While Barbauld’s poem (reproduced in Appendix A) may exist
in what was considered the feminine form of writing, especially with her
anthropomorphizing of the mouse, the ideas she engages with in the poem
demonstrate her vast knowledge and her engagement with political and scientific
efforts beyond what was expected of women in the time period. The language of
Barbauld’s poem continually creates the tension between the feminine sphere she
is meant to occupy and the masculine sphere of politics and natural science.
The title of the poem, “The Mouse’s Petition,” immediately suggests that the
poem is meant as some sort of social commentary, starting out in the masculine
sphere of politics. A “petition” could often be defined as “the most radical
version of a political letter, which targets the heart of established power by
directly addressing the monarch and parliament.”[1]
Her use of the term recalls the many petitions that Dissenters organized
throughout the late 1760s and 1770s.[2]
Because of Priestley’s position as a Dissenting clergyman who was actively
involved in reform efforts, Barbauld recalls the work that he would have done
while removing him from the position of the petitioning mouse, with which he
was familiar, and into the position of the “monarch” to whom he actively
appealed in his own petitions. Barbauld demonstrates her political awareness,
while also turning Priestley’s attention in on his own actions to question the
difference between his own subjugation of the mouse and the subjugation he
experienced as a Dissenter.
In the epigram of the poem following
the politicized title, Barbauld returns to the classical education that points
to her upper class background by quoting a line from the sixth book of Virgil’s
Aeneid: “Parcere subjectis &
debellare superbos.” Translated, the line reads, “To show mercy to the
conquered & to defeat the proud.”[3] By
adding this line to the subtitle of the poem, Barbauld alludes to the classical
education afforded to her because of her father’s position as a tutor of
languages at the Warrington Academy. The line’s original position as the 853rd
line of the sixth book of the Aeneid
suggests Barbauld’s intimate knowledge of the classical text that she could
pick out the specific line to use as an epigram. While this intimate knowledge
may be impressive, it is not particularly shocking for a woman to know
classical texts since upper class women were often educated in classical
languages, moving the poem momentarily back into the feminine sphere before she
enters into the poem. Her use of the line to allude to the petition that follows
also suggests her interest in the reform and liberation efforts of the time,
which points to the unusual nature of her knowledge and social engagement.
Moving into the poem itself, the
first person perspective of the poem immediately places the reader in the point
of view of the mouse, appealing to Priestly as a “pensive prisoner” uttering a
“prayer / For liberty” as it sits “forlorn and sad” in its cage (lines 1-5).
Barbauld’s language in these initial lines alludes to the mouse’s capacity to
feel emotions, to think, and to hope for release. The idea that the mouse
offers a “prayer” to Priestley set ups the God/subject dichotomy that
characterizes the rest of the poem, while also alluding to religion in the
“petition” as a means to affect the devout Priestley. Barbauld aligns her mouse
with the prisoner awaiting execution, as it “[trembles] at th’ approaching
morn, / Which brings impending fate,” in an attempt to elicit sympathy from her
reader. Barbauld does not shy away from engaging with other social issues of
the day in this petition, aligning the poem with criticisms of the slave trade
by alluding to spurning a “tyrant’s chain” in the appeal to “Let not thy strong
oppressive force / A free-born mouse detain” (lines 10-12). This allusion also
appeals to Priestley as a supporter of the American and Corsican
revolutionaries who were starting to demonstrate unrest towards their rulers at
the time of the poem’s writing, aligning the image of Priestley’s capturing of
the mouse with contemporary political issues.[4]
While Barbauld certainly remains
aware of political issues throughout the poem, using pointed allusions to align
the mouse’s plight with Priestley’s own, her allusions to “the literal details
of Priestley’s science” prove to be the subtler of her language.[5]
Couching these veiled references within the terms of hospitality, Barbauld
demonstrates her skilled awareness of Priestley’s work and of the necessity to
not comment on science directly. Her language of hospitality for the mouse’s
position in Priestley’s home alludes to her own position in Priestley’s home at
the time of the poem’s composition, which keeps the poem solidly within the
domestic sphere. The mouse’s appeal of “do not stain with guiltless blood / Thy
hospitable hearth” points to Barbauld’s own reception at Priestley’s
“hospitable hearth,” which allows her to observe Priestley’s experiments and
comment on them. Thus, her welcome into Priestley’s home and domestic
laboratory gives Barbauld the space to comment on Priestley’s work on behalf of
the other “guest” who cannot speak out. Her language of the hearth keeps the
poem within the domestic sphere, while also alluding to her liminal position in
the house as a guest who has her “frugal meals” supplied by Priestley. Her
position as the guest in the home, another outsider in the home, allows her to
align with the mouse, expressing sympathy for the mouse destined for
experimentation by giving it a voice to express the literal suffering it will
go through.
In the first lines of the poem, the
mouse’s “sighs” for “liberty” departs from the “convention of sentimental
literature” to “[pun] on the fact that the actual mouse might suffocate” in the
course of Priestley’s experiments.[6]
The later reference to the mouse’s desire for “the vital air” can thus be read
literally as well. The mouse’s assertion the “vital air” and the “chearful
light” are the “common gifts of heaven” plays on Priestley’s own language to
“common air” which appeared countless times in his book, Observations on Different Kinds of Air by Joseph Priestley, LL.D.
F.R.S, published in 1772, one year after Barbauld’s poem was written.[7]
This suggests that Priestley used the phrase in conversation prior to the
writing of his book and that Barbauld paid attention to his language to the extent
that she could allude to his speech in her poem. By placing Priestley’s words
in the mouth of a mouse, she both brings his scientific language out of the
realm of the intellectuals and forces Priestley’s self-reflection over the
poem.
Barbauld does not limit her petition to
Priestley’s science, however; Priestley’s status as the man who not only
discovered oxygen but also played a key role in the formation of the Unitarian
movement in Britain meant that Barbauld also involved Priestley’s spirituality in
her poem. She interweaves the hypothesis that animals may have “rational souls”
throughout her poem, implying “both reasoning power and the potential for an
afterlife” in the mouse.[8]
Barbauld also plays with the language of the transmigration of souls in the
later stanzas of the poem when the mouse warns Priestley, “If mind […] Still
shifts thro’ matter’s varying forms […] Beware, lest in the worm you crush / A
brother’s soul you find; / And tremble lest thy luckless hand / Dislodge a
kindred mind” (lines 29-36). This language craftily points to Priestley’s own
former belief in the transmigration of souls, turning the petition into a
question of morals.
Barbauld transforms this specific
moral quandary into a generalized exploration of the moral implications and
consequences of objective scientific discovery, through the suggestion that
these equal figures of “men” and “mice” may “share” the same “destruction” if
“some kind angel” does not “break the hidden snare” formed by the cruel use of
animals in scientific experiments. Essentially, Barbauld comically suggests
that Priestley may lose the “health and peace” and “heartfelt ease” wished upon
him by the mouse when he is barred from Heaven if he does not let his little
captive go. While the thought of Priestley being damned simply because he does not
save a mouse, a household vermin that would have been killed in some other
manner, seems slightly ludicrous, Barbauld does tap into a concern men of both
science and faith contended with as they experimented on animals: if God gave
man dominion over the earth, does man have the right to be “cruel” to God’s
creatures for the sake of further discovery and knowledge?
[1]
Ross, “Configurations of Feminine Reform: The Woman Writer and the Tradition of
Dissent,” Re-Visioning Romanticism:
British Women Writers, 1776-1837, ed. Carol Shiner Wilson and Joel Hafner
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1994), 98.
[2]
Ready, 102
[3]
Poem 36, translation my own
[4]
Ready 98
[5]
Bellanca 57
[6]
Bellanca 57
[7]
Bellanca 57; Priestley
[8]
Bellanca 58
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