Bryanne Salazar

High Society Word Count: 1087

“Let’s begin our class with a reward quiz!” Professor Foss eagerly sang out to the dreary-eyed class. Spring break, in the midst of winter, was on our minds and no fantastic promises of reward quizzing would quell that deep desire for freedom that burned within us all, much like the British romantic authors we’d been reading. The Prof, attempting a nudge towards humor, indicated that he was indulging in the role of “Confessions of an English Reward Quiz-Giver,” which did yield a few, muffled giggles. As our class pondered the works of such Romantic authors like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Thomas De Quincey, and Felicia Dorothea Browne Hemans, it was pointed out to us that during this time in Europe, the lives of our beloved inscribers were quite difficult. Opium addictions, imperialism, and slavish working conditions created a subtext within romanticism that echoed the hopelessness, confusion and dreariness of the time.

The pains of poverty, coexisting with the necessity of work for nearly the entire population, left little room for joyous, free-footed exploration. This was especially true in Lamb’s case, as he so eloquently penned in The Superannuated Man, “I had grown to my desk, as it were; and the wood had entered into my soul.” Work was an all-encompassing entity during this time for many (except William and Dorothy Wordsworth of course), and it was reflected in the literature. However, work in itself was not the only factor affecting the consciousness of the authors. Eastern Imperialism, especially in regards to India, was prominent. While some authors like Lamb, who worked for the East India Trading Co., had a romantic idealism of the Orient, others like De Quincey who held a particularly xenophobic point of view towards the exotic, unknown culture of India and the Middle East, used his prejudices to express deeper fears and worries while high on opium. Trade routes with China opened the portal for opium to wrap its comforting arms around romantic authors like De Quincey, helping him to release the dammed waters of creativity in an often chaotic and perturbing way. Opium was so popular in this time, that even mothers would give it to their children as a calming agent. All points of view, combined with new travel narratives of the time, combined to create a rich and varied approach to the style of Romanticism during the early nineteenth century.

Our class was asked to break into small group and based on our readings, to identify what the relationship was between opium and the romantic imagination, if there was one at all. Also, we were asked to examine the xenophobia present within the texts, especially focusing on the definitions of “Englishness” especially in comparison with India and the East, and how it displayed the British imagination. We were to focus primarily on De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, however, we were encouraged to compare it to other texts like Kubla Khan by Coleridge.

Our small group, consisting of Nick, Madonna, Emily and young lady who couldn’t apparently talk during group due to a sore throat, came to the conclusion that opium was the fan that fueled the fire of the romantic imagination. The question that arose, however, was this, “Did opium unleash the romantic imagination that already existed, pent up and buried as it was, inside the author, or was it the cause of it?” None of us could ascertain a definitive answer. We also noted how, primarily in De Quincey’s Confessions, that Eastern images and cultural practices were portrayed in a negative sense, as in this line, “No man can pretend that the wild, barbarous, and capricious superstitions of Africa, or of savage tribes elsewhere affect him in the way that he is affected by the ancient, monumental, cruel and elaborate religions of Indostan &c.” and that English familiars, like a scene of Easter Sunday in Confessions, are described in positive terms. The British imagination, it appeared, was of British superiority, where the English countryside captured the very essence of purity, beauty, simplicity and virtue and the East with it’s strange gods, castes and burning sun, was the darkness that overcame the senses, and sullied harmony. The final conclusion was that familiar was good, and foreign was fascinating as well as frightening. As far as opium, we were never able to truly answer the question of its role within British romantic literature.

The class returned to large group, where we discussed the possibility of romantic irony and imagination being transcendent, based on an opium induced trip. Professor Foss noted that the role of the human in nature and the supernatural seems to be without control. He called it “sublime,” and said it could be “invigorating, or even terrifying.” We spoke about the blur of the passages and how maybe the drug induced a truth which was deep in the author’s psyche, and that his buried truths are much more terrifying than the softer depictions of nature and reflection so often found in Romanticism.

After repeating many of the same small group ideas about xenophobic ideas within Confessions, the class moved on to talking about Heman’s The Indian City. Professor Foss noted how universal the theme of this piece was. Losing a child then, is just as painful and disturbing as losing a child now. It was also brought to our attention that even today, we tend to view India and the Middle East with a sort of xenophobic lens, where we see their countries as out of control, and different, where we view ourselves with a measure of certainty and control. The class was asked to question if The Indian City presented the same constructs and attitudes we had seen in Confessions.

Many students agreed that while the differences were present, they were posed in a more compassionate tone. The Indian City did not feel discriminatory, and if you changed the location and the religion of the mother, child and town, the story would resonate anywhere. There was still beauty to be found, and maybe, that in itself was the lesson. Through distorted opium hazes, misconstrued racial ideologies, and lost years spent earning meager wages, there was something beautiful within the words of our authors. Through terror, there was an indelible connection to the self, and through loss, be it of time or a loved one, there was the understanding of what truly mattered, and what carried them, as human beings, through this life.