Felecia Hermans: Woman and Fame

Hemans was very popular amongst women during her time as a poet and within Woman and Fame . She channels the women’s view on the world and perhaps sheds the light on a woman’s life during this particular era.
“She that makes the humblest hearth, Lovely but to one on earth,” is at the beginning of her poem and signifies the stereotypical portrayal of a women, that a woman does not want to be recognized but simply loved and have a family, very standard thinking for the time.
However as the poem progresses, a different approach to the archaic view of women is formed. She says the women ‘hast a voice, whose thrilling tone can bid each life-pulse beat, as when a trumpet’s note hath blown, calling the brave to meet,” (lines 13-15).  She meant that she wishes the women to have a voice that deserves to be heard. She knows what she says is new age thinking as she mentions that in “thy song a mockery in thine eye,” (line 20) suggesting that the ‘mockery’ is from the male public.  She comes into her own as a poet but not without the criticism and social ridicule that begins to eat at her as she says in the later part of her poem: “To the sick heart that doth but long for aid, for sympathy; for kindly looks to cheer it on, for tender accents that are gone.”  This shows she is searching for positivity and finds none and thus she wishes to be gone with the fame. In her final lines she declares her wish to be unseen once again:
Fame, Fame! Thou canst not be the stay
Unto the drooping reed,
The cool fresh fountain, in the day
Of the soul’s feverish need;
Where must the lone one turn or flee?—
Not unto thee, oh! Not to thee!
She wishes the benefits of fame but not the cruel voice of opinion that drags along with it. Though she did not refrain from speaking about the position she was placed into based on her gender, she fought and poured her heart in this poem and implored the sympathy of females and modern thinkers. She seeks to be respected, not humoured and bashed.