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.