SOURCE: “‘Matters That a Woman Rules’: Marginalized Maternity in Jean Ingelow's A Story of Doom,” in Victorian Poetry, Vol. 33, No. 1, 1995, pp. 75-88.

In the following essay, Johnson studies Ingelow's portrayal of feminine spirituality and the role of the woman within the patriarchal world of Christianity in her poem A Story of Doom.

And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.

Genesis 7.7

He looks back to the past grieves not over what is distant. I mourn the wrack, the rock under the blue sea, our old wound, the dismantling storm and cannot thank you. 

Fay Zwicky, “Mrs. Noah Speaks” in “Ark Voices”¹

Narrative poetry on biblical themes frequently has attempted, in Milton's terms, to “justify the ways of God to men” while justifying little more for woman than her marginalization within...