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Review: Samuel Richardson's Fictions of Gender

Roger Lonsdale's Anthology published in 1989 revealed a vast number of eighteenth-century women poets many of them hitherto forgotten. Mary Leapor's neglect has never been total. In 1748 the first volume of her poetry published posthumously received a warm reception which encouraged the publishing of a second which while not a commercial success confirmed her reputation as a poet. Interest in her continued for the rest of the century. If that reputation dissipated in the nineteenth century it never died. There was renewed interest in her in the 1980s but it was Lonsdale who firmly re-established her reputation, in the words of Richard Greene's timely study as 'a poet of worthy of serious consideration'. The daughter of a working gardener and nursery-man, from adolescence Mary Leapor worked as a kitchen maid. Her first employer was Susannah Jennens, a widow, entirely sympathetic to Leapor's ambitions as a poet who may well have provided access to her well-stocked library. Her last employer early in 1745 dismissed her. 'The spectacle of an intellectually ambitious kitchen maid' may have 'unnerved her'. Much to her father's disapproval she returned to her home, unemployed and dependent, to keep house for him until her death in 1746. Her education was probably at the Brackley Free School where an unusually gifted teacher was trying to raise standards. According to her sponsor and friend, Bridget Freemantle, the Artemisia of her poems, she owned only a handful of books but there is evidence of her wide reading. She was fortunate in having a sponsor who, far from condescending to her, was modest and unassuming, and, anxious to provide Leapor with 'a receptive audience', she actively promoted a subscription to the first volume of poems. If both Pope and Swift profoundly influenced her work, she remained independent of them and frequently criticised their ideas. What is extraordinary is the sheer range of ideas and emotions her poems embrace. Romantic notions of relations between the sexes are rejected and the real motives behind courtship and marriage uncovered, Leapor warned women of property of the dangers of surrendering all financial control to their husbands and had nothing but contempt for men's claims 'to automatic mastery over their wives'. Marriage was always a gamble. Sometimes celibacy was the lesser evil although she was well aware of the hardships of most unmarried women. Some poems reflect the ambivalence in relations with her father. Throughout her work there is a barely suppressed anger and frustration at the small chances of women more particularly labouring women leading fulfilled lives. Aware of the conflict between her intellecrual attainment as a poet and her work as a domestic servant she protested against 'a standard of value, indeed a division of labour, based on class and gender'. The friendship of women was vital to her development. Most of her poems are addressed to a woman friend but Greene insists there is no evidence that such friendships were lesbian. Recognition of Mary Leapor's great talent along with that of other women poetschallenges the canon of eighteenth-century poetry. The author sees her as a test case.