SOURCE: Talbot, Norman. “The ‘Pomona’ Lyric and Female Power.” Victorian Poetry 35, no. 1 (spring 1997): 71-81.

In the following essay, Talbot offers a feminist perspective on “Pomona” and maintains that Morris was aware and concerned with feminist and ecological issues.

1

Admirers of William Morris were (until relatively recently) inclined to assume that his later poetry dispenses with the erotic complexities of the Defence of Guinevere volume and the menacing mortal implications of most of the Earthly Paradise narratives.¹ Critics who had not read most of the ten prose romances of his last decade were especially prone to believe that his later poetry consisted simply of “affirmations,” such as that brave London Lads will rise and Kelmscott four-posters tranquillize. Undoubtedly, affirmation is there, but as a hard-earned fictive triumph, not a cosy guarantee. Many recent readings of the later work, including those of Frederick Kirchhoff and Carole Silver,² are undoubtedly more...