American
Transcendentalism
Romanticism took root
in the American soil in a slightly different way, and tended to last longer,
as well. It became known as Transcendentalism, and it differed from
European Romanticism in less of a focus on the past, more of a spiritual
orientation, and a decided penchant for social reform and ideas. As we have
seen with issues of Slavery and Poverty, the underdog was a concern for
European writers, who still largely maintained a "class" attitude
toward life situations. In the US, class was not an issue, but many
other kinds of reforms were central to their ideas. One of the most
important Transcendentalist ideals was the return to nature (something we
explored in the European Romantics) - and, here, the idea was not to make
nature more picturesque, but to engage it directly. Thoreau lived for
a time at Walden Pond, and Emerson and Alcott lived at Orchard House in
"communal" arrangements. This movement provided much of the
attitude-material for the Hippie movement of the 1960's.
The men in this
movement included Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and others.
material on Louisa May
Alcott
Bronson Alcott (1799-1893)
Abigail May Alcott (1800-1877)
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)
Anna Bronson Alcott (1831-1893)
Elizabeth Sewall Alcott (1835-1858)
Abba May Alcott (1840-1879)
Renowned for her classic novels LITTLE WOMEN and LITTLE MEN, Louisa May Alcott's passion for literature
and the intellectual life were shaped in the bosom of her family. One of four daughters of the prominent
Transcendentalist and pioneering educational innovator, Bronson
Alcott, and his wife, Abigail May, who
distinguished herself in the Abolitionist, Suffrage, and other reform causes of the period, Louisa May was born in
Pennsylvania, but grew up in Boston and later in Concord, where she associated directly with her parents' circle which
included the Emersons, Thoreaus, Hawthornes, and Ripleys. Accustomed to the straightened circumstances to which her father's idealism perpetually condemned the family, Louisa began to write stories at an early age to supplement the
family income. Said Emerson of her genteel novels, "She is a natural source of stories... She is and is to be, the poet of
children. She knows their angels." But as recent scholarship has demonstrated, the mature Louisa May also knew about the demons which people the human soul. Her tales of Gothic fiction, written behind the mask of pseudonyms,
reveal a psychological depth that compares favorably with the best writers of the genre such as Poe and Hawthorne.
Before her death in 1888, her book sales had reached the one million mark and she had realized the considerable sum
of $200,000 from her fiction.
Louisa May, whose literary earnings had become the support of her entire family, had written her two best-selling
novels at Orchard House after spending time as a Civil War nurse and a traveling companion on a European jaunt:
LITTLE WOMEN in 1868 and LITTLE MEN, the sequel inspired by her sister Anna's plight as a recent widow in
1871. She survived both her siblings (Elizabeth died of scarlet fever in 1858 and May succumbed to meningitis in
1878). Dividing her year between Boston and Concord, she continued to devote her life to literature (publishing
anonymous Gothic tales in addition to sentimental novels) and worked tirelessly for the causes of her youth, becoming
the first woman to cast a vote in Concord. On March 6, 1888, two days after Bronson's passing, Louisa May died
and was laid to rest in the little poet's colony in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
one little-known Louia May Alcott book is "Behind
the Mask, or A Woman's Power" - which is quite different from what we
know of Alcott's work in general.
Emily Dickinson -
1830-1886
Emily Dickinson is
not actually part of American Transcendentalism, but she inherits much of
their concern with nature, the romance of the everyday, close
observation. She was most noted for being a recluse - but that
information does little to explain the wonder of her poetry. She is
worth a whole evening. I hope you can spend time with some of this
information on the WWW.
I had no time to hate, because
The grave would hinder me,
And life was not so ample I
Could finish enmity.
Nor had I time to love, but since
Some industry must be,
The little toil of love, I thought,
Was large enough for me.
I measure every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.
I wonder if they bore it long,
Or did it just begin?
I could not tell the date of mine,
It feels so old a pain.
I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.
I wonder if when years have piled--
Some thousands--on the cause
Of early hurt, if such a lapse
Could give them any pause;
Or would they go on aching still
Through centuries above,
Enlightened to a larger pain
By contrast with the love.
The grieved are many, I am told;
The reason deeper lies,--
Death is but one and comes but once
And only nails the eyes.
There's grief of want, and grief of cold,--
A sort they call 'despair,'
There's banishment from native eyes,
In sight of native air.
And though I may not guess the kind
Correctly yet to me
A piercing comfort it affords
In passing Calvary,
To note the fashions of the cross
Of those that stand alone
Still fascinated to presume
That some are like my own.
After her death on May 19, 1886, Emily Dickinson became one of America's most noted poets. She was born in Amherst,
Massachusetts on December 10, 1830. Throughout her life, Amherst remained her residence. In her later progressively
reclusive years Emily Dickinson did not even venture out of her home. Who was this
woman ? What is her significance ? What
influences did the environment have upon shaping Emily's life and views ?
The Dickinson Homestead on Main Street was declared a National Landmark in the 60's, and work on establishing an historic
district is currently underway.
see the Emily
Dickinson Electronic Archives
Victorian Cousins (and invalids)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806 - 1861
[much of the information on Elizabeth
Barrett Browning comes from the Victorian
Web, created by George Landow of Brown University and the University of
Singapore.
Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett was born March 6, 1806 in Durham, England. Her father, Edward Moulton-Barrett, made most of his considerable fortune from Jamaican sugar plantations, and in 1809 he bought Hope
End, a 500-acre estate near the Malvern Hills map of GB. Elizabeth lived a privileged childhood, riding her pony around the grounds, visiting other families in the neighborhood, and arranging family theatrical productions with her eleven brothers and sisters. Although frail, she apparently had no health problems until 1821, when Dr. Coker prescribed opium for a nervous disorder. Her mother died
when she was 22, and critics mark signs of this loss in Aurora Leigh.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, an accomplished child, had read a number of Shakespearian
plays, parts of Pope's Homeric
translations, passages from Paradise Lost, and the histories of England, Greece, and Rome before the age of ten. Barrett was
self-taught in almost every respect and during her teen years she went through the principle Greek and Latin authors, along with
Dante's Inferno - all texts in the original languages. Her voracious appetite for knowledge compelled her to learn enough
Hebrew to read the Old Testament from beginning to end. Her enjoyment of the works and subject matter of Paine, Voltaire,
Rousseau and Wollstonecraft was later expressed by her own concern for human rights in her own letters and poems. By the
age of twelve she had written an "epic" poem consisting of four books of rhyming couplets. Barrett later
referred to her first
literary attempt as ,"Pope's Homer done over again, or rather undone."
In her early twenties Barrett befriended Hugh Stuart Boyd, a blind, middle-aged scholar, who rekindled Barrett's interest in
Greek studies. During their friendship Barrett absorbed an astonishing amount of Greek literature -- Homer,
Pindar, Aristophanes, etc... But after a few years Barrett's fondness for Boyd
diminished and she began to view him as naive limited and
pathetic. This is partially due to his choice of subject matter for discourse which consisted almost entirely of the Greek Christian
Fathers. Her intellectual fascination with the classics and metaphysics was balanced by a religious obsession which she later described as
"not the deep persuasion of the mild Christian but the wild visions of an enthusiast." (See Methodism for the connotations of
"enthusiasm.") Her family attended services at the nearest Dissenting chapel, and Mr. Barrett was active in the Bible and
Missionary societies.
From 1822 on, Elizabeth Barrett's interests tended more and more to the scholarly and literary. Mr. Barrett's financial losses in
the early 30's forced him to sell Hope End, and although never poor, the family moved three times between 1832 and 1837,
settling at 50 Wimpole Street in London. In 1838, The Seraphim and Other Poems appeared, the first volume of Elizabeth's
mature poetry to appear under her own name. That same year her health forced her to move to Torquay, on the Devonshire
coast. Her favorite brother Edward went along with her; his death by drowning later that year was a blow which prostrated her
for months and from which she never fully recovered. When she returned to Wimpole Street, she became an invalid and a
recluse, spending most of the next five years in her bedroom, seeing only one or two people other than her immediate family.
One of those people was John Kenyon, a wealthy and convivial friend of the arts. Her 1844 Poems made her one of the most
popular writers in the land, and inspired Robert Browning to write her, telling her how much he loved her poems. Kenyon
arranged for Browning to come see her in May 1845, and so began one of the most famous courtships in literature. Six years
his elder and an invalid, she could not believe that the vigorous and worldly Browning really loved her as much as he professed
to, and her doubts are expressed in the Sonnets from the Portuguese which she wrote over the next two years. Love conquered
all, however, and Browning imitated his hero Shelley by spiriting his beloved off to Italy in August 1846. Since they were proper
Victorians, however, they got married a week beforehand.
Mr. Barrett disinherited her (as he did each one of his children who got married without his permission, and he never gave his
permission). Unlike her brothers and sisters, Elizabeth had inherited some money of her own, so the Brownings were reasonably
comfortable in Italy. In 1849, they had a son, Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning.
At her husband's insistence, the second edition of her Poems included her love sonnets, and this helped increase her popularity
and the high critical regard in which the Victorians held their favorite poetess. (On Wordsworth's death in that same year, she
was seriously considered for the Laureateship, which went to Tennyson.) Her growing interest in the Italian struggle for
independence is evident in Casa Guidi Windows (1851) and Poems before Congress (1860). 1857 saw the publication of
the verse-novel Aurora Leigh, which today attracts more attention than the rest of her poetry.
It is still unclear what sort of affliction Elizabeth Barrett Browning had, although medical and literary scholars have enjoyed
speculating. Whatever it was, the opium which was repeatedly prescribed probably made it worse; and Browning almost
certainly lengthened her life by taking her south and by his solicitous attention. She died in his arms on June 29, 1861.
No female poet was held in higher esteem among cultured readers in both the United States and England than Elizabeth Barrett
Browning during the nineteenth century. Barrett's poetry had an immense impact on the works of Emily Dickinson who admired
her as woman of achievement. She was recommended as a possible successor to the poet laureateship that was left vacated by
Wordsworth's death in 1850.
Barrett's treatment of social injustice (slave trade in America, the oppression of the Italians by the Austrians, the labor of
children in the mines and the mills of England, and the restrictions placed upon women) is manifested in many of her poems.
Two of her poems, Casa Guidi Windows and Poems Before Congress, dealt directly with the Italian fight for independence.
The first half of Casa Guidi Windows (1851) was filled with hope that the newly awakened liberal movements were moving
toward unification and freedom in the Italian states. The second half of the poem, written after the movement of liberalism had
been crushed in Italy, is dominated by her disillusionment. After a decade of truce, Italians once again began to struggle for their
freedom, but were forced to agree to an armistice that would leave Venice under Austrian control. Barrett wrote Poems
Before Congress (1860) which responded to these events by bashing the English government for not providing aid. One of the
poems in this collection, "A Curse For a Nation", attacked slavery and had been previously published in an abolitionist journal in
Boston.
Aurora Leigh also dealt with social injustice, but its subject was the subjugation of women to the dominating male. It also
commented on the role of a woman as a woman and poet. Barrett's popularity waned after her death, and late-Victorian critics
argued that although much of her writing would be forgotten, she would be remembered for "The Cry of the Children", "Isobel's
Child", "Bertha in the Lane", and most of all Sonnets from the Portuguese. Woolf argued that Aurora Leigh's heroine, "with her
passionate interest in the social questions, her conflict as artist and woman, her longing for knowledge and freedom, is the true
daughter of her age." Woolfe's praise guaranteed that Elizabeth Barrett Browning would be remembered . Although it was
largely ignored at the time, recent feminist criticism has heeded her words.
While Aurora Leigh is better
known today, and certainly a deeper work, the Sonnets were so popular in
America that they came to stand for Romance itself, despite the fact that
they were Victorian in sentiment--a kind of extension of the Romanic
sensibility in many ways--
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese" was
originally published in 1850 in a two volume publication entitled
_Poems_.
Sonnets from the Portuguese
XXV
A heavy heart, Beloved, have I borne
From year to year until I saw thy face,
And sorrow after sorrow took the place
Of all those natural joys as lightly worn
As the stringed pearls, each lifted in its turn
By a beating heart at dance-time. Hopes apace
Were changed to long despairs, till God's own grace
Could scarcely lift above the world forlorn
My heavy heart. Then thou didst bid me bring
And let it drop adown thy calmly great
Deep being ! Fast it sinketh, as a thing
Which its own nature doth precipitate,
While thine doth close above it, mediating
Betwixt the stars and the unaccomplished fate.
XLIII
How do I love thee ? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life !--and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
