Poetry Commons^™

Born And Made: Sisters, Brothers, And The Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, Elisabeth Rose Gruner

English Faculty Publications

We are--almost all--born into families, born into relationship. Like Mary Ann Evans, I was born a little sister--but had I encountered her "Brother and Sister" sonnets at twelve, I might have thrown the book across the room. George Eliot's fantasy of a perfected brother-sister relationship in these sonnets rings hollow and yet resonates profoundly with me. As a little sister myself, I wonder what could make the relationship--so often fraught with competition, envy, and neglect, yet potentially so richly rewarding--seem so powerfully right, so important to and adult woman's self-identification? For the narrator of the sonnets is certainly an adult …