Charlotte Smith's The Immigrants
Voices of the French Revolution in Smith’s The Emigrants
In Module 3, the class was presented with reading regarding the French Revolution and how it affected writing during that era. In the discussion board, I analyzed Charlotte Smith’s The Emigrants. Our textbook, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, states that Smith was ostracized in a conservative piece written by Richard Polwhele for writing about the plight of refugees during the French Revolution (p. 1448). Generally, she was revered as one of the greatest poets of the Romantic Period, which was a huge feat considering that there weren’t many well-known female poets at the time. By examining The Emigrants further, I hope to better understand the female voice during the French Revolution and the Romantic Period.
The Emigrants is an 800 line poem lamenting of the French Revolution and those displaced by the bloodshed. Smith’s attempt to express the hopelessness of the people ranging from religious representatives to lower-class citizens was brilliantly executed with lines like, “To those, who shrink from horrors such as War / Spreads o 'er the affrighted world? / With swimming eye, / Back on the past they throw their mournful looks, / And see the Temple, which they fondly hop 'd / Reason …show more content…
Many writers during the time wrote about the disparaged, but Charlotte Smith and other women were important because they had more odds stacked up against them than the men. It was invigorating to the masses to realize that people who didn’t come from nobility had things of substance to say and that some of them were women at that! It was a new concept and it went to show that the times were changing and it was the perfect time for people from average walks of life to express themselves in
In Module 3, the class was presented with reading regarding the French Revolution and how it affected writing during that era. In the discussion board, I analyzed Charlotte Smith’s The Emigrants. Our textbook, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, states that Smith was ostracized in a conservative piece written by Richard Polwhele for writing about the plight of refugees during the French Revolution (p. 1448). Generally, she was revered as one of the greatest poets of the Romantic Period, which was a huge feat considering that there weren’t many well-known female poets at the time. By examining The Emigrants further, I hope to better understand the female voice during the French Revolution and the Romantic Period.
The Emigrants is an 800 line poem lamenting of the French Revolution and those displaced by the bloodshed. Smith’s attempt to express the hopelessness of the people ranging from religious representatives to lower-class citizens was brilliantly executed with lines like, “To those, who shrink from horrors such as War / Spreads o 'er the affrighted world? / With swimming eye, / Back on the past they throw their mournful looks, / And see the Temple, which they fondly hop 'd / Reason …show more content…
Many writers during the time wrote about the disparaged, but Charlotte Smith and other women were important because they had more odds stacked up against them than the men. It was invigorating to the masses to realize that people who didn’t come from nobility had things of substance to say and that some of them were women at that! It was a new concept and it went to show that the times were changing and it was the perfect time for people from average walks of life to express themselves in