#barbauld

William Wilberforce, after John Rising. Stipple engraving, after 1789. NPG D37514, National Portrait Gallery. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Poem by Mrs. Anna Letitia Barbauld, 1743-1825. London: Printed for J. Johnson, No. 72, St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1791. Epistle To William Wilberforce, Esq. on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade Cease, Wilberforce,…

In this imaginative farewell poem from Roman poet Ovid to his wife, English poet Anna Laetitia Barbauld writes of aging. Stich von John Chapman (tätig 1792-1823) nach einem unbekannten Künstler, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons OVID to his WIFE: Imitated from different Parts of his Tristia. Jam mea cygneas imitantur tempora plumas, Inficit & nigras alba senecta comas: Trist. Lib. iv. Eleg.…

“In Nature’s school, by her soft maxims taught, 

That separate rights are lost in mutual love”

“And all, like controversial writing, were born with teeth and sprung up fighting.” Barbauld, The Inventory of The Furniture in Dr. Priestley’s Study (43)

These lines come towards the end of the poem to describe the old, battered books that exist in the study of Dr. Priestly. This contrasts the infantile new books also present.

  An unfortunate maid,

  I by love was betray’d,

And wasted and pined by my grief;

  To deep solitudes then,

  Of rock, mountain and glen,

From the world I retired for relief.

  Yet there by the sound

  Of my voice I am found,

Though no footstep betrays where I tread,

  The poet and lover,

  My haunts to discover,

Still leave at the dawn their soft bed.

  If the poet sublime

  Address me in rime,

In rime I support conversation;

  To the lover’s fond moan

  I return groan for groan,

And by sympathy give consolation.

  Though I’m apt, ‘t is averr’d,

  To love the last word,

Nor can I pretend ‘t is a fiction,

  I shall ne’er be so rude

  On your talk to intrude

With anything like contradiction.

  The fair damsels of old

  By their mothers were told,

That maids should be seen and not heard;

  The reverse is my case,

  For you’ll ne’er see my face,

To my voice all my charms are transferr’d.

The final stanza of Anna Letitia Barbauld’s “The Rights of a Woman” says, “Then, then, abandon each ambitious thought. / Conquest or rule thy heart shall feebly move, / In Nature’s school, by her soft maxims taught, / That separate rights are lost in mutual love” (49).

This passage confuses me. The rest of Barbauld’s poem feels like it is a rally cry preparing women for the battle of obtaining their rights. Her third stanza even includes references to artilleries, canons, and war. Then she ends her poem with a surrender saying men and women’s rights aren’t important when you’re in love. This seems as if Barbauld doesn’t feel the pressing need for women’s rights because her husband may treat her well and she doesn’t see the need for anything else. She wrote this battle cry to make fun of the women who are saying they need these rights. She’s saying that they’re turning their request for equality into a war-like battle that is entirely unnecessary. The footnote for this poem says that she wrote this in response to Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which Wollstonecraft critiques how Barbauld follows the established gender codes in her writings. It could be that she felt called out, so she felt the need to respond in (what I hope is) a sarcastic manner.

— Anna Barbauld’s “Epistle to William Wilberforce, Esq., on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade,” Norton’s Romantic Period Volume. p 46.

I love the imagery the muse being awakened and she’s ready to fight for what she believes in. And I love that it’s mercy’s hymn song that wakes her up. I love that the muse and mercy are capitalized in the poem—it makes me think of them as people or something that’s BIG and IMPORTANT and they’re coming into this battle ready and willing to fight. They’re ready and awake; Muse is ready with her words (the words of the poem maybe?), and Muse is playing the song to gather others (and it’s loud enough for others to hear if it’s woken a sleeping muse!)