Nature and the Natural

            Fundamental to the Romantics was a desire to remove themselves from a “classical order and form” (OED). Their endeavor to differ themselves from man’s order and form led them to a great appreciation for nature. They saw nature as the answer to all that they disliked from previous schools of thought i.e. the classical. Frequently, Romantics used metaphors from nature and found their inspiration in the outdoors. In addition, the Romantics applied the idea of the ‘natural’ to humanity.  They identified a parallel between the freedom of nature and the natural man.  For the Romanticists, nature or the natural was not a limiting term; believing that it could be used to describe anything that indulged in a freedom void of human constraint or construction.   In the following poems, we will see how poets applied the term in both ways. There is no clear way to define the Romantic’s relationship with nature or the natural, apart from simply noting that the Romantics loved what nature symbolized.  The Romantics had no interest in defining nature but rather thrived on its blurring of lines.  For them, it was an expression of what they desired to be: free.

            Romantics identified a unique relationship between nature and youth because both were marked by innocence and purity.  Thus there is often a theme of longing for youth in Romantic poems.  The romantics saw the removal from nature by age in two ways. First, with age, we become more removed from nature i.e. the sun, the trees, the ground.  The young are less removed from nature in the sense that they still appreciate these things around them. Romantic poets believe that with time people are corrupted by man’s conventions and restrictions, and thus lose their ability to recognize and love nature.  Secondly, romantic poets believe that age can potentially remove people from their sense of their natural selves.  Man’s conventions and restrictions can bind up their hearts, minds, and souls until they do not know themselves anymore. Romantic poets believed Romanticism was an ideology that protected against this distancing of self from nature and one’s natural self.  The English Romantics “resented the attempts to reduce nature academically to mathematical and logical order.  They saw nature like mind, as willful, energetic, and dynamic” (Woodring).  For more information regarding the Romantics’ relation to Nature: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.htm

                                    John Constable’s The Haywain is a prime example of how

                                    Romantic artists strived for a peaceful, harmonious relationship

                                    with a free, untainted nature.

            Many Romantic poets heavily explored these themes. One such poet, William Wordsworth contemplates how age and other manmade things remove us from both nature and our natural selves in his poem Tintern Abbey published in 1798. In the poem, Wordsworth is reflecting on his youth as he looks out over Tintern Abbey.  The words he uses to describe his youth are representative of an innocent, carefree understanding of nature.  Wordsworth rejoices in the “wild green landscape” and “cottage grounds” (Windhover). These descriptions indicate the “naïveté and simplistic understanding of nature” (Windhover). Windhover points out a turn in the poem regarding how Wordsworth sees nature.  Age teaches Wordsworth to “look on nature, not as in the hour/ of thoughtless youth” (96).  This shift is symbolic of that transformation that romantic poets identified in all human lives.  Romantics believed that over time, worldly conventions and restrictions destroy man’s pure and innocent appreciation of nature. However, Wordsworth, as a Romantic thinker, offers a sense of hope.  If the reader like Wordsworth indulges in Romantic thought, then he or she may escape the grading presence of man’s conventions.  It seems that Wordsworth himself is able to do just this by looking at the world through a Romantic lens. Through this lens, Wordsworth is able to speak “of the natural scenes where living and inanimate things speak to eye and ear” (Beach).  Because he is committed to Romantic thought, Wordsworth appreciation of nature has grown with age.  He now knows to look for the beauty in nature rather then falling prey to the world’s restrictions. Windhover believes that “mental maturity into adulthood helped [Wordsworth] hear the "music of humanity" (92) and experience nature in a healthier light” (Windover).  Interestingly, in Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth still draws his greatest appreciation of nature from remembering the free and joyful nature of his childhood.  This reminds us that, for the Romantics, there is an inherently important relationship between youth and nature.  For more information about William Wordsworth’s progression as a poet and specifically his visit to Tintern Abbey, please visit: http://english.ucsb.edu:591/rchrono/.

            Because the Romantics associated nature with freedom, purity, and innocence, they were adamantly opposed to man’s intrusion on nature.  For them, nature was unstained but it was man’s invention and influence that robbed it of its beauty.  In the same way that Romantic poets often wished for youth as opposed to corrupted age, they often wished for pure nature as opposed to a human tainted nature.  In This Lime Tree Bower My Prison published in 1797, Coleridge demonstrates the Romantic poets desire for nature free of man’s degradation. In the poem, the speaker is “stuck in a bower, which the OED says is a dwelling or abode of some sort” (Anna Leigh). Imprisoned in the Lime Tree Bower, the speaker longs desperately to escape so that he can enjoy the nature that exists beyond his current station. He cries out for the nature that his friends are experiencing without him:

“The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep,

And only speckled by the mid-day sun;

Where it’s slim trunk the ash from rock to rock

Flings arching like a bridge; —that branchless ash,

Unsunn'd and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves

Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,

Fann'd by the water-fall!”

His descriptions of nature beyond the bower emphasize nature as free of man’s influence.  The roaring dell is “only speckled by the mid-day sun”-- notice the use of “only” reminding us that the only influence in nature is nature and nothing else (10-11).  Rather than a man-made construction, the “slim trunk” serves as a bridge “from rock to rock” (12-13).  The stark contrast in how the speaker describes his bower and the nature beyond reminds us of how opposed the Romantics were to man’s intrusion on the natural.  I think Anna Leigh is very perceptive to note that even though the lime tree bower is “made of natural elements” it “functions as a prison” (Anna Leigh).  I believe this shows us that man’s influence in any sort of way “robs [nature] of [its] innate beauty and freedom, making [it] prison-like”(Anna Leigh).  Romantic poets insisted that to preserve the integrity of nature it must be free of man’s touch.  While Coleridge entirely disagreed with man’s intrusion on nature, he did believe that man had the right to experience nature.  Like the speaker in the poem, Coleridge as a Romantic wanted to experience nature.  Coleridge and other Romantics believed that they could be changed through the purity and beauty of nature.  As a Romantic poet, Coleridge saw poetry as a way of discovering and sharing nature. Coleridge believed his poetry could only be beautiful if it imitated nature because nature was the only true beauty in the world.  In his work “This Lime Tree Bower My Prison And a Recurrent Action in Coleridge”, R. A. Durr describes Coleridge’s poetry relationship to nature. Durr explains that for Coleridge “art is an imitation of nature serving as ‘the mediatress between, and the reconciler of, nature and man’” (Durr 1).  Poetry is a “reenactment of nature’s essential act, the natura naturans, the emergence, the realization, of the universal in the particular” (Durr 1).   The hope for Romantic poets such as Coleridge was that in all they did, their lives and their poetry, they would shake free of restriction and exist in the purity and beauty of nature.

            As mentioned previously, the Romantics applied the principles they identified in nature, freedom and purity, to their understanding of humanity.  An element of this was how they viewed natural human behavior and natural human relations.  Romanticists wrote various poems accusing certain man-made constructions of fighting against the natural way that man and relationships should exist. One such institution attacked by the Romantics was marriage.  They identified something unnatural about the restrictions that governed marital relations in society.  Often they disagreed over the degree of women’s submission and/or the division of the public and private sphere.  In her post about Jane Austen’s Persuasion (published 1818), Carly describes the contrast between relationships that are based on something natural, love, and relationships that are based on social constructions.   For the Romantic, a successful marriage was one that wasn’t defined or limited by social constructions but was one that embraced true human nature.  In Persuasion, Austen gives us two different examples of marriage: one marriage conforms to the classical, traditional form of a marriage and the other thrives on a Romantic understanding of self and of the heart. As Carly explains the Croft’s marriage is successful because they “formed a happy marriage based on mutual understanding, breaking some of the commonly accepted gender roles of the time” (Carly).   To help us better see how radically different the Croft’s Romantic relationship is, Austen presents the Musgrove marriage.  The Musgrove marriage is “unhappy, fraught with misunderstanding, and controlled by Mary’s nagging and complaining” (Carly).  The intensely negative light in which Austen presents the Musgrove marriage communicates Austen’s disapproval of the restrictions and codes of traditional life.  In contrast, Austen praises the Croft’s marriage for its honesty and equality.   With this, Austen calls the traditional social spheres into question.  It seems to me that “the Crofts, who seem to defy these established roles, represent the ideal marriage” symbolize a fundamental element of Romanticism. Romantics believed that traditional societal constructions (such as the Musgrove’s marriage) were flawed.  They belied that marriage should be more in touch with humanity as well as more in touch with Romantic ideas such as freedom and a lack of societal codes. For further information on Austen’s life and works, please visit: http://english.ucsb.edu:591/rchrono/.

            The role of women was another element of society that was heavily critiqued by the Romantics.  Their arguments on the role of women centered on a tension between the role society had constructed for women and the role nature intended for women.  While we read a number of writers who were concerned with the role of women, Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the forefront advocates of women’s rights.  In her posts, Windover discusses Wollstonecraft’s view on women. In her Vindication of the Rights of Women published in 1792, Wollstonecraft heavily criticizes the constraints society has placed on women.  Furthermore, she laments that women have been so conditioned to their roles that they are unable to recognize their own lack of self.  Wollstonecraft cites Milton’s statement “women are formed for softness and sweet attractive grace", ultimately depriving them of character or souls” as evidence of how society sees women (Windhover).  Wollstonecraft lauds the fact that women have accepted a “predestined utility as an object cultivated to please men” (Windhover).  Wollstonecraft sees women who act in this manner as going against their natural selves.  However, Wollstonecraft admits,  “In the government of the physical world it is observable that the female in point of strength is, in general, inferior to the male. This is the law of nature… (373).” I believe she includes this in her argument because she is aware there are obvious physical differences between men and women.  Yet, she insists, the physical dispositions of men verses women should not keep women from being her own person. There is a difference between the natural body and the natural mind.  While Wollstonecraft admits that physically women aren’t as strong, she insists that the natural mind of women has the “knowledge and ability to self promote their moral, emotional, and rational selves” (Windhover).  Thus, reformed education for women was fundamental to her argument. Wollstonecraft demanded that women have the inherent natural ability to grow and learn.

            Romanticists were infatuated with the idea of nature.  Finding their inspiration in the untainted woods and sky, they began to expand their understanding of nature.  Ultimately, their understanding of nature would grow to include the ‘natural’. Both of these concepts were important in Romanticist poetry and artwork.  Through an understanding of nature and the natural, they hoped to grasp the true, unpolluted essence of life’s components: relationships, emotions, surroundings, reality and more.  

            Above: J. M. W Turner’s The Slave Ship.  I would like to borrow

            Alex’s words about how artwork (and this poem in particular) was

            employed and explored by Romanticists:

“The painting's emotive inclusion of a fiery orange-red center and iron shackles and manacles clasping the wrists and ankles of drowning slaves captures the bleak, aggressive event inimitably. The Romantic Period's glorification of nature was dually reinforced in the piece: Turner illustrates the immense power of nature over humanity with his relatively minuscule human forms in comparison to the vast sea and overarching sky. He lends a sort of unearthly element to the painting, which reinforces the disconnect between what is acceptable in reality and what is being permitted to transpire: the evils of slavery and the slave trade. Though his perspective is merely implied through a rash representation, his motives and feelings are quite clear. In fact, the power of the piece to elicit and provoke negative responses by audience members is, perhaps, more effective as a device of persuasion than words themselves” (Alex). 

Work Cited

 Beach, Joseph W. "Reason and Nature in Wordsworth." Journal of the History of Ideas 1.3 (1940): 335-51. JSTOR. Web. 23 Apr. 2012. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2707091>.

Constable, John.  "The Haywain." 26 Apr. 2012. http://www.thelilypad.co.uk/haywain.html.

Durr, R. A. ‘"This Lime--Tree Bower My Prison’ and a Recurrent Action in Coleridge." ELH 26.4 (1959): 514-30. JSTOR. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/2871803>.

Turner, J. M. W. “The Slave Ship.” 26 Apr. 2012. http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/ellpatke/EN3246/Class%20test.htm.

Woodring, Carl. "Nature and Art in the Nineteenth Century." PMLA 92.2 (1977): 193-202. JSTOR. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/461940>.