Project Female Voices In Keatss Poetry

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

This project studies some major figures in John Keats’ poetry in the light of recent criticism of sexual ambiguity in Keats. Sexual ambiguity, as scholars have discussed, refers to the sexual identity or fragmented poetic self as reflected in John Keats’s verse. It examines some central women characters of Keatsian verse in the light of this dual strand: first, as to how far these women figures are projections of Keats’s own poetic self; and secondly what do they reveal, as regard attitudes of a male poet towards women. A study of these women figures provides interesting observations on feminine projections besides trying to correlate the shaping of these attitudes with the psychological and biographical strands of the poet’s life. The study of Keatsian verse complicates the issue of gender, has already been highlighted by recent criticism. The project examines the female characters in his poetry in the light of deeper conflicts, complexities and confusion within Keats’s own poetic self.

Feminist critics of Romantic verse have often identified John Keats as a sort of a special case, whose poetry, in the light of gender, has been subversive of the traditional convention of male Romanticism. Keats is a different case, demanding special critical attention, was set in motion by Susan J. Wolfson’s path-breaking essay, Feminising Keats, which appeared in 1990.Wolfson and subsequently other feminist critics have pointed out that how Keats’s own anxiety, as being perceived as an androgynously passive poet in his own time, tends to merge with the larger issue of the ‘more general culture anxieties about feminization of man, ‘in the Romantic period. For eminent feminist critics like Wolfson, Margaret Homans, Anne Mellor and others, Keats becomes a unique poetic personality- full of contradictions and ambiguities, as far as the issue of gender is concerned. An attempt has been made to trace the biographical rules and to probe into some of the ambiguities which tormented the poetic psyche, while inspiring the origin of some of the immortal women figures in Romantic verse.

The brief eventful life of John Keats (1795-1821) was deeply influenced by women figures around him – be it in the form of mother, sister, beloved or even casual acquaintances. As to how far they are relevant to the myriad forms of femininity we encounter in his verse, is a question that will be taken up later. But a close examination of women figures in Keats’s personal life would enable us to trace the psychological roots that have contributed to his sexual ambiguity, insecurity anxiety and tension in his attitude towards the opposite sex.

There is not much authentically personal records of John Keats’s childhood. Being ‘born on the last day of October 1795 and christened seven weeks later at the London church at St. Botolph without, Bishop,’ John Keats was the eldest of the five children of the family. While we have greater access to the biographical details from his adolescence onwards, unfortunately our knowledge within authentic means, about his childhood and early years in rather scanty. It was little after a year of Frances Jennings marriage with Tomas Keats that the poet was born.

Of the women figures we meet in Keats’s personal life- a figure of profound influenced was his mother. Unfortunately when Keats’s early biographers were searching for details about her, she became easily vulnerable to gossip and slander. Like John Keats, his mother too, was the eldest of three children of the family. Frances Jennings was only nineteen years old when she got married to Tomas Keats.

John Keats spent his early childhood with his parents at the house in Craven Street, north of the City Road. His mother is affectionate and warm.

John Keats was born on 31 October 1795, the first of Frances Jennings and Thomas Keats's five children, one of whom died in infancy.  His parents had been wed for barely a year when John was born.  His maternal grandparents, John and Alice Jennings, were well-off and, upon his parents' marriage, had entrusted the management of their livery business to Thomas.  These stables, called the 'Swan and Hoop', were located in north London and provided horses for hire to adjacent neighborhoods.

Thomas and Frances lived at the stables through the births of their first three children.  George was born on 28 February 1797 and Thomas on 18 November 1799.  After their births, the young couple felt successful enough to move to a separate house on Craven Street, about a half-mile from the business.  Here, on 28 April 1801, their son Edward was born; he died shortly thereafter.  And on 3 June 1803, the last of their children and only daughter, Frances Mary, was born.

Details of Keats's early life are scarce.  During the last few years of his life, letters allow one to track him virtually week-to-week but his childhood and adolescence are another matter.  Indeed, virtually all the information known is in the form of reminisces, many taken years after Keats had died.  Understandably, one must view these memories with some skepticism.  Whether discussing Keats's physical appearance (his brother George said he resembled their mother while a family friend said it was the father) or his pastimes, these sources often contradict one another.

Keats's father, Thomas Keats, died on Sunday, 15 April 1804, while returning home from visiting John and George at Enfield school.  It was believed his horse slipped on the cobblestones and threw him to the ground. Suffering a skull fracture, he lived for a few hours after being found by a night watchman.  Barely two months later, on 27 June 1804, Frances Jennings remarried.  Grief-stricken and unable to conduct the livery business herself, she wed a minor bank clerk named William Rawlings.  Rawlings was a fortune-hunter and the marriage was a failure.  The children were immediately sent to live with their grandmother and, a few years later, their mother joined them.  She had left Rawlings and, with him, the stables she had inherited from her former husband.  From this time on, her health declined precipitously.

The upheaval in the children's lives continued.  On 8 March 1805, their grandfather died and the financial turmoil which haunted Keats's life began.  For John Jennings, a kindly and generous man, was also gullible; he had hired a land surveyor, not a lawyer, to draft his will and the result was an ill-written and vague document.  Mr. Jennings's real wishes were obscured and open to interpretation.  The specifics of the case are far too detailed for this generalized sketch, but are available in any biography of Keats.  There is also a book called The Keats Inheritance which can be found in any good university library.  It is worth mentioning here simply because Keats's entire adult life was spent struggling with money. 

The fight over shares in the estate began shortly after Jennings's death and ended long after John Keats's death.  Their grandmother, now almost seventy, was left with half the income she and her husband had lived on.  To practice economy, she moved to a smaller home and attempted to save what she could.  In her own will, she appointed Richard Abbey trustee and guardian of her grandchildren.  This appointment was to have tragic consequences for all the Keats children, but most especially John.

Mrs. Jennings's new home was close to Enfield, where the youngest son Tom was sent to join his brothers at school. At Enfield, the Keats brothers were well-liked and popular.  John caught the attention of his schoolfellows; their reminisces stress his bravery and generosity to others.  They also mentioned his sensitivity, a trait which did not prevent him from engaging in fights.  As schoolfellow Edward Holmes remembered, "The generosity & daring of his character - in passions of tears or outrageous fits of laughter always in extremes will help to paint Keats in his boyhood."  But Holmes, who later became a well-known music critic, stressed that Keats "was a boy whom any one might easily have fancied would become great - but rather in some military capacity than in literature."  Simply put, there was little in John's character which would indicate a great future in poetry

It examines Keats personal life in detail, closely as saying the women figures in his personal life in order to trace and assess the psychological roots that have contributed to his sexual ambiguity, insecurity, anxiety and tension in his attitude towards the opposite sex.

Also looks carefully in detail at the concept of sexual ambiguity, as discussed and examined by recent scholars of Keats. Besides exploring the split of the poetic self, also explores related issues that are triggered off by this ambiguity such as anxiety, helplessness, possessiveness, suspicion, extreme self indulgence or narcissism, poetic transvertism etc.

Explores women figures which stand as representatives of meek womanhood. The three major women figures are Psyche, Madeline and Isabella. Besides the aspect of sexual ambiguity, as and where it is evident, some of the subsequent ones, tries to find out if Keats tented to see or project his women figures in the mould of conventional grander stereotypes or not.

Women in Keats’s verse can be destructive and predatory as well it also examines three central women figures that are conventionally branded as seductive-La Belle, Lamia and Melancholy. These fetal women figures reflect the anxiety and insecurity that Keats encountered in his own interaction with women. Occasionally these attitudes appear confusing, contradictory and conflicting. While in La Belle Dame Sans Merci, we only get a male viewpoint, with lady’s perspective being ignored totally, in Lamia we find Keats implicitly contemning the traditional forces of patriarchy that bring about her destruction. Through his fetal women figures, Keats projects conventional gender stereotypes of seductresses-of sexual conscious women, who are a threat to the social code as endorsed by the patriarchal society and they have to be crushed by patriarchal forces through all means. The same element of fatality and anxiety hovers Melancholy in Keats Ode On Melancholy. But in this Ode, the voices of patriarchal authority and condemnation are absent, unlike La Belle Dame Sans Merci or Lamia.

It also examines femininity in Endymion. Though chronologically an earlier work, yet Endymion provides a complex blending of Keatsian attitude towards women. Endymion represents Keats’s own quest for immortality in life. Endimion’s attraction to both Cynthia and the Indian maiden represents the personal dilemma of the Romantic Keats, a poet torn apart between worlds of idealism and realism. Cynthia, in a way, represents the culmination of Keatsian narcissism-a pining for a regressive fusing love and towards idealized fantasies of the mother and self. However, the love for the idealized mother image and self ultimately gives way to a realistic acceptance and fulfillment of love through union with the Indian maiden. So Endymion provides a complex study of femininity in various ways. Two kinds of femininity emerging in Endymion, one being a projection of narcissism, mother fixation and Romantic idealism, while the other is a more realistic version based on acceptance of femininity as the ‘valued other.’ Keats ultimately supports the letter and shows that ultimate fulfillment of love lies in embracing of femininity as the ‘valued other’-an autonomous, free, independent and different entity and not a narcissistic self projection.

Next examines the centrally important figures, Mnemosyne and Moneta in Keats’s Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion respectively.

It sums up what Keatsian attitudes reveal, as far as the opposite sex is concerned, through the study of various women figures in his verse. In this context, it is imperative to underline the fact that due to a complex network of biographical and social circumstances Keats presents a rather complex case especially as regards gender studies. Keats’s special case defies any definite categorization or classification unlike his other contemporary male Romantic poets. Keats not only complicates the issue of gender, but also defies the traditional norms of masculinity and femininity which, quite naturally, subjected him to a lot of hostile criticism during his time. These conflicts, complexities, confusions within his own self find reflection in his female figures of verse as well. They encompass a wide range of complex, conflicting and contradictory issues like narcissism, mother fixation, approving of patriarchal norms, on the one hand, to granting of autonomy and independence to female figures, on the other.

The role of mother is crucially important in Keats’s life as it is with any other poet. As Barbara A Schapiro, a psychoanalytic critic of Romantic poetry states:

The image of the woman, whether she figures as an ideal goddess or a serpentine vampire, a deserted woman or, more frequently, as the ever-maternal Nature is, central to the poetry of the Romantics. The relationship with the woman which the poetry either expresses or implies is rooted psychologically in the relationship with the first woman of all our lives, the mother.

The relationship with the mother serves as the core experience in the blossoming of personality and attainment of psychic and emotional maturity. The image of the mother according to psychologists, as represented unconsciously, is greatly internalized in infancy and retained throughout the rest of life. The unconscious representation owes its origin to the first relationship fantasized by the son with his mother. In the case of certain unavoidable short comings of maternal care, psychologists point out, ambivalence characterizes the first relationship between the son and the mother. In Keats’s life, we find such shortcomings of maternal care which definitely contributed to ambivalence in his relationships with his mother as first object of love, When this ambivalence is internalized as was the case with Keats it results in a split of the self or ago, ‘The child internalizes both the "good" loving mother and the "bad", frustrating one! Psychologists point out that if the relationship with the mother is damaged by other allied disturbances like separation, dead, or emotional rejection, the internal splitting becomes even more intense. In Keats’s case we clearly see that to major factors were present in the form of separation and death. He was not only separated and rejected by his mother during her second marriage; her return too did not last long as she expired from tuberculosis shortly. Such a splitting of self weakens the ego. Separation and early death of his mother contributed to a split with him. It leads to a series of idealizations and narcissism as well. We find all these traits more clearly in his early works like Endymion.

The second most striking woman figure in the domestic circuit, especially during Keats’s childhood and adolescence was Mrs. Alice Jennings- his maternal grandmother. Whatever loss of maternal affection Keats encountered was largely compensated by his grandmother. She was a sharp contrast to his mother. She was bold and efficient, one who returned her strength and presence of mind against heavy odds of life and tried her best to protect her grandchildren.

We can say that Keats had two mothers in his childhood-one his own mother Frances Keats, being young, pretty and unreliable, the other in the form of Alice Jennings-his grandmother being aged, reliable, responsible and affectionate.

The Keats brothers were fiercely possessive of their sister Fanny Keats and John was no exception. The boys felt a spontaneous pull of affection for their sister. The brothers were not only possessive of their lone sister; they competed with one another for drawing more attention from her.

Keats was constantly aware of his duty towards his sister and tried his best to fulfill it within his limitations. He seems painfully helpless when he refers to his sister walking about in his imagination on his death bed. She is a vulnerable women figures in Keats’s verse, women who are helplessly trapped and are dependent on an external chivalric force to free them from bondage.

Another woman figure of major importance in Keats’s personal life was Georgiana Augusta Wylie Keats, wife of Keats’s brother George Keats. Keats was extremely fond of Georgiana and he himself admitted that his liking for her gradually increased with time. It was also Georgiana’s genuine tact and empathy with Keats’s feelings that accounted for the closeness and intimacy. ‘I like her better and better’, he told Bailey,

She is the most disinterested woman I ever know-that is to say she goes beyond degree in it. To see an entirely disinterested Girl quite happy is the most pleasant and extraordinary thing in the world-it depends upon a thousand circumstances-on my word, ‘tis extraordinary.’

Of all women figures in Keats’s personal life, the one that is most controversial and enigmatic-at the same time, significant, is that of Fanny Browne. For the first century following the death of the poet, Fanny Browne was harshly treated-rather unjustifiably readers and followers of Keats. The ‘Victorian legend’ that was cooked up ‘was that of a dying poet consumed with unsatisfied love for a heartless flirt.

The early part of Keats’s relationship with Fanny Browne remains obscure largely due to lack of evidence. As far as Fanny’s impression of Keats is concerned, we get it roughly two decades later when she refers to the interesting conversation she had with the poet, except for moments during the conversation when Keats was over concerned about his brother’s health.

We get a more detailed account of Fanny Browne when Keats followed his initial introduction with a more detailed account in a letter dated 18 December 1818.

…Shall I give you Ms Browne? She is about my-height with a fine style of countenance of the lengthened sort-she wants sentiment every feature-she manages to make her hair look well her nostrils are fine-though a little painful-he (r) mouth is bad and good-he (r) profile is better than her full-face which indeed is not full put (for but)pale and thin without showing any bone-Her shape is very graceful and so are her movements-her arms are good her hands baddish her feet tolerable-she is not seventeen-but she is ignorant-monstrous in her behavior flying out in all direction calling people such names-that I was forced lately to make use of the term Minx-this I think no(t) from any innate vice but from a penchant she has for acting stylishly.

That Keats’s relationship with her developed slowly but steadily from the first encounter onwards, there is no doubt-but again we do not have much evidence of its development. The next clear indication that we find is in a rather intense form in the famous love letter commencing from July 1819.The engagement between Keats and Fanny Browne took place sometime after September 1819. It was made between October 1819, when Keats returned to Hampstead, and January 1820.

The later days when Keats was suffering from a string of hemorrhages, he sent a total of twenty two short latter to Fanny. Ravaged by obsession and tuberculosis, these letters carry a constant undertone of belief in the essential fickleness of women. This was, in all probability, an extension of his childhood experience. As it was pointed earlier, being abandoned by his mother at a tender age, he never really could regain his trust and faith in relationships later in life. One of his lesser known sonnets ‘I cry your mercy’ also testifies to the authenticity of such feelings.

Of the women figures in Keats’s personal life, Fanny Browne is of central importance. Her beauty, stirred up Keats’s all too familiar anxiety-that he might be rejected. As to how far this anxiety looms his women figures in verse. Fanny was rescued from the Victorian legend of being a reckless flirt by her correspondence with Fenny Keats.

Keats’s relationships with women figures in personal life, we clearly have reasons to believe that his own childhood experience greatly shaped his feelings and attitudes towards the opposite sex. His adolescence, like that of any other teenager, was stormed by fantasies of unfulfilled desire, ‘when I was a schoolboy,’ he later wrote, ‘ I thought a fair woman a pure Goddess, my mind was a soft nest in which someone of them slept though she knew it not.’

Keats have a complex attitude towards the opposite sex is beyond any doubt. It is also beyond doubt that these attitudes were largely shaped by his insecure childhood and adolescence, knowledge of Keats’s personal life in a way helps us to resolve the complexities which plague the women characters we find in his verse. It also helps us to disentangle the psychological strands and trace the deeper roots that account for his diffidence and anxiety in feminine company. Without such knowledge it is extremely difficult to put forward any rational approach or explanation regarding his sexual ambiguity, as highlighted by recent criticism. But first of all it is essential to discuss how these circumstances of his childhood and adolescence combined with other social factors to complicate

Keats’s own notion about gender and contributed to his ambiguous attitude, as pointed out by recent critics.

As a male Romantic poet, Keats has often been branded as ‘effeminate’ by contemporary critics and poets like Byron, Hazlitt, Hunt and others. Keats’s unique, unparalleled capacity for feminine empathy that very frequently blurred the line of

separation between masculinity and femininity was the main reason that contributed to this central ambiguity. In his essay, ‘On Effeminacy of Character’ (1822) William Hazlitt cites Keats’s verse as a primary example of effeminacy.

Byron and Lockhart refuse to include Keats in adult male company and consider him seriously as a poet. It was only several decades later, as Susan J. Wolfson points out, that George Gilfillan admired Keats’s ‘elegant effeminacy’ amidst trying circumstances in which he nurtured and struggled with his arts. In a condescending tone towards his class origins and poetic aspirations, most poets and critics referred to him as ‘Johnny Keats.’ As J.R. Mac Gillivray observes, whenever any writer of the nineteenth century referred to Keats as ‘Johnny Keats,’ they, in fact, implicit affirmed the accusation labeled against Keats by critics like Lockhart and Byron, mainly consisting of ‘effeminacy, sexual immaturity, and social inferiority.’

Whatever may be the reason, the ultimate effect-arising out of gender confusion-is one of the fragmentation of Keats’s poetic self; which in turn resulted in insecurity, uncertainty, diffidence, contradictions, complexities and conflicts. This aspect of sexual ambiguity has been recurred focus of recent criticism and is crucially important, especially in the context in Keatsian verse. We need to take a fresh glance at these women figures and judge as to how far they are self projections or male projections of gender stereotypes. The process of re-evaluation of Keatsian female figures will also give us an insight into the attitude and anxieties that beset his poetic psyche in his interaction with women.

Keats’s Ode to Psyche clearly reveals his sexual ambivalence and confusing attitudes. In this ode, as we shall see, Keats takes on the positions of both male and female lover. Written between 21 and 30 April 1819, the Ode to Psyche is the first of the Keats’s five spring 1819 odes. When copying it out on April in his journal letter of 14 Feb-3 May 1819, he says:

[the poem] is the first and only one with which I have taken even moderate pains-I have for the most part dashed of [f] my lines in a hurry-This I have done leisurely-I think it reads the more richly for it and will I hope encourage me to write other[s] in even a more peaceable and healthy spirit. You must recollect that Psyche was not embodied as a goddess before the time of Apuleius [Sic] the Platonist who lived after the Augustan age, and consequently the Goddess was never worshipped or sacrificed to with any of the ancient fervor-and perhaps never thought of in the old religion-I am more orthodox than to let a hethan Goddess be so neglected.

The letter reveals two important observations. Firstly, Keats’s admission that is the first and only one with which he has taken ‘moderate pains,’ and secondly, Keats’s genuine concern for the marginalization of the goddess Psyche, whose identity needs to be rescued. The word psyche itself signifies ‘soul’ and poet’s interest in the subject can be related to the ‘value of soul making’ letter, which he wrote almost at same time as his composition of Ode to Psyche on 21 April 1819.

Keats not only identifies with goddess but worships the figures as well. The form and nature of worship that we encounter in the last stanza of the ode indirectly mounts to a cult of self worship-the conscious pains he undertakes to carry out the act of worshipping the divine potential within him-again underlines the aspect of narcissistic self projection.

The last stanza of the Ode depicts the elaborate preparations of the ‘pain’ he is ready to undertake to worship Psyche. He is ready to worship her,

With the wreathed trellis of a working brain,

With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,

With all the gardens Fancy e’er could feign,

[Ode to Psyche, 60-62]

Keats is ready to exercise his ‘working brain’ in the process. The toil and elaborate pains promised here, once again remind us of his own resolution to take own on pain in life, to suffer and emerge as a true soul in the ‘value of soul making’ letter. Keats’s internalization of the Psyche here is completed. As Anne Mellor points out,

… The Poems Keats will write as a result of this ravishment of, or by, his own imagination-the poem calculatedly obscures who is ravishing whom-are figures as "the wreathed trellis of a working brain. "The visual image of the spatially radiating, interwoven trellis resembles that of the spatially radiating, interwoven trellis resembles that of a spider web, the trope of feminine production. And the poem ends with an affirmation of female sexuality, of a vaginal "casement open at night/to let the warm love in!" in this Ode, Keats triumphantly and climactically occupies the positions of both the male and the female lover: he has made to, penetrated, received, and possessed how own fancy; his own "shadowy thought."

The flow of ‘love’ through the open casement, at one level, pints at psyche’s fulfillment of her dream through union with Cupid. At the metaphorical level we can interpret it as Keats’s own craving for the divine grace to be an immortal poetic soul. As Mario L D’Avanzo points out,

‘In the Ode, Psyche, the imaginative mind, receives her identity from Cupid, the embodiment of passion. Their perfect marriage stands for fulfillment that Keats wished in his poetic life.’

Cupid here is

‘Identified as the embodiment of love or passion, without which the imagination as woman cannot exist. The sexual union of Cupid and Perfect, because divine synthesis of emotion and imagination, of heart and head, of sense and soul, anion whose issue is poetry.’

Ode to Psyche contributes a great deal to the aspect of sexual ambiguity in Keats. We do not get any definite pattern of behavior emerging from it, especially in his attitudes regarding the opposite sex. What we get is basically a bundle of contradictions. Yet, amidst these contradictions, certain aspects are very clear. The poet internalizes Psyche and emerges both as a male and a female lover. His internalization also points out that Psyche is an extension or creation of his own narcissism-an element which is predominant throughout the Ode. By rescuing her in a chivalrous way and glorifying her, he emerges as a feminist, but quite confusingly again, after internalizing and rescuing her, disowns her and leaves her totally at the discretion of a male God Cupid for final recognition and triumph. Irrespective of all these confusions and contradictions, it is clear, that he does not represent Psyche as an autonomous, independent ‘valued other.’ This indirectly reflects a great deal about the nineteenth century male attitude towards the opposite sex-a clan to which Keats himself was hounded and cornered into by critics and social circumstances: and from which he desperately wanted to disentangle himself.

The most interesting of the fatal figures in Keats is the lady we encounter in La Belle Dames Sans Merci. The poem begins with an interlocutor questioning a knight at arms.

Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

Alone and palely loitering?

The question is repeated in the second stanza as well,

Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

So haggard and woe-begone?

The knight then goes on to narrate his tale of plight. It is only then we come to know about this mysteriously beautiful woman enticing men and then ruthlessly deserting them. Yet ‘the knight cannot tell who the romantic woman was, or where she went, or why, rather, he simply recounts a series of events, which he invites us to assume but does not claim are related.’ Another interesting aspect of the narrative has been pointed out by Susan Wolfson, who finds it difficult to separate the voice of the interrogator from that of the knight.

What complicates the task of depicting this so called fatal female character is the scanty evidence within the narrative. The knight’s tale evokes more questions from the reader rather than answers. Several questions baffle us: who is Belle Dame Sans Merci? Why does a ghastly vision of dead men follow the glorious celebration of love? If the lady is without pity, why does she weep and sigh or a mere camouflage to deceive the knight?

By focusing on the sources and parallels we have of this female character in the contemporary and earlier texts. Once again these are conjectures based on critical and biographical evidences. We find a similarity between her and Spenser’s Phaedria (in Faerie Queen 2nd 6). Phaedria hires the knight cymochiles into her little boat. She decorates herself with flowers and garlands and provides sweet music for him as well. After arriving on an island, she lulls him to sleep with his head on her lap and maroons him on the island. However, unlike Phaedria, La Belle does not lure the knight. It is the knight who initially starts active courtship.

Several critics like Harold G. McCurdy, A. Hyatt Williams have identified La Belle, or rather the inspiration of La Belle to lie in Keats’s own mother. Harold G. McCurdy relates the cruelty of La Belle with that of ‘the nursing mother who leaves her sleeping child to wake alone and hungry, and who may, besides, drive him harshly away. In this context we might recall how Keats, himself was abandoned by his own mother, following the death of his father. The knight’s anxiety of separation could well be an extension of Keats’s own childhood trauma.

So if we consider the biographical details, we find that Keats’s mother and finally Fanny Brawne form the biographical background that probably inspired La Belle’s character. Having discussed the probable biographical sources and other relevant sources and parallels of origin of the central female figure of the narrative, the narrative of the poem and analyse the incidents which would give us a better picture of the depiction of femininity in the text, as well as the male attitude towards the opposite sex.

The knight at the beginning of the poem is alone amidst desolated surroundings, when he encounters the interlocutor. He is ‘palely loitering’ in a sterile landscape. Nature is bereft of music as ‘no birds sing.’ The desolation of the first three stanzas is clearly brought out by the poet as he is described as ‘haggard and so woes begun.’ The meeting between the knight and the lady took place in the meads or meadows. Keats does not associate her with the traditional haunted forests. In his manuscripts, Keats had originally intended the encounter to take place in the ‘wild, but later he changed it to the ‘meads.’ This clearly reveals that Keats intended the surroundings not to be suggestive of wilderness. She does not even have the evil traits in her physical appearance, except for the wild look of her eyes. She is untamed and reference to shutting her ‘wild eyes’ with ‘four kisses’ implies a softening process. In fact, at the beginning of the narrative, we do not get any evidence whatsoever that the lady had some secret plan or scheme to seduce the knight. On the contrary, it is the knight who is more active in courtship. As Susan Wolfson points out,

…Keats allows certain of the knight’s narrative to suggest that if the lady had a hidden design on him, he, too, was a wielder of design: no sooner had he met her than he courted her with flowery bindings of his own(‘I made a garland for her head. And bracelets too, and fragrant zone’), claimed possession of her (‘I set her on my pacing steed’), and, figuratively repeating these motions, translated her words into terms to satisfy his own desire:

‘And sure in language strange she said-I love thee true’…

The active initiative taken by the knight is underlined by use of phrases like, ‘I met,’ ‘made a garland for her,’ ‘I set her on my pacing steed’ etc. However, there is a gradual reversal of roles after this, as in stanzas V11 and V111we find it is the lady who gradually gains ascendancy and takes charge of proceedings. We encounter phrases like ‘she found’, ‘she took me’, ‘she lulled me’ which clearly suggest a more active role being taken up by the lady. The food showered from heaven in the form of mannadew, suggests that the knight has indeed joined the select band of the blessed. Before entering the elfin grot, she proclaims her love as she says, ‘I love thee true.’ Even the activities inside the grot reveals very little about the assumed evil nature of the lady. That she weeps and sighs can evoke several responses. Of these responses it cannot be ruled out that she might be full of concern about the fate that might overtake her lover. It may also be that she is mourning her own fate, the trouble she has brought on herself by sanctioning this romance.

In the course of events we come across the dream, which itself has a crucial role to play in separating the lovers. According to Enscoe, the figures responsible for destructing of the knight are the kings and princes who appear in the dream. According to him,

…La Belle Dame and her elfin grot are evil, the enchantment of the knight-at-arms is destructive, and their duty is to warn him, to release him from the enchantment, even if it kills him. They are not simply the victims of La Belle Dame: they are her enemies…. To them she is La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and evil, destructive, merciless witch who has trapped the unwary knight and subverted him from his true loyalties. The horrible irony of their warning is that their intrusion destroys the knight as well as the lady: they are the responsible agents for the knight’s subsequent desolation and withered state…

The voices we encounter in the dream symbolize the patriarchal forces of the society. These male voices see her as a sort of threat to the knight’s commitment to society. As Susan Wolfson points out,

It is significant that the chorus who identifies the lady as ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’-kings, princes, warriors, knight-are representative figures of a patriarchal order defined by quest, battle, conquest, and government, and secured by rejection of the indulgence the knight associates with her, namely a zone of erotic luxury, sensuality and near infantile pleasure……

The code of masculinity, as endorsed by society requires exceptional standards of discipline and restrained. Felinity here is not only implicitly affirmed as representing something inferior, but also the attitude is condescending. The lady seems to be the target of all offence and attack. She is seen as a temptation which must be overcome for larger accomplishments of life. Femininity here symbolizes everything that prevents a knight from carrying out his disciplined code of duties. The proper masculine code conduct, as rigidly envisaged by the patriarchal forces, asserts discipline and withdrawal, even if it leads to disastrous consequences. In this context, it is imperative for us to remember, how Keats himself had to face hostile criticism for not rigidly adhering to the nineteenth century code of masculinity, especially in the depiction of male characters in his verse.

Critics have identified the lady to represent two dominant concerns. The first being the dissipative potential of love, the second being the aspect of visionary imagination. Critics like Leon Waldoff have asserted that:

‘La Belle, both as a character in the ballad and as an archetypal image in Keats’s skepticism toward the visionary capacity of imagination emerges.’

Yet on the basis of all critical opinion we can arrive at the following inferences. Firstly, femininity has been idealized in the form of ‘La Belle.’ Irrespective of whatever she symbolizes, as highlighted by several critics, she is a coveted object of love. The passionate intensity of lovemaking in the poem reduces her to merely a sexual object. Barring the physical attributes of grace and beauty we do not have any other feminine attribute for which the knight sought after her. There is nothing in the narrative to suggest that she is malevolent or evil, except the ‘strange language’ and ‘wild’ look in her eyes. The knight in a way seeks her love by trying to evoke her pity or compassion rather than true merit of his own, for as a ‘valued other’ exercising her free will, she in all probability abandons him. La Belle in that context symbolizes that kind of female who consciously exercises her choice and discards the knight-for which the patriarchal society accuses her. She does not seduce, it is the knight who initiates the process. In all probability through the reality of experience she realizes that the knight is no match for her and so she discards him. In that context the patriarchal forces seem to raise a spontaneous cry denouncing a woman, who has the courage to exercise her free will and discard a male. On the other hand, if we consider the patriarchal voices in the dream as a sort of admonishment for the knight, then the projection or attitude towards femininity that we get is even more condescending and derogatory. In that context, femininity is seen to be a hindrance, to be overcome for larger accomplishments of life. She stands as a threat to male discipline and must be carefully avoided. She is looked upon as the inferior other, to be shunned for greater success of life, even if that leads to devastation and emotional wreckage.

What is the most disturbing about the poem is that the feminine perspective is totally ignored in it. We do not get to hear the lady’s perspective. She is denied the right to express herself, which clearly reveals how lopsided the scales genders were in nineteenth century society, the reflection of which we find in Keats’s poetic discourse. The only word she is allowed to utter in the poem is her proclamation of love, ‘I love thee true.’ This indirectly affirms that if a female is allowed to ventilate her opinion it has to be in conformity with approval of the male. She cannot speak; rather she is not allowed to speak beyond that. Whether that proclamation is an outcome of the knight’s seduction or not we do not know, but surely we cannot rule out that possibility, for we never get any access to her mind later in the poem. The proclamation also serves us an evidence for the knight to malign her glory; we only get to listen to the male version of the tale. The knight goes out telling his story, evoking sympathy from the already over dominant patriarchal forces and ultimately team up with them to wrongly accuse the lady of being a fatal seductress. She might have had legitimate reasons for abandoning the knight as well and does not deserve this harassment. The bulk of the confusions of the poem, probably would have been resolved if we could have had an insight into La Bell’s mind. Her silence of the nineteenth century female-ruthlessly marginalized in society. Any slight from of assertion of free will, as we see in the case of La Belle leads to ill fame and hostile criticism from the male counterpart.

Like La Belle, a great deal of ambiguity hovers around the next seductress figures Lamia. In Lamia, throughout the narrative we encounter several details that provoke one question after another, with no definite answer whatsoever. Is Lamia good or evil? Is she a goddess or a witch? Is she in reality a serpent or a woman? And so on. Our first view of Lamia is one which Hermes has. In spite of being a snake, she is beautiful in her own way.

She was a Gordian shape of dazzling hue,

Vermilion-spotted, golden, green and blue;

Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,

Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barred;

And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,

Dissolved, or brighter shone, or interwreathed

Their luster with the gloomier tapestries (Lamia, 1, 47-53)

The physical appearance before her-transformation represents ‘a duality, an admixture of beauty and ugliness, and this juxtaposition of diverse elements reveal a complexity.’ After her deal with Hermes she gets transformed. The violent transformation with all its ugliness is described by Keats.

Her mother foamed, and the grass, therewith besprent,

Withered at dew so sweet and virulent;

Her eyes in torture fixed and anguish drear,

Hot, glazed, and wide, with lid-lashes all sear,

Flashed phosphor and sharp sparks, without one cooling tear.

The colors all inflamed throughout her train,

She writhed about, convulsed with scarlet pain.

(Lamia, I, 148-154)

If we closely analyze the lines at the beginning of the poem, we come to know about her real nature. She refers to her own body as a "wreathed tomb" as she says,

‘When from this wreathed tomb shall I awake!

When move in a sweet body fit for life’

And love, and pleasure, and the ruddy strife

Of hearts and lips! Ah, miserable me!

(Lamia, 1, 148-154)

She clearly seems to be captive,

…a spirit entombed in a body she wishes to change. The implication is strong the serpent body is something extraneous to the voice speaking real self is the voice-the serpent body holds this self captive.

The narrative suggests some sort of an exile. It also shows that she is acquainted with the pleasures and joys of being human in feminine form, and she desperately pines for that lifestyle. The word ‘wreathed, literally refers to the intricate beauty of the snake, on the other hand it also connotes, ‘the garland laid on a grave, the mark of a commemorative gesture for a departed soul. The wreathed tomb where Lamia dwells goes like this,

So rainbow-sided, touched with miseries,

She seemed, at once, some penance lady elf,

Some demon’s mistress or the demon’s self.

Upon her crest she wore a vanish fire

Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne’s tiar;

Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter sweet!

As Proserpine still weeps for her Scilian air?

(Lamia, 1, 54-63)

Enscoe draws our attention to the word ‘seemed,’ which according to him, underlines the fact that it is only her serpent garb that makes her seem evil, though in reality she is not a demon or a demon’s mistress. Modern critics like Bruce Clarke has drawn our attention to the words ‘penanced lady elf.’ According to him, the word ‘elf’ usually implies a male fairy.’ So Keats’s use of the term ‘lady elf underlines’ his sensitivity to the masculine implication of "elf." The following line of the poem also evokes ambiguity and gender confusion:

Some demon’s mistress or the demon’s self (Lamia, 1, 55-56)

When Keats implies as to whether she is ‘demon’s mistress’ or ‘demon’s self,’ he implies both masculinity and felinity. The word ‘penance’ implies both masculinity and femininity. The word ‘penance’ implies hiding one’s own self for some sort of shameful act. It is a sacrament involving confession of sin, repentance and submission to penalties imposed and subsequently followed by redemption. It is a voluntary suffering undertaken for atonement. So her reptilian form ‘concretizes her shame and self-abasement and signifies an implicit, perpetual apology to the spiritual authority who first authorized her penance. This ‘penance lady elf’ gains her proper desirable gender by bringing together Hermes and the nymph. This clearly reveals the sexual ambiguity of Lamia. It is quite probable that in her serpent form she represents sexual confusion or a hermaphrodite.

Lamia, in her serpent state could well be a woman carrying out a penance, on successful completion of which she will probably return to her normal feminine form.

‘I was a woman, let me have once more

A woman’s shape and charming as before.

(Lamia, 1, 117-18)

So Lamia, in her serpent state could well be a woman carrying out a penance, on successful completion of which she will probably return to her normal feminine form. The above line also reveals that she is not at all comfortable in her serpent’s form and she longs to be in the woman’s shape as she was before. It is even more interesting to observe the following lines of the poem,

I love a youth of Corinth-Oh, the bliss!

Give me my woman’s form, and place me where he is.

(Lamia, 1, 119-120)

The words ‘my woman’s form’ confirm her identification with femininity. We are here definitely deals with a woman figure that has been trapped in a serpent’s garb, and that account for her ambiguity and confusion. But the bottom line is that she is quintessentially a woman and definitely not a serpent. As Enscoe points out,

…Lamia is not only a love-goddess, she is the very spirit of human love emerging from the world of primitive passion changing the satyr world through her influence and now with the help of the gods bringing this new concept of love to man.

There is no evidence in the narrative to suggest that Lamia’s ‘beauty is treacherous or that her love is false.’ Lamia encounters Lycius as he returns being cleansed and purified after offering his prayers to Jove.

In port Cenchreas, from Engina isle

Fresh anchored; whither he had been awhile

To sacrifice to Jove, whose temple there

Waits with high marble doors for blood and incense rare,

Jove heard his vows, and bettered his desire;

For my some freakful chance he made retire

From his companion, and set forth to walk,

Perhaps grown wearied of their Corinth talk.

(Lamia, 1, 225-232)

The first encounter gradually gives way to proclamation of love. Lamia initially threatens to leave, but all these threats only deepen their bond of love.

‘Leave thee alone! Look back! Ah, goddess, see

Whether my eyes can ever turn from thee!

For pity do not these sad hearts belie-

Even as thou vanishes so I shall die.

Stay! Though a naiad of the rivers, stay!

To thy far wishes will thy steams obey.

…………

…………

Thy memory will waste me to a shade-

For pity do not melt!

(Lamia, 1, 276-279)

As she decides to bid ‘adieu,’ Lycius grows pale:

.......He, sick to lose

The amorous promise of her lone complain,

Swooned, murmuring of love, and pale with pain,

The cruel lady, without any show

Of sorrow for her tender favorite’s woe.

(Lamia, 1, 287-291)

Her cruelty is only a playful game of love, it is intended to intensity her bond of love and she proves it by rejuvenating Lycius with a kiss.

Put her new lips to his, and gave a fresh

The life she had so tangled in her mesh;

(Lamia, 1, 294-295)

The kiss infuses a lease of new life in Lycius, just as Cynthia’s kiss had revived Endymion. While critics like Wasserman assert Lamia to be a ‘Serpent Cynthia,’ Gerald Enscoe asserts quite contrarily though that ‘she is Cynthia with a new name.’ he points out,

…Cynthia wins the love of Endymion while in her role of

Goddess, but she is unable to bring this love to full fruition

Until she has also won him in her role as a creature of

Earth-the Indian maiden.... her (Lamia’s) transformation

From goddess to woman has the same function in this

Poem as Cynthia’s disguise in Endymion.

The situation is paralleled in Lamia: Lamia wins the love of Lycius while playing the role of goddess, and Lycius believes, at first, that she is a goddess. But like Cynthia, she

So threw the goddess off, and won his heart

More pleasantly by playing woman’s part,

With no more awe than what her beauty gave,

That, while it smote, still guaranteed to save.

(Lamia, 1, 336-339)

The first part of the poem closes with the apprehension of impending disaster. It is for the first time that Lamia meets Apollonius and both Lamia and Lycius and disturbed. As Lycius asks Lamia:

‘Why do you shudder, love, so ruefully?

Why does your tender palm dissolve in dew?’

‘I’m wearied,’ said fair Lamia, ‘tell me who

Is that old man? I cannot bring to mind

His features’ Lycius! Where fore did you blind?

Yourself from his quick eyes?’

(Lamia, 1, 369-374)

Lycius is apprehensive about his encounter with Apollonius, and sees him as a ‘ghost of folly’ about to ‘haunt’ his ‘sweet dream.’ The closing lines of the first part are no less significant, stating that the source of woe and misery for the lovers must come from the ‘busy world.’

And but the flitter-winged verse must tell,

For truth’s sake, what woe afterwards befell,

‘I would humour many a heart to leave them thus,

Shut from the busy world, of more incredulous.

(Lamia, 1, 394-97)

The busy world’ henceforth constantly intrudes and threatens the cocoon of love. The ‘thrill of trumpets’ carries with it the overture of destruction that is soon to follow. In the final scene we find that Lycius is too keen to display, even flaunt his prized possession to his fellow Corinthians. Leon Waldoff sees this passionate desire of display as an extension of Lycius’s own narcissism, for Lamia ‘has come to form a significant part of his image of himself, particularly of his new identity as a man.’ After dwelling for a short time in the purple lined palace of sweet sin, Lycius is impatient to show off Lamia to the world,

What mortal hath a prize, that other men

May be confounded and abashed withal,

But lets it sometimes pace abroad majestical,

And triumph, as in thee I should rejoice

Amid the hoarse alarm of Corinth’s voice.

Let my foes choke and my friends shout afar,

While through the thronged streets your bridal car

Wheels round its dazzling spokes.

(Lamia, 11, 57-64)

He wants to display Lamia to fan his own male ego. Femininity here is a commodity to display-merely for the satisfaction of the male ego.

Lucius’s ‘exhibitionistic tendency’ underlines Anne Mellor’s assertion that the Romantics did not see femininity as a ‘valued other’ but a narcissistic self projection. Even when Lamia beseeches him ‘to change his purpose,’ he becomes,

Perverse, with stronger fancy to reclaim

Her wild and timid nature to his aim

. . . . .

. . . . .

His passion, cruel grown, took on a hue

Fierce and sanguineous as’t was possible

In one whose brow had no dark veins to swell.

(Lamia, 11, 70-77)

Yet she gives into Lycius’s plea, being fully of her own predicament.

And knowing surely she could never win

His foolish heart from its mad pompousness,

She set herself, high-thoughted, how to dress

The misery in fit magnificence.

(Lamia, 11, 113-116)

Lycius’s masculine assertion underlines the helplessness and submissiveness of Lamia.

In words of Keats,

She burnt, she loved the tyranny,

And, all subdued, consented to the hour

When to the bridal he should lead his paramour.

(Lamia, 11, 81-83)

So through the action of Lycius, Keats indirectly approves of a standard masculine convention of subduing the female. As to whether he does it for the sake of his publishers and readers or in order to assert his masculinity, is a different question altogether. Waldoff asserts that even Lycius’s exhibition of exotic wealth is intended to inflame his male ego and vanity. Waldoff sees his concern for protecting Lamia from the ‘penetrating gaze of Apollonius’ as a sort of desperate measure to project his own self, where the woman is just a narcissistic self projection and totally absorbed in the identity of the male. So Lamia’s final catastrophic encounter followed by the death of Lycius in a way ‘becomes a metaphor for the psychological consequences of denying masculine identity.’ Thrilling compares the two worlds of love, ‘one of elfin grot created by La Belle and the other of the Place’ created by Lamia, and asserts that both these scenes of ‘erotic pleasure’ ultimately ‘leads to devastation, of an erotic fulfillment which implies castration.’ Thrilling also points out that Keats not only advocates or depicts a world of pleasure and sensations in his verse, he also extends his skepticism towards it. In Lamia, Apollonius can be seen as that agent of skepticism.

In the final encounter Lycius desperately tries to protect Lamia from Apollonius, Apollonius confronts Lamia in the banquet hall, following which Lamia being attacked as a ‘serpent!’ disappears and Lycius dies. As Leon Waldoff points out in psychoanalytic terms,

… (Apollonius) attack on and disappearance of the prime symbol of the hero’s masculine identity results in his death suggesting both castration and psychological devastation………………………………

………………………………… Central to the idea of tragedy in this poem is the fact that that Lycius’s identity and life have become fatefully intertwined with the illusion of a feminine ideal behind which hides, in the nature of a serpent, the image of a phallic woman. Apollonius repetition of the charge that she is a serpent is the climax of a recognition scene exposing one of the most fearful images associated with woman, an image symbolizing to the observing Lycius his powerlessness. In the final scene, Lamia’s kinship-with the fearful gorgons of myth and literature is silently but forcefully evoked and Lycius’s death is related to the fate of those who have looked on Medusa’s head. . .

So the two major reasons, behind Lycius’s death following Lamia’s disappearance, according to Waldoff are: firstly, ‘her disappearance and his recognition of her serpent’s nature,’ gives ‘a fetal wound to his male narcissism, his identity as a man,’ secondly, it is the culmination of what Waldoff calls, ‘castration anxiety,’ that is Keats’s

In Lamia, Keats clearly shows the failure of a woman who consciously tries to exercise her free will. She may be a seducer, but her relationship with Lycius is based on mutual consent and love. If any force can stand as a source of legitimate prerogative to pursue her obsession with love. Yet what does her disappearance signify? Does it signify her return to original serpent state? We do not know, we can only conjecture. What haunts us is the question whether femininity would ever emerge as a free, independent and autonomous entity within her own limitations and be regarded as a ‘valued other.’

There is a strong undertone of fatality associated with Keats’s characterization of Melancholy in his Ode on Melancholy. Melancholy was Keats’s lifelong companion ever since his childhood. It has been a recurrent backdrop of most of his odes and letters.

In May 1817, when Keats wrote to Haydon, about ‘a horrid morbidity of Temperament which has shown itself at interval.’ He had already come to terms with melancholy as an integral part of his quest for the ideal of beauty. He affirms it in the same letter as he goes on to write, ‘it is I have no doubt the greatest Enemy and stumbling block I have to fear.’ Composed much later, in May 1819, the Ode on Melancholy explores the relationship between joy and suffering in antithetical terms. This ambivalence or ambiguity of Melancholy is not only a source of mystery but as elusive and difficult to explain as some of Keats’s other female figures like La Belle or Lamia.

The aspect of the female figure ‘whom one must master, to whom one must yield’ is crucially important for an understanding of Melancholy. We are reminded of the La Belle and Lamia. In the former this ambivalence is absolutely clear. At the beginning of the poem, it is knight who is active in courtship. However, in the long run it is the female figure who gradually gains ascendancy and power. We find a similar trend in the Ode on Melancholy as well. In the Ode the code of conduct prescribed at the end of the second stanza for the pursuer of melancholy, urges us to treat mistress’s anger as a rich spectacle and snatch the initiative. It suggests an active role, but by the end of the final stanza the positions are totally reversed, with the female figure becoming triumphant, while the pursuer of the quest is merely reduced to one of her ‘cloudy trophies.’

The triumphant sway of the goddess is clearly revealed in the final two lines of the Ode.

His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,

And be among her cloudy trophies hung. (stz.III, 29-30)

The word ‘trophy’ usually connotes triumph or success. But here it has a different twist associated with it. As Van Gheny points out,

. . . In Keats’s ode, the trophy that the hero dedicates in the temple is also an ideal character-his soul that is to say, a dedication of mind in its ideal capacity. The trophy figure corresponds with what Yeats called the "Mask," "that object of desire or moral ideal which is off all possible things the most difficult"-a "form created by passion to unite us to ourselves."

When Keats says ‘Beauty that must die,’ at the beginning of the third stanza it has two implications. The first is the inevitability of death and the second the perception of beauty that blooms for a short span and then fades away stealing the strength and vitality of life. The second implication carries with it a sinister connotation that implies the destructive element of seduction and short lived ecstasy-a process in which the pursuer loses his self and ends up being a victim of the subject persued.

So the Ode on Melancholy is quite complex as far as depiction of femininity goes. Here we witness the reversal process, where the male lover does not efface the female into a narcissistic self projection, but he himself gets consumed in the process. She is fetal, the poet is aware of it, yet he prescribed the experience of beauty without paying any heed whatsoever to the fact that he would definitely be ‘among her cloudy trophies hung.’

Keats Endymion belongs chronological to an earlier phase of his poetic career. Yet in this poem romance, the treatment of femininity is quite complex and interesting. It is probably the only work by Keats, which shows a gradual progression in the depiction of womanhood, from an idealistic and narcissistic self projection towards a more realistic, independent and autonomous version.

Endymion’s quest for the elusive Cynthia is an idealist quest which is dissociated from reality and sees womanhood as nothing but a narcissistic self projection. By the end of the poem the narcissism gives away to a more mature, realistic vision of womanhood in the form of the Indian Maiden. Apart from Cynthia the poem abounds in women figures. Besides the moon Goddess (called variously Diana, Cynthia, Phoebe and moon) we have the anonymous golden haired maiden, Peona-Endymion’s sister, Venus, Circe and Indian maiden. The two female figures that account for the central ambiguity or enigma of the poem: Cynthia and the Indian maiden.

The poetic romance starts off the Keats’s famous exordium.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

It’s loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness, but still will keep

A bower just for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quite breathing.

(Endymion)

The celebration of beauty at the start of the poem is not in terms of serene abstraction but in tune with concrete reality. Keats provides a list of shapes which all assert ‘concrete and natural phenomena.’

…Such the sun, the moon,

Trees, old and young, sprouting a shady boon

For simple sheep; and such are daffodils

With the green world they live in; and clear rills

That for themselves a cooling covert make’

Gainst the hot season;

(Endymion, 1, 13-18)

Beauty here involves internalization of an earlier experience and idealization of it.

Keats through Endymion ultimately forces the male protagonists to give up the self destructive narcissistic love and accept the female as the valued other-free, independent and different. Cynthia and the Indian maid represent two opposite strands of the Romantic vision of Keats. The former is an idealistic creation of narcissism build on the infantile yearning for regressive fusing love for mother; while the latter is a creation based on acceptance of a more realistic emancipated version of womanhood-which breaks the shackles of self centeredness and gives a new kind of relatedness to society, based on independence of the female. It envisages a society where women have equal rights as their male counterpart, and in that context Keats emerges as a profeminist.

Other female figures fade into insignificance as Mnemosyne (in Hyperion) and later Moneta (in The Fall of Hyperion) reigns supreme in the epics; being the dominant, autonomous, female forces drawing the critical attention. Both teach words of wisdom, knowledge and humanity to male poet.

Once again Keats defies any definite form of classification, especially as regards his attitude towards the opposite sex. We can neither brand him exclusively as a feminist nor can we slot him with other male Romantic poets-who have been accused of being oblivious of the presence of the female, as an autonomous entity in poetic discourse by feminist critics.

The traits of feminism that we find could well be due to the personal and social circumstances her faced in early nineteenth century society.

Jasna sasidharan

6th semester

Roll no 616