What's in a name, Spoon River?
Even a quick perusal of the titles of the 243 epitaphs of ‘ Spoon River Anthology ’ reveals a staggering male bias. Just from the titles alone, without reading the underlying poems, there are a whopping 187 poems readily identifiable as ‘male’. This, in contrast to just 54 poems recognisably ‘female’ and, of these, ten of the women have no given name, being referred to only in relation to their marital status. Even in death, it seems, the womenfolk lacked a voice. If we take Masters at his word when he says he would “draw the macrocosm by portraying the microcosm”, we can read this dearth of female voices as reflective of the time and place rather than a sign of misogyny on the poet’s part. That there are so many women who lack a given name of their own – Mrs. Benjamin Pantier , Mrs. Charles Bliss and Mrs. George Reece among others – is not a sign that Edgar Lee Masters had a policy of ‘ disappearing ’ women from the register of life so much as a reflection of the reality...