Eliot’s Rosamond Vincy is a further example. On face value Rosamond also can be considered an Angel. She is beautiful and has been schooled in all the lady-like accomplishments; although as one of the Middlemarch older women noted in a direct challenge to the concept of Angelic domestic ideology, ‘what was the use of accomplishments which would all be laid aside as soon as she was married? (Eliot 157)’. The Victorian lady may have been equipped to look angelic but she was ill-equipped to deal with her required role of motherhood and manager of the household. Neither Dr Ludgate nor Rosamond are equipped to manage their household and they quickly descend into debt. Rosamond further digresses from the maternal role she is expected to take when
…show more content…
In much the same way that Catherine and Heathcliff yearn for freedom in her novel, Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte’s poetry articulates a similar desire to be free of societal expectations that restrict her because of her gender. In her poem, “I’m happiest when most away” (Bronte 1838) she writes about how her soul is released ‘from its home of clay’ (2) when she is on her own. She writes of her wish to be free and be ‘only spirit wandering wide/ Through infinite immensity’ (7-8). A similar theme is present in her poem, “Stars” (Bronte 1846) when the narrator longs to transcend reality and return to the night where ‘I was at peace…and revelled in my changeful dreams’ (9-11). She was able to dream at will through ‘boundless regions (14) but once the blood red sun rises, her soul ‘sank sad and low’ (24). Beyond this struggle against the constraints of being a woman, the poem “Stars” is also transgressive in that it uses sexually charged phrasing such as in the fourth and eighth stanzas- ‘While one sweet influence, near and far,/ Thrilled through and proved us one’ (16) and ‘Your worlds of solemn light, again/ Throb with my heart and me’ (31-32). The sexual energy in this poem is only present in the night when the narrator is free to wander the ‘boundless regions’ (Green 17/28) Her contrast between the harsh day and glorious night is at odds with a view that daylight is safe and nightnight dangerous. It also suggests the difference between men and women with women regaining the night versus the business of the public male sphere represnted by daytime and the blazing
In much the same way that Catherine and Heathcliff yearn for freedom in her novel, Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte’s poetry articulates a similar desire to be free of societal expectations that restrict her because of her gender. In her poem, “I’m happiest when most away” (Bronte 1838) she writes about how her soul is released ‘from its home of clay’ (2) when she is on her own. She writes of her wish to be free and be ‘only spirit wandering wide/ Through infinite immensity’ (7-8). A similar theme is present in her poem, “Stars” (Bronte 1846) when the narrator longs to transcend reality and return to the night where ‘I was at peace…and revelled in my changeful dreams’ (9-11). She was able to dream at will through ‘boundless regions (14) but once the blood red sun rises, her soul ‘sank sad and low’ (24). Beyond this struggle against the constraints of being a woman, the poem “Stars” is also transgressive in that it uses sexually charged phrasing such as in the fourth and eighth stanzas- ‘While one sweet influence, near and far,/ Thrilled through and proved us one’ (16) and ‘Your worlds of solemn light, again/ Throb with my heart and me’ (31-32). The sexual energy in this poem is only present in the night when the narrator is free to wander the ‘boundless regions’ (Green 17/28) Her contrast between the harsh day and glorious night is at odds with a view that daylight is safe and nightnight dangerous. It also suggests the difference between men and women with women regaining the night versus the business of the public male sphere represnted by daytime and the blazing