Classic Contemporary Relevance part 1: The Eve of St. Agnes by John Keats
Self-indulgence, self-fulfilment and self-discipline. Within everyone there exists a struggle to balance these different cares. The former two for one's own sake; the latter often for someone or something else – an authoritarian institution, a restrictive family or a social stigma. This is especially true of women, who are always up against a set of values not entirely decided by women themselves: Accepted and unaccepted behaviours; forbidden and permitted relationships. It may be a comfort to note, then, that different aspects of this alternately inner and outer struggle have been written about from various perspectives over the recent decades and centuries, telling stories of balancing this great trinity of living – or failing to, as is arguably the case in the early 19th century John Keats poem The Eve of St. Agnes.
This story derives from the folk tale that virgin women would see a vision of their future husband if they followed a certain ritual of going to sleep on January 20th, the Eve of the patron saint of virginity. To crudely (but not inaccurately) sum up this poem's plot: An uninvited man sneaks into a young woman's room, conceals himself, watches her enter, undress and fall asleep, crawls into bed with her unconscious body and manipulates her dreaming thoughts to make her run away from her family with him. Spooky? Well what may be spookier to the modern reader is that this is written as a romance, not a horror. The woman, Madeline, pines for Porphyro, thinks of him during a party and goes to sleep hoping to dream of him. Although the love is therefore mutual, Madeline is worryingly passive when she realises that she's been duped upon awakening, accepting his conspiracy because of her pre-existing feelings for him.
Today young people's sex lives often enter the realm of competition, leading to harmful fantasy, unhealthy relationships or even dangerous encounters. Madeline becomes so obsessed with the virgin ritual that she loses touch with reality. Wanting to be taken by a man so much makes her vulnerably exploitable. Discomfort is persistent across any interpretation of this poem, as a cautionary message to absorb here might brush uncomfortably close with the old father's adage “Lock up your daughters!” Protection from perverse seduction, however, shouldn't come in the form of repression of movement – a sentiment being echoed now, but unfortunately muffled in places.
[originally submitted to Wordpress for grading on the 17th of May, 2020]
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