Charlotte
Smith’s three sonnets, “Sonnet IX”, “Sonnet XXVII”, and “On Being Cautioned Against Walking on an Headland
Overlooking the Sea, Because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic” offer three
interesting personas telling us the story of the poem. All three sonnets speak
to the contrast between innocence and experience, and a distinct feminist
overtone can be observed in each of the three sonnets as well. The poems
illustrate Smith’s contemplation on innocence and its loss, as well as her
frustration and sadness at being subject to the cruelties of the world that the
innocent are not tortured by.
“Sonnet IX” tells us of a shepherd the speaker observes, and
what luck the shepherd has because he does not have to experience the same pain
and cruelty the speaker has dealt with at the hands of the world. The speaker
describes the shepherd as “blessed” (1), going on to say “Ah, he has never felt the pangs that move /
Th’ indignant spirit when, with selfish pride, / Friends on whose faith the
trusting heart relied / Unkindly shun th’ imploring eye of woe;” (5–8). Here we
see that the speaker is acutely jealous, evidenced by the emphasized “he”, that the shepherd does not deal
with the same hardships he or she does. The speaker sees the shepherd as
innocent, a man that leads a simple life uncomplicated by friends that have not
helped in times of need, or uncomplicated by any times of need whatsoever. In
contrast, the speaker is hardened, experienced in the ways of the world
compared to the shepherd’s “vacant mind” (3) that remains untroubled over time.
The speaker draws a line between the shepherd and herself. She is superior to
the shepherd in her knowledge, in her consciousness of the ways of the world,
but for all her superiority, the shepherd is innocent and carefree and so she
envies him.
Looking at “Sonnet IX” from a feminist point of view it becomes
clear that perhaps the speaker is envious of the shepherd in another way. The
shepherd is alone, he has freedom to do as he pleases and be isolated. Assuming
the speaker is female, she does not have the same freedoms. The shepherd does
not have to deal with the troubles of the world because he is innocent, and he
is also unencumbered by the burdens and tribulations of being a woman.
Charlotte Smith was writing in the 1700s and 1800s, a time when women were
essentially defined by the men in their lives. We can see that the speaker in
the poem can be considered subject to the same limitations women were subject
to in that era and is therefore jealous of the aloneness and freedom of the
shepherd.
“Sonnet XXVII” presents a different narrative but a similar
theme to that of “Sonnet IX”. In “Sonnet XXVII” the speaker depicts a troop of
children at play, enjoying themselves and having fun. Even in observing the
children’s “simple mirth” (6), the speaker relates their happiness to his or
her own sadness. Once again, the innocence of the children is juxtaposed with
the experience of the speaker. The speaker later states, “Ere yet they feel the
thorns that lurking lay / To wound the wretched pilgrims of the earth, / Making
them rue the hour that gave them birth, / And threw them on a world so full of
pain” (7–10). The speaker laments the tragic fate of the children: they will
lose their innocence to experience and open their eyes to a ruthless world. We
see also in this poem the use of the word “free” (3) to describe the children,
implying that the speaker of the poem is not free. We can interpret the
speaker’s captivity as imprisonment at the hands of a cruel world.
Additionally, if we take a feminist view, the speaker can be seen as captive to
convention, societies expectations for women, and the notion that women are not
free to do what they want, when they want, and how they want. Girls would be
freer as children than they are as women, because society and the world have
not yet trapped them so strongly.
Lastly,
“On Being Cautioned Against Walking on an Headland
Overlooking the Sea, Because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic” explores innocence
and experience in a different way. The speaker, presumably a woman, imagines
what the lunatic frequenting the headland must be thinking. She says “I see him
more with envy than with fear; / He
has no nice felicities that shrink /
From giant horrors; wildly wandering here, / He seems (uncursed with reason)
not to know / The depth or the duration of his woe.” (10–14). Here, the speaker
claims the lunatic is innocent because he does not know his own sorrow. He is
“uncursed by reason”, and thus uncursed by experience. She looks at him with
envy, obviously not because he is a lunatic, but because his abnormality (that
exists for whatever reason) affords him his innocence. From a feminist
perspective, the “giant horrors” that loom over the lunatic and the speaker
herself affect the two people in different ways. The man’s lack of “nice
felicities” gives him his indifference to the giant horrors. He is not affected
by the world, nor by the oppressive statutes that govern a woman’s life. The
speaker however, does possess these nice felicities and as such is subject to
the unhappiness the world brings, and the unhappiness of the typical woman’s
life.
Moreover the lack of freedom for
women that Smith brings to light is substantiated by the very nature of the
three sonnets. In each poem, the speaker is only guessing at what the shepherd,
the children, and the lunatic are thinking and feeling. The speakers are
distant from the subjects. All three women are only imagining, unable to
participate in the actual story. There is a lack of action on the part of the
speakers that points to the lack of action in a woman’s life that could be
dictated by the woman herself. In the third poem, a woman is cautioned not to
go to a headland, and so she does not go. She cannot determine on her own what
she will do. The speakers are subject to the heartlessness of knowledge and
experience having lost innocence, and are cursed because they are unable even
to act on their knowledge. This theme runs in parallel to the restrictions
placed on women in the time Smith was writing. As much knowledge and experience
as women could and did have, they were almost entirely limited in their actions
and their use of their experience.
Charlotte Smith
Photo: Encyclopedia Britannica
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Charlotte-Smith
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