Encountering Demonic Femininity in Samuel Coleridges Christabel and John Keatss Lamia - Essay Example

Discuss supernatural/demonic femininity as we encounter it in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Christabel” and John Keats’s “Lamia”. On close reading the essential portions of the poems “Christabel” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and “Lamia” by John Keats, readers are apparently brought to perceive each poet’s understanding of woman’s femininity in the light of finding beauty that exudes angelic innocence and temptation that conceals demonic treachery. In both literary pieces, Keats and Coleridge manage to explore on the rather delicate subject concerning man’s frequent view of a woman’s nature as they converge to the utilization of supernatural incidents and concrete images that signify comprehensive yet figurative approach of conveying the main theme herein. Woods, snake or serpent, and silken objects, for instance, embody the ‘bad’ and ‘good’ alike in the feminine characters of Christabel, Geraldine, and Lamia. Through Coleridge’s “Christabel”, we initially come across a scene which depicts the howling of the female mastiff at twelve midnight and Coleridge must have chosen the dog’s gender on purpose as the role of the mastiff appears symbolic of a typical woman’s keen intuition. Then the only daughter of the baron Sir Leoline comes into the woods to figure resolve for the vision of her lover in a dream through prayer and this is evident in the lines “She had dreams all yesternight / Of her own betrothed knight; / And she in the midnight wood will pray / For the weal of her lover that’s far away.” At this stage, we become acquainted to the immediate nature of Christabel’s femininity which is exhibited via the attachment of Christabel to faith or belief of spiritual entity in her prayerful attitude. As a feminine person, she must be aware of the limits of her physical strength and on this ground, we understand the reason we can expect her to rely chiefly upon the aid derived from the world of spirits. Christabel might be assumed to suppose that there emerges no significant power of her own to address the prevailing situation in which the illness of her baron father could potentially put to risk a kind of leadership that most likely requires to a scrupulous command of a masculine figure. Moreover, she prays by the oak tree at the thought of the knight to whom she is engaged and this behavior typifies womanhood capable of gaining comfort in establishing more steadfast prayerfulness since women are generally vulnerable to romance. Upon the arrival of Geraldine in the cold dim forest as indicated by the moment Christabel hears a bleak moaning sound which could not possibly come from the wind for “There is not wind enough in the air / To move away the ringlet curl / From the lovely lady’s cheek -- ”, the speaker in third person expresses the manner by which the baron’s daughter catches sight of her. This scenario is justified in the text where, according to the speaker, “There she sees a damsel bright, / Drest in a silken robe of white, / That shadowy in the moonlight shone: / The neck that made that white robe wan, / Her stately neck, and arms were bare; / Her blue-veined feet unsandl’d were, / And wildly glittered here and there / The gems entangled in her hair.” It turns out, Geraldine is a picture of perfect beauty and being, at this point, fairer than Christabel, the latter shifts to the level of femininity that momentarily allows some personal weakness to escape for she needs to be strong in order to rescue the other maiden whom she learns were abducted by five warriors who had forced their way to consume her chastity despite her anxiety and utter reluctance. Eventually, Geraldine becomes perceived as a defiled creature whose experience with rough men causes a great deal of disgrace on her womanhood and her wretched case ought to be a look of pity in the eyes of moral standards. Though it makes her feminine by convention not to have fought nor released herself from palfrey and repelled the brutes away, the exceeding loveliness in her external possession and line of nobility seems altogether insufficient to compensate for the stained honor of her femininity which is yet quite a symbol of weakness in several respects. The ‘silken robe of white’ and all the glowing sparkles in Geraldine merely function as a contrast to her loss of dignity which Christabel feels obliged to repair by granting her a spot of shelter in her sire’s abode before she fully recovers to be aided back home. On the way to the castle’s chamber where Geraldine should surrender her exhausted body to rest, Christabel exclaims in prideful joy “Praise we the Virgin all divine / Who hath rescued thee from thy distress!” in reference to her companion. There however occurs no remedy for Geraldine’s state of weariness that no matter how high Christabel has yielded to the power of good and sound mode of spirituality, the other lady may not be lifted up in the same faith since her character demonstrates no sign of having established any form of religiosity. The well-being of Christabel’s femininity is kept intact by the constant presence of wisdom in her act of conviction toward the unseen godly world she believes by heart to have sustained her inner strength as a woman. Nevertheless, on the contrary, Geraldine is bound to be discovered later with the capacity for mysticism the time she has been able to lure Christabel to the impure wonders of her nakedness and designate Sir Leoline’s child to a trance which reveals her demonic truth when she eyes Christabel disdainfully with a serpent look as explicated via the passage “A snake’s small eye blinks dull and shy; / And the lady’s eyes they shrunk in her head, / Each shrunk up to a serpent’s eye / And with somewhat of malice, and more of dread, / At Christabel she looked askance!”. To this extent, the conspicuous differences between the two women are affirmed for us to comprehend with total clarity that the weak attributes of Geraldine’s femininity are no more than elements of deception. Her mystic ability to entrance Christabel appears quite relative to the mesmerizing potential she might have had on causing the five warriors to fall into temptation of committing grave violation against the essence of her womanhood. Feministic virtues on the part of Christabel, on the other hand, have shielded her purity in heart and thought from readily judging the existence of supernatural curses attached with Geraldine otherwise, she would not have considered the saving act first. Similarly, the extraordinary charm of a nymph in Keats’s “Lamia” beguiles the god Hermes and the ordinary man of Corinth, Lycius. Like Geraldine in Coleridge’s literary work, Lamia’s celestial beauty serves as a cover for the ugly truth that she is actually a serpent. The third person speaker narrates the story of Lamia in such a way as to project a femininity that is fleeting in reality as a trickery device whenever Lamia succeeds in shifting from her snake to human form targetting to deceive Lycius with whom she has fallen in love. In the poem, her initial encounter and feelings for the Corinthian man is described in the following terms “She saw the young Corinthian Lycius / Charioting foremost in the envious race, / Like a young Jove with calm uneager face, / And fell into a swooning love of him.” Even if she possesses supernatural powers that could match the masculine strength of dynamic men at youth, her degree of femininity directs her inclination to obey the will of her emotions. Just as Christabel may be found deeply attached to her feelings for the absent lover, Lamia acquires the similar nature so that it is her femininity that reduces her supernatural control to human confines yet commands Lycius to grant her marriage and isolation from family and friends. For a brief span, Lamia’s feminine power over Lycius has created For Lycius illusions that separate him from reason where the observer of the scene confesses “His phantasy was lost, where reason fades.” In the long run, however, Lycius snaps back to the challenge of truth when Old Apollonius sets scorn and reminder to what he has unconsciously been deprived of due to his overwhelming love and adoration for Lamia. Out of their unfavorable confrontation during the wedding banquet, the sage cries out “Fool!” to the wrong pride for love which his Corinthian student is consumed by in exchange of rationality. At this turning point, Apollonius’ further expression of his anguish does not cease until his convictions force Lamia to undergo metamorphosis the moment she is pierced with the sophist’s pure eye of wisdom. With the statement “from every ill / Of life have I preserv’d thee to this day, / And shall I see thee made a serpent’s prey?”, Apollonius means at depth to recover Lycius from his oblivion to the beauty of reason by unveiling before him what Lamia is truly made of behind the illusions of her deceitful femininity. In a way, Lamia is a helpless character for prior to meeting Lycius. Having stated “I have no friends ... My presence in wide Corinth hardly known: / My parents’ bones are in their dusty urns / Sepulchred, where no kindled incense burns”, we are led to determine how lonely Lamia could probably have been so that only her reciprocated love for Lycius may keep her alive with a stronger hope and will to live. Hence, from the time that forces of immense attraction bring her and the man she loves to settle with lifetime unity, she maintains the illusion of feminine beauty in the eyes of the male counterpart. To investigate further on the ground of her femininity, we would find that as a serpent at fault, her major misdeed in the story is making an entrapment for Lycius to stay in love with her. So how could Lamia ever deserve a severe curse of philosophy if no object of moral value reached her understanding since the beginning of her existence? Poor Lamia, she merely has to suffer the consequences of bearing feminine attributes that cause a man’s fall. Not even the warm affection of Lycius could save her from the shame of exposure for the man himself later fails to accept her horrible truth. At that stage, Lamia takes the blame when Lycius is divided between reason and the impact of temptation and Lycius is seemingly held responsible only on account of allowing himself to give in to the blinding seduction of the woman serpent. Lamia is doomed for being a serpent yet she is deprived of the right to express womanhood which is an intrinsic part of her serpentine constitution. Already, the femininity that resides in her is judged as invalid and immoral for the principal nature she is just because she leads a man astray from the righteous path of keeping one’s rationality. Unfortunately, while Apollonius encourages Lycius with a challenge to return to the realm of reason, he closes mind to the possibility of positive change for Lamia. Not like Geraldine of “Christabel”, Lamia has nobody by her side to shield her with comfort as in a friend like Christabel who would cry out “Jesu, Maria, shield her well!” in intense mode of prayer. Though Keats’s rendition of Lamia illustrates a feminine figure that is bound to tempt and enslave Lycius in her world of illusion, the lady snake has meant no other harm or threat to the life of the young Corinthian than to isolate him from the rest of the society to love and serve him for eternity as his faithful spouse. She has no other purpose than achieve happiness through a lover who could become her companion in various aspects of life lived secretly from the knowledge of others. Nevertheless, Lamia gains no opportunity of understanding what truth is nor what the beauty of a good life is about for Lycius is destined to encounter the sophist guide to be given corrective instructions. At the poem’s ending where Lycius shouts “A Serpent!” in a shocked condition, the poetic details consist of “Than with a frightful scream she vanished: / And Lycius’ arms were empty of delight, / As were his limbs of life, from that same night. / On the high couch he lay! – his friends came round / Supported him – no pulse, or breath they found, / And, in its marriage robe, the heavy body wound.” Evidently, this is a picture of tragedy for the couple who are made to break away from each other due to rule of reason. Apollonius might have successfully broken the spell upon Lamia’s transformation to her original self but even if Lycius has the right to see this truth, it does not turn out to enlighten him for it comes as too much to bear and no further philosophical principle could do to relieve Lycius out of sudden lifelessness. He can no longer be back to the normal state of reasoning because more than falling into deception created by Lamia’s feigned external looks, he has passionately fallen in love with her, that this love apart from reason is the new truth that Lycius has come to recognize. Beyond justice, Lamia is a victim of harsh judgment and her lover follows to have a much colder fate of losing love and total detachment from reason. We cannot deny the fact in the poem’s narrative that Lamia’s femininity proceeds as a tool that ruins her love’s sense of rationality but the element of reason proves to be more destructive in the end as it could drive one to insanity and complete loss of self. With the characters of Christabel and Geraldine, on the other hand, the issue of femininity may be viewed with relevance to the contemporary society where women play roles that reflect the course of their feminine nature. The altering religious and demonic traits exist among the attitudes of women at corporate workplaces, religious conventions and churches, places of residence, academic institutions, and night clubs. Besides a nun or a prayerful lady, the image of Christabel manifests in a woman who typically belongs to a feminist movement for Christabel’s act of reaching out to Geraldine is comparable to a modern sensible act of a woman who helps another woman in crisis, regardless of the latter’s background. Allegorically, the righteous deed of the noble lady takes on a symbolic meaning of extending aid to a person who could be weak not just literally in physical but even in spiritual terms. Often, women like Geraldine who possess not an inner strength to carry the weight of their burdens whether due to oppression or guilt are unable to stand on their own and would thus need someone like Christabel with whom to be inspired and depend for hope and courage to move on. For weak and weary women like Geraldine, we can expect two kinds of response whenever kindness is applied to them. Usually, there are those who pay enough gratitude as to return favor yet Coleridge’s theme of femininity in “Christabel” is rather disposed to present the type who yields to insecurity. In the first place, Christabel holds not merely youth, wealth, and a position in her father’s castle but also charms and the fresh un-corrupt state of innocent womanhood which altogether forms a logical ground for Geraldine to feel insecure about. Coleridge might have desired to balance one’s influence over the other so as to build what readers ought to critic based on the individual feminine qualities. The castle’s hallway over which Sir Leoline’s daughter guides that of Lord Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine appears to represent the way Christabel is since the hallway serves as a walking path that is conducive for praying and contemplation by a meditative walker. Bedroom, however, could be a metaphor to a tempting slumber and sexual intercourse which is Geraldine’s appropriate representation. As such, a scene by the bed is depicted in the stanza “Beneath the lamp the lady bowed, / And slowly rolled her eyes around; / Then drawing in her breath aloud, / Like one that shuddered, she unbound / The cincture from beneath her breast: / Her silken robe, and inner vest, / Dropt to her feet, and full in view, / Behold! her bosom and half her side – / A sight to dream of, not to tell! / O shield her! shield sweet Christabel!” While Geraldine is worn out walking along the hallway where Christabel is such an influential entity providing her support, she occurs to empower the innocent other in the bedroom. At the time Christabel can seem drawn to her sensuality to realize her own or dared toward the tendency to acknowledge homosexuality or lesbianism in her perception. Assuredly, the pure woman in this setting confronts the risk of losing chaste heart and thought that is posed by the sight of the impure one in captivating motion. Either “Christabel” or “Lamia” presents contexts through which femininity comes to perceptive imagination as ‘gentle’ and on certain occasions ‘perilous’. Both poems by Coleridge and Keats evoke the sentiment that feminine traits may not be underestimated for they, like supernatural might or venomous snakes, can be rendered to twist the fate of men. References Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Christabel.” Poetry Foundation. 2012. Web. 9 Dec 2012. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173227. Keats, John. “Lamia.” The Literature Network. 2012. Web. 9 Dec 2012. http://www.online-literature.com/poe/2055. Read More