Felicia Hemans (1793-1835)

Felicia Hemans was born in 1793, the year of the execution of the king and queen of France; she was a child of prodigy under the devoted tutelage of her mother and publicized her first volume at fourteen. At nineteen with three volume produced already she married captain Alfred Hemans in 1812. By 1818 she produced three more volume and five sons; unfortunately the captain left her with no reason just before the birth of her last son. She then decided to move in with her mother, brothers and sisters in order to raise her children and survive by continuing to write. After the death of her mother in 1827 she was devastated and her health suffered as a result she died in 1835. I am writing about Felicia Hemans because she is a great write, a brave woman and I was very moved by "The wife of Asdrubal.”
In this poem, Felicia Hemans told us how the day of her death and her children was a triumph for her; after having suffered the consequence of being left by her father and husband she condemned her husband to death by taking her children lives and hers. She spoke “The mean things thou hast done to save thy life shall not avail thee; thou shall die this instant, at least in thy two children.” (P 1736) She is telling her husband that the mean things he had done in order to survive elsewhere without his family will not last or stay without consequences, that he too should dye that day with them (the death of the two children).
In this poem it is written “Her walls have sunk, and pyramids of fire. In lurid splendor from her domes aspire; Sway’d by the wind, they wave while glares the sky….” (P 1736) The narrator is describing Felicia Hemans as a woman who did not have any more walls, any more strength; that she was not holding back any more as the end of her life was beginning. “The flames are gathering round …Full on her features glares their meteor light, but a wild courage sits triumphant there, the stormy grandeur of a proud despair….” (P1737). Here we are given a picture of the temple where Felicia was, there were flames all over, and she was courageous and proud of what she was about to deliver. She knew that this was her only way out, the only way to reach her husband and make him pay for what he did. “Are those her infants, that with suppliant cry cling round her, shrinking as the flame draws night, clasp with their feeble hands her gorgeous vest… Is that a mother’s glance, where stern disdain, and passion awfully vindictive, reign?” (P1737) Here the narrator was wondering if those suppliant children were hers, Felicia face was hard as a rock, she was just seen the end means: vengeance against her husband. “Live traitor, live!” she cries (P1737) This is too sad of story, like the narrator said “O slave in spirit” (P1737) Felicia was mentally ill of her husband’s behavior, her mother was her only strength whose death was unbearable; she then had to show her husband how much she wanted to pay him back for what he did to her. “Think’st thou I love them not? Tis mine with these to suffer and to die. Behold their fate! The arms that cannot save have been their cradle, and shall be their grave” (P1738). Wow!!! Here Felicia was telling the husband and even the readers not think that she did not love her children; that she held their fate, that she rather them to dye that to suffer, that her arms could not save them any more even thought those arms were their cradle; but now those arms were about to become their grave. Felicia was a woman of a kind, she was a typical example of courage and despair, I had mixed emotions when I read this poem, I still cannot imagine or understand that she was able to do it; but I must say that I did not condemned her at all. The more I read the poem, the more I understood what message she was sending us all; if her mother was alive the outcome would have been different.