Colleen Wenzel and Meghan Kelley Discussion Questions

Edna St Vincent Millay – Fatal Interview

-          In Millay’s biography, it mentions how other women writers like George Eliot and Virginia Woolf criticized her writings because it was directed to the ‘women’s market’ and too sentimental. How is Edna Millay writing to the ‘women’s market’? Should we limit this form of sentimental women’s writing? Do you agree with her critics?

-          It is a common cliche that love is viewed as something necessary for survival, that one cannot live without it. Edna writes

“Love is not all; it is not meat nor drink,
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain…”

What point does Millay make by denying that cliche?

-          “But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before,
Should I outlive this anguish – and men do-
I shall have only good to say of you”

What is the significance of this stanza, how does it express Millay’s strength? What point do you think she is trying to get across?

-          Fanny Fern - Working Girls of New York

Do you agree with the idea that Fanny Fern presents that marriage will tie a woman down and strip them of independence?  How does that compare to how Millay portrays love?

-          In The Working-Girls of New York, Fanny states that most girls would prefer to work in the factories “because when six o’clock in the evening comes they are their own mistress”

 What does this mean? What cost do we pay now to be independent? Is it still a struggle for the present day woman? What sacrifices, if any do women make today? 

Christina Georgina Rossetti – In an Artist’s Studio

-          - In Rossetti’s poem she talks about a nameless girl who is only able to exist through a painting. Do you feel Rosettis description of the expectations of female applies to the present day modern woman?

-       -  In what ways does the painting in the poem represent the unattainable qualities of the perfect female woman? Do you think Rossetti got her point across?

Christina Georgina Rossetti - Eve

-          What do you think Rossetti is trying to say about the bearer of the original sin? What is she saying about the power of the mother’s original sin in comparison to everything?