"Mariana" and "Mariana in the South" Comparative Analysis

Poets typically revise and re-revise their perform, as it can be hard to totally express the emotions they want to invoke in the reader. Just a adjust of 1 word can modify the whole which means of a line, and poetry’s usual brevity needs every single word to be the ideal decision. Tennyson wrote two versions of his “Mariana,” the second getting quite different. Both are about a lady named Mariana who has been deserted by her lover and left to be forever alone in their country home. Upon close inspection, one can see clearly why he produced the decisions to modify the issues he did. The 1st version, “Mariana in the South” has a a lot more hopeful tone: it has movement from a deeper depression to moments of hope. The second, merely titled “Mariana,” has no sense of hope whatsoever. The poems are so different, in fact, that it becomes evident that he wasn’t happy with the expression of his 1st try, and wanted to try once more to evoke that sense of comprehensive desperation. Tennyson changed the actual shape of the poem, its diction, and most importantly his imagery, to produce a considerably stronger sense of despair in the second version.

The shape of the poem, which would look to be a tiny and insignificant detail, shapes the poem’s meaning in a quite considerable way. In the first version of the poem, specific lines of each stanza are indented in such a way as to produce a shape that resembles a wave. It alternates between indented and unindented lines, swelling out at the refrain into what may well appear like the crest of the wave. In the second version of the poem, every stanza also alternates in between indented and unindented lines, but the seventh and eighth lines of each stanza reverse the pattern. This breaking of the pattern aids to visually produce a considerably less smooth feeling, and seems to be broken in a way. This brokenness becomes important since Mariana herself, in her heartache more than the loss of her lover, is in a sense broken.

The diction of the poem is greater thought out in the second version, to assist produce that sense of comprehensive desperation Mariana is experiencing. A couple of instances of awkward or ineffective diction happen in “Mariana in the South.” A single such instance refers to Mariana’s singing as a “carol” (13). The word “carol” appears to be selected basically simply because its two syllables make the iambic tetrameter of the line perform effectively, but is completely detrimental to the emotion Tennyson intends to evoke. The connotations of the word really imply joy, and specifically refer to a song about Christmas- a time of love and peace. Of course, Mariana is experiencing neither joy, nor really like, nor peace. The diction of the second edition of the poem appears to be significantly more clearly believed out. Several words in fact have two meanings, each of which are important to the perform. When evening comes, Tennyson writes, “thickest dark did trance the sky,” (18). The footnote tells us that the word “trance” means cross, as in “thickest dark did [cross] the sky,” but to trance can also mean to bewitch, some thing that would have sinister connotations for the reader. Similarly, he also writes that Mariana “glanced athwart the glooming flats” (20). “Athwart” indicates across in this line, but can also mean perverse or incorrect, just as Mariana’s globe appears somehow wrong without having her lover’s presence. This word is also used in line 77. In the final stanza of the poem, Tennyson writes that the sun is “sloping toward his western bower” (78). Of course, most men and women know that the sun sets in the west. Tennyson’s objective is not to remind the reader of the sun’s setting location, but to recommend the finality that comes with the setting of the sun. As the setting of the sun represents the finish of the day, so the west comes to symbolize an ending or a finality. So the use of the word “western” serves to imply the finality of happiness that comes with the loss of the lover for Mariana. Probably most crucial in the category of diction changes is the alter the poet produced to the refrain of the poem, as it is repeated numerous occasions and central to the meaning. In the very first version, the refrain ends with, “To live forgotten, and enjoy forlorn.” In the second version, it ends with, “I would that I had been dead.” Even though each are indeed pitiful, the initial at least focuses on life. Despite the fact that she is not thrilled with the prospect, Mariana thinks of her future life in some way. On the other hand, the second version focuses only on death. The hopelessness of the predicament is so excellent in this version that Mariana wants to die.

Imagery is so prevalent in these poems, and so substantial, that it is the most crucial element. So many image patterns are utilized (and nearly all of them are changed) that imagery have to be the central topic of discussion in the adjustments made in between the earlier and later versions of “Mariana.” Religious imagery is probably the most drastic example. “Mariana in the South” is simply filled with Christian religious imagery. The refrain consists of complaints created to the Virgin Mary, Mariana prays to Mary at instances for aid with combating her depression, and Heaven is referred to in the last stanza. In “Mariana,” even so, all of that religiosity is gone, except for a modest, “Oh God, that I have been dead!” (82) in the last stanza. This alter contributes immensely to the lack of hope for Mariana. Religion offers several followers a sense of hope through prayer and via the assurance of happiness in the afterlife. By removing the believed of religion, Tennyson removes a supply of hope for Mariana.

An additional image pattern missing from the second version consists of the photos that consistently portray Mariana as stunning. Throughout “Mariana in the South,” she is referred to as simply breathtaking. He writes,

She, as her carol sadder grew,

From brow and bosom gradually down

Thro’ rosy taper fingers drew

Her streaming curls of deepest brown

To left and appropriate, and made seem,

Still-lighted in a secret shine,

Her melancholy eyes divine (13-19)

He later refers to “the clear perfection of her face” (32). These descriptions at greatest serve no objective to the which means of the poem, and at worst are detrimental. Tennyson should have realized their uselessness, and so did not incorporate any references to Mariana’s beauty in the second version of the operate.

A main addition to the poem’s imagery comes in the kind of destruction photos. The initial version tends to make no references to the situation of the residence and surroundings as in any way unkempt. In the second version, even so, the residence and the area around it are described as completely decrepit. The initial stanza reads:

With blackest moss the flower-plots

Were thickly crusted, one particular and all

The rusted nails fell from the knots

That held the pear to the gable wall.

The broken sheds looked sad and strange:

Unlifted was the clinking latch

Weeded and worn the ancient thatch

Upon the lonely moated grange. (1-12)

The area surrounding the house is “glooming” (20), the trees have “gnarled” bark (42), and the wood paneling is “moldering” (64). Everything about the home and grounds seems to be falling apart or rotting in some way. These image patterns assist to create the notion that Mariana, like her surroundings, is falling apart. These images also help to create the gothic pictures that are added in abundance to the second poem. The destruction of the residence, the dark and rainy atmosphere, “the flitting of the bats” (17), the reference to midnight (25), the creaking doors, and the references to ghosts all assist to contribute to the prototypical Gothicism of the poem. Such pictures also associate with death, which Mariana longs for, and common gloom, which she is experiencing deeply.

Photos of water and wetness in “Mariana” contrast straight with photos of heat and drought employed in the former version. In the initial version, the riverbed is empty and “dusty-white” (54). The only source of water is “shallows on a distant shore” (7), and Mariana herself is until the finish unable to cry. Tennyson writes, “day increased from heat to heat, / On stony drought and steaming salt,” (39-40). While the dryness of the pictures is a brilliant way to symbolize Mariana’s inability to cry as reflected in her surroundings, Tennyson need to have decided he wanted something distinct for his poem. In the second version, these dryness pictures are changed to pictures of wetness. Mariana cries almost continually in this poem, which reads, “Her tears fell with the dews at even / Her tears fell ere the dews were dried,” (13-14). This draws an apparent comparison between her tears and the dew, which shows the reader that Tennyson intended the wet pictures to reflect Mariana’s tears in her surroundings. He writes about the “blackened waters” of a sluice nearby (38). He also describes the rust, mold, and moss of the home and its grounds, all factors that cannot exist with out water. Maybe he wanted Mariana to be capable to cry, so as to appear more emotional and desperate. Maybe he needed the wetness in order to describe items as rotting and molding. No doubt he had both of these purposes in mind when he produced the modify.

The water serves yet another goal in the second poem as effectively. Whereas the bodies of water that did exist in the initial version are swiftly moving bodies (a river and the ocean), the water in the second version is in the form of a moat or a “sluice with blackened waters” (38). The slow-motion aspect of the second poem’s water pictures helps to emphasize the slowness of life for Mariana, with her “slow clock ticking” (73). Without her lover, she is doomed to pass by way of her “dreary” life alone. The passage of time would come about incredibly slowly for an individual who is entirely alone forever, so Tennyson makes use of these images to develop the symbolism of her surroundings as representative of her life.

Yet another essential image pattern Tennyson adds to the second version is the use of pathetic fallacies. Mariana sees her house as a “lonely moated grange” (eight), the morning as getting grey eyes (31), and the sluice as sleeping (38). Of course these inanimate objects do not have eyes and can not sleep or feel lonely, but the truth that Mariana projects her personal emotions onto them suggests mental illness. Her intense depression has brought on her to see her sadness as enveloping her whole globe.

A final image pattern, and a single of the most exciting, consists of the photos that portray males as fearful or loathsome. The sun, that implies only yet another day of pain for Mariana, is referred to as “sloping toward [his] western bower” (78). It is telling that Mariana considers the sun, which is surely anything to be dreaded for her, to be male. The most fascinating instance of the man-fearing imagery comes in the form of a tree. The poplar’s shadow falls “Upon her bed, across her brow,” (56). If the tree is observed as a phallic symbol and thus representative of guys, the reality that it falls across her bed represents the sexual aspect of her fear, and that it falls also across her brow represents the mental domination she knowledgeable beneath him. Later, the sound the poplar makes in the wind, “all confound[s] / Her sense,” (74-75). It seems that by way of the images that recommend maleness, Tennyson is implying Mariana’s inherent fear and hatred of men since of some prior abuse by a man, presumably her missing lover.

It is apparent through evaluation of the modifications made from Tennyson’s “Mariana in the South” to his “Mariana,” specifically the addition and deletion of pictures, that Tennyson was not satisfied with his original version of the poem. Mariana was just too lovely and hopeful to be truly pitied. Through adjustments of literary devices, he creates a Mariana who is despairing so deeply as to live in an equally desolate atmosphere. The endings of every poem completely illustrate the modifications he made. The 1st poem’s ending reads, “‘The evening comes on that knows not morn, / When I shall cease to be all alone, / To live forgotten, and really like forlorn” (95-96). This ending, with its reference to a “night that knows not morn,” implies Mariana’s death. The second poem’s ending reads, “‘He will not come,’ she stated / She wept, ‘I am aweary, aweary, / Oh God, that I were dead!” (80-82). In the second poem, she is not even granted the peace of death. The accurate hopelessness of the second poem surpasses any attempts at such an emotion in the first.