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Alexis Gomez
“Unromanticizing”
Romanticism
In my quest to deciphering which texts
count under the umbrella of Romanticism, I ran into the term realism. I learned
that realism is the exact opposite of romanticism. While romantic writing
typically tells the reader that the sky is the limit, realism awakens the reader
out of that dream-like trance and reminds the reader of all of the limits the
character faces. Romantic writing seems more dream-like and grand, while works
that contains both romanticism and realism allows the reader to relate to the
text on a more personal level because the reader may be able to relate to the
struggles as they are representative of the life the reader lives.
In the early stages of the course,
one of the first terms we learned was Romanticism. The style of Romanticism in a
text is normally regarded as utilizing “feelings, emotions, imagination, lack of
facts or logic, nostalgia for the past, or being gothic” (“Romanticism”). All of
the styles mentioned above are attributes of Edgar Allan Poe’s tale “Ligeia.”
Poe opens the story with the lines, “cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or
even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia” (“Ligeia”
[1]); by opening the lines up stating that he does not recall all of the facts
how they once were, it signals to the reader that the story they are about to
read will have dream-like and unrealistic qualities that are associated with
romanticism. By announcing that some of the memories have been distorted over
time, Poe is by default going to be filling in those gaps with his imagination.
It is through his imagination that Ligeia was turned into an idealized gothic
figure, as Poe writes, “They were, I must believe, far larger than the ordinary
eyes of our own race. They were even fuller than the fullest of the gazelle
eyes… The hue of the orbs was the most brilliant of black” (“Ligeia” [5]).
Again, Poe is reiterating that some of what he is describing may or may not be
factual as he says, “I must believe.” Poe is giving Ligeia gothic-like features
by describing her as having an excess of everything with the words “far larger,
fuller than the fullest, and most,” when describing her eyes being larger and
darker than any race ever known. Yes, it is true that because of the unrealistic
nature that is associated with texts like “Ligeia” the audience seems to become
infatuated with the text, but the passion seems to remain at arm’s length
because the readers are not able to fully relate to the struggles that the
characters face in romantic tales.
While Poe seems to be writing a tale
where memory is distorted because of time, Whitman’s “The Wound-Dresser” seems
to also be recalling a memory, but different than Poe, Whitman’s memory seems to
add more hints of realism because of his experience and reliability with the
description of the details in his story. This can be noticed when Whitman
recalls details like, “Bearing the bandages, water and sponge…Where they lie on
the ground after the battle brought in, where their priceless blood reddens the
grass the ground” (“The Wound-Dresser” [2.13,15-16]). It is precisely the vivid,
truthful, and real-life experiences like the one from Whitman’s poem above that
gives the reader a sense of understanding the text on a deeper and more human
level, unlike tales such as “Ligeia.”
Even though Whitman’s “The
Wound-Dresser” has realistic detail in regard to the real-life horrors that many
of the soldiers in The Civil War had to go through, Whitman also incorporates
some hints of Romanticism within his poem. One of the lines that can be regarded
as being romantic is when Whitman writes, “Some suffer so much, I recall the
experience sweet and sad” (“The Wound-Dresser” [4.5]). The first detail that is
pertinent to the style of Romanticism is that nostalgia he presents with the
experience he once had; it also brings out his emotions of being “sweet and
sad,” as well as making it evident that he is talking about more than just the
here and now, but the past that was beyond that. Whitman is using the
combination of realistic details and time and ends the poem with a sense of
romanticism in that he is transcending beyond the realistic details that he has
provided with the war.
Similar to that of Whitman, Davis’
“Life in the Iron-Mill” presents a similar mixture of both a realistic setting
with some hints of romanticism. “Life in the Iron-Mill” can be regarded as a
realistic story, because many of the issues it covers are ones that everyday
people actually deal with. This story deals with characters that are struggling,
working hard, dealing with class issues, stealing and facing realistic
consequences for their actions. However, different from that of Whitman but
similar to Poe, Davis incorporates the gothic, which falls under the umbrella of
romanticism, in her story. Davis’ story is very unique in that she combines
realistic elements, like an otherwise boring working engine, and elevates it to
something more by adding the gothic to it. A good example of this can be found
when Davis writes,
“the unsleeping engines groan and shriek, the fiery pools
of metal boil and surge…but as soon as the clock strikes midnight, the great
furnaces break forth with renewed fury, the clamor begins with fresh, breathless
vigor, the engines sob and shriek like "gods in pain" (“Life in the Iron-Mill”
[41]).
With this story, it seems as though
Davis is trying to add a romantic element to that of something realistic like an
engine. By making work-related things more than they are, she is not only
relating the material to her audience, but making them see it as something
exciting. Work life in the iron mills does not seem enticing, but the way she
has described it with words makes one look at an engine differently.
After comparing and contrasting the
different elements of both romanticism and realism in the stories above, it is
interesting to see how the authors who incorporated both styles did so. While
Poe’s “Ligeia” gets my attention because the story is dramatic and full of
mystical diction, the stories that utilize both realism and romanticism are more
impactful to me because they feel more balanced in the amount of realistic and
unrealistic elements they use.
