The Romantic Era featured a drastic change in how many people lived their lives, including how authors wrote their poems. I Am! and The Night is Darkening Round Me were both written during the Romantic Era by people facing similar struggles. I Am! was written by John Clare who didn't fit in with the current societal norms and used poetry as a method to convey his struggles; The Night Is Darkening Round Me, written by Emily Bronte, was meant to convey her difficulty being a female author in a male-dominant society. Both are heavily influenced by nature as they possibly may have seen it as a place of comfort as well as the inspiration of The Romantic Era. I Am! uses multiple different methods throughout to create a sense of dread that is conveyed to the reader. The Night Is Darkening Round Me is a metaphor in itself used to describe how Emily Bronte feels in her life. They are both written to serve a similar purpose and use similar methods to convey their struggles to the reader.
I Am!, written by John Clare, is meant to convey the struggles that John Clare has endured throughout his life. Many of John Clare’s methods and statements throughout I Am! have been heavily motivated by his connection to nature and his lack of connection with the rest of society. This aligns with the transition of The Romantic Era.
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems; (Clare, I Am!)
John Clare uses a metaphor of a shipwreck in the sea to portray the way he feels his life has turned out. This was also still during a time when men were shamed for being emotional openly, poetry could be seen as Clare’s way of covertly conveying this. Also visible in the quotation is Clare’s utilization of an alternate rhyming scheme throughout the poem. This alternate rhyming allows Clare to further convey a sense of dread to the reader, it creates a negative, downbeat energy throughout the poem which ties in heavily with his other methods and word choice. Alan Bewell, the author of John Clare and The Ghosts Of Nature’s Past, interpretations also support the theory that John Clare’s feelings of exclusion may have motivated a lot of what is said in his poems. “Clare confronts what it means to lose one’s place in the world and to discover that even nature, the most rooted of things, can make no claim to place.”(Bewell, 548) Bewell also discusses Clare’s past life as a farmer, which links into why he doesn’t fit in with the industrial revolution and feels more drawn to nature. As mentioned earlier Clare could’ve also seen nature as a place of comfort, an escape from the rest of society.
The Night Is Darkening Round Me portrays the struggles that Emily Bronte had to face as a female author during her time period: The Romantic Era. During The Romantic Era, society was trying to regain a stronger connection with nature. Multiple methods including her use of nature are frequently used to convey her struggles throughout the poem.
a tyrant spell has bound me,
And I cannot, cannot go. (Bronte, The Night Is Darkening Round Me)
Bronte uses a “tyrant spell” to describe the way Bronte’s created character feels. This could be interpreted as a metaphor for the obstacles that held Bronte back in the real world, an example of this being the oppression she felt. The statement “I cannot, cannot go.” also carries a significant meaning in this quotation. This statement is repeated at the end of each stanza in the poem; it reinforces the image in the reader’s mind of Bronte’s character being pinned in place, unable to escape the grasp of the “tyrant spell”. The caesura in the middle of the line also builds on the feeling of being stuck. Edward Hirsh uses a unique metaphor to describe how he interpreted Bronte’s poem: “I saw barren spaces stretching out endlessly below - the blasted countries of hell. But I was firmly planted on the ground - a tree rooted to earth.” (Hirsch, 45) Hirsch’s interpretation of Bronte’s metaphors supports the feelings of loneliness and exclusion from society that she felt trying to be a female author in a predominantly male society.
Interestingly, I Am! and The Night Is Darkening Round Me have a lot of shared methods that come up. They were both written in the same time period trying to convey a similar sense of identity and place in the world. John Clare talks about how he felt lonely in modern society as he didn’t connect with societal norms in comparison to Bronte who had similar emotions due to her exclusion from society because of her gender. Their shared alternate rhyming scheme is the most similar method used throughout each of the poems. In I Am! the alternate rhyming scheme creates a negative, downbeat energy that conveys Clare’s emotions to the reader; The Night Is Darkening Round Me uses rhyming to convey a sense of dread and being stuck. While having a slightly different rhythm they both work to serve a similar purpose. Bronte and Clare also both utilize nature throughout their poems. Clare uses the ‘sea’ (Clare, I Am!) as a metaphor to convey that his ‘life’s esteems’ are like a ‘shipwreck’ in the sea. Bronte’s entire poem could be seen as one overarching metaphor to describe the way she feels held back.
The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow; (Bronte, The Night Is Darkening Round Me)
This quotation is an example of Bronte using descriptions of the nature around her to portray the way she is feeling internally.
It is evident that John Clare and Emily Bronte both struggled with similar issues during the same time period. They both wrote their poems during the Romantic Era which can explain much of their similarities. It is clear that John Clare felt disconnected from the rest of society and didn’t fit in with societal norms and used poetry as his way to convey this to people. It is also clear that Emily Bronte used poetry to express the way she felt society held her back because she was a female author. I Am! and The Night Is Darkening Round Me both used similar language and structure features to convey their not-so-different messages. Poetry is a very broad style of writing that can have many different purposes, however, it is clear that poetry is one of the deepest and most meaningful ways of conveying an identity.
Works Cited
Bewell, Alan. “John Clare and the Ghosts of Natures Past.” Nineteenth-Century Literature,
vol. 65, no. 4, 2011, pp. 548–78, https://doi.org/10.1525/ncl.2011.65.4.548. Accessed 5
Apr. 2022.
Brontë, Emily. “The night is darkening round me by Emily Brontë.” Poetry Foundation,
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43711/the-night-is-darkening-round-me.
Accessed 11 April 2022.
Clare, John. “I Am! by John Clare.” Poetry Foundation,
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43948/i-am. Accessed 11 April 2022.
HIRSCH, EDWARD. “Three Initiations: A COLUMN.” The American Poetry Review, vol. 27,
no. 5, 1998, pp. 45–55, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27782809. Accessed 5 Apr. 2022.
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