Undermining the Eighteenth-Century Pastoral

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to humankind prevalent in the eighteenth century and how she adapts these ideas to a ... eighteenth-century thought: (1) the earth was made expressly for humans by God; (2) the human mind was ...... English Romantic Poetry and Prose.
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European Romantic Review, Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2004, pp. 131–150

Undermining the Eighteenth-Century Pastoral: Rewriting the Poet’s Relationship to Nature in Charlotte Smith’s Poetry Kandi Tayebi

Recent new historicist readings of Romantic poetry have illustrated how Wordsworth and other Romantic poets displace the historically significant events of their time in their poetry. Thus, Jerome McGann argues that the uncomfortable presences of the beggars and coal barges are displaced in ‘Tintern Abbey’ through Wordsworth’s celebration of the imagination. This emphasis on what Alan Liu calls the ‘denial of history’ is totally upended by Charlotte Smith’s poetry. The new historicist account relies on the idea that the poet will elide the historical events that interfere with the poetical transcendence and that the critic will therefore need to replace the historical information that erodes the poet’s vision. This new historicist version of Romantic poetry cannot be readily appliced to Smith’s work since she initially displaces the disenfranchised and the harsh realities of oppression but then reinserts them into her texts. Her poetry is an interesting combination of imaginative verse and historical discourse, that refuses to cleanse the poetical vision of the oppression evident all around her. Charlotte Smith may at first appear to be a nature poet intent on finding an escape through the natural world. Wordsworth recognized her as one of the few poets of the time who displayed a ‘true feeling for rural nature’ (4: 403). In his introduction to The Poems of Charlotte Smith, Stuart Curran argues that Smith’s last poem Beachy Head contains ‘so powerful an impulse to resolve the self into nature’ that no other poem of the period comes close to achieving this seemingly modern ecological approach to poetry (xxvii). Yet it is not just Beachy Head, Smith’s epic poem published shortly after her death, that develops her nature poetics, but instead is the wide variety of European 10.1080/1050958042000180737 gerr031048.sgm 1050-9585 Original Taylor 12004 15 [email protected] KandiTayebi 21March and & Article Francis Romantic 2004 (print)/1740-4657 FrancisLtd Ltd Review (online)

Kandi Tayebi is an Associate Professor of English at Sam Houston State University. This research was partially funded by Sam Houston State University’s Faculty Enhancement Fund. ISSN 1050–9585 (print)/ISSN 1740–4657 (online) © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/1050958042000180737

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poetry—from fables, to sonnets, to children’s didactic poems—all of which are buttressed by a foundation of botanical scholarship, natural settings, and descriptive details of natural phenomena. Judith Pascoe in ‘Female Botanists and the Poetry of Charlotte Smith’ describes Smith’s poetry as a merging of ‘poetry and science’ (193). Unlike Romantic poetry which values the ‘ability to generalize or abstract from the particular’ (203) and aims at transcending and transforming nature, Smith’s poetry celebrates ‘the infiniteness of particularity’ (204). A close analysis of Smith’s poetry, reveals a poetic style and philosophy that does not attempt to ‘transcend or to absorb nature but to contemplate and honor its irreducible alterity’ (Curran, ‘Introduction’ xxviii). Instead, Smith develops a dialectical discourse that finds truth somewhere between superstition and science, nature and society. Smith, by capturing the apparent contradictions in nature, confronts the poet’s tendency toward colonizing the disenfranchised and rejects a utopian vision for one that attempts to reveal and thus hopefully combat oppression. In order to understand Charlotte Smith’s unique contribution to nature poetry, one must first analyze how she utilizes the common ideas about nature and its relationship to humankind prevalent in the eighteenth century and how she adapts these ideas to a new conception of humanity’s place in the cosmos. Three major views of nature shaped eighteenth-century thought: (1) the earth was made expressly for humans by God; (2) the human mind was shaped by the climate and soil of a particular region; and (3) humans adapted to and transformed nature (Bewell 238). The first idea is clearly illustrated in works by Milton, Addison and numerous eighteenth-century writers who delighted in nature not for its beauty but for its revelation of ‘God’s plan for the universe’ (Ellison 111). Charlotte Smith recognizes nature as a way for humans to get a small glimpse of God and paradise. In her poem ‘Flora,’ Smith asks that scenes of nature help her escape the realities of human misery: Remote from scenes, where the o’erwearied mind Shrinks from the crimes and follies of mankind, From hostile menace, and offensive boast, Peace, and her train of home-born pleasures lost; To Fancy’s reign, who would not gladly turn, And lose awhile the miseries they mourn In sweet oblivion? (1–7)

These are not scenes actually present before her eyes, but are memories of natural scenes viewed through the eyes of an innocent child.1 Smith then parades a variety of natural plants and insects before the reader with footnotes providing the botanical information about each species. Some of the footnotes supply the reader only with the scientific name of the plant or insect, such as the ant footnoted as ‘Formica’ or the beetle as ‘Scarabeus’ (282). Other footnotes inform the reader of the poetic license Smith is employing in her poem: Libellula. The Dragonfly, or as it is called in the southern countries, the Horse-stinger, though it preys only on other insects. Several sorts of these are seen about water, but the introduction here is a poetical licence, as it does not feed on or injure flowers. (282)

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Yet all of the footnotes lead the reader toward the idea that there is an underlying order and classification to the overflowing abundance of natural phenomena in the world. Eventually, the poem ends with Nature providing the ‘wearied Pilgrim’ an ‘antepast of Paradise’ (227–228). In this way, nature is not a fallen Eden nor an Eden unattainable by humankind but is instead a small glimpse at God’s finest creations. Ironically, the nature Smith describes as an ‘antepast of Paradise’ is literally armed to fend off attacks by inclement weather, spiders, Aphis, earwigs, ants, and beetles: Around the goddess, as the flies that play In countless myriads in the western ray, The Sylphs innumerous throng, whose magic powers Guard the soft buds, and nurse the infant flowers, Round the sustaining stems weak tendrils bind, And save the Pollen from dispersing wind, From Suns too ardent shade their transient hues, And catch in odorous cups translucent dews. The ruder tasks of others are, to chase From vegetable life the Insect race, Breath the polluting thread the Spider weaves, And brush the Aphis from the unfolding leaves. (49–60)

The plants and their defense systems are described as ‘warlike Chief[s]’ which ‘drive away,’ ‘assail,’ and ‘strike’ at insects with their ‘lances’: With stern undaunted eye, one warlike Chief Grasps the tall club from Arum’s blood-dropp’d leaf This with the Burdock’s hooks annoys his foes, The purple Thorn, that borrows from the Rose. In honeyed nectaries couched, some drive away The forked insidious Earwig from his prey, Fearless the scaled Libellula assail, Dart their keen lances at the encroaching Snail, Arrest the winged Ant, on pinions light, And strike the headlong Beetle in his flight. (69–78)

Although obviously not a peaceful, calm nature, Smith’s scene blends the beauties of nature with the realities of the natural cycle of death and rebirth. All of nature is encompassed by God’s laws and thus is part of the wonder of the world. Smith also believed that nature had the power to shape the mind of humans. This idea was fairly widespread during the eighteenth century and was used to account for the presence of savageness or seeming lack of industry in particular cultures. As England encountered new and unusual cultures, it became increasingly necessary to ensure the belief in the superiority of England and its people, or more generally, of Europeans. Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, in his Spirit of the Laws (1748), argued that climate and soil influence political institutions. Thus, northern people were strong, brave, and forceful while southern people were weak, listless, and controlled by extreme passions (290). Taking a slightly different slant on this idea, Smith, in her poem ‘A Descriptive Ode, Supposed to Have Been Written Under the Ruins of Rufus’s

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Castle, Among the Remains of the Ancient Church on the Isle of Portland,’ describes a ‘Man, lost in ignorance and toil’ who ‘Becomes associate to the soil’ and thus ‘his heart hardens like his native rock’ (22–24). Montesquieu, of course, believes the toil brought about by the inhospitable soil makes the inhabitants of that area industrious. It follows that the warmer climates, particularly those of the West Indies and the Polynesian Islands, produced inferior cultures hence justifying the slavery and political domination forced upon the people of these countries by Europe. Montesquieu goes on to argue that fertile soil which requires little industry from humankind to cultivate brings about a variety of negative character traits: ‘The goodness of the land, in any country, naturally establishes subjection and dependence’ while barren earth encourages industry because people must ‘procure by labour what the earth refuses to bestow spontaneously’ (271–272). In Beachy Head, Smith refers to Tahiti as a tropical paradise: He, in some island of the southern sea, May haply build his cane-constructed bower Beneath the bread-fruit, or aspiring palm, With long green foliage rippling in the gale. (663–666)

However these thoughts of an unspoiled Eden are only the dreams of a forlorn lover and not real nature. Smith emphasizes this by her footnote which recalls the horrible vices discovered by explorers in Tahiti: An allusion to the visionary delights of the newly discovered islands, where it was at first believed men lived in a state of simplicity and happiness; but where, as later enquiries have ascertained, that exemption from toil, which the fertility of their country gives them, produces the grossest vices; and a degree of corruption that late navigators think will end in the extirpation of the whole people in a few years. (245)

Before Captain Cook’s last visits to Tahiti between 1773 and 1777, the people of Tahiti were described as innocent natives who lived harmoniously in a modern Eden by writers such as Louis de Bougainville, Diderot and Cowper. In ‘The Task’, Cowper creates Omai, a savage from Tahiti, who is corrupted by exposure to European society (I: 633). Diderot builds on Bougainville’s supposedly realistic accounts of voyages to Tahiti by ‘inventing imaginary savages in a fictional supplement to the travels’ (MacCormack 31). Throughout his accounts, he ‘presents Tahiti as a more natural society in which bodily instinct is properly respected and handled’ (31). The Tahitians provide for him a contrast to the strict regulations of Europe which he wishes to dispute. But by the time Smith writes Beachy Head, Cook’s accounts of human sacrifice, war, poverty, and disease had become common knowledge for those back in England. Perhaps the most famous depiction of Cook’s travels became the picture by John Webber illustrating the human sacrifice observed by Cook on September 1 and 2, 1777, at a sacred burial ground. The horror of the act is intensified by the rows of skulls that lined the area (Moorehead 55–68). Other stories circulated in England about the religious sexual orgies of the priesthood and the strangling of any children born from these unions in order to avoid paternity issues (6–7). Readers of Smith’s Beachy Head

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would have immediately recognized the corruption and gross vices to which she was referring. The natural state of man is complicated in Smith’s poetry and the phrase takes on opposing nuances prevalent in the thought of her time. This conception of a natural state was used by de Sade to justify horrible actions as only man following nature (156), and throughout the French Revolution, both sides used the idea to describe the benefits and drawbacks of the French Jacobins’ philosophy. While the Jacobins insisted that toppling the monarchy was restoring the natural state of society, the English loyalists argued that returning society to its natural state made the French Jacobins as savage as the [American] Indians and thus eventually resulted in the terrible violence of the Revolution. Perhaps the most famous depiction of the baseness of the natural state, Burke’s description of the French revolutionaries as a ‘swinish multitude’ (122) helped condemn the revolutionaries by a striking picture of the worst of nature. He continued to disparage the acts which took place during the march on Versailles on October 6, representing the crowds as subhuman: ‘[King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette] were slowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused shape of the vilest of women’ (122). On the other hand, many eighteenth-century writers perceived the natural state of man as a healthy relationship between man and the land. Farmers were the symbol of this state and through their immediate contact with nature arrived at a state of contentment. In many Georgics, the farmer is ‘close to nature,’ ‘alert to its changes, quick to take his signs from nature,’ and utilizes nature for ‘his proper work’ (Feingold 25). Adam Smith praises farming as the ‘original destination of man’ (1: 357). He discusses the distinct advantages of farming over trade: Upon equal, or nearly equal profits, in the improvement and cultivation of land than either in manufacturer or in foreign trade. The man who employs his capital in land has it more under his view and command, and his fortune is much less liable to accidents than that of the trader, who is obliged frequently to commit it, not only to the winds and the waves, but to the more uncertain elements of human folly and injustice. (1: 357)

Charlotte Smith demonstrates the detriment brought about by the abandoning of rural labor, such as shepherding and farming, for the smuggling that occurs along the coast of England. Although more profitable for the worker, smuggling brings about a cost not only of human life but of morality and consequently the alienation of the individual. Before Smith, William Crowe, in Lewesdon Hill, discusses the smuggling occurring off the coast west of Chesil Beach. However when he compares ‘what is natural and what is not,’ he characterizes smuggling as ‘a game sanctioned as was hunting—by nature’ (Williams 16). This belief is based on Adam Smith’s argument that smuggling is part of the natural economic processes when unnatural economic barriers, such as war, trade embargoes, and tariffs, obstruct free trade (II: 826–827). This is, of course, exactly the situation that Charlotte Smith envisions in Beachy Head, where the unnatural split from the French has caused the vice of smuggling to increase. Thus, Charlotte Smith understands that in some way, smuggling sustains the natural intercourse

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between the two nations, but she also recognizes the terrible cost to the laborer who becomes involved in such a trade. Charlotte Smith contrasts the happy hind ‘Who, with his own hands rears on some black moor,/Or turbary, his independent hut/Cover’d with heather, whence the slow white smoke/Of smouldering peat arises—A few sheep’ (194–197) with the shepherd who ‘Quitting for this/Clandestine traffic his more honest toil,’ (183–184) risks his life for illegal trade. These smugglers, whom nature has made ‘hardy and athletic,’ trade in the ‘coarsest and most destructive spirits’ and ‘hazard their lives to elude the watchfulness of the Revenue officers, and to secure their cargoes’ (225). Even though she believes the rural laborer to be better off ‘If no such commerce of destruction known,/He were content with what the earth affords/To human labour; even where she seems/Reluctant most,’ (190–193) Smith does not completely accept the naive pastoral which suggests that the rural worker is lucky to be toiling away on inhospitable soil. Ironically, Smith introduces this scene with a promise to describe ‘simple scenes of peace and industry’ (169). Smith depicts a beautiful valley with a lone farm and shepherd’s hut nestled in elms and ash: Where, bosom’d in some valley of the hills Stands the lone farm; its gate with tawny ricks Surrounded, and with granaries and sheds, Roof’d with green mosses, and by elms and ash Partially shaded; and not far remov’d The hut of sea-flints built; the humble home Of one, who sometimes watches on the heights. (170–176)

Already the pastoral scene begins to deconstruct, as the reader sees the obvious difference in class status between the farmer and the shepherd. The farmer’s home is surrounded by signs of plenty—piles of hay, granaries, and sheds. His home is shaded by trees. On the other hand, the shepherd’s home sits physically ‘not far remov’d’ but socially a big distance away. Discarding the vision of the pastoral shepherd, Smith moves on to the happy hind, Who, with his own hands rears on some black moor, Or turbary, his independent hut Cover’d with heather, whence the slow white smoke Of smouldering peat arises— (193–197)

He is free from ‘The dread that follows on illegal acts’ as he works the ground and shares the labor with his wife (210–211). But this hind gazes with ‘envy and contempt’ at the man of fortune who reaps the rewards of the hind’s labor, as the laborer ‘smooths/The road before his chariot’ (249–250). Smith tries to convince the reader that there is no need for envy since the man of fortune often ‘Enjoy[s] nothing, fl[ying] from place to place/In chase of pleasure that eludes his grasp / And that content is e’en less found by him,/Than by the labourer’ (246–249). However, the reader realizes like the hind that ‘one day’s expenditure, like this,/Would cheer him for long months, when to his toil/The frozen earth closes her marble breast’ (252–254). The inequality and the contemptible wastefulness of the wealthy emphasizes the oppression evident in

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England and the absurdity of the myth of the happy laborer who needs only to work the English countryside to be content. Smith continues her depiction of the happy hind ironically juxtaposing the typical pastoral descriptions of the ‘smoky roof,’ ‘flock bed,’ (237–238) and patient toil with the realities of poverty, demeaning labor, and savage familial relationships. He is ‘just remov’d from savage life’ (207) and perceives his sheep as ‘His best possession’ in the ‘rugged shed,’ including his children (198–199). Although ‘his industrious mate/Shares in his labour’ (212–213), her work is more demeaning, resembling that of a beast, or more particularly a bird. As the curlew ‘drops her spotted eggs among the flints,’ the wife piles stones (233), and while the ‘black coot hides/Among the plashy reeds, her diving brood,’ the mother leads her children wading through the brook to gather rush (214–215). Through this juxtaposition, Smith reminds us that these scenes are ‘unlike the poet’s fabling dreams/Describing Arcady’ (209–210), yet this laborer does possess liberty. ‘[H]e is free’ (210), free from a sickening dependency on others, from the constant worry of the law, and from the isolation felt by many in England’s cities. All of these oppressions Smith felt with terrific force. As a woman, she was dependent on the financial and legal protection of men. After her husband spent all of their money, Smith worried continuously about the law and her legal troubles. She toiled ceaselessly writing novels in order to procure her independence, and yet never in her lifetime achieved financial security. Throughout her trials, she felt the isolation of a woman without a spouse, a father, a mother, or anyone with whom to share her troubles. Next, Smith introduces the reader to a lovesick wanderer. He rambles through the ruins, forest and hills reciting poetry about the love he has lost. The wanderer is a man of means who dreams how his life might be better if her were a ‘Shepherd on the hill’ (531) or a man in the earthly paradise of ‘some island of the southern sea’ (663). Because his visions completely ignore the reality of the lives of those he imagines, his descriptions of his ideal life are not only ironic but also oppressive. It is exactly this ability to fantasize about and romanticize the lives of the poor and disenfranchised that allows those in power to continue to oppress them without a guilty conscience. If the poet rids the landscape of the people’s reality, then she cooperates in the oppression. Smith does not allow the wanderer’s vision to dominate the poem. Instead reality intrudes on the scene. The vision of a Tahitian paradise is disrupted by a footnote that reminds us that the reality found in Tahiti is one of ‘grossest vices; and a degree of corruption that late navigators think will end in the extirpation of the whole people in a few years’ (245). The idea of himself as the ideal pastoral shepherd is countered by the real laborers described all around him. ‘[T]he tir’d hind’ passes by him wondering why he is sitting on the hill so late at night and of course recognizing that he must not need to work to be able to sit on the hill so long (514–516). The smugglers eye him with suspicion (516–518). As he wanders through the woods, ‘barkmen,’ ‘wedgecutters,’ and ‘truffle hunter[s]’ all see him pass as they labor in the forest (564, 565, 566). Surrounded by laborers, the wanderer appears to be self-absorbed, selfish, and insular.

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The ‘peasant girls’ memorize his songs and sing them as they go about their work (529–530). Ironically, this scene later will be mimicked by Wordsworth in a letter to Isabel Fenwick. Wordsworth hopes that his poem ‘The Labourer’s Hymn’ written in the mid-1830s will become part of the real laborer’s day: Often one has occasion to observe Cottage children carrying, in their baskets, dinner to their Fathers engaged in their daily labors in the fields and woods. How gratifying would it be to me could I be assured that any portion of these stanzas had been sung by such a domestic concert under such circumstances. (IV: 428)

What Wordsworth fails to realize is the colonizing behavior of this poet’s dream. The peasant’s experience becomes retold in the voice of the colonizer. Smith recognizes this fact in her poem and continually lets this realization intrude on her poetic vision, disrupting her poetry but leading to a clearer view of the real oppression of the world. Throughout Beachy Head, Smith’s attempts at transcendence have disintegrated into a harsh reality. The pastoral vision collapses under economic realities, war, greed and societal hierarchies. During most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, writers depicted the rural laborer in a typical pastoral setting. In fact, no laborers are usually described until we ‘meet the inevitable good shepherd’ (Williams 13). In this way, ‘agrarian reality is thus masked by picturesque effect’ (13). Instead of hunger, hard labor, and corruption, the reader is shown an industrious man (rarely a woman) working close to nature and enjoying the fruits of his labor. Smith appears at first in much of her poetry to endorse the pastoral myth, yet by the end of the poems, the pastoral is rejected for a more realistic view of rural life. Her nature is a combination of a belief in the pastoral and a rejection of the pastoral myth. Smith’s poem ‘The Peasant of the Alps’ begins with a view of a happy, humble man who has built a home in extremely difficult terrain: Where cliffs arise by winter crown’d, And thro’ dark groves of pine around, Down the deep chasms the snow-fed torrents foam, Within some hollow, shelter’d from the storms, The PEASANT of the Alps his cottage forms, And builds his humble, happy home. (1–6)

Although below him and clearly visible to him are rich fields, the peasant does not envy his neighbor’s wealth but instead ‘Finds all he wishes, all he loves’ (12) in his thatched hut. The peasant shapes his environment, planting his lover’s favorite flowers and a little produce to be shared with his family. These transplants mingle with the native Alpine plants, seeming to tame the wildness of the terrain. But Smith destroys the tranquility of this scene by showing how meaningless his attempts to alter nature have been. Suddenly, while the peasant is away from the hut, an avalanche destroys his home, his garden, and his love in one unfeeling moment: Of rifted ice!—O man of woe! O’er his dear cot—a mass of snow, By the storm sever’d from the cliff above, Has fallen—and buried in its marble breast,

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European Romantic Review 139 All that for him—lost wretch!—the world possest, His home, his happiness, his love! (37–42)

By the end of the poem, the happy peasant is reduced to suicide by plummeting from the very heights of nature that destroyed his possessions. Smith makes her intentions very clear to the readers, letting them see that she is not going to allow the obvious oppression and difficulties of the rural poor to be dismissed for the purposes of poetry. In perhaps her most political poem The Emigrants, Smith looks to the Arcadian vision of rural life for hope. She surveys in ‘yon low hut/Of clay and thatch, where rises the grey smoke/Of smould’ring turf, cut from the adjoining moor,/the labourer, its inhabitant’ (179–182). The rural peasant ‘toils/From the first dawn of twilight, till the Sun/Sinks in the rosy waters of the West’ (182–184). Yet the peasant is so poor that ‘Should Disease,/Born of chill wintry rains, arrest his arm,’ he will be forced to rely on the ‘reluctant dole,/Dealt by th’ unfeeling farmer’ in order to barely prevent the ‘ling’ring spark of life from cold extinction’ (191–193). The laborer, attempting to draw upon enough strength to work at least a little at the hard, physical labor that is his lot, looks toward the mansion of the rich landowner who has left to vacation somewhere where the sight of the poor does not sadden him. Smith laments in her poem that ‘the landscape be too oft deform’d/By figures such as these’ (204– 205), believing that as John Williams argues that if we do not truly see the laborers, we can believe the order of the pastoral (22–25). Therefore, as often in Romantic poetry, the people populating the landscape become political statements that disrupt the pastoral innocence of the poem. The reality of the poverty and oppression prevalent across England keeps intruding on the pastoral vision of the poet until she claims that Peace is here, And o’er our vallies, cloath’d with springing corn, No hostile hoof shall trample, nor fierce flames Wither the wood’s young verdure, ere if form Gradual the laughing May’s luxuriant shade; For, by the rude sea guarded, we are safe, And feel not evils such as with deep sighs The Emigrants deplore. (205–212)

By this time, the reader knows that the sea is no protection from the forces of destruction that will come from within, not without, the country’s borders. England is not safe as long as it allows the abuses of power to continue against the poor. While all of England looks to France and fears an impending invasion that will replicate the Norman conquest, Smith argues that the real danger is already within England. Later in the poem, she introduces the reader to the solitary shepherd once again. Yet this time, she immediately discards the pastoral tradition. The shepherd is alone, cold, and destitute: ‘The solitary Shepherd shiv’ring tends/His dun discolour’d flock’ (299– 300). ‘Born to indigence’ (313), he tends his flock and barely ekes out an existence amidst a ‘land/That boasts such general plenty’ (305–306). Smith openly disparages the economic and political processes that allow such poverty to exist side by side with extreme oppulence. While the political ideology of the time was ill-equipped to

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question rural depravation, Smith describes the poor as an integral part of England’s landscape. Immediately following her description of the shepherd, Smith contrasts this realistic figure with the shepherds of the pastoral tradition: ‘Shepherd, unlike/Him, whom in song the Poet’s fancy crowns/With garlands, and his crook with vi’lets binds’ (300–302). Through her rejection of the pastoral, Smith recuperates the economic and physical realities of human labor and of rural existence that other poets tend to mask. Only the naive observer can view scenes of nature without noticing the horrible toil of the rural laborer and the way nature appears to provide obstacles instead of nurturance to the inhabitants of her slopes. The ‘winding sheep-path’ and ‘soft turf’ of Smith’s childhood memories are mingled with the realities of nature for those who do not choose to observe but must participate in the struggle to survive in the natural environment: Scenes of fond day dreams, I behold ye yet! Where ’twas so pleasant by thy northern slopes To climb the winding sheep-path, aided oft By scatter’d thorns: whose spiny branches bore Small woolly tufts, spoils of the vagrant lamb There seeking shelter from the noon-day sun; And pleasant, seated on the short soft turf, To look beneath upon the hollow way While heavily upward mov’d the labouring wain, And stalking slowly by, the sturdy hind To ease his panting team, stopp’d with a stone The grating wheel. (298–309)

Nature provides a meager subsistence for the sheep and shepherd, supplying only thorns for shade from the sweltering sun. The ‘sturdy hind[’s]’ heavy plodding up the hill is contrasted with the poet’s pleasurable climb and the aid provided by the thorns to the poet with the wool taken from the lamb. While the poet sits contentedly watching the natural surroundings, the hind engages in a Sisyphean task, slowly rolling his cart up the hill once again. Smith also does not ignore the work of women and children. It was commonplace during the eighteenth century for writers who attempted to describe rural labor to limit their portrayals to the work of men or to contrast the difficult work of men to the frivolous activities of women. Cowper in The Task provides an account of an impoverished rural family who are ‘Ill clad and fed but sparely’ (IV: 393). The father works most of the day outside, striving against the elements. His hardships are enumerated in detail, as Cowper stresses the difficulties of driving a team of horses up ‘a hill of snow’ in twenty-five lines of poetry (IV: 341–366). On the other hand, the mother’s work is left to the reader’s imagination. The most strenuous labor she performs is lighting the fire for the house. Before Cowper’s depiction of the rural laborer, Mary Collier in The Woman’s Labour critiqued Stephen Duck’s portrayal of rural women in The Thresher’s Labour. She notes that Duck persuasively describes the hard, physical labor of men but then contrasts that with the lighthearted, carefree lives of the wives (Landry 56–78). The women seem almost parasites to the industrious male laborer.

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Smith, conversely, focuses her account of the rural family in Beachy Head on the labor of the wife and children. Although we are told that the man rears his sheep, the next twenty-three lines mingle the work of the wild birds with the work of the wife and children. They gather rush to light the cottage, destroy the charlock and thistles that threaten the survival of the sheep, and clear the fields of rocks (213–235). Matthew Bray in his dissertation on Charlotte Smith suggests that Smith equates the familial relationship between the man and his wife as one of master and slave. Her labor subsidizes his leisure, ‘like the laborer who smoothes the road for the rich man’s chariot’ (244–245). Smith expresses this belief more specifically when she describes the labor of the mother and children as ‘pil[ing] the stones/In rugged pyramids’ (234–235). In her poetry, the idea that humankind shapes nature occurs only as delusion in the mind of the poet or her characters in order to provide hope or a feeling of community with nature. The peasant of the Alps works hard to shape his environment only to have it destroyed by nature. The peasant at first hopeful of his future is left in utter despair, ending in suicide. Nature cannot be easily read, even through science. Smith does not ignore nor despise science. In fact, science is intricately woven into most of her poetry, either through botany or through geology and archeology. Beachy Head, with its long accounts of the history of the area, affords the reader the closest look at Smith’s understanding of the relationship between science, nature, and the poet. Smith opens the poem by describing how the cliffs of Beachy Head were separated from the continent of Europe: … while Fancy should go forth, And represent the strange and awful hour Of vast concussion; when the Omnipotent Stretch’d forth his arm, and rent the solid hills, Bidding the impetuous main flood rush between The rifted shores, and from the continent Eternally divided this green isle. (4–10)

She footnotes this section, explaining that she is ‘alluding to an idea that this Island was once joined to the continent of Europe, and torn from it by some convulsion of Nature’ (217). In this way, she uses geological knowledge to help bolster her revolutionary setting. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, geology was the ‘science of revolution’ (Bewell 246) and placed the ‘apocalypse at the beginning of creation rather than at the end’ (257). French geologists at the beginning of the nineteenth century argued that ‘geological change was violent and sudden’ (247). However, the English geologist James Hutton argued that the accumulation of small changes resulted in cataclysmic events. Thus, two opposite but equal forces were continually at work on the earth: the erosion of existing land masses through wind, waves and chemical decomposition and the formation of new land masses created by heat acting on the sediment deposited by erosion on the ocean floor. Smith’s Beachy Head utilizes the reader’s knowledge of geology to connect her poem to a revolutionary idea—that nature is a combination of dynamically opposed forces

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and that true art, like nature, must be composed of oppositions that work together. Later in the poem, Smith returns to geological speculation: And still, observing objects more minute, Wondering remark the strange and foreign forms Of sea-shells; with the pale calcareous soil Mingled, and seeming of resembling substance. Tho’ surely the blue Ocean (from the heights Where the downs westward trend, but dimly seen) Here never roll’d its surge. Does Nature then Mimic, in wanton mood, fantastic shapes Of bivalves, and inwreathed volutes, that cling To dark sea-rock of the wat’ry world? Or did this range of chalky mountains, once Form a vast bason, where the Ocean waves Swell’d fathomless? What time these fossil shells, Buoy’d on their native element, were thrown Among the imbedding calx: when the huge hill Its giant bulk heaved, and in strange ferment Grew up a guardian barrier, ’twixt the sea And the green level of the sylvan weald. (372–389)

Smith seems to propose two opposing explanations for the shells found on the downs. The first proposition that the fossils were a game played by nature mimicing the shapes of real sea creatures was already discredited by the time Smith wrote Beachy Head. The fossils were supposed to be inorganic minerals that took on shapes inherent in nature because all forms were derived from a seminal root. This neo-Platonic geology was rejected by most scientists and educated readers by the late 1690s (Ito 269). The second proposition that the shells were deposited after the land was forced up from the sea is, of course, a specific reference to Huttonian geology. So why does Smith propose opposing views and claim to ‘have never read any of the late theories of the earth’ (232)? Matthew Bray argues that Smith offers the neo-Platonic version in order to ‘throw her politically censorious readers off the track of the Huttonian basis of her geology’ (310). Yet by this time, Smith had written numerous poems and novels, including Desmond, The Emigrants, and ‘The Dead Beggar,’ that had infuriated readers of different political persuasions. It is difficult to think that in her final poem, in which she takes so many creative risks, she would be concerned with insulting anyone by stating her political beliefs. Instead I would argue that Smith believes the truth of nature is found somewhere in the middle of the contrary elements. She reinforces this idea by subsequently declaring that these geological suppositions are just ‘conjecture,/Food for vague theories, or vain dispute’ (393–394). Smith cannot read the fossil history clearly nor other histories left behind because nature refuses it. Like many women writers, Smith doubts whether she or any poet can be the ‘designated reader of Nature’s designs’ (Mellor, Feminism 46). She discusses how the ‘lone antiquary’ looks on the burial mounds left behind by former inhabitants of the downs. Through archeology, the observer traces what he believes to be the history behind the bones and other objects left behind:

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European Romantic Review 143 He perhaps may trace, Or fancy he can trace, the oblong square Where the mail’d legions, under Claudius, rear’d The rampire, or excavated fossil delved; What time the huge unwieldy Elephant Auxiliary reluctant, hither led, From Africa’s forest glooms and tawny sands, First felt the Northern blast, and his vast frame Sunk useless; whence in after ages found, The wondering hinds, on those enormous bones Gaz’d; and in giants dwelling on the hill Believed and marvell’d. (408–419)

Smith again sets up a series of apparent contradictions. In footnotes to this section, Smith supplies four separate suppositions: that the bones were left over from the Biblical flood, that they were brought by the Emperor Claudius, that they might have been native species in a time long ago, or that they are the bones of giants who lived formerly in the hills (234). Smith does not evaluate each of these ideas as equally scientific, but she does recognize that each conjecture is an important part of the true history of the area. The peasants’ belief in giants provides many of the place names of the area; the Biblical flood story provides the inhabitants with a spiritual foundation; the belief that Claudius brought them to the downs allows for the greatness of humankind; and the supposition that they might have once been native species shows a close connection between the seemingly diverse parts of the world. In her discussion of the ‘lone antiquary,’ Smith reminds us that although we may be tempted to value his scientific theory over the others, his conjectures are as much guess work and as biased as the others. He, by no means, is absolutely able to read nature, but instead can only ‘fancy he can trace’ or ‘perhaps’ trace the messages left by nature. Matthew Bray admits that ‘Smith presents—scientific, historical, and superstitious— as limited lenses that equally distort the physical world’ but still identifies her view as ‘value-laden’ on the side of empirical reason (283–284). Contrary to Bray’s assertion, Smith has as much doubt of the objectivity of the empirical view as she does of the peasant’s superstitious belief. Throughout her poetry, Smith provides the reader with various superstitions of the local inhabitants. Sometimes she rejects them outright as in the belief that the Goatsucker injures goats and cattle: It is called Goatsucker …, from a strange prejudice taken against it by the Italians, who assert that it sucks their goats; and the peasants of England still believe that a disease in the backs of their cattle, occasioned by a fly, which deposits its egg under the skin, and raises a boil, sometimes fatal to calves, is the work of this bird, which they call a Puckeridge. Nothing can convince them that their beasts are not injured by this bird, which they therefore hold in abhorrence. (239)

At other times, she is completely unable to dismiss what appears to be an entirely absurd belief in a ghost: Some years ago a strange notion prevailed among the people occasionally passing over one of the highest of the South Downs, that a man on horseback was often seen coming towards those who were returning from market on Saturday evening. This appearance, the

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K. Tayebi noise of whose horse’s feet they distinctly heard, vanished as soon as it came within an hundred yards of the passengers who often tried to meet it. At other times it was seen following them. They have stopped to let it approach, but it always melted into air. I have been present when a farmer not otherwise particularly weak or ignorant, said, that he had seen it, and distinctly heard the horse galloping towards him. (127)

Although Smith acknowledges that this idea of a ghost is a ‘strange notion,’ she presents as a witness a person that she herself would call reliable. In contrast, Wordsworth in his poem ‘An Evening Walk’ describes a similar scene of ghostly horsemen, but his footnote varies greatly from Smith’s: ‘See a description of an appearance of this kind in Clark’s Survey of the Lakes, accompanied by vouchers of its veracity, that may amuse the reader’ (Noyes 247). Unlike Smith, Wordsworth leaves no doubt that the superstition is not only unbelievable but even ridiculous. In the end, Smith remains ambivalent toward superstitious beliefs. To believe that she trusts and values scientific knowledge more, one must privilege her footnotes over her poetry. Throughout Smith’s poetry, the scientific view is asserted and then tempered by the poet.2 After providing the reader with geological speculation on the origin of shells in Beachy Head, Smith reminds the reader that science illuminates only a partial truth: Ah! very vain is Science’s proudest boast, And but a little light its flame yet lends To its most ardent votaries; since from whence These fossil forms are seen, is but conjecture. (390–393)

In place of objective certainty, Smith presents the peasant’s relationship to nature: … to his daily task the peasant goes, Unheeding such inquiry; with no care But that the kindly change of sun and shower, Fit for his toil the earth he cultivates. (395–398)

The peasant wishes to read nature in order to best survive its force while the antiquary attempts to read of his own history through nature. Nature becomes for the antiquary a means of discovering more about humankind. This multifaceted view Smith experiments with is particularly appropriate at a time when the invention of the microscope and the telescope ‘inspired not only reconceptions of what “nature” consisted but also rethinking of what man’s best relation to nature might be’ (Kroeber 9). This scientific view of nature produced a double vision that combined both a macroscopic view of ‘nature as an indifferent mechanism of cosmic physical forces’ and a microscopic view of the ‘natural world as the wonderfully contingent play of minutely particularized biochemical processes’ (43). Smith’s poems combine a view of the ever expanding horizon with the view of nature at its most detailed and intimate. Atop the hills of Beachy Head, the poet surveys the vastness of nature, tempered only by the power of the eye: ‘So extensive are some of the views from these hills, that only the want of power in the human eye to travel so far, prevents London itself being discerned’ (238). The expansiveness of the scene forces the poet to recognize the inherent connection between items separated in time and space, from the distant ‘mart/Of England’s capital’ to the ridge of Black-down, ‘shagg’d with heath, and

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swelling rude/Like a dark island from the vale’ (484–485, 491–492). The city and the country, the center of commerce and the rural fields of production are inextricably linked. Immediately following this passage, Smith connects the ancient conqueror with the humble farmer currently living on the land: The Conqueror’s successors fiercely fought, Tearing with civil feuds the desolate land. But now a tiller of the soil dwells there, And of the turret’s loop’d and rafter’d halls Has made an humbler homestead—Where he sees, Instead of armed foeman, herds that graze. (488–503)

Smith explains in a footnote that many of the ‘fortresses or castles built by Stephen of Blois’ have been ‘converted into farm houses’ (238). Though separated by time, the two men are linked through nature, and the hierarchical structure of society is dismantled. At the same time, Smith encourages a close-up, detailed view of nature, without which the picture is deceptively incomplete. In her poem ‘Studies by the Sea,’ she points out how those who do not look closely at the scene see only redundancy: Ah! wherefore do the incurious say, That this stupendous Ocean wide No change presents from day to day, Save only the alternate tide, Or save when gales of Summer glide Across the lightly crisped wave; Or, when against the cliff’s rough side As equinoctial tempests rave It wildly bursts; o’erwhelms the deluged strand, Tears down its bounds, and desolates the land? (1–10)

If one is only interested in the sublime nature, in large cataclysmic actions, then one misses some of the most important aspects of nature. The next eleven stanzas are devoted to cataloging the small, gentle actions of the ocean that through cooperation with the rest of nature and through time produce a myriad of changes. Smith describes the soft interplay between the wind, sun, and the ocean; the delicate change of color as a result of weather or time; the vast array of plants and animals nurtured in the water; and the multitude of creatures, including man, that have been carried to far regions on the waves. The scene focuses not on the sublime but on the maternal aspects of the beautiful. She asks the reader to forget the thundering break/Of waves, that in the tempest rise,/The falling cliff, the shatter’d wreck,/The howling blast, the sufferers’ cries’ and listen instead to the ‘fairy lullabies/That tributary waters bear,/From precipices, dark with ply woods/ And inland rocks, and heathy solitudes’ (51–54, 57–60). The soft voice of nature speaks as loudly to Smith as the raging power of nature. She then introduces the reader to eagles who ‘rear their sanguine brood’ (72) in the cliffs and to the eider duck who sacrifices her own downy covering for her young (96– 99). The mother’s sacrifice is emphasized in a footnote: ‘… the eider Duck lines her nest most carefully with the feathers from her own breast, which are particularly fine and light: the nest is robbed, and she a second time unplumes herself for the

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accommodation of her young’ (293). In the end, it is from the maternal breast of nature that the life force flows: No more then let the incurious say, No change this World of Water shews, … Shew them its bounteous breast bestows On myriads life: and bid them see In every wave that circling flows, Beauty, and use, and harmony— (121-128)

Though Smith’s nature is nurturing, it is not impractical. She does not ignore the fact that the existence of one creature might necessitate the destruction of another individual. Smith’s eagle mother must wait with ‘hosts of other Sea-birds’ for the welcome sight of shoals of fish so she may ‘bear [the] silver captives from the deep’ (80). Even the eider duck who with such self-sacrifice nurtures her brood will eventually abandon her nest if it appears that the sacrifice is no longer helpful: If the lining be again taken away, the drake lends his breast feathers; but if, after that, their unreasonable persecutors deprive it of its lining, they abandon the nest in despair, the master of the domicile wisely judging, that any farther sacrifice would be useless. (293)

Man, too, participates in this process. The eider duck’s nest is usually robbed by the adventurous native of the north of Scotland [who] is let down from the highest cliffs that hang over the sea, while with little or no support, he collects the eggs of the sea fowl, in a basket tied round his waist. The feathers also of these birds gathered from the rocks, are a great object to these poor industrious people. (293)

The man gathers the eggs and feathers for his family at great risk to his own life. Nature at any time may claim his life just as he claims the lives of the eider’s young. Unlike the guilty boy in The Prelude who steals the bird’s eggs for sport, this man ‘collects’ the eggs, ‘Urged by imperious want’ (105). Treated with respect, nature provides for humans. The annual migration of fish provides the ‘Lapland savage food and light’ (70), and the sea birds with their ‘superior instinct’ help the ‘Highland native’ find the shoals of fish: Thrown on the summit of an high clift, overlooking the sea, the native watches for the approach of the expected good, and sees with pleasure the numerous sea birds, who, by an instinct superior to his own, perceive it at a far greater distance, and follow to take their share of the swarming multitude. (292)

Man and animals share in the banquet but do not take more than their need. Smith describes a cooperative rather than a possessive interaction with nature. In this way, nature becomes less of an awe-inspiring force and more of an intimate friend. She presents a nature ‘with whom [humans must] cooperate in the daily business of life, to the mutual advantage of each’ (Mellor, Gender 97). Mellor argues that this stance toward nature is typical for women writers who describe ‘a heightened sensibility, not of anxiety, but of love, reverence, and mutual relationship’ in their interactions with nature (97). Smith’s nature works together without distinguishing between positive or negative plants. The parasite, insect, and weed are as crucial to the

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system as the rose or even humans. In Beachy Head, Smith describes a scene in which nature nourishes ‘the parasitic bindweed equally with other “uncultur’d” plants, all of them existing within a complex symbiosis that reinforces the integrity of each without hierarchy or the imposition of human aesthetic considerations’ (Curran, ‘British’ 77). In ‘The Heath,’ she presents the reader with an untamed nature that flourishes even in the worst conditions. Yet this ‘unequal ground/[which] Has never on its rugged surface felt/The hand of Industry, …/Is not without its beauty’ (1–4). Smith finds a nature ‘full of life’ (7) among the thorns, ‘ragged gorse,’ and inhospitable soil. Here various birds make their homes, insects find sustenance, and mushrooms grow. Plants that barely eke out their own existence from the poor soil support the parasitic dodder which ‘winds; and nourishes,/Rootless itself, its small white flowers on them’ (42–43). What at first sight appears to be a failure of nature becomes an abundant, thriving ecosystem supporting a variety of plants and animals. Smith understands that it is exactly the natural cycle of death and rebirth, rejected by most poets in favor of immortality, that provides the rejuvenation, duration, and power of nature: As in the woods, where leathery lichen weaves Its wint’ry web among the sallow leaves, Which (thro’ cold months in whirling eddies blown) Decay beneath the branches once their own, From the brown shelter of their foliage sear, Spring the young blooms that lead the floral year: (‘Verses Supposed to Have Been Written in the New Forest, in Early Spring’ 1–6)

Embracing the cycles of nature and recognizing oneself as a natural creature, part of the continual process of change is the only hope humans have of overcoming alienation. The poem Beachy Head begins by describing a violent tear of nature that forces Beachy Head into the isolation of an island: Of vast concussion; when the Omnipotent Stretch’d forth his arm, and rent the solid hills, Bidding the impetuous main flood rush between The rifted shores, and from the continent Eternally divided this green isle. (6–10)

But the poet turns away from separation of the island and describes how the cliffs, representative of this separation, become the home for terns, gulls, and tarrocks (and eventually men) and echo the voices of life and community. The sea and heavens become harmonious, and men and nature work together, barely disturbing the calm: The sloop, her angular canvas shifting still, Catches the light and variable air That but a little crisp the summer sea, Dimpling its tranquil surface. (33–36)

Isolation is replaced by community and connectedness. Society is a natural part of nature and is almost embraced by the natural landscape: Those lowly roofs of thatch are half conceal’d By the rude arms of trees, lovely in spring,

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K. Tayebi When on each bough, the rosy-tinctur’d bloom Sits thick, and promises autumnal plenty. (313–315)

The nature she has come to worship is not completely untamed nor is it sublime. Instead the poet wanders among ‘warrens, and heaths,/And yellow commons, and birch-shaded hollows/And hedge rows, bordering unfrequented lanes’ (347–349). These she describes as Nature’s ‘rudest scenes,’ yet society is evident throughout her description with hedge rows and lanes. Mies and Shiva discuss the importance of interconnectedness to women’s views of nature. The life force which inhabits and permeates all things, they call the ‘female principle,’ the ‘connecting principle’ (17). For women, this life force pulsing through nature is largely identical to their own sexual energy, their creative forces which link them to each other, to other life forms, and the elements. Charlotte Smith describes those who live this connectedness as satisfied, unlike those who try to dominate and control. The hind who lives by the rhythms of nature though laboring is still blessed: More blest the hind, who from his bed of flock Starts—when the birds of morn their summons give, And waken’d by the lark—‘the shepherd’s clock,’ Lives but to labour—labouring but to live. (‘To Dependence’ 5–8)

In contrast, Smith who through oppressive laws has been alienated from the fruits of her own labor is like a slave chained to her fate. Throughout her poetry, Smith finds despair and alienation more often than peace and tranquility. But her moments of true liberty come when she is most connected to nature: ‘For here the soul unruffled feels its powers,/And seeks the Hermit Peace within his forest bowers’ (‘Sonnet to the Forest Ytene’ 13–14). To escape to a world of fulfillment, the poet must find a place not separate from nature but inside it. Yet the poet does not need to lose her individuality. In fact, Smith’s concept of the poet’s relationship to nature closely parallels current theories in biology, which suggest that the individuality of an organism is not definable except through its interactions with its environment, through its interdepedencies. An organism’s uniqueness consists in ‘intersubjective’ connections and is determined not by separation but by ‘attunement,’ participation in ‘communities’ … defined by historically individualized mutualities of need and desire. (Kroeber 7)

Liberty comes from an ability to live at one with nature without violating her, from participation in communities, from interactions with nature, and from a mutual interchange. Mies and Shiva state that women tend not to ‘separate the material from the spiritual’ and, therefore, discover the sacredness of life (17). Most importantly, this spirituality is located not in an ‘other-worldly deity, in a transcendence, but in everyday life’ (18). Due to this, Smith’s writings locate the interconnectedness of all things in the everyday domestic sphere. The humble peasant or hermit experiences the spiritual in everyday tasks. The greatness of the human spirit is not to be found in the historical moments of battles fought and scientific discoveries made, which she uses to frame the first part of Beachy Head, but in the common battles of everyday life, the struggles to

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survive. Smith contrasts the fishermen who live in harmony with nature, literally matching their movements to those of the seasons and the ocean, with the British imperialists who acquire their goods at the expense of the ‘sacred freedom’ of other people (59). The trader is a ‘dubious spot’ on the horizon (40) while the fishing vessels seem to be a natural part of nature. The trading vessel breaks through the calmness of the night with ‘loud clamours’ and ‘busy hums,’ as she ‘ploughs the sand’ and leans off balance in the sea (107–109). On the other hand, the fishermen cooperate with the setting of the sun: The fishermen, who at set seasons pass Many a league off at sea their toiling night, Now hail their comrades, from their daily task Returning; and make ready for their own, With the night tide commencing. (100–104)

The fishermen do not separate themselves from human society in order to connect with nature. They continue to hail comrades and work within their community, for Smith recognizes that a separation from society is destructive ‘because it rejects the concept of reciprocity and reconciliation’ (Fernandez 7). In this way, the fishermen are not absorbed by nature, but are both inside and outside nature at once. Susan Griffin in Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her asserts that women ‘are nature seeing nature … nature with a concept of nature’ (226). Smith observes and participates in nature; she is both places, subject and object, at once. Through close observation revealed in an earth-bound aesthetic that closely catalogs her environment through the botanist’s eye, Smith’s poetry transports the gaze of the poet to the seemingly insignificant. Blurring boundaries, her poetry creates a unified, feminized nature that no longer must be dominated and transcended by the poet. As with all the great writers, Smith fails to achieve a deep connection with nature as often as she succeeds, but she provides a voice for the feminine. She does not completely contradict and overturn the values of her male counterparts, yet her poetry forces us to reconsider our assumptions about the use of nature by male poets. By combining numerous apparent dichotomies—nature and society, microscopic and macroscopic views, science and superstition—she produces a poetry of dynamically opposed forces which helps us find our place within the natural world and brings us closer to the source, the continuance, and the completion of human existence.

Notes [1]

[2]

Smith turns frequently to childhood for happiness and oneness with nature, but she continually shows the idea to be a delusion, just complete naiveté that ignores the realities, or an innocence that can never be regained. Smith’s rejection of science as the ultimate objective view is supported by current feminist criticism. See for example, Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science; Anna Bramwell, Ecology in the Twentieth Century: A History; Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature.

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Copyright of European Romantic Review is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

Copyright of European Romantic Review is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.