The Realm of Sisterhood in Mary Leapor’s Poetry Essay -- Biography Bio

The Realm of Sisterhood in Mary Leapors Poetry For a woman writer to be read by her peers in 18th century England was somewhat unusual. For this woman to procure some kind of living from her writing was even more remarkable. But for such a woman to rent both these accomplishments, with writings attacking the very state of women no less, was extraordinary. Yet Mary Leapor was this woman. Not only did she herself defy society in remaining unwedded for the whole of her short life, but she also took up the call to fight for women everywhere. Her answer to the oppression of society was to find solace in the bonds of sisterhood. The radicalism of Leapors rise has long been a source of discrepancy for her critics, and there exists a wide array of interpretations. The headway lies within the definition of the female relationships she so wholeheartedly promotes. The variable interpretations include everything ranging from Leapor as promoting lesbianism, to simply prom oting good female friendships. Adrienne Rich termed this range of womanly bonds the lesbian continuum, and explains it as the inclusive realm between consciously desired genital sexual experience with another woman, and the sharing of a rich inner life, the bonding against male tyranny, the giving and receiving of practical and political support (51). The question remains where does Leapor belong on this continuum? Critic Donna Landry places Leapor in the realm of replacing heterosexual union with something closer to homosexual tendencies, while Richard Greene offers a far more platonic view of things. In applying Richs tenets of a range, it is possible to read Leapor as somewhere between Landry and Green, and as enco... ...ress, 1995.Greene, Robert. Mary Leapor A remove in Eighteenth-Century Womens Poetry. New York Oxford University Press Inc., 1993.Harris, Jocelyn. Sappho, Souls, and the Salic Law of Wit. Anticipations of the Enlightenment in England, France, and German y. Ed by Alan Charles Kors and Paul J. Korshin. Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987.Landry, Donna. Mary leapor Laughs at the Fathers. The Muses of Resistance labour Class Womens Poetry in Britain, 1739-1796. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1990. 78-119.Rich, Adrienne. Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. Blood, Bread, and Poetry Selected Prose 1979-1985. New York W.W. Norton & Company, 1986.Wahl, Elizabeth Susan. Invisible relations Representations of Female Intimacy in the epoch of Englightenment. Stanford Stanford University Press, 1999.