Characteristics Of Romantic Poetry In Charlotte Smith's 'Written In October'

Although there is a common assumption that the majority of Romantic poets are men, women too were writing poetry between 1780 and 1830 and their poems were published, purchased and read just as much as that of their male counterparts. Charlotte Smith was one of these poets and she was held in high regard among her peers and was considered one of the most successful writers of her time (Brooks, 1). Although successful as a writer Smith’s personal life was difficult, her mother died whilst in childbirth and she was raised by her aunt. She married at fifteen and mothered twelve children, of which only nine outlived her, with her husband Benjamin Smith who was later imprisoned for debt. Smith joined her husband in prison and it was there that she began to writing in an effort to pay her husband’s debt. After successfully publishing novels and poetry including her first collection Elegiac Sonnets and other Essays (Ferguson et al, 2127), Smith died a desolate women in 1806 after suffering in her later years with uterine cancer (Curran, 67).

Written in the late eighteenth century “Written in October” displays characteristics of Romantic poetry such as close description of nature, plants and the seasons, and the relation of these to the individual’s state of mind (Brooks, 16). Smith uses the theme of autumn in a comparison to the speakers own personal situation and “dejected mood” (5). Although the poem is predominantly concerned with the sense of loss often associated with autumn, Smith uses the hopefulness of spring in contrast to the end of life that autumn brings. It is as if the speaker is comparing themselves to the changing season, suggesting that she is also coming to the end of her cycle and sees the “fading foliage” as a refle...

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...suggested that autumn is nature’s reaction to the death of life, that it is nature’s way of grieving for the lost life of the summer.

Smith successfully uses the periodic nature of the seasons to mirror her own emotions as she considers the hope of new life offered in spring and the fading of life in the autumn. However it is this cyclical nature that she wishes to prevent and she expresses this through her experimentation of sonnet form and by rejecting the regular cycle of a sonnet. Although the diction and alliteration employed by Smith enables the reader to imagine the force of the autumn as it destroys the life of the landscape, the speaker finds comfort in this and is able to relate it due to her own melancholy situation. Such imagery allows the reader to relate the loss and decay of autumn to the speakers own experiences of loss and her own life fading away.