The Troubling Case of the Ideal Feminine in "Indian Woman's Death Song"

Throughout her works, and as the short biography in the anthology notes, Felicia Dorothea Hemans was a vocal proponent of the virtue of feminine domesticity. She viewed the home as the ideal place for women, somewhere they could escape public world meant for their husbands and accomplish meaningful tasks for their families. And hence she subscribes, possibly inadvertently, to the long-upheld tradition of women having partial agency, meaning they can make decisions only that effect their duties as a wife/mother not in regard to their public lives or status. The passivity forced by this pseudo-agency is seen at the forefront of "Indian Woman's Death Song" and even complicates the poem's subject.

In the piece, agency is given to three characters: the woman, the river, and the woman's husband. Yet, as may be imagined from my intro, these agencies are in no way equal. While the woman has no action but to sing and bear her child, the river is constantly called upon to act, "Roll on!" (20). And though this may be seen as a command, what it also highlights is the woman's powerlessness. She is at the hands of the "Father of ancient waters," which is coincidentally another man (17). Thus I believe that the woman is robbed of her most defining action, the suicide, because it is an action done by the river, not by her. We do not see her decide to place the canoe in the river, but only the canoe gliding at a "fearful" speed, or a speed which one cannot choose.

To bring this a step further, the woman defines herself in terms of her jilted love (24-31) instead of characteristics inherent to her. Yes, in the opening stanza she is defined as acting "proudly and dauntlessly" and that she looked "triumphantly" as her death approached, but these are all defining her attitude toward death, not her as a person apart from this action. There is no woman outside of her death and therefore there is no woman outside of her husband. In effect, Hemans creates a female character that is nothing but a shell through which to convey a suicide and thus the suicide in someway becomes general or dulled. The consequence of losing a life is diminished because the import of that life defined by Hemans (i.e. the woman's ability to be a good wife) is already determined.

Noble Casabianca?

"Casabianca" and "Properzia Rossi"centered on characters of certain tragedy.

Hemans presents Casabianca, the child who dies on a sinking ship because he remains waiting for his father's command instead of fleeing, as a boy with nobility and courage. He is described to be standing on the deck and calls out three times, asking his father if he can leave his post. And there isn't an answer because his "chieftain lay / Unconscious of his son." (15 - 16). Hemans describes him with "brave despair" (24) and "the noblest thing" (39).

She depicts him this way, but within the story, it really seems as though, it wasn't a brave thing to do to remain on the burning ship, but a stupid one. Throughout the poem, I don't think that this kid has guts, I think that the kid should be smart enough to realize that his father wouldn't want him to remain on a burning ship. Hemans likes to write about these characters that are facing tragedy, in hopes that the tragedy gives the story beauty, but I don't find Casabianca, someone to emulate.

Hemans also likes the tragedy of the female sculptor, Properzia Rossi. The story goes that she was very talented and very in love with a Roman Knight. Her love for him leads to her death and he has only indifference for her. 

The poem paints her love for him as one of "passion and of beauty more" (1) but I find that Hemans is once again using tragedy to make the main character seem like a hero. The speaker of the poem is Properzia Rossi and she goes on and on about her love for a man though he doesn't share the same feelings. To me, this isn't beautiful but I wish that the character didn't make her last work for a man who doesn't love her but instead, made it because of her rare talent or even just for herself, or even to defy the man who she gave so much unrequited love to.

The poems seemed similar to me in that Hemans uses their tragedies in hopes that we will appreciate the main characters, but in the realities of the background stories, I found no reason to call them heros.

1795

January 1795

I really enjoy reading poetry from non-canonical writers like Mary Robinson and Barbauld because I have never been introduced to them as I was to the others. Robinson's January poem critiques the English society she lived in at the time. Without having any knowledge of the poem, one may assume the poem is one-sided after hearing it is a critique. But Robinson does not take a side, she acknowledges that there are flaws in her society and also good things in her society. Overall though, the poem seems to have a melancholy tone. The structure of this poem was intriguing to me because every line has an end rhyme and every stanza is a quatrain. The perfectly formulated structure of this poem speaks a lot to the content within the poem. As Robert Creeley says "form is never more than the extension of content." Robinson's poem speaks of a society that is filled with a variety of people and things through a formulaic structure. The society she speaks of is now controllable like the lines in her poem are which serves as very powerful contrast in the poem. Also, the rhyme scheme is consistent throughout the entire poem, making each line, regardless of its content, sound beautiful. It is also interesting to note that she wrote this poem in January, which is one of the coldest months of the year. This would be a dreary time of the year for everyone due to the cold. Again, Robinson makes sure to depict the good and bad of society but her overall tone is not the happiest of tones. The last lines of the poem, "Ruin hasten'd, peace retarded;/ Candor spurn'd, and art rewarded" end on a seemingly positive note. At first I read this and thought "well that's nice. She ended on a good note." But After reading her other poems and coming back to this one, I felt like "and art rewarded" could possibly be read sarcastically or cynically. I am not completely committed to this idea yet and I wonder what the rest of the class thinks about this line!

Mice

As we wind down the semester, it becomes more interesting to examine patterns that have persisted throughout the readings we have done. It is far more interesting to consider these new poems as being part of this anthology and part of a time period, than as an isolated entity. That being said, in Robert Burns' To a Mouse I saw a connection, not just back to Barbauld's mouse poem, but many of the poems we have read this semester.
In the first footnote of the poem, the line reads "Burns's brother claimed that this poem was composed while the poet was actually holding the plow." I'm not even sure this necessarily adds meaning to the poem, but what it does do is present the poem with a myth to go along with it. It creates a mystical aura around the poem. This same technique has been used extensively throughout the semester.
Samuel Coleridge attached a description of his inspiration for Kubla Khan. His supposed was a drug induced dream that he supposedly has transcribed perfectly for us. We also see this attempt at myth in much of Byron's work. His poems bring up questions about countless stories from his own life. Barbauld's mouse poem from last class, brought with it the myth that the mouse (I am assuming the one responsible for "writing" the petition) was set free.
All of these poems are seemingly rich with meaning, yet there is an anxiety to further validate these works with (what I mostly believe to be false) stories about where/when/how the poems were created. It seems that much of the poetry in this time period was afraid to stand alone, so it came prepackaged meaning to ensure that people would consider it. It is almost as if these poets hoped there would be tabloid rumors about their poetry the way celebrities experience rumors now.

London's Summer Morning

One thing I thought was really important to Mary Robinson's London's Summer Morning was the form, and how the poem is written in blank verse. The image that the poem creates about a typical scene on London in the morning is made stronger because of the form the Robinson uses. The enjambment that Robinson uses to make the lines run together and stop abruptly create the illusion of a busy, bustling city, crowded with people and shops and products. Although she did use punctuation quite frequently, it helped the overall form and sound of the poem because it added more of a suspension while reading the poem. There was no real consistent rhythm to the poem, emphasized by the blank verse, but this lack of rhythm also emphasized the movement in the poem and how there is no consistent movement within a city as large as London.
The one spot in which the punctuation and the stop it created felt really natrual was the final two lines of the poem, when Robinson writes, "And the poor poet wakes from busy dreams, / To paint the summer morning" (41-2). Here, the stop feels a little bit more abrupt because the first line is a complete thought, and the comma forces a stop, causing the line to feel like the poet has actually woken up from a dream. The last line of the poem also perfectly sums up exactly what Robinson has done. The rest of the poem moves so quickly through each idea, that it almost feels like a blur. To paint the images that she has described, every single stroke would have to be quick and concise, exactly like the lines she has written.

The Haunted Beach

The structure of Mary Robinson’s “The Haunted Beach” perfectly parallels the content of the poem in a jarring manner that leaves the reader feeling somewhat uncomfortable. The poem emphasizes the idea of permanence, a concept that we have seen before in other romantic poems; however, unlike the permanence desired in a poem like “Bright Star” this permanence appears, as the title suggests, as somewhat haunting – a ghost that cannot be shaken off. The cause of which is of course, the guilt of the Fisherman.

The poem has a rhythmic flow to it, mimicking the undulating waves of the ocean that are mentioned in every stanza. The lines themselves visually imitate waves in the way that they are printed on the page, alternating between being indented or not. Within each stanza is a steady rhyme scheme that is broken by a rhyming couplet in the 7^th and 8^th line and followed by the final 9^th line to complete the previous rhyme. This pattern somewhat mimics the rising and breaking of waves – lines 7 and 8 represent the crescendo of the wave as it reaches is peak before finally crashing in line 9 – fittingly, always the line mentioning the “green billows.”

The repetition of this pattern throughout the poem helps emphasize the fact that there is no escaping the ebb and flow of the ocean in the way that there is no way for the Fisherman to escape his guilt. We especially see this in the final stanza which takes place thirty years after the murder, “day after day more weary;/ For Heav’n design’d his guilty mind/ Should dwell on prospects dreary” (75-76). Robinson accurately depicts the feeling of guilt by describing it as a “strong and mystic chain” (77) that prevents him from straying. Like the ocean, and the structure of the poem, the Fisherman is unable to escape the guilt he has created for himself and thus must live with it until his death – or the end of the poem.     

Some Mary Robinson Info

Because I missed my blog post last week, I am posting this as a supplementary one for this week. This is really more-so additional biographical information about Mary Robinson than a true blog post. Mary Robinson wrote an autobiography for herself, and though she never finished it, it seems like the manuscript would be interesting. As the Norton anthology headnote for Mary Robinson notes, she "lived a more sensational life than any other poet of the period, Byron and Shelley included" (77). From what we've discussed of Byron and Shelley in class, that's saying something.

Below is an excerpt from the editor's preface of the memoirs that helps to illustrate Mary Robinson the person:

"THE author of these Memoirs, Mary Robinson, was one of the most prominent and eminently beautiful women of her day. From the description she furnishes of her personal appearance we gather that her complexion was dark, her eyes large, her features expressive of melancholy; and this verbal sketch corresponds with her portrait, which presents a face at once grave, refined, and charming. Her beauty, indeed, was such as to attract, amongst others, the attentions of Lords Lyttelton and Northington, Fighting Fitzgerald, Captain Ayscough, and finally the Prince of Wales; whilst her talents and conversation secured her the friendship and interest of David Garrick, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Charles James Fox, Joshua Reynolds, Arthur Murphy, the dramatist, and various other men of distinguished talent. [Page viii]  

Though her Memoirs are briefly sketched, they are sufficiently vivid to present us with various pictures of the social life of the period of which she was the centre. Now we find her at the Pantheon, with its coloured lamps and brilliant music, moving amidst a fashionable crowd, where large hoops and high feathers abounded, she herself dressed in a habit of pale pink satin trimmed with sable, attracting the attention of men of fashion. Again she is surrounded by friends at Vauxhall Gardens, and barely escapes from a cunning plot to abduct her–a plot in which loaded pistols and a waiting coach prominently figure; whilst on another occasion she is at Ranelagh, where, in the course of the evening, half a dozen gallants "evinced their attentions"; and ultimately she makes her first appearance as an actress on the stage of Drury Lane before a brilliant house, David Garrick, now retired, watching her from the orchestra, whilst she played Juliet in pink satin richly spangled with silver, her head ornamented with white feathers."

Here are some portraits of Mary, as well: