FREE ESSAY ON FELICIA HEMANS AND JANE TAYLOR

FELICIA HEMANS AND JANE TAYLOR

The literacy world of the 19th century saw an emergence of female writers into the male
dominated profession of poetry. Many men felt as though their profession was being
invaded. They resented women entering the public sphere. This mentality in part helped
influence which women were able to write and what they wrote about. Felicia Hemans and
Jane Taylor are both women poets that emerged during the 19th century. Both women have
used their poetry to help expand on traditional notions of romantic poetry during their
lives. 
In order to define romantic poetry on must look towards Bronte and Hemans male
contemporaries at the time since their works influenced many other writers of that time.
William Wordsworth and Coleridge both wrote criticisms on what made a good poet and what
factors made up good poetry. In Biographia Literaria, Coleridge defines the poet and
poetry. He sees a distinction from the poetic genius itself which sustains and modifies
images of the own mind  (Coleridge, ). He believes in the power of exciting of the reader
by using new colours of imagination  to adhere to the truth of nature. In the Preface to
Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth describes the principal object of poetry to make the
incidents of common life interesting by tracing our nature. He wanted to use the
beautiful forms of nature to write simplistically so that many could understand it. He
attributes great poetry to a certain type of person:
For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; but though
this be true, Poems to which any value can be attached, were never produced on any
variety of subjects but a man who being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility
had also thought long and deeply. (Wordsworth, 226)
The most important part of this quote is the use of word 'man' for it already excludes
women. Women were not seen as equal players in terms of writing. 
Felicia Hemans was one of the most prolific, critically admired, best selling poets of
her generation as well as one if the first women to make a living by publishing her
writing. Hemans emerged as a successful poetess and was celebrated. Her poetry was so
popular that many were public favourites, memorised, and some even set to music. Poems
such Casabianca and England's Dead classified Hemans a poet of imperial and domestic
ideology. Hemans work demonstrates many of the traditional genres of the time such as
nation and the individual, war and peace, the lives of female domestic lives, and the
child martyr. A prime example of this is in the poem Casabianca: 
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.
Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm -
A creature of heroic blood,
A proud, though child-like form.
The flames rolled on - he would not go
Without his father's word;
That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.
He called aloud:- 'Say, father, say
If yet my task is done!'
He knew not that the chieftain lay
Unconscious of his son.
'Speak, father!' once again he cried,
'If I may yet be gone!'
And but the booming shots replied
And fast the flames rolled on.
Upon his brow he felt their breath,
And in his waiving hair,
And looked from that lone post of death
In still yet brave despair;
And shouted but once more aloud,
'My father! must I stay?'
While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud,
The wreathing fires made way.
They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,
They caught the flag on high,
And streamed above the gallant child
Like banners in the sky.
There came a burst of thunder-sound-
The boy-oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds that far around
With fragments strewed the sea!-
With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
That well had borne their part;
But the noblest thing which perished there
Was that young faithful heart!
This relation of a child dying is a common theme of romantic poetry. This poem tells a
tale of war and family relations. This poem helps to expand on romantic poetry ideals.
Hemans verse expanded on the traditional notions of Victorian women's poetry. She was the
ideal women writer. Many of her other poems encompass the pure long-suffering female
which Victorians idolised. This position allowed her to write poems that actually had
deeper meanings. Hemans work turns her anger at society inward and romanticises death as
the only solution. Heman writings commented on the social situations of the time. She
insists that readers confront the violence of war, it's child martyrs and the female
victims that suffer from their position in life.
Hemans popularity wore off as time went on and her words were buried under the works of
her male contemporaries. It is not until recently that her works have been resurrected
and examined as literary texts of their own merit. The twentieth century reader uses
these texts to analyse how gender functioned in the 19th century. By reading women
writers of the time we are able to form a better view of what it was like to live and
write in the 19th century. 
Another women who expanded on the traditional genres or romantic poetry is Jane Taylor.
Taylor's poems like most of the poems of this time have a definite double meaning. She
writes from the position of happy fulfilled woman hood. In The Poppy and The Violet,
Taylor uses the metaphor of a flower to symbolise women. In the Violet, the flower takes
on many characteristics that women are expected to have. Words such as modest, lovely,
bright, and fair are used to describe the flower. The flower knows nothing of this beauty
and is content to bloom hidden away. 
Yet it was content to bloom,
In modest tints arrayed;
And there diffused its sweet perfume,
Within the silent shade
The use of nature is another example of how she expanded on notions of romantic poetry.
She delves into the relationship between the poet and nature. This binary relationship
reflects other relevant binary relationships, namely, the masculine/feminine and
subject/object relationships. This is interesting because the poet is female and still
her writing reflects the ideals of the men around her. Her poem does make the woman the
object to be gazed at and admired reinforcing patriarchal ideas surrounding writers of
this time.