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You can read my posts;
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Ask questions of other bloggers and me;
Look at links and articles;
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I think that this blog has huge potential, but it will only be of any use if there are regular contributors. Get blogging!
Mr. Denchfield
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Which text do you need to do most revision on?
If the Keats question in Section A was difficult, would you choose Mariner or push on with Keats?
Which three characters from 'Great Expectations' would be the best to write about in Section B?
Which of these would you write about as 'key events' in Enduring Love (you can choose three)
Which is the most effective setting in Great Expectations?
Some feminist critics think that he is on the side of Porphyro in 'The Eve of St Agnes' ('Now prepare, / Young Porphyro, for waiting on that bed') and this is what one critic says about LBD:
ReplyDelete‘In La Belle Dame Sans Merci, (Keats allies) himself with the male knight against the female La Belle Dame’ (Keats and the Complexities of Gender, Anne K. Mellor, The Cambridge Companion to Keats, Cambridge (2004)
I'm not sure that I agree, however.
In some ways i agree with the critic Meller, as although we hear the Belle Dames voice, it is only though the Knight's repoted speech. This distances the reader from Le Belle Dame and makes us more sympathetic to his suffering.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, the Knight cannot understand the Belle Dame as her language is 'strange' yet arroganlty assumes that she loves him: 'I love thee true'. This demonstrates the Knight's desire to posses her. It can be argued that because her voice is contained within his narrative, his suffering is due to the failure to retain her. This is mirrored when he tries to encapsulate her nature with 'Garlands' and 'braclets'.
I disagree with Mellor, as from what we know about Keats’ life and outlook, he seemed to admire and respect women. His profound love for Fanny Brawne, for instance.
ReplyDeleteIt could be argued, however, that ‘La Belle Dame’ indicates that Keats had a paradoxical attitude towards women (both admiring and resenting them). Yet it seems to me, that Keats was more of a harmonious character; interested in the ambiguity of negative capability, but not riddled with contradictions, or with an erratic, bipolar nature as Coleridge had. (Keats’s contrasts are central in his work, such as Madeline’s chastity and Porphyro’s passion, but tend to be complementary rather than contradictory).
However, it cannot be denied that Keats does create sympathy for the knight’s suffering; but this does not necessarily, in turn, create resentment for the Belle Dame (as misogynist readings argue). Believing that the Belle Dame is an allegory for poetry, the character is mysterious, creative, wild, but ultimately intangible. Keats therefore makes the allegory for poetry a female character, so that he is able to demonstrate his attraction to (and compulsion to write) poetry, and his intense relationship with poetry. Thus poetry, like women, has admirable, mysterious qualities that Keats struggles to fully grasp. Yet, I think there is a clear distinction between poetry (the Belle Dame) and Keats’ view of women: the Belle Dame is attractive, but not sexual. Therefore the Belle Dame’s spiritual, unearthly quality, to me, is more important and prominent than the fact that she is female.
In “The Eve of St Agnes”, it can also be debated as to whether or not Keats is unsympathetic towards woman. Stillenger comments on Madeline's portrayal as pure an innocent: she is associated with moonlight which represents chastity, innocence and religious devotion. Extremely fine images such as the “tiger moths' deep damask'd wings” contribute to her portrayal as delicate and pure. Even her clothes seem to portray her in this way; her jewels are described as “warmed” suggesting her warmth is radiant and extends to the things around her, and she wears pearls depicting her purity. If Keats were entirely unsympathetic women, he would not have described her in this positive way that accentuates her purity. Stilliger argues that, in contrast to the picture he paints of Madeline, Keats points up Porphyro's selfish, leering nature, “Porphyro took covert, pleas'd amain”. In addition, he “tween the curtains peepe'd” which is hardly presenting him in a heroic light. He goes on to argue that Madeline is totally innocent, “free from mortal taint”, and becomes a naiive victim of Porphyro's “stratagem”.
ReplyDeleteHowever, other critics have argued that Madeline too should be condemned as she brings much of the situation upon herself because of her superstitions. This could translate into a criticism of women, who can be “full of this whim”.
Many readers have interpreted Porphyro as being manipulative and as taking advantage of Madeline but it can also be argued that he had he noblest intentions, and Madeline's fault was in her superstition and therefore she is not simply portrayed as a naiive victim. Personally, I feel the latter and do believe that in fact Porphyro was honourable. However, I do not believe that in this poem Keats is entirely unsympathetic to women as the delicate portrayal of Madeline cannot be ignored. Ultimately however, it is by no means clear whose side Keats is on and perhaps, because of the notion of negative capability, he wanted it to be this way.
Some excellent insights from Zoe and Sara. Zoe, in response to your point, how might the poem be different if it was written from the Faery's Child's narrative point of view? Any budding poets might want to give this a try!
ReplyDeleteSara, your final points are excellent but I wonder whether they would all hold up in response to Lamia, both the poem and the character. I find it very difficult to determine whether the nymph is betrayed by Lamia or set free to enjoy a mutually-desired love affair with Hermes. Again, we do not hear her voice but are only told, when she flees with Hermes, that 'She felt the warmth, her eyelids open'd bland,
And, like new flowers at morning song of bees,
Bloom'd, and gave up her honey to the lees.
Into the green-recessed woods they flew;
Nor grew they pale, as mortal lovers do' (Part 1)
On the one hand, this suggests a very pleasant outcome for both Hermes and the nymph; but Lamia has either assumed that the nymph would fall in love automatically with Hermes--presumably because he's a God and is very easy on the eye--or she's indifferent to the nymph's happiness and is only using her to gain her own freedom.
I recently encountered this picture: http://www.lib.unc.edu/rbc/keats/img/lowillustration.jpg
It is from an 1889 edition of the poem and seems to show the nymph enshackled by her own hair which Lamia 'bade her steep
... in weird syrops, that would keep
Her loveliness invisible'. This draws parallels to La Belle Dame, of course, but the nymph seems to be even more passive than the Faery's child.
All of this makes me wonder exactly what to think of Lamia the character. Can someone pull out some quotes and line references from the poem that either paint her in a sympathetic or unsympathetic light?
Fabia's comment is very interesting too. I agree that the descriptions of Madeline are so beautiful, delicate and aesthetically fine that Keats clearly paints her in a light that suggests her outer and inner beauty. I wonder, however, whether she might be rather passive: would a feminist critic argue, for example, that she has no power in the poem and therefore Keats is presenting us with a woman who is a mere stereotype of men's desires? I think the key section is when Porphyro melts into her dream: is he summoned by Madeline and the power of the ritual she has created or does he take control?
ReplyDeleteLooking again at that picture of Hermes, I wonder whether the woman is in fact Lamia.
ReplyDeleteI had a look at the picture; it is difficult to tell whether the female depicted is Lamia or the nymph. Initially, I felt that the woman’s protective body language captures a sense of the nymph’s vulnerability and timidity:
ReplyDelete‘Faded before him, cower’d, nor could restrain
Her fearful sobs, self-folding like a flower’.
Moreover, it seems unlikely that Lamia would be depicted as so vulnerable, as in this section she is empowered by toying with Hermes’s lust, as she conjures images of the nymph to tantalise Hermes:
‘She plucks the fruit unseen, she bathes unseen:
And by my power is her beauty veiled’.
In contrast; Hermes begs Lamia to enlighten his ignorance of where the nymph is:
‘Possess whatever bliss thou canst’ devise
Telling me only where my nymph is fled’
However, looking more closely at the image, there does seem to be a coiling shape of a serpent by Hermes’s feet. Furthermore, there seems to be a sense of urgency in the woman’s facial expression as she leans towards Hermes. Therefore, if the woman is indeed Lamia, perhaps the intense expression that the artist is trying to capture is her sense of longing and desire:
‘I was a woman, let me have once more
A woman’s shape and charming as before’.
I agree that it is difficult to assess to what extent Lamia uses the nymph as a pawn to achieve her own desires. Yet as I reread the poem, it struck me that perhaps Lamia was aware that Hermes and the nymph were destined for each other. Lamia’s rhetoric soliloquy in part one (‘When from this wreathed tomb shall I awake!’), implies that she planned and expected Hermes to find her. Therefore, it could be argued that Lamia weaved herself into the fate of the two lovers, which was already predetermined. Thus, the ‘matchmaking’ of the nymph and Hermes was not devised by Lamia, but that she used her knowledge of their fates to further her own ambitions: she made the nymph invisible (by the nymph’s request) to conceal her from all other admirers until Hermes came in pursuit, and Lamia herself managed to benefit from the situation.
ReplyDeleteThis argument would suggest that there are parallels that can be drawn between Lamia and the nymph, as the nymph is not entirely passive, but she too desires a relationship with Hermes. Most of the descriptions characterise the nymph as passive (such as the initial description of her only describes her affect on others rather than the character herself: ‘At whose white feet the languid Tritons poured’), but I noticed suggestions of coyness, even flirtation ‘…the guarded nymph near-smiling on the green’. The nymph, certainly, is more reserved and ‘guarded’ with Hermes than Lamia is with Lycuis, but the nymph, to me, does not seem to be entirely vulnerable, Lamia claims that:
‘Her loveliness invisible, yet free
To wander as she loves in liberty’. The emphasis of freedom and independence implies that the nymph was free to chose her lover, and ‘love in liberty’.
Thus, I don’t feel that any of the characters in ‘Lamia’ are merely stereotypes as all have glimmers of weakness and strength, vulnerability and power (some more obviously than others). It is arguable that Keats does not represent women as weak, but demonstrates that love has the ability to weaken even the most powerful; as demonstrated earlier by how easily Hermes was manipulated by Lamia. Moreover this can be noted in Lycius’s reaction when he first sees Lamia; he claims ‘Even as thou vanishest so I shall die’ and Keats describes that he ‘Swoon’d, murmuring of live and pale with pain’.
Lamia herself is no exception, as she demonstrates both power and helplessness. These two quotes demonstrate the juxtapositions of Lamia’s nature: ‘The cruel lady, without any show/ Of sorrow for her tender favourite’s wow’. Keats illustrates he manipulation of Lycius, but later emphasises her vulnerability: ‘Arose and knelt before him/ wept a rain of sorrows at his words’. The protagonist is an embodiment a variety of paradoxical concepts, and merges the boundaries between them:
Mortality/ immortality
Colour (and desire) / coolness
Weakness / strength
I think the description of Lamia at the very end of the poem is particularly interesting:
‘As pale it lay upon the rosy couch:
‘twas icy, and the cold ran through his veins’
Here, she embodies human death (‘pale’) and the coolness of immortality; perhaps demonstrating the death of her human desires (and sexuality), but the immortal ‘icy…cold’ of the supernatural.
What an excellent response, Sara. If a question comes up on women in Keats for Section A, part (b) this will be very useful to all of us. I agree with your points about the eponymous character's contradictory nature. In this way she is very similar to, say, Porphyro who is either a manipulator or a passionate lover depending on one's perspective. The fact that male and female charaters occupy the roles of manipulator and victim--often simultaneously--would suggest that Keats is not interested in assigning gender stereotypes to his characters.
ReplyDelete