Nature of the Supernatural

When will I ever get to include a picture of myself in a graveyard for an assignment again?!

When thinking about literature written in the Romantic period one of the first aspects to come to mind is how Romantic poets loved to include nature in their works. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Darwin…just to name a few.  Nature can be seen as a pentacle of their writing. Yet, as with everything else there is a darker side. The supernatural leaks into some works in the Romantic period almost as strongly as nature. The four works I’d like to discuss are Coleridge’s Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, Byron’s Giaour, Wordsworth’s The Thorn, and Lewis’s Bothwell’s Bonny Jane. Each of these works deals with the supernatural, nature, and each has an instance of a crime committed which nature seeks revenge for.

In Wordsworth’s The Thorn nature separates Martha Ray from society.  The very first thing mentioned in the poem is the great thorn that obstructs the view of Martha Ray. The poem contains possible themes such as infanticide and ghostly specters. It can be seen as a commentary on society and what can happen to those on the outskirts. The thorn can be seen both as a representation of Martha Ray and as the barrier between her and society. CLC commented that the thorn “represents Martha Ray's never-ending sorrow. Like a stiff thorn that is not easily broken the sorrow of mourning her baby remains strong within her.” In the words of the narrator “all had joined in one endeavor/to bury this poor thorn for ever;” showing a distinct desire of the townspeople that Martha Ray would just disappear and become the ghost they treat her as (21-22). Thomas L. Ashton wrote in his article “’The Thorn’: Wordsworth’s Insensitive Plant” he states that “the value of human vulnerability has been rejected outright” by the other citizens of the village (181). Who really is to blame in this work? The woman who “may” have committed infanticide…or the society that never bothered to ask.

This is why I fly!!!!

In the Rime of the Ancient Mariner the ocean is the physical manifestation of the supernatural revenge. Though the men see the ghost ship and though the ghostly specters are haunting; the real torture is stated plainly in the lines “water water everywhere/and not a drop to drink.” The mariner even goes so far as to drink his own blood to wet his throat enough to speak. When the ghost woman whistles three times and the rest of the crew drops dead it is here that the mariner must face his ultimate punishment for killing the albatross. He is forced to remain on the ship until he is finally able to pray and his penance is lifted as the albatross falls from around his neck. 

It will only hurt for a second!

In the Giaour the supernatural appears in the form of a vampire curse. After he has killed Hassan the Giaour is cursed to “ghastly haunt [his] native place/and suck the blood of all [his] race,” or as Calliope states in her blog post that “the Christian infidel/Giaour is sucking the life out of everything, leaving nothing but death and destruction in his wake.” This may be true. The first death visited in the poem is that of Leila who is murdered by Hassan for her affair with the Giaour. The rest of the story is one of revenge. This is what makes the Giaour the anti-hero, he is not killing to save a life or to defend the honor of Leila, he is killing to avenge her death, he is in fact killing to take revenge of the fact that she was taken from him. Even he knew that this was the wrong path to take. Dlacey1127 reflected this in her blog when she said that “the Giaour fought with himself constantly through the whole confession, emphasizing that he was really unsure of what he thought and what he felt.” Nature’s revenge is a bit different in the Giaour, coming in the form of a curse as opposed to an aspect that the reader is used to seeing. 

Yeah...a monk from here will totally kill you

A view of Bothwell Castle from a footpath by the River Clyde

In Bothwell’s Bonny Jane the reader is lead to believe that a familiar storyline is going to come about. One of the best aspects of Lewis’s writing is that he is able to hit you with the unexpected and make it thrilling. With the lines “’Now thou art mine! exclaim’d the monk,/And clasp’d her in his ruffian arms,” Lewis flipped this poem on its head! Where is nature one might wonder, just a few lines away. When the monk take Jane onto the boat it begins to rock in the choppy water, and when the boatman cried for him to throw Jane overboard to “lighten” the boat. Natures revenge comes swift to the monk, not only does the river continue to swell but here the boatman grew “gigantic” and held the monk until they went down with the boat. And now the monk and Jane haunt the place where they died.

Why wonder about the supernatural included in Romantic poetry?  The romantics lived at a time when the world was drastically changing. The NortonAnthology of English Literature says in its introduction on the Romantic Period that the gothic works are “in radical opposition to the Enlightenment ideals of order, decorum, and rational control, had opened to literary exploration the realm of nightmarish terror, violence, aberrant psychological states, and sexual rapacity.”  Basically these authors wanted to work on fun things! Not everything can be Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey not every second can be about serious things, and this was a period in history where the supernatural didn't seem so distant as it does today. No episodes of "Ghost Hunters" or bevy of horror movies to dull the senses and pervert the minds of the people. The possibilities of ghosts, and vampires, and all manner of things that go bump in the night were still possible.  I didn't actually get a chance to use the next linked article but it's worth the read. As for Wordsworth's work The Thorn Is it good or bad?

Ashton, Thomas L.”The Thorn’: Wordsworth’s Insensitive Plant.” Huntington Library Quarterly. Vol 35. 2 (Feb 1972). Pages 171-187.

Fragmented Thoughts

Okay, so like a broken mirror reflecting the times- I feel I have a shattered comprehension of this tale.

Thoughts:
Religion: Hassan, even though he has taken a life will be in a Paradise in the afterlife. Doesn't quite equal out to what awaits the Giaour.
The monk and Hassan stereotypes of religion-Christian/Muslim

The butterfly: This butterfly is Leila and Greece... once too many fingers have stained it, it becomes a shade of its former glory, not even really recognizable as the brilliant object it once was. Also very fragile.

The vampire curse: I can't help but feeling like the Christian infidel/Giaour is sucking the life out of everything, leaving nothing but death and destruction in his wake.

So, Leila has died, the Giaour has a vampire curse, and is also likened to having the forehead of a Gorgon because of it's wild wreathing round, it seems to me, that our Christian Giaour is assuming mythological aspects of Greece-becoming a weird hybrid, a liminal being.

Towards the end, in the Giaour's confession, it seems that the love he had or shared with Leila is like religion.
 "Love indeed is light from heaven" (1131)

I like that at the very last bit of the poem, there is a foot note detailing a story of some twelve women accused of infidelity and were thrown into the river in sacks. It was completely acceptable (culturally) for Hassan to implement such a punishment. At first I wondered why not put the foot note with Leila's death, but I think it fits the ending better. As a reader along on this fragmented journey, how are we to know the customs of foreigners?

I feel much like a Giaour myself by the end- waiting to confess that I wish death (or at least the end of this poem) and the calm that waits after the final thought.

Eugene Delacroix; The Giaour contemplating the dead Hassan (circa 1829)

Better understanding of the Giaour

After discussing the poem in class, I seem to understand the poem more intensely as opposed to the previous reading on my own. I seem to grasp the concept more elaborate about the sense of hero that the giaour seems to be portraying in the poem. The giaour seems to be troubled himself when it comes to becoming or playing the part of a "byronic hero". The definition of a byronic hero according to the dictionary is,"a Byronic hero is a melancholy and rebellious youngman, distressed by a terrible wrong he committed in the past." This definition of the byronic hero is considerably showed in the Giaour. The Giaour is seen by the slave lover as an escape from the master and trouble in her life, but the Giaour has some unresolved issues within himself that make him very flawed in his title as being a hero. For instance, when the slave lover is thrown over the boat into the lake, the Giaour first instinct is to take revenge on the Hassan master for the murder he committed. Later on the Giaour talks about if he had been the Hassan Master he would have done the same out of hate. The Giaour is also confessing his sins to the monk, proving that he knew that he distressed about events in his life and wanted to confess his wrongful thoughts about the death.




Also, the teacher stated the metaphor for these three characters as countries. The two men characters were fighting over the young frail Greece. Without the problem of Greece, then there would be no reason to fight. Like what the Giaour was confessing to the monk, but he knew and loved the slave lover, but the reason for her death was because of the hate that the Hassan master possessed. The Giaour was torn between doing right and what his mind was telling him to believe. The Giaour fought with himself constantly through the whole confession, emphasizing that he was really unsure of what he thought and what he felt.

"If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad". ~Byron

If Lord Byron had been a vampire he would have been this hot! RAWR!

"But first, on earth as vampire sent,
Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent:
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race;
There from thy daughter, sister, wife,
At midnight drain the stream of life;
Yet loathe the banquet which perforce
Must feed thy livid living corpse:
Thy victims ere they yet expire
Shall know the demon for their sire,
As cursing thee, thou cursing them,
Thy flowers are withered on the stem."

Poetry has never really been my thing...but like a lot of people I've always been fascinated with vampires. At the ripe old age of 14 I was introduced to Lord Byron...not surprising the portion about the vampire is what has always stuck in my head. I had this memorized before Damon Salvatore was a blip in L.J. Smith's mind ;) 

As discussed in the previous Byron poem dude was kinda a stud.  When considering all of the Romantic era writers it's quite easy to say that Byron was the original rock-star (even known by only one name...al la Madonna) 

As for the Giaour itself...I'm on the fence. I'm not 100% sure if there is a real point to this story...other than the love triangle and attempted murder. I'm hoping that upon its completion I won't feel so much like I'm reading a story out of 1,001 Nights 

Southey The Confusing

I was surprised by how much I liked Thalaba.  I found the footnotes to be distracting, as previously mentioned, but the story started to really flow for me.  There were some passages or lines that really stuck out to me.  One of the first parts that I had to stop and reread was at the beginning and Thalaba is cursing god, asking what wrongs they did to deserve such a punishment (4).  The raw exclamations are believeable.  They are the questions every person asks at some point in their life. I also really enjoyed on page 5 when he says "The Day of the Trial will come, When I shall understand how profitable/ It is to suffer now".  Maybe this stuck out because I'm in college and have a to do list three pages long, maybe it's simply human nature.  When they discuss the camel and how "She knew me as I past, She stared me in the face" I had chills run down my spine.  I can understand the practice, but to think that another living creature is aware of what's going on and has no way to save itself is beyond depressing. My absolute favorite line is the closing to the poem: He stood amid the Wilderness, alone.  I had to simply sit back in my seat and give myself a moment to process before reading it through again with footnotes.  I still feel like I didn't understand what was happening every moment, and I couldn't find a good online summary, so I'm excited to talk about it in class.

Urban legend like

I believe that the thorn in Wordsworth's The Thorn represents Martha Ray's never-ending sorrow. Like a stiff thorn that is not easily broken the sorrow of mourning her baby remains strong within her. I felt the rhyme to be one of spoken poetry versus the song like poems we have been reading, almost like telling a old urban legend. In The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman we can see the same theme of despair like many of Wordsworth other works and also of having to mourn a child however, in this poem the woman mourns because she will die and leave her child in another woman's care. Very interesting twist of portraying how women suffer in different ways when they become separated from their children. Like The Thorn, this story also reminds me of an old urban legend.