Percy Bysshe Shelly

 Percy Bysshe Shelly: (1792 – 1822) 

Introduction:

 

“O world, O life, O time! On whose last step I climb,

Out of day and night, A joy has taken flight;”

He was known as “Mad Shelly” among the youth. He died in very young age of thirty. His poems contained the melodious quality of Romanticism and a different point of view towards the nature than Wordsworth had.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets, and is widely regarded as having written some of the greatest poems in the English language. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death, and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets including Browning, Swinburne, Hardy and Yeats.

Life - career:

Shelley’s critical reputation fluctuated in the twentieth century, but in recent decades he has achieved increasing critical acclaim for the sweeping momentum of his poetic imagery, his mastery of genres and verse forms, and the complex interplay of sceptical, idealist and materialist ideas in his work. Among his best-known works are "Ozymandias" (1818), "Ode to the West Wind" (1819), "To a Skylark" (1820), and the political ballad “The Mask of Anarchy” (1819). His other major works include the verse drama, The Cenci (1819), and long poems such as Alastor (1815), Julian and Maddalo (1819), Adonais (1821), Prometheus Unbound (1820)—widely considered his masterpiece—Hellas (1822), and his final, unfinished work, The Triumph of Life (1822).

“Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.”

At Oxford Shelley attended few lectures, instead spending long hours reading and conducting scientific experiments in the laboratory he set up in his room. He met a fellow student, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who became his closest friend. Shelley became increasingly politicised under Hogg’s influence, developing strong radical and anti-Christian views. Such views were dangerous in the reactionary political climate prevailing during Britain’s war with Napoleonic France, and Shelley’s father warned him against Hogg’s influence.

Shelley also wrote prose fiction and a quantity of essays on political, social, and philosophical issues. Much of this poetry and prose wasn’t published in his lifetime, or only published in expurgated form, due to the risk of prosecution for political and religious libel. From the 1820s, his poems and political and ethical writings became popular in Owenist, Chartist and radical political circles and later drew admirers as diverse as Karl Marx, Gandhi and George Bernard Shaw.

“A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.” 

In the winter of 1810-11, Shelley published a series of anonymous political poems and tracts: Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, The Necessity of Atheism (written in collaboration with Hogg) and A Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things. Shelley mailed The Necessity of Atheism to all the bishops and heads of colleges at Oxford, and he was called to appear before the college's fellows, including the Dean, George Rowley. His refusal, to college authorities, to answer questions regarding whether or not he authored the pamphlet resulted in his expulsion from Oxford on 25 March 1811, along with Hogg. A number of writers have speculated that the expulsion of Shelley and Hogg was politically motivated. Hearing of his son's expulsion, Shelley's father threatened to cut all contact with Shelley unless he agreed to return home and study under tutors appointed by him. Shelley's refusal to do so led to a falling-out with his father.

In May 1814, Shelley began visiting his mentor Godwin almost daily, and soon fell in love with Mary, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Godwin and the late feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley and Mary declared their love for each other during a visit to her mother’s grave on 26 June. When Shelley told Godwin that he intended to leave Harriet and live with Mary, his mentor banished him from the house and forbade Mary from seeing him. Shelley and Mary eloped to Europe on 28 July, taking Mary’s step-sister Claire Clairmont with them. Before leaving, Shelley had secured a loan of 3,000 pounds but had left most of the funds at the disposal of Godwin and Harriet, who was now pregnant.

Shelley‘s life was marked by family crises, ill health, and a backlash against his atheism, political views and defiance of social conventions. He went into permanent self-exile in Italy in 1818, and over the next four years wrote a series of poems widely considered his masterpieces. He died in a boating accident in 1822 at the age of twenty-nine.

“Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

Critical acclaim:                   

Shelley’s work was not widely read in his lifetime outside a small circle of friends, poets and critics. Most of his poetry, drama and fiction was published in editions of 250 copies which generally sold poorly. Only The Cenci went to an authorised second edition while Shelley was alive.

The initial reception of Shelley’s work in mainstream periodicals (with the exception of the liberal Examiner) was generally unfavourable. Reviewers often launched personal attacks on Shelley’s private life and political, social and religious views, even when conceding that his poetry contained beautiful imagery and poetic expression. There was also criticism of Shelley’s intelligibility and style, Hazlitt describing it as,

“A passionate dream, a straining after impossibilities, a record of fond conjectures, a confused embodying of vague abstraction.” 

Shelley’s poetry soon gained a wider audience in radical and reformist circles. Queen Mab became popular with Owenists and Chartists, and Revolt of Islam influenced poets sympathetic to the workers’ movement such as Thomas Hood, Thomas Cooper and William Morris.

However, Shelley's mainstream following did not develop until a generation after his death.

Death:

On 1 July, Shelley and Edward Williams sailed in Shelley’s new boat the Don Juan to Livorno where Shelley met Leigh Hunt and Byron in order to make arrangements for a new journal, The Liberal. After the meeting, on 8 July, Shelley, Williams and their boat boy sailed out of Livorno for Lerici. A few hours later, the Don Juan and its inexperienced crew were lost in a storm. The vessel, an open boat, had been custom-built in Genoa for Shelley. Mary Shelley declared in her "Note on Poems of 1822" (1839) that the design had a defect and that the boat was never seaworthy. In fact the Don Juan was overmasted; the sinking was due to a severe storm and poor seamanship of the three men on board.

Shelley’s badly-decomposed body washed ashore at Viareggio ten days later and was identified by Trelawny from the clothing and a copy of Keats's Lamia in a jacket pocket. On 16 August, his body was cremated on a beach near Viareggio and the ashes were buried in the Protestant Cemetery of Rome.

Shelley’s Heart:

When Shelley’s body was cremated on the beach, his “unusually small” heart resisted burning, possibly due to calcification from an earlier tubercular infection. Trelawny gave the scorched heart to Hunt who preserved it in spirits of wine and refused to hand it over to Mary. He finally relented and the heart was eventually buried either at St. Peter’s Church, Bournemouth or in Christchurch Priory.

“I have drunken deep of joy,

And I will taste no other wine tonight.”

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George Gordon Byron

 George Gordon Byron (1788 – 1824)

     Introduction:

“And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on.”

Mostly George Gordon Byron was known as Lord Byron. His poetry was full of imaginations and supernatural elements. His life was full of grief, as he wrote, 

“My days are in the yellow leaf,

The flowers and fruits of love are gone:

The worm, the canker, and the grief

Are mine alone”

 Lord Byron was born George Gordon Noel Byron on January 22, 1788 in London. His mother, Catherine Gordon of Gight was a Scots heiress and his father, John Byron was captain referred to as "Mad Jack", who wasted the family's money and left the family to venture overseas, he never came back and died when he was 36.  Byron was born with a club foot leaving him with a limp. He was always insecure and embarrassed by this. Byron had a rather difficult childhood. His nurse began sexually abusing Byron when he was only 10 years old. This early introduction to sexual maturity would complicate any relationship he would have. 

Life:

In 1799, he went to school in Dulwich, then attended Trinity College in Cambridge. The next year he fell madly in love with his cousin Magaret Margaret Parker, who inspired his poetry. When she died two years later, he wrote "On the Death of a Young Lady". He published his first poem "Fugitive Pieces" in 1806, but it was met with rebuttal and harsh criticism on writing of the poet. 

“Always laugh when you can, it is cheap medicine.”

 

While on a grand road trip throughout Europe, Byron wrote "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", which would serve as an autobiography ("adnax"). While writing his autobiography, he would take excerpts and over-dramatize them to create a new poem. His most famous poem "Don Juan", which he would never finish. Although Byron had many admires and gained great public fame through his writing, his main target was the critics. He often referred to them as "harpies that must be fed" 

 In January 1815, he married Annabella Millbank. In December, his daughter Augusta Ada Byron was born. The couple separated in January of the following year due to persistent rumours of Byron's relations with his half-sister, but the actual reason behind the separation was the revelation that Byron had practiced sodomy on the nursery governess. Byron signed divorce papers and left England, never to return. He then had a relationship with Claire Clarmont who would give birth to his second daughter Allegra. In Autumn of 1816, he left for Venice where he had multiple occasions with the local women. 

In the summer of 1818, he completed the first canto of "Don Juan", but they refused to publish it on account of the "indelicacies". In April 1819, he met Countess Teresa Guicciolo, who was only 19 but married to a man three times her age. Byron won the affection of her father and brother who convinced him to join the revolutionary society of the Carbonari. He also helped the Greeks with with their War of independence from the Turks. There he bought an entire fleet and was the commander. 

“The great object of life is sensation- to feel that we exist, even though in pain.”

In February he became ill and was bled with leeches; he was well for a while before relapsing in April. On April 19, 1824 he died and his body was embalmed. His heart was removed and buried in Missolonghi. The rest of his body was sent and buried near Newstead Abby. He was known as a “flamboyant” and well known for his romanticism, and was appointed as poet laureate in 1813. His role model throughout his life was Alexander Pope. Byron was remembered for his lavish ways, numerous love affairs with both sexes, his scandalous ways and most importantly for his passionate poems. 

Literary Career:

In Lord Byron’s life, he was very well known for being flamboyant and full of passion. During his journey of affairs, he fell in love with his cousin Catherine. This path that he went down in his life inspired him to write his poem “She Walks in Beauty” to describe Catherine’s beauty, comparing it to the night and the starry skies. His tendency to observe women carefully is shown in his poem as well. 

This poem can be interpreted through a gender perspective, considering that Lord Byron was a male with a passionate emotion towards women. Through this poem, he expresses his deep feelings for women of beauty in nature. This is visible when he speaks of a woman that is like the night and how her innocence shines bright. Byron illustrates women as a pure and innocent creature. This shows how he views women as beautiful and harmless. 

“If I do not write to empty my mind, I go mad.” 

Byron was a British Romantic poet and satirist whose poetry and personality captured the imagination of Europe. Renowned as the “gloomy egoist” of his autobiographical poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18) in the 19th century, he is now more generally esteemed for the satiric realism of Don Juan (1819–24).

In 1806 Byron had his early poems privately printed in a volume entitled Fugitive Pieces, and that same year he formed at Trinity what was to be a close, lifelong friendship with John Cam Hobhouse, who stirred his interest in liberal Whiggism. Byron’s first published volume of poetry, Hours of Idleness, appeared in 1807. A sarcastic critique of the book in The Edinburgh Review provoked his retaliation in 1809 with a couplet satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, in which he attacked the contemporary literary scene. This work gained him his first recognition.

On reaching his majority in 1809, Byron took his seat in the House of Lords, and then embarked with Hobhouse on a grand tour. They sailed to Lisbon, crossed Spain, and proceeded by Gibraltar and Malta to Greece, where they ventured inland to Ioánnina and to Tepelene in Albania. In Greece Byron began Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, which he continued in Athens.

In March 1810 he sailed with Hobhouse for Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), visited the site of Troy, and swam the Hellespont (present-day Dardanelles) in imitation of Leander. Byron’s sojourn in Greece made a lasting impression on him. The Greeks’ free and open frankness contrasted strongly with English reserve and hypocrisy and served to broaden his views of men and manners. He delighted in the sunshine and the moral tolerance of the people.

“You gave me the key to your heart, my love, then why did you make me knock?” 

At the beginning of March 1811, the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage were published by John Murray, and Byron “woke to find himself famous.” The poem describes the travels and reflections of a young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks for distraction in foreign lands.

During the summer of 1813, Byron apparently entered into intimate relations with his half-sister Augusta, now married to Colonel George Leigh. He then carried on a flirtation with Lady Frances Webster as a diversion from this dangerous liaison. The agitations of these two love affairs and the sense of mingled guilt and exultation they aroused in Byron are reflected in the series of gloomy and remorseful Oriental verse tales he wrote at this time: The Giaour (1813); The Bride of Abydos (1813); The Corsair (1814), which sold 10,000 copies on the day of publication; and Lara (1814).

 The first two cantos of Don Juan were begun in 1818 and published in July 1819. Byron transformed the legendary libertine Don Juan into an unsophisticated, innocent young man who, though he delightedly succumbs to the beautiful women who pursue him, remains a rational norm against which to view the absurdities and irrationalities of the world.

A serious illness in February 1824 weakened him, and in April he contracted the fever from which he died at Missolonghi on April 19. Deeply mourned, he became a symbol of disinterested patriotism and a Greek national hero. His body was brought back to England and, refused burial in Westminster Abbey, was placed in the family vault near Newstead. Ironically, 145 years after his death, a memorial to Byron was finally placed on the floor of the Abbey.

“A drop of ink may make a million think.”

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John Keats

John Keats

   

Introduction:

“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?” 

John Keats, the bright star, was the very personification of a young romantic. He was everything the poet stereotype brings to your mind: boyish, indulgent, fragile, star-crossed, and exceptionally talented.

And perhaps there’s a close association because Keats is so widely regarded as one of the greatest poets of all time. His work and, quite frankly, his tragic death, have influenced so many of poetry’s powerhouse writers, like T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, Lord Alfred Tennyson, and as we learned in an earlier episode, Oscar Wilde.

Life:

English Romantic poet John Keats was born on October 31, 1795, in London. The oldest of four children, he lost both his parents at a young age. His father, a livery-stable keeper, died when Keats was eight; his mother died of tuberculosis six years later. After his mother’s death, Keats’s maternal grandmother appointed two London merchants, Richard Abbey and John Rowland Sandell, as guardians. Abbey, a prosperous tea broker, assumed the bulk of this responsibility, while Sandell played only a minor role. When Keats was fifteen, Abbey withdrew him from the Clarke School, Enfield, to apprentice with an apothecary-surgeon and study medicine in a London hospital. In 1816 Keats became a licensed apothecary, but he never practiced his profession, deciding instead to write poetry.

Literary Career:

Around this time, Keats met Leigh Hunt, an influential editor of the Examiner, who published his sonnets “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” and “O Solitude.” Hunt also introduced Keats to a circle of literary men, including the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Wordsworth. The group’s influence enabled Keats to see his first volume, Poems by John Keats, published in 1817. Shelley, who was fond of Keats, had advised him to develop a more substantial body of work before publishing it. Keats, who was not as fond of Shelley, did not follow his advice. Endymion, a four-thousand-line erotic/allegorical romance based on the Greek myth of the same name, appeared the following year. Two of the most influential critical magazines of the time, the Quarterly Review and Blackwood’s Magazine, attacked the collection. Calling the romantic verse of Hunt’s literary circle “the Cockney school of poetry,” Blackwood’s declared Endymion to be nonsense and recommended that Keats give up poetry. Shelley, who privately disliked Endymion but recognized Keats’s genius, wrote a more favorable review, but it was never published. Shelley also exaggerated the effect that the criticism had on Keats, attributing his declining health over the following years to a spirit broken by the negative reviews.

“Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.”

In July 1820, he published his third and best volume of poetry, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems. The three title poems, dealing with mythical and legendary themes of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance times, are rich in imagery and phrasing. The volume also contains the unfinished “Hyperion,” and three poems considered among the finest in the English language, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode on Melancholy,” and “Ode to a Nightingale.” The book received enthusiastic praise from Hunt, Shelley, Charles Lamb, and others, and in August, Frances Jeffrey, influential editor of the Edinburgh Review, wrote a review praising both the new book and Endymion.

The fragment “Hyperion” was considered by Keats’s contemporaries to be his greatest achievement, but by that time he had reached an advanced stage of his disease and was too ill to be encouraged. He continued a correspondence with Fanny Brawne and—when he could no longer bear to write to her directly—her mother, but his failing health and his literary ambitions prevented their getting married. Under his doctor’s orders to seek a warm climate for the winter, Keats went to Rome with his friend, the painter Joseph Severn. He died there on February 23, 1821, at the age of twenty-five, and was buried in the Protestant cemetery.

Literary Influence:

The time of his grandmother’s death also marked one of Keats’s earliest surviving poems, “Imitation of Spenser.” It was inspired by the work of 16th century London poet Edmund Spenser. John Keats continued writing but his focus was on his studies. He studied medicine at Guy’s Hospital in Central London and even received his apothecary’s license but he grew increasingly depressed about his future.

“Nothing ever becomes real 'til it is experienced.”

His brother George, once wrote that John feared “that he should never be a poet and if he was not, he would destroy himself.” But for Keats, luck was just around the corner. Through his old friend Charles Cowden Clarke, Keats received his first big break. In May 1816, Clarke’s friend, poet Leigh Hunt, published Keats’s sonnet “Solitude” in the liberal magazine, The Examiner. That year, Keats decided to leave medicine and pursue poetry.

With his brother George’s move to America, Keats decided to move to Wentworth Place, which was owned by Armitage Brown. It was at Wentworth that he wrote some of his most famous works, “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode to Psyche,” “Ode on Melancholy,” and “Ode to Indolence.”

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”

Wentworth held even more significance because it was the place where Keats was introduced to Fanny Brawne, the woman who would later become his fiancée, and admittedly, his obsession.

Before his brother Tom’s death, they had met when Fanny was visiting Wentworth. Eventually, Fanny and her mother moved into Wentworth. John and Fanny spent every day together and in June 1819, they reached an informal agreement to be married. John continued to struggle financially and felt he had little to offer her.

He wrote hundreds of letters to Fanny, often when they were living next door to each other. His letters to her are some of the most famous love letters ever written. In one, he says,

“I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion — I have shudder’d at it — I shudder no more — I could be martyr’d for my Religion — Love is my religion — I could die for that — I could die for you.” 

Unfortunately, in parallel to his overwhelming love affair with Fanny, Keats was also experiencing the all-too-familiar symptoms of tuberculosis. His coughing and haemorrhaging got increasingly worse.

That fall, his doctors told him that his life depended on a move to a warmer climate. He set off for Rome in November. On the ship to Italy, he made his last revisions to “Bright Star.” He stopped writing to Fanny, knowing he would never return to London.

In Rome, the medical treatment he received contributed greatly to his suffering and rapid decline. He was bled and starved. He requested pain medication, but was refused for fear of him committing suicide.

On February 24, 1821, at just 25 years old, John Keats took his last labored breath. Before his death, he requested that his tombstone not include a name, just a simple phrase:

“Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

    Life :

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the youngest of thirteen children. He was an extra precocious child, who could read at the age of threes, and before he was five, he had read the Bible and the Arabian Nights. From three to six he has attended “dame” school and from six to nine he was attending his father’s school and in that period his father died. At ten he sent to London for school education. At nineteen Coleridge, who had read more books than old professor he entered Cambridge as a charity student. He left the university without taking the degree. After that he has joined Southey and they were working together for the regeneration of the human society. Then he studied in Germany; worked as a private secretary later he went to Rome for study and then he started The Friend a paper devoted to truth and liberty.

 In early life he suffered from neuralgia, and to ease the pain began to use opiates, the result was very bad he became a slave to the drug habit; after fifteen years of pain and struggle and despair, he gave up and put himself in the charge of physician and Carlyle who visited him at this time called him “a king of men” he later gave his contribution in Lyrical Ballads in 1798. He died in 1834, and was buried in Highgate Church.

    Works of Coleridge :

In the poetry of Coleridge we find note of sympathy, and humanity. He has three divisions of his works, the poetic, the critical and the philosophical. He had a strong influence of Blake’s poetry. Coleridge was very much attracted with the concept of supernatural, he was able to make familiar world unfamiliar, as he himself noted in his “Day Dreams” that,

“My eyes make pictures when they are shut”

It seems very similar to Blake’s songs of innocence, but the difference between both is very important that Blake is only a dreamer while Coleridge is dreamer as well as a profound scholar. Strong suggestions of Blake can be seen such poetries like “A Day Dreamer,” “The Devil’s Thoughts,” “The Suicide’s Argument,” and “The Wanderings of Cain.”

His later poems there is his imagination with thought and study, as it could be noticed in “Kubla Khan,” “Christabel,” and “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner.” Coleridge’s more controversial and unfinished poem id Kubla Khan, the poem has a verbal dream pictures, 

The sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea

He was interrupted after fifty-four lines were written, and he never finished the poem. Christabel is also planned as the story of a pure young girl and till the poem ends it has so many elements which convert it from a simple story to a very mysterious and horror supernatural reading. The masterpiece of Coleridge is “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner” he has presented this poem in Lyrical Ballads, he has made the reader aware with the supernatural imagination he has presented totally an imaginative journey which cannot be true and reader also know that but though it seems real, it gives us a sense of reality if we connect the incidence with each other, the poem has a very good meter, rime and melody. Coleridge has a very clear pattern of poetry that he never describes things but makes suggestions, brief suggestions and always right, it supports with the imagination of the reader.

Coleridge has written also a short poems, and there is a wide variety, that are, “Ode to France,” “Youth and Age,” “Dejection,” “Love Poems,” “ fears in Solitude,” “Religious Musings,” “Work Without Hope,” and “Hymn Before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni.” Coleridge also translated a poem from Latin, “The Virgin’s Cradle Hymn” and “Wallenstein” is its best example.

Coleridge’s prose works are also important; the first and remarkable one is BiographiaLiteraria, or Sketches of My Literary Life and Options, his collected Lectures on Shakespeare (1849), and Aids to Reflection (1825) both are very important on the literary point of view. His lectures has been stood for two centuries as the rules of literary criticism of Shakespeare, it could be applied to all the literary works. Coleridge had a belief that only a profound philosopher could be a perfect poet, as he has the philosophic perspective in his poetries. He has introduced the idealistic philosophy of Germany to England. In his works he has presented the view of Religion and aspect of Philosopher. The life of Coleridge was full of struggle though he has lived with his imagination and supernatural realms.

Wordsworth and Coleridge both have given a very important contribution to the literary world. Contemporary literature has also an influence of both. The introduction of nature by Wordsworth and supernatural world by Coleridge is still fresh as blossomed flower.

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William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

    Life :

Wordsworth was born in 1770 at Cockermouth, Cumberland, and spent his seventeen years in Cumberland Hills; his mother died when he was eight years old and after six years his father has also died, and the orphan has taken in charge by relatives, in school he used learn with flowers and hills rather than classes; in 1787 he went to Cambridge. It was the time of stress and storm with his revolutionary experience in university and in his life it was like a period of uncertainty. He started writing from 1797 to 1799 a very short period but very important in his life and for the romantic period, and from 1799 he has taken retirement from his work of writing and spent time in between the nature at northern lake region where he was born, he was very close to the nature which experience has reflected in all his poetry.

I heard among the solitary hills

Low breathings coming after me, and sounds

Of undistinguishable motion.

He goes out into the woods at night and what he experienced he has presented in the poetry it is like a mental photograph. On the death of Southey, he was made poet laureate, against his own inclination.

     The Poetry of Wordsworth :

Wordsworth has in favour of simple poetic diction but he himself has not followed his own rule, his poetries are easy to read but not to understand, reader could get the pleasure but not the hidden meaning. As in his poem “Lucy”:

A violet by a mossy stone,

Half hidden from the eye;

Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

Wordsworth was strongly believed that man and nature should be portrayed as they are. He is not always melodious, but he is seldom graceful. He is absolutely without humour.

After his longer works his first good book as per critics was Selections with short poems, after reading these poems we come to know that Wordsworth is the greatest nature poet that ever has been produced by our literature. No other poet has found such beauty in nature as Wordsworth has described. He had a strong belief that all nature is the reflection of the living God, all his contemporary writers like Cowper, Burns, Keats, and Tennyson were providing the out ward aspects of nature in varying degrees but Wordsworth gives you her very life, and the experience of man with the nature. While reading his poetry the reader could feel the touch of nature, the experience of wonderland and memory of our own childhood.

Wordsworth’s philosophy toward human life is very simple that man is not apart from nature, but is the very “life of her life.” Wordsworth has connected birth with nature and he expressed this gladness with poetry that the child comes straight from the Creator of nature:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,

But trailing cloud of glory do we come

From God, who is our home”

In “Intimations of Immorality from recollections of Early Childhood” and in “The Retreat” he has summed up his childhood and philosophy; In “Tintern Abbey”, “The Rainbow”, “Ode to Duty” and “Intimation of Immorality” it is plain teaching; In “Michael,” “The Solitary Reaper,” “to a Highland Girl,” “Stepping Westward,” he tries to suggests the joy and sorrow not of princes or kings but of a common life. He has described his whole life in “The Prelude” and “The Recluse” is the treat to nature.  

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“Pride and Prejudice” - Title Significance

 

Justify the title “Pride and Prejudice”.

 

The title is here the justification of the characters in the novel. Elizabeth and Darcy both are in concern of the title. Pride can be seen in both the characters as novel develops and the same way prejudice is also enough observed. Darcy has good enough sense of pride and Elizabeth is always surrounded by the sense of prejudice. As a reader no one can state that any one character has any one emotion. At a time both have their perception towards each other. 

Analysis of the title:

Pride and Prejudice 

Originally, the novel was going to be called “First Impressions”, but after Austen was having enough fame for the high value sales of Sense and Sensibility, just because of that reason her publisher asked if they could try for a little branding magic by sticking to the same title formula: noun-and-noun. Sure enough, this new novel went over like a big hit again.

With First Impressions, readers are thrown into the characters' point of view immediately. We experience those first impressions right along with Darcy and Elizabeth. Also, first impressions are all about people interacting with each other, so a novel called First Impressions puts the idea of people meeting with and reacting to other people front and centre. The focus is on manners, behaviour, and outward appearance.

We're no longer looking at things through the characters' eyes. Instead, it sounds like people are being called names—and it's up to the reader to try to figure out who's who. The reader is here not able to sense with the characters any more, but is instead all judgy and superior from the get-go. We are not able to connect ourselves with Darcy or Elizabeth at all. Instead, our main connection is the narrator, who knows ahead of time that someone's full of pride and someone else is probably full of prejudice.

As the novel develops a reader is moved into some deep psychological territory. Feeling prideful and being prejudicial are things which people do in the privacy of their thoughts, not things we express with enough boldness. A novel named in this way immediately puts readers all up in the characters' thoughts, seeing how they make decisions and what their value systems are all about.

Pride is clearly observed by the readers in the persona of Mr. Darcy who in the very first appearance of the novel seems more conservative and proudy to talk to anybody and is not replaying to anyone or even smiling. Charles Bingley is wealthy and having well enough social reputation the same was Darcy has but Bingley is enough frank with other characters and also having enough social communication aspects in his characters which Darcy apparently lacks. When the people in the Ball party come to know that Darcy is wealthier than Bingley, there was a clear judgement of people that Darcy is having pride upon his social reputation and wealth he has.

Darcy is in novel observed as more straightforward and ice cold when he is surrounded by people. He very openly and clearly rejects the dance proposal of Elizabeth and in a way insulted her. That was a time when Elizabeth has started thinking that Darcy has a huge wall around him and that is of pride. On the same night he also passed a judgment upon Elizabeth that she is not enough beautiful to temp him,

“She is not enough tempting”

That comment on Elizabeth made her to construct a prejudice about Mr. Darcy that he is having excessive pride and he is judgmental. In all the further encounters of Elizabeth and Darcy clearly represents Darcy’s silence which is mistakenly taken as pride and Elizabeth’s harsh comments about Darcy which is her pure prejudice for Darcy. Both are much in shell of their own psychological aspects.

Psychologically if one observes the novel, there can be a conclusion that to construct a prejudice one must have enough strong reasons and behavioural patterns to observe. If Darcy is in concern then his aura is much introvert which he reveals later in the novel especially in front of Elizabeth and also accepted that he is publicly not good. As he is the reserved nature man.

“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess, of conversing easily with those I have never seen before.”

In the reply of this also Elizabeth sarcastically replied that

“You should practice.”

Darcy is much concerned with the sense of Elizabeth and he by putting his pride aside he proposed her. But his words were still there to reflect his pride as he explained that though he is aware of Elizabeth’s social condition, he is ready to marry him. This thought of his clearly reflects his view regarding his social status.

When Darcy realized that he is in love of Elizabeth he just put away his pride and started focusing about his feelings of love and accepted it as well. He proposed Elizabeth twice even after the rejection of his first proposal. He time and again try to explain his part of story to Elizabeth which represents his humble efforts to clean his image for the sake of love.

Elizabeth Bennet is a head strong and stubborn girl with self-respect. When she proposed Darcy for dance and he denied with a reason that she is not enough beautiful to temp him, she laughed first at this comment but steadily constructed a prejudice towards Darcy. She firmly believed with the behaviour of Darcy that he is having enough pride in his personality and continuing thinking in this way she believed Wickham and started hating Darcy even more. She believed a person whom she hardly knows, just because somewhere she was also having a same perspective to judge Darcy. The same way, without thinking about her own faults she judged Darcy on Fitzwilliam’s comments that he saved a friend Bingley from unsuitable marriage.

Elizabeth has started thinking stubbornly about Darcy just because of her own pride got hurt. This is more psychological than literal. In the back of her mind it was only her insult which triggered her to hate and judge Mr. Darcy. When Mr. Darcy has explained her everything at that time she realizes that whatever she was thinking about Darcy was not true. She has also got a chance to know Darcy personally when she visited Darcy’s place. She has started thinking about Darcy with a new plain perspective. The way Darcy helped Lydia it was for Elizabeth only and that was clearly reflecting Darcy’s love and respect for Elizabeth which she also sensed.

The novel has a clear focus upon the psyche of people and the parameters on which they judge other people and behave with them. Money, class, wealth, reputation, appearance and at last comes nature which is may be not that much important if other things are there with the person. Ego clashes, pride problems which can be explained as attitude problems also can be seen clearly in the novel. A very private thought process and the process of judging the persona is well explained in the novel.

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Pride and Prejudice - themes

 Pride and Prejudice - themes

Discuss the major themes of the novel Pride and Prejudice.

 

There are many important concept in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Social concept of Marriage is well explained by the reference of class and upbringing. The novel clearly attacks on the social vanity and the ignorance of society towards will and integrity. Marriage is the social concept and connection which is based on money and reputation and no one can deny it. The novel has provided major attention on all the characters’ thought process, behaviour and critique with judgements.

 

Self-knowledge and integrity:

Through their interactions and their critiques of each other, Darcy and Elizabeth come to recognise their faults and work to correct them. Elizabeth meditates on her own mistakes thoroughly,

I, who have valued myself on my abilities! 

Elizabeth Bennet considers herself to have very high standards of integrity, and is often frustrated and disappointed by the way she sees others behaving. She complains bitterly to her sister that

“The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it, and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters.” 

She behaves in ways she considers consistent with her definition of integrity by refusing to marry both Mr. Collins and Mr. Darcy (when he proposes the first time): Elizabeth thinks it is very important to only marry a man she loves and respects, despite the pressure to achieve economic security. By the end of the novel, her commitment to integrity has been rewarded because she marries a partner who will truly make her happy. She has also come to see that she can sometimes be too rigid and judge too quickly, since she was initially mistaken about the nature and ethics of Wickham and Darcy. The novel both approves the importance of integrity, and reminds readers not to be too quick to pass judgement on who has it, and who doesn’t.

Till this moment I never knew myself.

Mrs Bennet's behaviour reflects the society in which she lives, as she knows that her daughters will not succeed if they don't get married. "The business of her life was to get her daughters married: its solace was visiting and news." This shows that Mrs Bennet is only aware of "material objects" and not of her feelings and emotions.

Marriage:

The opening line of the novel famously announces: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." This sets marriage as a motif and a problem in the novel. Readers are poised to question whether or not these single men need a wife, or if the need is dictated by the "neighbourhood" families and their daughters who require a "good fortune".

Marriage is a complex social activity that takes political economy and economy generally, into account. In the case of Charlotte Lucas, the seeming success of her marriage lies in the comfortable financial circumstances of their household, while the relationship between Mr and Mrs Bennet serves to illustrate bad marriages based on an initial attraction and surface over substance (economic and psychological). The Bennets' marriage is an example that the youngest Bennet, Lydia, re-enacts with Wickham and the results are far from suitable.

There are four marriages in the novel. First one is Charlotte and Collins. Charlotte has got agreed to marry Collins is because of his property. Charlotte needs comfortable and secure life and though she knows the nature of Collins she was ready to marry with him. Elizabeth was not happy with the marriage but Charlotte wanted a good life and she got convinced. Afterwards when Elizabeth observed the life of Collins and Charlotte she was happy see Charlotte happy. It was a successful marriage.

Second marriage is of Lydia and Wickham. Lydia is much concerned about the post and looks of Wickham and also was having a pursuit of marriage. She is the most notorious child of Bennet family. Wickham is more concerned with the money he could get from the marriage as he once tried to marry Georgiana because of the dowry he could get. Wickham married Lydia just because Darcy promised him to give his live. The marriage was based on much of give and take situation.

Third marriage is of Jane and Charles. Both loved each other and wanted to marry but prejudice was the hurdle and there were Darcy and Caroline’s suggestions which played a role. At the end, Charles proposed Jane and both got married. Fourth marriage is of Elizabeth and Darcy both have shared weird relationship with each other throughout the novel. They have at the end got the sense of their emotions and eliminated pride and prejudice.

Love and Reputation:

Pride and Prejudice contains one of the most cherished love stories in English literature: the courtship between Darcy and Elizabeth. As in any good love story, the lovers must elude and overcome numerous stumbling blocks, beginning with the tensions caused by the lovers’ own personal qualities. Elizabeth’s pride makes her misjudge Darcy on the basis of a poor first impression, while Darcy’s prejudice against Elizabeth’s poor social standing blinds him, for a time, to her many virtues. (Of course, one could also say that Elizabeth is guilty of prejudice and Darcy of pride—the title cuts both ways.) Austen, meanwhile, poses countless smaller obstacles to the realization of the love between Elizabeth and Darcy, including Lady Catherine’s attempt to control her nephew, Miss Bingley’s snobbery, Mrs. Bennet’s idiocy, and Wickham’s deceit. In each case, anxieties about social connections, or the desire for better social connections, interfere with the workings of love.

Darcy and Elizabeth’s realization of a mutual and tender love seems to imply that Austen views love as something independent of these social forces, as something that can be captured if only an individual is able to escape the warping effects of hierarchical society. Austen does sound some more realist (or, one could say, cynical) notes about love, using the character of Charlotte Lucas, who marries the buffoon Mr. Collins for his money, to demonstrate that the heart does not always dictate marriage. Yet with her central characters, Austen suggests that true love is a force separate from society and one that can conquer even the most difficult of circumstances.

Pride and Prejudice depicts a society in which a woman’s reputation is of the utmost importance. A woman is expected to behave in certain ways. Stepping outside the social norms makes her vulnerable to ostracism. This theme appears in the novel, when Elizabeth walks to Netherfield and arrives with muddy skirts, to the shock of the reputation-conscious Miss Bingley and her friends. At other points, the ill-mannered, ridiculous behavior of Mrs. Bennet gives her a bad reputation with the more refined (and snobbish) Darcys and Bingleys. Austen pokes gentle fun at the snobs in these examples, but later in the novel, when Lydia elopes with Wickham and lives with him out of wedlock, the author treats reputation as a very serious matter. By becoming Wickham’s lover without benefit of marriage, Lydia clearly places herself outside the social pale, and her disgrace threatens the entire Bennet family.

The fact that Lydia’s judgment, however terrible, would likely have condemned the other Bennet sisters to marriageless lives seems grossly unfair. Why should Elizabeth’s reputation suffer along with Lydia’s? Darcy’s intervention on the Bennets’ behalf thus becomes all the more generous, but some readers might resent that such an intervention was necessary at all. If Darcy’s money had failed to convince Wickham to marry Lydia, would Darcy have still married Elizabeth? Does his transcendence of prejudice extend that far? The happy ending of Pride and Prejudice is certainly emotionally satisfying, but in many ways it leaves the theme of reputation, and the importance placed on reputation, unexplored. One can ask of Pride and Prejudice, to what extent does it critique social structures, and to what extent does it simply accept their inevitability?

Wealth

Money plays a fundamental role in the marriage market, for the young ladies seeking a well-off husband and for men who wish to marry a woman of means. George Wickham tried to elope with Georgiana Darcy, and Colonel Fitzwilliam married for money. Marrying a woman of a rich family also ensured a linkage to a high family, as is visible in the desires of Bingley's sisters to have their brother married to Georgiana Darcy. Mrs Bennet is frequently seen encouraging her daughters to marry a wealthy man of high social class. In chapter 1, when Mr Bingley arrives, she declares

"I am thinking of his marrying one of them"

Inheritance was by descent but could be further restricted by entailment, which would restrict inheritance to male heirs only. In the case of the Bennet family, Mr Collins was to inherit the family estate upon Mr Bennet's death and his proposal to Elizabeth would have ensured her security but she refuses his offer. Inheritance laws benefited males because most women did not have independent legal rights until the second half of the 19th century and women's financial security depended on men. For the upper-middle and aristocratic classes, marriage to a man with a reliable income was almost the only route to security for the woman and the children she was to have. The irony of the opening line is that generally within this society it would be a woman who would be looking for a wealthy husband to have a prosperous life.

Class and upbringing

The theme of class is related to reputation, in that both reflect the strictly regimented nature of life for the middle and upper classes in Regency England. The lines of class are strictly drawn. While the Bennets, who are middle class, may socialize with the upper-class Bingleys and Darcys, they are clearly their social inferiors and are treated as such. Austen satirizes this kind of class-consciousness, particularly in the character of Mr. Collins, who spends most of his time toadying to his upper-class patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Though Mr. Collins offers an extreme example, he is not the only one to hold such views. His conception of the importance of class is shared, among others, by Mr. Darcy, who believes in the dignity of his lineage; Miss Bingley, who dislikes anyone not as socially accepted as she is; and Wickham, who will do anything he can to get enough money to raise himself into a higher station. Mr. Collins’s views are merely the most extreme and obvious. The satire directed at Mr. Collins is therefore also more subtly directed at the entire social hierarchy and the conception of all those within it at its correctness, in complete disregard of other, more worthy virtues. Through the Darcy-Elizabeth and Bingley-Jane marriages, Austen shows the power of love and happiness to overcome class boundaries and prejudices, thereby implying that such prejudices are hollow, unfeeling, and unproductive. Of course, this whole discussion of class must be made with the understanding that Austen herself is often criticized as being a classist: she doesn’t really represent anyone from the lower classes; those servants she does portray are generally happy with their lot. Austen does criticize class structure but only a limited slice of that structure.

Gender and family

Gender is a key theme in Pride and Prejudice. The story takes place at a time when gender roles were quite rigid, and men and women had a very different set of options and influences. Marriage is a pressing question for female characters like Charlotte Lucas and the Bennet sisters because marriage is the only way women can achieve economic stability and autonomy. As upper class women, they would not have been able to work to earn a living, or live independently. Marriage offered one of the only ways to move beyond their birth families. However, a woman’s marriageability relied on an impeccable reputation for chastity, and for women like Georgiana Darcy or Lydia Bennet, a reckless decision to trust the wrong man could permanently ruin their future prospects. Lydia’s elopement causes Lizzy to exclaim with horror “she is lost forever.” If Lydia is living with Wickham without being married to him, her reputation will be destroyed.

Family is an integral theme in the novel. All of the characters operate within networks of family connections that shape their decisions and perspectives. For the female characters in particular, the influence and behavior of their family members is a significant factor in their lives. Because “the business of [Mrs. Bennet’s] life was to get her daughters married”, the Bennet sisters constantly have to navigate their mother’s plans and schemes. While male characters like Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley have much more social and financial independence, they still rely on the judgement and opinions of female family members like Caroline Bingley and Lady Catherine de Burgh. Individuals are judged according to the behavior of their family members, which is why Darcy points out to Lizzy that he is doing her a favor by proposing even though she comes with embarrassing family connections. The theme of family shows that individuals never lead totally autonomous lives, and that individual actions have wider communal implications.

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