Keats in Context

John Keats is one of the greatest poets in the Romantic Era and arguably one of the greatest poets that has ever lived. Keats was known for his neo-Elizabethan and classical style of writing and unique passion in his poems. Keats, throughout his life, was plagued with a series of problems. These difficulties, such as family issues, women troubles, and political debates, affected his writing. Was he doing the right thing and was he making the right decisions? Was it a good idea to be a writer, rather than a physician? All these questions, including the troubles Keats was facing, caused him to go in and out of depression. Keats, bombarded with all these difficulties in his life, as well as his doubts about whether he was doing the right thing, was still able to become one of the major poets of the Romantic period.

John Keats was born in Moorgate, London, on October 31, 1795. His parents were Thomas and Frances Jennings Keats. His father worked at, and was expecting, full ownership through his wife, of the stables in the Swan and Hoop Inn. John had three younger siblings, George, Tom, and Fanny. John Keats attended John Clarke’s school in Enfield, which had a more liberal stance compared to other schools. There he became close friends with Charles Cowden Clarke, the son of the headmaster, John Clarke. Frances Jenning’s father (Keats’s grandfather) died soon after Thomas Keats’s death, of a skull fracture. His mother soon became sick with tuberculosis. This was when Keats first started writing his poetry, to please his dying mother.

In March 1810, his mother died and Keats went to live with his grandmother. “France’s death… produced many other less manageable thoughts – some of which caused Keats grave personal difficulties.” (Motion 41). After confronting the piercingly intense melancholy of losing his mother, Keats pursued medicine and was under the apprenticeship of a Dr. Hammond. Later in 1815, he attended Guy’s Hospital. He then dropped medicine and began to write full-time. He met people like Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt,  and Joseph Severn. While he was in London he fell in love with Fanny Brawne and wrote the love poem “Bright Star” for her. He contracted tuberculosis then moved to Rome. Keats died on February 23, 1821.

Keats and his two brothers were close to each other; they exchanged letters back and forth daily. Keats’s brothers however, also gave him troubles, which set back his writing career and caused him to lose valuable time, which he could have spent on his poems. Keats’s youngest brother also contracted tuberculosis and required that Keats take care of him for months. He left home in London on March 4th for Teignmout, on the coast of Devon, in southwest England, to take care of Tom. Forced to write less, Keats became frustrated and struggled with depression. Tom started to get sicker and began coughing up blood, and Keats became more worried for Tom. “Now it was obvious there was no hope for him (Motion 298).” While Tom’s sickness was occupying Keats, his other brother George and his wife had also been giving Keats stress. George planned to move to America with his wife, investing a big chunk of his money. This would take a lot of the money from the three brothers’ inheritance. If the investments failed, the brothers would have little money left.

Andrew Motion, an English poet, novelist and biographer, as well as the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009, wrote “Keats” a biography of John Keats, focusing not only on the history, but also on the social context of his life. Andrew Motion constantly relates Keats’ life with his poetry, and makes clear that the subject matter of the poems shows what he was going through in his personal life during that time.

Keats’s poem “Isabella” is a symbolic expression of his frustration with his brothers. In this poem, Isabella is love with a young clerk, Lorenzo. Her brothers find out about this and kill Lorenzo. The ghost of the young clerk comes back, telling Isabella to plant his head in a pot. The brothers discover this and dispose of the pot. “O cruelty, “To steal my Basil-pot away from me!” According to Motion, the two brothers in this poem represent Tom and George holding Keats down with their problems.

As Keats lived in London he had come to question with the role of women in his life. He generally ignored them as he focused on his writing, but he still was conflicted about what women meant to him. Keats had disapproved his friends’ relationships with their wives. Hunt and Shelley regularly went out with prostitutes and mistreated their wives. This kind of treatment angered Keats and he was determined to find his one true love and stay faithful. While Keats was questioning himself about women, he went out with women and flirted with them. Keats’s women troubles gave him a lot of stress and caused him to wonder if women were disturbing his writing. It is well known that, later, Keats fell in love with Fanny Brawne. He wrote a poem to Fanny Brawne titled “Bright Star.”  In the poem Keats writes about a man with his partner and the man looks up to the sky. “Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night/ And watching with eternal lids apart” (Bright Star).  This relates to Keats trying to write while thinking about Brawne. He wants to stay with her for all eternity to watch her forever.

Keats had multiple friends in London that he contacted often. When he returned to Hampstead on October 5th he was determined to get back together with his friends.  These friends had different opinions about the government and the French revolution. Keats’ friends Hunt and Haydon, two famous writers and essayists, met and clashed about their own opinions. There were other clashes and debates on politics, namely, Richard Price and Edmond Burke who agued with each other about the French Revolution. Price thought that the French Revolution was a good change and brought radical ideas to the law, but Burke on the other hand, thought the revolution would destabilize France making it worse off than before;  Burke thought people cannot govern themselves, that they needed a monarch to establish a civilized country. The monarchy was a guard against the revolution and all the chaos that would come with it.

Hunt and Haydon’s clashes were similar to Price and Burkes’ disagreement about the French revolution. Keats, caught between these arguments was faced with the question of whose side he should be on. Keats was a liberal in his opinions, and he once stated, “The world…has been vexed and teased by a bunch of devils” (Motion 199). This shows how liberal Keats is and his dissatisfaction of how England is run by the King; it shows Keats’ disapproval to the king. The poem Robin Hood, which was written as a response to the imprisonment of Leigh Hunt, also shows Keats’ liberalism.  “Honour to bold Robin Hood/ Though their days have hurried by/ Let us two a burden try”. Robin Hood represents Hunt as he stands up for his rights and acts boldly for the people. Keats’s political views leaned towards the liberals who disapproved of the King, but still was split between his friends.

Keats’s had a tough life, and dealt with burdens: with family members dying, with women troubles and with problems with his friends. These problems caused Keats to wonder whether he did the right thing to begin to write. Ultimately, Keats’s troubles caused him to write better. The problems Keats faced made him ponder his  life as a success.  The poems such as Isabella and his romance poems are some of the most critically acclaimed poems of the Romantic Period, and beloved by many today.