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Felicia Hemans' Atypical "Bride";
Eudora's Latent Byronism
by Brooke Mackenzie Walter

Felicia Hemans has the poetic reputation of being concerned with home and hearth; most of her poetry concerns women's struggles and suffering in domestic contexts.  It is often sentimental, sometimes criticized for “having too many flowers and too little fruit” (Sir Walter Scott). Her poem, “Bride of the Greek Isles” initially fits this reputation for domestic concerns and sentimentality.  However, Hemans moves beyond the domestic realm by giving the bride, Eudora, qualities of a Byronic Hero.  This is an unexpected characterization, especially considering how different Hemans' poetry is from Byron's thematically.  While her focus in on home and family, Byron's is on nature and travel.   By suggesting that a female character can be a Byronic hero, Hemans expands the normal domestic scope of her poetry; by representing Eudora as passionate and defiant she expands  reader's notions of a sentimental heroine's emotional range, giving the poem “more fruit”. 

By definition, a Byronic hero is alienated, defiant, and angst-ridden. Initially, Eudora is far from this description; however, as the narrative progresses these characteristics begin to arise. Prior to Eudora's marriage ceremony, Hemans describes her as a typical, submissive bride.  Eudora's farewell to her family is replete with sentimental language that shows her anxiety of leaving her family to go “unto love yet untried and new” (29); however, Hemans does not include this same, sentimental language after a pirate invasion interrupts the marriage ceremony.  Rather, she employs more masculine, violent imagery to portray Eudora's passionate response.  After Eudora experiences a series of displacements, being removed from her family and her husband-to-be, Byronic qualities emerge when she is no longer defined by her domestic role. On a first reading, Eudora's personality shift seems sudden; her passionate reaction, along with the pirate invasion that provoked it, appear shocking and random.  But signs of Eudora's defiance appear from the beginning.   The pirate invasion is not random at all; it acts as a catalyst for her personality shift from docility to defiance. 
     
One of the first signs of Eudora's  Byronic qualities comes from Hemans' epigraphs to “Bride of the Greek Isles”. Hemans introduces the poem with two epigraphs from Byron's Sardanapalus  This play is based on a king who, like Eudora, commits suicide to avoid capture.  Hemans includes the epigraph, “I will not live degraded” to introduce the idea that Eudora is a female Byronic hero.  Like male counterparts in Byron's Sardanapalus and Manfred, Eudora takes death on her own terms rather letting others determine her fate.  By preceding the poem with these epigraphs, Hemans  suggests there is more to Eudora than is apparent; she is not just “the bride of the morn”(6), but a woman with a “troubled stream/ of the soul”(17-18) underneath her veil.   Though Hemans initially masks Eudora's “troubled” aspects, they erupt when the pirate invasion ends her marriage.
 
The first section of the poem describes Eudora, “the bride of the morn”(6), before her wedding ceremony.  Hemans initially depicts Eudora's appearance and feelings prior to her marriage ceremony, typical domestic details.  But, her description of Eudora's “dark resplendent eye/for the aspect of woman at times too high”(15-16) subtly foreshadows the violent shift in her personality later in the poem. This description stands in stark contrast to the surrounding floral imagery. This line describes Eudora as set apart from other women similar to the way Byron's Manfred is set apart by being “half dust, half deity”.  While Manfred struggles with resolving these opposing forces of “dust” and “deity”, Eudora must reconcile domestic life with her internal, rebellious spirit.  Hemans suggests this turmoil through the “glance of [Eudora's] dark resplendent eye” that connotes her later defiance in the face of submission.        
           
Apart from this initial hint of defiance, Hemans initially focuses on Eudora's compliant nature regarding her marriage and leaving her family.  By contrast, Byron consistently focuses on Manfred's  defiant, rebellious personality.  Compared to Hemans' diction, Byron's is much more inflated and lofty to match Manfred's “lofty will”.  One critic, Jason Rudy, suggests, “Hemans capitalizes on precisely the quality Byron was seen most to lack: restraint. In Hemans' verse...there is to be found not even a single example of 'inflated epithets...sound without sense...a hobbling measure, an unseemly rhyme”(Rudy, 2).  Hemans capitalizes on restraint in her poetry, yet includes details such as Eudora's “dark, resplendent eye”, that suggests her' own “aspect of woman at times too high”.   Her poetry outwardly conforms conventions of sentimentality and domestic focus; however, her own spirit of defiance gleams in her inclusion of acts such as Eudora's burning of the ship.  Hemans' language, however, makes such acts ambiguous to avoid controversial reception.  She includes the conventional, sentimental language to please her audience; yet, she also includes Byronic language of greater defiance and passion. Her concentration on sentimental domestic qualities is exemplified by her language in Eudora's farewell to her family.  Eudora values her bond with her mother and weeps at leaving her, yet even in this sentimental moment,Hemans notes that her heart  is a “changeful thing”(77). This detail suggests that domestic life is not all of Eudora's concern and undermines the importance of the sentimental aspects of this scene. It suggests that the domestic narrative is not the heart of the poem. 

Following Eudora's farewell to her family, she acquiesces to her role as wife.  The first section closes with the statement, “an arch for the triumph of youth and love”(94), maintaining the outer narrative of simple domestic nature.  However, this is unraveled in the next section when the pirates invade and kill her husband.  On a first reading of the poem, the pirate invasion and its subsequent affect on Eudora's personality seems shocking and random.  This violent interruption shatters the domestic facade of the poem; Hemans uses the invasion as a turning point which shifts the focus to Eudora's changed personality. Prior to the invasion, Hemans uses sentimental, floral imagery that describes Eudora's domestic roles of daughter and wife; afterward, she employs masculine, violent imagery to describe Eudora after she is stripped of these roles.   Hemans' initial depiction of Eudora as “bride of the morn”(6) with “braided hair”(7) literally unravels; by the poem's end “her veil [is] flung back” (205) and her braids have let loose to “her free dark hair” (205).  Before the invasion, Hemans' depicts Eudora as a typical bride; however, under her “transparent veil;/ changeful and faint was her fair cheek's hue” (12-13).  This is an early sign that Eudora's personality shift is not so sudden.  “Though clear as flower which the light looks through”, Eudora is not so transparent.  The “glance of her dark resplendent eye” suggests her defiant nature which the the pirate evasion evokes.  Such subtle aspects of Hemans' diction suggest that the pirate invasion is not as random as it seems.  It instead is a necessary device that acts a catalyst for Eudora's passionate response. 
             
Perhaps these qualities have been with her all along, but her release from the ties of marriage is what evokes them.   After Ianthis's death, she doesn't react with the dejection that women would be expected to feel. Instead, she is filled with passion and “wild despair”(149).  In the third section she expresses this energy by setting the ship on fire.  This scene is wild and chaotic in contrast to the order of the wedding ceremony.  At this point, Eudora has lost all sense of constraint after being displaced from both her family and Ianthis.  For the first time she isn't confined by any domestic role.  Her “haughty smile”(211) reflects “eagle gladness”(209) in this sense of independence. Hemans' use of the word eagle here also connotes strength, the eagle being a symbol of bravery and freedom. This image is also striking for the way it recalls Act 1, Scene 2 of Byron's Manfred.  Manfred, isolated on the top of a cliff, also associated with an eagle in confrontation with his own character.  He  envies the “cloud-cleaving minister/Whose happy flight is highest into heaven” (1.2. 29-30). He   admires how it soars “where the eye cannot follow” (1.2.33).  Manfred would love to separate himself through such flight, but is forced to live grounded by his curse of being “half clay”.  Eudora's description of having an “eagle gladness” thus underscores the way she has set herself apart through her act of expression and destruction. Not only has she distinguished herself through an act of artistic expression, she has distinguished herself as a defiant woman.  It is an expression on “canvass” that “reddened the stars with its wavy glare;/And sent out bright arrows, and soar'd in glee”(196-7)  It is so magnificent that the speaker questions, “Could this be work of woman wrought?” (208). It stands out for the seeming impossibility that it could come from a woman.  Eudora is the epitome of a Byronic hero at this moment, for she has expressed herself in a way that is un-tamable by man; “Man may not fetter, nor ocean tame” (190-91) the fire that she has created. Though this fire  necessitates her death, she dies gloriously.
           
Eudora believes that “[kindling] her funeral pile”(212) is better than living in submission after experiencing the fleeting joy of independence.  The private invasion strips her of social and gender constraints, leaving her with the instinctual urge to sustain her freedom.  Rather than feeling powerless in the face of death, she feels empowered.  Critic John Rudy notes that this is a common emotional thread that runs through Hemans' poetry; “It must be said,the space Hemans creates for passionate flow leads almost inevitably to either insanity or death, and frequently to both. Indeed, Records of Woman rarely offers up a lyric moment unless it produces a corpse, such is the awkward position of passionate lyricism- and especially lyric poetry by women in the late Romantic period”(10).  For Hemans, Eudora's death achieves the necessary pathos expected by readers of “sentimental” poetry. However, it also allows for the ambiguity inherent in the nature of her death.  Rudy suggests that Hemans is trying to “interrogate passion” (5).  She makes the audience question the result of Eudora's death; was it triumphant or futile? Though Hemans acknowledges Eudora's passion, she also questions its result.  The series of forced displacements that Eudora suffers evokes her passionate refusal to live in submission.   However, the only way to achieve this is by taking her own life.
           
Eudora's displacement from home acts as a precursor for her displacement from Ianthis. These two displacements are the core of the narrative, depicting the two events that preclude Eudora's final self-sacrifice. This surface layer of the poem suggests Eudora's suicide to be a testament to “the triumph of youth and love”(94).  Each section of the poem closes with such an epigraph that speaks to youth and love, as if this is what the poem is centered around.  By concluding the poem with, “Now the night gathers over youth and love”(226), Hemans could be suggesting that Eudora's suicide is a reflection of her love for Ianthis.  However, Hemans subtler details reject this reading.   Going back to the preliminary quotation, “I will not live degraded,” Eudora's suicide should be considered as a final act of self-expression and defiance. The image of her with 'a brand/ blazing up high in her lifter hand”(203-204) does not suggest submission; it suggests power and triumph. The image of Eudora with “her veil flung back”(205) shows her symbolic rejection of the domestic constraints of marriage.  She is finally independent, “at her loftiest height”(207). Critic Michael Williamson suggests that Hemans “uses the conventional erotic signs of loosened femininity-torn clothes and unbound hair 'feminine' mourning and erotic 'feminine' purity into a shocking physical image of a desolate survivor's panic-stricken attempt to thwart death...” (21). However, only on the surface of the poem is Eudora “desolate” and “panic-stricken”.  Only by ignoring the details of her “wild resplendent eye” and  her “eagle gladness” can Eudora be seen as desolate and desperate.  She may have a “fragile form”(207) but her “haughty smile” (211) reveals her fiery, rebellious spirit underneath the facade of domesticity.  “Proudly she stands” (215),not passively.   The  moment where Eudora “kindles her funeral pile” marks the pinnacle of her similarity to the ideal Byronic hero; she has disregarded her assumed role of mourning, and taken her life on her own terms. 
           
The last few lines show Eudora as “fallen”(222) with “lips in prayer for pardon”(225), an opposing image of submission as compared to the previous images of defiance.  This image concludes the outer narrative concerning domesticity. It allows for a reading opposed to that of the controversial elements of female Byronism that Hemans includes in the counter narrative. However the two stanzas before are overwhelmed with powerful images showing Eudora's power, outweighing her “fallen” image in favor of her at “her loftiest height”.
             
Hemans  allows the reader to see Eudora's self- sacrifice as an act of liberation.  She depicts Eudora as a female Byronic hero, in comparison to a male counterpart in Manfred. They both exemplify the defiant quality that is part of the Byronic ideal; though it inevitably results in both their deaths, it is at least death on their own terms.  However, Hemans' details alluding to Eudora's defiance and triumph are subtle in order that this depiction would not be subject to criticism. Hemans includes a surface of domestic details and events that could portray Eudora as the expected mourning widow; yet, she undercuts this description through specific diction alluding to Eudora's “wild resplendent eye” that marks her as different from other women.  The fact that Hemans' even suggests Eudora to be a Byronic hero is shocking; by creating a female Byronic hero, Hemans expands the scope of her poetry.  She asserts that there is more to woman's life than can be defined by her domestic role. 
 


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