Poem Is a Form of Human Expression - Essay Example

Poetic Analysis Introduction A thought that gets ‘seeded’ into an mind, most times comes out in his/hers works. That work will be in the form of novels, short stories, plays, poems, etc. Among these different forms, the beautiful as well as the tragic form that comes out of an author’s mind is Poems. So, Poem is a form of human expression, which can be expressed by the poet at any moment of his/her life, whenever something stimulating or disturbing gets into his/her mind. A poet normally pens poems based on what he/she sees, hears, feels and lives. Human lives are composed of situations and incidents which sounds interesting, inspirational, innovative, ‘injuring’ etc, etc. And, there is a proportion among poets who bring these situations and incidents into a written form, using the realistic or fictionalized version of the real life happenings as the base. Beautifulness and tragedy in poem comes out in the words that are used, objects that are handled, concepts that are discussed, etc. Likewise, the English poets, Felicia Hemans and Lord Byron have penned poems bordering on both beautifulness and tragedy, particularly about human relationships influenced by the events they knew. So, this paper will contrast and compare the treatment of relations between men and women in Hemans’ “Indian Womans Death Song" and Byron’s “Don Juan”. Background and Plot Felicia Dorothea Hemans is the 19th century English poet, who wrote a lot of poems basing most of them on the travails of women. In her works, she brought out the different problems faced by the women of those times, both in their personal fronts and from the society. So, most of her works bordered on sentiments, with “Casabianca,” being the well known one. In her other famous work, “Indian Woman’s Death Song”, Hemans again focused on the tragic problems faced by a married Indian woman due to the extra martial relationship of her husband. Driven to despair because of husband’s abandonment, the woman with her child takes a deadly ride in a canoe down the Mississippi river. While rowing the canoe only, she sings a mournful death song. The death song gets overpowered by the river’s sound, as she gets drowned in the raising water. On the other hand, George Gordon Byron, the English poet, focused on the travails of a male protagonist. Lord Byron in his poem “Don Juan” discusses the legend of Don Juan, but with a slightly different perspective. That is, he portrays Don Juan not as the stereotypical womaniser but as a gullible person, who can be easily seduced by women. That is, with a lot of humor and satirical views, Byron focuses on the journey of Don Juan after he leaves his home due to inappropriate reasons. That is, he gets caught for his illegal affair with his mother’s best friend, Donna Julia and because of that, he was sent to the island of Cadiz. Then at different locations, Juan gets trapped by the situations involving different woman. In Cadiz, he meets and cohabitates with the chief pirate’s daughter, Haidee and from there he was sold as a slave to a Sultan, whose wife makes advances towards him. Likewise, he faces many characters. So, Byron brings out all the illegal affairs; Juan is forced to indulge in, throughout the poem. Analysis The main aspect that is visible in both the poems, particularly about the men, women relationship is how Felicia Hemans clearly follows Byron’s perspective while handling the female protagonist. That is, Hemans’ female protagonist in “Indian Women’s Death Song” is based on Byron’s many female characters because, as in many Byron’s poems, the female character forms an abject figure, who transform into a heroic material. “The orientalized Byronic heroines that appear in Hemans’s poems challenge stereotypical representations of femininity through their unorthodox acts of self-assertion—often engaging in violence and even suicide as a means of avenging the loss of familial ties or emancipating themselves from their oppressive circumstances” (Osman). So, the Hemans’ heroine even though is committing the suicide, she does that in defiance of her husband, who wants to subjugate her. The male central character in the poem is portrayed as the one who had dumped his beloved wife and his child for another woman, even without caring whether they are alive or dead. “My shadow comes not oer his path, my whisper to his dream, He flings away the broken reed–roll swifter yet, thou stream” (Hemans, 106). The husband of the singing woman is the culprit, whose action of abandonment has only led the woman to stand at the fag end of her life. The child who committed no wrong also had a harrowing death, due to the action of his/her father. But one thing is certain, that is, the female character of Indian woman even though is distressed; she is resolute, as she wants to reclaim her dignity through an act of self-destruction or suicide. “Proudly, and dauntlessly, and all alone, Save that a babe lay sleeping at her breast” (Hemans, 104). So, Hemans clearly inspired by Byron’s female characters, penned the poem with a female character, who in spite of being in the most trying emotional state, takes a ‘courageous’ or extreme decision. This extreme decision brings into focus the lack of responsibility from the male side, to take care of his wife and child, and in a way elevating the female characters. So, female characters’ “actions allow Hemans not only to call into question the innate masculinity of acts of valor and sacrifice, but also to underscore the sorority of female suffering” (Osman). In the case of “Don Juan”, this concept of females being the victim and also persons of integrity goes for a knock because in the Byron’s work, the female characters only trap the male protagonist into problematic situations. That is, even though Juan should be accused of having illegal affairs, it is the women who seduced him to commit those illegal acts. Actually, it all started with her mother, as she only prohibited Juan from learning the different aspects of man and woman relationship. “Perfect she was, but as perfection is Insipid in this naughty world of ours,” (Byron, xviii).That is, her mother by not allowing Juan to read any relationship related readings, prevented him from understanding the deeper aspects of man, woman relationship and thereby stopped him from developing into a well rounded individual with knowledge about all issues, including the man, woman relationship. “…young Don Juan lacks a well-rounded education, as his mother censors all hints of sex from his readings. He has no knowledge of relationships between men and women” (Shaw). This lack of knowledge in Juan about man, woman relationship comes to the fore, when Juan doesn’t know how to react, when older women seduced him. That is, he doesn’t know whether to stop them from doing so or encourage them. So, he becomes just an object, with no control over the ‘proceedings’. This puts the onus on the women, who controlled the ‘proceedings’, and prevented Juan from having a normal and settled life. “…he is hopeless to defend himself when an experienced woman seduces him. He has no foundation to make correct choices” (Shaw). So, in the case of Don Juan, his life became a mess and irregular due to the actions of the women. That includes his mother, pirate’s daughter Hadee, Sultan’s wife, etc, etc. So, the main contrasting thing that appears in the poems is the role of opposite sex, in the destruction of the central character’s life. In the case of “Indian Woman’s Death Song”, Hemans fixes the blame for the destruction of her female protagonist on her husband, who only initiates the destruction by abandoning his wife and child. While in the case of “Don Juan”, the central male lead of Don Juan gets caught in a web of deceit and troubles, mainly due to the actions of the female characters. The other contrasting thing is, the female character chooses the extreme step mainly because there is no one to love her and her child, while in the case of Don Juan, he is at least loved by a lot of women (even though they only push him into a sea of trouble). Juan is the object of women’s fantasy, but the Indian woman is the object of hate. Also, the Juan’s character is portrayed as a shy and relatively passive Spanish youth, who travels around the world and falls into number of affairs, adventures and subsequent troubles. While, the Indian Woman’s character is portrayed as a strong woman, who will go to any extreme end, to live her life on her own terms. So, both the poems brought out the travails and the perspectives of two characters, who are put into problematic situations by the opposite sex. Reference Byron, G. Don Juan: Canto The First. [online]. [Accessed 12th January 2008]. Available from World Wide Web: http://www.geocities.com/~bblair/canto1.htm Hemans. F. “Indian Womans Death-Song”. Records of Woman: With Other Poems. Edinburgh: William Blackwood, & London: T. Cadell, 1828, 2nd edition. pp. 103- 108. Osman, S. A. 2006. Mightier than death, untamable by fate”: Felicia Hemans’s Byronic Heroines and the Sorority of the Domestic Affections. [online]. [Accessed 12th January 2008]. Available from World Wide Web: < http://www.erudit.org/revue/RON/2006/v/n43/013590ar.html > Shaw, G. The use of Irony to Portray Morality in Lord Byron’s Don Juan. [online]. [Accessed 12th January 2008]. Available from World Wide Web: Read More