by Larry Lounsbury

Created on: September 15, 2010

The Romantic Paradox

In the Romantic period of Literature revolutions of political, social and sciences were taking place. Two very different streams of thought contended that either man embraced the time held traditions of their forefathers or that they accept that a new enlightened age was coming complete with new ideas of equality.  

Author Dorothy Wordsworth writes in her “Grasmere Journals” a picture of the castoffs of an enlightened society framed by the beauty and grandeur around them. Yet in their degraded state she seems oblivious of the circumstances of the society that spawned them. Men of power held noble titles that enslaved the men and women of numerous countries by a system of both Monarchial and religious preferences.

She mentions in one place the women beggar describing to her the death of her first husband for desertion, apparently because he had seen the evils of slavery first hand. “ I have been in the West Indies- lost the use of this Finger just before he died he came to me and said he must bid me farewell to his dear children and me…He was shot directly,” (Dorothy Wordsworth,464).  

Dorothy saw the inventions of the industrial age as interference to an age of innocence; yet she readily bid farewell to her place as an author in her own right. “But I have no command of the languages, no power of expressing my ideas, and no one was more inapt at molding words into regular metre,” (Dorothy Wordsworth, p.471). Her thoughts apparently were influenced by her brother’s. If you examine William Wordsworth’s Poem “The Tables Turned” you will see his view is very much like his sister Dorothy’s. “Enough of science and of art; Close up these barren leaves; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives,” (Wordsworth,327).

     We see a very different picture from Mary Wollstonecraft whom embraces revolution of the political as well as social kind. She speaks with a heart and mind that focuses on refuting every word in Edmund Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France”.  Wollstonecraft especially saw through the ruse of Mr. Burkes attempt to justify the Monarchy of the French revolution through the age old excuse of patriotic duty rather than natural feelings and common sense. “My indignation was roused by the sophistical arguments, that every moment crossed me, in the questionable shape

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