Spellbound - Emily Bronte Flashcards
‘The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me,
And I cannot, cannot go.’
‘The night’ - we immediately understand the dark and gloomy setting, speaker can physically see the night darkening creating a sense of desertion and sinister
‘darkening round me’ - trapped, stuck ‘darkening’ - present tense shows situation getting more intense and frightening
‘wild winds’ - alliteration creates a musical quality, enhancing the lyrical nature of the poem.
‘coldly’ - adverb, cold and darkness reminding us of death
‘And I cannot, cannot go’ - modal verb, emphasises this idea of being trapped, against her will
‘The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow;
The storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.’
‘giant trees’ - gives the imagery of her small size in comparison and as a result her helplessness.
‘bending’ - noun, personifies nature, emphasises connection between speaker;s emotions and the natural world illustrating how external forces can affect internal states.
‘bare boughs’ - alliteration of plosive sounds, suggestion of decay and death
‘storm is fast descending’ - creates a sense of panic, chaos, she can’t control her situation and her possible choices are closing in on her
‘Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond waste below;
But nothing drear can move me:
I will not, cannot go.’
‘above me’ - suffocated, she’s being weighed down
‘below’ -she’s trapped, there is nowhere she can move (stuck between heaven and hell - purgatory)
‘I will not’ - implies some level of autonomy beyond the tyrants spell, her own mind is involved in her immobility (her fictional world Gondal, where the narrator has to leave their child to die in the mountains, this fictional world created to haze out her awkward and unhappy childhood)
‘cannot go’ - echoes a determination, like a mantra when you’re facing dark times, concludes on a note of ambiguity leaving us to imagine.
context
Thought that Spellbound is located in her fictional world ‘Gondal’ - where her and her siblings created casts of characters of heroes and heroines who fought battles.
The incident imagined is where the heroine has to leave her child to die in the mountains in the winter time, she can neither stay and watch or leave.
- possibly created this world in an attempt to hide away from her childhood to escape the death and brutal realities of real life.
