Home / Current Issue / Paper 1702518
Beauty, Power, and the Feminine in John Keats: A Feminist Reassessment
Subject area: Science,Engineering and Technology · Area of research: Poetry
Abstract
This article offers a feminist reassessment of John Keats? portrayal of women in his poetry and personal letters, focusing on the complex interplay between beauty, power, and gender dynamics. Keats frequently depicts female figures as embodiments of beauty, often idealized as muses or cast as dangerous femme fatales. Through close readings of La Belle Dame sans Merci, Endymion, and Ode on a Grecian Urn, the study explores whether Keats? works celebrate or objectify women and how his aesthetic ideals contribute to traditional patriarchal narratives. Keats? personal letters to Fanny Brawne reveal similar tensions between admiration and possessiveness, further highlighting his struggle to reconcile idealized femininity with real female autonomy. While his poetry elevates beauty to a near-divine status, this elevation often reduces women to passive symbols of inspiration. This duality reflects broader Romantic anxieties about gender roles, with women portrayed as both desirable ideals and disruptive threats to male stability. By applying a feminist lens, this article argues that Keats? works, while deeply lyrical and emotionally rich, perpetuate limiting gender constructs. The study invites readers to reconsider Romantic literature?s treatment of women and the implications for understanding literary portrayals of gender.
Keywords
Feminism; John Keats; Femme Fatale; Romantic Poetry; Gender Dynamics
References
[1] Altikriti, S (2016) A Pragmatic Analysis of Hyperbole in John Keats: ’ Love Letters to Fanny Brawne, Journal for the Study of English Linguistics 4(1)
[2] Alwes, K (1993) Review of Imagination Transformed: The Evolution of Female Characters in Keats’s Poetry, Marquette University
[3] Gilbert, S. M., and Gubar, S (1979) The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, 2nd Edition, Yale University Press, New heaven and London
[4] Johnson, CF (2019) John Keats’s Letter to Fanny Brawne – 1 July 1819
[5] Stolker, M (2013) And By My Power Is Her Beauty Veil’d: Deconstructing Binary Oppositions Within the Changing Reception of the Representation of Gender in the Poetry of John Keats M, Utrecht University.
[6] Sultana, B., Akram, Z., and Rasheed, G (2023) An Ecofeminist Analysis of John Keats Selected Odes, Russian Law Journal, 11(2).
[7] Triaridou, N (2021) Lamia, Sirens, and Female Monsters: Feminist Reframings of Classical Myth in 19th Century Literature
How to cite this paper
@article{1702518,
author = {Pritish Biswas},
title = {Beauty, Power, and the Feminine in John Keats: A Feminist Reassessment},
journal = {Iconic Research And Engineering Journals},
year = {2020},
volume = {4},
number = {5},
pages = {111-115},
issn = {2456-8880},
url = {https://www.irejournals.com/formatedpaper/1702518.pdf},
abstract = {This article offers a feminist reassessment of John Keats? portrayal of women in his poetry and personal letters, focusing on the complex interplay between beauty, power, and gender dynamics. Keats frequently depicts female figures as embodiments of beauty, often idealized as muses or cast as dangerous femme fatales. Through close readings of La Belle Dame sans Merci, Endymion, and Ode on a Grecian Urn, the study explores whether Keats? works celebrate or objectify women and how his aesthetic ideals contribute to traditional patriarchal narratives. Keats? personal letters to Fanny Brawne reveal similar tensions between admiration and possessiveness, further highlighting his struggle to reconcile idealized femininity with real female autonomy. While his poetry elevates beauty to a near-divine status, this elevation often reduces women to passive symbols of inspiration. This duality reflects broader Romantic anxieties about gender roles, with women portrayed as both desirable ideals and disruptive threats to male stability. By applying a feminist lens, this article argues that Keats? works, while deeply lyrical and emotionally rich, perpetuate limiting gender constructs. The study invites readers to reconsider Romantic literature?s treatment of women and the implications for understanding literary portrayals of gender.},
keywords = {Feminism; John Keats; Femme Fatale; Romantic Poetry; Gender Dynamics},
month = {November},
}