The War Poets

Hello everyone...this week my post is really late! It must be the effects of the last week of term. Anyway....
This week we read and compared two poems written during the First World War. Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier" is a sonnet presenting an idealistic view of war, and he used a lot of words we would not usually correlate with the topic - flowers, rivers, the sun, friends, laughter. Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" captured the more realistic aspects of death in a war where new weapons were being tried out. Perhaps by modern standards it seems very naive, and perhaps not very shocking; but at the time it was written it caused quite an effect. Still, I think, it has a certain power.

Please sir, can I have some more?

The Victorian Era was a period of contradictions. Some people prospered while others became poorer. Conditions for women became stricter in spite of there being a Queen on the throne. While science became more materialistic and the theory of evolution developed, people clung on to their religious beliefs tighter than ever before.

In terms of literature, the Victorian Era was the "Golden Age" of the English novel. Storylines became more intriguing and characters more unusual as the novelists tried to satisfy their audiences' ever increasing appetite for fiction.

Charles Dickens was a symbol of the times. He himself had a hard childhood, with his father being imprisoned for debts he was sent to work in a factory at 12 years old. We can see many influences from his life in his works. Oliver Twist , the story of the orphan boy growing up in a harsh environment, is one of his most popular works. Like all of his novels, it was originally written in installments for publication in a newspaper to be read by fathers to their families. The image of a starving, ragged boy going against the authorities and daring to ask for more gruel is one of the most striking in English literature. Of course Dickens' descriptions are rather exaggerated, as with a lot of literature. He aimed to bring the plight of the British poor to the attention of the politicians, which he eventually did, therby bringing about some very important changes in the social law of the country.

Check out the following link:

moterma.altervista.org/Tesina/Inglese.html

The Lady of Shallot

The story of "The Lady of Shallot" is said to come from an ancient Italian story, and Tennyson made connections with the Arthurian legends through Sir Lancelot and Camelot.
The first few verses of the poem set the scene-

"On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road run by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott. "

We learn that there is a mysterious lady imprisoned in a tower on a lonely island in the middle of the river that flows to King Arthur's castle, Camelot. Nobody has seen her, only the workers in the fields have heard her singing.
It turn out that she has some kind of curse upon her, the origins of which are very unclear nd even she does not know for sure -"She has heard a whisper say....". She is forbidden to look out of the window directly, and has to view the world via a mirror. She weaves a tapestry of the things she sees in the mirror to keep herself occupied.
While she doesn't seem to be too bothered by her fate - "And little other care hath she", she does feel depressed when she sees young people living their lives - "I'm half sick of shadows".
One day she sees the reflection of the gallant, handsome knight Sir Lancelot returning from a quest and she is caused to look out of the window toward Camelot. Then the curse begins...
The tapestry flies out of the window, the "mirror crack'd from side to side". She leaves the tower and finds a boat in which she lays herself down. The boat carries her down the river to Camelot, and she slowly dies while it takes her there. She dies singing her own death song. The boat finds its way to King Arthur's hall, where all wonder at what or who she is. Poignantly, considering he doesn't realise that he is the cause of her death:

"But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott."

There are several interpretations of this poem:
1. Women are expected to behave in certain ways and should suffer the consequences if they are disobedient.
2. The idealisation of women as untouchable "angels" or "saints" and their consequent isolation from society is used by men to oppress them and to keep them in their place.
3. All humans have emotional needs, but artists and scholars must make sacrifices if they want to make their achievements. What happens to such people if they suffer a moment of weakness? Are they destined to suffer a fall as a result?
Remember that Lord Tennyson was Poet Laureate, and a reluctant one. He had to write poems to please and praise the Queen and State rather than those which expressed his own inspirations.
I love this poem, especially with the visual representations by Waterhouse (which are, incidently, exhibited in Manchester City Art Gallery....) and the musical adaptation by Loreena McKennitt. I hope you enjoyed it too.

"I love my murderer" - Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

Sorry I'm late this week - Friday was very busy!



Wuthering Heights is a very different love story indeed. It centres around the legendary love of Catherine Earnshaw and her adopted brother, the enigmatic Heathcliff. Although Cathy loves Heathcliff so deeply that she says she and Heathcliff are one and the same, she says she cannot possibly marry him because her brother, Hindley, has humiliated him so much and made him so low. She instead marries the much more civilised but insipid Edgar Linton. In despair, Heathcliff runs away and disappears. Cathy is heartbroken. 5 years later, Heathcliff returns a rich man. He buys Wuthering Heights from the financially ruined Hindley, and aims to take revenge on the Lintons for taking Cathy away from him. Cathy dies in childbirth, and Heathcliff is distraught. He then loses his mind and any sense of what is socially acceptable until he can be reunited with Cathy in the other world at the end of the novel.

The Bronte Sisters - Jane Eyre

The Bronte sisters, who were born and brought up in a remote part of England, developed female characters in their novels that were against the norm of that time. Jane Eyre experiences an internal rebellion against the limitations of women's lot in life. She decrees that women, like men, need to be able to use their intelligence productively and to be able to achieve things in life in order to be happy. Despite her deep love for Mr Rochester, she cannot marry him once she learns that he is aleady married, so she runs away in order to forget him. Neither can she marry the insipid St John Rivers, whom she knows does not truly love her.

While Jane Austen granted some freedom of choice to her characters, they are all eventually married in a manner conventionally acceptable at that time (think about Lizzie and Jane Bennet, and Elinor and Marianne Dashwood). Lydia Bennet's shameful elopement remains rather peripheral in comparison, and her actions are clearly not commended. The Bronte characters are entirely different. They are the outcasts of life put in the centre.

Sense and Sensibility

This week we watched an adaptation of one Jane Austen's novel, "Sense and Sensibility". Like "Pride and Prejudice", the novel is centred around human characteristics, this time rationality (sense) and sentimentality (sensibility). The central characters representing these aspects of human nature are two sisters-Elinor (sense) and Marianne (sensibility), whose father has just died. They have to move from their beautiful mansion to a small cottage, since their father's property was entailed to their half-brother, John.

To summarise, we see how Elinor's patience and suppression of her emotions leads her to being able to marry Edward; and how Marianne learns that handsome young men who read poetry do not always make ideal husband-material. During the course of the novel, she learns to control her emotions and eventually realises that it is better to marry reliable men with good hearts, such as Colonel Brandon.

Austen has been criticised for repeating herself, and in a way we can see some parallels between "S and S" and "P and P" - young women's emotional trials, learning to realise one's faults, and the characters Wickham and Willoughby, for example. Their are differences, however, Mrs Bennet gives importance to money in a marriage, Mrs Dashwood thinks it necessary to marry for love. Marianne's lack of propriety, while it may resemble that of Lydia in P and P (the sister who ran off with and eventually married Wickham), is different in that she sees the outward expression of emotions as central to human existence. Lydia is just silly. Darcy is proud of his position in life as noble, and he has to get over this pride in order to win Lizzy's love. Edward Ferrars, on the other hand, is a shy, diffident young man who feels a sense of duty towards Lucy Steele, though he really loves Elinor, and is not particularlybothered about losing his fortune.

As always, Austen satirises the vain elements of English society of that time in a gentle and humorous way.

....a single man of good fortune must be in want of a wife...

Now, a lot of people are suriprised to hear that Jane Austen is not considered to be a Romantic writer, after all, she writes about love and marriage. We must remember that Romantism has no relation to romantic love, it is related to the expression of deep emotions in poetry. Jane Austen's style, on the other hand, resembles more closely the technical perfection of the early 18th century writers such as Swift and Dryden. She satirises her characters, but not with the vindiction of Swift. Rather, she uses a gentle irony to make us laugh at the ridiculous nature of some people. Just think of the opening dialogue between Mr and Mrs Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Recall also the marriage proposal of Mr Collins to Lizzy, and how you laughed at the former's failure to understand that Lizzy could possibly refuse him.

Pride and Prejudice is considered to be perfection in the novel form. The way Austen develops her characters; how the events unfold and relate to one another; the sequence of events in the rising action which cause Lizzy to hate Darcy, but Darcy to love her; how, Lizzy's refusal of Darcy's proposal causes him to reflect on his own pride and its consequences; how Darcy's actions in the falling action make Lizzy reconsider her prejudice of him, and allow her to eventually fall in love with him. When Darcy asks her to marry him again at the end of the novel, they have both undergone a significant amount of reflection allowing them to change their ways and see each other on equal footing. Lizzy finds a partner she can love and respect - and he's also handsome and rich!