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