Love through the ages texts overview student work

THE KNIGHT’S
TALE
[GEOFFREY
CHAUCER] –
MIDDLE
ENGLISH
(PERIOD 1)

MIDDLE
ENGLISH
(PERIOD 1)
- ‘THE
KNIGHT’S
TALE’–
contd.

MIDDLE
ENGLISH
(PERIOD 1) -
‘THE
KNIGHT’S
TALE’–
contd.

580
Up rist this joly lovere Absolon,
And hym arrayeth gay, at poynt-devys.
But first he cheweth greyn and lycorys
To smellen sweete, er he hadde kembd his heer.
Under his tonge a trewe-love he beer,
585
For therby wende he to ben gracious.
He rometh to the carpenteres hous,
And stille he stant under the shot-wyndowe;
Unto his brest it raughte, it was so lowe,
And softe he cougheth with a semy soun:
590
"What do ye, hony-comb, sweete Alisoun,
My faire bryd, my sweete cynamome?
Awaketh, lemman myn, and speketh to me!
Wel litel thynken ye upon me wo,
That for youre love I swete ther I go.
595
No wonder is thogh that I swelte and swete;
I moorne as dooth a lamb after the tete.
Ywis, lemman, I have swich love-longynge,
That lik a turtel trewe is my moornynge.
I may nat ete na moore than a maide."
600
"Go fro the wyndow, Jakke fool, she sayde;
As help me God, it wol nat be 'com pa me'.
I love another, and elles I were to blame,
Wel bet than thee, by Jhesu, Absolon.
Go forth thy wey or I wol caste a ston,
605
And lat me slepe, a twenty devel wey!"
"Allas", quod Absolon, "and weylawey,
That trewe love was evere so yvel biset!
Thanne kysse me, syn it may be no bet,
For Jhesus love and for the love of me."
610
"Wiltow thanne go thy wey therwith?" quod she.
"Ye, certes, lemman", quod this Absolon.
"Thanne make thee redy", quod she: "I come
anon".
And unto Nicholas she seyde stille,
"Now hust and thou shalt laughen al thy fille".
615
This Absolon doun sette hym on his knees
And seyde, "I am a lord at alle degrees;
For after this I hope ther cometh moore.
Lemman, thy grace, and sweete bryd, thyn oore!"
The wyndow she undoth and that in haste.
THE MILLER’S TALE [GEOFFREY CHAUCER]– MIDDLE ENGLISH (PERIOD 1)

620
"Have do", quod she, "com of, and speed the
faste,
Lest that oure neighebores thee espie"
This Absolon gan wype his mouth ful drie.
Derk was the nyght as pich or as the cole,
And at the wyndow out she putte hir hole;
625
And Absolon, hym fil no bet ne wers,
But with his mouth he kiste hir naked ers
Ful savourly, er he were war of this.
Abak he stirte and thoughte it was amys --
For wel he wiste a womman hath no berd.
630
He felte a thyng al rough and long yherd,
And seyde, "Fy! allas! what have I do?"
"Tehee!" quod she and clapte the wyndow to;
And Absolon gooth forth a sory pas.
"A berd! a berd!" quod hende Nicholas,
635
"By goddes corpus, this goth faire and weel".
This sely Absolon herde every deel,
And on his lippe he gan for anger byte,
And to hymself he seyde, "I shal thee quyte".
Who rubbeth now, who froteth now his lippes
640
With dust, with sond, with straw, with clooth, with chippes,
But Absolon, that seith ful ofte, "Allas!
My soule bitake I unto Sathanas,
But me were levere than al this toun," quod he,
"Of this despit awroken for to be.
645
Allas," quod he, "allas, I ne hadde ybleynt."
His hoote love was coold and al yqueynt,
For fro that tyme that he hadde kist hir ers,
Of paramours he sette nat a kers;
For he was heeled of his maladie.
‘THE MILLER’S TALE’ [GEOFFREY CHAUCER]– MIDDLE ENGLISH (PERIOD 1)

Literary representations of Love Through the Ages in Middle English comes from two
core traditions. The attitudes, values and styles of these re-surface in different ways
during subsequent literary periods, so they are important.
The first tradition is the Romance tradition. The Romance tradition deals with love’s
feelings and emotions. Whether it talks of heartbreak or happiness, it views romantic
love idealistically, in the sense that it portrays the experience of love as being a
transcendant (important) part of existence. Often, in the Romance Tradition, love’s
virtues (such as courtesy, gentility, honour, fidelity, faithfulness etc.) are represented in
noble, even spiritual terms. Elevated and refined language is commonly used to do so.
Meaning is effectively codified (implied) through imagery, conceit and allegory.
There is another, distinctly earthier tradition as well as the Romance tradition. This tries
to look at love realistically, portraying the experience of love in a more everyday
manner. This tradition has no single name, although it has been called both Rabelaisian
and Chaucerian, since Chaucer and Rabelais, writing in the late middle ages, were two
of the earliest writers to use this style (although Chaucer is equally able to also write in
the higher-flown Romance tradition).
In this tradition, love is often represented in physical and sexual terms. Plain and even
coarse language is commonly used to do so. Meaning is frequently conveyed through
humour, suggestiveness and ribaldry (innuendo).

Both of these derive from long-standing European literary traditions. In the opening of
Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale (slides 1-3), which is part of a famous text from the late Middle
Ages called ‘The Canterbury Tales’, we see a blend of both at work. The “gentil duc”
has a “Herte pitous”, “chivalrie”, “gentillesse”. He represents the Romance tradition.
However, he is accosted by a “compaignye of ladyes” whose caterwauling for their lost
“housbondes” seems funny rather than sad:
“but swich a cry and swich a wo they make
That in this world nys creature lyvynge
That herde swich another waymentynge.”
Their behaviour is presented in a more earthy way which bemuses the refined Duke.
This representation of love has a bit of the flavour of characters such as Nicholas and
Alisoun in ‘The Miller’s Tale’ (slides 4-5), when a humiliated Absolon brands Nicholas’s
buttocks with a red-hot poker after he has farted in his face and Alisoun has “putte” her
“naked ers” (arse) out of the window for him to kiss.
Chaucer’s treatment of love combines Romance with realism. One of the ways that
later periods broke these down was by exploring Romance realistically and realism
more romantically. Middle English looks at both, but tends to do so separately (as we
see in Chaucer).

THOMAS WYATT – ‘THEY FLEE FROM ME, THAT SOMETIME DID ME
SEEK’ - ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN LITERATURE [PERIOD 2]

O! how I faint when I of you do write,
Knowing a better spirit doth use your
name,
And in the praise thereof spends all his
might,
To make me tongue-tied speaking of your
fame.
But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
My saucy bark, inferior far to his,
On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
Your shallowest help will hold me up
afloat,
Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth
ride;
Or, being wrack'd, I am a worthless boat,
He of tall building, and of goodly pride:
Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
The worst was this, my love was my
decay.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of
May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a
date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime
declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course
untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his
shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can
see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to
thee.
SONNETS 18 and 80 (‘Shaky’) - the birth of the CONCEIT – ELIZABETHAN (period 2)

TWELFTH NIGHT A
“Make me a willow cabin at your gate
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of
night.
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out ‘Olivia!’ O you should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth
But you should pity me.”
TWELFTH NIGHT B
“These be her very Cs, Us and Ts – and thus
makes she her great Ps.”
“Wilt thou go to bed Malvolio? Ay, sweetheart
– and I’ll come to thee.”
HAMLET
Hamlet: “Do you think I meant country
matters?”
Ophelia: “I think nothing, my lord.”
H: “That’s a fair thought to lie between a
maid’s legs.”
O: “What is, my lord?”
H: “Nothing.”
High Romance and Low Bawdy Realism
(C-word) – SHAKESPEARE sustains the
separate traditions
ELIZABETHAN / JACOBEAN (PERIOD 2)

JOHN DONNE - THE FLEA
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deny'st me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea, our two bloods mingled
be;
Thou knowest that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead.
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered, swells with one blood
made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.
Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married
are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, we are
met
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be
Except in that drop which it sucked from
thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and sayest that thou
Find'st not thyself, nor me, the weaker now.
'Tis true, then learn how false fears be;
Just so much honor, when thou yieldst to
me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life
from thee.
METAPHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
OF SONNET’S CONCEIT –
JACOBEAN (PERIOD 2)

PERIOD 2 - ANDREW MARVELL – ‘TO HIS
COY MISTRESS ’ – METAPHYSICAL
POETRY (JACOBEAN)

PERIOD 2 - ANDREW MARVELL – ‘TO
HIS COY MISTRESS ’ – METAPHYSICAL
POETRY (JACOBEAN) contd.

The Elizabethan and Jacobean periods (1509-1642) are characterised by a several
developments in the way love was treated. Although the traditional Middle Ages
approach of combining separate elements of romance with realism is continued in
Shakespearean drama – look at Hamlet’s and Malvolio’s crudity set alongside Viola’s
lyricism (slide 14) in Twelfth Night and Hamlet - newer tones and forms emerge as
well.
At this time the sonnet becomes the standard form for the poetic expression of romantic
feeling. Such short, intense bursts of concentrated emotion became known as lyric
poetry.
A typical lyric poem tried to convey one particular idea. This was called a Conceit. In
‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? ’ the poet’s conceit is that his lover’s beauty
possibly exceeds that of a summer’s day; in ‘O! how I faint when I of you I do write’
(slide 10) his conceit is that he feels overwhelmed at the thought of her.
Conceits are often presented in images. We see this in both ‘Shall I compare thee to a
summer’s day ’ and O! how I faint when I of you I do write’, where analogies to boats at
sea are repeatedly made. You will notice that although there are many images in these
sonnets, they can be associated with each other. This method of using linked images is
called EXTENDED IMAGERY & METAPHOR. It came into use because it allowed a conceit
to be presented with power, force and clarity.

Later poets such as John Donne and Andrew Marvell developed the conceit
by taking it out of the sonnet. ‘To his Coy Mistress’ and ‘The Flea’ (slides 15,
17-18) are too long to be lyric poems. Because they are slightly longer and
allow the writer to adopt as much of a philosophical tone as an emotional
one, they are known as metaphysical poems.
The purpose of both of these poems is sexual: Donne and Marvell want to
get their mistresses into bed: “Had we but world enough, and time / This
coyness lady were no crime.” “Mark but this flea, and mark in this / How
little that which thou deny’st me is.” But the philosophical connection the
poems make to wider meanings (or lack of meanings) of life in general is why
they are called Metaphysical. Marvell urges his coy mistress to seize the
moment “But at my back I always hear / Time’s winged chariot hurrying
near”; Donne says that we may well have shared fleas, so why can’t we
share each other?! The central image they use to propel their conceit has
now become so extended that it is no longer called an extended metaphor;
it has become an epic simile.

By the end of this period all of these formal developments have meant that very direct
and plain expressions of love (such as “sleep with me”) have found themselves rendered
in complex and dense styles. At the time, poetry was seen as the supreme vehicle for
scholarship, wit and technique. At the time these three qualities were seen as X-factor, A-
List accomplishments for A-List people. Most of the poets of the day, such as Donne,
Jonson, Milton, Marlowe, Spenser and Marvell were better-known as men of the world
rather than writers. But writing helped to burnish their images as Renaissance Men was
But feeling as well as form is a factor in the development of the writing of this period.
New tonal notes are struck. The passionate erotic realism of Wyatt’s ‘They flee from me’
(slide 9) breaks new ground in representing feminine desire as something which can be
as predatory (“she me caught”), “stalking” and “wild” as its masculine counterpart – a
conceit which anticipates Keats’ ‘Belle Dame’ (slides 47-8) of the Romantic period almost
three centuries later.
We are invited to look at the independence of women in a different way to the Middle
Ages’ presentation of women such as Chaucer’s Wife of Bath. Although she had many
husbands, we the reader were left to imagine how she managed to acquire them. Wyatt
leaves no such room for the imagination: “sometime they put themselves in danger / To
take bread at my hand; and now they range / Busily seeking with a continual change.”

PERIOD 3 - RESTORATION – JOHN WILMOT,
EARL OF ROCHESTER. ‘AN IMPERFECT
ENJOYMENT’, ‘LOVE AND LIFE’

PERIOD 3 -
RESTORATION –
JOHN WILMOT,
EARL OF
ROCHESTER: ‘AN
IMPERFECT
ENJOYMENT’
contd.

3c RESTORATION –
JOHN WILMOT,
EARL OF
ROCHESTER: ‘AN
IMPERFECT
ENJOYMENT’,
‘LOVE AND LIFE’

Slides 24-26 contain two Restoration (1660-1685) poems: ‘An Imperfect Enjoyment’ and
‘Love and Life’, both by John Wilmot, a court favourite of Charles II. Wilmot is also known
as Rochester, because his title was The Earl of Rochester. Rochester lived fast and died
young at the age of 33.
Sexually, the Restoration of a Monarchy in England was typified by excessive, debauched
and Dionysian extremes of behaviour. This may have been in reaction to the restraints that
the Puritan Roundheads, led by Cromwell, had imposed immediately before this, when they
took power after winning the Civil War, executing Charles I and establishing a
Commonwealth. Such curbs included the closure of the theatres and the prescription of
rigid codes of personal morality. A modern-day analogy exemplifying the degree of change
could be made by asking you to think of the difference between Sharia law and a ruling
elite presided over by King Pete Docherty. Pepys’ diaries show how commonly the gentry
exercised sexual licence and were prepared to set this licentiousness down in writing.
Rochester exemplified this orgiastic ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ hedonism. A new feature of Love Through
the Ages at this time is the graphic candour with which sex is described. ‘An Imperfect
Enjoyment’ is a poem about premature ejaculation – itself a new subject. The coarse and
profane language that is used to describe genitalia and copulation (including C and F
words ) represent an advance even upon the earthiness of earlier periods. In fact this
period was probably the high-water -mark for such bawdy until the last 50 years.

The character of Corinna is interesting too. Although Elizabethan / Jacobean poets
(Wyatt) and dramatists (Shakespeare, Middleton) had at times presented women in a
sexually active way, dialogue such as her dismayed “Is there then no more?” sees female
desire vocalised very directly. This is another new development.
Restoration writing about love , however, was not just a ‘bonkfest’! It is characterised by key
emotional tones.
One of these is futility: “And may ten thousand abler pricks agree / To do the wronged
Corinna right for me.” While the outrageousness of the image is intended comically, it still
reflects a sense of personal failure and inadequacy. It is as if such attempts at conquest set
one on a path where, paradoxically, the spectre of defeat and one’s inner frailty are
brought more closely into view. Senses of futility and nihilism (of nothing being worth
anything) pervade Rochester’s writing about sex every bit as much as senses of humour and
energy do.
This awareness brings with it a melancholy , anxiety and tenderness to the tone of
Restoration writing about Love. This is evident in the lyric ‘Love and Life’. The register is
more refined. The poet declares his love to his wife and plights himself to her above all
others. But in doing so he reflects upon the elusiveness, changeability and uncertainty of
love’s nature. “The past is to come, / How can it then be mine? / The present moment’s all
my lot / And that, as fast as it is got, / Phyllis, is only thine.”

PERIOD 4 – AUGUSTAN: ‘THE
WAY OF THE WORLD’, 1700 -
WILLIAM CONGREVE.

PERIOD 4 – AUGUSTAN: ‘THE
WAY OF THE WORLD’ contd.

n.b. “What dire offence from
amorous causes springs, / What
mighty contests rise from trivial
things, / I sing – this verse to
CARYLL, Muse! Is due, / This ev’n
Belinda may vouchsafe to view: /
Slight is the subject, but not so the
praise , / If She inspire and He
approve, my lays.” [‘]
PERIOD 4 – AUGUSTAN: ‘THE RAPE
OF THE LOCK’, ALEXANDER POPE
PERIOD 4 – AUGUSTAN: ‘THE WAY OF THE
WORLD’ contd.

O this angel of a master! this fine gentleman! this gracious benefactor to your poor
Pamela! who was to take care of me at the prayer of his good, dying mother! This very
gentleman (yes, I must call him gentleman, though he has fallen from the merit of that
title) has degraded himself to offer freedoms to his poor servant; he has now showed
himself in his true colours, and, to me, nothing appears so black and so frightful.
I have not been idle; but had writ from time to time, how he, by sly, mean degrees,
exposed his wicked views, but somebody stole my letter, and I know not what is become
of it. I am watched very narrowly; and he says to Mrs. Jervis, the housekeeper, "This girl is
always scribbling; I think she may be better employed." And yet I work very hard with my
needle upon his linen and the fine linen of the family; and am, besides, about flowering
him a waistcoat. But, oh, my heart's almost broken; for what am I likely to have for any
reward but shame and disgrace, or else ill words and hard treatment!
As I can't find my letter, I'll try to recollect it all. All went well enough in the main, for
some time. But one day he came to me as I was in the summer-house in the little garden
at work with my needle, and Mrs. Jervis was just gone from me, and I would have gone
out, but he said, "Don't go, Pamela, I have something to say to you, and you always fly me
when I come near you, as if you were afraid of me."
I was much out of countenance you may well think, and began to tremble, and the more
when he took me by the hand, for no soul was near us. PERIOD 4 – AUGUSTAN: ‘PAMELA’
– SAMUEL RICHARDSON

"You are a little fool," he said hastily, "and know not what's good for yourself. I tell you I
will make a gentlewoman of you if you are obliging, and don't stand in your own light."
And so saying, he put his arm about me and kiss'd me.
Now, you will say, all his wickedness appear'd plainly. I burst from him, and was getting
out of the summer-house, but he held me back, and shut the door.
I would have given my life for a farthing. And he said, "I'll do you no harm, Pamela; don't
be afraid of me."
I sobb'd and cry'd most sadly. "What a foolish hussy you are!" said he. "Have I done you
any harm?" "Yes, sir," said I, "the greatest harm in the world; you have taught me to
forget myself, and have lessen'd the distance that fortune has made between us, by
demeaning yourself to be so free to a poor servant. I am honest, though poor; and if
you were a prince I would not be otherwise than honest."
He was angry, and said, "Who, little fool, would have you otherwise? Cease your
blubbering. I own I have undervalued myself; but it was only to try you. If you can keep
this matter secret, you'll give me the better opinion of your prudence. And here's
something," added he, putting some gold in my hand, "to make you amends for the
fright I put you in. Go, take a walk in the garden, and don't go in till your blubbering is
over.“ PERIOD 4 – AUGUSTAN: ‘PAMELA’ CONTD.

"I won't take the money, indeed, sir," said I, and so I put it upon the bench. And as he
seemed vexed and confounded at what he had done, I took the opportunity to hurry
out of the summer-house.
He called to me, and said, "Be secret, I charge you, Pamela; and don't go in yet."
O how poor and mean must those actions be, and how little they must make the best
of gentlemen look, when they put it into the power of their inferiors to be greater
than they!
Pray for me, my dear father and mother; and don't be angry that I have not yet run
away from this house, so late my comfort and delight, but now my terror and anguish.
I am forc'd to break off hastily.
Your dutiful and honest DAUGHTER.
O, how my eyes overflow! Don't wonder to see the paper so blotted!
PERIOD 4 – AUGUSTAN: ‘PAMELA’ contd.

Slides 29-34 give two examples of how dramatically things changed during the Augustan
age’s representation of ‘Love Through the Ages.’ (c.1688-1789). These changes reflected
two key trends, one of which was sociological and the other artistic.
The key sociological change was in a growing mercantile class. This meant that a small but
significant group of people were coming into wealth through trade. They sought to make
alliances through marriage, just as royalty and the aristocracy had done for hundreds of
years. The basis for these alliances was primarily economic, i.e. all about the wealth and
influence this would enable both groups to pool through a matrimonial union. It was a bit
like a business merger. This was, as one well-known play of the time reflected, simply ‘The
Way of the World’ (William Congreve, slides 29-31).
This is shown in the sparkling comic scene between Mirabel and Millament, two characters
who are discussing their prospective engagement. They flirt, but their banter is based
around talk of a “covenant” and “contract” with “conditions” and “articles”. Their
”agreeable fatigues of solicitation” are effectively all about doing business, conducting a
negotiation and making a deal. The amount of legal language that is present in this extract
is telling: it is in many ways a forerunner of today’s ‘pre-nup’!
In this climate the expression of emotions of love – be these sexual or romantic – came to
be seen as less important. Love was no longer seen as an end in itself; now it was seen as a
means to the end-goals of social advancement and ‘social-climbing’.

This sociological change went hand in hand with the other key shift of the Augustan age
which was an artistic one. Augustan or neo-classical writers thought that form was more
important than content. This meant that the style of Augustan writing about love overrode
the substance and ideas that writing on this subject at this time contained.
Alexander Pope is the main writer of the time and the greatest exponent of the heroic
couplet (a rhyming iambic pentameter). The heroic couplet is the archetypal FORM of the
day. Pope’s ‘Rape of the Lock’ (slide 31) – a mock-epic tale in verse about a lock of hair
being stolen from the fair Belinda’s chamber – illustrates the degree of irony and artifice
with which love was considered at this time:
“What dire offence from amorous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things,
I sing – this verse to CARYLL, Muse! Is due,
This ev’n Belinda may vouchsafe to view:
Slight is the subject, but not so the praise ,
If She inspire and He approve, my lays.”
The subject-matter was indeed often ridiculously “trivial” and “slight” – just as the “praise”,
style and form of treatment was (as if in an inverse proportion to its flimsy content)
commonly over-lengthy.

Love is treated in a detached, comical and ironic way. Many of Pope’s longer poems
were many hundreds of lines long and called ‘Essays’. Although metaphysical poems
had extended the sonnet’s conceits into something which expressed a wider world-view,
this world-view and philosophy was always something with which the writers were
personally engaged (e.g. ‘The Flea’, ‘To his Coy Mistress’, slides 15, 17-18). They
sincerely believed in and felt ‘the power of love’. Because Augustan Literature’s
perception of or ‘take’ on love is so intrinsically ironic it questions the importance of this
emotion, partly by describing it in such stylised terms. Even when it is sincere, such as in
Richardson’s novel ‘Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded’ (slides 32-34), scenes such as Pamela’s
attempted rape are represented so artificially as to seem insignificant: “O, how my eyes
overflow! Don't wonder to see the paper so blotted!” she writes in reporting the
incident. Predictably, contemporary writers such as Fielding mocked him.

Pride and Prejudice – the two proposals of Darcy and Collins.
PERIOD 5 – REGENCY and the ROMANTICS . ‘PRIDE AND PREJUDICE’, JANE AUSTEN
``My reasons for marrying are, first, that I think it a right thing for every clergyman
in easy circumstances (like myself) to set the example of matrimony in his parish.
Secondly, that I am convinced it will add very greatly to my happiness; and thirdly --
which perhaps I ought to have mentioned earlier, that it is the particular advice and
recommendation of the very noble lady whom I have the honour of calling
patroness. Twice has she condescended to give me her opinion (unasked too!) on
this subject; and it was but the very Saturday night before I left Hunsford -- between
our pools at quadrille, while Mrs. Jenkinson was arranging Miss de Bourgh's foot-
stool, that she said, "Mr. Collins, you must marry. A clergyman like you must marry. -
- chuse properly, chuse a gentlewoman for my sake; and for your own, let her be an
active, useful sort of person, not brought up high, but able to make a small income
go a good way. This is my advice. Find such a woman as soon as you can, bring her
to Hunsford, and I will visit her." Allow me, by the way, to observe, my fair cousin,
that I do not reckon the notice and kindness of Lady Catherine de Bourgh as among
the least of the advantages in my power to offer. You will find her manners beyond
any thing I can describe; and your wit and vivacity I think must be acceptable to her,
especially when tempered with the silence and respect which her rank will
inevitably excite. Thus much for my general intention in favour of matrimony; it
remains to be told why my views were directed to Longbourn instead of my own
neighbourhood, where I assure you there are many amiable young women. But the
fact is, that being, as I am, to inherit this estate after the death of your honoured
father (who, however, may live many years longer), I could not satisfy myself

without resolving to chuse a wife from among his daughters, that the loss to them
might be as little as possible, when the melancholy event takes place -- which,
however, as I have already said, may not be for several years. This has been my
motive, my fair cousin, and I flatter myself it will not sink me in your esteem. And now
nothing remains for me but to assure you in the most animated language of the
violence of my affection. To fortune I am perfectly indifferent, and shall make no
demand of that nature on your father, since I am well aware that it could not be
complied with; and that one thousand pounds in the 4 per cents, which will not be
yours till after your mother's decease, is all that you may ever be entitled to. On that
head, therefore, I shall be uniformly silent; and you may assure yourself that no
ungenerous reproach shall ever pass my lips when we are married.''
Mr Darcy PERIOD 5 – REGENCY and the ROMANTICS . ‘PRIDE AND PREJUDICE’ contd.
``In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must
allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.''
Elizabeth's astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and
was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement, and the avowal of all that he
felt and had long felt for her immediately followed. He spoke well, but there were
feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed, and he was not more eloquent on
the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority -- of its being a
degradation -- of the family obstacles which judgment had always opposed to
inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he
was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit......

PERIOD 5 – REGENCY and the ROMANTICS . ‘A RED, RED ROSE’ – ROBERT BURNS

PERIOD 5 – REGENCY and the ROMANTICS . ‘THE CLOD AND THE PEBBLE’, - WILLIAM BLAKE

SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY LIKE THE NIGHT
- LORD BYRON
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
SO, WE'LL GO NO MORE A-ROVING
So, we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.
PERIOD 5 – REGENCY and the
ROMANTICS . See titles and
poet above

PERIOD 5 – REGENCY and the ROMANTICS .
‘I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD’
– WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

PERIOD 5 – REGENCY and the ROMANTICS
‘ODE TO AUTUMN’ - JOHN KEATS

O what can ail thee Knight at arms,
So haggard, and so woe-begone ?
The squirrel’s granary is full
And the harvest’s done.
I see a lilly on the thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too―
I met a Lady in the Meads
Full beautiful, a faery’s child ;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild―
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone ;
She look’d at me as she did love
And made sweet moan―
PERIOD 5 – REGENCY and the ROMANTICS
‘ODE TO AUTUMN’ contd; ‘LA BELLE
DAME’- JOHN KEATS
LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI –
O what can ail thee Knight at arms,
Alone and palely loitering ?
The sedge has withered from the lake
And no birds sing.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long ;
For sidelong would she bend and sing
A faery’s song―
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew ;
And sure in language strange she said
I love thee true―
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she gaz'd and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes--
So kiss'd to sleep
And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d, Ah Woe betide !
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale Kings, and Princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all ;
They cried ‘La belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee hath in thrall.’
I saw their starv’d lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill’s side.
And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
PERIOD 5 – REGENCY and the
ROMANTICS - ‘LA BELLE DAME
SANS MERCI’ contd. - JOHN
KEATS

Family Portraits Vanity Fair
Sir Pitt Crawley was a philosopher with a taste for what is called low life. His first marriage
with the daughter of the noble Binkie had been made under the auspices of his parents;
and as he often told Lady Crawley in her lifetime she was such a confounded quarrelsome
high-bred jade that when she died he was hanged if he would ever take another of her
sort, at her ladyship’s demise he kept his promise, and selected for a second wife Miss
Rose Dawson, daughter of Mr. John Thomas Dawson, ironmonger, of Mudbury. What a
happy woman was Rose to be my Lady Crawley!
Let us set down the items of her happiness. In the first place, she gave up Peter Butt, a
young man who kept company with her, and in consequence of his disappointment in
love, took to smuggling, poaching, and a thousand other bad courses. Then she
quarrelled, as in duty bound, with all the friends and intimates of her youth, who, of
course, could not be received by my Lady at Queen’s Crawley—nor did she find in her
new rank and abode any persons who were willing to welcome her. Who ever did? Sir
Huddleston Fuddleston had three daughters who all hoped to be Lady Crawley. Sir Giles
Wapshot’s family were insulted that one of the Wapshot girls had not the preference in
the marriage, and the remaining baronets of the county were indignant at their
comrade’s misalliance. Never mind the commoners, whom we will leave to grumble
anonymously.
Sir Pitt did not care, as he said, a brass farthing for any one of them. He had his pretty
Rose, and what more need a man require than to please himself?
PERIOD 5 – REGENCY and the ROMANTICS. ‘VANITY FAIR’ –
WILLIAM THACKERAY

So he used to get drunk every night: to beat his pretty Rose sometimes: to leave her in
Hampshire when he went to London for the parliamentary session, without a single friend
in the wide world. Even Mrs. Bute Crawley, the Rector’s wife, refused to visit her, as she
said she would never give the pas to a tradesman’s daughter.
As the only endowments with which Nature had gifted Lady Crawley were those of pink
cheeks and a white skin, and as she had no sort of character, nor talents, nor opinions, nor
occupations, nor amusements, nor that vigour of soul and ferocity of temper which often
falls to the lot of entirely foolish women, her hold upon Sir Pitt’s affections was not very
great. Her roses faded out of her cheeks, and the pretty freshness left her figure after the
birth of a couple of children, and she became a mere machine in her husband’s house of no
more use than the late Lady Crawley’s grand piano. Being a light- complexioned woman,
she wore light clothes, as most blondes will, and appeared, in preference, in draggled sea-
green, or slatternly sky-blue. She worked that worsted day and night, or other pieces like it.
She had counterpanes in the course of a few years to all the beds in Crawley. She had a
small flower-garden, for which she had rather an affection; but beyond this no other like or
disliking. When her husband was rude to her she was apathetic: whenever he struck her
she cried. She had not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slipshod
and in curl-papers all day. 0 Vanity Fair— Vanity Fair! This might have been, but for you, a
cheery lass—Peter Butt and Rose a happy man and wife, in a snug farm, with a hearty
family; and an honest portion of pleasures, cares, hopes and struggles—but a title and a
coach and four are toys more precious than happiness in Vanity Fair: and if Harry the Eighth
or Bluebeard were alive now, and wanted a tenth wife, do you suppose he could not get
PERIOD 5 – REGENCY and the ROMANTICS. ‘VANITY FAIR’ contd

the prettiest girl that shall be presented this season?
The languid dullness of their mamma did not, as it may be supposed, awaken much
affection in her little daughters, but they were very happy in the servants’ hall and in
the stables; and the Scotch gardener having luckily a good wife and some good
children, they got a little wholesome society and instruction in his lodge, which was
the only education bestowed upon them until Miss Sharp came.
Her engagement was owing to the remonstrance of Mr. Pitt Crawley, the only friend or
protector Lady Crawley ever had, and the only person, besides her children, for whom
she entertained a little feeble attachment. Mr. Pitt took after the noble Binkies, from
whom he was descended, and was a very polite and proper gentleman. When he grew
to man’s estate, and came back from Christchurch, he began to reform the slackened
discipline of the hall, in spite of his father, who stood in awe of him. He was a man of
such rigid refinement, that he would have starved rather than have dined without a
white neckcloth.
PERIOD 5 – REGENCY and the ROMANTICS. ‘VANITY FAIR’ contd.

PERIOD 6 VICTORIAN - ‘WUTHERING HEIGHTS’ - EMILY BRONTE
Heathcliff and Catherine
Mrs. Linton sat in a loose white dress, with a light shawl over her shoulders, in the
recess of the open window, as usual. Her thick, long hair had been partly removed at
the beginning of her illness, and now she wore it simply combed in its natural tresses
over her temples and neck. Her appearance was altered, as I had told Heathcliff; but
when she was calm, there seemed unearthly beauty in the change. The flash of her
eyes had been succeeded by a dreamy and melancholy softness; they no longer gave
the impression of looking at the objects around her: they appeared always to gaze
beyond, and far beyond - you would have said out of this world. Then, the paleness of
her face - its haggard aspect having vanished as she recovered flesh - and the peculiar
expression arising from her mental state, though painfully suggestive of their causes,
added to the touching interest which she awakened; and - invariably to me, I know,
and to any person who saw her, I should think - refuted more tangible proofs of
convalescence, and stamped her as one doomed to decay.
A book lay spread on the sill before her, and the scarcely perceptible wind fluttered its
leaves at intervals. I believe Linton had laid it there: for she never endeavoured to
divert herself with reading, or occupation of any kind, and he would spend many an
hour in trying to entice her attention to some subject which had formerly been her
amusement. She was conscious of his aim, and in her better moods endured his
efforts placidly, only showing their uselessness by now and then suppressing a
wearied sigh, and checking him at last with the saddest of smiles and kisses. At other
times, she would turn petulantly away, and hide her face in her hands, or even push

him off angrily; and then he took care to let her alone, for he was certain of doing no
good.
'Oh, Cathy! Oh, my life! how can I bear it?' was the first sentence he uttered, in a tone
that did not seek to disguise his despair. And now he stared at her so earnestly that I
thought the very intensity of his gaze would bring tears into his eyes; but they burned
with anguish: they did not melt.
'What now?' said Catherine, leaning back, and returning his look with a suddenly
clouded brow: her humour was a mere vane for constantly varying caprices. 'You and
Edgar have broken my heart, Heathcliff! And you both come to bewail the deed to me, as
if you were the people to be pitied! I shall not pity you, not I. You have killed me - and
thriven on it, I think. How strong you are! How many years do you mean to live after I am
gone?'
Heathcliff had knelt on one knee to embrace her; he attempted to rise, but she seized his
hair, and kept him down.
'I wish I could hold you,' she continued, bitterly, 'till we were both dead! I shouldn't care
what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn't you suffer? I do! Will
you forget me? Will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say twenty years
hence, "That's the grave of Catherine Earnshaw? I loved her long ago, and was wretched
to lose her; but it is past. I've loved many others since: my children are dearer to me than
she was; and, at death, I shall not rejoice that I are going to her: I shall be sorry that I
must leave them!" Will you say so, Heathcliff?'
'Don't torture me till I'm as mad as yourself,' cried he, wrenching his head free, and
grinding his teeth.
PERIOD 6 VICTORIAN - ‘WUTHERING HEIGHTS’ CONTD. EMILY BRONTE

The two, to a cool spectator, made a strange and fearful picture. Well might Catherine
deem that heaven would be a land of exile to her, unless with her mortal body she cast
away her moral character also. Her present countenance had a wild vindictiveness in its
white cheek, and a bloodless lip and scintillating eye; and she retained in her closed
fingers a portion of the locks she had been grasping. As to her companion, while raising
himself with one hand, he had taken her arm with the other; and so inadequate was his
stock of gentleness to the requirements of her condition, that on his letting go I saw four
distinct impressions left blue in the colourless skin.
'Are you possessed with a devil,' he pursued, savagely, 'to talk in that manner to me when
you are dying? Do you reflect that all those words will be branded in my memory, and
eating deeper eternally after you have left me? You know you lie to say I have killed you:
and, Catherine, you know that I could as soon forget you as my existence! Is it not
sufficient for your infernal selfishness, that while you are at peace I shall writhe in the
torments of hell?'
'I shall not be at peace,' moaned Catherine, recalled to a sense of physical weakness by
the violent, unequal throbbing of her heart, which beat visibly and audibly under this
excess of agitation. She said nothing further till the paroxysm was over; then she
continued, more kindly -
'I'm not wishing you greater torment than I have, Heathcliff. I only wish us never to be
parted: and should a word of mine distress you hereafter, think I feel the same distress
underground, and for my own sake, forgive me! Come here and kneel down again! You
never harmed me in your life. Nay, if you nurse anger, that will be worse to remember
than my harsh words! Won't you come here again? Do!'
PERIOD 6 VICTORIAN - ‘WUTHERING HEIGHTS’ CONTD EMILY BRONTE

Heathcliff went to the back of her chair, and leant over, but not so far as to let her see his
face, which was livid with emotion. She bent round to look at him; he would not permit it:
turning abruptly, he walked to the fireplace, where he stood, silent, with his back towards
us. Mrs. Linton's glance followed him suspiciously: every movement woke a new
sentiment in her. After a pause and a prolonged gaze, she resumed; addressing me in
accents of indignant disappointment:-
'Oh, you see, Nelly, he would not relent a moment to keep me out of the grave. THAT is
how I'm loved! Well, never mind. That is not MY Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take
him with me: he's in my soul. And,' added she musingly, 'the thing that irks me most is this
shattered prison, after all. I'm tired of being enclosed here. I'm wearying to escape into
that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and
yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart: but really with it, and in it. Nelly, you
think you are better and more fortunate than I; in full health and strength: you are sorry
for me - very soon that will be altered. I shall be sorry for YOU. I shall be incomparably
beyond and above you all. I WONDER he won't be near me!' She went on to herself. 'I
thought he wished it. Heathcliff, dear! you should not be sullen now. Do come to me,
Heathcliff.' PERIOD 6 VICTORIAN - ‘WUTHERING HEIGHTS’ CONTD. EMILY BRONTE
In her eagerness she rose and supported herself on the arm of the chair. At that earnest
appeal he turned to her, looking absolutely desperate. His eyes, wide and wet, at last
flashed fiercely on her; his breast heaved convulsively. An instant they held asunder, and
then how they met I hardly saw, but Catherine made a spring, and he caught her, and they
were locked in an embrace from which I thought my mistress would never be released
alive: in fact, to my eyes, she seemed directly insensible. He flung himself into the nearest

seat, and on my approaching hurriedly to ascertain if she had fainted, he gnashed at
me, and foamed like a mad dog, and gathered her to him with greedy jealousy. I did
not feel as if I were in the company of a creature of my own species: it appeared that
he would not understand, though I spoke to him; so I stood off, and held my tongue,
in great perplexity.
A movement of Catherine's relieved me a little presently: she put up her hand to
clasp his neck, and bring her cheek to his as he held her; while he, in return, covering
her with frantic caresses, said wildly -
'You teach me now how cruel you've been - cruel and false. WHY did you despise me?
WHY did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You
deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my
kisses and tears: they'll blight you - they'll damn you. You loved me - then what RIGHT
had you to leave me? What right - answer me - for the poor fancy you felt for Linton?
Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could
inflict would have parted us, YOU, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your
heart - YOU have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the
worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when
you - oh, God! would YOU like to live with your soul in the grave?'
PERIOD 6 VICTORIAN - ‘WUTHERING HEIGHTS’ CONTD. EMILY BRONTE

As we have seen with ‘Pamela’, The Augustan age had also seen the birth of the novel. The
Regency (1780-1830) period, which occurred when the Romantic poets were alive, saw novels
such as Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ (slides 38-9) seek to combine those economic
considerations that accompanied the arrangement of marriage (which the Augustans had
been so aware of and which remained a matter of survival in an ever-expanding upper-
middle class) with that concern for personal feeling which re-connected them with pre-
Augustan times.
For example, Darcy’s initial proposal to Lizzie talks of “feelings” that “will not be repressed.”
When Mr Collins proposes, he says that Lizzie’s acceptance would “add greatly to my
happiness.” But both proposals also contain “feelings beside those of the heart.” Austen
describes how Darcy “detailed” the “degradation” of Lizzie’s social “inferiority” in unsparing
terms. Mr Collins claims that “To fortune I am perfectly indifferent,” (a typical example of
Austen’s irony) before going on to make Lizzie uncomfortably aware of her lack of wealth
when he says that he “shall make no demand of that nature on your father, since I am well
aware that it could not be complied with; and that one thousand pounds in the 4 per cents,
which will not be yours till after your mother's decease, is all that you may ever be entitled
to.”
At this time the upstart novel overtakes the poetry and drama as the pre-eminent literary
form in the eyes of the reading public, if not the intelligentsia. The conflict between “feelings
… of the heart” and “feelings beside those of the heart” (i.e. emotional versus social / worldly
considerations) defines the treatment of Love in Literature at this time and continues to be
explored throughout both Regency and Victorian novels.

The extracts from the Regency Novel ‘Vanity Fair’ and the early Victorian novel ‘Wuthering
Heights’ (slides 49-56) show this. Thackeray’s novel is almost Augustan in the way it shows
calculation invariably overcoming impulse. The brilliant phrase “items of … happiness” sums
up how possessions and place came before passion in many people’s reckoning. But
Thackeray also attacks this cold materialism as a world of “Vanity Fair.” In contrast, the
recriminations between Heathcliff and Cathy over their failure to marry due to “feelings
beside those of the heart” (i.e. social / worldly considerations) don’t itemise happiness in
representative terms: they deal directly in “savagely” emotional language such as “varying
caprices”, “throbbing … heart”, “paroxysm”, “despair”, “scintillating”, “intensity” and “burned
with anguish”. It is as if the price of placing “feelings beside those of the heart” above
“feelings … of the heart” is the unleashing of other, destructively powerful and passionate
feelings which cannot be suppressed.
Romantic poetry about Love, on the other hand (slides 40-48), dismisses social and worldly
factors, choosing to focus instead upon the sublime, the passions and nature.
‘The Clod and the Pebble’, ‘A Red, Red Rose’, ‘To a Skylark’, ‘To Autumn’, ‘La Belle Dame Sans
Merci’ and ‘She Walks in Beauty, like the Night’ all link love to nature. Connecting feelings,
emotions and moods in this way to an aspect of nature – either to reinforce these moods
(e.g. a sunny day, a happy mood) or to contrast with them (e.g. Singin’ in the Rain) is called
pathetic fallacy. Blake, Burns, Shelley, Keats and Byron use pathetic fallacy in these poems.
Its use as a device is a commonplace of much Romantic poetry about love.

Pathetic fallacy is a staple ingredient of this writing for two reasons. Firstly, it allows writers to
use a referential field / domain to portray emotions in a way which allows them to seem pure,
natural, important, true and idealistic.
Consider “O, my love’s like a red, red rose / That’s newly sprung in June” and “I wander’d lonely
as a cloud / That floats on high o’er vales and hills, / When all at once I saw a crowd, / A host of
golden daffodils”. Bt re-casting their feelings in metaphorical terms, both Wordsworth and Burns
allow the reader to perceive these emotions afresh. Suddenly writing about the emotional
aspects of Love can enjoy pre-eminence again rather than being relegated in favour of more
“trivial” considerations. This allows the poet to feel “wealth” in terms of emotional rapture and
as a matter of “bliss” and “pleasure” in his “heart”, instead of being a matter of reputation and
social gain, as had become the case during the Augustan era.
The second way in which a focus on nature is a staple ingredient of this writing is because it
allows the poets to emphasise the transient, evanescent, ephemeral nature of love. It is seen as
a passing and not an everlasting experience – something which the turbulent love-lives of
Shelley, Burns and Byron reflected.
The ‘Ode to Autumn’, ‘She Walks in Beauty, like the Night’ and ‘A Red, Red Rose’ are all images of
transience. The ecstasy of the night inevitably gives way to the cold light of day; just as surely as
the rose buds, blooms, and is blown into decay: “For the sword outwears its sheath, / And the
soul wears out the breast, / And the heart must pause to breathe, / And love itself have rest.” So
when Keats asks Autumn “Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? / Think not on
them, thou hast thy music too” his declaration is steeped in the pathos of winter’s approach.

It’s this knowledge which gives Romantic poetry about love its distinctive intensity. Like
the Restoration, there is a sense that “the present moment’s all my lot” – that the “live-
long minute” is “all that Heaven allows.” Romantic poetry expresses this intensity by
concentrating it into stunning images and dazzling sound-effects.
Keats was determined that poetry should capture what he called the “slippery blisses” of
the sex-act itself, but needed to be inventive about the way he used figurative language to
evoke this. The conventions of the time dictated that he had to ‘write in code’, partly
because Keats was writing for a wider readership than Rochester150 years before him.
Keats’ audience was public; Wilmot wrote for a limited and private circle. In ‘La Belle
Dame Sans Merci’ Keats’ knight first relates how “I set her on my pacing steed”. Later
though, the sexual initiative is assumed by the Belle Dame when, the knight recalls, “she
took me in her elfin grot.”
‘The Clod and the Pebble’ gives an astonishing example of how two antithetical images of
nature can allow a poet to meditate upon the nature of love itself as a joyous, giving,
humble, downtrodden yet animate entity (the clod) as opposed to its unhappy, selfish,
coasting, deadened counterpart (the pebble). Note finally how Blake allows them to speak
for themselves in his use of direct speech in stanzas 1 and 3.
The bewitching power of the Belle Dame foreshadows the preoccupation with the scope
that existed for women’s roles that Victorian Literature showed in its writing about Love –
specifically their restrictions and potential.

The Lady of Shallot Part I
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the
sky;
And thro' the field the road runs by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro' the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four grey walls, and four grey
towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.
By the margin, willow veil'd
Slide the heavy barges trail'd
By slow horses; and unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to tower'd Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers "'Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott.“
PERIOD 6 VICTORIAN - ‘THE LADY OF
SHALLOT’ – ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

Part II
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may
be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
And moving thro' a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot:
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad,
Goes by to tower'd Camelot;
And sometimes thro' the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often thro' the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights,
And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed;
"I am half sick of shadows," said
SHALLOT’ CONTD.

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.
The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armour rung,
Beside remote Shalott.
All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
As often thro' the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flash'd into the crystal mirror,
"Tirra lirra," by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro' the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
SHALLOT’ CONTD.

In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower'd Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
And down the river's dim expanse -
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance -
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right -
The leaves upon her falling light -
Thro' the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song.
"
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darken'd wholly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot.
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died
Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame.
And round the prow they read her name,
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they cross'd themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace.
PERIOD 6 VICTORIAN - ‘THE LADY OF SHALLOT’
CONTD.

O Captain My Captain - WaltWhitman
O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is
done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the
prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the
people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the
vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear
the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung for you
the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths
for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass,
their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!This arm
beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are
pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has
no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its
voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip the victor ship comes
in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

‘A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE’ ACT 3 – OSCAR WILDE
Gerald Mother, tell me what Lord Illingworth did. If he did anything shameful, I will not
go away with him. Surely you know me well enough for that?
Mrs Arbuthnot Gerald, come near to me. Quite close to me, as you used to do when
you were a little boy, when you were mother’s own boy. (Gerald sits down beside his
mother.° She runs her fingers through his hair, and strokes his hands) Gerald, there was a
girl once, she was very young, she was little over eighteen at the time. George
Harford—that was Lord Illingworth’s name then— George Harford met her. She knew
nothing about life. He—knew everything. He made this girl love him. He made her love
him so much that she left her father’s house with him one morning. She loved him so
much, and he had promised to marry her! He had solemnly promised to marry her, and
she had believed him. She was very young, and—and ignorant of what life really is. But
he put the marriage off from week to week, and month to month.— She trusted in him
all the while. She loved him.—Before her child was born—for she had a child—she
implored him for the child’s sake to marry her, that the child might have a name, that
her sin might not be visited on the child, who was innocent. He refused. After the child
was born she left him, taking the child away, and her life was ruined, and her soul
ruined, and all that was sweet, and good, and pure in her ruined also. She suffered
terribly—she suffers now. She will always suffer. For her there is no joy, no peace, no
atonement. She is a woman who drags a chain like a guilty thing. She is a woman who
wears a mask, like a thing that is a leper. The fire cannot purify her. The waters cannot
quench her anguish. PERIOD 6 VICTORIAN - see above.

Nothing can heal her! no anodyne can give her sleep! no poppies forgetfulness! She is
lost! She is a lost soul!—That is why I call Lord Illingworth a bad man. That is why I don’t
want my boy to be with him.
Gerald My dear mother, it all sounds very tragic, of course. But I dare say the girl was just
as much to blame as Lord Illingworth was.—After all, would a really nice girl, a girl with
any nice feelings at all, go away from her home with a man to whom she was not
married, and live with him as his wife? No nice girl would.
[A pause]
Mrs Arbuthnot Gerald, I withdraw all my objections. You are at liberty to go away with
Lord Illingworth, when and where you choose.
Gerald Dear mother, I knew you wouldn’t stand in my way. You are the best woman God
ever made. And, as for Lord Illingworth, I don’t believe he is capable of anything
infamous or base. I can’t believe it of him—I can’t.
ACT 5 PERIOD 6 VICTORIAN - ‘A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE’ CONTD.
Mrs Arbuthnot I do not know it. I do not feel it, nor will I ever stand before God’s altar
and ask God’s blessing on so hideous a mockery as a marriage between me and George
Harford. I will not say the words the Church bids us to say. I will not say them. I dare not.
How could I swear to love the man I loathe, to honour him who wrought you dishonour,
to obey him who, in his mastery, made me to sin? No: marriage is a sacrament for those
who love each other. It is not for such as him, or such as me. Gerald, to save you from
the world’s sneers and taunts I have lied to the world. For twenty years I have lied to the
world. I could not tell the world the truth. Who can, ever?

But not for my own sake will I lie to God, and in God’s presence. No, Gerald, no
ceremony, Church-hallowed or State-made, shall ever bind me to George Harford. It may
be that I am too bound to him already, who, robbing me, yet left me richer, so that in the
mire of my life I found the pearl of price, or what I thought would be so.
Gerald I don’t understand you now.
PERIOD 6 VICTORIAN - ‘A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE’ CONTD.
Mrs Arbuthnot Men don’t understand what mothers are. I am no different from other
women except in the wrong done me and the wrong I did, and my very heavy
punishments and great disgrace. And yet, to bear you I had to look on death. To nurture
you I had to wrestle with it. Death fought with me for you. All women have to fight with
death to keep their children. Death, being childless, wants our children from us. Gerald,
when you were naked° I clothed you, when you were hungry I gave you food. Night and
day all that long winter I tended you. No office is too mean, no care too lowly for the
thing we women love—and oh! how I loved you. Not Hannah° Samuel more. And you
needed love, for you were weakly, and only love could have kept you alive. Only love can
keep anyone alive. And boys are careless often and without thinking give pain, and we
always fancy that when they come to man’s estate° and know us better, they will repay
us. But it is not so. The world draws them from our side, and they make friends with
whom they are happier than they are with us, and have amusements from which we are
barred, and interests that are not ours: and they are unjust to us often, for when they
find life bitter they blame us for it, and when they find it sweet we do not taste its
sweetness with them.… You made many friends and went into their houses and were
glad with them, and I, knowing my secret, did not dare to follow, but stayed at home and
closed the door, shut out the sun and sat in darkness.

What should I have done in honest households? My past was ever with me.… And you
thought I didn’t care for the pleasant things of life. I tell you I longed for them, but did
not dare to touch them, feeling I had no right. You thought I was happier working
amongst the poor. That was my mission, you imagined. It was not, but where else was
I to go? The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the
dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin. It was you I
thought of all the time; I gave to them the love you did not need: lavished on them a
love that was not theirs.… And you thought I spent too much of my time in going to
Church, and in Church duties. But where else could I turn? God’s house is the only
house where sinners are made welcome, and you were always in my heart, Gerald,
too much in my heart. For, though day after day, at morn or evensong, I have knelt in
God’s house, I have never repented of my sin. How could I repent of my sin when you,
my love, were its fruit! Even now that you are bitter to me I cannot repent. I do not.
You are more to me than innocence. I would rather be your mother—oh! much
rather!—than have been always pure.… Oh, don’t you see? don’t you understand? It is
my dishonour that has made you so dear to me. It is my disgrace that has bound you
so closely to me. It is the price I paid for you—the price of soul and body—that makes
me love you as I do. Oh, don’t ask me to do this horrible thing. Child of my shame, be
still the child of my shame!
Gerald Mother, I didn’t know you loved me so much as that. And I will be a better son
to you than I have been. And you and I must never leave each other … but, mother … I
can’t help it … you must become my father’s wife. You must marry him. It is your duty.
PERIOD 6 VICTORIAN - ‘A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE’ CONTD.

Act 1
MAGGIE. And so shall I. I'll talk to Ada. I've seen her and I know the breed. Ada's the
helpless sort.
PERIOD 6 VICTORIAN - ‘HOBSON’S CHOICE – HAROLD BRIGHOUSE
WILLIE. She needs protecting.
MAGGIE. That's how she got you, was it? (_Turns_ C.) Yes, I can see her clinging round
your neck until you fancied you were strong. But I'll tell you this, my lad, it's a desperate
poor kind of a woman that'll look for protection to the likes of you.
WILLIE. Ada does.
MAGGIE. And that gives me the weight of her. She's born to meekness, Ada is. You wed
her, and you'll be an eighteen shilling a week bootmaker all the days of your life. You'll
be a slave, and a contented slave.
WILLIE. I'm not ambitious that I know of.
MAGGIE. No. But you're going to be. I'll see to that. I've got my work cut out, but there's
the makings of a man about you.
WILLIE. I wish you'd leave me alone. (_Sits_ R.)

MAGGIE. So does the fly when the spider catches him. You're my man, Willie Mossop.
(Moves to desk.)
PERIOD 6 VICTORIAN - ‘HOBSON’S CHOICE’ contd.
HOBSON. You'll put aside your weakness for my Maggie if you've a liking for a sound skin.
You'll waste a gradely lot of brass at chemist's if I am at you for a week with this. (_He
swings the strap_.)
WILLIE. I'm none wanting thy Maggie, it's her that's after me, but I'll tell you this, Mr.
Hobson - (_seizing_ MAGGIE _roughly by the arm_), - if you touch me with that belt, I'll
take her quick, aye, and stick to her like glue.
HOBSON. There's nobbut one answer to that kind of talk, my lad. (_He strikes with belt_.
MAGGIE _shrinks_.)
WILLIE. And I've nobbut one answer back. Maggie, I've none kissed you yet. I shirked
before. But, by gum, I'll kiss you now - (_he kisses her quickly, with temper, not with
passion, as quickly leaves her, to face_ HOBSON)-and take you and hold you. And if
Mr. Hobson raises up that strap again, I'll do more. I'll walk straight out of shop with thee
and us two 'ull set up for ourselves.
MAGGIE. Willie! I knew you had it in you, lad. (_She puts her arm round his neck. He is
quite unresponsive. His hands fall limply to his sides_.)

(HOBSON _stands in amazed indecision_.)
ALICE. We're not against you, father. We want to stay and see that Will deals fairly by
you.
HOBSON. Oh, I'm not capable of looking after myself, amn't I? I've to be protected by you
girls lest I'm overreached, and overreached by whom? By Willie Mossop! I may be ailing,
but I've fight enough left in me for a dozen such as him, and if you're thinking that the
manhood's gone from me, you can go and think it somewhere else than in my house.
VICKEY. But father - dear father -
HOBSON. I'm not so dear to you if you'd to think twice about coming here to do for me,
let alone jibbing at it the way you did. A proper daughter would have jumped - aye,
skipped like a calf by the cedars of Lebanon - at the thought of being helpful to
her father.
ALICE. Did Maggie skip?
HOBSON. She's a bit ancient for skipping exercise, is Maggie; but she's coming round to

reconcilement with the thought of living here, and that is more than you are doing, Alice, isn't it? Eh?
Are you willing to come?
ALICE (_sullenly_). No.
WILLIE. I said such things to him, and they sounded as if I meant them, too.
MAGGIE. Didn't you?
WILLIE. Did I? Yes ... I suppose I did. That's just the worst ... from me to him. You told me to be strong
and use the power that's come to me through you, but he's the old master, and -
MAGGIE. And you're the new.
WILLIE. Master of Hobson's! It's an outrageous big idea. Did I sound confident, Maggie?
MAGGIE. You did all right.
WILLIE (_sits_ R. _of table_). Eh, but I weren't by half so certain as I sounded. Words came from my
mouth that made me jump at my own boldness, and when it came to facing you about the name, I
tell you I fair trembled in my shoes. I was carried away like, or I'd not have dared to cross you,
Maggie.

MAGGIE. Don't spoil it, Will. (_Moves to him_.) You're the man I've made you and I'm
proud.
WILLIE. Thy pride is not in same street, lass, with the pride I have in you. And that
reminds me. (_Rises, moves up and gets his hat_.) I've a job to see to.
MAGGIE. What job?
WILLIE (_coming down_ L.). Oh - about the improvements.
MAGGIE. You'll not do owt without consulting me.
WILLIE. I'll do this, lass. (Goes to and takes her hand.)

‘The Lady of Shallot (61-64), ‘A Woman of No Importance’ (66-69) and ‘Hobson’s Choice’
(70-74) track ways in which writers’ thinking developed along these lines from the 1830s to
the end of the century: from being effectively imprisoned as the Lady of Shallot is by the
“curse” of her social role, to being able to take charge of one’s own destiny and “manage
things” as Maggie Hobson does.
In Tennyson’s poem it’s love which proves the fatal trigger for the Lady of Shallot as, “half sick
of shadows”, she seems to forget the curse. Spellbound by the dazzling Sir Lancelot, she tries
to see him in the flesh: “She left the web, she left the loom, / She made three paces thro’ the
room”. But even this tiny act of independence sees the “curse … come upon” her. In the end,
all that she has control over is the way that she can lose control – i.e. her death.
This poem is one of the most haunting and beautiful poems ever written, partly as a result of
its extraordinary structure. At an allegorical level it is also a brilliant poem, for all that it
paints a bleak picture of how women’s limited opportunities at this time could encounter love
as a blight and not a blessing. As Queen Victoria herself wrote, “All marriage is such a lottery.
The poor woman is bodily and morally a husband’s slave. That always sticks in my throat.”
Later plays such as Wilde’s ‘A Woman of No Importance’ and Brighouse’s ‘Hobson’s Choice’
(written during World War 1 but set in the 1880s) show how, through love, women did gain
more of a say in the running of not only their own lives but also those of their loved-ones and
dependants, even if this often shown to be hard-won.

Over the course of ‘A Woman of No Importance’ Mrs Arbuthnot’s love for her illegitimate son
Gerald and the alliance she forges with Hester eventually enables her to defeat the claims
that the dastardly Lord Illingworth makes on the son that he has never acknowledged. By the
end of the play, Wilde has Mrs A turn the tables on Ld I’s earlier dismissal of her as being “a
woman of no importance.”
The course of the play engineers a shift towards increased social (a peer is bested by a
commoner) and gender equality. Importantly, true love (Hester and Gerald’s, Mrs A’s and
Gerald’s) is the catalyst by which this change is brought about. Whilst Mrs Arbuthnot
possesses independence of mind (her own set of upright moral attitudes and values), she
does not have the independence of means to confront Lord Illingworth until an outside
agency (Hester) supplies this.

However, the redoubtable Maggie Hobson has both independence of mind and acquires her
own independence of means through hard work, thrift, determination and organisational
skills. She not only achieves upwards social mobility for herself in doing so; she also takes Will
Mossop with her, openly declaring that “You’re the man I’ve made you.” Both good and bad
loves are the catalyst by which this change is effected: Maggie’s drive to improve things for
herself and Will is spurred by her refusal to put up with her father’s negligence and drinking.
The image of the trap-door that Will works beneath at the start of the play is a potent image
of social ceilings. But this trap-door is sprung open over the course of the play and Will, with
Maggie’s help, climbs free of the poverty and dependency-trap to acquire independent
means. Victorian Literature shows the seminal role that women played in social advancement
through their capacity for true love and ability to overcome love’s setbacks. “The Angel in the
House”, a phrase used by a contemporary poet called Coventry Patmore, summarised the
growing sense of this that was reflected by Victorian Literature. This is a key feature of
writing about love from this time.

The Soldier – Rupert Brooke
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
PERIOD 7 EDWARDIAN / GEORGIAN – see above

I, Too, Sing America by Langston
Hughes
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed -
I, too, am America.
PERIOD 8
MODERN
– see title

THIS IS NO CASE OF PETTY RIGHT OR
WRONG by Edward Thomas
This is no case of petty right or wrong
That politicians or philosophers
Can judge. I hate not Germans, nor grow hot
With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers.
Beside my hate for one fat patriot
My hatred of the Kaiser is love true: –
A kind of god he is, banging a gong.
But I have not to choose between the two,
Or between justice and injustice. Dinned
With war and argument I read no more
Than in the storm smoking along the wind
Athwart the wood. Two witches' cauldrons roar
PERIOD 7 EDWARDIAN / GEORGIAN – see
title
.
From one the weather shall rise clear and gay;
Out of the other an England beautiful
And like her mother that died yesterday.
Little I know or care if, being dull,
I shall miss something that historians
Can rake out of the ashes when perchance
The phoenix broods serene above their ken.
But with the best and meanest Englishmen
I am one in crying, God save England, lest
We lose what never slaves and cattle blessed.
The ages made her that made us from dust:
She is all we know and live by, and we trust
She is good and must endure, loving her so:
And as we love ourselves we hate her foe.

PERIOD 8 MODERN – ‘LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER’ – D.H. LAWRENCE

A hallmark of Edwardians, Georgians (1901-35) and early modern (1901-35) treatment of love is the way
it looks in one’s relationship with one’s country. a patriotic sense. In an age of international warfare,
business, imperialism and colonialism, poetry in particular was concerned with defining what kind of
patriot one ought to be.
The England of Brooke’s ‘The Soldier’ (78) could be seen as being sentimentally patriotic. Brooke refers
to England and the English repeatedly. The imagery he uses to connote his country’s qualities are
exclusively rural ones, such as rivers, flowers and suns. This is what he “dreams” of taking to his death
should he die in “some corner of a foreign field.” In view of the fact that the war in which Brooke died
was caused by his country’s part in a European arms-race and power-struggle, one could make a case for
the patriotism in Brooke’s sonnet as being naïve and jingoistic.
The upsurge in popular patriotism was blamed by some on “spilt religion”, i.e. a substitute belief for the
decline in Christian faith. Others called it “the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Subsequently, many writers
have attempted to re-define what they think patriotism is and should be.
The love of one’s country which Edward Thomas (80) and Langston Hughes (79) express is more
balanced, ambivalent, mature and powerful. Thomas, for example, rejects the Hun-hating xenophobia
that was widespread at the outbreak of World War One in Britain: “I hate not Germans, nor grow hot /
With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers. / Beside my hate for one fat patriot / My hatred of the
Kaiser is love true”. A reader is meant to detect his disgust through the iterated ‘t’ and ‘s’ sounds at this
point. Thomas most prizes the littlest things about his country –“what never slaves and cattle blessed” –
hence the paradox of the poem’s title. He is prepared to make a stand for these, even though he
confesses that this is an act of faith and not certainty: “we trust / She is good and must endure, loving
her so: / And as we love ourselves we hate her foe.”

Langston Hughes’s ambivalence is explained by his status as a black American. The
resentment he feels at his maltreatment through racial prejudice doesn’t affect his sense of
belonging (“I, too, am America”), his feeling that he can “sing” his patriotism and his
confidence that in the future he will take his place as an equal: “Tomorrow, / I'll be at the
table / When company comes.” Observe how the loose jazzy metre gives the poem an
uncertain tone.
The deep love which both Thomas and Hughes try to articulate is as unconditional as
Brooke’s. However, Hughes’ and Thomas’ patriotic love is not blind to the faults of their
respective countries. In the post-Freudian landscape which the modernist age ushered in,
psychological insight came to be valued at a premium. Reasoned declarations of love such
as these came to be seen as a more romantically ‘in-touch’ style; unqualified declarations
like ‘The Soldier’ just seemed out of date.
By the post-modern age, ‘Going, Going’ (90-1) suggests that all that is out of date is the
justification for even having such sentiments any more. Larkin predicts that his cherished
“England” of “shadows, meadows … lanes … guildhalls” and “carved choirs” will “soon” be
“gone”, replaced by an island of “concrete and tyres” (choirs / tyres is a particularly acidic
rhyme).

PERIOD 8 MODERN – LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER contd

Blanche DuBois: You're married to a madman.
Stella: I wish you'd stop taking it for granted that I'm in something I want to get out of.
Blanche DuBois What you are talking about is desire - just brutal Desire. The name of that
rattle-trap streetcar that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down
another.
Stella: Haven't you ever ridden on that streetcar?
Blanche DuBois It brought me here. Where I'm not wanted and where I'm ashamed to
be.
Stella: Don't you think your superior attitude is a little out of place?
Blanche DuBois May I speak plainly?... If you'll forgive me, he's common... He's like an
animal. He has an animal's habits. There's even something subhuman about him.
Thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is. Stanley Kowalski, survivor
of the Stone Age, bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle. And you - you
here waiting for him. Maybe he'll strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you, that's if kisses
have been discovered yet. His poker night you call it. This party of apes.
Stanley You know what luck is? Luck is believing you're lucky, that's all... To hold a front
position in this rat-race, you've got to believe you are lucky .
PERIOD 8 MODERN – ‘A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE’ – TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

Over the course of the modern age, writing about love began once more to focus explicitly upon
sex itself. Due to the dawning of the psychological age, many writers felt encouraged to think
that the human condition could be looked at anew – in this light perhaps more than any other.
Moreover, the onset of movies, with their common use of close-ups, helped stress consciousness
of the desirability of the human form. The fact that millions of cinema-goers sat in darkness in
intimate communion with the heroes and heroines who peopled the silver screen enabled this
consciousness to be felt on a more universal level than had previously been the case.
Two examples of works which focus explicitly upon aspects of sex itself are Tennessee Williams’
play ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ (86) and ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, a novel by D.H.Lawrence (81,
84-5). Lawrence’s novel looked at an adulterous liaison between a lady and a working man.
Written in the 1920s, its material was considered so scandalous that the ban on selling the book
was not lifted until the early 1960s. Stanley Kowalski’s rape of Blanche du Bois in ‘A Streetcar
Named Desire’ not only explores how actions of this kind can occur, but also how powerfully and
destructively these can impact upon the lives of all of those involved.

Regardless of the social stigma attached to Lady Chatterley’s affair with the gardener,
their lovemaking is described as “such a clean passion”. Lawrence is suggesting that sex
alone can be joyous, fulfilling and an outlet for mutual need, giving and receiving. In its
celebratory viewpoint, this kind of writing can be seen as a forerunner to the likes of
Duffy’s post-modern ‘Girlfriends’. All that mitigates this viewpoint is Lawrence’s
contention that it can be as enslaving a force as it is a liberating one: “the curious united
circle of the man and the woman. It was a kind of prison too.”
The strength of their attraction is made very clear: Mellors exclaims with “dark, glowing
eyes” “I canna believe as yer really want me”; just as they go to bed for the first time, the
narrative, reflecting Lady Chatterley’s perspective, comments that “He was a mature
man.” Later that night, lying together contentedly, her point of view is shown in the lines
“so this was what it was to be a wife.” Note the monosyllabic directness and simplicity of
this sentence.

Lawrence also makes the nature of their attraction clear too, using Mellors to remind Lady
Chatterley of “what ter’s come for.” Here, dialect adds an impression of honesty and
authenticity.
The metaphor of the streetcar for sexuality – as a “rattle-trap” machine of “brutal desire
that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another” is, by its
definition, a modern, thrilling yet frightening one. Exuding this type of sexuality is essence
of Stanley Kowalski’s allure to both the other characters and the audience. Williams makes
the characters themselves aware of the fact that this kind of untrammelled sexuality can
be a cause of havoc as well as happiness, especially if the dominant view is that one’s only
imperative should be “to hold a front position in this rat-race.”

PERIOD 9, POST-MODERN: ‘GOING, GOING’ –
PHILIP LARKIN

PERIOD 9, POST-MODERN: ‘GOING, GOING’ –
contd

PERIOD 9, POST-MODERN: ‘A MONTH
OF SUNDAYS’ – JOHN UPDIKE

PERIOD 9, POST-MODERN: ‘A
MONTH OF SUNDAYS’ contd.

Duffy Medusa
A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy
grew in my mind,
which turned the hairs on my head to
filthy snakes
as though my thoughts
hissed and spat on my scalp.
My bride’s breath soured, stank
in the grey bags of my lungs.
I’m foul mouthed now, foul tongued,
yellow fanged.
There are bullet tears in my eyes.
Are you terrified?
Be terrified.
It’s you I love,
perfect man, Greek God, my own;
but I know you’ll go, betray me, stray
from home.
So better by for me if you were stone.
PERIOD 9, POST-MODERN: ‘GIRLFRIENDS’, ‘MEDUSA’ – CAROL ANN DUFFY

I glanced at a buzzing bee,
a dull grey pebbly fell
to the ground.
I glanced at a singing bird,
a handful of dusty gravel
spattered down
I looked at a ginger cat,
a housebrick
shattered a bowl of milk.
I looked at a snuffling pig,
a boulder rolled
in a heap of shit.
I stared in the mirror.
Love gone bad
showed me a Gorgon.
I stared at a dragon.
Fire spewed
from the mouth of a mountain.
And here you come
with a shield for a heart
and a sword for a tongue
and your girls, your girls.
Wasn’t I beautiful
Wasn’t I fragrant and young?
Look at me now
PERIOD 9, POST-MODERN: ‘MEDUSA’ contd

The post-modern age gave Literature the opportunity to consider love with a degree of
candour which even beyond the graphic frankness of the Restoration. This related most
directly to the discussion of sex and language about it.
In ‘Girlfriends’ (94) Carol Ann Duffy describes the strange ecstasy of reaching orgasm to
the sound of a siren outside. Her description is both lyrical and funny, the jumbled syntax
reflecting her disordered equilibrium just as much as Wyatt’s (9):
“you fell to your knees
and became ferocious, pressed your head to my stomach,
your mouth to the red gold, the pink shadows; except
I did not see it like this at the time, but arched
my back and squeezed water from the sultry air
with my fists.”

The subject-matter is more explicit in this post-modern age with Duffy’s poem than it was
in the modern one with Lawrence’s novel (81, 83-4). But both the tone and language are
similar. The tones are celebratory; the language, far from being as direct as the subject-
matter might suggest, is often mysterious, allusive and cloaked in imagery (“red gold”;
“squeezed water from the sultry air”; “it was as if he balanced the whole of her … as if she
were no more than a dove nestling”; “his hand came like a child’s, gathered her breast and
held it as in a cup”) – as if to convey something of the mystery of the processes themselves.
Similarly, the subject-matter is more explicit in this post-modern age with Updike (92-93)
than it was in the modern one with Williams. And again, both the tone and language are
similar. The tone is downbeat; the language, as if to reinforce this, is not only negative in
the connotations of its imagery (cf Streetcar, 85) but often coarse – witness the C and F
words Updike has his minister use when he does not get his way, despite the mean
psychological ploys he tries with Frankie Harlow. The nihilism that Updike gives his minister,
which is devoid of the rhythmical energy Rochester shows, is if anything even more
downbeat than that of his Restoration counterpart.

PERIOD PLAY NOVEL POETRY FOCUS
Middle Ages Chaucer, Miller’s Tale and Knight’s Tale
Romance and realism; the two traditions;
sincerity versus bawdy; the comic and ironic.
Elizabethan
&
Jacobean
Twelfth Night
Hamlet
Wyatt (‘They flee from me’); Shakespeare
sonnets ‘Shall I compare thee’, ‘Oh! how I
faint..’
The two traditions are maintained; the sonnet
arrives from Italy; the Conceit; sonnets develop
into metaphysical poetry; Wyatt’s passionate
realism (the sexual and behavioural psychologist).
Donne (‘The Flea’), Marvell (‘To his Coy
Mistress’)
Restoration
Rochester (‘An Imperfect Enjoyment’,
’Love and Life’)
Reaction to Puritanism; hedonism, nihilism,
graphic subject-matter and language not
surpassed until 1950s; lyric tradition also upheld;
private audience / limited readership.
Augustan
‘The Way of the
World’ - Congreve
‘Pamela’ - Richardson Pope - ‘The Rape of the Lock’
Irony and artifice; form dictates content;
economic imperatives override considerations of
feeling; love seldom treated seriously, more often
lightly / humorously; even when treated
seriously, treatment perceived as ineffective.
Regency and
Romantic
Austen - ‘Pride and Prejudice’
Burns (‘A Red, Red Rose’), Blake (‘The Clod
and the Pebble’), Wordsworth (‘I
Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’) Byron (‘She
Walks in Beauty’, ‘So we’ll go no more a-
roving), Keats (‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’)
‘Ode to Autumn’).
The Romantic poets; the celebration of sensation;
nature the prism through which human passion
and feeling are re-cast as valid but transient
(pathos); pathetic fallacy and imagery; Austen
sets emotions back on an equal footing with
economics.
Victorian
‘Hobson’s Choice’ –
Brighouse; AWONI’ -
Wilde
‘Wuthering Heights’ – Emily Bronte;
‘Vanity Fair’ – William Thackeray
‘The Lady of Shallot’ - Tennyson
Women go from having hardly any foothold in the
world to having some foothold in the world
through their success in managing loving
relationships.
Edwardian,
Georgian
Edward Thomas (‘This is no Case of Petty
Right or Wrong’), Rupert Brooke (‘The
Soldier’)
How to express love of one’s country?*
Modernist
‘A Streetcar Named
Desire’ – Tennessee
Williams
D.H.Lawrence – ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ Langston Hughes (‘I Too Sing America’)*
Sex considered anew: mechanical metaphors and
brutal but thrilling realism in the modern age
(Williams) versus the love that conquers all
(Lawrence), tender yet direct.
Post-Modernist Updike – ‘A Month of Sundays’
Larkin (‘Going, Going’)*, Duffy
(‘Girlfriends’)
The subject-matter and language become more
explicit . Treated thus, Love’s ecstasy reaches
heights of humour and lyrical romanticism; love’s
agonies plumb new depths of nihilism and
desperation.

Middle English Quiz
1. Which two tales in ‘The Canterbury Tales’ exemplify the different
aspects of the two core representations of love at this time?
2. Which two characters exemplify qualities of refinement?
3. Which descriptors could be said to convey these qualities?
4. Which characters represent earthier and coarser qualities?
5. How does their behaviour do this?
6. What impression is this behaviour meant to have on the reader?
7. What language choices reinforce the sense of crudity?
8. What was the chivalric code?

Restoration Quiz
1. What could the rakish behaviour of the Restoration be a reaction
against?
2. Whose writings are full of sexual candour?
3. What is ‘An Imperfect Enjoyment’ about?
4. What’s significant about the representation of women?
5. What word for philosophical despair do critics sometimes use to
describe Rochester’s writing about sex?
6. What paradox does Rochester’s writing about promiscuity and sexual
conquest reveal?
7. What tenderer, more romantic form of verse did Restorations poets like
Rochester write?

Augustan Quiz
1. How did social change affect attitudes towards love from the early
eighteenth century?
2. How does the play ‘The Way of the World’ reflect this?
3. ‘The Rape of the Lock’ is a mock epic poem. What is a mock-epic?
4. Why was the heroic couplet important?
5. Why is much Augustan literature about love criticised as being artificial?
6. Who’s the supreme example of a literary character more worried about
form than feeling?
7. What’s the importance of ‘Pamela’?

Romantic and Regency Quiz
1. What debate is presented as taking place between two sets of “feelings” in
Regency and early Victorian novels?
2. Which of these “feelings” is making a return to Literature about Love in Regency
novels, having been absent from Augustan Literature?
3. Which Jane Austen characters typify these returning qualities?
4. How might Austen undermine considerations of fortune and status in her portrayal of
Mr Collins?
5. Does Austen completely dismiss considerations of fortune and status in ‘Pride and
Prejudice’? Give evidence for your answer.
6. How does ‘Wuthering Heights’ explore the consequences of choice in this debate?
7. By using nature as a referential field, what device did Romantic poets commonly
use?
8. How do symbols of nature such as roses and autumn suggest pathos?
9. What phrase does Wordsworth use for the Romantic imagination?
10. How does Wordsworth repeatedly personify the daffodils?
11. What archetypal image of love did Burns do more than anyone to make famous?
12. Which analogy does ‘Ode to Autumn’ and Burns’ lyric share?
13. What form of writing in praise of nature / their subject matter did later Romantics
like Keats and Shelley use?
14. How does the structure of ‘To Autumn’ work?
15. What antithetical images of nature are used by Blake? What purpose does this
serve?
16. How could ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ be seen as a study in sexual realism?

Victorians Quiz
1. Which famous contemporary figure said that it “stuck in” her “throat” that marriage
could be such a “lottery” in making a woman “bodily and morally” a “man’s slave”?
2. Which texts, written in the 1830s, 1880-90s and during World War 1, show a growth in
women’s abilities to live more independent lives?
3. How is the Lady of Shallot trapped?
4. How does Mrs Arbuthnot engineer change?
5. What is the significance of Wilde’s play’s title with reference to Illingworth’s and Mrs
Arbuthnot’s roles?
6. When and where is ‘Hobson’s Choice’ set?
7. What kind of area is it?
8. What metaphor represents social opportunity in ‘Hobson’s Choice’?
9. What did Coventry Patmore call a home-making woman?
10. What makes the Lady of Shallot seem invisible?
11. Who eschews epigram and paradox and Why are epigram and paradox important
to ‘A Woman of no Importance’?

Georgian, Edwardian, Post-Modern and Modern Quiz 2: Representations of Patriotism
1. When were the 4 different poems written?
2. Why can attitudes to one’s country be seen as an aspect of love through the
ages?
3. Why was the nature of patriotism such a concern for writers in the twentieth
century?
4. What kind of patriotism is Brooke’s?
5. What are ‘The Soldier’s key aspects?
6. How are both Thomas’ and Hughes’ patriotism more ambivalent?
7. What does ‘Going Going’ refer to?
8. In one word, what kind of poem is ‘Going Going’?
9. How do attitudes to one’s country change from the modern to the post-modern
era?
10. What sort of patriotism does Thomas revile?
11. What does he most cherish about England?
12. What does Hughes feel anguish at?
13. (i) “I ...sing America” and (ii) “I ... am America” imply what?

Post-Modern and Modern Quiz 1: Representations of Sex
1. The Modern Text which portrays sex positively? What type of text is it and
who is its author?
2. The post-modern Text which portrays sex positively? What type of text is it
and who is its author?
3. The Modern Text which portrays sex negatively? What type of text is it and
who is its author?
4. The post-modern Text which portrays sex negatively? What type of text is it
and who is its author?
5. How do1 & 2 portray sex positively?
6. How do 3 & 4 portray sex negatively?
7. How do post-modern representations of sex go further than modern ones?
8. Why is the streetcar a telling modern image for desire?
9. What’s surprising about Mellors and Lady Chatterley’s affair?

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