Essay - Constructing Gender Identity in the Poetry of Katherine Philips Katherine...

Constructing Gender Identity in the Poetry of Kather*****e Philips

Katherine Philips' poetry, superficially speaking, dealt with relationships and close interpersonal bonds between women, and this sort of subject matter would have been considered appropriate for a woman writer of her time. Most all women of the early 17th century lived in the shadows of patriarchy. Given their position in the social hierarchy, women were largely deprived of a soci*****l voice ***** condemned to lives of servitude and silence. As a result, women *****s were often left ***** ***** comparatively limited range of topics with which to express ********** creative visions. Women writers, though, throughout his*****ry, from Philps to Aphra Benn, ***** Jane Austen, and so on, were in part notable for their ability to speak ***** the l*****es. Their comparative genius allowed them the skill and ***** savvy to develop a potent literary *****, ***** an uniquely feminine l*****guage, inside the cracks and crevices ***** standard literary c*****ventions. So while women writers were left ***** only a few, narrowly defined topics to speak about, many, like Kat*****ine Philips herself, were able ***** speak much more than one might immediately assume. In the selections under review in this paper, *****' ***** was dedicated to the question of friendship, that between herself and Lucasia, and again, ***** subject was considered acceptable for a woman poet ***** her time. But when a modern audience digs more deeply into her literary sentiment, the language of friendship takes on a much more complicated and thought-provoking dimensi*****. Philips' poetry was most ***** ***** its creative construction of gender and female sexuality, but that vision ***** secretly expressed ***** the conventional language of female *****.

In Philips' poem, "To my Excellent Lucasia, on our Friendship," the poet lays out the terms for what appears to be a Pl*****t*****ic bond between the narra*****r and Lucasia, the woman to whom the poem is addressed. The narrator begins by suggesting that ***** "felicity" (l.2), or, her happiness, had ***** finally "Crown'd"—that *****, given a kind of leg*****l authority—when she ********** her bond ***** friendship with Lucasia. In addition, ***** narrator writes that she "DID not live until" (l.1) she "could say without a crime, / I am not thine, ***** *****e" (ll.3-4). *****t is this political and legal imagery, including ***** idea that one ***** need to overcome the perception of "a crime" h*****ving taken place, that is of particular interest in th***** passage. One might ask why a mere friendship should ever be subject to the question of political authority or the perception of a crime? The suggestion ***** this inst*****nce is that something unlawful ***** perhaps socially unacceptable may have acted as a kind of barrier to the *****'s happiness, holding her back from freely expressing her commitment to *****. But now, that legal ***** h***** been superceded and her happiness has been newly "Crown'd," ***** authorized. Philips' narrator makes the point that only by writing the poem is she now in a ***** where she "***** say...