Blackwell Reference Online

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In her contemplative blank-verse poem Beachy Head, published posthumously in 1807, Charlotte Smith locates herself and her reader atop Beachy Head, investing the poem with the authority culturally allied to the prospect view and making use of her vantage-point to explore nature in all its ‘multitudinous, uncanny particularity’, in Stuart Curran's words. Beachy Head participates in the Romantic revival of the prospect poem; it arises from the same impulse that produced Tintern Abbey and that would produce, for instance, Mont Blanc. In it, Smith creates a tableau fixing her own place – as poet, as woman – in a cultural, social, natural and poetical landscape, utilizing tropes of height, vision and dispossession; and inserting self-confidence and authority via the poem's footnotes, which act as a kind of running commentary on her own work. It is important to note where Smith situates herself and her poem: the prospect view, allied as it was with political and cultural power and dominance, and allied also with masculinity and breadth of vision, is not common property Smith's daring opening move is to claim the prospect, but to do so in typically Smithian fashion; that is, she gestures towards power but cloaks her moves in decorous propriety. Again, as in so much of her work, she gradually unfolds to the reader's eyes a more assertive, authoritative persona. This essay will sketch out ... log in or subscribe to read full text