So. . .the title.

While contemplating starting this blog, I found myself thinking a lot about who I am, what my interests are, the things that amuse and enrage and downright puzzle me. About my artistic and academic work, and the places where those two parts of my life overlap (imagine a Venn diagram with rhymes).

I found that I kept coming back to the Victorian idea of the “unnatural woman.” Perhaps it’s the phrase itself. Or the Victorian paradigm of the Angel in the House and how everything (and I mean everything) that fell even a little outside of that paradigm was considered unnatural for a woman.

The list of things that made a woman “unnatural” in the Victorian Era is long. (And let’s be honest and acknowledge that we could say the same thing about today, although some items on the list have changed.) A woman who was an author was unnatural. A woman who married late, or not at all. Women who entered into a Boston Marriage. Women who worked at a job outside the home. Women who traveled alone. Women who wanted the vote. Women who wanted an education. Women who were artists. (When I discuss this with my students in class, I point out to them that I fit into an appallingly amusing – or is it amusingly appalling – subset known as the “unnatural wife”: a married woman with no children. They are horrified, and indignant on my behalf, which is kind of sweet when you think about it.)

These women who lived outside the norm were the unnatural women. The “odd” women. The “redundant” women. They were known by many names (not all of them unique to the Victorians): bluestocking, suffragette, spinster, adventuress, strumpet.

These were my sisters, the ones who came before. Not just them, of course. But in thinking about how I would describe myself for this blog, it was “The Unnatural Woman” I kept coming back to.

So. . .here I am.

I have no set expectations for this virtual journey, just an idea that there will be things I wish to write about that don’t fit neatly into either my poetic or academic lives (there’s that idea of fitting in again). Will I blog at least once a week? I hope so. Can I promise I will do so? Um, no.

However often I do post, I will be talking about teaching, about poetry, about feminism. About those things that amuse and enrage and puzzle me. And I hope that you will enter into a dialogue with me about these things. That you will join this Unnatural Women on her journey.