The Chairman’s Choice – Charlotte Smith
Aha! One of the regular readers of Mondays’ poetry posts has suggested we look closely at this week's woman poet, Charlotte Smith. The momentum is building. Dear Readers, please follow The Chairman’s lead; suggest poets you would like to know more about or pick a period in history wherein you would like yours truly to choose a stellar poet for your own exploration and enjoyment.
Our featured poet, Charlotte Smith (1749 – 1806) hails from the United Kingdom during the Romantic period. She was not only an exceptional poet (3 published collections); she also wrote Gothic fiction (9 novels). She dared to tackle a genre that very few female writers explored at the time: political novels. Significantly, she also incited a return of the English sonnet, which had fallen out of wide attention before the Romantic era. In addition, she was instrumental in setting standards and conventions for Gothic fiction.
Here are just a few of her poems:
On the Departure of the Nightingale
Sweet poet of the woods, a long adieu!
Farewell soft minstrel of the early year!
Ah! ’twill be long ere thou shalt sing anew,
And pour thy music on the night’s dull ear.
Whether on spring thy wandering flights await,
Or whether silent in our groves you dwell,
The pensive muse shall own thee for her mate,
And still protect the song she loves so well.
With cautious step the love-lorn youth shall glide
Through the lone brake that shades thy mossy nest.
And shepherd girls from eyes profane shall hide
The gentle bird who sings of pity best:
For still thy voice shall soft affections move,
And still be dear to sorrow and to love!
[Disillusion with the French Revolution]
So many years have passed,
Since, on my native hills, I learned to gaze
On these delightful landscapes; and those years
Have taught me so much sorrow, that my soul
Feels not the joy reviving Nature brings;
But, in dark retrospect, dejected dwells
On human follies, and on human woes. —
What is the promise of the infant year,
The lively verdure, or the bursting blooms,
To those, who shrink from horrors such as War
Spreads o’er the affrighted world? With swimming eye,
Back on the past they throw their mournful looks,
And see the Temple, which they fondly hoped
Reason would raise to Liberty, destroyed
By ruffian hands; while, on the ruined mass,
Flushed with hot blood, the Fiend of Discord sits
In savage triumph; mocking every plea
Of policy and justice, as she shows
The headless corse of one, whose only crime
Was being born a Monarch—Mercy turns,
From spectacle so dire, her swollen eyes;
And Liberty, with calm, unruffled brow
Magnanimous, as conscious of her strength
In Reason’s panoply, scorns to distain
Her righteous cause with carnage, and resigns
To Fraud and Anarchy the infuriate crowd.—
What is the promise of the infant year
To those, who (while the poor but peaceful hind
Pens, unmolested, the increasing flock
Of his rich master in this sea-fenced isle)
Survey, in neighboring countries, scenes that make
The sick heart shudder; and the man, who thinks,
Blush for his species? There the trumpet’s voice
Drowns the soft warbling of the woodland choir;
And violets, lurking in their turfy beds
Beneath the flowering thorn, are stained with blood.
There fall, at once, the spoiler and the spoiled;
While War, wide-ravaging, annihilates
The hope of cultivation; gives to Fiends,
The meager, ghastly Fiends of Want and Woe,
The blasted land—There, taunting in the van
Of vengeance-breathing armies, Insult stalks;
And, in the ranks, “Famine, and Sword, and Fire,
Crouch for employment.”
Mute is thy wild harp, now, O Bard sublime!
Who, amid Scotia’s mountain solitude,
Great Nature taught to “build the lofty rhyme,”
And even beneath the daily pressure, rude,
Of laboring Poverty, thy generous blood,
Fired with the love of freedom—Not subdued
Wert thou by thy low fortune: But a time
Like this we live in, when the abject chime
Of echoing Parasite is best approved,
Was not for thee—Indignantly is fled
Thy noble Spirit; and no longer moved
By all the ills o’er which thine heart has bled,
Associate worthy of the illustrious dead,
Enjoys with them “the Liberty it loved.”
Background
Charlotte Smith was unhappily married. She had 12 children; two died at birth or soon after, and six survived her. In some ways, she was a modern woman in that she attempted to “have it all" – motherhood, professional life, her art, and modest recognition during her lifetime. She aimed for excellence in all she did. Yet not surprisingly, she often despaired. For example, due to the circumstances surrounding her marriage, she said she was a “legal prostitute.”
Despite ten novels, four children's books, and other works, Charlotte Smith saw herself mainly as a poet, and she hoped to be remembered for her Elegiac Sonnets (1784). She left her husband and began writing to support their children. Her struggles for legal independence as a woman affected her poetry, novels, and autobiographical prefaces. Waning interest in her work left her destitute by 1803. Barely able to hold a pen, she sold her book collection to pay debts and died in 1806. Largely forgotten by the mid-19th century, she has since been seen as a major Romantic writer.
Smith’s husband, Benjamin, illegally spent at least a third of a legacy from his father, which was intended for Charlotte’s children. Due to severe legal difficulties, Benjamin ended up in a debtor’s prison. Smith moved in with him, and it was there that she wrote and published her first work. Elegiac Sonnets achieved instant success, allowing Charlotte to pay for their release from prison. Smith's sonnets helped initiate a revival of the form and granted an aura of respectability to her later novels, as poetry was then considered the highest art. Smith believed her poetry, not her novels, granted her respectability.
She published all her works under her own name -- "a daring decision" for a woman at the time -- where her success as a poet allowed her to make this choice. Although she published far more prose than poetry, and her although novels brought her more money and fame, Charlotte identified herself as a poet throughout her career. She believed poetry would bring her respectability. As Sarah Zimmerman has claimed that poetry gave her “a role as a private woman whose sorrows were submitted only reluctantly to the public."
After leaving her husband, Smith decided to write novels, as they would make more money than poetry. Her first one, Emmeline (1788), was a success, selling 1500 copies within months. Charlotte wrote nine more novels in the next ten years, beginning her novelist career at a time when women's fiction was expected to focus on romance and to focus on "a chaste and flawless heroine subjected to repeated melodramatic distresses until reinstated in society by the virtuous hero". Although Smith's novels employed this structure, they also included political commentary, notably support of the French Revolution. At times, she challenged the typical romance plot by including "narratives of female desire" or "tales of females suffering despotism.
Smith's personal experiences led her to argue for legal reforms that would grant women more rights, making the case for these in her novels. Her stories showed the "legal, economic, and sexual exploitation" of women by marriage and property laws. Initially readers were swayed by her arguments; however, as years passed readers became exhausted by Smith's stories of struggle and inequality. The public shifted to the view of the poet Anna Seward, who called Smith "vain" and "indelicate" for exposing her husband to "public contempt".
Smith earned the most money between 1787 and 1798, after which she was no longer so popular; several reasons have been given for the declining public interest, including "erosion of the quality of her work after so many years of literary labor, an eventual waning of readerly interest as she published, on average, one work per year for twenty-two years.
Smith "clung to her own sense of herself as a gentlewoman of integrity". The negative sides that Smith claimed to have experienced during the publication process were perceived as self-pity by many publishers of her time, affecting her relationship and reputation with them. Smith's push to be taken seriously and how she emerges as an essential figure of the "Age of Sensibility" is observed in her powerful use of vulnerability. Antje Blank of The Literary Encyclopedia states, "Few exploited fiction's potential of self-representation with such determination as Smith." Her work is defined as "squarely in the cult of sensibility: she believed in the virtue of kindness, in generosity to those less fortunate, and in the cultivation of the finer feelings of sympathy and tenderness for those who suffered needlessly."
Oneț Alina-Elena, scholar and literature critic felt that Smith's work "rejected an identity defined exclusively by emotionality, matrimony, the family unit, and female sexuality." Overall Smith's career in writing was rejoiced, well perceived and popular until her later years of living. "Smith deserves to be read not simply as a writer whose work demonstrates changes in taste, but as one of the primary voices of her time and a worthy contemporary of the male romantic poets."
Exploration 1: Do you think Charlotte Smith actually “had it all,” or did her life fall short compared to today’s women?
Exploration 2: Are you finding this series, “Womankind,” to your liking. Is the singular focus on women appropriate? Is this post catching up to the number of men of poetry that we have published? Is this a worthy effort? Why or why not?
Exploration 3: Who is Smith addressing in “To the Shade of Burns? Why does she speak to him through her poem?
Exploration 4: From Poetry Foundation: “Charlotte Smith wrote Elegiac Sonnets in 1783 while she was in debtor’s prison with her husband and children. William Wordsworth identified her as an important influence on the Romantic movement. She published several longer works that celebrated the individual while deploring social injustice and the British class system.”
Charlotte has many identities in one person. The quote above shows but two aspects of her complex character. Do you think she had problems in society with such a rich personality?
Charlotte!! You get your jerk of a husband safely in prison then you move in with him!?
ReplyDeleteJoe-Wednesday’s Child turned me on to this poet with “Sonnet Written in the Church Yard at Middleton in Sussex.” Check it out.
1. Did Smith have it all? Yes. Much of which she could have done without. She had fewer rights than women in Britain today.
2. This series does a great job of presenting women poets. Keep it up please.
3. She addresses the spirit of Robert Burns, who died ten years before Smith, free now from the hard knocks of his life.
4. A rich personality will always have problems in society. Indoor plumbing and aspirin have made their problems more tolerable.