Margaret Darby
Department/Office Information
Writing and RhetoricContact
In both my teaching and my scholarship, I always try to understand better the difference that language itself makes, how it mediates between intention and meaning.
I want to teach students who feel a strong impulse to discover what they mean when they write and, further, what they really mean when they revise what they have written.
This attention to language finds more specific expression in my scholarly work on 19th-century metaphors of femininity and their relation to women鈥檚 lived experience in the Victorian Age. One scholarly path is to garden history, especially metaphors of a space like the glassed-in garden conservatory, as portrayed in horticultural history, women鈥檚 history, literature, and art. I follow another scholarly path of women in the life and writings of Charles Dickens. I present my work at conferences on Dickens and Victorian Studies in the United States and Britain.