To Sensibility by Helen Maria Williams - Essay Example

Romantic Poetry The concept of Sensibility takes a key role in much of the writings produced during the Romantic period. Despite its name, this period is characterized by a very formalized and cold (to modern standards) method of expressing oneself and one’s feelings. This was carried to such as extent that Victorian citizens became fluent in a secret language of flowers that made it possible to convey certain sentiments without going to the extreme of writing them down or giving them voice. The idea of Sensibility, though, can be misunderstood in today’s world of blunt speech and the celebration of the extreme. To understand what was meant by Sensibility in the sense in which the Romantic writers spoke of it, it is helpful to take a look at their own descriptions. By examining Helen Maria Williams’ poem “To Sensibility” and comparing its findings with the image presented in William Blake’s “London”, one can begin to gain an appreciation for the subtleties involved in trying to define exactly what Sensibility meant to these people. In “To Sensibility,” Helen Maria Williams (1786) writes about the nature of sensibility. By personifying the concept, she is able to describe its characteristics and virtues, as well as its limitations. Personification is established from the very first line of the poem when Williams informs her audience that it is “In Sensibility’s lov’d praise / I tune my trembling reed” (1-2). The capitalization of the word coupled with the possessive tense in which it is placed, capable of owning or bestowing praise, further delineates a characterization of the concept that places it on a more human, and more addressable, level. In addition, this characterization is immediately associated with the death of passion as the speaker’s heart is forced to bleed upon the bays that decorate the shrine erected to Sensibility (3-4). In the Romantic language of flowers, which was nearly universally understood at the time the poem was composed, the bay is associated with glory or prophecy. In this sense, it becomes necessary for the speaker to leave her pride behind, abandon all sense of self if she is to serve Sensibility well. However, this does not necessarily mean she must abandon all sense of human feeling, as has often been the understanding. By describing her own relationship with the personified concept of Sensibility, Williams is able to illustrate the more important and limiting aspects of Romantic notions. It is clear as early as the second stanza that the speaker, despite any discomfort suggested in the first stanza, does not wish to become separated from the concept of Sensibility. “No cold exemption from her pain / I ever wished to know; / Cheer’d with her transport I sustain / Without complaint her woe” (5-8). The reason for this steadfast loyalty begins to emerge with the fourth stanza, in which it becomes clear that Sensibility provides the friendship and associations necessary to overcome bouts of passion, “To heal the wounded heart, / To shorten sorrows ling’ring hour” (4-5). While Sensibility might bring on a pain of her own, it is nothing compared to the pain brought on by the outside world, thereby reducing the stings suffered when passion is allowed to rule. In subsequent stanzas, Sensibility becomes that entity most capable of recognizing, receiving and bestowing love in proper measures even as she is the mediating force that enables her subjects to survive the extremes of human emotion. Her range of emotional experience is perhaps best illustrated in the ninth stanza, “Quick, as the trembling metal flies, / When heat or cold impels, / Her anxious heart to joy can rise, / Or sink where anguish dwells!” (33-36). While Sensibility is as capable of feeling the depths of emotion of any human, it still falls to her to provide the necessary skills for survival: “Tho’ she, the mourners’ grief to calm / Still shares each pang they feel, / And, like the tree distilling balm, / Bleeds, others wounds to heal” (41-44). In these words it becomes clear that Sensibility is capable of perhaps more depth of feeling and emotion than humanly possible as she both suffers the pain while maintaining the compassion necessary to heal. However, to do so, she must blunt the edges of feelings, maintaining a certain distance. Nevertheless, she appears as quite another entity from that of Indifference, “who, for her apathy, would lose / The sacred power to weep” (63-64). While human emotions should be expended on human concerns, the speaker also makes it clear that Sensibility requires it only be expended upon those things that are living. Concern for material objects only serves to further distance the human feelings from the subjects as objects cannot be loved because they cannot love back. Sensibility teaches that any such love of objects must be shunned because they will lead one into the hard and cold realm of Indifference for whom she is often mistaken. Throughout the characterization, then, it becomes clear that Sensibility is quite different from the lack of feeling often associated with her. Sensibility, in her attempts to help her subjects, is capable of feeling a great range of human emotion and does not condone negating these emotions by pretending they don’t exist or throwing them away on inanimate objects that cannot return feeling. Instead, she seeks to heal the hurts of life through friendship and recognition of feelings in others. However, she does this by blunting emotions, keeping them in some form of controlled area in order to keep them from overwhelming the individual and interrupting the relationship Sensibility shares with them. Far from being cold and hidden, shunning any and all attempts at human connections, Sensibility emerges as a friend to mankind, encouraging human relationships and discouraging attempts to lessen the importance of these relationships by confusing them with feelings for material objects. The nature thus described places Sensibility as the fulcrum between wanton passion and abject indifference. This role of Sensibility becomes the subject of William Blake’s poem “London” (1794). Included in his collection entitled Songs of Experience, this poem presents an adult’s perspective regarding what is seen and heard during a walk down the city’s streets. Examining the poem presents both the experience of Sensibility on the part of the speaker as well as the lack of Sensibility on the part of the citizens observed. The speaker of the poem demonstrates the effects of Sensibility upon his own thoughts as he voices his observations, “A mark in every face I meet, / Marks of weakness, marks of woe” (3-4). By recognizing the weaknesses in these people, he is acknowledging their tendency to lapse into the easier standards set by indifference while he also acknowledges that perhaps life has proved too difficult to survive with the same ideals to which he holds himself by following the rules of Sensibility. At the same time, he is also allowing himself to make the necessary connections with his fellow man that Sensibility requires of him instead of turning aside and ignoring the pain he sees. This willingness to see what is happening around him also enables him to understand that perhaps the pain of living has become so great that Sensibility is only able to keep these people alive by making them too numb to feel any of their griefs. This is indicated most strongly in stanza 2, “In every cry of every man, / In every infant’s cry of fear, / In every voice, in every ban, / The mind-forged manacles I hear” (4-8). In this, he is relating Sensibility to manacles, created by the mind as a means of staying alive and coping with hardships that cannot otherwise be overcome. Although these people could be considered indifferent, having crossed over long ago, the speaker, speaking with his own Sensibility, understands that if some of the grief could be lifted, these people might still be able to express human feelings and again create human connections. As the hardened hearts and minds of the people continue to be described, Blake illustrates the bleakness of a world that has taken Sensibility too far, at least for the time being, crossing into the realm of Indifference where there is a complete lack of sense and feeling. This concept is first brought forward in the disdain of the “blackening church” (10) for the chimney-sweeper who would willingly keep them clean if allowed: “How the chimney-sweepers cry / Every blackening church appals” (9-10). The double meaning here is clear, the lack of Sensibility, or the prevalence of Indifference, has led to the defilement of places even as sacred as the church in that they are neglecting their primary responsibility, which was considered to be helping poorest members of society, especially through so noble a method of providing honest work that must be done in any event. Indifference can also be seen as having gone completely out of hand in the lack of sympathy expressed for the “hapless soldier” (11) who’s sigh “runs in blood down palace-walls” (12) in hopeless defense of a city that no longer cares to be saved. The result of all this indifference as it affects the city at large is made clear in the understanding final stanza of the poem. The speaker, having witnessed all these events and understood that the lack of feeling is taking over the city at large, is able to put all these events into true context. The absence of Sensibility has “the youthful harlot’s curse / Blasts the new-born infant’s tear, / And blights with plague the marriage hearse” (14-16). The absence of Sensibility, then, is not only detrimental to the individual soldier or chimney-sweep, but becomes universally virulent, destroying the lives of the infants in their cradles as well as the possibility for happiness inherent in the convention of marriage. By describing the marriage procession as a hearse, Blake is able to imbue this happy occasion with the extreme sense of indifference and its effects he has witnessed, understanding the death of Sensibility, or the ability to feel anything, as the death of everything that has ever been held sacred. Thus, through these two poems, one can gain a sense of what Sensibility meant to the writers of the Romantic period as well as how they viewed its effects upon the world at large. While it was undeniably seen as a means of blunting human emotions, this was not necessarily considered an evil thing. Instead, it was seen as a means of both coping with overwhelming emotions and of keeping emotions in their proper place by not expending them on things that had no meaning. However, this blunting effect could be taken too far, as it is illustrated in Blake’s poem, creating a world of dull grays in which no one cares anything for anyone else. This overweighting of indifference, seen as occurring when the ideals of Sensibility are taken too far, can then be seen only as a means of slow and utter destruction and decay. While Sensibility is necessary for a healthy society, it is also necessary to keep it in its proper perspective. Read More