The French Revolution

The French Revolution happened from 1789 to 1799. It was a time that brought change for the people of France. Their was a time when the people of France wanted to take charge and make way for improvement. It all started when the common people decided to take over the Bastille prison. This was a prison that was built for the people of "royal" descent. It eventually became a place for common people but the conditions that they went through were horrible. Social change also came about during this time period.



What lead up to the French Revolution?



There were many factors that lead up to the French Revolution. France had been at war with England and other countries for quite some time. France then were in debt and there was famine that hit the country. All of the prices for food and essential things such as bread were priced at unreasonably high prices. The main cause that has always been accredited to the start of the French Revolution was the class struggle. There were many other factors that the French people were dealing with as well.

The French Revolution offered an opening of a new world and view for the people in France and England. Change was coming and people had to find ways to express the way that they were feeling. Poetry and fictional writing was the way that they did it. In this time, poetry was not only a way to make a profit, it was also a way to express your political views and opinions. This is what is called the Romantic Period. Poets expressed their love of nature, their hatred of Parliament and any other human rights issues. Writers were writing fiction and nonfiction and this made reading a popular genre.

Thomas Hardy/A Broken Appointment

Thomas Hardy was one of the poets who paved the way for the Modern era. As a young child he was sick alot so this inspired him to read many books. He began an early life being around simple people who worked hard and never were able to gain success. This troubled him. He moved to London at a young age and he tried to get some of his writings published, but they were always rejected. It was not until he met his wife that he finally published his first novel. In his first writings Hardy wrote about the life he knew when he was younger. He changed some things and renamed places though. My favorite poem was A Broken Appointment. The tale is of a man who is waiting for a woman but she does not come. He considers this to be a sign of the woman not loving him. He questions the relationship that he has and wonders why the woman can not simply love him and be with him for an hour. I think I am partial to this poem because I am a woman, and normally it is us, who just waits for the men and are often disappointed by them. I find this poem compassionate and it is ironic to listen at this subject from a man's point of view. He writes:

You did not come.
You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty:
I know and knew it........(p.4)

I am sure that many people are partial to this particular poem because of its message. I am one of those in favor of it.

Oscar Wilde/ThePicture Of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde was although he was an artist who lived in the Victorian reign, he was closer to the Modern writers in his style. He came from a very influential but controversial background. His father was an eye and ear surgeon who wrote a book himself but he was often chastized because he had three children out of wedlock. His mother also published poems and she was supposedly the heir of Dante Alighieri. He was famous for his epigrams that he wrote. They were all controversial and they all started out one way and ended in a totally different light. In his book The Picture of Dorian Gray (preface) the very first sentence and the last sentence gives a glimpse into the skill that Wilde possessed.

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
All art is quite useless.

Wild deliberately goes from one extreme to the other. He often did this by using his famous epigrams. He also goes along to say:

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

He just bluntly ends and states "that it all" as if nothing else matters. He writes again in the preface of the book:

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intendedly.

If there was more to the book I am sure this preface enticed people to read it, just to understand Wilde's justification of the book. This was probably one of the reasons he was so famous.

John Stuart Mill/The Subjection Of Women

John Stuart Mill was a very important part of the Victorian Era. He was a utilitarian and very liberal. He did not have a formal education because his father thought that the schools were not up to teaching adequate education. He was very smart and knew more by the time he was twenty than scholars who had gone to the best schools did. This knowledge came at great cost though. He was a ulitarian and the creed of this was to be happy at any means necessary. It was a scientific way of making decisions of making you happy. In his book The Subjection Of Women, Mill explores the rights of women and what laws were equal for them when in areas of divorce and legal matters. Mills served as a member of Parliament and he married Harriet Taylor after her husband died. She was a great influence on him when writing this book. He was getting first hand knowledge of how unfair the women in society were being treated. He states:


And the case is that in which the desire of power is the strongest: for everyone who desire it most over those who are nearest to him, with whom his life is passed, with whom he has most concerns in common, and in whom any independence of his authority is oftness likely to interfere with his individual preferences.

He understands clearly that women have no power or say, but they should because without them what type of life would there be? He uses his wits and smarts to argue the equality of women. He continues to write in the book the "wrongs" of women who are English. All of the laws are designed to help the husband. He lists the many "wrongs" that English laws have set up in the name of women.

Robert Browning/Porphyria's Lover

Eventhough Robert Browning was the husband of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, their style of writing was very different from one another. In popular opinion, Elizabeth was more popular than her husband. Robert, like his wife grew up wealthy and he stayed at home with his family for many years. His work was not noted until after he died. One of my favorite poems by Browing is Porphyria's Lover. This poem starts out being a wonderful tale of how love is supposed to be. A man is waiting in a cottage for his lover. His lover is caught up in what society says about their love and how she really feels for him. Clearly he is afraid that society will win so he kills her and lays by her side for an entire night and he wonders why God has not punished him for doing so. This poem is gruesome and very different from what his wife would have written. It makes me wonder if he sometimes thought this way of his own wife being that often she was more famous as a poet than he was eventhough she was an invalid. It seems as if the roles are reversed in this poem. He is the one who is in the bed and she has to come in and get the fire going and warm him up. It shows that he loves her and he is happy to know that she loves him, but he wants to somehow keep her there forever in love with him. He writes:

Too weak, for all her hearts endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me forever. (line 22-25)

He was afraid to lose her. I think this is ironic because he lost his wife and it meant that he would probably be nothing without her.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning/Aurora Leigh

Elizabeth Barrett Browning started off with a prosperous yet harsh background. She was forbidden by her father to leave the house and get married, so when she married Robert Browning she was banned from the rest of her family by her father. Her poems emphasized the concerns of women's rights. Her poem Aurora Leigh is one of most famous pieces that she composed. This is a very long poem, it almost reads like a novel. This poem was about a young poet who loses her mother and father and has to move away with her aunt. Her cousin Romney, who is very wealthy tries to convince her that it is best to marry him because without him she will make nothing of her life. Early own in her story she illiterated to how women were viewed by men when she stated:

Women know
The way to rear up children (to be just),
They know a simple, merry, tender knack
Of tying sashes, fitting baby shoes,
And stringing pretty words that make no sense, ..(book 1 line 47-51)

She rejected him and his proposal. She spends the rest of her life proving him wrong. She wanted to show that women too had ambitions and dreams, and that they too could make something of theirselves. Romney's idea of a woman is that she needs to be at home and the man needs to take care of her. She was dead set on having the same rights and advantages that men have. Later on in the poem she does end up with Romney because he is blind and both seem to finally learn the roles of what each gender has to offer. In his illness he eventually realized how his way which may not have been the best but it was not the worst, stated to Aurora in the poem:

So much for the necessities of power,
So much for the connivances of fear,
Coherent in statistical despairs
With such a totalof distracted life,....(line 335-338)

They both learn how to adjust to each other by the time the poem is finished, but in contrast women in this time were just beginning to take the steps in having rights in the world.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson/In Memoriam A.H.H.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was a very importnat figure during the Victorian Era. He was born of somewhat a prominent figure, but due to his fathers habit of drinking, he was not able to stake his claim. He could only take a lower job as a clergyman in the church and he resented that. He had a great friend in life and he was Arthur Hallam. He considered Arthur to be his mentor and he care a great deal about him. He was even engaged to his sister. Tragic entered Lord Tennyson's life when Arthur suddenly died at an early age. This weighed heavy on the heart of Lord Tennyson and he did not write for ten years afterwords. This poem has always been kind of special to me because you have a man who is willing to express his feelings about a friend that happens to be male. His poem is very deep and you can feel the sense that Arthur was his true and dear friend. His faithfulness and what he was taught about grieving comes through in the poem. He writes:

We mock Thee when we do not fear:
But help Thy foolish ones to bear;
Help Thy vain world to bear Thy light.

Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in Thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.(prologue)

He knows that death is natural and that we are not supposed to question the judgement of the Lord and he asks that he help him understand why it had to be his friend Arthur. The poem itself although a sad undertone, it is also inspirational. In another part of the poem he writes:

Are God and Nature then at strife
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,....(stanza 55)

In this part of the poem he is wondering if he is believing in the after life, but he looking for reasoning in nature. This is a true feeling that all of us have wondered when we lose someone that we love.

Charles Dickens/A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens was a controversial figure during the Victorian Era. He was born in London and that is where he grew up. He travelled to the United States and he was not impressed with the "American" lifestyle. He quickly found out that his book was being sold and he was not getting any credit for it. This outraged Dickens and he wrote a book about it. The book did not settle well with America, and for a number of years he was not a well to do author there. That was until he wrote the story A Christmas Carol. Everyone has either seen the movie or read the book and if you have, then you will know why it was so well loved. It was a story that opened the eyes and heart of many Americans. The book was set up in staves. The tale began with death. A character named Scrooge, was rich and he only thought about one thing, himself. He was rich and he felt that help was expendable for him. There are ghost who come to take him through his life and the lives of people who are directly affected by him. He is amazed to know how some people suffer. By the end of the story his life has changed and he helps out everyone he can help. Dickens used the appearances of what he calls spirits to draw in the audience. He writes:

Looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed tht its hair was gray.
"Are Spirits lives so short?" asked Scrooge.
"My life upon this globe is very brief, " replied the Ghost "It ends tonight."(341)

Dickens is very clever with his detail pattern. You begin to wonder if he wrote this book for sheer enjoyment or did it have a double meaning. The book states that Dickens wrote this books supposedly to make amends with the "America."

Thomas Carlyle/Past and Present

Thomas Carlyle has been known as evolutionary scholar in his day. His thinking and way of life was ahead of his time. He challenged many everyday life choices and he often chastised other authors and critics for not noticing or handling situations on a different level. In his book Past and Present, there is a particular section that is still used today. It is the section on Democracy. In this section Carlyle speaks on what it means to have a democracy and what is to be expected. He also questions if there is really a democracy when most of our power is in the hands of one dominant force or power. Carlyle writes about the how England has changed over the years and how the views of the new, industrialized England has changed along with it. He speaks out the legitimacy of being born noble and in control. He tries to explain what actually makes a man do wicked acts. He simply implies that men are born with this particular instinct. He was well aware that men were put here to suffer and rely on their own sensibilities to figure out certain aspects of life and that there is no need for such governing to control their behaviors or life. He writes, Life was never a May-game for men. In all times the dumb millions born to toil was defaced with manifold sufferings, injustices, heavy burdens, avoidable and unavoidable...not play at all.."(p.28) It is incredible that many of these things that Carlyle wrote about are still issues that we are facing today with what is currently going on in the world. The issues of war, and the president having to get things back on track when there seems to be no real answer at hand. He was entirely a gift of a brilliant mind in an earlier time.

Felicia Heman/Casabianca

Felicia Heman was a far cry from what we have seen so far by a woman. Her poems are totally opposite from what we see in the writing of Dorothy Wordsworth. Her past relationships with men obviously had a lot to do with what she wrote about. Most of the poems that were written by Heman were all condescending to men. The poem Casabianca was a different type of poem. She seemed concerned, and showed a form of compassion towards the young boy, but she still made him out to be senseless. The young boy had been aboard a ship and there had apparently been a battle and his father was dying and could not speak. The son was so used to getting orders from his father that he did not move without the father telling him to go. I am not sure if she wrote this poem to show that inevitably no matter what the situation may be that men are never able to make good decisions or if she just heard of this story and felt compelled to write about it. he wrote in two stanzas;"Yet beautiful and bright he stood, As born to rule the storm"... in this passage she builds the child up with brave, manly qualities. In the next few stanzas she begins to make references to the father; "The flames roll'd on-he would not go, Without his father's word".. This makes reference to the father having given the child commands that have failed him and makes him not be able to think on his own. She was somewhat witty in getting her message across.

John Keats/Ode On A Grecian Urn

John Keats one of the latter Romantic poets, died at a very young age. Although he started his career out being in the medical field, his passion and loved proved greater for the art of writing poem. Keats was famous for writing all different types of sonnets. He was also known to write poems that were meaningful, loving and somewhat sensuous. It seems that in most of his poems he was wondering about life, and more possibly of what will become of life in another form. In his poem Ode On A Grecian Urn, Keats releases what seems to be a questionable reason of what may happen in the after life. He begins to explain what happens when a looks at an urn and sees the picture on it and wonder what the pictures represent. These are some of the lines that are memorable:

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to a sensual ear, but, more endear'd,....
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Keats describes in the poem that beauty can not fade because as long as he remember it, it will never die. He was so different from the earlier poets because he never had a formal education and he did not live his life with much controversy.

Percy Bysshe Shelley/ Alastor or, The Spirit of Solitude

Percy Bysshe Shelley unlike his former constituents grew up wealthy. He resented that fact though. He endured harrassment and always seemed to blame the abuse he suffered at school on the fact that he was rich. He was not well liked by society due to some of his graphic work. He was often misunderstood as being evil and outcasted when truthfully he was smart and most of what he wrote about and learned was enhanced by science. In his work Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude, he often explained things in a truthful and yet saddening manner.

Mother of this unfathomable world!
Favour my solemn song, for I have loved.....
Keep record of the trophies won from thee,
Hoping to still these obstinate questionings
Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost(p615)

He describes that he will be leaving the world and eventhough he is going to die, the world must still be loved. He was unlike Byron because the way that he felt was unraveled in the poem with a softening effect and does not come off accusatory.

George Gordon, Lord Byron/Don Juan

Lord Byron, who is personally one of my favorite for the same reason he was most famous in his day, the mere scandal surrounding his name is most fascinating. He was so young but yet so talented. As Dr. Glance discussed in his podcast, Byron was often followed because people believed that he wrote about things that occurred in his own life. He struggled with finances throughout his life but still wanted to live and extravagant lifestyle. His poems were powerful, but the story of Don Juan is what I like best. Don Juan is a story of a true "gigolo." Although it is considered a poem, it is one that reads as a story. The poem is short and full of irony and satire. The plot and irony of this story begins in the first canto. He states:

I want a hero: an uncommon want, ....
I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan
We all have seen him in the pantomine,
Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.(p.539)

He immediately draws the tension in what the character Don Juan is supposed to be..a hero. He brilliantly ends the stanza with stating that the devil has taken over and you get a sense that something is going to go quite wrong with him. More irony in the story is that the roles of gender are reversed. Normally it is almost always the male who is being portrayed as the villian and the one who seduces the female. In this poem, Don Juan is the innocent victim. He is being chased and seduced by the women. His mother sends him away when he is finally "caught" but this still does not help the situation. Ironically he continues to get entangled with women he is not supposed to, they end up falling for him at first glance and the trouble continues to escalate for Don Juan throughout the poem. This poem deals with many issues that were going on in the Romantic Era.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge/The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Samuel Taylor Coleridge of course had his own style, but he was close to William and Dorothy Wordsworth. This friendship possessed many hidden agendas, but nevertheless the writing that they shared is work that is still viewed today as phenomenal. One of his poems that he wrote was Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The poem was grim but it told a story that intrigued the senses. This poem ends with a moral that everyone needs to take care of everyone that God has created nature for. In the first stanza, Coleridge does a good job of describing how the Mariner looked. In the first passage he begins to give detailed descriptions of what "The Mariner" looked like. You could have the visual image by his details. He states:

"By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

"The bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;.....(p.305)

Coleridge draws the audiences attention by stating that the man has a "glittering eye." He does the same in the poem he wrote called The Eolian Harp. This poem was almost like a song and it gave metaphoric detail of describing of how he felt. The two poems are quite different because in The Eolian Harp, the tone of the poem is melodious and bright. The tone of the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is dark and gloomy. That was the great thing about the work of Coleridge, you could almost expect anything.

Dorothy Wordsworth/The Grasmere Journal

With all the famous poets in the Romantic Era, personally I like Dorothy Wordsworth the best. I am not sure if I like her better because she is a woman, or the fact that we get an overwhelming view of how men in this era were viewing the world, but we never get it from a woman's perspective. Although what she writes about seems simple and plain, her views are totally distinguished from those of her colleagues. I am sure because she was able to aquainted with great writers like Samuel Coleridge, and being William's kin that she learned many things, but the heart of her work was when she was casually writing in her journal. The sheer glimpse into the lives of these poets is in itself powerfully fascinating. Some of the simplest gestures that she describes heightens your senses. She clinged to Williams every word and their relationship is somewhat questionable. The night before he marries Mary she suddenly becomes ill. She writes I slept a good deal of the night and rose fresh in the morning....I saw them go down to the avenue towards the church. William had parted from me upstairs. I gave him the wedding ring.......I took it off my forefinger(p.291)...I am not completely sure but it seems that his wedding day made her sick. To add she wore the ring and did not attend the wedding ceremony. Their relationship may have been something different. I am sure when she started to write poetry she was being coached by William and Coleridge as well because she picked up on the area surrounding her.

William Wordsworth/We Are Seven

William Wordsworth has been known to be the "inventor" of what is now known as the Romantic Era. Supposedly he started it all with his Lyrical Ballads. He too was a lover of nature and he was very descriptive when he wrote about what he observed. His love of nature was extremely defined in the way he described what he saw. In some of his writings it is really unusual with the way he described life and death. In his poem We Are Seven, he was very detailed on how he described the way the little girl looked and he applied his love of nature to the application as well. One detailed description he used to describe her was "she had a rustic, woodland air, and she was wildly clad." He was well in tune to his surroundings. Many ways that he described how the world looked around him was very unique.

William Blake/The Chimney Sweeper

William Blake was from a different breed from the start. In part of his autobiography it was told that he received "thrashings" (74) for seeing visions of God. His imagination was vividly apparent at such a young age. It is also fascinating that he did not receive any formal education yet his work is well noted by scholars all around the world. The majority of his work was dark and gloomy. One notable piece is The Chimney Sweeper. Right from the start he gives descriptive words and you can actually visualize the child being covered in black "soot." In the poem just when you begin to think it will not turn out so grim he adds: "And by came an Angel who had a bright key, And he open'd the coffins and set them all free.(38)....you would think that the poem would turn out to be a happy moment but it does not. Instead he puts Tom back to work early in the morining, with no hesistation knowing well that he too, will soon be dead from the type of work that he does. During his lifetime Blake had many visions of the supernatural. This poem fits into the realm of what he was always claiming he saw. The little boy Tom had a dream but in the dream an angel came and she let the little children out of their coffins.

Hello my name is Tamica Jordan and I am a middle grades education major. I am learning how to use blogs and this is my first time taking a class online. I am taking this class to help fulfill my degree. I have taken a course with Dr. Glance before and for all who are scared do not worry..he is very approachable and he will help you with any problems that you may have.