Beachy Head Poem Analysis

Fissured perception in Beachy Head Beachy Head, Charlotte Smith’s swan song of a poem, was published in 1807. Differing opinions on the poem’s seeming incompleteness betray an underlying fissured element- an element at once tangible and intangible, parting its way through the substratum of 19th century notions on gender, poetics, aesthetics, history and science. Smith intended Beachy Head to be the “local subject” (Fry 31) on which she would rivet her Fancy and her theme. However, like an unrestrained coil spiraling outwards, the poem is anything but fixed. There is liquidity, apropos to the setting by the Sussex shoreline, which creates a flux between temporal, spatial and factual elements, thereby strengthening the schismatic politics

This geological marvel bursts unto the scene and unto the vision of any who approaches the mainland, in a manner akin to the ‘Big Bang’ of cosmological evolution. It is arresting, a sight that can scarce escape the notice of anyone in the vicinity. Such an invocation plays the dual role of establishing Smith’s authoritative voice- her imprint on the poem, her mimicry of a predominantly masculine epic poetic form- and of attributing an elevation to her muse (the Beachy Head). Traditionally female, the attachment of regality [“Imperial lord of the high southern coast” (11)] to the muse would constitute a dramatic ‘talk back’ to the existing power structures between the sexes. Furthermore, the rigidity of perceiving sexed objects is considerably fractured through such reversals. Thus in the very first lines, burgeoning cracks begin to appear at the foundation of gendered convictions which were prevalent during Smith’s time. Crickenberger says, in Wandering Around in Beachy Head, that the looming promontory is “not a place to be built up stone on top of stone in the mind of the reader, but a colossal force to be reckoned with all at once—like the imagination of the poet herself” (3). Imagination is rooted in a feminine source and let loose at will by Smith- a self-sanctioning of