ELUCIDATING THE SOCIAL AND LITERARY CONTEXT OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THROUGH MRS. BARBAULD’S “WASHING DAY” POEM
ELUCIDATING THE SOCIAL AND LITERARY CONTEXT OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THROUGH MRS. BARBAULD’S “WASHING DAY” POEM

Summary/Abstract: Eighteenth century, being a transition period in England, was open to various shifting opinions. Hence, the social matrix of the time easily made an autor ascend the literary hierarchy, and then excluded him/her from the antologies. Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743-1825) is one of the middle class female authors of the eighteenth century England who has been left to oblivion for a long time similar to many of her contemporaneous advocates. Stemming from the opinion that these long-forgotten writers can be rather precious to better read and appreciate an obsolete period, the main focus of this article will constitute the discussion on the reasons of such neglect, the reasons of male dominancy to the canon and will foreground a different approach to a seemingly insignificant female text, namely “Washing Day” by Mrs.Barbauld, to justify that even an insignificant text can be invaluable for university syllabuses. Mrs. Barbauld, handling the most male dominant genre of the time, the mock-epic, in this poem subjects the social dichotomy of the eighteenth century life, the social and domestic spheres, to close scrutiny. Henceforth, she proves that women can obtain everlasting influence on human affairs with their texts related to the domestic sphere they are confined to, thanks to their inborn capacities in imaginative powers so long as they are not deprived of a good education.

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