Sing the Body Electric Although the 19th

¶ … Sing the Body Electric

Although the 19th century is often conceptualized as a repressive era, Walt Whitman's poem "I Sing the Body Electric" crackles with sexual electricity. It celebrates the human, physical body in a very positive manner. Whitman points out some very positive physical characteristics all human beings possess. However, as you note, he also points out some very negative aspects of human physical life: "The sprawl and fullness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards." As you note, women in particular often had a very difficult life, physically as well as emotionally speaking, in the 19th century. Middle-class women were hemmed in by corsets and constant child-bearing and lower-class women had to suffer heavy physical labor. Whitman attempts to create a complete, all-encompassing picture of the physical body in his writings. He sings the song of all different physical bodies -- of the body politic of America itself.

Furthermore, although the women's bodies of the Whitman are 'downwards' the fact that they give birth to 'the sprawl and fullness of babes' still suggests that even though women experienced many difficulties during the Victorian era, there was still something positive about their bodies that was beautiful and profoundly natural. Whenever Whitman describes something, he almost invariably ends on a positive note. No physical description of any of the people in the poem is so negative that it is not counterbalanced by a positive image. Whitman's poem is affirmative of the natural beauty of the human body, including its sexual and maternal aspects which were often demonized in certain aspects of literature. Whitman's images of the body are very real and visceral: they accept the body's imperfections and do not create ethereal images of men and women but they also revel in the natural, earthy aspects of human nature.

I do agree that "Song of Myself" has some religious imagery, as in the quote you cite: "I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself." But Whitman's God is not a conventional theological object. God is more what is unknowable to the self, a sense of pure greatness and power that cannot be explained, much like the force which drives the artistic process itself. It exists and is manifest everywhere, including within the speaker. Thus God is not a God of guilt and shame (or shame about the body) but a God of love.