To gain the most from this example, The Muse suggests that you follow these steps: 1. Read Housman's poem, below. 2. Read the poem to yourself out loud.
3. Listen to the reading by Alexander Scourby, below. 4. Read The Muse's analysis that follows the poem.
5. Now, if it isn't already open, open the How To Approach A Poem page: click here.
6. To confirm your understanding of The Muse's Approach, compare The Muse's analysis below on this page with the Checklist and Procedure described on the How To Approach A Poem page. 7. So far, The Muse has done the analysis for you. Now do your own analysis of Housman's poem using The Muse's Approach. Consult the Checklist and Procedure on the How To Approach A Poem page, point by point, this time supplying your own understandings, insights, and ideas. 8. Compare The Muse's analysis with your own. Note how The Muse's application of the Approach on this page, below, differs from your own analysis.
9. When finished, close this page, return to the How To Approach A Poem page, and continue reading.
1. 写作背景
The poem was published during the upheavals of the French Revolution.
London was suffering political and social unrest, due to the marked social and working inequalities of the time.
An understandably nervous government had responded by introducing restrictions on the freedom of speech and the mobilization of foreign mercenaries.
London was a town that was shackled to landlords and owners that controlled and demeaned(贬低) the majority of the lower and middle classes. 2. 分析
Sonnet 18 iambic pentameter 五步抑扬格 × ／ × ／× ／ ×／ × ／
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? × ／ × ／× ／ × ／ × ／ Thou art more lovely and more temperate. × ／ × ／× ／ × ／ × ／
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, × ／ × ／× ／ × ／ × ／ And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
五步抑扬格的特点1．每一行诗有十个音节（syllable）。2．每十个音节中分五个音步（foot）。 3．每一个音步有两个音节，重音落在第二个音节上
London iambic tetrameter 四步抑扬格 × ／ × ／× ／ × ／
In every cry of every man, × ／× ／ × ／ × ／
In every infant's cry of fear,
× ／ × ／×／ × ／
In every voice, in every ban, × ／ × ／ × ／ × ／ The mind-forged manacles I hear
四步抑扬格的特点rhyme scheme of abab
1．每一行诗有八个音节。2．每八个音节中分四个音步（foot）。3．每一个音步有两个音节，重音落在第二个音节上。
The first stanza
我徘徊在每条被独占的街上，靠近那也被霸占的泰晤士河，注意到所遇的每个行人，脸上都把衰弱和痛苦的烙印铭刻。 Paraphrase
The London streets and the river Thames were owned by the governor and nobility. It seemed that the poor and lower people were unqualified to walk on there. When I wondered through the streets and the river, I saw the powerless, weak, sorrowful and hopelessly on the people’s faces. I thought it was because of their oppressed way of life. 问题
The river is free-flow, but why the poet says the river is chartered?
The poet uses hyperbolic(夸张) technique to reflects the poet's strong disdain for institutional dominance, for their controlling laws and oppressive ways.
A mark in every face I meet, Marks oweakness, marks of woe.
The repetition stresses the despair and tiredness that they seem to be going through because of their oppressed way of life.
The second stanza
从每个男女的每一声呼喊声，每个婴孩害怕的哭叫，从每个声音里，从每一条禁令都能听到心灵铸的镣铐。 Paraphrase
The sorrowful shout of every man for the governor’s depressed and tough life, the frightened cry of every infant for coming to the horrific world, the harsh bans from the governors’ voice and many other hysterical voices conveyed that the British ruling class ideology fetters people’s personality strangles their life and freedom.
The third stanza
听扫烟囱孩子的叫喊，震惊着每座熏黑的教堂。 不幸士兵的悲叹，像鲜血冲下堵堵宫墙。 Paraphrase
The children, the chimney-sweepers, were bitterly shouting. Because of the priest’s hypocrisy and corruption, the sound like this shocked priests in the church whose wall was blackened by the pollution. The soldiers who devoted himself to the country but didn’t get the concern, and miserably reduced to beggars and vagabonds, wandering around everywhere, causing big social
problems. And I could hear the sorrowful sound that they shouted, which is like their blood running down on the walls of the palace.
Church：does not refer to a specific church but refers to the clergymen living in the church. Soldier’s sigh
black’ning： Physically, the outward appearance of the church is blackening because of the pollution. Morally, it refers to the hypocrisy and corruption of the church.
sigh run in blood：Hearing the sigh of the miserable soldier, the picture of many soldiers’ blood running along the Palace walls is brought into the poet’s mind.
The territorial expansion of the British Empire in the 18th century led to many casualties. Most of those wounded veterans(老兵) , when they came back home, were miserably reduced to beggars and vagabonds（流浪者wandering around everywhere, causing big social problems.
The fourth stanza
但我常听见在深夜的街头，年轻妓女不停地诅咒。 它吓得新生儿眼泪不敢流，妓女带来瘟疫，使婚车变成灵柩。 Paraphrase
But the sound I heard most in the midnight streets was the prostitute’s unceasing curse that made the infants do not dare to cry. They brought the pestilence into the world, which is because of their carnal life. Thus, the beautiful marriage became a mourning hall. The Marriage hearse----There were many prostitutes（妓女） wandering in the street who spread venereal disease to men and through men to their wives and children.
Features of \"London\"
1.Anaphora(首语重复法) & Repetition 2.First person3.Images
Feature 1: Anaphora(首语重复法) & Repetition In every cry of every man, In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forged manacles I hear.
The use of the words “In every\" contributes to the poem's overall sense of urgency, giving the impression that the issues were more widespread than they perhaps were in reality.
There is a repetition of the word ―every‖ of five times, showing the importance of it as he stresses on that particular word. It shows how everyone within the society is influenced negatively and how he or she can’t escape and are trapped in this civilization. It creates a sense of hopelessness...
Feature 2: First Person
The poet describes the city that he probably lives in, and from the use of the word ―I‖ & “I wandered ” &“I hear” shows as a narrator, he not only is the observer, but also one of the
people of the society that is suffering from the negative aspects of the society.
Feature 3: Images(形象)
How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals, And the hapless soldier's sigh Runs in blood down palace-walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear How the youthful harlot's curse Blasts the new-born infant's tear
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse
The final two stanzas concentrate on various different groups of citizens (sweeper,soldier,harlot,infant) that populated London in Blake's life, giving us a vivid picture of London life at that time.
Structure
As the title of the collection suggests, London is presented in a very regular way, much like a song. There is a strict abab rhyme scheme in each of the four stanzas.
The four stanzas offer a glimpse of different aspects of the city, almost like snapshots seen by the speaker during his \"wander thro'\" the streets.
Attitudes and ideas
Blake's speaker has a very negative view of the city. For Blake, the conditions faced by people caused them to decay physically, morally and spiritually.
For Blake, buildings, especially church buildings, often symbolised confinement, restriction and failure. To Blake, this makes a mockery of the love and care that should characterise the Christian religion.
The poem as a whole suggests Blake sees the rapid urbanisation in Britain at the time as a dangerous force. The poem is pessimistic. It is without hope for the future.
A Room of One’s Own Background:
The feminist movement refers to a series of campaigns for reforms on issues such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, and so on.
Setting: Virginia Woolf has been invited to lecture on the Women and Fiction. She advances the thesis that \"a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.\" Her essay is constructed as a partly-fictionalized narrative of the thinking that led her to adopt this thesis. Content: Woolf dramatizes that mental process in the character of an imaginary narrator (\"call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please—it is not a matter of any importance\") who is in her same position, wrestling with the same topic.
Theme: Woolf holds that if women want to achieve independence, they have to experience two adventures. One is to gain material independence; the other is to gain spiritual independence. Both of them are indispensable.
Contents PartⅠ(1) This part introduces the position of women in 15c and 17c indicated in History of England written by Trevelyan. PartⅡ(2-3) This part shows the distinction between women in fiction and women in real life and analyzes the reason. PartⅢ(4) This part gives a comparative analysis of Shakespeare and his supposed sister to reveal the miserable fate of his gifted sister, which reflects women’s life and positions at that time. PartⅣ(5) This part explains why a woman having Shakespeare’s genius in Shakespeare’s day can’t gain the same achievement. PartⅤ(6) This part reveals the truth of the imagined figure of Judith Shakespeare’s story and any woman born with a great gift in that age ending in an unfortunate fate.
Characters \"I\" - The fictionalized author-surrogate (\"call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please—it is not a matter of any importance\") whose process of reflection on the topic \"women and fiction\" forms the substance of the essay.
The Beadle - An Oxbridge security official who reminds the narrator that only \"Fellows and Scholars\" are permitted on the grass; women must remain on the gravel path. Mary Seton - Student at Fernham College and friend of the narrator.
Mary Beton - The narrator's aunt, whose legacy of five hundred pounds a year secures her niece's financial independence. (Mary Beton is also one of the names Woolf assigns to her narrator, whose identity, she says, is irrelevant.)
Judith Shakespeare - The imagined sister of William Shakespeare, who suffers greatly and eventually commits suicide because she can find no socially acceptable outlets for her genius. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic. Although she had the quickest fancy, a gift like her brother's, for the tune of words, she could get no training in her crage. Then she found herself with child by a gentleman and so her poet's heart caught and tangled in a woman's body. Finally, she killed herself one winter's night and lies buried at some crss-roads.
\" That, more or less, is how the story would run, I think, if a woman in Shakespeare's day had had Shakespeare's genius.\"
\" For it needs little skill in psychology to be sure that a highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty. Woolf invents this gigure to illustrate that a woman with Shakespeare's gifts would have been denied the same opportunities to develop them because of the doors that were closed to women.
Mary Carmichael - A fictitious novelist, contemporary with the narrator of Woolf's essay. In her first novel, she has \"broken the sentence, broken the sequence\" and forever changed the course of women's writing.
Mr. A - An imagined male author, whose work is overshadowed by a looming self-consciousness and petulant self-assertiveness.
Themes
1.The Importance of Money
For the narrator of A Room of One’s Own, money is the primary element that prevents women from having a room of their own, and thus, having money is of the utmost importance. Because women do not have power, their creativity has been systematically stifled throughout the ages. The narrator writes, ―Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time . . .‖
She uses this quotation to explain why so few women have written successful poetry. She believes that the writing of novels lends itself more easily to frequent starts and stops, so women are more likely to write novels than poetry: women must contend with frequent interruptions because they are so often deprived of a room of their own in which to write. Without money, the narrator implies, women will remain in second place to their creative male counterparts. The financial discrepancy between men and women at the time of Woolf’s writing perpetuated the myth that women were less successful writers.
2.The Subjectivity of Truth
In A Room of One’s Own, the narrator argues that even history is subjective. What she seeks is nothing less than ―the essential oil of truth,‖ but this eludes her, and she eventually concludes that no such thing exists. The narrator later writes, “When a subject is highly controversial, one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold.”
The theme conclusion
The central point of A Room of One’s Own is that every woman needs a room of her own—something men are able to enjoy without question. A room of her own would provide a woman with the time and the space to engage in uninterrupted writing time. During Woolf’s time, women rarely enjoyed these luxuries. They remained elusive to women, and, as a result, their art suffered. But Woolf is concerned with more than just the room itself. She uses the room as a symbol for many larger issues, such as privacy, leisure time, and financial independence, each of which is an essential component of the countless inequalities between men and women. Woolf predicts that until these inequalities are rectified, women will remain second-class citizens and their literary achievements will also be branded as such.
Structural analysis
Part1:The position of women indicated in History of England by Trevelyan A. About 1470, soon after Chaucer’s time
- Wife-beating - Marriage
--Obey the parents’ wish --Betrothal in the cradle B. The time of the Stuarts
-No right to choose their own husbands C. Women in fictions
-In Shakespeare’s works
-Imagined by people
D. Women described by Trevelyan Para 2 - 3
A comparative analysis of Women’s Position In “ fiction”
Be the highest importance
Pervades poetry from cover to cover
Dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction
Inspired words and profound thought in literature fall from her lips In “real life” Be insignificant
Be absent from history
The property of her husband and slave of marriage Be Rarely educated
-Imaginatively – practically; in fictions – in fact; in literature – in real life -A composite
--An odd monster
---The Elizabethan woman (we know nothing about them) -(Seldom mentioned: only a queen or a great lady) -Historian’s view of women in the past -Not in collection of anecdotes -Hardly mentioned by Aubrey -No on the shelf
-Women known from an old gentleman
Para 4
A comparative analysis of Shakespeare and his supposed sister 1. What would happen to Shakespeare? A. Sent to school
B.What would happen to him when he sought his fortune in London? 2.What would happen to Shakespeare’s supposed sister? A.Not sent to school
B.Staying at home doing housework C.Be forced to marry
D.What would happen to her when she sought her fortune in London?
Comparison in Similarities
Aspects William Shakespeare Judith Shakespeare Gift 1.quickest fancy for the tune of words same 2. a taste for theater Look 1. gray eyes 2. rounded brows same
Comparison in Differences
Aspects William Shakespeare Judith Shakespeare Education Learning at school None, but secret study Housework None Yes Marriage Married and had a child Forced to get married but ran away Career Servitor;actor;dramatist Fled and got no chance Social Life Knowing everybody, practice wits in the street, No dinner in tavern And access to the queen No roam of street in midnight Ending The greatest dramatist Suicide
Para 5
Why couldn’t a genius woman in Shakespeare’s day make achievement? Not born among laboring, servile people Not born among the Saxons and the Britons
Not born among women whose work began before they … custom The author’s wish (a woman with great genius)
Para 6
The truth of the imagined figure of Judith Shakespeare’s story and any woman born with a great gift in that age ending in an unfortunate fate.
----What would happen to women born with a great gift in the 16th century?
Stream-of-consciousness technique 意识流手法
1,A literary method of representing mental process in fictional characters ,usually in the form of interior monologue.
2.The work broke through the bounds of time and space, and depicted vividly and skillfully the unconscious activity of the mind fast changing and flowing incessantly, particularly the hesitant, misted, distracted and illusory psychology people had when they faced reality.
The writing techniques
1. First person—“I”第一人称我
The unnamed female narrator is the only major character in the book.
The using of the first person—―I‖ stands out the main tendency of female in the fiction, and it also implies the feminism.
―Here then was I (call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please—it is not a matter of any importance) sitting on…‖
Woolf did not use ―we‖, but ―I‖ to express the difference and the personality between woman so that she broke the traditional patriarchy.
2. Metaphors and Symbolisms隐喻和象征
There are many metaphors and symbolisms in the book, for example, the title of the book—A Room of One’s Own suggests the material needs and spiritual needs of a woman to write. They formed the expression for woman’ writing and imply the feminism.
Eg.1 ―because, in the first place, to earn money was impossible for them, and in the second, had it
been possible, the law denied them the right to possess what money they earned. It is only for the last forty–eight years that Mrs Seton has had a penny of her own.‖
Woman did not have the right to possess their own money, it means woman have no economic status, no freedom to create in the society of patriarchal dominating.
Eg.2―My aunt, Mary Beton, I must tell you, died by a fall from her horse when she was riding out to take the air in Bombay. The news of my legacy reached me one night about the same time that the act was passed that gave votes to women. A solicitor’s letter fell into the post–box and when I opened it I found that she had left me five hundred pounds a year for ever.‖
The legacy from aunt implies the substance accumulation and the literary tradition from female predecessors.
3. Androgyny雌雄同体
It is Woolf who first puts androgyny into literary field. Woolf gives it a new meaning by viewing the androgyny as an ideal union of duality between the male and female. According to Woolf, only when a person has an androgynous character, he is able to achieve success in writing and art. In a word, it is important for writers to think of their sex. One must be man-womanly or woman-manly. Male and female should live in harmony.
― …it is fatal for anyone who writes to think of their sex. It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly. ‖
4. Semi-fictional narrative style半虚构的叙事风格
When writing this book, Woolf rejects standard logical argumentation. She innovatively uses the resources of fiction to compensate for gaps in the factual record about women.
For instance, the figure of Judith Shakespeare is generated as an example of the tragic fate a highly intelligent woman would have met with under those circumstances.
Eg.1 \" That, more or less, is how the story would run, I think, if a woman in Shakespeare's day had had Shakespeare's genius.―
Eg.2 \" For it needs little skill in psychology to be sure that a highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty.\"
Conclusion
Through the above six parts, we can conclude that A Room of One’s Own is of great significance in feminism. Although it’s combined with 2 speeches, it has its special writing techniques and styles. It reflects the interruptions, inequality of women in which ―a room‖ is a symbol for these issues.
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage 《恰尔德·哈罗尔德游记》
The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks for distraction in foreign lands; in a wider sense, it is an expression of the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras.
The title comes from the term childe, a medieval title for a young man who was a candidate for knighthood.
feature
A. Spenserian stanzas9-line stanza rhymed ababbcbcc[eight iambic pentameter lines followed by one alexandrine (a twelve syllable iambic line)] B. long poem with 4 cantos
C. philosophical and political views D. the concept of the Byronic hero
E. autobiographical based upon Byron's travels
long poem with 4 cantos---Spenserian stanza 9-line stanza, ababbcbcc---Harold’s travels in Europe----solitary, melancholy keen understanding strong love of freedom-----philosophical and political views first expressed by the mouth of Harold, then by the poet himself
Main Idea
1.Portugal and Spain:the delicious land; the poverty of the poor;and the struggle of the Spaniards against the foreign aggression
2. Albania and Greece:the fallen state of fair Greece;remind of the heroic past,strive for the liberty 3. The venom(恶毒的话) and spite (怨恨) of the high society；condemns the reaction, glorifies the French Revolution
4. Sings of Italy and its people; exposure the reactionary rulers;ardent love of liberty and firm belief in the people’s final triumph
Structure
written in Spenserian stanzas eight iambic pentameter lines
one alexandrine (a twelve syllable iambic line) 最後一行又称为亚历山大诗行，因十二世纪末的法文长诗《亚历山大传奇》(Roman d’ Alexandre)的诗行都是十二个音节，因而得名。 rhyme pattern ABAB BCBC C.
“Byronic heroes” 拜伦式英雄
The work (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage) provided the first example of the Byronic hero. The idea of the Byronic hero is one that consists of many different characteristics, including:
1.fiery passions 2.unbending will 3.ideal of freedom 4.against tyranny and injustice 5.lone fighters, individualistic ends
Tess of The D’Urbervilles Tess
Status: The oldest daughter from a poor peasant family ,worked as Dairymaid.
Good-looking, pure,naive,honest & not self-protected. Represents fallen humanity in a religious sense Represents Eve in the Bible to some extent
Angel Clare
Social status :Capital class---The son of a clergyman; Tess’s husband and true love.
A typical image of bourgeois intellectuals(典型的资产阶级知识分子的形象). Considers himself as a freethinker, but his notions of morality turns out to be conventional. Despises class bias against religion and traditional morality(鄙视阶级偏见，反抗宗教和道德传统) A image of angel of God,with both sincerity &unkindness.His coldness strengthens Tess’s tragedy.
Alec Stoke-d'Urberville
Status: Emerging bourgeoisies--- The libertine son of Simon Stokes .works as a Preacher. A deep sinned,evil and hypocritical image
The embodiment of this kind of capital: money can buy everything - apart from housing, land, livestock, machinery, but also can buy a noble facade（假象）of the family name decoration, and even marriage and sex. So he thought that Tess was also willing to do everything for money. Endlessly sinned desires for Tess brings her tragedy directly
故事plot
Rising Action:Tess's family's discovery that they are ancient English aristocracy(英国古贵族), giving them all fantasies of a higher station in life;Tess's accidental killing of the family horse, which drives her to seek help from the d'Urbervilles, where she is seduced and dishonored by Alec d'Urberville.
Climax: Tess goes to work in a farm where she meets Angel Clare, they fall in love & agree to marry. During their wedding night, Tess tells Angel about what Alec did to her.
Angel doesn’t forgive her , leaves her for Brazil, & doesn’t answer her letters, which makes Tess despair.
Falling Action:Tess's last-ditch decision to be with Alec, who claims to love her; Angel's return from Brazil to discover Tess marriage to her former seducer. Tess's murder of Alec and short-lived escape with Angel before being arrested and hanged.
The causes of Tess’s tragedy A. Family background
1.impoverished peasant family2.Both lazy father & simple-minded mother admire benightedly the vanity and higher status3.Eldest child in the family & deep care for her family B. Social Causes
1. The Industrial Revolution
Trade and commerce grew rapidly, driving more peasants to the crowded factories of the smoky cities. More & more peasants become impoverished and live a miserable life. 2. Unequal Morality for Female
The highest virtue of the Victorian woman is sexual purity. The sexual morals are rooted in people’s rational minds: when either man or woman engaged in sexual lapses, men would be forgiven, but women would be condemned. 3. Unequal Legal System
In the Victorian era,capitalism invades the rural region.Law is served for the capitalist class. Farmers are at the bottom of the society, they have never equal rights as the capitalists. *Both Angel & Alec are the representatives of the society: Angel----traditional moral concepts
Alec------bourgeois society’s authority
*Because Alec has money & power, and his evil behavior is protected by the capitalist law & rules. In the eyes of Victorian people, the young upstart is noble, while Tess is considered to lure Alec in order to acquire his money. C. Tess’s personal characteristics
1. good-looking, pure,naive,honest & not self-protected.
2. Her Sense of Responsibility .The horse’s death makes her think she is responsible for this accident and she must earn money to support her poor family. This guilt leads her to visit the D’Urbervilles and puts her into an uncertain and potentially dangerous situation. 3. Her Resistance and Compromise
She struggles bravely against her destiny & the conventional morality. She desires for happiness and true love. She has the courage to resist the hypocritical ethics.
However, she can not completely get rid of social conventions and standard of that time, which makes her believe that she has to pay for what she has sinned. Tess’s deep sense of guilt makes her submit to Angel’s maltreatment without resistance, thinking she deserves it. D.Hardy's fatalism
Hardy was pessimistic about life. The main theme of his novels is the futility(徒劳)of man’s effort to struggle against cruel & unintelligible fate & circumstances, which are all predestined（注定）by the inner will.
He exposed the hypocritical morals, laws & people’s miserable life, after the invasion of industrial capital to the British villages. He was good at viewing life with “a tragic light”.
Themes :1.Criticism of social conventions of Victorian England (ideas of social class as well as the sexual double standard);2.Naturalism as against the ache of modernism3.The injustice of existence;4.Men dominating women
Three symbols:1. Prince(horse)2. The d'Urbervilles Family Vault (墓穴)3. Brazil
Heart of Darkness Plot
Based on Joseph Conrad’s own experience traveling up the Congo River into the African interior, Heart of Darkness follows the disturbing journey of English ivory-trading agent Marlow into the jungles of Africa in search of a mysterious man named Kurtz.
Marlow, an Englishman, took a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a ferry-boat captain in Africa, essentially along Congo river.
Marlow’s duty: He is employed to transport ivory downriver. However, his more pressing assignment is to return Kurtz.
Heart of Darkness exposes the myth behind colonization while exploring the three levels of darkness that the protagonist, Marlow, encounters— 1）the darkness of the Congo wilderness,
2）the darkness of the European’s cruel treatment of the natives
3）the unfathomable darkness within every human being for committing brutal acts of evil.
Break, Break, Break Main Idea
The poem presents a sea-side image, complete with a wild sea, playing children, fishermen and sailing boats, but Tennyson manipulates these elements to reveal a poem about his feelings of loss after Arthur Henry Hallam died and the realization that there is something beyond the cycle of life and death.
Structrural Analysis Stanza 1 (Lines 1 - 4 ) Break, break, break,
The speaker addresses the ocean directly, telling the waves to \"break, break, break\" onto the stony shore.
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
After telling the sea to keep doing its thing, the speaker regrets that he can't express his thoughts . And I would that my tongue could utter
He doesn't come out and say, \"I can't utter the thoughts,\" he says that his \"tongue\" can't \"utter\" them. This makes him seem kind of passive – he's not speaking, his \"tongue\" is doing it. The thoughts that arise in me.
He's not really thinking, either – the thoughts \"arise in\" him almost spontaneously, without effort. Stanza 2 (Lines 5 - 8)
O, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
The speaker thinks it's all well and good that the fisherman's kid is \"shout[ing]\" and \"play[ing]\" with his sister.
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
Repeating the same sentence structure, the speaker says it's great for the sailorwho is \"sing[ing]\" in his boat.
The repetition makes it sound like maybe the speaker doesn't really think it's all well and good for these people to be cheerful. Is he jealous, perhaps, of their happiness? Or of their ability to communicate it, since he admitted back in Stanza 1 that his \"tongue\" can't \"utter the thoughts that arise\"?
Stanza 3 (Lines 9 - 12)
And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill;
The fancy, \"stately ships\" pass by the speaker and head to their \"haven\" or protected port. The port is \"under the hill,\" so there must be a big hill overlooking it. But O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!
The speaker isn't distracted by the ships, though. Sure, he notices them, but his mind is elsewhere. He's just wishing he could \"touch\" the \"vanished hand\" and hear \"the voice that is still.\" This is the first explanation of why the speaker is so sad. He's grieving for someone he loved who is now dead.
He doesn't come out and describe the dead friend, though – he just lists a series of missing things: the \"hand\" and the \"voice.\" The lost friend is described as a series of absent parts. Stanza 4 (Lines 13 - 16) Break, break, break
The speaker repeats the first line again, telling the waves to \"break, break, break\" again. At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But it's repetition with a difference: in the first stanza, he tells the waves to break \"on thy cold gray stones,\" and in the last stanza, he tells the waves to break \"at the foot of thy crags. But the tender grace of a day that is dead
It's not exactly the same – time has gone by, and even the breaking of the waves has changed slightly. Maybe it's the tide coming in. Will never come back to me.
The waves have changed slightly, and we see that time is passing, despite the tragedy that the speaker has suffered. Mournfully he says that the happy old days when his friend was alive will never return. Summary
All in all, this short poem is an expression of Alfred Tennyson's personal grief, but it is more than an individual cry of pain and despair. The poet has presented it as a universal characteristic of our world. He has drawn a picture of permanent and lasting images in contrast with temporariness of human life.
Wuthering Heights Historical Background
The Victorian Age was the Critical Realism in England from 1832 to 1901.
The early years was the time of rapid economic development as well as serious social problems. The mid-Victorian period was the period of economic prosperity with a revival of trade and production and social peace.
The last three decades of the century witnessed the decline of British Empire and the decay of Victorian values.
Generic structure
1)time and space perversion flashback--past chronology--future 2)multi-angles------ use of the first person narratives
The First Stage:
Mr. Earnshaw brings a street orphan--Heathcliff home.Hindley is intensively jealous of Heathcliff. However, Catherine becomes Heathcliff’s inseparable friend and falls in love with him. After Mr. Earnshaw’s death, Hindley takes over the estate. He brutalizes Heathcliff, forcing him to work as a hired hand.
The Second Stage:
In order to pursue the so-called traditional \"love\" that a marriage should be two families of equal social rank, Catherine Earnshaw betrays Heathcliff, and marrys to Edgar Linton as the masteress in Thrushcross Grange.However, she obviously knows that she loves Heathcliff in heart. The Third Stage:
In despair, Heathcliff takes every effort to revenge both families. Fianlly Heathcliff gains compete control of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Even thus, he is not happy at all.
The Fourth Stage:
Catherine Linton falls in love with Hareton Earnshaw. At last, Heathcliff committs suicide himself and he is buried near to Catherine；
love(1)Finally: choice Edgar: a wise,realistic choice
Heathcliff: perfect companion , soulmate, servant, handsome, poor, the lowest position
Edgar:handsome, young, cheerful, rich, and loved her,elegant, could make her the greatest women. love(2)
Although Catherine is born in a noble family, yet she falls in love with Heathcliff without any fear. ―She was much too fond of Heathcliff. The greatest punishment we could invent for her was to keep her separate from him: yet she got childed more than any of us on his account.‖ Saied Nelly. love(3)
She knows it is false to marry Edgar: ― In whichever place the soul lives. In my soul and in my heart, I’m convinced I’m wrong!‖
\" My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath—a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff!\"
She considers her whole life—the seven years under oppressed patriarchal society as a blank and she loses her freedom. Significance
Wuthering Heights is composed in the Victorian age. In that time, there were some standards of evaluation for women: women were considered as family angels and they lived as daughters, wives, and mothers. So we can see that women at that time are not allowed to live independently, they have to depend on their fathers, husbands, and sons. Theme
The social strategy between Heathcliff and Cathy lies in their different social classes. Cathy is a young lady who comes from a wealthy family while Heathcliff is only a Gypsy orphan. Thus he has suffered discrimination and opression since he is young.
But as they grow up, Cathy gradually realizes the great gap between their social status and their love is unacceptable to the society of that time. Strict caste accounts for their separation. So the author criticizes not only the racial discrimination but also the caste.
Catherine Characteristics: brave, strong-willed, repellious, wild, rude, proud, cruel,selfish, vanity
因篇幅问题不能全部显示，请点此查看更多更全内容