Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady is a poem by Alexander Pope in Heroic couplets that was first published in 1717. Unlike his other famous works like Rape of The Lock and Dunicad, Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady is not a satire. Rather it is an emotional poem sympathetic to a diseased lady who committed suicide. Suicide was considered a heinous crime directly against the religious scriptures of both Roman Catholic and Protestant sects. When Alexander Pope wrote this elegy commemorating her ending life, he faced criticism as death by suicide was not considered something to be lauded.
In this poem, Alexander Pope describes death by choice as a brave, or noble act. He describes a young woman who took her own life because her uncle barred her liaison with the man of her choice.
The lady is not named anywhere in the poem and there is no substantial evidence that Alexander Pope wrote this poem inspired by some real incident. It could have been the case of the completely manufactured story of such a lady by Alexander Pope that he invented to support his own ideas about suicide, or in support of his ideas for the right of a woman to choose her spouse.
Aphra Behn (The Forc’d Marriage), George Farquhar (The Beau Stratagem), William Wycherly (The Country Wife), John Vanbrugh (The Provoked Wife), and William Congreve (The Way of The World) had already raised this issue by their plays.
Structure of Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady:
The other title for the same poem is “Versus to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.”
The poem is written in Heroic couplets with 82 lines composed in 7 Stanzas of varying length. The poem lacks any strict rhyming pattern but end-rhyming (shade-glade, heart-part, sky-die, aspire-desire....) keeps the poem melodious. Pope has used alliteration, allusion, allegory, anaphora, and imagery has been used.
Summary of Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady:
Stanza 1
Lines 1-10
The narrator identifies the spirit of her dead beloved as a silhouette, “a beck’ning ghost” silver-lined by moonlight. She invites the narrator to examine the wound, that killed her. The narrator observes that the ghost has a deep bleeding wound going right through her bosom to her heart. The sword that wounded her is still there and it gleams lightly as her blood shines on it.
The poet wonders why the spirit of her beloved is lurking around, he worries about her even though she is dead and asks if she has been alienated by Heaven for committing suicide: “Is it, in heav’n, a crime to love too well?” He enquires if the angels consider it a crime for someone who loves a person more than anything, their own life and when they fail due to the harsh and heartless society’s opposition, they act "a Lover's or a Roman's part." Christian scriptures claim suicide is a crime against God. However, the Romans didn’t consider it a crime or immoral in certain conditions. Rather the pagan considered it a brave way to ascertain one’s liberty, honor, and prestige. During medieval India when the villages and forts of native people were attacked by Muslim or Christian exploiters, the unmarried girls, wives, and daughters of fighting Hindu soldiers used to prepare themselves to commit “Jauhar” or “Sati” in case of the defeat and death of their husbands in the battleground. They did so because, for them, their honor and chastity were more important than their life. They believed that it is better to jump in the fire and end one’s life than to allow the robbers to sully their bodies and life and become their slaves. The Christians and Muslim invaders who often attacked Hindu villages and colonies with the main purpose of robbing Hindu women often found themselves fooled as they got nothing but burnt bodies of dead women whom they desired to enslave. But for Christians, suicide is a crime. Thus, the poet mentions the act of committing suicide as "a Lover's or a Roman's part." The narrator acknowledges that in the mortal world, the lady’s family and society as a whole mistreated her and considered her a sinner and didn’t even attend her funeral. So he asks if she is suffering the same alienation in her afterlife?
Stanza 2
Lines 11-22
The narrator admires the dead lady so much that he questions Christian morality and wonders If heaven does not approve of one human's loving another beyond bearing, and the death by one's own hand that might result, then why would heavenly "Pow'rs!" allow, or even cause "Her soul aspire / Above the vulgar flight of low desire?" Pope blames the Almighty for the folly of love that ends in death. He says that if it is a sin for someone to love another person so much to die for them, then why does God inspire them to love someone to such a great height? He uses biblical allegory and mentions that God made man in his own image. But then the Angels produce ‘Ambition’ for love in their heart. The narrator says that love "first sprung" as the "glorious fault of Angels and Gods." The narrator then complains about human frailty and says that most souls only "peep out once an age," the rest of the time remaining "sullen pris'ners in the body's cage." Pope uses excellent imagery to suggest a loving heart either as a prisoner or liberated by passion.
Stanza 3
Lines 23-28
In these lines, the narrator says that when the lady died, he believed that being a better soul, a better human being, she has left the heartless society of living people to join the purer souls in the sky where she will be acknowledged and respected for her good, love, and virtues. Her ambition destined her for the heavens, and her departure from this earth has deprived her family below of all “virtue (to redeem her race).”
Stanza 4
Lines 29-46
In these lines, the narrator suggests that the lady who committed suicide was an orphan being controlled by her guardian, her uncle. The narrator compounds the guardian’s failings in Christian charity toward his female ward by heaping curses for the early death of the uncle’s entire family to an overwrought, even surrealistic degree (“And frequent hearses shall beseige your gates/While the long fun’rals blacken all the way”). So many should die that neighbors behold a veritable parade of hearses, to compensate for the death of the innocent maiden who could not be buried in the hallowed ground because of her manner of death.
Stanza 5
Lines 47-68
The narrator returns to the sad situation of the lady who didn’t even get a proper, traditional funeral and last rites and maybe that is why she is suffering even in her afterlife. The narrator says that she understands her pain. “By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd, By foreign hands thy decent limbs compos'd, By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd, By strangers honour'd, and by strangers mourn'd!” Pope used anaphora to explain the dire situation of the lady in lines 51-54. The narrator mentions that strangers buried her in an unhallowed grave, without Christian burial rights because of her suicide. But nature restored beauty and sacredness to her unmarked grave site, where angels “o’ershade/ The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made.”
Stanza 6
Lines 69-74
In these lines, the narrator says that despite all the wrongs she faced, the lady must now attain the peace and comfort that she deserves. Once she had wealth, beauty, titles, and fame but now she resides under a grave without a stone. The narrator says that she is now mere dust, “as all the proud shall be.”
Stanza 7
Lines 75-82
In the last stanza, the narrator offers a lesson of mortality to himself: someday he too will die and the last thought of the lady will be torn from him as he passes away. There will be no more to mourn her and remember her. He mourns that after his death he will no longer be able to mourn his beloved: “Life’s idle business at one gasp be o’er,/ The Muse forgot, and thou beloved no more.”
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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