THE
WOODMAN’S DAUGHTER.
Coventry
Patmore
‘She went merely to think she
helped;
And, whilst he hack’d and saw’d,
The rich squire’s son, a young boy then,
For whole days, as if awed,
Stood by, and gazed alternately
At Gerald, and at Maud.
He sometimes, in a sullen tone,
Would offer fruits, and she
Always received his gifts with an air
So unreserved and free,
That half-feigned distance soon became Familiarity’.
PICTURE:
As a
starting point, the poem THE WOODMAN’S DAUGHTER, witten by Coventry Patmore talks about the link
created by the relationship between a “rich” boy and a poor girl. The poem is
about children and the scene is all the time surrounded by innocence and pure
feelings that can only be related to children.
At
first sight, the image of the two children sharing some fruits leads the
observer to the idea that it is a mere relationship between two youngsters. The
scene shows a rich boy offering fruits as “gifts” to a lower class girl. At
that time, the scene could only be represented by children, since grown people
would not accept the union between members of different social class with the
same innocence than those children do.This is a childish behaviour that obbeys
to childish feelings. they don´t care about social differences, they don´t even
have in mind that they cannot be together because of their social position. As
the Victorian Web defends in THE VICTORIAN
WEB: they have a love affair which cannot end in marriage because of the
difference in social rank. But they are not conscious, they are just children
and obviously they ignore the social rules of the 19th Century
society.
The attitude of the girl of the poem is expressed by a
semantic field that has certain connotations:”helped”in verse 1, “unreserved
and free” in verse 10, that make the reader remember the pure thoughts and acts
of children. The fact that “in 1862 the poet’s wife died, leaving him with six
young children” NEWADVENT makes the reader think that his relation with
children went stronger along time, leading him to his particular vision of
children, which is expressed in his poems in general, and in this one in
particular. Introducing children on the scene he can criticise society of the
time, because he can impute that behaviour to children rather than to adults,
and express his ideas about social classes that, in other case would be out of
place.
On the other hand, the picture of the scene has several
elements that are valuable for the comprehension of the scene. The picture is
placed in Nature, place where feelings can be free, place where emotions are
not under control, place which is in constant contradiction with society and
the cities. In Nature feelings flow from the inside, and get out without restraints
and Millais was aware of it. The same scene but placed in society would not
have the same meaning.
The picture shows in second plane a grown person, who is
supposed to be girl’s father, the woodman. He is giving the back to them, to
their relationship, to the scene. He is concentrated in his work. He represents
society and its point of view, contrary to feelings and emotions. It is an
Impresionistic picture, it gives some traces to give the impression of what he
wants to express, to give the viewer an impression of the image, of the
characters, of the scene. The picture catches more specific traces that
distinguish the different social class of the protagonists, for example the
dresses, the shoes, their positions, ... because this is the power of images,
they can be more concrete than words if necessary, images are extremely
powerful. When observing his painting we can deduce that:
his later works
show with startling clarity how greatly Pre-Raphaelitism must have offended
popular taste: PERSEPHONE.
The poem coincides with the painting in verse 7 “in a
sullen tone” that can be clearly seen in the picture. The boy looks at her with
a special seriousness, appealling to his high class position. In contrast with
him, she obbeys to the poetic description of innocence explained above.
But, in contrast, words are more powerful than pictures in
the sense that they can evoke different moments in time, different states, and
paintings are just able to capture a specific moment and place. This can be
seen in the last verse where Coventry Patmore will transform a single moment in
a basic element for the development of a futurible story. He uses the words
“the half-feigned distance soon became Familiarity”, making reference to the
long duration of their relationship in the future, as it is defended in the
Victorian Web again. The poet includes the adverb Familiarity which, written in
capital letters, gives the idea of the importance of feelngs for the authors,
and the value of the true relations and links created by children.
As a
conclussion, the comparison between two kinds of artistic representations of
the same scene gives the reader/viewer a wider point of view. This way he can
bear in mind all the details that make
important such a simple scene at that specific time, the Victorian Age, and
place, England, where relations were not seen the same way than nowadays. They
were more strict, more based on convenience. Feelings were hidden to the rest
of society instead of being the motor and the real motive for a love relation.
And, in this context, the scene described in the poem makes much sense.