18th Cen Poetry the Domestic

18th Cen Poetry

The Domestic in Rural Britain: Watching on Washing Day, but being part of Clifton Hill

The predominant domestic and the Romantic images of women in nature are both evident in the images of Anna Laetitia Barbauld's "Washing Day" and Ann Yearsley's "Clifton Hall." But although Barbauld's "Washing Day" seems to highlight the mundane aspects of female existence, it also attempts to sorrowfully elevate one of the most unpleasant tasks of the traditional household, that of washing the laundry. It talks not simply of "red armed" rural washers who have little choice in their lot, "Ye who beneath the yoke of wedlock bend, / With bowed soul, full well ye ken the day/Which week, smooth sliding after week, brings on / Too soon; for to that day nor peace belongs / nor comfort; ere the first gray streak of dawn." It shows these women as noble, even if they have no choice but to labor until the ends of their earthly existence.

But despite this yoke to domesticity, matrimony, and physical labor, the poem also celebrates the act with an invocation to the domestic muse. "The Muses are turned gossips; they have lost / the buskin'd step, and clear high-sounding phrase, / Language of gods. Come, then, domestic Muse, / in slip-shod measure loosely prattling on." The poem ultimately deflates the poetic project of the author entirely in its final lines, saying "earth, air, and sky, and ocean, hath its bubbles, / and verse is one of them - this most of all." Like a toy of a child -- or a man, says the poet, the act of verse does no real work in the world. She observes these women, so unlike her and so a part of their environment and physical cares, and although she does not wish to be like, she evidently respects them.

Thus, Barbauld views her subjects from the outside, regarding them not as one of her own tribe, for she is a poet not a domestic. The one quality she shares with them is her femininity, but as an fellow observer of the weary feminine domestic lot, not a participant. Her status as a woman does giver her the ability to instill within these women a certain dignity, and a material importance that even the poet's own poetry may lack, in her view.

However, "Clifton Hall" views women in the context of nature not from the outside, but from the insider's perspective. Ann Yearsley came form the working class herself, as is evident from her poem, and sees women's lot as chosen, rather than something imposed upon her by outside authority. She is of nature, as well as observer of it, and rather than merely performing mundane chores, in her rustic environment she has control over her fate, in her native environment. She does not see the labor of women as noble, and unchosen, but as something one may actively resist. She sees the world of Clifton Hill and sees herself as a part of the daily grind of its existence, in all of its rue and joy. The style of the author, in contrast to barbauld, does not contain many highfalutin references to muses.