One dominant figure acting in both of these Hemans poems is light or the invocation of it. The opening stanza of "The Wife of Asdrubal" is particularly rife with imagery of light, though it is portrayed as more fierce than delicate, as the "sun sets brightly" but "the flames of Carthage throw." This image is attributed to the general's wife who is glowing "intensely bright." Whereas light is often meant to be promising or a manifestation of good, here it is more threatening, passionate, or even sublime since the woman is "mightier than death, untameable by fate." In the poem's final stanza, too, the dagger with which the woman kills her children gleams brightly. Thus, perhaps Hemans is attempting to comment on women's potential to break out of the oppression of their male counterparts who selfishly sacrifice family to fame as Asdrubal had allegedly done. This light signifies the power and agency females have to achieve this end and it burns especially bright in such intense moments of action. This figure is even more important in "Bride of the Greek Isle." As the bride bids farewell to her family, she claims, "Like shadows o'er me sweep,/ I leave my sunny childhood here." Her life becomes dimmer as she moves to her husband's home, where "The sun looked not on them in that sweet shade." However, after his death, she "kindled her funeral pile" and is once again able to ignite the metaphorical flame that marriage had extinguished.
I also thought that light was an important imagistic device, particularly in "The Bride of the Greek Isle." The entire first stanza is saturated with images of light: flashing, starry, golden, gleaming, etc. Moving through the poem, one can clearly see, as you pointed out, the stark change to the more gloomy and dark imagery of the farewell. The this moving into darkness seems to emulate despair she feels losing her agency and individual identity in favor of the life of someone else.
ReplyDeleteI love your reading of the "kindled her funeral pile" as how the bride was able to regain the light once she left the shadow of her husband. I think the darkness of the marriage contrasts the light of the woman outside of marriage to show the extent to which a woman's light -- her reason, judgment, personality -- is burnt out in a marriage. What I think is interesting though is that the marriage is characterized with darkness -- suggesting that there is no light at all, perhaps suggesting that although a woman's light is burnt out, a man does not bring light to the marriage, critiquing his lack of reason and judgement.
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