WOMEN WRITERS AND THE CHAINS OF IDENTIFICATION

The great female characters of the eighteenth century?Moll Randers, Roxana, Clarissa Harlowe, Sophia Western, Amelia Booth?were created by men; those of the nineteenth century?Elizabeth Bennet, Emma Woodhouse, Jane Eyre, Gwendolyn Harleth, Catherine Morland, Dorothea Brooke?by women. It is no coincidence, I believe, that, with the exception of Jane Austen, the women who created these great characters published under pseudonyms. Ironically, as more and more women became writers, the range allowed their work became more and more constrained. Above all, the tendency to identify women writers with their work confined their creativity. Seen as committing not just outrageous acts but outrageous autobiographical acts, women writers found protest futile. With considerable passion, Hannah Cowley, author of thirteen plays, wrote in 1786,