Progressive Language and Conservative Ideologies

While reading Hemans’ work I found myself unable to extricate it from the work of both Percy and Mary Shelley. The works of both Shelley’s expressed at times tumult, passion, mysticism and despair, and were engaged with existential concerns throughout. Percy was a bohemian rebel, challenging contemporary social and moral standards and was exiled as a result. Mary subverted such conventions by writing from a male point of view and addressing serious socio-psychological issues in Frankenstein. Hemans, however, seems to reproduce contemporary mores and perpetuate female ideals of delicacy, purity, and faith through both her subject matter and style. Looking at The Homes of England specifically, Hemans paints a poetic picture that is deeply rooted in domestic, nationalistic, and religious ideology utilizing a relatively simplistic rhyme scheme and singsong rhythm. While Hemans does focus on a casualty of the Napoleonic Wars in “Casabianca”, albeit a “young and faithful” child, in “The Homes of England” Hemans addresses the home front. She extols the praises of the “stately…merry…blessed…free” and “fair” homes of England seemingly as a battle cry for those on the front lines to defend the values of their homeland and those, ostensibly women, at home to defend these values accordingly by ensuring that their “…child’s glad spirit loves; Its country and its God.”

Perhaps I am reading this poem from a distinctly 2011 perspective, but I was struck by the differences in tone and subject matter between the work of the Shelleys and Hemans. Not to say that one must be a political or social radical to be a literary Romantic, a style to which Hemans’ vivid and expressive language clearly adheres, or that a poet must be a rebel or revolutionary to be taken seriously. In sum, what most interested me about Hermans’ work was her utilization of theatrical, Romantic language to express socially conservative ideals.