"Think as I think," said a man,
"Or you are abominably wicked;
You are a toad."

And after I had thought of it,
I said, "I will, then, be a toad."

- Stephen Crane

A name and complication; an act of undue intimacy, political independence, a shelter from personal servitude, confinement and oppression. You are a burning field; raging and tormented; as delicate and sweeping as a spring web - with an angry spit of distaste, I hate you. 

This is the weather the cuckoo likes,

And so do I;

When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,

And nestlings fly

-          Thomas Hardy, Weathers

A critical analysis of Brontë’s The Prisoner, employing feminist criticism and problematizing the practise of literary criticism. (Because I'm a sucker for her work) 


Emily Brontë wrote The Prisoner as either a literal or figurative poem; critics explore their individual interpretations, and that of others, in order to find the intentional fallacy of the author. Through these interpretations we can access what is believed to be the subconscious of the poet, using psychoanalysis and historical context of both Emily Brontë’s past and the era in which she lived. However, the reader will always contextualise the poem unintentionally, making it profoundly difficult to unearth Brontë’s true intentions and bringing to the poem and essence of themselves. It could be that she did not intend anything other than a literal approach to The Prisoner, or that it is a direct reflection on the treatment of women in Victorian England, and of patriarchy. Similarly, it is possible that she wrote it as a literal poem, unaware that she was subconsciously expressing her inner anguish and metaphorical imprisonment.

As a literal approach to Brontë’s The Prisoner, it is clear that she speaks of incarceration, and a fierce dignity that prevents the imprisoned from weakening under the ‘desolate despair’ of their confines; lines such as, ‘Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less’ underline this notion of hope, and of strength. The poem, addressing limitation, or rather the constraints of reality, and the agonising need for freedom, expresses ecstasy in the idea of self-strength and hope which the character yearns for. It could be that the prisoner is slipping into a state of delirium, whether from pain or time or ‘year after year in gloom’, which would push anyone to the brinks of insanity, through which they find solace in their own mind where reality fails them ‘My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels’. In this case, ‘Hope’ could be representative of the prisoner’s imagination, where the idea of their eventual freedom is strong enough to withstand the pain of imprisonment. There is a sense of scale within the poem, ‘measuring the gulf’ to signify the prisoner’s leap between struggling against captivity and allowing desire to consume them, which is followed by ‘It stoops and dares the final bound’ highlighting the dawning of ‘the Invisible’ and the strength of Brontë’s prisoner.

The Prisoner, in a different light, can be seen as a figurative exploration of the position of women in Victorian society, by which the prisoner becomes a woman entrenched in a century of constraint and repression. In this era, women had to lead duplicitous lives; facades and concealment meant that they could hide behind false identities that secured their reputation and status within society, and within their home. Their true temperament was to remain a secret untold. Emily Brontë’s The Prisoner could speak of this restraint, ‘The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain’, and of repressed female aspiration; limitations on the potential of women, and of dreams. The lilt of Brontë’s poem exposes the disparity of desire and rationality, expressed through lines such as ‘a soundless calm descends; the struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends’, which could address the notion of freeing yourself from social, or patriarchal, and domestic restraint. Moreover, ‘When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again’ suggests that the liberation of allowing yourself to feel, think, and finally breathe without the pressures of conformity ‘year after year in gloom, and desolate despair’, will be in a clarity worth the consequence. Brontë’s poem reflects on the clarity gained through unburdening ones self from social expectation, disregarding the ‘importance’ of reputable status and allowing raw emotion to conquer rationality, ‘my outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels’. The ‘prisoner’, in this case, is clearly symbolic of women, while the prison is representative of Victorian society; the poet creates a character that is enclosed not only in a physical incarceration, but also within the confines of her own mind, in order to show the vulnerability of women in Brontë’s time. 

While this idea is plausible, it is needless to say that our individual interpretations bring elements to the poem that Brontë may not have been aware of herself; The Prisoner might have been intended as literal rather than  figurative, a deeply concealed and neglected anguish. Similarly, Brontë may have insinuated an entirely different approach, where ‘A messenger of Hope comes every night to me... He comes with western wings’ is actually symbolic of religious hope, or ‘that kill me with desire’ of an affair. Symbolism, and in fact meaning, is given through the reader, who contextualises it by incorporating their own idea of historical and cultural understanding to the poem; any aspect of the poem that we, as individuals, can relate to on a conscious or subliminal level, automatically alters our perspective of its meaning; we relate and reminisce over it, producing memories of times we have felt similar pain, or love, and so on, whilst at the same time inducing historical references that we associate with the poet, or the poet’s era. Our perspective, so altered, means that the author’s intentional fallacy is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish. ‘A messenger of Hope’, could represent the prisoner’s dreams and aspirations, a woman’s chance of freedom in a patriarchal society, or a person, thought or object that induces optimism. These theories oppose each other; ‘He comes with western winds, with that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars’, in a feminist light - as a metaphor for women overcoming the repression of society and men, ‘Still let my tyrants know’ – is contradicted by the use of ‘He’ representing the ‘Hope’ and liberty, which suggests the poem takes on a highly religious tone.  We use these interpretations in order to access the mind of the poet; a key to their subconscious thought.

With Brontë’s history in mind, her childhood and the influence of her sisters, it is easy to see why criticism of The Prisoner is often in light of feminism, as a reflection on Victorian women cannot be disregarded completely as her intended meaning. Likewise, the poem could speak of repression in its most general form, so that it speaks to anyone who can relate to the feeling of being repressed, and the unyielding refusal to give in. Though, without empirical evidence, the significance of Emily Brontë’s poem, and that of all her work, will remain an obscurity critics can only hope to unveil; we are left to tread blindly into the storms of an incredible imaginative scope.

I'm in a pissy mood. 

Okay. What would you class as ‘emblematic’? Something similar to a lot of other things; a thesaurus says characteristic, archetypal and distinctive, all of which I’m fond of, as far as sounding goes, but none of which I’m familiar with. I suppose it means ‘usual’, to some extent, plainly, or just representative of a certain genre of things; that must make me typical. So I am a typical individual; juxtaposed, clearly, and a seemingly profound mess of useless, and ridiculously time consuming, deliberation that isn’t going anywhere nice.

“We are such stuff, as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep”

- Shakespeare, The Tempest

Demoralised, literally

Do you want to read some airy nonsense? Some Bronte-esque escapism?

It's all just a painful mass of burning ire; I feel I am nothing but an entity of something. My skin encases one magnificent deluge of fury, and of confusion. Haven’t these words been written before?

When you sink into an all-consuming couch, psychologically oppressed by the ugly huffing and emulous snifflings, as Ted so delicately put, of moronic twats, the only thought to surface from this extensive void of mentality, in which humanity astutely named our Conscious, is ‘Christ, he has hairs sprouting from his nose’ and the agonising need to understand existence, for fear of descending into clinical insanity.
It begins much the same way: life goes on, colourfully denying all rights of privacy, of solitude and possibly our actual want of it, or maybe it isn’t life that perseveres so vehemently, but rather language. Language, the tool of the human race, one which is maltreated; its entrails and organs wrenched, piled into glistening towers of a large discarded carcass, and letters that wouldn’t mean a thing to an 18^th century rector, let alone whoever’s ingenious idea it was to discover the art of communication.
It’s at this moment in time when, after analysing the situation and coming to the conclusion that yes, somehow you’ve managed to bypass insanity, you realise ‘life’ is a cadaver intended for dissection; a metaphorical something that is too extended to get our heads around. We reside on the shores of our own subconscious, acutely aware of an ever expansive landscape that flickers in and out of mundane vision.

'Just'

Every aspect of the word, and its intricate web of relativities, refuses to aid the ones I am itching to use; diction simply isn't good enough! I've got a feral gnawing in my gut, an agitated defiance that I have to unwillingly stifle and opress. Fuck; words cannot articulate - self indulge, even - in the depths of their own understanding, to surface some exquisite adjective that will enable me to describe this. I never truly understood the word feast as I do in this moment; I never fully appreciated the implications that run, like rivers, through thirst. I had no idea that I could know what it is for my eyes to literally feast, and quench their thirst, on the purest of beauty - I am not sorely lacking. I saw beauty in it’s realist form, and I am taken by it.

Shiny new parenthesis

I like the word divulge. It has all the thick convulses of tongue I want in a word.

You know you're insane when

You’re sat there wondering whether a supraesophageal ganglion is similar to human nerve cells - actually, if we have them at all and you just weren’t aware of it. And who discovered that flies have three ganglia which fuse together to form something like a brain - Why? And what that means for life. Then, obliterating what little sanity was left, why mosquitos have 7 abdominal segments, rather than an even 6 or 8 - which leaves all kinds of questions about everthing.  

So the things that are here to make us feel just that little bit better will be the death of us, as we over indulge ourselves in a sick and metaphorical ecstasy

We delude ourselves every day into believing our actions mean something, that we, as a race, truly mean something. Life is not a journey, life doesn’t matter at all; we are a trace aspect of a monstrous universe, a universe of rage where stars live off and devour each other as cannibals.  

'And sat upright. While drearisome

Arose the howl of wakened hounds:

The mouse let fall the alter-crumb,

The worms drew back into the mounds.'

Alienation; I have lost my passion for stories, overwhelmed by the imagination of other authors, my mind is a shell filled with plagiarised ideas that I like to consider my own. I tell myself, surely there isn’t one author out there, dead or alive, that hasn't been influenced by another writer’s work, which sounds convincing enough – it is a lie I repeat every time I touch a keyboard, or open a document. In truth I am devoid of imagination, and of originality - yes, originality, for if such a thing doesn’t exist then there wouldn’t be a word for it – which pains me to no end.

We do not discern those eyes

Watching in the snow

-          Thomas Hardy, The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House

Illness festers; it churns beneath a great yawning chasm. It cannot be felt, because of an indifference to all emotion. To think that you turn your shoulder willingly is denial – it isn’t that you won’t feel, it is that you can’t; there grows a dull, all-consuming ache of an indefinable nothing. It feels much like delirium, with a light awareness of reality. Illness is like having a figurative cord restrict your lungs, whilst firmly believing it is really there; it affects you physically, psychologically and socially. You drown in it, you allow it to suffocate your mind and body; it feeds on the chemicals and cells we naturally produce, it wounds energy resources and rational thought until you are slave to the ache of it. The desire to self-inflict pain is like a steadfast hound mid-hunt, and beneath all of this is an unyielding truth: that you are not required, needed or wanted at all. 

And strange-eyed constellations reigned his stars eternally

- Thomas Hardy, The Dead Drummer