Exposing the Self
During the Romantic period, The Thorn (1789) and the Prelude (1799) by William Wordsworth, A
Nocturnal Reverie (1713) by Anne
Finch, and The Glow Worm (1783) by Charlotte Smith were a few
literatures that expressed the self or “feeling” of the author through the
descriptions of sight and experiences in poems.
In A Nocturnal Reverie by Anne Finch, the author expresses the night
bringing peace to the author by revealing the true beauty of dull and ugly
objects that were seen during the day. She describes the night as being a
reflection of herself and a sanctuary for her indiscretions. Finch writes, “In
such a night, when every louder wind Is to its distant cavern safe
confined;”(lines 1-2) expressing her feelings as though the night is a safe
haven for the loud and obnoxious world of man during the day. Finch writes, “In
perfect charms, and perfect virtue bright: When odors, which declined repelling
day, Through temp’rate air uninterrupted stray…”(lines 20-22), explaining that
in the night dull things are seen as peaceful and very charming with more value
than what is seen during the day. Anne Finch elaborates on her thoughts on
expressing her true self with objects in nature of the night. Finch expresses
that nature is natural and peaceful, while human morals fraught during the day.
Lesley Johnstone states, “Imitation of day is an agent of destruction
mercifully counteracted by night’s cool healing peace and privacy” (Winchilsea's NOCTURNAL REVERIE), expressing that
Finch describes her thoughts of the natural beauty of things (objects or
nature) is distorted by the hostility of the world and calmed by the coolness
and peace of the night. Anne Finch found peace in the night because it revealed
the presence of silence and calmness, allowing her to express on the beauty and
peace that she was experiencing.
In The
Glow Worm by Charlotte Smith, Smith describes the child as being very
destructive while handling the glowworm and seeing the world as a state of,
“new”. She also describes the feelings the child has while feeling the glowworm
and the sense of imagination that the glowworm gave to the child. This could be
a metaphor for the way nature effects the human imagination and the way that
humans naturally are very curious about nature, like the fascination that the
child had with the glowworm. Smith used the character of a child to express
inexperience, innocence, and happiness. Smith writes, “And dreams that
Fairy-lamps illume his bower: Yet with the morning shudders to behold His lucid
treasure , rayless as dust!”( lines 11-13), expressing that nature becomes
necessary for the imagination and intrigues people to exaggerate. The boy tries
to claim the glowworm as his own, but Smith explains that nobody owns nature
and people should try to preserve nature instead of claiming nature for their
own. Smith writes, “So turn the world’s brightest joys to cold and blank
disgust”(line 14), explaining that with nature/ imagination people and children
were able to find joy and with the death of nature or the imagination, life
would be “cold and blank disgust”. Smith has a way of being able to allow the
reader to be able to have sympathy for the death of the glow-worm, just by
vividly describing the joy it brought to the innocent child. The reader is able
to feel sympathy for both the child and the glow-worm and manage to understand
the beauty of the poem. Daniel Robinson states Smith’s poems as having, “a
large degree in sympathy for the suffering expressed…a real or imagined
comprehension of the poet’s personal misfortunes” (Elegiac
Sonnets: Charlotte Smith's Formal Paradoxy ), inferring that Smith
had a way of expressing her sadness on the reader and bestowing the same
feeling as a instant reaction. This poem goes from a state of happy and new
feeling to a sense of dark and cold, explaining the importance of imagination
and what joy it brings to humanity.
In The
Thorn by Wordsworth, Wordsworth gives vivid descriptions of a thorn and the
surrounding areas around the thorn upon a hill in order to reveal the grief
that is experienced by one of his characters, in order to reveal a message
about how the imagination can take control of a person. Wordsworth writes,”
There is a thorn; it looks old…It is a mass of knotted joints, A wretched thing
forlorn…”(Lyrical Ballads, 103),
expressing that the thorn was not a pleasant sight, intending for the reader to
imagine for himself what had happened and feel the grief of the character.
Wordsworth then begins to elaborate
on the parts that surround the thorn and then mention the moss that consumes
the thorn. Nature plays an extravagant
part in this poem, creating suspense and insight on how the characters are
feeling due to the nature that surrounds them or are mentioned by the narrator.
Wordsworth is using nature to elaborate on the sadness that one of the
characters is feeling, thus causing great suspense for the reader because the
reader is never certain about the apparent reason for the sadness and
gloominess. Wordsworth then writes, “A beauteous heap, a hill of moss,…All
lovely colours there you see…Which close beside the thorn you see”(104),
expressing that there was some beauty to the hill that sat beside the thorn,
which then again, intrigues the reader as to what actually happened. With the
descriptions of nature, Wordsworth is able to allow the readers’ imagination to
grow and decide for themselves what actually happened in the poem. Sue Schopf states, “The state of agitation
destroys the tranquility in the narrator’s mind and thus disrupts the accurate
flow of the “memory””( Wordsworth's Exploration Of
Geriatric Psychology: Another Look At The Narrator Of 'The Thorn') ,establishing
that the reader is experiencing the same type of “agitation” that the narrator
is in the poem, due to the growth of the imagination of both the narrator and
the reader. Wordsworth explains that the “colours” were beautiful, giving the
reader a sense of life within the nature that is being described. Wordsworth is
trying to say that nature has both beauty and ugliness and that nature is an
expression of feeling and interpretation. Wordsworth is expressing that nature
has a distinct impact on how our imagination resembles things and how the
reader can relate. I chose to put this picture in my paper because I found this
picture on the Internet and I read that is was one of the landscapes that
Wordsworth observed when creating The
Thorn.
In the Prelude
by Wordsworth, many descriptions of nature are used to relate to create a
feeling that engages the imagination and is then stored in the memory. Nature
is not as prominent as in his earlier poems, but it is still used to inform the
reader that nature is in everyday life, but not overpowering. Wordsworth
describes the clouds and the cliffs to represent the sublime and the
picturesque. Wordsworth writes, “With measured motion, like a living thing
Strode after me. With trembling hands I turned, And through the silent water
stole my way…”(4, lines 411-414), describing the site of the cliff, while
rowing in the stolen boat. Wordsworth confesses that he has a guilty pleasure
for his rebellion, by explaining that he stole and boat and was away from
everyone like he wasn’t supposed to, blaming it on the imagination he had as a
boy.
I chose this picture for my paper
because it gives a since of how big and mighty the cliff must have looked to
Wordsworth as a boy. Wordsworth relates the image of the cliff with the
disruptions in his life and begins to feel guilty about his morals. He says in
the quote that when he saw the cliff, he turned away and headed back to the
willow tree, indicating that the cliff could have been a metaphor of guilt. His
imagination grows as he spots the cliff in the beginning of the poem and with
the guilt; his imagination began making him think about what he had done. His
imagination begins connecting the images of nature together and forcing him to
believe that everything was against him because of his evil doing (affects of
the imagination). Wordsworth describes many scenes when he describes something
very beautiful and then something very grotesque is described intentionally. Wordsworth
could be implying that he believes that beauty and peace will suffer with the
grotesque scenes at some point in life, resembling experience. Mark Smith
states that the poem, “gives[s] its reader permanent access to suffering, not
by making one perpectually able to sympathize …but by making temporarily
visible the perpectual openness of experience” (Unrememberable"
Sound In Wordsworth's 1799 Prelude ), suggesting that Wordsworth is
trying to inform the reader that nature/peace is something to be disrupted
because nature/peace is fractured and the background to many grotesque parts of
a memory. Wordsworth begins describing that his memories are just glimpses in
his life without the exact feeling he had when he was actually experiencing the
event. Wordsworth describes that he cannot see the life or feeling he
experienced in his memory; he just can see the memory itself and observe the
state his mind had once been in before. Wordsworth writes, “Meanwhile my hope
has been that I might fetch Reproaches from my former years, whose power May
spur me on, in manhood now mature, To honorable toil”(14 lines 648-650),
describing that he wanted to remember and feel the imagination that he had had
as a boy because the imagination and the feeling cannot be alive again when all
he has is the memory of the moment in time.
From all of the texts I have read this semester, I have found that most
of them have used the descriptions of either object or nature in order to
express an underlying message about the author and their thoughts/feelings.
When I saw at the beginning, all the different kinds of books that we would be
reading during this semester, I had no clue that they had this much in common.
There are many different categories that I could have used in order to write my
paper, but I found that I was most interested in this topic because of how
different each poet decided to elaborate on their thoughts and feelings to the
reader.
Johnstone, Lesley.
"Winchilsea's NOCTURNAL REVERIE, Lines 25-28." Explicator 41.4
(1983): 20. Academic Search Complete. Web. 8 Dec. 2012.
Schopf, Sue Weaver.
"Wordsworth's Exploration Of Geriatric Psychology: Another Look At The
Narrator Of 'The Thorn'." English Language Notes 19.1 (1981): 33. Academic
Search Complete. Web. 8 Dec. 2012.
Smith, J. Mark.
"Unrememberable" Sound In Wordsworth's 1799 Prelude." Studies In
Romanticism 42.4 (2003): 501-518. Academic Search Complete. Web.
8 Dec. 2012
Robinson, Daniel. "Elegiac
Sonnets: Charlotte Smith's Formal Paradoxy." Papers on Language and
Literature 39.2 (2003): 185-220. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 9
Dec. 2012
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