Abstract

Victorian poet Adelaide Anne Procter, a devout Catholic and a nineteenth-century feminist and social activist, was hugely popular in her lifetime for her devotional and sentimental poetry. However, scholars who have looked closely at her work have recognized that her poetry contains moments of tension that suggest they may be more than they appear on the surface. Such tensions and ironies are often glossed over or misread by readers whose expectations of Christian devotional messaging and domestic sentiment overshadow the contradictions. In this paper, I propose that one of the most effective ways to more fully understand the nuance and complexity of Procter's poetry is to put that poetry back into its original context and read it alongside the periodical articles it was published with. I consider one pair of Procter's poems, "Maximus" and "Optimus," in the context of the specific issues of the English Woman's Journal in which they were published. Though many still view Procter as a purely devotional poet, reading her poetry in its periodical context shows that it interacts with feminist and social activist causes in complex ways. I argue that by inverting gendered hierarchies and rethinking feminine characteristics, "Maximus" and "Optimus" subvert some of the unintentionally anti-feminist sentiments expressed in the journal, changing the reader's interpretation of these points of tension by introducing ambiguities that require careful reading to parse.The interaction between Procter's poetry and the EWJ's prose is emblematic of the Victorian feminist movement as a whole. The same tensions, exchanges, and compromises that defined nineteenth-century English feminism can be seen playing out in the interchange of ideas between poetry and prose in the EWJ. Exploring the interactions between Procter's poetry and the prose that surrounds it emphasizes her poetry's refusal to be just one thing. Religious and secular, conventional and surprising, Procter's poetry has a complicated politics that cannot be understood without attending to the print that lived alongside it.

Degree

MA

College and Department

Humanities; English

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2026-04-17

Document Type

Thesis

Keywords

Adelaide Anne Procter, Adelaide Procter, poetry, English Woman's Journal, nineteenth-century periodicals, feminism, contextual reading, collaboration

Language

english

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