Letters to Jane and Sappho: An Exploration of the Way Women Write

While reading the poetry of Sappho, it is clear that some poems might be read as having a strictly sexual interpretation; however, I much prefer to interpret her writings as more of a correspondence, mostly one sided, between her and the women with whom she interacted with daily. Some of those had left the town and were beyond reach. Sappho’s poems read much more like intimate notes to friends than risqué love poetry. She is a woman who writes for herself and for other women, much like Jane Austen did in the beginning of the nineteenth century. “Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much a higher degree; the pen has been in their hands,” says Anne Elliot, the protagonist of Persuasion (Austen 223). Austen wrote novels about women, and men, but the focus was more on the women’s lives and roles. She wrote novels that were meant to be read by women. In today’s society, the idea has arisen that Jane Austen books and the films based on them are “chick flicks,” and most men will refuse to read or watch them. From the scholars who write on Sappho, it seems that there is a generalized trend that male scholars tend to see her poetry in the more modern sense of the word lesbian, while female scholars make more allowances and believe her work to be more about communication and relationships between women.

Through our discussion in class on Sappho, I realized just how much her work reminded me of Jane Austen, and especially of the novel Persuasion. In the book, Anne Elliot was persuaded by her friend Lady Russell, an older woman who acted as a surrogate mother to Anne, not to marry Frederick Wentworth. The novel begins eight years later when Wentworth’s sister and brother-in-law rent o...

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...its onset, and both authors address it.

Though several thousand years separate Sappho and Jane Austen, there are definitely connections between the two women as expressed in their poetry and novels. Part of the reason for this connection is because this is the way that women write about love. Men and women inevitable think differently about life, and especially about love. Though I believe it is possible for a man to enjoy an Austen book or film, I have yet to meet one who can actually read or sit through the entirety of one. Men do not appreciate Austen, and while I am sure that there certainly are men who can at least appreciate the beauty or poetics of Sappho, I do not believe that most men can fully grasp and feel what Sappho’s poetry really is all about in the same way in which a woman can because they do not think about love or relationships in the same way.