Lord Tennyson uses powerful language through his poetry that really allows his readers to feel the emotion of his writings. In Mariana, he tells us the story of a girl who was rejected by the one that she loved. Even before we are introduced to Mariana, Tennyson sets his reader up with a sad and dreary scene.
"With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look sad and strange:" (586)
Although I had not been introduced to Mariana yet, I was braced by the sadness that accompagnied the introduction. The use of rusted nails and broken sheds was very appropriate for me to state the loss the girl had suffered. She was broken by the absense of the guy that she loved, and it seemed as if she was going to allow herself to rust in her mourning. In the sidenotes at the bottom of page 586 it talked about how Angelo refused to marry Mariana after her brother and her dowry were lost in a shipwreck. So not only did the girl lose her love, but also the hope for another love since she lost her dowry.
We are then introduced to Mariana in the following passage:
"She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead."
This hopelessness reminded me of the hopelessness faced by the prisoners in A visit to Newgate. Although Mariana was free, she was held captive by her feelings for Angelo. Angelo was all that she could think about and since he would not love her she was destined for the same fate as those prisoners. Nothing but him coming would satisfy her, and therefore she was really already dead.
"Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors,
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without." (588)
This passage seemed to affirm that there was nothing that could save Mariana other than Angelo coming. It did not matter who else came to visit, he was the only one who could save her. You have to truly feel for Mariana as she has seemed to lose all that she cares about.
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2 comments:
I enjoyed A.L. Tennyson because in his writings he expressed the emotions that he was mostly consumed with. They were feelings of rejection, sadness, and loneliness. These feelings are real and though he had issue with depression and alcoholism he succeed when others said that he wouldn't.
Jeremy,
Good discussion of Tennyson's "Mariana" here. You select and discuss some appropriate passages to communicate your sense of Tennyson's tone and mood in this melancholy poem.
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