Sir Bertrand: A Fragment - Anna Laetitia Aikin & John Aikin

 Sir Bertrand: A Fragment - Anna Laetitia Aikin & John Aikin

Anna Laetitia Barbauld is now considered to have been an important writer of the late eighteenth century. Her works for her adopted son are among the founding pieces of literature written for children. She wrote in support of radical causes and in opposition to slavery and warfare. Her last work was a criticism of Britain’s participation in the war against Napoleon, a work which received such a savage response that she never published again. She was an influence on Wordsworth and Coleridge, and she attained success as an educator.

In 1773, when she was still as Anna Laetitia Aikin, she jointly published Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose with her brother, John. On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror, with Sir Bertrand, a Fragment is, as the title suggests, an essay, with a short Gothic tale. The essay discusses the pleasure afforded by childhood tales of peril, and a reading of Sir Bertrand will soon reveal parallels with Sleeping Beauty. The date is revealing. Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, usually considered to be the first Gothic novel, had been published in 1764. Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron would be published in 1778. Ann Radcliffe’s works began in 1789. Sir Bertrand is, therefore, an early tale in the genre.

Contemporary scholarship has explored the importance of the Gothic to women’s writing. The works of Radcliffe, in particular, have drawn the attention of feminist scholars for the resilience and resourcefulness of their heroines. The female figure in Sir Bertrand, though, is passive. Sir Bertrand is drawn into eventually releasing the woman from enchantment. The idea of the lone knight draws attention to the Medievalism of Gothic, just as the structure of the fragment is reminiscent of folk tales. Of course, given the fragmentary nature of the text, it cannot be assumed that the woman is the helpless victim that I have suggested so far. Keats’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci provides an interesting comparison. Could it be Sir Bertrand’s fate to become a knight alone and palely loitering? Perhaps of greater significance, a reading of Sir Bertrand in conjunction with Coleridge’s Christabel, also a fragment, leads to interesting comparisons.

Jane Austen’s criticism of the Gothic in Northanger Abbey is well-known. Feminist scholars may debate whether Austen or Radcliffe can provide better models for women. I am always suspicious of Austen. The solution for her heroines seems to lie in marrying a kind and wealthy man, the unlikelihood of which is underlined by Austen’s own life. Anna Laetitia Aikin could well have been a model for a Jane Austen heroine, though. A beautiful and dazzlingly intelligent polyglot, she attracted many offers of marriage, including, allegedly, from Jean-Paul Marat. In the same year that she published her Poems and the Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose, she entered a relationship with Rochemont Barbauld, marrying him in 1774, partly for fear of the effect on him if she should refuse. This strange and troubled man gradually declined into mental illness. At times, in his rages, Anna feared for her safety. She was, though, deeply affected by his suicide, by drowning, in 1808. Sometimes, alas, the Gothic is more instructive than the Romantic.

Anna Laetitia Barbauld is a worthwhile writer for anyone interested in the history of women’s writing. The titles of her works show her interest in education, in writing for young people, and for young women in particular, and in the politics of her time, as well as poetry and criticism. She is not as significant as Harriet Martineau, but she does belong to the same tradition. Barbauld’s volume, The Female Speaker, was published when Martineau was nine. Both belonged to Unitarian families. The Dissenting community seems to have contributed to more than one struggle for emancipation. 

Sir Bertrand contributes little to an appreciation of Barbauld’s part in these struggles. However, it does show her part, as an accepted influence on English Romanticism, in developing the Gothic genre. It is a surprisingly readable work, deserving of the attention that Peter Haining brought to it after two centuries of neglect.