SOURCE: "Orinda and Her Daughters," in Raising Their Voices: British Women Writers, 1650-1750, Wayne State University Press, 1990, pp. 64-133.

In the following excerpt, Williamson surveys the role of the woman writer as presented in Finch's poetry.

[Finch] was resolutely ladylike and therefore a natural daughter of Orinda [Katherine Philips], and so she is consistently defensive about her writing. In "Mercury and the Elephant," which began her Miscellany Poems, on Several Occasions, Written by a Lady, she uses a fable to represent the predicament of the woman writer. Just as the god Mercury cannot be bothered with the quarrels of an elephant and a wild boar, so men can hardly be troubled with what women write:

 What Men are not concem'd to know:
For still untouch'd how we succeed,
'Tis for themselves, not us they Read;
Whilst that proceeding to requite,
We own (who in the Muse delight)
'Tis...