Degrees of Freedom: American Women Poets and the Women’s College, 1905-1955

In this original contribution to the history of American poetry in the twentieth century, Bethany Hicok traces the influence of the women’s college on the poetic development of three American poets - Marianne Moore at Bryn Mawr, Elizabeth Bishop at Vassar, and Sylvia Plath at Smith. Drawing on extensive archival research, Hicok demonstrates how the women’s colleges provided an important source of cultural and critical authority for American women poets and played a central role in their poetic development in the first half of the twentieth century. Hicok argues Moore, Bishop, and Plath were each part of a supportive but also competitive community of writers and scholars who honed their writing skills in college classes and in literary magazines. Her book offers theoretically and historically grounded new readings of their poetry within the specific cultural and literary context of the women’s college in order to sharpen and deepen our understanding of women’s poetic production.