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• 1 media/gettyimages-494584561-612x612.jpg media/gettyimages-3416496-612x612.jpg 2020-12-01T11:08:44-08:00 "Growing Old" 25 Analyzing Dinah Mulock Craik's Reputation as a Female Novelist image_header 2020-12-05T16:55:30-08:00 1858 51.5074° N, 0.1278° W mid-nineteenth century

  Dinah Mulock Craik published A Woman’s Thoughts About Women when she was 32 years old. She married her husband George Lillie Craik at age 39 and a few years later adopted a baby girl named Dorothy in 1869. Craik started her family life much later than the majority of women in that time period, depicting the value she placed on establishing her writing career and individuality before starting a family. 
  

  In the chapter “Growing Old,” Craik describes her position on the beauty of aging and how instead of fearing age, women should embrace the wisdom and greater self-understanding that comes with time. Speaking to women of all social classes, Craik conveys how middle-aged women have greater independence and better know themselves as individuals: “she will be mistress over herself—she will have learned to understand herself, mentally and bodily” (Craik 264). In spite of recognizing that it is a difficult time in a woman’s life when she realizes that she is “not so young as she used to be,” especially for single women, Craik unfolds the pleasures of growing old (Craik 245). She states how women have a “greater capacity for usefulness in middle life than in any previous portion of her existence,” and this statement in particular is depicted through Craik’s personal life and her decision to create a family in the later half of her life (Craik 263).  
  
  Even though Craik did marry, she writes that a woman doesn’t need a man to be happy. Instead, she conveys that building personal character and confidence are truly invaluable to establishing selfhood: 

  “Would that, instead of educating our young girls with the notion that they are to be wives, or nothing-—matrons, with an acknowledged position and duties, or with no position and duties at all—we could instill into them the principle that, above and before all, they are to be women —women, whose character is of their own making, and whose lot lies in their own hands” (Craik 266).
  
  
  In building upon this reflection on age, personal achievement, and reputation, Craik was a well-read author of the Victorian era. Yet, she is not often read, studied, and included within the traditional literary canon in classrooms today compared to other authors of her time, such as George Eliot: “At the moment, George Eliot is one of the most widely read and studied of nineteenth-century writers, while Dinah Mulock has not been included in the present canon of English novelists” (Perkin 26). 
  
  Our group questions the grounds of her exclusion from the literary canon, and then seeks to support Craik’s value as an author by both recovering her work and engaging in gender critique that reflects on and reconstructs the criteria for inclusion in the traditional literary canon: “Recovery in anthologies and edited collections provides openings for gender critique by bringing new texts, locations, and approaches to rhetoric to light because of the ways gender issues inform, enable, and constrain women’s rhetorical contributions” (Ryan 37).

   

  Why is Dinah Mulock Craik not widely read today or included in the traditional female literary canon? 

   

  First, J. Russell Perkin’s work sheds light on the idea of a “lady novelist.” He writes about how Craik was taken seriously as a novelist at the beginning of her career, but she became progressively more identified with this category of lady novelist, and she lost the audience who would have ensured her a more “dignified status” (Perkin 27). In other words, Craik was associated with writing novels only for female audiences, which displays the separation of writers and readers at the time based upon gender: “proper spheres of male and female writing” (Perkin 27). 

  In comparison, George Eliot established a narrative voice that appeared to readers of both genders, helping her to “produce works that became part of the cultural repertoire of the educationally privileged,” consequently escaping the label of a lady novelist (Perkin 27). Her male pen name as well contributed to her acceptance by male readers. 

  Perkin describes how by writing A Woman's Thoughts About Women, Craik had "identified herself publicly with the woman problem and the woman reader” (Perkin 33). She was therefore excluded from the literary canon not strictly on the basis of her gender, but on her ability to appeal to male readers of the Victorian era. 
  
  
  As a result, this ground for exclusion produces more ground for gender critique. Even though Craik was believed to be a “lady novelist” who only wrote for a female audience, it doesn’t mean that men couldn’t learn and have value in reading her work. Her worth as an author shouldn’t contest upon whether or not she appeals to male readers.
  
  Even though Craik’s reputation faded considerably 25 years after her death, Karen Bourrier argues that Craik’s writing still holds significance in shaping readers. She argues that Craik’s ‘‘narrative voice...simultaneously acknowledges, identifies with and shapes a community of female readers’’ (Bourrier 291). In addition to building community through her writing, Bourrier also suggests that Craik's narrative voice was effective in “consolidating single women across class boundaries” (Bourrier 291). These conclusions are significant to consider not only in analyzing how Craik’s work was received by readers and the cultural context that influenced reception, but also how her work affected and influenced readers. 
  
  Overall, this initial research surrounding Dinah Mulock Craik works to establish a greater understanding of the cultural context in which she lived and to spark further questions that inspire students and scholars alike to reevaluate which authors are considered “valuable” or “canon-worthy.” It is our hope that we provide a starting ground for encouraging further analysis and critique of authors who either fall into or outside of the traditional female literary canon. If there are female voices and authors like Craik who have not been included in the traditional canon today, we urge you to question not only the value of her writing, but also the circumstances of her life that placed a value judgement on her writing and consequently shaped our perception of her today.