She Walks in Beauty

Lord Byron

AO3

• Blazon poetry

  • praising individual parts on a woman

• Peace

  • Christian peace

  • perfect - a paragon that surpasses all others

• Romantic poet

  • Mad, bad and dangerous to know

  • Second wave romanticism

  • life plagued with rumour and intrigue

  • his only official coupling separated

• Public reaction

  • Huge star

  • enthralled and repulsed by his behaviour

• She Walks In Beauty

  • Published in the ‘Hebrew Melodies’

  • Designed to be set to music

AO4

• Idealised love

  • Sonnet 116

• Love and gender

  • Women portrayed positively

  • La Belle Dame

  • The Ruined Maid

• Gatsby

  • Most comparison to Daisy

  • In Gatsby, none of the women come across in a positive light

  • Objectifying but not vacuous, dishonest or promiscuous

  • ‘Thoughts serenely sweet express how pure, how dear their dwelling-place’

  • ‘That’s the best thing a girl can be, a beautiful little fool’

  • ‘All that’s best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes’

  • as cool in their white dresses and their impersonal eyes absent of all desire’

AO5

• juxtaposing imagery of dark and light

• conceit of a starry night

  • to increase the internal light that comes from her

  • to hint that, despite her perfection, that there is something darker and more fatal about her

AO5

• reinterpret the feminist interpretation by Person

• Objectifying but not victimising

• male obsession is more destructive to him than her