Walsingham Volume II

The most striking argument posed by Mary Robinson in volume II of Walsingham is in the plight of the female literary writer and the reception and critique of their works. In chapter 39, Robinson presents us with the reunion of Walsingham to Mrs. Woodford who recalls the trials of her literary career and details the many obstacles obscuring the path of female literary progression. Mrs. Woodford assumes the mantle of "a candidate for literary honors"following a seemingly positive reception from her late husband and her "good-natured friends, who hoped to witness the downfall of her ambition." For though Mrs. Woodford's writings had previously been reviewed by her associates with "the honeyed cup of flattery... in private circles of hospitality, [her work] was dashed with the bitter gall of envy, when publicly demanded." Robinson seems to condemn the female critics particularly, who seem to dismiss female works stemming from jealousy, rather then attempting to decode or decipher any literary merit therein. Robinson illuminates these unjust intentions by stating "Reviewers are but mortals. There are such beings as wives, sisters, and mistresses: there are pretenders to literary honors, who cannot endure the superiority which they envy; who entertain...Prejudice; and who, being invested with the supreme honors of criticism, wield the pen with little mercy." Robinson continues cataloguing the adversity faced by female writers through Mrs. Woodford's various attempts at obtaining literary fame. Mrs. Woodford attempts again and again to have her work published fairly but is continuously cut short either by "the publisher, being menaced with a prosecution, suppressed the sale" of her works or in the case of her satyrical poem when the object of which her poem "was meant to satirize was permitted to review it; and its dying speech was published." Despite changing the medium of her publication or switching rhetorical methods Mrs. Woodford's literary genius is subdued and kept in the shallows of literary reception, when in fact, it seemed able to tread the very depths of scholarly debate. Every aspect of literary practice pursued by Mrs. Woodford appears followed by the "demon of Envy" or reviewed with a "triumphant tyranny which deals out injustice where impartiality ought to hold the even scale." Robinson argues continuously throughout the chapter for a fair reception of work based on the value of the writing and not based solely on the hand that holds the pen. She argues not only for a change in the field of literary criticism as a whole, but  for a change in the way women aid in the disenfranchisement of their fellow women, in order to obtain a hold over cultural capital and reshape the atmosphere in which female writers are received.