The Autobiography and Letters of Mrs. M.O.W. Oliphant

The Autobiography and Letters of Mrs. M.O.W. Oliphant

This excerpt from Oliphant’s autobiographical work, compiled after her death, acts a window into her own thoughts regarding marriage and gender. “The Library Window” exemplifies a female narrator who constantly struggles with unorthodoxy and conformity regarding 19th century gender roles. One can interpret the unnamed narrator in this story as possessing a desire for marriage, but only if it is accompanied by the autonomy that only men retain when married. Women in the 19th century were themselves a commodity, and their fathers handing them over in marriage, in a transaction-like manner was emblematic of this. In this portion of Oliphant’s autobiography, she reveals a personal stance that was never explicitly mentioned in works such as “The Library Window,” though the thoughts she harbored were conceivably veiled by her female protagonists. In this passage, Oliphant avows that “I have learned to take perhaps more a man’s view of mortal affairs, – to feel that the love between men and women, the marrying and giving in marriage, occupy in fact so small a portion of either existence or thought.”

Oliphant, Margaret

HathiTrust

New York: Dodd, Mead and company

1899

Arranged and ed. by Coghill, Harry, Mrs.

Public Domain. Digitized by University of Michigan.

451 p., two portraits of Oliphant.

An autobiographical book, containing letters written by Oliphant (1850-1897), a list of her published works, and her contributions to Blackwood's Magazine.