Publication of the week: Dr Jocelynne A. Scutt

Jocelynne A. Scutt, “The Fishmonger, the Mantua Maker and the Madness of Mary Lamb”, The Charles Lamb Bulletin (Autumn 2015), New Series No.162, Special Issue: Mary Lamb

Known principally as Charles Lamb’s sister, Mary Lamb had a substantial writing career of her own. Despite this, biographers focus on Charles – even when writing of Mary – with Mary coming into focus in her own right most significantly in relation to the death of her (and Charles’) mother. Mary is portrayed as killing her in a fit of madness, madness that was to return to her throughout her life, in turn returning her to the madhouse. Yet surely this stereotypical vision of Mary Lamb is not only narrow, but bathed in ignorance. In “The Fishmonger …”, Jocelynne Scutt analyses the patriarchal nature of the story so far conveyed in literature about Mary Lamb, and challenges the subordinate positioning in life and writing of Mary to Charles. She observes that Mary was crucial to Charles’ productivity and played a far greater part in his writing that hitherto acknowledged.

More about The Charles Lamb Bulletin.

As a Visiting Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, Dr Jocelynne A. Scutt began researching Mary Lamb – a consequence of being interested in the way (some) women are ‘disappeared’  in history, their achievements downplayed, overlooked or attributed to others. The principal feature of Mary Lamb’s life, according to biographies about her and where she is referenced in biographies of her brother, is the killing of their mother and Mary Lamb’s role in it. This inevitably sparked Jocelynne Scutt’s interest, building on her work on women and the law. Dr Scutt is a Visiting Professor and Senior Teaching Fellow in the Law School at Buckingham. Her books include The Incredible Woman: Power and Sexual Politics (2 vols, Melbourne: Artemis, 2007); The Sexual Gerrymander: Women and the Economics of Power (North Melbourne: Spinifex, 1994); Even in the Best of Homes: Violence in the Family (Ringwood: Penguin, 1983) and Women and the Law (Sydney: Thomson Regulatory, 1990).