Características de la costa

Robinson publishes A letter using the pen name Anne Frances Randall. Literary scholars maintain different hypotheses on Robinson’s decision to sign this pamphlet with the name of a fictitious author, also because by that time she had published other works using her own name without disguising her authorship (Arnold 738). Daniel Robinson (D. Robinson) argues that this particular pseudonym played a different role from other pen names used by the “chameleonic” Mary Robinson. According to this scholar, by using the name of Anne Frances Randall, Robinson wishes to create an “illusion of impartiality” in her practice of recognising great historical female figures (D. Robinson, “The English Sapho” 114). This might be better understood if we take into account that Robinson in her pamphlet, besides mentioning the names of exemplary women to prove her arguments on women’s worth, also included, along with A Letter, a “List of British Female Literary Characters Living in the Eighteenth Century” (86). The list Robinson added to the tract includes “many prominent bluestockings, novelists, and poets, as well as writers who had also generated essays on women’s issues such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Hannah More, Mary Hays, and Catherine Macaulay” (86). Robinson added her own name to the list: “Robinson, Mrs. – Poems, Romances, Novels, a Tragedy, Satires, &c.

disgraced the pages of literature; while it failed to sully the treasures of mental splendour, which this illustrious woman has bequeathed to posterity.” (117)

&c.” (87) This means that Robinson’s strategy of creating a permanent record of great literary women would not have been complete without upholding her own fame as a writer.

Another hypothesis related to Robinson’s use of a pen name ‒ which does not necessarily exclude the aforementioned suppositions ‒ is the one Amy Culley (Culley) asserts. This scholar posits that Robinson employed the name Anne Frances Randall to prevent her already-damaged reputation from interfering with the reception of the text (Culley, “The Literary” 114). This was due to the fact that Robinson knew the value of reputation perfectly well and how it had played against her desire for a female community. As we noted earlier, like Wollstonecraft, Robinson herself experienced the rejection of various fellow female writers, such as Charlotte Smith, because of her inability to follow the rigid rules of a ‘proper’ femininity.

In A Letter, Robinson attempts to address the lack of knowledge of female historical figures and the women writers’ legacy, by envisaging a way to strengthen a collective female identity that could offer mutual support. To this end, Robinson preferred to use the name of Anne Frances Randall, “a fictitious woman with no reputation”, instead of her own name to prevent biased judgements against her letter (Culley, “The Literary” 114). As I already pointed out, Robinson was particularly concerned about this aspect of authorship, and in various texts, including her essay Present State of the Manners, she declared that authors were immortalised by reputation (115). She was aware that the people of England were more interested in unjustified and malicious attacks and preferred to ignore a lengthy list of women who had enriched the country’s cultural heritage:

England may enumerate, at the present era, a phalanx of enlightened women, such as no other nation ever boasted. Their writings adorn the literature of the country; they are its ornaments, as they ought to be its pride! But they are neglected, unsought, alienated from society; and secluded in the abodes of study; or condemned to mingle with the vulgar. (115)

Robinson notices that in other countries such as France, even under despotism, the work of intellectuals, including “men as well as women of letters”, was praised (Robinson, Present State 116). A further explanation, which supports the two previous hypotheses in regard to her use of the pen name, is that the name Anne Frances Randall has a different impact than the other pseudonyms used by Robinson in previous works, as it alone took the form of a ‘real’ name. Robinson tried to make her readers believe it was an unknown writer who was advocating women’s rights; whereas the other names Robinson had employed for her former literary works, such as ‘Sappho’, ‘Laura Maria’, and ‘Portia’, were clearly pseudonyms (Hodson, “The Strongest” 97). In the same year as the first publication of A letter, Robinson

reissued the text under a new title Thoughts on the Condition of Women and revealed her identity as the author of the work (Sodeman 179).

The literary imagination of writers such as Robinson played a significant role in influencing readers by pointing out the injustices of a society that has treated women for centuries as property and not as individuals. Robinson states that women were no less capable in intellectual endeavours, since it was “prejudice and custom” that had made people believe in their inferiority. For Robinson, as for other women writers, literature was a tool for feminist politics and the idea of a woman as an author represented a way of rethinking women’s traditional roles. Indeed, in A Letter Robinson presents a manifesto in favour of the figure of the literary woman, a female author who could aspire to develop progressively a masculine mind (Cross, “He-She Philosophers” 55). Robinson’s literary proto-feminism was not without its challenges; writing about and promoting female equality necessarily created many paradoxes regarding sexual difference.