Literary Analysis of The Old Stoic, by Emily Brontë

Riches I hold in light esteem,
And Love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of fame was but a dream,
That vanished with the morn:

And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is, “Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty!”

Yes, as my swift days near their goal:
‘Tis all that I implore;
In life and death a chainless soul,
With courage to endure.

Emily Brontë’s (1818-1848) The Old Stoic explains how a stoic—an apathetic and passive person—reasons about dreams and happiness. His only wish is to leave this life and to achieve complete freedom, rejecting carnal pleasures such as material wealth, love and fame.

The poem consists of three stanzas, containing four lines each. All twelve lines rhyme according to the rhyming scheme ABAB, CDCD, EFEF. This is common among Old English poetry, and leaves more energy for the reader to analyze the content of the poem. Also common is the iambic rhythm. Brontë varies regularly between iambic tetrameter for odd-numbered lines, and iambic trimeter for even-numbered lines. This creates a certain flow in the poem, which makes it easy to read. The polysyndeton at the lines two and three further helps simplifying the text.

The Old Stoic has a tone of simplicity. Most words used are from the Anglo-Saxon language, such as “love”, “laugh” and “death”. Very few advanced words are used, with “liberty” being the only one with more than two syllables. By applying this vocabulary, Brontë makes the “old stoic” seem unintelligent, while at the same time letting the reader focus on the message of the poem.

Each stanza of The Old Stoic deals with a different part of the stoic’s thoughts. Throughout the poem, the stoic is the narrator. In the first stanza, he describes that he finds the worldly things unnecessary: “Riches I hold in light esteem”. He also tells that he did have a wish to be famous, but it “vanished with the morn”, where the “morn” could symbolize the melancholy resulting from realizing how sad life is.

In the second stanza, the narrator reveals his current wish, which is to become free—“give me liberty!”—but he also states that this can only be achieved through death, since he wants to “Leave the heart that now I bear”. The narrator’s wish remains in the third stanza, but there, he adds that he needs the “courage to endure”. I interpret it as the courage to endure life until his soul will be set free.

Since Brontë is very straight-forward in this poem, there is not much to analyze. I am unable to detect any sign from the writer that there is a deeper meaning than what the stoic says himself. Thus, there are two alternatives; Brontë could be using the stoic as a medium for communicating her opinions, or she could be sarcastic.

Emily Brontë died from tuberculosis, after having rejected any medical treatment. This suggests that she was of opinions similar to the old stoic , and thought that we can be free only when we are not bound by things such as medicines. Another fact which favors the former theory is that female authors were looked down upon at that time. Expressing opinions through a man, even if he was fictional, was a better way if a woman wanted to be taken seriously.

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