Death, decay and emotion in romantic-modern works of literature - Essay Example

?Running Head: THE ROMANTIC HEART Death, decay and emotion in romantic-modern works of literature Death, decay and emotion in romantic-modern works of literature Emotions in literature are developed with the intention of driving the human element of the story line through to its end. The way in which the characters react on an emotional level will provide the context for the meaning of the events within the story. As modern English literature has evolved, the themes through which these emotions are expressed touch upon events in life that are central to common meanings that provide for the reader to understand the way in which those themes are being utilized. The themes of death and decay, through a variety of forms, can be seen for a connecting theme that can show the humanity within the works of a variety of writers as it is romanticized for the various ways in which it is expressed. In looking at works that use these ideas to express different emotional developments, a strategy can be formed for how the advancement of literary discovery occurred in the early modern writings. “The Lady’s Dressing Room” was written in 1732 by Jonathan Swift. The poem was written in regard to a lover who sneaks into a woman’s dressing room, only discover the humanity of the woman he had held on a pedestal. The struggle between the sexes, the desires of women to create an illusion of perfection and the expectations of men that a woman is above the mortal coil, is examined through the investigation that is conducted by the male within the storyline of the poem. According to Fox (2003), the misogynistic nature of a great deal of Swift’s work comes through during the poem as the revelation of the illusions that the sexes create for one another are explored in ways that demean the female sex. Through this discourse on the revealed humanity of the female as the object of desire that has been decayed through the reality of life, the discussion is made about how the male feels about this revelation. Fox (2003) discusses Swift’s point of view on emotions, that of the rationale capax, that “human beings are capable of reason rather than reasonable creatures” (p. 235). Therefore, the poet intends to connect to the emotional context of illusions about life and about the decay of life. He brings to the forefront that there are foul orders that are emitted, even by the most beautiful women. The lover finds himself disenchanted by the decay of her body, that she has garments with stains in their pits and that there is evidence that her feet smell through the stains on her stockings. Through looking at all of the jars, he finds that in her aging body that requires maintenance, in its need to hide the different smells and deteriorations that come from advancing life through time, he is filled with a feeling that he did not understand the truth of his desires, the object not the pristine vessel of his want that he thought her to be. It is in the deterioration of human life, that the freshness of youth, of being beautiful, and of being pure is tainted by the nature of reality, that Swift bases his argument within the poem. He is showing that human life is not pretty, no matter what illusion is given over to a lover. A woman, like any other human being, will create foul smells, her body will excrete that which proves that it is functioning, and much of these excretions are not pleasant. Through an explicit litany of ideas, Swift provides a context for the true nature of woman through exploring all of the ways in which the illusion of being a woman is developed. Some have read this as a form of hate about women, but it can also be read as a way of dropping the illusion that takes such efforts to create in order to provide socially acceptable images. The feelings that are involved in dropping the veil of that illusion are complex as the male in the poem is assaulted with that reality, his nose seeming the most offended as the scents of the woman he loves are not what he believed. The aromas of life, the death and decay of the body that occurs every day that is masked by the illusions of social life provides a way in which to see into the reality of the body, the idea of the woman on a pedestal knocked over by a recitation of how she does not belong upon that elevated position. In the work by Leo Tolstoy, “The Death of Ivan Ilyach”, the illusion of a man is revealed after his death, the way in which his social position is defined manifested into a disillusionment that is similar to that of the Swift poem. DeSousa (1991) begins a discourse on the connection between death and emotion when it is said that “The thought of our own death to this discount” referring to the idea that most often human beings think of death as a remote experience that has no real connection to the present (p. 197). The discussion goes on to suggest that “We are usually curiously indifferent to it, but as Tolstoy vividly shows in “The Death of Ivan Ilyach”, the prospect of death might provoke such a shift in a man’s patterns of salience that an entire life is seen aright for the first time: Ivan Ilyach’s emotions are axiologically adequate only when he faces death” (p. 197). Through the discussion of death, in the disillusioned prospect of the revelations that come from the pealing back of the social facade to the raw nature of life, the true human existence becomes a part of the reality in a way that it had previously not been experienced. The raw truth leads to some raw emotions, thus providing a new way in which to understand life. Through these types of revelations, the writers who provided some of the great works through the early time periods of the modern English era of writing created a reality in balance to the illusions of social life through the aspects of decay that strips away the outer body to leave only the rotting interior that is not so pretty in observation. In comparing the two works, it can be seen that the nature of the cycles of life, the rotting, stinking, fleshly experience of moving towards the end of cycle of living is the reality that breaks down all of the social illusions upon which most relationships are created. For the male lead, Stephen, in the Swift poem it is clear that his love was for a woman who was created out of the jars and potions that he found in her room, the evidence of her humanity becoming a source of both discomfort and revulsion. In the Tolstoy work, it is clear that the truth of the existence of the protagonist is based upon the illusions of his position in society, but in the end death was no more kind or harsh upon a man who is merely a man like any other. As the advent of politics became based upon intellectual connectivity, so did the emotional context of literature begin to be more expressive and based upon deeper meanings. Vaught states that “the gradual emergence of men of feeling in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literary texts and the blossoming of this popular version of manhood during the eighteenth century” is due to this emergence of the courtier in exchange for the war driven leadership of earlier time periods. It might also be noted that the transition from a feudal state towards the industrial revolution that elevated more men into position of intellectual power based upon commerce might also contribute to the rise in the emotion driven literary works. In discovering a more intellectually based social world, the concepts of human existence and the rise of the individual and the importance of the individual had some influence on the understanding of death and the social meanings of civilized culture. As seen through both the Swift and the Tolstoy text, the revelation and the pealing back of social illusions became a theme that was explored in order to incite the emotions that are connected to how a person has positioned themselves in society and the fears involved with the illusions of civility. A connecting piece of work between Swift and Tolstoy can be seen in the work by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe through the story of “Faust”. In this play, the contemplation of death is so remote to the protagonist that he is willing to gamble it away to get what he wants from life. Within the boundaries of the play, it is clear that the desires that he tries to manipulate will not be fruitful. It is in the meaning of life that the clarity is found for the theme of this play. While he has gambled with his death, the influences that this arrangements make upon those he wants in his life are dire and fateful, his ‘easy’ attainment of what he wants tainted by the trick of moral consequence. Through a discussion on the meaning of death in regard to the illusions of life, Goethe provides emotional context of the meanings of life through making them abstracted and meaningless as they are attended to by Mephistopheles, a representation of the devil. In gambling away the meaning of what gaining what he desires, he loses the reality of his life to fates that are defined by his actions. The three works show that death is a powerful theme through which the human experience can be examined. In Swift’s work, the reality of the human existence of the woman who is the object of affection is redefined by her existence within the mortal coil. Her life, as it is maintained artificially, is revealed to be no more spectacular than any other. Through an examination of the illusions of social position in Tolstoy’s work, the great equalizing capacity of death becomes the resource from which emotional context is explored in revealing the truth. In between these two works, Goethe showed how death has abstracted meaning in comparison to the illusions of life. The three works create a discourse on the way in which emotions and life are explored in context with decay and death. References DeSousa, R. (1991). The rationality of emotion. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Fox, C. (2003). The Cambridge companion to Jonathan Swift. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press. Vaught, J. C. (2008). Masculinity and emotion in early modern English literature. Alershot, England: Ashgate. Read More