The Woman Within by Ellen Glasgow
"The Woman Within" by Ellen Glasgow is an autobiographical exploration of the author's life and artistic journey. Glasgow, a Southern writer rooted in Virginia, deliberately distances herself from being labeled simply as a regional or female author in her pursuit of universal appeal. The narrative begins with her earliest memories, which evoke her sensitivity to beauty and aversion to cruelty, marking the foundation of her character and worldview. Throughout her childhood, she grapples with the contrasting influences of her gentle mother and stern father, shaping her internal conflicts and resistance to orthodox beliefs.
Glasgow recounts her early experiences with writing, highlighting her joy in creating poetry and the subsequent humiliation that led her to write in secret. This duality of existence becomes a central theme, representing her solitary internal life as a writer versus her external interactions. Influenced by major literary figures such as Tolstoy, Flaubert, and Chekhov, she strives for artistic authenticity, overcoming challenges like illness and deafness. Despite personal struggles, including unfulfilled romantic engagements and the losses she endures, Glasgow finds contentment in her dedication to her craft. Ultimately, she reflects on her achievements in literature, recognizing her growth and the complex nature of her heart, which remains "unreconciled." The memoir serves as both a tribute to her artistic integrity and a poignant examination of her life as a writer.
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Subject Terms
The Woman Within by Ellen Glasgow
First published: 1954
The Work
Ellen Glasgow, a Southern woman who set her best novels in the Virginia she knew, deliberately rejected labels of regional or Southern or woman writer and sought for universal appeal and reputation. The Woman Within is the autobiography of herself as writer. The book begins with her earliest memories—sensations that anticipate her antipathy to inflicted pain and sensitivity to beauty. These memories include having a terrifying vision of a “malevolent” face without a body, wistfully watching sturdier children at play in the street, recognizing beauty and wonder in the brightness and grace of a lamplighter’s activity, identifying with a dog fleeing from heartless boys and with an old man struggling as he is carried off to the almshouse. She decides when very young that cruelty is the unforgivable sin.
Feeling gives way to observation: the antagonistic heritages of her sensitive, gentle, aristocratic mother and her stern Scottish Presbyterian father suggest the origin of her inner strife and her rebellion against orthodox religion. Happy memories surround intelligent, adventurous Mammy, their walks around Richmond, their stories of “Little Willie,” the first hero of her imagination.
Glasgow becomes a writer in her seventh summer. She remembers joy in creating a poem and then in humiliation when a sister reads it. Ever after writing in secret, she begins to live two lives, the external and the interior—solitary and free. The life of the writer, the outpouring of “the woman within,” Glasgow considers the unifying core of her being. She determines to become an artist, not merely a novelist. She proudly perseveres in perfecting her craft in spite of obstacles of illness, ignorance, and eventually deafness—that “impenetrable wall” threatening to defeat her.
Her search for truth leads to writers such as Charles Darwin and Edward Gibbon and away from her family’s approval. Her search for literary art takes her to European rather than American models. From Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, and Henry Fielding, Glasgow learns style and realism, but her great inspiration is Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy, she claims, shows her that truth to art means faithfulness to her own inner vision.
In her autobiography, Glasgow does not neglect details of the external world. She tells of travelling widely, falling in love, becoming engaged twice, but never marrying, of visiting famous authors such as Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, and John Galsworthy. She experiences what she thinks is more than her share of death and suffering. Deafness comes as a last insulting catastrophe.
Her novels, during her life, were increasingly well-received and reviewed. Believing that beginning with Barren Ground (1925) she has produced her best work, she expresses pleasure that her novels rank with the best of American fiction. She is content not with life but with her lifelong quest for artistic integrity. She concludes with the bittersweet recognition that she has arrived at “accord without surrender of the unreconciled heart.”
Bibliography
Auchincloss, Louis. “Ellen Glasgow.” In Pioneers and Caretakers: A Study of Nine American Women Novelists. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1965.
Godbold, E. Stanly, Jr. Ellen Glasgow and “The Woman Within.” Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972.
MacKethan, Lucinda H. Daughters of Time: Creating Woman’s Voice in Southern Story. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990.
Rouse, Blair. Ellen Glasgow. New York: Twayne, 1962.