BIOGRAPHY
Ella Wheeler Wilcox was a nineteenth and twentieth century writer, poetess, and spiritualist. Born in 1850 in Johnstown, Wisconsin, she started submitting poems for publication at thirteen years old. Wilcox became immensely popular through her works of poetry and is known for her sentimentality. One volume, Poems of Passion (1883), became her most known work of poems, and another volume titled Poems of Pleasure was initially rejected for being immoral. Still, she gained a fan base, receiving love letters and flowers from her many admirers. She married Robert Wilcox in 1884 in Meriden, Connecticut, and they moved to New York City. They both became interested in Spiritualism and Theosophy. In 1916, her husband died and after his death, and in her grief, she wrote about Spiritualism and tried to make contact with him. She died in October of 1919 in Short Beach, Connecticut.
Oh, you who read some song that I have sung,
What know you of the soul from whence it sprung?Dost dream the poet ever speaks aloud
His secret thought unto the listening crowd?
RECOVERING Mal Moulée (1886)
Mal Moulée, a domestic romance novel, tells the story of Dolores King and her boarding school friend Helena Maxon. Dolores King, a young and intelligent girl, denounces the institution of marriage after witnessing loveless marriages within her own family. After graduating from boarding school, she travels Europe and meets Percy Durand, a young, wealthy bachelor who possesses the same opinions in regards to marriage. This allows them to become closer, with no fear of developing feelings for the other. Or so they think. The novel asks: Can an unmarried couple in love have a fulfilling relationship in a society that rejects the idea? Can love last in a society where the gender power dynamics are unequal?
Mal Moulée addresses effect of society on marriage and how marriage intersected with morality and religion at the time. She dives into the idea of the impermanence of love and how it does not coincide with the concept of marriage. Wilcox critiques gender roles, and how those roles affect marital and romantic relationships.
“In terse and finely chosen sentences, [Dolores] denounced marriage as a bondage and slavery of the most degrading type—opposed to the highest interest of Society as a whole, and [of] women in particular.”
WHY Mal Moulée IS IMPORTANT
Written in the time of the Women’s Rights Movement, this novel questions the role of men and women romantically in the nineteenth century, and asks if marriage actually lives up to the romantic standard that is portrayed. The novel follows a marriage plot, a characteristic of the genre of women’s fiction, and adds a progressive and unique take on its genre.
“To one who believes dancing is a sin—the act is wicked. If she dances, she violates a principle. But I love to dance—and believe it is right”