Dacre, Death, and Manipulation

Charlotte Dacre, otherwise known as Charlotte King Byrne, was a woman out of step with the traditional expectations of females of her time.  Very reminiscent of a strong and independent woman today, Dacre had three children out of wedlock, pursued a career typically reserved for men, and went on to excel in her career, buoyed by her unconventional antics.  Dacre became a novelist and poet, but rather than adhering to traditional standards of the fairer sex, her female characters were strong-willed and aggressive, with raging sexual desires  (“Charlotte Dacre”).

In addition to untraditional portrayals of women in her literature, Dacre employed death in creative ways.  In her poem “The Mistress to the Spirit of her Lover,” death comes as the ghost of a woman’s late beloved.  In another poem, “Death and the Lady,” Death is actually a principal character, capable of holding an entire reasoned conversation with a human being.  But beyond personifying death in her poems, Dacre goes so far as to allocate unto it a very human attribute, but one that suits death well in her verses: the ability to manipulate.

It is this manipulation, present in both poems, that allows Dacre’s readers to deviate from conventional thoughts of death as an abstraction and permit their minds to consider it concretely.  This is perhaps Dacre’s exact objective: to bring death to life, if you will.  To demystify it and familiarize her readers with it.  Whether this speculated objective of hers was intended to frighten her audience or evoke a sense of comfort with the idea of death, either or both can be accomplished through “The Mistress to the Spirit of her Lover” and “Death and the Lady.”  Examples abound in these two poems of Dacre’s clear ease to accept death.  It seems, however, that Dacre thinks it necessary to strong-arm her readers into such ease.  She certainly does so by portraying death as a manipulative being whose persuasive talents draw its objects into the belief that death is their best option.

Beginning with the subtler of the two, manipulation in “The Mistress to the Spirit of her Lover” is far from overt.  There is no dialogue between the two presences in the poem: the mistress and her lover’s spirit.  The scene is a forlorn woman sitting on a rock, looking to the edge of a cliff where the spirit of her lover appears to be contemplating a jump.  The majority of the verses consist of her lamenting his insubstantiality.  Throughout the poem runs an undercurrent of her potential mental instability, which makes it all the more easy for death to influence her mind. 

Evidence of her fragile mental state comes most obviously from the very fact that she is seeing a ghost.  Then it comes through in Dacre’s words: “Oh! Lover illusive, my senses to mock -/’Tis madness presents if I venture to think” (15-16).  That line, which comes early in the poem, teeters on the brink between realizing that she is flirting with insanity and not caring, as long as she is able to see her lover.  She is able to recognize the fact that he is an “embodied mist” (21). 

However, the longer she contemplates his status as a spirit, the more easily death is able to manipulate her mind.  She is initially worried for the spirit, afraid that he will fall off the cliff.  But she then realizes the benefits he has: “Yet ah!  I forget, thou art light as a breath;/That aerial form, which no atoms combine,/Might dizzily sport down the abyss of death,/Or tremble secure on the hazardous line” (29-32).  The mistress begins to see the advantages there are to being dead and all hope for an intact mental state is lost in the last stanza when she feels her soul beginning to mingle with his. 

Reading beneath the surface of the words, it is easy to see that the spirit is not just a supernatural entity in the poem, but the “embodiment” (in mist form) of death.  Pop cultural perceptions elucidate that death’s objective is to claim as many lives as it can, by any means necessary, and it is able to claim the mistress’ in clever fashion.  It lets her own mind make the decision to give up her life, but helps it along by tempting her with the proximity of her lost lover, guiding her to realize that she could join him and not worry about earthly troubles any longer, and then sealing the deal by convincing her of the spirit’s affection for her: “Lo! see thy dim arms are extending for me;” (37).  Death manipulates her feelings for her lover by puppeteering the spirit to reach for her.  Clearly, Dacre’s subtle personification of death appears alluring and inviting.  This begs the question, though, of whether readers should be scared of the power death can have or comforted into not fearing it.

Further evidence of Dacre’s use of death as a manipulator comes in her poem “Death and the Lady.”  In this poem, death is actually a character, Death, and has a conversation with the Lady, in which it tells her that she will soon join it on the other side.  The poem is a back-and-forth between Death and the Lady where she laments that her life will end in her prime and Death brings her to the realization that her life was nothing but misery and pain, and death would be an improvement. 

Death’s manipulation begins by claiming that taking her life would be doing her a favor: “What hast thou known but care and sorrow?/Thy lovers faithless all?/And if I spare thee till to-morrow/Some horrid ill may fall” (57-60).  When she continues to resist his temptations, though, he moves on from gentle persuasions to belittling her: “Thou griev’st to die, others grieve none,/Nor miss thee from the scene” (115-6).  It tells her that she is insignificant and since no one will miss her when she’s gone, she may as well leave with Death now.  From there, Death moves back toward the enticements of death, promising her a robe of blue vapors and the chance to feel her mother’s embrace again.  The Lady’s resistance slowly crumbles until it shatters completely in the final stanza: “Then rising from her silken bed,/ She gave her hand to Death;/His touch’d, benumb’d, her soul with dread,/And stopp’d her rising breath” (157-60).   

The manipulation by death that Dacre employs in her writings is far more obvious in this poem, where death is able to take on a form and a voice of its own.  The exploitation of the Lady’s feelings is much less subtle than that of the mistress’ was in the former poem.  Death plays on her life full of misfortune and her desire to see her mother again, very clear manipulation techniques.  Once again, though, the issue arises of whether death’s power of manipulation is meant to be frightening or whether the benefits it can offer outweigh its objects’ fear.  Either could be a possibility in both of Dacre’s poems, “The Mistress to the Spirit of her Lover” and “Death and the Lady.”

 So the question remains of Dacre’s intentions: Is she attempting to scare her readers with gothic poems that make death visible in people’s lives or is she attempting to convince them that there are actually upsides to death and they should accept it, as the women in her poems do? 

“Charlotte Dacre.”  Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.  20 May 2012.  Wikimedia Foundations, Inc.  25 May 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Dacre

Dacre, Charlotte.  "The Mistress to the Spirit of her Lover."  Hours of Solitude: A collection of original poems, 2 vols.  London: Hughes and Ridgeway, 1805.

Dacre, Charlotte.  "Death and the Lady."  Hours of Solitude: A collection of original poems, 2 vols.  London: Hughes and Ridgeway, 1805.

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