Being a woman writer in that period was very difficult. The Victorianism
was an age for men. Women didn’t have privileges and the way they could
integrate themselves in the society was being a writer. By this way, they
could claim their rights, their human rights. On the other hand, we know
they had to use a pseudonymous, they couldn’t sign their works with their
true name. Examples for this are the poems by Charlotte,
Emily
and Anne
Brontë or George
Eliot whose real name was Mary Ann Evans. Although her pseudonymous
was chosen by her lover, a man who was married and had children.
Women writers used a male pseudonymous, because in the Victorian society
men made everything. To make themselves’ way in a male tradition was very
hard, besides in this period people were afraid of changes in their lives.
It was shameful a woman who wanted to be writer, a woman who wanted to
do what men did, this woman should be considerate lustful, evil and despicable.
Despite of this, I think thanks to the pseudonymous they could express
their likes and dislikes of this repressive society, their thoughts, their
feelings, their love and so on. But they had to take care with their words,
because sometimes people thought someone was a bit mad. This was
the case of Emily Dickinson (who was an American poet). She wrote love
poems to a man and she didn’t go farther than her garden gate in twenty
years. Because of this, people say she was an unusual woman.