Kallie Shramek
English 266-001
Professor Coronado
31 October 2016
Romanticism’s Love and War Letters
In times of war, many people rely on their loved ones to support them throughout the hardships they face. The American Civil War is an example of how people had to cope with death in their lives. Soldiers were pitted against each other that resulted in thousands of deaths. Those who survived held onto the hope that they would come back to their families and loved ones. For Rufus Dawes, who volunteered his service to the Sixth Wisconsin Infantry, and his fiance, Mary Gates, they had to endure the war while being separated from each other. During the war, the two lovers would write to each other to express their concern and love for each other. One set of letters they wrote to each other on the same day was called “Lovers Unknowing Write at the Same Moment” and were written during the Battle of Gettysburg. The letters were documented in Dawes’s narrative called, Service With the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers. Through Mary and Rufus’s letters to each other, they show their feelings of sorrow and love.
Rufus R. Dawes was born in Malta, Ohio on July 4th, 1838. He came to Wisconsin in 1855 and attended the University of Wisconsin for a short time. When the Civil War broke out, Dawes started a volunteer company of lumberjacks for the war known as Lemonweir Men (wisconsinhistory.org). The company was assigned to the Sixth Wisconsin Infantry and stayed throughout the duration of the war. Dawes’s company were involved in many battles including the Battle of Gettysburg (wisconsinhistory.org). During his war time, he wrote about his feelings and detailed accounts of the battles. These letters were to his finance, Mary Gates who was was born on August 27th, 1842 (wisconsinhistory.org). On Dawes’s 25th birthday, he wrote to Mary to express how he felt during the Battle of Gettysburg on July 4th, 1863. While he was writing to Mary, Mary was writing her letter to convey her feelings for him and the war on the same day. The two were married after the war in 1864. Both of the letters to each other show their sorrow and love for each other that correlates with the era’s Romantic movement.
Through the Civil War, Romanticism played a role in capturing people’s emotions during these hard times. People relied heavily in finding a way to cope and understand their feelings for the war. The Romantics wrote about the emotional struggles people faced each day that caused people to look and think about what they were going through in a personal way. Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, and Dion Boucicault focused their works on the emotional ties of love and sorrow that occurred during the war. These poets and playwrights use the characteristics of Romanticism that can be related to the letters through their works “Are you the New Person Drawn to Me?”,“The Raven”, and The Octoroon. The letters and poems express their feelings for others and how they personally feel about themselves. They also show how they viewed their own humanity during the time period. The letters help readers and historians understand how people lived and felt during the 1800’s. Through Romanticism, the letters express the common feelings of melancholy and love.
During the Battle of Gettysburg, Rufus’s eyewitness account of the devastation is a look into the horrors of war that plagued him and his company. In his letter, Dawes writes about his feelings about the war, his comrades, and his feelings for Mary. On the day of his birthday, he wrote to Mary saying, “What a solemn birthday. My little band, now only two hundred men, have all been out burying the bloody corpses of friend and foe,” (Dawes 159). The horror these men faced were testimony to what soldiers had to see and do during the war. His account shows how these men saw almost no end to the war and how they carried their sorrows with them each time a battle would end. In terms of Romanticism, Dawes’s sorrow shows that he cares for his and his men’s survival. Readers see the heartbreak in his letter when he writes, “The fighting has been the most desperate I ever saw,” (Dawes 159). This shows that Rufus is seeing the hope in his men fade away and how the war is making the reasons for the war blurred. For these men, they showed that their thoughts and emotions were tied to the fact that they might never return home to their loved ones and that the war they are fighting is not worth their life or other’s lives.
Dawes’s account can be connected to Poe’s work, “The Raven”. Poe’s works were mostly focused on the melancholy side of reality. This overall feeling of sorrow helps propel his poems to have readers relate to themselves with the character and story. He writes, “Leave my loneliness unbroken!— quit the bust above my door!/ Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”/ Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.” (Poe 4012). For the narrator, he loses his hope of ever finding peace within himself that relates to Dawes’s experience during the battle. Rufus’s letter to Mary shows his sorrow for thinking of him being lost in the war and never seeing her again. He illustrates, “I have no opportunity to say more now or to write to any one else,”(Dawes 159). This shows that he thought that he might not be able to write or see Mary again because of the fear of dying in war. The fear of never seeing a sign of hope and the sorrow that follows is Romanticism strongest trait because that feeling is such a common aspect in people.
Mary Gate’s letters to her finance also capture her struggle to keep having faith that Dawes would return to her. She focuses her letters solely on her feelings of Dawes himself and the sorrow she feels about the war. She writes, “I shall not undertake to tell you how slowly and sorrowfully the last three days have dragged along,”(Gates 162). Mary shows that she struggles to come face to face with the idea of Rufus dieing on the battlefield. The families of these soldiers had to cope with their loved ones going to war and the idea that they will never return. This idea makes people think about their own beliefs on the war. Mary shows this by saying, “Great Babylon is fallen, is fallen.’ I do not know how as a Nation we are going to bear our success, but I know as an individual I can’t bear much more of anything,” (163). This shows that Gates is starting to think about what the outcome of the war will result in and how she will be affected by it. For her and others, they show that their moralities are being changed by what the outcomes of the Civil War will bring. This also affects their emotions on the war and for their loved ones fighting in it. This correlates with the Romantic writings of showing how events can affect a person’s emotions.
Edward Kravitt’s article called, “Romanticism Today” relates to Mary Gate’s letters by showing how emotions can play a role in today’s Romanticism. He writes, “The newer theory of romanticism centers on the artist’s estrangement from society and consequent reaction: to turn within” (Kravitt 93). He argues that self expression is more relevant to today’s Romanticism than the old romantic idea of nature. This can also be seen in Gate’s writings to Dawes that shows her emotions for him. She writes “It has seemed utterly impossible for me to write to you, not knowing you were where my letters could ever reach you or my prayers ever avail you,” (162). She shows that she feels at lost whether writing to Rufus brings him comfort at all. Through Mary’s writings, readers can see how she expresses her sorrow for her lover that people can relate to. The idea of self expression in terms of Gates’s emotions can be seen as a way for her to express her worry towards the war and her feeling of melancholy towards Rufus.
The feelings of love between Dawes and Gates is their way of coping with their fear of losing each other to death. For them, love is what holds them together during the times of war. In Dawes’s letters, he shows his love through in a way that poetic towards his lover by saying,“O’ Mary it is sad to look now at our shattered band of devoted men,”(159). For him, he conveys his love by making Mary his own concern at the moment before he goes off to battle. This relates to how Romanticism makes the topic of love being a way to show a person’s compassion towards another to create a personal connection. Dion Boucicault’s play, The Octoroon shows this kind of relationship through his characters, George and Zoe. George tells Zoe how he will show his love by stating,“As my wife—the sharer of my hopes, my ambitions, and my sorrows; under the shelter of your love I could watch the storms of fortune pass unheeded by,” (Boucicault 18). In this scene, George wants to connect with Zoe and would bear all things that would come between the two of them. This goes along with for how Dawes can only write to Mary because he feels that he can get through this war and sorrow to be with her. Readers can see that Rufus is holding onto his love for Mary and his hope that he will return to her.
Mary shows her love for Dawes in a similar way that is more hopeful and helpless. She writes to Rufus to convey her hope that he will return to her and they would be able to have a future together. However, she knows that the fear of death is very real in their situation that keeps them apart that she cannot do anything about. She starts her letter of by stating, “Your birthday, and I have been all the time anticipating so much pleasure in writing to you to-day but it is only to-night that I have felt that I could write at all,” (Gates 162). This shows that she feels helpless because she cannot be there for Rufus physically yet, be there for him in spirit. This way of writing correlates with how Romantic writers would write in a way that makes the readers feel the same way as they do or the character does. Walt Whitman demonstrates this writing technique in his poem “Are you the New Person Drawn to Me?”. He writes, “Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?/ Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?..Do you see no further than this façade--this smooth and tolerant manner of me? (3-8). In this poem, Whitman explores the complexities of being in love with a person that readers can relate and feel. Being in love can lead to a person questioning their love for the other and vice versa for how the other person feels. For Gates and other women during this time, they were faced with the fear that their lovers would have changed into a different person because of what the war did to them. The idea of them being different from what they once were was a concern for women during this time and can be seen in today’s society when lovers are apart for a long period of time. However, Mary is willing to love Dawes no matter what happens to him. For the two lovers, Dawes and Gates’ love is a way for them to imagine a better place for them after the war is over. Their display of love being a way to escape their realities is another trait of Romanticism during their time.
This romantic idea can also can be seen in Richard Sha’s article called, “Romantic Paradoxes Of Free Love: Hegel, Rousseau, and Goethe”. Sha argues that romantic love is part of a person’s imagination to escape into a self-conscious paradox that Hegel, Rousseau, and Goethe use in their theories. He explains that, “Love, therefore, may be imagination, but the solution to this is not some nostalgic return to the past, but rather for the teacher to be the provider of imaginary objects so that students learn how to avoid illusions about reality,” (Sha 30). For Sha, love is a way for people to learn how to distinguish between what is genuine love is and learn to escape the illusions in reality. In Dawes and Mary’s letters, this can be seen as how they relay on each other to get them through the war and separation. Gates tells Dawes that, “ I shall watch, oh, so anxiously, for tidings this week, praying to that God in His mercy may spare you” (162). She believes that God and her love will help him make it through and return her. While she writes to Rufus about her feelings, Dawes writes in a similar way to her by saying, “God has been kind to me and I think he will spare me,” (159). He displays his belief that God and his love for Mary will help him make it through the war. The letters symbolisms the idea of love and God as a way to escape from reality that is a common theme in Romantic literature. They both show how their love for each other helps them throughout the Civil War and to help focus on their dreams of a better future together.
For the two lovers, they both show how they had to cope with their love for each other and their own sorrows during the war. In Romanticism emotions are a guide to how readers are suppose to feel about the story, the characters, and the overall theme. This can lead to the readers connecting to the story on a personal level that they can relate to. The two love letters show these characteristics and tie into the canon of Romanticism by connecting to a reader's feelings for what Gates and Dawes had to go through along with others who lived in Wisconsin during the Civil War. These common feelings of love and melancholy are an essential human trait that every reader can understand and connect with to understand how people lived during the 1800’s.
Works Cited
Boucicault, Dion. The Octoroon. Miami, FL: Mnemosyne Pub., 1969. Web.
Dawes, Rufus. "Service With the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers," Chapter 7, page 159-160. Web.
Gates, Mary. “Service With the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers,” Chapter 7, page 162-163. Web.
Kravitt, Edward F. "Romanticism Today." The Musical Quarterly 76.1 (1992): 93-109. JSTOR. Web. 25 Oct. 2016.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Pocket, 1951. Print.
Sha, Richard C. "Romantic Paradoxes Of Free Love: Hegel, Rousseau, And Goethe." Wordsworth Circle 46.1 (2015): 26-36. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 25 Oct. 2016.
Whitman, Walt. “Are You The New Person, Drawn Towards Me?” Poemhunter, http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-saw-in-louisiana-a-live-oak-growing-2/. Wed. 25 Oct. 2016.
Link to Letters: http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Content.aspx?dsNav=N:4294963828-4294963805&dsNavOnly=N:1170&dsRecordDetails=R:CS3234
No comments:
Post a Comment