Felicia Hemans

"The stormy grandeur of a proud despair;
A daring spirit, in its woes elate,
Mightier than death, untameable by fate."
(Hemans, pg 407, from The Wife of Asdrubal)

This poem could very well hold the most powerful language I have read for this class. This woman is not playing around. The imagery is absolutely amazing. The whole poem leaves the reader seeing red as I am sure she was when she wrote it. It is full of anger, pain, vengeance, loyalty, and love. All emotions that Hemans was too familiar with experiencing. "Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,/Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd." Asdrubal's wife martyrs her children not out of hatred or insanity, but out of love and loyalty. Hemans shows here that this woman has more bravery and loyalty than her cowardly husband. She doesn't wish to harm her children, but does so to punish her husband and end the lineage. It is mostly done out of desperation as they are about to become slaves.

"'Tis mine with these to suffer and to die.
Behold their fate!--the arms that cannot save
Have been their cradle, and shall be their grave."

I think that as much as she did this to hurt her husband, she did it to protect the children from a fate far worse. This poem is extremely powerful and the storyline is riveting.

Hemans loyalty continues in her other works. Records of Woman displays this forsaken woman who remains in waiting. The epigraph at the start reminds me of Coleridge and Keats. Unlike these two, she is not technically ill, she is brokenhearted, which can invite death just as much as illness. She feels similar to them in the questions of success and remembrance as well. All three question happiness in life and death:

"...Yet it may be that death
Shall give my name a power to win such tears
As would have made life precious."
(Hemans, pg 409, from Properzia Rossi

I think that her works are evidence of strong loyalties and show that she is capable, even as a woman. I have already compared her work to the likes of Coleridge, Tennyson, and Keats! I can't imagine how difficult it was to be as good as she was a writer in that era. With all the criticism that the men received, I am sure that few even took her seriously, but her work is great. I am upset that I have never heard of her before now. I honestly think that she believed that she was good enough to be Poet Laureate. Not unlike any of these other poets, she considered herself a genius. In my opinion, she could have considered herself more genius than the others as she conquered both with words and by being a proper woman. I am pretty sure that this is what she was trying to tell her readers.

"...Happier far than thou,
With the laurel on thy brow;
She that makes the humblest hearth,
Lovely but to one on earth."
(pg 414, from Corinne at the Capitol & from Woman and Fame

If I have translated this correctly, she was really trying to get her point across because she said it twice! Woman and Fame carries on this idea throughout. She is as egotistical as the male poets and rightfully so.

"...In their perceptions of grace, propriety, ridicule--their power of detecting artifice, hypocrisy, and affectation--the force and promptitude of their sympathy, and their capacity of noble and devoted attachment, and of the efforts and sacrifices it may require, they are, beyond all doubt, our superiors."
(pg 416, Francis Jeffrey, from A Review of Felicia Hemans's Poetry)

I couldn't have said that better! Seriously, this man was before his time as a mostly unbiased critic. His review still had remnants of the time when all were not equal, but he saw true skill and ability in Hemans's work. And he was right as she did fully grasp human feeling and exude it in her writing using "beautiful imagery."