Though Felicia Hemans
and George Gordon, Lord Byron are both members of the second generation of
Romantics, they might strike us as bewilderingly different from or even
diametrically opposed to each other. Byron
was deeply skeptical of Christian faith; Hemans was deeply devout. Byron was a political radical who embraced a
life of exile from his homeland; Hemans was much more conservative and
valorized patriotism. Byron famously had
a string of affairs and separated from his wife when their daughter was a
child; Hemans was abandoned by her husband and supported their six children on
her own.
And yet, despite vast
differences of experience and ideology, the two poets share some profound
similarities. Both, for example, are
invested in constructing heroes. Records of Woman presents a host of
figures who embody ideals Hemans felt to be important for women throughout
history. Even when they embody gender
norms, Hemans’ women are passionate, courageous, and undaunted in the face or
threat or trauma. They are often wronged
or rejected by those around them, and often seek means to defy those who seek
to control them.
In your post, pick one of Hemans’ women to consider. In what ways does she embody conventional (female) virtues? In what ways does she defy these conventions? How is she like and unlike Childe Harold or the general Byronic hero?
Happy reading,
Prof. M.
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| Hemans, from her Collected Works |
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| Illustration of Hemans' poem "Effigies" |
I chose The Sicilian Captive. Hemans starts the poem off with three stanzas describing her heroine's Norse captors, who she first describes as "the champions". At first glance, the Norsemen could be the heroes of the poem. The terms that relate to them could be seen as positive in some context (war, spoils, glare, solemn). In the fourth stanza, the Sicilian Captive shows up. Immediately, she is different from the Norsemen. While they have a "red radiance" and are surrounded by symbols of conquest (masculinity, perhaps?), the girl is described as softer, lonely, mournful, stately and fragile. The girl seems delicate and beautiful: she has a pale brow and marble cheek, waves of hair, is flushed from a fever and keeps her eyes half-closed. Her hands tremble. We hear about her hair more than once. While she is fragile, she is also stately. I think Hemans presents delicacy and dignity as two sides of femininity. Her voice starts out "faint", but "swelled into deeper power", implying that women are capable of inner (if not physical) strength.
ReplyDeleteThis poem reminded me strongly of the Psalm that talks about captive Jews sitting by the rivers of Babylon and being asked to play songs on their lyres, to which they respond by asking how they can sing holy songs on foreign land.
It's hard to say what makes the Sicilian Captive a hero for women. I think the moral of the poem is that love is "stronger than the grave". When I first started to read the poem, I assumed it would be about a chaste maiden fighting to preserve her moral/sexual code among heathens. This doesn't seem to be the case at all. It's unlikely that the request for music has anything to do with illicit sexuality, because the girl acquiesces and she seems like the kind of character who can do no wrong.
The girl's triumph is one of spirit. Throughout the poem, we are reminded of her fragile and weak physical state. She marshals her courage and her sense of self (and otherness from the Norsemen) and is rewarded with death, a removal from captivity. I think she's supposed to be a symbol of feminine inner fortitude more than a point-to-her-actions kind of hero. She has a voice (she is the only character whose words we hear), and she has more of a personality than any of the nameless male figures. Maybe she's supposed to represent the triumph of the female spirit over male violence. She doesn't bodily escape her captors, who control the physical reality, but she escapes them in death, which is spiritual. Overall, the Sicilian Captive conforms to gender conventions of physical weakness and inner sensitivity.
I chose to respond to Hemans’s poem “Joan of Arc”. A bit of historical background is necessary in order to understand this piece. The Hundred Years’ War was fought over the succession of the French throne during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There was a dynastic feud between two factions: the Armagnac, who supported the crown prince Charles of Valois, and the Burgundians, who were allied with the British (King Henry had laid claim to France as a descendant of French royalty). France was torn asunder by this division, and the general population was wearied out by the perpetual state of civil war. In the midst of this national crisis emerged Joan of Arc. This illiterate girl claimed to have received divine instructions to crown Charles as king and to oust the English from France. Unbelievably, she secured an audience with Charles, successfully led the Armagnac troops in battle, and anointed Charles of Valois as king of France, thereby achieving her raison d’etre. However, she was later captured by the English, tried and found guilty of heresy, and subsequently burnt at the stake.
ReplyDeleteThere are many aspects of Joan’s tale which make her character seem to diverge from that of the conventional female. For instance, she led an entire army of men to battle, a feat which was unheard of for a woman in her time as well as in our own. Hemans terms her a “warrior” and refers to her as “the leader through the battle storm”. The poetess also describes her as “holy amidst the knighthood of the land”, a position clearly not traditionally inhabited by women. Joan pushed for Charles’s anointment, demonstrating an insistence uncommon in conventional females. Further, Hemans notes Joan’s uniqueness by declaring, “Never before, and never since that hour, / Hath woman, mantled with victorious power, / Stood forth as thou beside the shrine didst stand.” By stating that Joan was different from all other women in existence, Hemans highlights the fact that Joan did not embody to the traditional female role.
At the same time, there are elements of Joan’s character which are reflective of the conventional view of women. Firstly, she presents herself as God’s messenger; this is reminiscent of classic female purity, holiness, and virtue. Her illiteracy also might be seen as representative of the pervasive notion of female ignorance. Joan is described by Heman as being in “deep devotion meek”, which rings strongly of female timidity and naivete. Most striking, though, is the moment her father and brothers appear in Rheims. Hemans writes, “On the breast of that grey sire she sank”, portraying the classic reliance of females on male figures in their lives. There is a palpable assurance felt by Joan in the appearance of her father, so much so that “she saw the pomp no more”. The traditional sense of a woman’s dependence on a man is felt even by the strong-willed Joan.
The wife in The Switzer’s Wife is certainly a picture of traditional womanhood. She is intuitive, sensing her husband’s distress as well as his internal debate. She is emotional, calling on pathos to convince her husband – ‘think of the children’ is her main argument. She sees herself primarily as a wife and mother – her title is ‘this man’s wife,’ rather than her own name, but there is no indication that she’d rather it any other way. She embraces the gender norms, accepting that it is her place to stay at home and pray while her husband goes to war. In fact, she seems to valorize these roles – she demands that her husband fulfill his and seems proud of her own role. There is no indication that she would like to be the one going to war – she’s no Joan of Arc. Rocking the baby and praying is enough for her.
ReplyDeleteYet despite her conventionality, she is a more modern woman than she seems at first. She calls her husband “friend,” indicating that she seems him as an equal. She tells him what to do, unequivocally – not what you’d expect from the demure, traditional wife. Despite the fact that her arguments are largely emotion-driven, this doesn’t negate the fact that she argues logically and coherently. She wants freedom, at any cost, even at the cost of domestic happiness – not the sort of sentiment usually attributed to woman. It’s usually men who want to throw their lives away for liberty – women tend to be more pragmatic and focused on personal happiness. (I don’t think this is true in real life, but I believe that’s the stereotype). Granted, she wants it ‘for the children’ but that argument is more an attempt to use her husband’s emotions against him. The very fact that she convinces her husband to go to war is nontraditional. The traditional woman wishes her husband was home, and bemoans the fact that he must go to war. As Rebecca complains to Ivanhoe, while men are off dying for glory, they lose out on what most women wish for: domestic happiness. Yet she is urging him, against his will, to go to war, despite the emotional cost to both him and her. And when her husband leaves, we see her calmly putting her child to bed, praying for her husband, but not devastated at the fact that he’s gone, perhaps forever. Her logic and ideology seem to have a good hold on her emotions. Thus, despite the fact that she’s a ‘good woman,’ her valor and strength of mind seem to defy traditional stereotypes.
I have always harbored a deep fascination with Joan of Arc (perhaps because of my deep fascination with witchcraft and the Church). I found this poem interesting because it portrayed Joan in a way that was similar to her account of herself. When Joan was asked why she wore men’s clothing, she replied that she had done it for the protection of her virginity. This appropriation of male attributes for female ends is a theme championed by Hemans in the poem.
ReplyDeleteThe poem starts off by describing the battle scene with a fixation on sound. We get “peal on peal of mighty music roll’d” and “dome with the trumpet-notes be shaken / And bid the echoes of the tombs awaken” this at the time when “rose a nation’s sound.” Joan is not in the midst of all this; she is leading them into the fray. Once Joan sees her father and brothers, all this noise is stilled. She sinks back into the domestic role, literally and figuratively, as she throws herself into the arms of her father. Of course, by ending the poem with the lines “the paradise / Of home with all its loves, doth fate allow / The crown of glory unto woman’s brow” Hemans reinforces her idea of the women’s true place being at home.
The idea of femininity in this poem is as complex as Joan’s idea of femininity. Like Joan dressing up as a man to protect herself, Hemans combines oxymoronic terms to demonstrate how women can retain their female virtues by accessing their manlier side. The poem contains descriptions such as, “warlike melodies” an oxymoron or describing Joan with the female attributes of “devotion meek” and “slight form” while she is with her army. All of these both reinforce the gender norm of the time and undermine it, by proving that the soft female can have a role (and a lead role at that) in the, what is most often thought of as, the male sphere of war.
Therefore, although the poem does endorse the view of the domestic women, by demonstrating that a duality can be achieved, Hemans subtly undermines the stereotype of the separated gender spheres.
In the Indian Woman's Death song, we are treated to the pleasantly depressing song of a woman comitting suicide and taking her daughter along with her, in response to her husband's desertion. This Indian woman is depicted as heroic in a different sense than the women in Heman's other poems. She is does not face tragedy with calmness and logic, nor is she killed. Rather, she makes the decision to kill herself. Her choice is not in response to an immediate danger, unless her emotions themselves are the danger. She makes the choice to escape the painful feelings that are tearing at her, as well as the choice to "protect" her child from ever experiencing the same pain as she did. She believes she and her child are headed for a better and more peaceful place.
ReplyDeleteIt is important the she chose the river as the means to end her life rather than something simple, such as stabbing herself. It seems to me as if she did not want to see her actions as suicide, but rather as life running its course in the natural manner - she is just helping to end things a little faster. The poem includes many descriptions of and comparisons to nature, stressing that the woman is one with nature, and as the river flows on, so does life. She is flowing with the river... and, you know, a violent and painful death (but we won't mention that now, will we?). She is "roll[ing] swiftly to the spirit's land," through the "might stream". She is "free".
The woman refers to her "warrior", her husband, and how he has been drawn to another woman. He can forget abou her, but she cannot forget him. Sheis adamant that her daughter will not experience the same "weary lot" of a woman, and so the both of them must move on together.
The woman sees her actions as actions of strength. Her heroism is that, in a world where she will always be given the worst lot, she will take her life into her own hands and choose to move on to a different and more pleasant world. She will no longer be "borne leaf-like" by the river of life. Rather, she will choose to end her journey on the river, both figuratively and literally. She will take charge in the only way she can. If all she controls is her life, then her life she shall take.
I chose to write about Edith. I feel that the text portrays Edith in the general female conventions that are often played on, but then juxtaposes them to surroundings the exact opposite of them, to naturally tear down those stereotypes. The text calls Edith “young and fair” and depicts a woman mourning for her lover, as she holds him. She is lost in the woods, and is weak, and vulnerable. She is referred to the “broken flower of England”, pale in color, fragile. Yet, in every moment and instance in this poem, when recognizing the circumstances, weakness, paleness, fragility and brokenness, don’t become defining factors, rather just adjectives that describe this woman, and her setting, situation, and choices come to define her character. The poem opens with her holding her dead, bloody, lover to her chest, amongst utter destruction, in the woods, with other dead bodies around. The text says that this was a fearful scene for one coming from the fair halls of England, yet, Edith is still there, doing what she has to do. She is not really lost, in fact she has the determination to be in that forest, surrounded by death and danger, to fulfill a need that she has, to be with her dead love. From what I gather this happens next (forgive me if I’m wrong), she is adopted by Indian parents, and is cared for while she mourns the death in her life. Eventually, the death that was at her root caught up with her and she died. She in some ways becomes the woman to whom losing her lover ends the rest of her life, but at the same time, endured as long as she was able.
ReplyDelete