 | observation and one detailed criticism. In general: all the qualities that Ross attributes to Hemans in order to distinguish her from Wordsworth seem to me either trivial or to be found in Wordsworth. As an example of how her program can lead her to sweeping assertions, I cite her praise of Hemans for using
we
instead of the egoistic
I
: "In place of the romantic's self-possessing control of the reader's vision, she offerss consciously and repeatedly the shared experience of an italicised 'we.' She offers the potential of shared desire for a humanity that can never escape the power and vulnerability of their shared affection" (309). When does a poet write "I" and when "we"and why? The question is fascinatingand more complicated than is here admitted. Why should Wordsworth, that great user of the first person singular, begin a sonnet, "The world is too much with us,'' continue, "We have given our hearts away," and move to the singular only when he indignantly exclaims, "Great God! I'd rather be / A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn"? Not only is it doubtful whether Hemans uses
we
more often than Wordsworth (it occurs in none of the poems Ross has just mentioned as creating "her own distinct vision of the relation between nature and humanity"); it is even more doubtful whether the use of
we
is less egoistical and more truly concerned with shared experience: it could equally be seen as an insensitive assumption that others are like me. And as for the italicising of
we,
does that not suggest the uncertainty of a writer who protests too much? A political agenda damages our reading if it leads the critic to drag in thoughtlessly such tricky points of technique to support an ideological case.
|
| 50. Philip Collins, "The Decline of Pathos,"
English Studies Today,
Fifth Series (Dublin 1970).
|
| 51. Elizabeth Ammons, "Stowe's Dream," 167n.39.
|
| 52. This is why Ross's plea for a "noncanonical" approach to literary study, though attractive, is in an important sense anti-literary. To open up the canon in accordance with new ideological and political positions can certainly be liberatingbut not only for those who hold the new positions. It is important, in the end, to ask what the established writers, canonized by a conservative tradition, can offer to the radical and what the forgotten writers, unearthed by the radical, can offer to the reader previously satisfied with the established canon. This is one of the most fruitful questions confronting criticism today; and I do not want to see it ruled out of court by either conservatives or radicals.
|
| 53. "Modern Novels,"
The Christian Remembrancer
(Dec. 1842), 591592.
|
| 54. Fitzjames Stephen,
Cambridge Essays
contributed by members of the University (London: 1855), 174. And see George Ford,
Dickens and his Readers,
chapter 3 (passim).
Cambridge Essays,
contributed by members of the University (London, 1855), 154
|
| 55.
Saturday Review,
8 May 1858, 474, in
Dickens: The Critical Heritage,
383. This article may also be by Fitzjames Stephen.
|
| 56. Francis Jacox, "About Goody Children,"
Temple Bar
(Aug. 1868), 138.
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|