Critics
Later feminist writers have had a less positive view of the Angel. Virginia Woolf satirized the ideal of femininity depicted in the poem, writing that "She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed daily. If there was a chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in it ... Above all, she was pure." (Woolf, 1966: 2, 285) She added that she "bothered me and wasted my time and so tormented me that at last I killed her" (Woolf, 1966: 2, 285). Nel Noddings views her as "infantile, weak and mindless" (1989: 59). Similarly, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote a short essay entitled The Extinct Angel in which she described the angel in the house as being as dead as the dodo (Gilman, 1891: 200).
More recently, the feminist folk-rock duo The Story used the title in their album The Angel in the House.
Read more about this topic: The Angel In The House
Famous quotes containing the word critics:
“My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer ... writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one’s children will become than for the children one’s “mature” critics often are.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)
“Learn then what morals critics ought to show,
For ‘tis but half a judge’s task, to know.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)