Arts and Humanities Commons^™

“Pen Is Envy”: Education, Feminine Sexuality, And Fruitfulness In Christina Rossetti’S “Goblin Market” And “An Apple Gathering” And Margaret Atwood’S The Handmaid’S Tale And The Testaments, Hannah White

Honors Program Theses and Projects

The Victorian era was a time in which people were very much interested in morality and sinning, especially when it came to women’s sexuality. It was also time in which conversations about women and education often linked women to their bodies—even medical doctors during this era spoke of the dangerous consequences education might have on a woman’s reproductive capabilities. While men’s sexual transgressions were often viewed as a natural result of their being in the public sphere, women were expected to be the pure and domestic moral compass there to guide men that could not help but sin because of …