Decoding the Past: Self-Reflection and Presence of Feminine in John Keats’S Select Poems

JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REVIEWS ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 09, 2020 Decoding the Past: Self-reflection and Presence of Feminine in John Keats’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: - “Ode to Psyche”, “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 Fanny Brawne 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.

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