Dublin Core
Title
Women in Coleridge’s “Christabel”, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “The Eolian Harp”: Sexualisation and the Cultural Expectations
Abstract
To face it, it is quite challenging to draw distinctive borders of women issues when it comes to Romantic poets of English literature. These poets were reforming many issues of the contemporary culture of England such as valuing the nature, which was deteriorated by Industrial Revolution of the period, and emphasizing intuition over reason. However, the changes those poets endeavouring to create might not be considered as revolutionary since these poets could not manage to stay away from the traditions of their societies. The aim of this paper is to analyse the place of women in Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The Eolian Harp and Christabel": how he sexualised women and what were the cultural expectation from women at the time. Allocating an exaggerated feminine aspect to women nearly climaxes in one of Coleridge’s memorable poems “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. Coleridge attends sexualising women in “Christabel” with the help of specific word choice. Additionally, it might be put forward that Coleridge gives significance to virginity, which is identified with the Blessed Virgin Mary in Christianity when Coleridge’s being ‘a staunch Anglican in religion’ is taken into consideration. In most of the patriarchal societies, virginity equates purity, which is utilized by men to suppress women. Moreover, negative attitudes of Coleridge towards his wife, Sara Fricker, must be concentrated on to have an insight into the poet’s views on women. Considering the attitudes of Coleridge towards his wife, the assertions above on sexualisation of women and cultural expectations from them in the eyes of Coleridge might be conceived as accurate. Keywords: Sexualisation, Women, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Cultural Expectations
Keywords
Article
PeerReviewed
PeerReviewed
Publisher
International Burch University
Date
2016-05-19
Extent
3280