JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REVIEWS

ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 09, 2020

Decoding the Past: Self-reflection and Presence of Feminine in ’s Select Poems

Noopur Baruah

Freelance Scholar Assam

Abstract This paper is an attempt to look at how Keats portrayed women in his poems and how women in his life had a great influence on him and his poems. The poem which I will be referring to are: - “”, “Stanzas to Miss Wylie”, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, “Lines to Fanny”. These poems are chosen because poems like Stanzas to Wylie were written in the earlier part of his career as a poet and poems such as La Belle Dame Sans Merci which was written in the latter part of his career as a poet. We see a gradual change in his perception of women from his earlier poems to his poems written in the later years of his life after he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. His treatment of women has grown from naive appreciation to critical observation. We can see that the aesthetic sense got heightened concerning his treatment of women. So in a nutshell this paper will be an attempt to look at how Keats portrayed women in different ways and how his perception of women changed from narrow appreciation to a much broader understanding. Keywords: women, love, marriage, death, trust

Introduction The Romantic Period is the period that ushered in the later parts of the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th century. The literature of this period cannot be termed as entirely new but it was in contrast to the literary scene which was prevalent in the eighteenth century. Poets like Keats did not recognize them as "romantic" as they thought that their literary practice differed from that of the eighteenth century. The Romantic period includes the work of two generations of writers and Keats belonged to the Second-generation. The major writers of the second generation were mostly poets. The second generation of writers is different from the first because all the writers of the first generation except Byron achieved literary success during their lifetime. But from the second generation, only Byron savored the taste of success during his lifetime. Keats had a very small readership and it was only in the Victorian era that Keats got his deserved respect as a major romantic poet and was also considered as one of the best Romantic poets to ever exist.

Representation of Women Keats's portrayal of women in his poetry owes much to the actual women of his life. His mother remarried after his father's death and she left her children high and dry. His mother's remarriage colored his perception of women to some extent. After his mother's remarriage, Keats moved to his maternal grandmother's house with his siblings. His maternal grandmother was one such figure in Keats's life who also played a prominent role in coloring Keats's perception of women. Whatever maternal love he missed it was fulfilled by his grandmother to some extent. With her limited means, his grandmother tried to provide a proper home for Keats and his siblings. Keats's grandmother was a sharp contrast to his mother because Keats's grandmother was a bold, courageous and efficient woman and she kept her mind stable and she battled against heavy odds, and tried her level best to protect her grandchildren. So if we consider maternal affection Keats had two mothers, one was his mother who used to run away from responsibilities and one was his grandmother Alice Jennings who was a headstrong woman and was very affectionate. The next women figure in Keats is his sister. Keats was very possessive about his sister just like his other brothers. She was someone Keats could treasure and indulge in. Keats and his brothers were not only possessive about her but also tried to compete with one another to draw more attention to their sister. She was sent to school after the death of Keats's grandmother under the guardianship of Richard

3273

JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REVIEWS

ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 09, 2020

Abbey. She remained in school for three years after which she was taken into the household of Richard Abbey and she was unhappy because she was taken away from school. As Keats's sister was a quiet girl Keats asks her to socialize and show prudence. Keats's relation with his sister was some sort of a father- daughter relationship. Another important figure in Keats's life is Georgiana Keats, the wife of his brother George. Keats liked Georgiana very much because she was a woman who exercised her own will as she ran away from her family to live with George. She also did empathize with Keats's feelings and this resulted in the closeness and intimacy between them. Keats's liking for her grew day by day. Keats regarded Georgiana as his sister and in one of his letters to George and Georgiana he writes as “my dear sister George”. He created an acrostic for her. The brotherly feelings of Keats towards his sister in law is very clearly seen in the acrostic. A few lines from the acrostic can prove it: Give me your patience, sister, while Iframe Exact in capitals your golden name, Or sue the fair Apollo and he will Rouse from his heavy slumber and instill Great love in me for thee and poesy. (Banerjee 15) Keats was very much impressed with Georgiana’s intelligence. She was not beautiful but her virtues and views of the world and her disinterestedness impressed Keats to a large extent.

Representing The most prominent of the women figures in his life is Fanny Brawne. She was a woman with wit and she had a great interest in foreign languages and was very much interested in clothes (19). Fanny was a simple, straightforward, and unpretentious woman and we come to know about it from various letters Keats wrote to her. Keats and Fanny got engaged in 1819 and we come to know about it from the letter that Fanny Brawne gave to Fanny Keats (20). Keats’s jealousy towards her was because he was sick and his sickness increased his worries about his love also increased. This gave way to his fears and uncertainties. This can be the result of his own childhood experience when his mother ran away from the responsibilities and married again after his father’s death so because of it Keats never could again bring back the trust in relationships later in his life. Keats was broken because he could not take the fact of being separated from Fanny. Fanny was very unhappy that she could not be beside Keats's death bed and nurse him and after Keats's death she mourned for a long period and she wore the ring that Keats gave him till the end of her life. So this shows that Keats’s insecurities were just an extension of his experiences in childhood and so he viewed Fanny too in that line but Fanny was very loyal to him and this Keats did not see and so he missed the love because of his insecurities. There is nowhere written about Fanny’s loyalty to Keats but Fanny loved him dearly and his death broke her down and later she too fell ill and died. In “Lines to Fanny” Keats talks about his muse who is Fanny Brawne and he says that he has seen her in his dream and he is asking her what can he do to drive away from the remembrance of her or the picture of her which he has seen in his dream. Keats was dying and so he was unhappy to part from Fanny and so he does not want to bring Fanny into his mind because it makes him sad. After all, he will have to part from her. Here we can see that Keats does not tell her directly that he misses her but as we know that Keats was a true romantic he made it look romantic by bringing in the element of the dream. He says that his muse has wings and also says that she was ready to take her course even if he tried to bent her force which means that his muse did not abide by him and was on her own and was least bothered about his feelings for her. There is a point to note that in this poem Keats describes his muse as "unintellectual” (418) so we can make out from this description that Keats thought women as lacking in intellect. He says that his muse is unintellectual yet divine which shows that he merely viewed women as beings without any intellect and are here in this world only to display her beauty. So practically Keats referred to women as fools. The end of the poem is a sensual one. Here we can see Keats's interest in making love with his lady. He says, “O, let me once more rest My soul upon that dazzling breast! Let once again these aching arms be plac’d, The tender gaolers of thy waist!

3274

JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REVIEWS

ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 09, 2020

And let me feel that warm breath here and there To spread a rapture in my very hair,- O the sweetness of the pain! Give me those lips again!” (419) From these lines, we can make out that Keats was not satisfied in love and it can be seen in these lines. He is creating a very sensual picture. Warm breath is a sign of over-excited and when he says that the warm breath creates a rapture in his hair that means he is referring to the panting of the lady in pleasure. Warm breath could also mean a sense of contentment and fulfillment. Keats here portrays women as beings who are only on this earth to please the men and they are devoid of any intellect and they are also unruly. This shows one negative side of Keats.

Illustration of Victorian Woman In “Stanzas to Miss Wylie” Keats is referring to Georgiana Keats, Keats's sister-in-law and wife of . John Keats shared a very close relationship with his sister in law and he would often write letters to her and tell her about his life and love. We can see that when he says to Georgiana in the lines: Of mosses and flowers to pillow thy head And there Georgiana I’ll sit at thy feet While my story of love I enraptured repeat (Wright 269) After reading the following lines we can see that Keats was attracted to Georgiana. Though he did say that he had brotherly feelings for Georgiana we can see the reversal of it. It is evident from the following lines from the poem: Yet no-as I breathe I will press thy fair knee And then thou wilt knows that the sigh comes from me. Ah! Why dearest girl should we lose all these blisses? (269) Here we can see the flirtatious nature of Keats. He even did not spare his sister-in-law. He is so obsessed with the fact of having sexual pleasures that he is even ready to break all the rules of society and also break all the taboos because he is here showing signs of getting close to his sister-in-law. Keats was a fearless poet that is to be noted here because at the time when he wrote what he is talking about was unthinkable. Keats was also asking his sister-in-law for love as he says in the lines, “So smile acquiescence, and give me thy hand, With love looking eyes, and with voice sweetly bland” (269) Keats was blinded by pleasures. He was not aware of what was saying. Asking his sister-in-law for love is not agreeable and he is so audacious that he thinks that she will fall for his sweet words and love him. He is in a way indirectly portraying women as frivolous beings without any feelings. One day she will be with one and the other day she will feel for someone and go to him. It is wrong how he thinks and it is wrong that he wrote such a poem to Georgiana asking for favors indirectly.

Epitomizing Masculinized Woman Keats, in his poem “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, portrayed women as a seductress. It is about a knight who is wandering alone in a barren landscape and just then an unknown interrogator comes in and asks the knight about the reason behind his state. The knight then goes on to say about his encounter with a lady whom he met at the meadows and how she lulled him to sleep and left him alone in this barren landscape. The knight tells the speaker that the lady whom he encountered had wild eyes and those eyes were the cause that the knight fell for the lady. The eyes of the lady was like a trap set for the knight. She seduces him with her gazes and her sweet moans. She bought for his things to have like honey and manna dew and then she took him to her elfin grot and lulled him to sleep. The 'elfin grot' here can be two things, it can be a cave-like place and two it is used to refer to a woman's vagina now it is not sure what Keats wanted to mean but the former meaning sounds right in this context. After moving to her elfin grot and kissing her she is lulled to sleep and then he dreamt about pale kings and princes who were telling him that he has been trapped by the enchantress. After waking up he found himself on the cold hillside and land devoid of everything, a barren land. Keats here portrays women as an enchantress who with their beauty seduces men and later destroy them. In the lines "She looked at me as she did love and made sweet moan” (336) when we picture this line in our mind we can

3275

JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REVIEWS

ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 09, 2020

visualize a woman making a sweet moan and inviting the man to give her sexual pleasures. So Keats with his lines creates pictures that hit our mind automatically and a sensual picture flashes in our mind as we read them. Though Keats portrays women as an enchantress here he also in a way appreciates them and tells them they too have feelings which can be purer than a man’s but they are bounded by the societal norms. In the line “And there she gaz’d and sighed deeply" (337) which means that she was crying and it was a beautiful trap set by her so that the knight can fall easy prey to her because for a woman the most potent weapon is crying and most of the males fall prey to this. Keats has written this poem after he was diagnosed with tuberculosis so the beautiful enchantress described here can be seen as his hope to live more and the barren landscape is the reality which shows that there is no hope for his survival.

Identity of Woman In "Ode to Psyche" Keats is concerned with the marginalization of Goddess Psyche and he wants to save the identity of Psyche. Psyche was a Goddess who had no temples, no altars, and also no choir to sing for her. We can see in the fourth stanza Keats says that the Goddess has come to the world too late. So Keats says that even though he is going to die he will try his best to pay homage to Psyche and become her choir and sing for her sweet vespers. So, in the fifth stanza, he says that he wants to make a temple for her in "the untrodden region of his mind" (Wolfson 224) and be her priest. And he says that he will keep the window of her new place open so that her love can come in. Keats chose Psyche as the subject of the ode because Psyche was a marginalized Goddess and she was not worshipped and her identity was not known to others. Keats finds a similarity of himself with the Goddess Psyche. Keats was a marginalized poet because of the hostile criticism he had to face and because of his low social origin which makes him similar to the women because women were also marginalized in contemporary society. Psyche remained isolated and neglected for a long period. She receives her identity after the Augustan age. He wrote this ode not to bring back the lost glory of Psyche but it was an attempt of him to identify his poetic self. So in the last stanza of the ode, we can see that Keats was ready to undergo anything to worship Psyche. The pain which is promised here by Keats to undergo any pain to worship Psyche reminds us of his resolution which he took to undergo any pain and suffering in life to emerge as a true soul. There is also another point to be noted that though Keats has shown Psyche as a female figure with autonomy and independence he also in a way tells that a woman is incomplete without a man. So he writes in the last lines, “A casement ope at night To let the warm love in” (Wright,1994:224 ) This clearly shows that Psyche is complete only with the Cupid.

Conclusion The researcher can conclude that Keats is a balanced poet. He criticizes women and also appreciates them. So, we cannot label him as a feminist. His criticism towards women is because he has had a bitter experience with women in the earlier part of his life and so he could not place his trust in relation with a woman. As he was dying his mind was clouded with many such insecurities of losing his love and so he criticized his lady, Fanny a lot because he thought that Fanny was not giving him any attention but in reality, she loved him a lot and she was also sad because she could not be with the poet in his last days and nurse him. So overall if we see we can say that Keats though criticized women in many of his poems he had great reverence for them in his heart.

References Banerjee, Argha. Female Voices in Keats’s Poetry. Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, 2002. Keats, John. The Complete Poems of John Keats. edited by Paul Wright. Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1998. The Cambridge Companion to Keats. edited by Susan J. Wolfson. Cambridge U P, 2001.

3276