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Allyson Yates
Dr. Kathryn Ledbetter
English 3365
31 October 2006
A Romantic Poet in the Victorian Period
When Algernon Charles Swinburne published Poems and Ballads in 1866 it was greeted
with a storm of outrage because several of the poems expressed sadomasochism, necrophilia
and other forms of sexual deviancy (Mermin and Tucker 900). Most of Victorian society was
outraged by the forms of sexual deviancy found in Swinburnes poetry and condemned him for
his irreverent and animalistic language. Buchanan subscribed Swinburnes poetry, along with D.
G. Rossettis, to what he called the fleshy school and believed that Swinburnes poems would
degrade the moral fiber of Victorian society (Mermin and Tucker 144-148); consequently, the
publisher pulled the volume (Mermin and Tucker 900). Though he was a master of the lyrical
form, and rivaled Tennyson in this area, many critics writing on Swinburne tended to dwell on
the sexual deviancy found in his poetry. Many modern critics of Swinburne, in turn, dwell on the
societys reaction, as David G. Riede says the event [Victorians shock] is so amusing a part of
literary history, in fact, that Poems and Ballads has been slighted while attention has been
focused on the symptoms of Victorian culture shock and on Swinburnes motivations in
producing it (Romantic Mythmaking 41). However, the shocking and sometimes repelling
nature of Swinburnes poetry is nothing more than a mask which hides the depth of his poetry.
Swinburnes Dolores and The Leper are pieces that exemplify this point and the
blasphemous imagery and erotic language of the poems blind many to the depth of their themes.
One theme common between them is Swinburnes commentary on Victorian poetry through his

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rejection of the Arnoldian idea (Alkalay-Gut 228) and commonality with characteristics of
Romantic poetry.
Karen Alkalay-Gut asserts that Swinburnes response to the intense criticism of his
Poems and Ballads represents a radical shift from Matthew Arnolds belief that poetry should
uphold a high moral seriousness that could both act as a modern substitute for religion and
provide the basis of an improving education (228). Swinburnes rejection of this Arnoldian
idea (Alkalay-Gut 228) and subsequently of Victorian poetrys prevailing ideal can be clearly
seen in Dolores. The speaker in Dolores laments that the world has changed and the old
world is broken (Swinburne 329) saying of modern society we match not the dead men that
bore us / At a song, at a kiss, at a crime - (Swinburne 387-388). As Dolores shows,
Swinburne, like most Victorian poets, yearned for the past, for a time when society did not foster
hypocritical institutions. The use of historic backgrounds and the dramatic monologue in
Dolores, however, is about as far as the comparison between most Victorian poets and
Swinburne can go. Whereas most Victorian poets adhered to a strict moral code, the main
exception being of course the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Swinburne did not subscribe to the
Victorian archetypal quality of morality. At one point in Dolores the speaker asks Our Lady
of Pain to come down and redeem us from virtue (Swinburne 279). Virtue is defined as a
moral goodness. That the speaker is asking to be saved from morality is significant because it
verifies that Swinburne was chafed by the restrictions in Victorian poetry and even society. He
seems to consider that virtue is holding the poet back from creating better art. The Victorian era,
according to Karen Alkalay-Gut, was a period when society believed everything should have a
calculable social purpose (228-227). This meant everything had to be justified, even poetry.
Many Victorian poets stayed well within this stereotype which validated the genre of poetry in a

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period when society was driven to assign value through practical economics (Alkalay-Gut 228).
While Swinburne recognized the expectations that poetry should, according to the Arnoldian
idea, (Alkalay-Gut 228) contain a moral function (Alkalay-Gut 228) and moral seriousness
(Alkalay-Gut 228), he deliberately ignores it. One of the shocking things about his poetry, at
least to most Victorians, was that he described the human body. This is in direct contradiction to
a morally serious genre of poetry. Allison Pease points out that Victorian authors were obsessed
with dressing their heroines and that they described their dress with as little reference to the
body as possible (48). Swinburne, it seemed, had no such qualms and wastes no time in
setting out to describe the bodies of his (always female) love objects (48). Dolores, in fact,
starts with describing the womans body:
Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;
The heavy white limbs, and the cruel
Red mouth like a venomous flower;
When these are gone by with their glories,
What shall rest of thee then, what remain,
O mystic and somber Dolores,
Our Lady of Pain? (Swinburne 1-8)
Swinburne deliberately flouts Victorian morality and the ever popular Arnoldian idea
(Alkalay-Gut 228) by describing Dolores with her cold eyelids, hard eyes, heavy white
limbs, and red mouth. His describing the female body was not the only affront to Victorian
sensibility to be found in Dolores. The overtly sensual language to be found in the poem
scandalized critics. The connotation of words like hunger, lascivious, fierce, famishing,

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bite, and stung in Dolores all create violent sexual imagery. Swinburne does not even try
to veil the sensuality of the poem, calling Dolores a mystical rose of the mire (Swinburne 21)
who lives in a house of unquenchable fire (Swinburne 23). Occasionally, the speaker
transparently refers to sex. One of the more noticeable times is when he begs Dolores to feed
me and fill me with pleasure, (Swinburne 31). The unconventional and obvious dismissal of
morality in Dolores caused critics to condemn it and call it obscene. Swinburne defended the
poem renouncing Victorian morals for a form of poetry founded completely on the idea that art
should be created for arts sake; in other words, he believed that the poet had no obligations to
anything but the creation of art (Alkalay-Gut 229). Swinburnes Dolores blatantly challenged
the implicit restrictions placed on Victorian poetry by Matthew Arnold and other critics through
straightforward exploration of all issues and experiences (Harrison, Swinburnes Losses 689)
and by not caring whether it is morally correct or not.
Judith Stoddart says that Poems and Ballads represented a rejection of high Victorian
values, (93) but it is more than just Victorian values that Swinburne rejected. He was also
attacking the direction in which poetry was heading and the implicit restrictions on what it was
acceptable to write about which were set down by Matthew Arnold. The Leper is a poem that
embodies Swinburnes denunciation of Arnolds poetic ideal which permeated most Victorian
poetry. The painfully conspicuous sadomasochistic references and obvious sexuality in
Dolores affronted Victorian morality at every turn but the The Leper is no better with its
suggestions of necrophilia. Swinburne in The Leper, like Dolores, does not hesitate to
describe the womans body openly in a time when most poets referred to the body in only vague
terms. The speaker constantly talks about the womans two cold little feet and less innocent
things. He comments that her former lover turned her away even though he had Felt her bright

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bosom, strained and bare, / Sigh under him, with short mad cries (Swinburne 59-60). Later
after she is dead he describes her saying:
Love bites and stings me through, to see
Her keen face made of sunken bones.
Her worn-off eyelids madden me,
That were shot through with purple once. (Swinburne 105-108)
These lines mimic the beginning stanza of Dolores except now cold eyelids (Swinburne 1)
are replaced by worn-off eyelids (Swinburne 107) and heavy white limbs (Swinburne 3) by a
face made of sunken bones (Swinburne 106). Swinburne, by so explicitly describing the
female body offends Victorian morals. The story of The Leper, though, is also a blow to
Victorian morals. Swinburne pointed out that in his poems artistic imagination could transcend
the limitations of banal reality and moral prescription by expanding its vision into a universe that
was not the conventionally familiar one (Alkalay-Gut 229); this is exactly what happens in The
Leper. In The Leper the speaker finally has the chance to love the woman he has been
secretly yearning after for years. However conventional this story may seem at first it is
definitely an unusual love story for the man is only able to make love to the woman he loves
after she contracts leprosy. Her former lovers turn her away and All they spat out and cursed at
her / And cast her forth for a base thing (Swinburne 51-52); conversely, the speaker takes her
into his home and serves her water and poor bread (Swinburne 70) because it gave him joy, at
first, to serve her. Even after she dies he holds onto her saying:
Six months, and I sit still and hold
In two cold palms her cold two feet.
Her hair, half grey half ruined gold,

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Thrills me and burns me in kissing it. (Swinburne 101-104)
Although she is dead he still holds her in his arms and kisses her; this image of the speaker
delighting in being able to kiss her even though she is dead is the epitome of Swinburnes
subversive poetry. This unusual love story without a doubt defies the limitations of banal
reality and moral prescription (Alkalay-Gut 229) and in the process rebels against the ideal of a
morally significant poem. The Leper, along with Dolores, combats the Arnoldian idea that
art possessed a moral function (Alkalay-Gut 228) which translated the prevailing Victorian
belief of utilitarianism into a poetic form.
The repressive expectations of the Arnoldian idea (Alkalay-Gut 228) which
predominated Victorian poetry resulted in driving Swinburne back into the arms of the
Romantics. Many Victorian poets, such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, were trying to create a
new poetic form to purify the sexually contentious poetry of Bryon and like Romantic poets
(Slinn 46). Swinburne, on the other hand, greatly admired Bryon, Blake and Shelly and the
Romantic movement, with its high ideals and still higher ambitions for poetry (Riede,
Swinburne 22). His poems demonstrate a return to Romantic poetic ideas, compelling Antony
H. Harrison to call Swinburne one of the later Romantics (Victorian Poets 178). Swinburne
saw Romantic poetry as true art, as opposed to Victorian poetry, and strived to imitate it, to a
certain extent. As Riede points out Swinburne sought to do three things in his poetry: to create
imaginative separation from and rebel against conventional thought, speak to people across the
ages through a realm of eternal truths and unchanging laws, and finally to master poetic forms
and harmonies as they are a seal of authoritative power (Swinburne23). The first goal is
distinctly Romantic in nature (Drake). By attempting to emulate Romantic poetry Swinburne is
returning to some of the very ideals that the prevailing ideal in Victorian poetry was created in

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opposition to. In Dolores Romantic characteristics can be seen everywhere. Since Swinburne
disagreed with the direction Victorian poetry was heading he tried his utmost to keep his poetry
from falling into the predetermined set of rules. The subject matter for his poetry, especially for
poems like Dolores and The Leper, illustrate that he was unafraid to break out of Victorian
conventions. The Romantic poets prided themselves on being separate from society and for
refusing to conform to societys expectations (Drake). Both of the above mentioned poems
flagrantly disregard Victorian societys conventions.

Emotion over reason was another one of

the main Romantic characteristics (Drake) and Swinburnes poetry certainly demonstrates this
characteristic. The speaker in Dolores is constantly buffeted by passion and the poetic form
furthers the cycle of passion conveyed to the reader. Many of Swinburnes major poems do not
build towards moments of vision but employ a circular structure that returns again and again to a
provisional imaginative center, adding layer after layer of image and meaning (Landow). This
circular pattern of emotion is evident in Dolores where it serves to heighten the passion with
each cycle. At the beginning of the poem the speaker is more rational but as the poem goes on
the speaker becomes so overcome by emotion that at times he seems to make almost no sense.
The speaker is so overwhelmed by passion that it frequently turns violent and he begs Dolores to
Bite hard, lest remembrance come after (Swinburne 27) and to surround him with her passion
because The desire of thy furious embraces / Is more than the wisdom of years (Swinburne
169-170). This last line parrots the Romantic maxim of emotion over reason. For the speaker,
passion trumps reason. This triumph of emotion over reason in an age of reason caused many
critics to admonish Swinburne and his poetry for his characters unreasonable desires and
actions. Swinburne defended his poetry and himself, according to Alkalay-Gut, by saying he
was not writing lyrics that expressed his own feelings or opinions (228) and that the characters

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in his poetry should not be mistaken for him. This, itself, is yet another idea of Romantic poetry,
the celebration of the imagination as the foundation of the art (Drake). In other words the mind
creates the poetic world. Another obvious Romantic characteristic in Dolores is the emphasis
on the physical and the aesthetic (Drake). The very sensual nature of the poem ensures that one
of the main emphasizes is on the physical. Swinburne uses specific devices to guarantee that
word choice in Dolores contributes to the overall poem. According to Isobel Armstrong,
Swinburnes words have to transgress their limits and dissolve the boundaries of language by
coalescing distinctions of sound and meaning (Victorian Poetry 405). Indeed, Swinburnes
word usage in Dolores not only manages to make the poem flow and sound appealing but also
serves to communicate multiple meanings. Swinburnes anxiety over using the right words in his
poems betrays his Romantic preoccupation with the aesthetic. Dolores exemplifies many
Romantic characteristics; the permeation of Romantic thought in Swinburnes works instead of
Victorian views demonstrates that Swinburne found something to be desired in Victorian poetry
and consequently returned to past poetical characteristics.
Swinburne, according to Riede, believed, emphatically, that the poet must speak without
vacillation or hesitation, that he must speak powerfully and authoritatively (Swinburne 2223). In his eyes the Romantics, unlike most Victorian poets, accomplished this; thus Swinburne
tried to emulate Romantic ideas in his poems. These Romantic ideas are especially evident in
The Leper. Swinburne believed that poets should question the structure of society and that
the great poet remains a bard and prophet who stands apart from and above his time (Riede,
Swinburne 23). These distinctly Romantic beliefs, which permeate his poetry, substantiate the
statement that Swinburne considered Romantic poetry superior to Victorian poetry; subsequently,
because he believed Romantic poetry was superior more of its ideals can be found in his works.

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The speaker in The Leper, like in the speaker in Dolores, allows emotion to triumph over
reason. The speaker cares only for the woman he loves and has loved from afar for years.
Reason is overcome by emotion when he takes her into his home after it is discovered that she
has leprosy. No one else would even touch her for fear of contracting it but he takes her in, feeds
her, cares for her and even makes love to her. He says this about how her former lovers reacted
when they discovered that she had leprosy:
They cursed her, seeing how God had wrought
This curse to plague her, a curse of his.
Fools were they surely, seeing not
How sweeter than all sweet she is. (Swinburne 53-56)
He, however, does not care; what they curse, he worships. He does not care that he will contract
the disease and ultimately die, he only cares that for right now he has her and can love her. The
Leper, unlike many Victorian poems, does not teach Victorians how to behave. Rather, it can be
seen as a poetic exploration of the human psyche, which was another characteristic of Romantic
poetry: a preoccupation with the psychological (Drake). The Leper can be considered an
exploration of unrequited love, for that is what his love is because even though she is his in the
end it happened by mistake. The poem is a dramatic monologue and through this the reader can
hear the thoughts of the speaker and follow him through his story. The speaker in The Leper
is so fixated on the woman he once served that he is jealous of thoughts she might be having
about her former lovers. While tending for her he says, to himself, that he knows the old love
held fast (Swinburne 126) and her old scorn for him waxed heavier, / mixed with sad wonder,
in her heart (Swinburne 127-128). His unrequited love for this woman, to some extent, destroys
him because through her he contracts leprosy and will eventually die from it; furthermore, after

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she dies he spends his time holding her dead body in his arms and wondering if all his love
went wrong (Swinburne 129), if it was all in vain like spoilt music with no perfect word
(Swinburne 132). The deep agonizing on his part and the lines devoted to it can unquestionably
be considered an analysis of the human psyche during a certain phase of unrequited love. The
Romantic traits found in The Leper, triumph of emotion over reason, examination of the
human psyche, among others, and the Romantic traits found in Dolores serve to undermine the
Victorian ideals which were created in response to the Romantic period. Swinburnes use of
characteristics that can be considered more Romantic than Victorian can be seen as a statement
against dominant Victorian ideals in poetry.
Some of todays critics are now wondering if the Victorian era can correctly be
considered to be the years from 1837 to 1901 since there were groups that deviated from the
dominant Victorian ideal of moral goodness and justification of everything (Armstrong,
Victorian Poet 279-280). The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who greatly influenced Swinburne,
is one of these deviant groups. Because of them and the Romantic poets Swinburne rejected the
main Victorian ideal which was defined by Matthew Arnold. His poems, Dolores and The
Leper, demonstrate that he was frustrated with the Arnoldian idea (Alkalay-Gut 228) of
poetry and consequently turned to ideas that were more Romantic in nature. Both, Dolores
and The Leper tend to shock readers with their salacious language and scandalous subject
matters which sometimes causes readers to miss their underlying statements on society;
nonetheless, when looked at closely, it is clear that they do offer a powerful commentary on
Victorian poetry and more.

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Works Cited
Alkalay-Gut, Karen. Aesthetic and Decadent Poetry. The Cambridge Companion to Victorian
Poetry. Ed. Joseph Bristow. Cambridge: University Press, 2000. 228-254.
Armstrong, Isobel. When Is a Victorian Poet Not a Victorian Poet? Poetry and the Politics of
Subjectivity in the Long Nineteenth Century. Victorian Studies: A Journal of the
Humanities, Arts and Sciences. 43.2 (2001): 279-92.
Armstrong, Isobel. Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Drake, Al. E212: British Literature since 1760. California State University, Fullerton. 23 Oct.
2006 <http://www.ajdrake.com/e212_sum_04/materials/guides/rom_romvic
_character.htm>.
Harrison, Antony H. Swinburnes Losses: The Poetics of Passion. ELH. 49.3 (1982): 689-706.
Harrison, Antony H. Victorian Poets and Romantic Poems: Intertextuality and Ideology.
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990.
Landow, George P. Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Difficulties of Victorian Poetry. Victorian
Web. 10 Oct. 2006 < http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hopkins/difficulty.html>.
McGann, Jerome and Charles L. Sligh, eds. Major Poems and Selected Prose: Algernon Charles
Swinburne. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
Mermin, Dorothy and Herbert Tucker, eds. Victorian Literature: 1830-1900. United States:
Thomson Wadsworth, 2002.
Pease, Allison. Questionable Figures: Swinburnes Poems and Ballads. Victorian Poetry. 35.1
(1997): 43-56.
Riede, David G. Swinburne: A Study of Romantic Mythmaking. Charlottesville: University Press
of Virginia, 1978.

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Riede, David G. Swinburne and Romantic Authority. The Whole Music of Passion. Ed. Rikky
Rooksby and Nicholas Shrimipton. Cambridge: University Press, 1993. 22-39.
Slinn, E. Warwick. Experimental form in Victorian Poetry. The Cambridge Companion to
Victorian Poetry. Ed. Joseph Bristow. Cambridge: University Press, 2000. 46-66.
Stoddart, Judith. The Morality of Poems and Ballads: Swinburne and Ruskin. The Whole
Music of Passion. Ed. Rikky Rooksby and Nicholas Shrimipton. Cambridge: University
Press, 1993. 92-106.