“A conceited fool” is a not uncommon expression. “Excerpted from Miss Grief and Other Stories by Constance Fenimore Woolson, edited by Anne Boyd Rioux. It touches on still-sensitive questions about how gender informs perspective, literary value, and success. It showcases the conflicting views of her time about what made literature valuable, staging the tensions between polish and power in the forms of a male and female writer, respectively. The layers of feeling are subtle and require careful attention to excavate, making reading and re-reading “Miss Grief” a rewarding experience.Īlthough the story has been read primarily as an index to Woolson’s own feelings of neglect as a woman writer, it is much more than that. At a time when direct expressions of women’s anger were taboo (and many would agree they still are), Woolson shows how such intense feelings inevitably emerge under the force of tremendous pressure and often through side channels. This was one of her great strengths as a writer: undercutting her self-assured narrators for readers attentive to her subtle irony.Īnother remarkable element for this late-nineteenth-century story is its controlled rage. Ultimately, however, our perception is limited by the narrator (we never learn the woman writer’s full story, for instance), yet Woolson has a way of letting us see more than he does. We as readers must decide for ourselves which of the two we identify or empathize with, and our allegiance may change over the course of the story. Told from the point of view of a successful male writer (who bears some surface resemblance to James, whom Woolson knew then only by reputation), it describes the persistent attempts of an aspiring female writer to meet him and gain his attention for her work. What is most remarkable about “Miss Grief” is not simply its semi-autobiographical context, however, but also its deft use of perspective. She would soon meet the writer who had not yet gained the status of “The Master,” and “‘Miss Grief’” reflects the anxieties she felt about seeking the recognition of the male literary elite he represented.

(“Miss Grief” was first published in Lippincott’s in May 1880 and chosen by Scribner’s for volume four of its Stories by American Authors, published in 1884.) “Miss Grief” is Woolson’s first story set in Europe (in a Rome she had not yet visited), and it marks her transition from a much-hailed writer who had opened up the literary regions of the Great Lakes and the Reconstruction South to a writer tackling the international themes most closely associated with Henry James. She published regularly in Harper’s, Scribner’s, Appletons’, and theAtlantic Monthly. When Constance Fenimore Woolson wrote “Miss Grief,” shortly after her arrival in Europe in late 1879, she was, unlike her eponymous character, already known as one of America’s preeminent short story writers.

Anne by constance fenimore woolson