Heres a virtual movie of the great Emily Bronte (1818 -- 1848) reading her much lovrd poem "The Prisoner" written by her in October 1845,and published like most of her works after her death.
"The Prisoner" was originally written to be included in the Gondal saga. The Gondal saga was a series of stories about an imaginary island that Emily Bronte worked on with her younger sister Anne. The poems and stories that they included in this collection were full of "political intrigue, passionate love, rebellion, war, imprisonment, and exile" (Norton 1419). Bronte creates a heroine out of the prisoner; though she suffers, she has, and will, fully overcome her prison with the help of a Divine power. Through death, God will release the prisoner from her confines and justify her wrongful imprisonment.
In the third stanza, the speaker, a young man visiting his fathers dungeon, proclaims "God forgive my youth, forgive my careless tongue" as he begins to recount his mocking of the prisoner. The prisoner knows that her confinement is unjust and knows that God recognizes that, and so is very calm; but this realization by the speaker, as he is telling it looking back, is somewhat frightening and unsettling to him. Especially after her discourse when he realizes "Her cheek, her gleaming eye, declared that man had given / A sentence unapproved, and overruled by Heaven." The prisoner would be released from her chains, but the speaker would then be bound with the chains of guilt, knowing that she should never have been in them at all.
The jailer, as well, jibes the prisoner: "Dost think, foolish dreaming wretch, that I shall grant thy prayer?" But, she just smiles at him for her knowledge. She did not and will not ask anything of him, because there is nothing he could replace for her. Only God can restore the life and the family that she has lost. Since the guard can offer her no salvation, he can also instill no fear in her; at this point, the existence of the two men is irrelevant to her existence.
Every night the prisoner experiences magnificent dreams she could never have imagined before: "I could never dream till earth was lost to me." It is after her dreams that the prisoner suffers the most, since she continues to wake up from them. All of the beauty and serenity of heaven are revealed to her, yet as soon as the calm sets and she starts to awaken, her soul returns, and it once again begins "to feel the flesh and the flesh to feel the chain." The dreams are her hope as much as they are her torment; with them her future is revealed to her, but her present is then brought strikingly back.
There are frequent references to God or some other greater power that is in control of the universe. The prisoner is even described with the face of a "sculptured marble saint." She tells her captors that she is visited every night by a "messenger of Hope," who promises her freedom for death. The "Unseen" reveals its truth to her in magnificent dreams, showing her how she will live for eternity. Her torture now is the waiting, not the confinement, because she knows that a better existence is to come, just not when. The only thing she knows for sure is that without her suffering, her relief will not come. In the second to last stanza, the prisoner says, "Yet I would lose no string, would wish no torture less; / The more that anguish racks the earlier it will bless." She knew that there was a greater force in the world than mankind, and that force recognized that her punishment was unjust, and showed her that her wrongs would be righted in a better place than the world she was in.
Emily Brontes, "The Prisoner: A Fragment," is both about imprisonment and hope. The prisoner has suffered great losses unjustly, but her soul will be rewarded in Heaven. Bronte uses the young man and the jailer to depict all those that had played a part in her captivity; and, thus the young man will suffer in the future with his realization that mans will must always secede to Gods. The prisoner is a symbol of hope for all those wrongfully accused that their wrongs would be righted; as for their accusers, their fate depends on what they do with their knowledge.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyrigt Jim Clark 2010
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The Brontes: Three Muses and Their Men 2-5by ksotikoula3,409 views
Incredible poem.
tstakland4 1 month ago
A great poem.
jeana1001 4 months ago
Bronte is powerhouse-
hswatnik 1 year ago