애너 바볼드의 초기 시에 나타난 여성의 사회의식

Abstract

The last quarter of the 18th century can be characterized as the period in which women writers began to give voice to the idea of equality of woman and actively participated in social causes such as abolitionism. This paper traces woman's social consciousness in the early poems of Anna Laetitia Barbauld. Though there were many poems by other women writers dealing with the theme of anti-slavery, this paper concentrates on Anna Barbauld, who started writing on everyday life around her and evolved into participation in social causes and criticism of British imperialism in her later years. But her concern with woman's role and the socially oppressed can be traced in her early poems. Barbauld portrays woman with two opposing sides. In her well-educated and well-mannered women, Barbauld finds a rational being as well as the possibility of transcending both the socially oppressed inferior status and the sex merely equal to "rational" man. Barbauld observes that woman can develop empathy with others through her feminine sensibility or love even in the confined domestic environment. This continued interest in others constitutes the ground of Barbauld's criticism of slavery and British imperialism in her later poetry and at the same time, puts her above other minor women writers who wrote anti-slavery poems.