true character and, as Tabitha glibly
notes, by the return of the ten pounds he paid to the actual gypsy
who first disabused him. Tabitha reminds her readers,Thus FORTUNE pays the LOVER BOLD;
But, gentle MAIDS, should FATE
Have any secret yet untold—
Remember simple KATE! (95–8)Tabitha’s satire incriminates women more than it does men. In her
Letter to the Woman of England, Robinson censures Pope’s “cynical
asperity towards the enlightened sex” while praising Ingram’s rejoin-
der to it (8: 148). Her Tabitha Bramble poems, however, have more
than a little “cynical asperity” toward women, a fact that certainly
complicates readings of Robinson’s liberal humanism as well as her
radical proto- feminism. Then again, as a satirist, Robinson consid-
ered any subject fair game, so she used her Tabitha Bramble avatar as
a form for satirizing other women, a group by whom she felt particu-
larly slighted and persecuted, as we have seen.
Robinson clearly reconceived the avatar to suit various purposes,
usually satirical. Whereas the first batch of poems show the Tabitha
Bramble persona intervening in a particularly masculine, urban, and
political sphere, and doing so in a particularly aggressive manner, spe-
cifically attacking Pitt and his ministry, the second batch of 1800
finds the persona functioning in an ostensibly fictional, narrative,
comic, and didactic mode that finds its objectives in the feminine,
rural, and domestic. However, several other poems from 1800 signed
“Tabitha Bramble” or “T.B.” diverge starkly from both of these kinds
of poems: lyrics such as “Lesbia and Her Lover” (2: 52–3), “The
Beau’s Remonstrance” (69–70), and “Taste and Fashion” (97–8)9780230100251_06_ch04.indd 1829780230100251_06_ch04.indd 182 12/28/2010 11:08:53 AM12/28/2010 11:08:53 AM
10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel RobinsonCopyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket iTr
omso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-13