The Development Of The Sappho-Corinne Myth In Victorian Women’s Poetry

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pay and recognition. As the annuals became more popular the Sappho- Corinne figure became more accepted as a literary heroine. The lyrical form, so stylized by Sappho, became popular among the contributors because it allowed a particular freedom of emotional expression to the burgeoning Victorian female poetic voice. Sappho again took the role of muse as she was looked upon by Victorian authors desperate to find a literary “grandmother” with whom they could identify. The longing for love and emotional isolation found in Sappho’s songs became an oft imitated theme in feminine Victorian poetry.
Felicia Hemans was the first Victorian poet to develop the Corinne/Sappho myth within the framework of Victorian social mores. Her work invents the Sappho figure as a Victorian Corinne: a literary heroine doomed to struggle with the dilemma of yearning for literary recognition in a society that would keep her locked in the home as a housewife. Hemans not only uses the Sappho/Corinne character as a heroine, but uses the lyrical form in much of her poetry. Lyric poetry’s emotive freedom and the fragmentary nature of Sappho’s original works allow the poet to use the Sapphic heroine as an agent for personal exposition, a trend that Hemans paved for other Victorian female authors follow.
In “Last Song of Sappho”, Hemans’ heroic, yet doomed, Sappho is a literary descendant of de Staël’s Corinne. In the poem, the speaker’s voice is that of Sappho, yet Hemans’ voice rings through as a reverberating echo of feminine Victorian attitude and thought. The admission that the speaker’s “weary soul hath sought in vain one echoing sigh [of recognition]” shows the desire for recognition common among female Victorian authors.
As the speaker ponders suicide she wonders if she will find in her watery grave the peace that so often eluded her in mortality. She has loved too much a world that has held for her nothing but scor...