A Thinking Woman Caged in a Fat, Ugly, Unwomanly Body: A Critical Review of Amy Lowell Scholarship

Abstract

This paper sheds light on a series of symbolic aggression inflicted by gentleman poets and critics upon Amy Lowell, since they take on additional force in the devaluation of Lowell’s Imagism due to their profess of objective, scientific study of literature. Looking into the entries in Lowell’s memoirs and biographies, this paper illustrates how she tried to link her social origin to the intellectual capital in order to campaign her cultural agenda of New Imagist Poetry. In addition, removing the curtain of academic bigotry against “Amygism,” it uncovers the male-centered reality of American literary industry where gentleman-critics have long maintained their priority on the academic/intellectual tastes in the judgement of true nobility. Ultimately, it aims to present another view of Lowell as a modernist poet who broke through the entrenched cliches of Victorian genteel womanhood as well as an accomplished modern woman who attempted to generate momentum toward a more egalitarian society with her woman-centered aesthetic taste.