Montagu, Mary Wortley | Devoney Looser (essay date 1994)
Devoney Looser (essay date 1994)
SOURCE: “Scolding Lady Mary Wortley Montagu? The Problematics of Sisterhood in Feminist Criticism,” in Feminist Nightmares: Women at Odds: Feminism and the Problem of Sisterhood, edited by Susan Ostrov Weisser and Jennifer Fleischner, New York University Press, 1994, pp. 44-61.
[In the essay below, Looser evaluates Montagu's reputation as a progressive and a proto-feminist.]
As with many women writers “found” by second-wave feminisms, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu has been held up as an exemplary model of womanhood. Montagu is frequently taught alongside her eighteenth-century British “sisters,” Aphra Behn, Mary Astell, and Mary Wollstonecraft, all of whom carved significant spaces outside of traditional feminine roles in their lives and writings. Montagu has not lacked a contemporary audience, her letters garnering space in The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women as well as The...
[The entire page is 7162 words long]
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