The Adventurous Life of Amelia B. Edwards by Margaret C. Jones;

Author:Margaret C. Jones; [Jones, Margaret C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781350293977
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2022-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

It is a perceptive critical study; but also Amelia’s meditation on grief, on the experience of the loss of a beloved parent, that Edwards and her friend Doré shared in common.

It may be true that in most of her public writings, Edwards gives us little in the way of disclosure about her innermost thoughts and feelings – certainly not in the form of autobiographical articles, or interviews with the Press. But to take such reticence for emotional repression, is to overlook the cultural context in which she functioned, in which uninhibited public displays of emotion were not encouraged. She was quite capable of giving vent to her feelings in interactions with close friends. And the account of her depressive episode while in Rome in 1871–2, confided to a private journal, is a harrowing piece of intimate reflection.15 When it came to public disclosure, though, she was a well-bred Victorian lady, in a world where one sign of good breeding was a decent reticence. Excessive self-disclosure was considered ‘bad form’ – even shameful. Between the two spheres of the drawing room and the private study – let alone the bedroom – a great gulf was fixed. One simply did not bring private emotional matters out into the public sphere.

Edwards was skilled at retaining her privacy. A case in point, is the draft of an autobiographical article she sent in letter form to Edward Abbot, editor of the Literary World in Boston. Abbot had asked Amelia for some details about her life, that would be of interest to his American readers – they wanted to know more about the famous novelist than her books alone could tell them.

She begins her piece by insisting that there really is nothing to tell:

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