Compared Themes in Clare and Duck - Essay Example

Compared themes in Clare and Duck Although the Romantic Period would seem to be so d because of anunusual fascination with stories of love and what we consider ‘romance’ today, the actual literary movement was characterized by a complete ideology that focused on the natural, picturesque and the fantastic. The period idolized the imagination as the highest of human capacities due largely in part to its creative abilities. It also esteemed nature not only because of the creative element inherent in it, but also because of the manifestation of the imagination that could be found within it in the sense that we create what we see. The world was full of symbols and signs that would portend future events and actions which were knowable through their relationship to the myths and legends of antiquity. As a literary movement, it is recognized to have begun sometime during the 1770s and extended into the mid-1800s, a bit longer in America (“Introduction”, 2001). Many of the concepts that emerged as a part of Romanticism were reactions to the social upheaval that was taking place at this time coupled with a shifting economic structure. During the ‘Romantic Period’, the poets took part in a movement against the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment, where they protested (with their poetry) the ideals of those Europeans who sought to bring reason and ‘Enlightenment’ to the world. The Romantics expressed their defiance of the so-called ‘reason’ that both the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment brought to society. They expressed their eagerness to return to nature and their feelings of discontent with the stresses of society that this ‘reason’ brought to humans as they aged. Not officially within the general classification of the ‘Romantic’ period but still managing to use the pastoral to express his discontent, Stephen Duck’s poem “The Thresher’s Labour” written in or around 1736 can be compared with the social commentary found within John Clare’s poem “The Mores” dated 1822 as each author struggles against the binding qualities of an emerging capitalistic economy. John Clare begins his poem with a description of the wild and untamed plains of his youth, “Still meeting plains that stretched them far away / In uncheckt shadows of green brown and grey” (5-6). As he describes the beauty that he once enjoyed in these sights, he begins to illustrate how the freedoms they once offered have been overtaken by the ravages of capitalism and consumerism, being turned to profit by the “little tyrant with his little sign” (67). More than simply discussing how the land itself has been bounded in, Clare illustrates how the animals and mankind, particularly the poor, have also been constrained by the temporary blockages that have been put in place by wealthier men in the interest of making a profit. At the same time, he suggests that these wealthier men have discovered in the process that their “dreams of plunder in such rebel schemes / Have found too truly that they were but dreams” (79-80). Rather than reaping significant profit from ‘their’ lands, the owners have discovered that they have given up something precious, rare and unrecoverable for temporary and insufficient material gain. This seems to be in direct contrast to Stephen Duck’s poem as Duck focuses on the activities of the poor workers, particular those of the threshers, as they struggle all year long to produce profit for their master. The subject of this poem is perhaps set by the inspiration that birthed it, “’The Thresher’s Labour’ was commissioned by Duck’s local patron, the Reverend Mr. Stanley, as a poem ‘on his own Labours.’” (Goodridge, : 12), but it nevertheless conveys the same sense of loss of freedom and beauty that is found in Clare’s poem of a later date. In describing the incessant monotony of the work involved in the job of threshing, Duck attempts to describe how it separates him and his fellow workers from the joys to be had in other positions and illustrates in the process how the profit game has separated the poor from their natural state of bliss. Both Clare and Duck manage to convey a deep love of the pastoral within their poetry, although they approach it from very different angles. Duck, the earlier of these two writers, illustrates the pastoral almost in passing, as an element of life that is missing from his own. “The Shepherd well may tune his Voice to sing, / Inspir’d with all the Beauties of the Spring. / No Fountains murmur here, no Lambkins play, / No Linnets warble, and no Fields look gay” (56-59). In this passage, as well as several others to be found throughout the 286 line poem, Duck indicates that while his duties as a thresher may preclude him from enjoying such pleasant springtime activities as listening to the shepherds singing in the fields, watching the springs and brooks sing and splash with the new waters of spring or take time to enjoy the frolicking of the young animals as they dance about fields full of springtime flowers, he remains well aware of them as an important entity in the simple pleasures of life that had previously been afforded to the poor. This is as true for the spring as it is for the other seasons he mentions throughout the year. Clare, on the other hand, focuses almost exclusively on his appreciation of the pastoral in trying to make his point. In describing the state of the countryside from his youth, Clare says, “The sheep and cows were free to range as then / Where change might prompt nor felt the bonds of men / Cows went and came with evening morn and night / To the wild pasture as their common right / And sheep unfolded with the rising sun / Heard the swains shout and felt their freedom won” (23-28). In describing how the animals were free to roam where they might across these open plains, Clare also indicates how any man, rich or poor, was also free to wander and partake of the inspiring and liberating fields, “Each little path that led its pleasant way / As sweet as morning leading night astray / Where little flowers bloomed round a varied host / That travel felt delighted to be lost / Nor grudged the steps that he had taen as vain / When right roads traced his journeys and again / Nay on a broken tree hed sit awhile / To see the mores and fields and meadows smile” (51-58). Thus, while Duck is able to appreciate the pastoral only from afar and Clare sees it only as a remnant of his youth, both recognize it as a symbol and source of freedom for the common man. At the same time that the pastoral becomes a symbol for freedom, the restraint of it in any way becomes a symbol for the enslavement of the working or common people. Duck reinvents the cycles of the year as a relentless workhouse, continuously forcing the poor man to stay too busy to enjoy the beauty of the world. “In the poem the seasonal and agricultural cycle, traditionally used as a model of harmony and of pleasing concordia discors, becomes a dehumanizing machine, controlled by ‘The Master’, and driving the farm workers relentlessly through a never-ending cycle of backbreaking work” (Goodridge, 1995: 12). As the cycles of the year progress from harvest through winter to spring and summer, Duck continues to enumerate the various tasks the Master might set his workers that keep them constantly busy and constantly tired, filling their souls with nothing but the difficult task they perform each day. “Our mimic Fancy ever restless seems; / And what we act awake, she acts in Dreams. / Hard Fate! Our Labours ev’n in Sleep don’t cease” (255-257). Without expressly relating his subject to work, Clare also illustrates the constrained spirit of the common man within the enclosed parcels of the land. This is particularly illustrated in his use of the sign. “Each little tyrant with his little sign / Shows where man claims earth glows no more divine / But paths to freedom and to childhood dear / A board sticks up to notice ‘no road here’ / And on the tree with ivy overhung / The hated sign by vulgar taste is hung / As tho the very birds should learn to know / When they go there they must no further go” (67-74). Within this passage, Clare demonstrates how the land owners’ use of the sign not only serves to designate which part of the land belongs to them, but also blocks the view of the individual traveler who was once able to glimpse freedom in the wide open vistas. The constrained, limiting function of these signs is suggested to be so pervasive that not even the birds, the creature most associated with freedom and open spaces, are completely expected to be above such restriction of use. For both of these poets, the theme of limitation and slavery as a result of restricting access to the pastoral images of the country serves to make a bold political statement about the world in which they lived. Each seeming to present a relatively innocent portrait of an individual’s life work in the case of Duck or of a childhood memory in the case of Clare, both speak out in loud protest against the imbalance of power evident in their worlds. For Duck, the working man is seen as little better than a slave as the Master determines the course of their lives. “Strict to his Word! for scarce the Dawn appears, / Before his hasty Summons fills our Ears. / His hasty Summons we obey; and rise, / While yet the Stars are glimm’ring in the Skies. / With him our Guide we to the Wheat-field go, / He to appoint, and we the Work to do” (216-221). They are given no time for rest when weary, little time for lunch, grudging time for Sabbath and permitted to return to their wives only as the sky darkens at night. “Living in what the poet clearly shows to be hardship, they are opportunistic about the work, constantly in search of the small advantage that will make life bearable. They cannot choose, and wherever the Master commands them to go they go” (Goodridge, 1995: 26). This is much the same picture presented by Clare nearly 100 years later regarding the continued partitioning off of the land into owned and restricted parcels. By restricting the use of the land by the many to use by only those few who had managed to gain favor or build material wealth, Clare indicates the country has wrested freedom from its subjects for a paltry return. Indicating the slavery of the common man, he says, “Thus with the poor scared freedom bade goodbye / And much they feel it in the smothered sigh / And birds and trees and flowers without a name / All sighed when lawless laws enclosure came” (75-78). Because they can no longer enjoy the open spaces, the common man is no longer able to taste any element of freedom. And while the landowner was free to do with his land as he pleased, Clare indicates that the law restricting all others was felt to such a high degree that even the wildest of elements, the flowers that have no name, felt the enslavement. While both poets base their reactions and their interpretations upon a relationship built with the pastoral views of the open spaces of England, each manage to convey a sense of entrapment and enslavement within their work. The threshers of Duck’s poetry are given no time to enjoy the scenery that blossoms around them, no leisure to contemplate the freedom such vistas might suggest and are not even able to determine their own future activities by selecting the field or the chore they will perform in a given day. Similarly, the enclosing of the wild places and open fields of Clare’s youth is seen to be an entrapment of the common man of the time, similarly preventing him from taking a moment to enjoy the freedom and escape the open moors might suggest to the imagination. In each case, the materially minded greed of the wealthy is seen to produce means of enslaving the poor toward their own, often unrewarding, ends. References Clare, John. (1831). “The Mores.” Name of Collection. (year of publication). Name of Editor (Ed.). Place of publication: Publisher, pp. Duck, Stephen. (1736). “The Thresher’s Labour.” Name of Collection. (year of publication). Name of Editor (Ed.). Place of publication: Publisher, pp. Goodridge, John. (1995). Rural Life in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. “Introduction to Romanticism.” (2001). A Guide to the Study of Literature: A Companion Text for Core Studies 6, Landmarks of Literature. New York: Brooklyn College. Available October 12, 2007 from Read More