ABSTRACT
The prospect of the woman about to die elicits from De Quincey, in 1847, a curiously emphatic and innocent enthusiasm. The scene of woman's death is the scene of her artistic, emotional and even political success. The relationship between the aesthetic and the ideological is one of ironic connection rather than of mutual exclusion. De Quincey's celebration of idiomatic style as the province of women, relies on a quiet undercurrent of criticism of the social and sexual structures, whether 'conjugal' or 'parental', in which most women are caught. De Quincey had good reason to associate women with death. The story of his own life is tragically landmarked by the deaths of the women he knew and loved. De Quincey is a pure rhetorician, a daring dreamer, whose work often constitutes a biographer's nightmare of fantasies and fine lies.
