“Uncursed with Reason”: Symbolism in Charlotte Smith’s “On Being Cautioned against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It was Frequented by a Lunatic”

Charlotte Smith was writing as a part of the early Romanticism movement in literature, which is characterized by the poet’s self-expression of natural emotion and the preference for rural living over urbanized living. It is interesting how Smith chooses to use the sea in many of her poems to set the atmosphere rather than the farm, meadow, or forest of the typical romantic poem. The sea can represent many different things such as subconscious thought, the primal state of being, or emotion and I believe she is utilizing all of these ideas in her poem “On Being Cautioned against Walking on a Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It was Frequented by a Lunatic.” Smith characterizes the “lunatic” by making him a “wretch” (1) of the sea, in other words, the representation of the sea; she has placed the “lunatic” by the sea, rather than in a meadow or other rural area, because like the sea, his mind is wild, untamed, and uncontrollable. The speaker says, “I see [the lunatic] more with envy than with fear” (10) because “He seems (uncursed with reason) not to know / The depth or the duration of his woe” (13 - 14). This implies that the speaker is cursed with reason and the knowledge of their “woe,” which I believe woe here is referring to the speaker’s lifespan, for a rational person realizes their time on Earth is limited and is constantly burdened by that knowledge whereas the “lunatic” is as free-minded and wild as the ocean waves that come and go along the surf. Also, by setting her poem on a “giddy brink” (line 9), the speaker is physically located at the edge of a cliff but is also on the “brink” of either doing or thinking something: is the speaker on the brink of throwing her life to the “sea-born gale[s]” (5) and living freely, or is she on the brink of madness, or worse, suicide?

The mood brought forth by the atmosphere of a cliff over the sea definitely implies all of these options as a possibility. The concept of throwing oneself off a cliff and into the ocean, either metaphorically or literally, could be seen as the speaker’s way of cleansing their mind of the burden of rational thought. By romanticizing the “lunatic’s” mental illness, it is obvious that the speaker is truly on the “brink” of something, since living as a madman seems more appealing than living the life they live now. This idea is interesting considering that Smith wrote the Elegiac Sonnets, and Other Essays, which includes this particular poem, in order to raise money to support her family while her husband was in debtors’ prison. Even though the title implies that this poem was just a spur of the moment thought after the poet was warned about a madman who frequents a local cliff, I think this poem may be a cry for help: Smith has had children with an abusive, debt-inducing man and her only source of income comes from her writings. Smith must have looked upon her future with the same “moody sadness” (9) as the speaker in the poem, pushed to the point where being a “lunatic” by the sea seemed a better life than the one she was currently living.