Authorial Distance in Hemans' "Indian Woman's Death Song"

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My first impression of Felicia Hemans’ “Indian Woman’s Death Song” had a great deal to do with the number of epigraphs and introductions. It seems like one doesn’t need so many unless one is defending something or hiding behind them. Further, the two epigraphs don’t bring much to the poem, simply restate sentiments that already exist there. The epigraph in French from Bride of Messina translates to “No, I can’t live with a broken heart. I must retrieve my happiness, and be reunited with the spirits of the air.” The entire poem is about how she cannot live any longer and will find happiness in the afterlife, so why does this need to be restated? (However, in Bride of Messina, interestingly enough, the male protagonist finds his brother with the woman he loves, kills his brother, and then kills himself. Perhaps she is saying something there?)

The other epigraph is about the tragic life of women, but this sentiment is stated quite clearly in the second to last stanza, where the Indian woman addresses her daughter who is “born, like me, for a woman’s weary lot” (36). The introduction may be the only part of this buildup necessary, if only to give credit for the source of the story. The story itself is clear.

These introductory statements seem to distance the poet from the work. Citing all these other sources seem to say, “well these aren’t my ideas, don’t judge me,” as if the author didn’t want to be accused of identifying with the subject of the story. This may be a bit of a leap, but this buildup throws suspicion onto an already suspicious poem (in terms of exploiting another culture for poetic uses).

However, formally and aesthetically the poem works well in many ways. For one, I like the way Hemans sets the scene – this exposition does not rhyme but rhythmically works to quicken the pace of the poem as the canoe speeds down the river. As the current carries the canoe, so this current carries the rest of the poem, even when the meter changes. The speed is fearful, but the woman fearless and light, like the “leaf-like” canoe (5). The natural imagery, too, is stunning, particularly the way the woman describes her face as having “faded from his soul, as fades a moonbeam’s trace” (21). She, leaf-like, moon-like, and one with the stream, unites with the natural world around her as she heads toward the waterfall and toward transcendence. Her repeated entreaties to the stream also show her fearlessness – she is not passive in this ride. She appeals to something larger and more powerful than both herself and the man that has wronged her to take her and her child elsewhere. This refrain does not seem so much like a plea, however, but more like an invocation, as nature here is complicit rather than indifferent.

Although the poem contains beautiful imagery and a compelling rhythm and cadence, there are aspects of the poem that prevent it from being as evocative as it could be, namely the distance created by the introduction, epigraphs, and third-party narrator, as well as the use of a different culture to express a sentiment perhaps not acceptable in the poet’s own. I think ultimately it is a ‘write what you know’ situation, or at least do your research.

A 'nice' poem about raping a virgin

Can a rape be beautiful? If not, then wherein lies the beauty of Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn? The poem's depiction of the rape of a young girl is crucial to the action and energy of the poem. Furthermore, the speaker predominantly revels in the joys of the rapist, only lamenting the pain of the victim in passing. The extent to which the greatness of such a work is lauded as a seminal, even genius contribution to the literary cannon is rendered highly disturbing when a feminist reading of the poem is explored.

The centrality of the rape theme in the poem is established in the first line: “Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,” (line 1). The speaker addresses the urn, which becomes metaphorically equated to a woman's body. The much sighed-over preservation of temporal stasis embodied by the vase is directly equated with the preservation of virginal 'purity'. The woman is married to “quietness”, she is without a husband and therefore assumed to be a virgin, deemed by the speaker to be a more inciting target for the rape he is set upon committing. The woman is further characterized as a “foster-child” (line 2). This line paints the woman as socially, physically and emotionally vulnerable. As she is without a husband, so is she without a father. The speaker's desire to rape this woman is the desire to exploit her special vulnerability, to simultaneously occupy the place of the absent husband and father in a fantasy of total patriarchal dominance.

At the end of the first stanza there is an explicit reference to the rape event. “What maidens loth? / What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? / What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?” (lines 7-10). We are given a frame-by-frame depiction of the rape, a “maiden” is chased, she is caught and she struggles to free herself, she is forcibly penetrated and the rapist achieves orgasm. The word “pipes”, repeated in the next stanza as “soft pipes” (line 12) is a graphic reference to the anal or vaginal orifices of the victim.

The disturbing quality of the poem is heightened by the continuation of the rape theme in praise of the rapist and sanctification of the act. “Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave” (15). The speaker returns to his fantasy, finding the unmarried and fatherless youth beneath a tree and exerting his power to prevent her from escaping him. The speaker sees the rapist in his imaginary scenario as a “Bold Lover” (line 17), not only praising his transgression through rape as courageous but capitalizing the phrase to give him an even greater position of power.

 On the first stanza the speaker, imagining the urn as a woman's body, asks “What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape” (line 5). Later in the poem, a “heifer” (line 33) is being sacrificed “And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?” (line 34). In the parallelism of these two descriptions the virgin is equated with the heifer that is to be sacrificed. The rape becomes a sacrifice, relating to the trope of sacrificing a virgin and therefore preserve her virginity forever as the vase does. The sacrifice is a rape in the penetration of the phallic dagger, but instead of eternally destroying virginity it eternally preserves it.  

Ode on a Grecian Urn, Not So Unchanging!

Holly Pretsky

John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” the speaker emphasizes the power that lies in the historical treasure that is the ancient piece of pottery, adorned all around with frozen images. The aspect of the urn most highlighted is its constancy, it’s endurance through the ages, unchanging and eternal. The scene of young love will never grow less beautiful or less passionate: “For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!” (20). The scenes of verdant nature will not fade away: “Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed / Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu.” The urn, through its immortality, seems to gain an almost supernatural awareness of the universe. It can view humanity from outside of time, from a place perhaps other than earth. It relates the wisdom at the end of the poem: “’Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know’” (49 – 50).

While the urn is explicitly unchanging and eternal, the imagery of the poem implies something else. The imagery shifts distinctly from the beginning to the end of the poem. At the beginning, the urn is much closer to human life. By the end, it has grown distant, cold. In other words, despite the speaker’s insistence otherwise, the urn seems to age right before us.

In the first stanza, the opening lines of the poem, the urn is personified: “Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, / Thou foster-child of silence and slow time.” The urn is an unravish’d bride, meaning virginal, young, and a foster-child. Not only is it compared to living humans, but it’s compared to young ones. There is also ample fecund imagery. The urn is covered in plants: “Sylvan,” “flowery,” “leaf-ring’d.” Next, the scene of the two lovers is described. The man is a “youth.” There is frozen music, then trees that will never shed their leaves.

The second to last stanza of the poem takes a turn, and speaks of sacrifice. If the rest of the poem was intimately related to human life and green-ness, this stanza stands out in its meditation on death. It moves to a town empty of humans. Where the last stanzas focused on people, this one focuses on the absence of them, moving away from human life. The poem began with youth, then moved through sex and attraction, then death. For something that is unchanging, the urn neatly encompasses human life.

In the last stanza the speaker observes, “Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought / As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!” What was living is dead, what was silently musical is cold. Rather than being eternal, the urn seems to have aged and died.

Additionally, the urn is inconstant by virtue of its very form. An urn is round, it cannot be viewed entirely at once. Stillness is impossible in order to observe it as the speaker does.

There is a fascinating tension here, between what the speaker says, and what her use of imagery implies. (Photo from schmoop.com)

In Sympathy for Juana

Transgressive women are often labeled “insane” in order to contain them. These women have historically been incarcerated or lobotomized. It is popular to this day to tell a woman she is “crazy” when she is upset by a man or acting as aggressively as a man. And so it goes with “Juana” by Felicia Hemans. In this poem, a woman neglected by her husband stays mourning by his corpse for days, insisting he will awake. While it may be tempting to conjure up the image of Emily and the corpse of Homer Barron, in “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, this is not a just comparison. Emily was a transgressive woman who won. Emily murdered her lover and got away with it−she was the perpetrator, not the victim. Juana on the other hand was a woman and ruling queen, neglected by her husband. After his death, she mourned by his side hoping that he would awake and fall in love with her again. This is not the story of a mad necrophiliac−this is the story of an abused woman facing the knowledge that she will never be treated with love by her abuser.

In real life Juana of Aragon, Queen of Castile was a queen in her own right. As the throne passed through blood, her father, Ferdinand II of Aragon was not the successor to the throne-she was. Therefore her father and her husband, Philip the Handsome, went to great lengths to try to secure the position for themselves, and dethrone her. One of their tactics was labeling her as insane. Both men even minted coins with their names on them in order to try to gain power. Juana and her husband were initially deeply in love. Therefore, when he was shown to be philanderous, she was devastated. Juana and Philip would fight, and then her husband would punish her by ignoring her for days at a time. Occasionally their arguments would turn violent. When Philip fell ill, there were suspicions that Ferdinand II poisoned him. Juana cared for Philip as he died. The rumors that Juana stood by Philip’s corpse for days were invented, and her father used them to finally take her place on the throne.

It is important to note the characters of this poem: the narrator, the dead husband, Juana, and an ambiguous “they.” The “they” function as those who wish to bring the body to rest, the narrator passes on Juana’s dialogue and narrative, and the dead king simply rests. The most agency in the poem is given to the narrator. In Felicia Heymans poem the narrator emphasizes Juana’s insanity rather than its cause. Here are a few descriptions of Juana: “on her wan cheek no beauty dwelt and in her garb no pride,” she is a “dreamer,” and has a “strange resplendence” meaning immaturity (l10-11). Therefore the narrator describes Juana as unattractive, unkempt, and childlike. Juana is a “dreamer” also meaning that she is living in dreams rather than reality. The narrator reduces a queen to the state of a day dreaming child. Conversely, the narrator describes the dead husband as looking, “like a hunter or a chief struck down” as “majestic” and “proudly glittering in royalty’s array” (l6-8). This narrator portrays the dead, decaying husband as more beautiful and strong than his living, ruling wife. I also wonder whether the narrator would have called Juana by only her first name had she been a king mourning over his dead queen.

 Juana is given little voice in this poem. The only words she speaks are regarding her husband, and all we know of her is in reference to her husband. She speaks of his “brow so proudly beautiful” and of how “surely that humble patient love must win back love at last! (l22,32). We are shown her regard for her husband, that he did not love her, and that she is distraught over the knowledge that know she will never win back his love. What is missing is her complicated tragedy. The lack of love from her husband was a tragedy, but it was further complicated by the fact that her father and husband were wrestling over her crown. The two men closest to her were tarnishing her name for money and power. The accusations of insanity were pushed on Juana even before the death of her husband. In fact, her father and husband once allied themselves in order to sign a treaty that would declare her insane. The men in her life used these accusations in an attempt to control her crown, and in real life her father succeeded after the death of her husband.

I believe the poem is beautifully written, but it is tragic that it passes on rumors that subverted a powerful woman. This poem retells history as men told it. In reaction to this poem I have written a poetic response, hoping to be more sympathetic to her character, and include important details of her Queen-hood:

For Juana

“Visit me at night”

you begged,

“the bruise of an empty bed

is worse than my cold bruised cheeks.”

A Queen cannot rule without men,

but you did, and look where that got you.

Your husband loved the petty chase,

your father loved your crown.

“She’s unfit to rule,” they said,

and minted themselves a coin.

He’d punish you

by leaving your chamber for days;

And the two of them

pulled on the babe inside o’ you.

When your husband died,

we were sure it was your father;

and you’d waited so long for him to love you,

and now he’d never love you.

You stayed with him,

while the fever overtook his naval.

You stayed until his eyes looked at you

with more intensity than they ever had before.

Those eyes never closed

and you felt seen for the first time.

“This, this is love,” you said,

and would not leave,

could not believe that this was

the only love you’d get.

So you waited, as you waited in life,

and as I’m sure you wait in death.

Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_of_Castile
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_of_Castile
http://madmonarchs.guusbeltman.nl/madmonarchs/juana/juana_bio.htm

Seeking Revenge for the End of Time

“Revenge” by Letitia Elizabeth Landon reflects the transition from unconditional love to forgotten love. The first two stanzas of the poem drown in sentimental tropes. This is especially apparent in the second stanza, “And swear your heart is as a shrine, / That only owns her sway.” There is no other room in the person’s heart than for his beloved. Additionally, it reiterates the total love begun in the first stanza. The phrase “gaze upon her” is repeated twice in the two opening lines which alludes to one set of eyes doting upon another. The first stanza continues, “Seem as you drank the very air / Her breath perfumed the while.” The imagery presented insinuates a romantic attitude where lovers are physically consuming one another. The love of the first two stanzas is physical and complete.

Furthermore, in the first two stanzas of the poem the narrator is speaking to a person outside of the poem. At the third stanza it becomes evident that the previous two stanzas were retrospectively spoken. The third stanza introduce a complete 180 in its sentimental feelings. The poem from here on presents a vengeful tone. The speaker says, “’Tis well I am revenged at last” meaning that the speaker finally understands and has condolence for all the bitter tears they wept for lost love.

The speaker has spent countless amounts of time pondering the list love and hoping for its redemption. This is clear from phrases such as, “The racking doubts, the burning fears…by the nights pass’d in sleepless care / The days of endless woe.” Still, what exactly has avenged all of these torments for the speaker? The answer comes at the seventh stanza, “this is fitting punishment / To live and love in vain— / Oh my wrung heart, be thou content, / And feed upon his pain.” The speaker understands the punishment as if they have also lived and loved in vain. But the best part of all is to see this outside person suffer and from what the speaker has felt before. In the next stanza the speaker further explains the lack of affection the outside person is receiving as they dote elsewhere. This unrequited love is just the revenge that the speaker sought.

The last two lines of the last stanza writes, “Ev’n I could almost pity feel, / For thou art nor beloved.” At first the use of nor appeared out of place and incorrect. However, understanding the poem in its parts—lost love, pain felt over that lost love, and then retribution—the ending makes perfect sense. The outside person is “nor beloved” in relation to the speaker. Neither of them have the love then seek. The speaker thus attains satisfaction and revenge from seeing her lost love suffer from the same pain.

The Benefits of Loving a Dead Woman in Wordsworth's "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways"

 I think “She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways” speaks more to Wordsworth’s success in being able to love Lucy rather than as a simple ode to Lucy as a woman.  This is clear in the first line when he says “She dwelt among the untrodden ways” meaning that she lives in a place that is not easy to access.  It also could imply a completely different style or way of living that was different than other women at that time.  This inaccessibility suggests that Wordsworth, too, must go “among the untrodden ways” to find Lucy and to be with her.  It means that he had to great struggle to get to her and be with her, as there are no clear paths or ways to truly get to her.

According to the dictionary, untrodden means “(of a surface) not having been walked on” (Google search of “untrodden").  With that, I want to try and take it further and use the idea of “untrodden ways” as a suggestion for Lucy’s virginity or purity.  If she “dwelt among the untrodden ways”—the untrodden ways being a lifestyle rather than geographical location—then she lives a life in a body that hasn’t been walked on, or altered, or made impure.  This idea is further pushed along when he writes; “A Maid who there were none to praise/And very few to love” (3-4).  So, if Lucy does really live in inaccessible areas, there is no one to love and therefore no way for her to become impure.  She also lives; “Beside the springs of Dove” (2).  The dove is often a symbol for peace.  Wordsworth is really idealizing Lucy and their love here, as she lives in a peaceful place with no one to truly love her like he does. 

Wordsworth takes ownership over Lucy and his love for her with this poem.  In the final stanza he says; “She lived unknown, and few could know/When Lucy ceased to be” (9-10).  By stating that he noticed her absence right away, he is establishing a very clear and special connection between him and Lucy that no-one else is capable of having but himself.  He further strengthens this connection and claims more ownership over Lucy when he says; “But she is in her grave, and, oh,/The difference to me!” (11-12).  With this final revealing of Lucy’s death, Wordsworth is implying that no-one else will ever be able to love her or have her like he did, making her eternally his. 

            This last line can also be taken back when rereading the poem.  With the idea of Lucy as dead, the “untrodden ways” and “springs of Dove” can be seen as heavenly images.  This could be a way of saying that Lucy has always and will always live in heaven, or in an unreachable place that only Wordsworth can get to.  So, if Lucy has always been in heaven and continues to be so, it could imply a relationship with her that continues after death.  It doesn’t necessarily imply sexual relations that continue post death, but does suggest an eternal love between Lucy and Wordsworth, if not a continued love of Lucy post death or strange obsession with her in her “untrodden” and unreachable state.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painting "Elizabeth Siddal."  It's a painting of his wife, who had recently died.  Its idealization of her beauty and heavenly surroundings reminds me a lot of Wordsworth's Lucy poems and the general obsession with dead women.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_-_Beata_Beatrix,_1864-1870.jpg