This text that we are going to talk about is called “To George Sand: A recognition”, a
poem written by Elizabeth Barret Browning and it is included in the collection Poems,
published in 1844. The theme of this poem is to encourage women to rebel themselves
against society, and with a rhetorical and lyric use of the language, the poetess appeals
to women writers to let their voices be heard in society in the context of the mid-
nineteenth century, a period where major in civil legislation regarding women and
education took place. The poem pleads for George Sand, a pet name for another women
writers, Amantine. And the topoi she uses is “omnia mors aequat”, meaning we all die
the same way.
About the stricter, in the external we can say that it follow the structure of the
Pethrarcian sonnet, two quatrains and two tercets, following a rhyme that is abbc, abbc,
ded, ede. These fourteen line can also be divided into three part to talk about the internal
structure. From lines 1 to 4, it talks about the denial of Geroge Sand about her feminity.
From lines 5 to 10, it talks about the fact that Amantine had to use a man’s name to be a
successful writer. And from lines 11 to 14 it appeals directly to the heart of the woman
to impose her real self on her literary persona. And also, in this las part, we can find the
climax, meaning that the poem has a climatic movement, a progressive intensification.
Moving on to the lexical categories, we can see that the author uses a lot the noun
“woman”, to intensify her purpose. It also uses the noun “sister”, in line 7, expressing
that she is also a women suffering the sexism that is really present in the time she lives
in. And by using only once the word “man”, it emphasizes her opinion. It is also
remarkable the use of adjectives which refer either ti physical qualities or emotional
attitudes of women, for example “true” in line 1, “weaker” in line 4, “unshorn” in line 7
and “dishevelled” in line 8, these two reffering to the woman’s hair as a symbol of
rebelness, and “purer” in line 12, ”heavenly” in line 13 and ”unincarnate” in line 14,
referring to the unisexuality of God and how he does not mind if you are a woman or a
man, if you were pure you will go to heaven and if you were evil you will go to hell.
Also, it is nedded to stand out the verbs used, because some of them, the ones referring
to the situation of women in the time that the poem was written, have negative
connotations, for example “deny” in line 1, “break away” in line 3, “sobbed” in line 6
and “disproving” in line 9.
If we look at the use of literary devices we can find a parallelism in line 1 “true genius
but true woman”, a apostrophe in line 5 “Ah, vain denial”, a metaphore in line 10 “the
world thou burnest in a poet-fire” and a synaesthesia in line 11 “we see thy woman-
heart beat evermore”. Also we can see an antithesis when the author compares the
clichés on the world of men and women, for example in line 2 “woman’s nature” vs
“manly score” or woman’s hair vs man’s name in lines 7 and 9. And the author uses the
hair as a metaphore, an image of rebelliousness because in that times women should
have their hair short and pretty and perfect and showing an image of a woman with long
hairy messy hair was really rebel.
To sum up, the idea that we can extract from this poem is the intention of the poetress to
express her disagreement on the way women are treated and the big distinction that
society does between women and men, that shouldn’t be done.