SOURCE: "Hemans and Home: Victorianism, Feminine 'Internal Enemies,' and the Domestication of National Identity," in PMLA, Vol. 109, No. 2, March, 1994, pp. 238–53.

In the essay below, Lootens investigates the patriotism in Hemans's verse and, through this, the contradictions and complexities that underlay Victorian ideology.

If any phrase still evokes Victorianism as conceived early in this century, surely the first line of Felicia Hemans's "Casabianca" does. "The boy stood on the burning deck" conjures up a familiar vision of unconscious ironies and lost innocence. Calling to mind drawing rooms where parents comfortably weep to the recitation of earnest or sullen children, the line revives the mockery, nostalgia, and anxiety with which early-twentieth-century critics approached Victorian writing. To quote "the burning deck" raises a smile; to suggest that Hemans's verse be studied seriously raises the specter of creeping Victorianism. Wendell V. Harris worries that unless we admit works such as "Casabianca...