Women's Suffering Portrayed in "The Sick Rose" by William Blake from IkhtiarinaPutri

The Sick Rose and The Suffering of Woman

ABSTRACT

As people know, poetry is as universal as language and almost as ancient. It has been the concern of the folks not only the lowborn citizens but also the royal families and the educated men. Poetry might be defined as a kind of language that says more and says it more intensely than ordinary language does. Being in the group of the intelligent, it is a must to study more intensively about the poetry. To enjoy and love every time reading the poem is very important for the writer in composing this essay. William Blake was born in London England in the year 1757. The Sick Rose is one of The Songs of Experience’s by William Blake written in 1794 when one of the only jobs women could get was one within prostitution. In the 18th century London became a center of public houses. The worm represents any male customers who goes to the prostitute and are after personal satisfaction. The Rose’s life is destroyed physically, emotionally, socially and psychologically.

INTRODUCTION

According to “A Handbook to Literature”by C. Hugh Holman, the Professor of English University of North Carolina, “Poetry is a term applied to the many forms in which human beings have given rhythmic expression to their most imaginative and intense perceptions of the world, themselves, and the interrelationship of the two”.

As people know, poetry is as universal as language and almost as ancient. It has been the concern of the folks not only the lowborn citizens but also the royal families and the educated men. Poetry might be defined as a kind of language that says more and says it more intensely than ordinary language does. Being in the group of the intelligent, it is a must to study more intensively about the poetry. To enjoy and love every time reading the poem is very important for the writer in composing this essay.

THE POEM

The Sick Rose

LITERARY REVIEW

1. Woman Prostitution
2. Nathan Cervo's "Blake's The Sick Rose"

3. Leopold Damsroch. Jr.

    

DISCUSSION

From a background in which the poem is issued, at the time of London in the 18th century London became the center of public houses, where many customers who are looking for the satisfaction came to the public houses. The speaker in “The Sick Rose” try to describe how is the women circumstances at that time and how they suffer their life in prostitution.

“O rose, thou art sick!”

As mentioned in the literary review by Cervo, “The Rose” is not described as a beauty of love, but it tells about the state of woman which is so “sick” and far from love until it suffers because she live in the prostitution.

“Does thy life destroy”

In the last line, according Cervo “life’s vulnerability”, the woman which was influenced by the character "the invisible worm” should suffer her ultimate fate because all she has had been destroyed. As it described in the Metaphor that the man’s lust makes the woman’s life destroyed.

Besides, the first aspect that mentioned by Leopold Damroch before is that the poem can read as a naturalistic rose (roses do decay). Meanwhile the speaker does not mean that that people would innocently appreciate the poem as a description of a naturalistic decay of the worm-eaten roses. As it is described in the Symbols that “The Rose” is refers to “woman”. It is symbolized a woman whose love plundered by a man who does not responsible against the woman. The virginity was taken from the woman, so that not only the loss of purity, but she also feels physically, emotionally, psychologically and socially ache.

The other aspect mentioned by Damroch is sociopolitical. As we know prostitution is never been illegal and so could the only be prosecuted when associated with disorderly conduct or public indecency. In the middle century, England saw the apogee of the double standard of sexual morality; male sexual access to women was a necessity but any slip from sexual purity on woman’s part cut her off from respectable society.

 However, the proper aspect according to Leopold Damroch is about the psychosexual. The man symbolized as an “invisible worm” is hanging around at night carrying an aura or an unpleasant situation with him to search for sexual satisfaction within prostitution. It does destroy the woman’s life and she must suffer her life after the prostitution.

CONCLUSION

William Blake’s “The Sick Rose” is a simple yet meaningful poem to describe the woman’s suffering in 1794. In that era, London is experiencing rapid growth in prostitution where so many people go the pub seeking for inner satisfaction. Blake eliminating the symbol of the beauty in the “rose” and describing it as “a sick rose” and shows his sadness about the condition of woman who lived in prostitution in that era.

This poem is beautifully described where Blake used the “worm” and “rose” as the main characters and make a story about the women who suffer her life in prostitution and get her life destroyed by the droves of men who come to search for prostitution. “The Sick Rose” brings us about the psychosexual aspect where the man behavior of sex drives him to search for sexual satisfaction.

REFERENCES

Abrams., Ford., Daiches. 1890. The Norton Anthology of English Literature Volume 2. England: W. W. Norton and Company.

Cervo, Nathan. Blake's' The Sick Rose. Explicator. 48: 4 (Summer, 1990), 253-54. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00144940.1990.9934016. Accessed in June 23 2015 at 10.00 PM.

Damrosch, Leopold, Jr. Symbol and Truth in Blake's Myth. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980. https://books.google.co.id/books?id=5q3_AwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false. Accessed in June 25 2015 at 7.48 AM.

Harvey, Sir Paul. 1967. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Great Britain: Oxford University Press.

Holman, C. Hugh. 1985. A Handbook to Literature. Indianapolis: ITT Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing Company, Inc.

Perrine, Laurence., Thomas R. Arp. 1992. Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry. United States of America: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers.

Oxford. 2008. Oxford Learner’s Pocket Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

English Poetry 1 Take Home Final Test

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1  Background of The Study

Poetry is a beautiful art that ever written by human being. It is expressed what the poet’s feeling at the time the poet writes the poem. As Holman explained it in “A Handbook of Literature”, poetry deals with emotion. It presents the emotions of the poet as they are aroused by some scene, some experience, some attachment. It is often rich in sentiment and passion. (1985: 341)

The following quotation is from “Understanding Poetry”; only poetry - in the broadest sense of the word – can help us to answer such questions, and help us, thus, to an understanding of ourselves and of our own values. (Brooks&Warren, 1976: 6).

Being in the group of the intelligent, it is a must to study more intensively about the poetry. It is very happy to know what the author’s meaning clearly. The writer has chosen the poem entitled “A Complaint” by William Wordsworth for it is good and full of metaphors and symbols. To enjoy and love every time reading the poem is very important for the writer in composing this essay..

1.2  Purpose of The Study

There are several purposes of composing this essay, which are:

1.            To analyze what kind of intrinsic elements of poem within the poem itself.

2.            To understand the meaning of the whole poem written by the poet.

1.3  Scope of The Study

         This essay has been scoped into the important element that is only the intrinsic element. The intrinsic element is figurative language that is divided into metaphor and symbol.

CHAPTER II

THE POET, THE POEM, AND TRANSLATION

2.1. THE POET

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was born in Cockermouth in West Cumberland, just on the northern fringe of the English Lake District. His mother was died when he was eight. He was then sent to school at Hawkshead, near Esthwaite Lake, in the heart of that sparsely populated region that he and Coleridge were to transform into one of the poetic centers of England.

Wordsworth’s father, John Wordsworth then passed away when he was thirteen. In the summer of 1790, he took a walking tour through France and Switzerland. After receiving his degree in 1791 he returned to France, where he became an enthusiastic convert to the ideals of the French Revolution (1789-1799). His lover Annette Vallon of Orleans bore him a daughter in December 1792, shortly before his return to England. Disheartened by the outbreak of hostilities between France and Great Britain in 1793, Wordsworth nevertheless remained sympathetic to the French cause.

In 1795 he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge when he settled in a rent-free house at Racedown, Dorsetshire, with his beloved sister, Dorothy. Coleridge claimed that he had detected signs of genius in Wordsworth's rather conventional poem about his tour in the Alps, Descriptive Sketches, published in 1793. Now he hailed Wordsworth unreservedly as "the best poet of the age."

By 1843 he was poet laureate of Great Britain. He died in 1850 at the age of eighty. Only then did his executors publish his masterpiece, The Prelude, the autobiographical poem that he had written in two parts in 1799, expanded to its full length in 1805, and then continued to revise almost to the last decade of his long life. Most of Wordsworth's greatest poetry had been written by 1807, when he published Poems, in Two Volumes; and after The Excursion (1814) and the first collected edition of his poems (1815), although he continued to write prolifically, his powers appeared to decline.

2.2. THE POEM

A COMPLAINT

 There is a change—and I am poor;

 Your Love hath been, nor long ago,

 A Fountain at my fond Heart’s door,

 Whose only business was to flow;

 And flow it did; not taking heed

 Of its own bounty, or my need.

 What happy moments did I count!

 Bless’d was I then all bliss above!

 Now, for this consecrated Fount

 Of murmuring, sparkling, living love,

 What have I? shall I dare to tell?

 A comfortless, and hidden WELL.

 A Well of love—it may be deep—

 I trust it is, and never dry:

 What matter? if the Waters sleep

 In silence and obscurity.

 —Such change, and at the very door

            Of my fond Heart, hath made me poor.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

2.3. TRANSLATION

Sebuah Pengaduan

Terjadi sebuah perubahan, dan aku malang

Cintamu telah ada, tidak lama diwaktu itu

Sebuah mata air pada pintu hati yang sangat kucinta

Yang hanya bertugas untuk mengalir

Dan telah mengalir sebagaimana mestinya, tidak memusatkan perhatian

Dari karunia itu sendiri, atau apa yang kubutuhkan

Sungguh peristiwa-peristiwa bahagia yang dapat kuhitung!

Telah memberkahiku dengan semua keberhakan dari yang di atas

Sekarang, untuk sumber yang suci itu

Dari bisikan, kilauan, cinta yang hidup

Apa yang aku punya? Bolehkah aku berani katakan?

Sebuah kesedihan yang tersembunyi dengan baik

Sebuah sumur cinta yang mungkin dalam

Aku percaya adanya dan tidak pernah kering

Kenapa? Jika air itu tertidur

Dalam sunyi dan kabur

Seperti perubahan, dan dalam setiap pintu

Pada hatiku yang sangat kucinta, telah membuatku malang

CHAPTER III

LITERARY REVIEW

The poet “A Complaint” contains a lot of intrinsic elements. Here the writer will distinguish become three sections that most dominant appear in the poem. All of the dominant elements are figurative language. According to Holman, figurative language is intentional departure from the normal order, construction, or meaning of words in order to gain strength and freshness of expression, to create a pictorial effect, to describe by analogy, or to discover and illustrate similarities in otherwise dissimilar things. (1985: 185)

a.      Metaphor

The first dominant element that mostly appears in the poet is metaphor. In the Oxford Learner’s Pocket Dictionary, it has been written that metaphor is use of words to show something different from the literal meaning. (2008: 277). Besides, according to Holman, metaphor is an implied analogy which imaginatively identifies one object with another and ascribes to the first object one or more of the qualities of the second or invests the first with emotional or imaginative qualities associated with the second. (1985: 264).

The example can be found in Tennyson’s poem “The Eagle”: He clasps the crag with crooked hands. As Perrine said, Tennyson substitutes crooked hands with claws. (1992: 65) Another example is in the “Hope” by Emily Dickinson, the first two lines she mentioned:

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

“Hope” and “feathers” has no connection at all in literally meaning.

b.      Symbol

A symbol can be described as way how the author represented their knowledge. According to Holman (1985: 436), on the most literal level, a symbol is something which stands for or suggests or means something else.

What makes metaphor and symbol different? It differs from metaphor in that a metaphor evokes an object in order to illustrate an idea or demonstrate a quality, whereas a symbol embodies the idea or the quality. Holman (1985: 436). Besides, W. M. Urban said in Holman (1985: 436); the metaphor becomes a symbol when by means of it we embody an ideal content not otherwise expressible.

Example for symbol is reflected on the Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken”. The poem tells us that the persona would like to choose both roads, but it cannot be real because he is unable to do it. “The roads” here is not something real like a real road in the real life, but the roads here symbolized as a choice. It means that the persona had to choose an important choice in his life and the road he takes will make all the differences though his life.

CHAPTER IV

DISCUSSION

Generally, William Wordsworth’s poet “A Complaint” tells us about the persona that has lost her/his lover. Here we will discuss about figurative language aspects that is metaphor and symbol.

1.      Metaphor

As what have been stated by Perrine, a metaphor means something other than what it is. (1992: 83) William Wordsworth is the poet that loves to use metaphor. In the poem “A Complain” itself, there is a several metaphor expressed.

A fountain at my fond heart’s door

The second line in the first stanza of the poet use metaphor. It analogizes two contradiction things directly; they are “heart” and “door”. As we know “heart” and “door” are very different from all sections. “Heart” is part of our body, or it also something connected with a feeling that we feel, but “door” is something that was not part of our body and it has no feeling.

Why “heart” has a “door”? It is more often expressed as a feeling. When we feel something in our heart, we will feel a vibration in our hearts too. When we are in love, sometimes we often say, "you knock the door of my heart cause I am falling in love with you". The same thing also happens in “my fond heart’s door”. The lines that succeed this also imply that while the persona’s love was fair and natural.

Whose only business was to flow

This third line of the first stanza has connection with the line before. The metaphor here shows with the contradiction between the word “business” and “fountain”. Business is something connected with work, but the word “fountain” has no connection at all with work.

What happy moments did I count!

The first line in the second stanza shows us the metaphor in the word “count” and “happy moments”. Count refers to number or amount of something but as a normal human, we know that our happy moments cannot be counted. “Count” showed that the “happy moments” is rarely and may be a man in this poetry was just felt happiness in a separate time in his life. Besides, they were indeed happy and that he or she was grateful for those times.

A Well of love—it may be deep

In this line, the contradiction objects are “well” with “love”. Love is only something that can be felt by human being, but here love has a well. Something that made the writer believe this line is more to be metaphor is because in the line after the line mentioned above, Wordsworth said “I trust it is, –and never dry.” Also love is compared to water in a well, and so complains or shows great sorrow and grief after the love is gone.

2.      Symbol

There is a change—and I am poor

This poet begins with symbol. The word “poor” is not literally meaning as if it is monetary sense but rather the persona uses the term to suggest the loss of something that was once very important to him or her. It is also this line, which sets the tone of helplessness and resignation that is quite resonant in the poem. Moreover, in this first line, Wordsworth exclaims on the onset that something has changed, but by immediately following it with “and I am poor”. It also reflects that nothing more can be done about the situation because the persona has lost, but it simply lost for good.

A fountain at my fond heart’s door

As the words “my fond heart’s door” has been explained in metaphor, here will be “a fountain” that contains symbol. “A fountain” could be mentioned too as one of central images used throughout the poem and it appears to represent the beloved. In literally meaning “a fountain” is a supply of water for public, but then it comes to symbolize the “magnanimity and thoughtfulness” from Lord who gives a grace for enough supply. Thus the fountain was not only an ornament but was also a lifeline for the people as it gave them access to an extremely important element, water.

Now, for that consecrated fount

Of murmuring, sparkling, living love,

“Consecrate fount” has a meaning of a love. In the second line, the words are using as three adjectives to describe “consecrate fount”: murmuring, sparkling and living. This creates multiplicity in meaning as it could mean that the persona has gotten used to the presence of the “fountain”. The words murmuring, sparkling, and living sound that it creates has become familiar to the persona. In the other side, it could also mean that the persona is perfectly aware of the beloved’s unhappiness.

A comfortless and hidden well

In the following lines can be concluded that the persona is being leaving with “a comfortless and hidden well.” Why the persona is being leaving? The persona is being leaving because the beloved (the fountain) is something that easy to find before then the persona explained that he was in the “a comfortless and hidden well.” The highly accessible fountain as it implies that the water held within in is no longer within the persona’s reach. What remain from the persona and the beloved’s relationship is hidden somewhere deep and far way.

I trust it is, –and never dry

This second line in the last stanza has a meaning that the persona begins to deal with the situation of the beloved’s leaving. He/she believes that the fountain of love is never dry; it means that the fountain of love that used to flow will always flows although it may be gone far away or lost deep down in the well.

What matter? If the waters sleep

As the waters represented a love, the word sleep is not a meaning as it means sleep and then has a dream. The word sleep symbolized a leaving. The persona realized that he/she cannot force his/her beloved to stay. As the analogy of the waters, they will continue to flow to places further away. The love has ended and it is ready to go, but it will still remain in the well as it called memories.

In silence and obscurity

The line symbolized that the persona finally understand that the beloved have to go. The love when they were together will find a way to disappear “in silence and obscurity.” The persona gave up to the beloved in case that the beloved had gone without saying a word or the beloved ended up the relationship in obscurity.

–Such change, and at the very door

Of my fond heart, hath made me poor

The last two lines reinforce the persona’s helplessness and resignation to his/her separation with the beloved. He/she will back to the where they are.

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

2.1. Conclusion

William Wordsworth’s “A Complaint” has three elements which is metaphor, personification, and symbol. The metaphor consists of 4 lines; while the symbol consists of

After all “A complaint” is a poem that tells us about the experience of the persona about her/his former love that left her/him. The first stanza tells us about the persona’s feeling about her beloved. William Wordsworth has made it clear with symbol in the very first line. The second stanza tells us that the persona started to realize that his/her beloved is ready to leave expressed by the symbol in the second and third line.

In the last stanza, the persona finally gave up to the beloved though with a heavy heart because the beloved is leaving without any explanation. The persona realized that what still remains in their relationships is only memories.

This poem gives us a lesson that when you fight alone, when there is no more left in a relationship, you should let go even though it makes your heart breaks. At the end, William Wordsworth has delivered a poem within metaphors and symbols beautifully.

2.2. Suggestions

From the conclusion above, the writer have some suggestions for readers who want to translate literary works in the form of a poem:

1.   To collect a lot of sources of reading literature, especially poetry

2.   To increase the vocabulary, because the translation of poetry need a literary translation not only literal translation;

3.   To enjoy every second you read the poem, because without love you cannot feel and you cannot reach the author’s meaning.

CHAPTER VI

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abrams., Ford., Daiches. 1890. The Norton Anthology of English Literature Volume 2. England: W. W. Norton and Company.

Brooks, C, & Warren, R. P. 1976. Understanding Poetry. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Echols, John M., Hassan Shadili. 2000. Kamus Inggris Indonesia. Jakarta: Gramedia.

Holman, C. Hugh. 1985. A Handbook to Literature. Indianapolis: ITT Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing Company, Inc.

Oxford. 2008. Oxford Learner’s Pocket Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Perrine, Laurence., Thomas R. Arp. 1992. Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry. United States of America: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers.

--. Poems, In Two Volumes. Vol.2. By William Wordsworth. An Electronic Classics Series Publication. http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/wordsworth/poems-2vol-2.pdf. Accessed in Saturday, December 27, 2014.

This paper is written by Ikhtiarina Putri Shalehah