Envy: Poem by Mary Lamb

• A Knowledge Organiser on the poem Envy

About the Author

• Mary Lamb (1764-1867) who was an English writer of stories and poems.
• She collaborated with her brother Charles throughout much of her life.
• They are most famed for their Tales from Shakespeare and Stories for Children.
• Mary suffered from mental illness.
• She stabbed her own mother to death with a kitchen knife during a breakdown in 1796.
• She was confined to mental facilities at different points in her life.
• She managed a literary circle with Charles that included William Wordsworth, amongst others.

Context of the Poem

• Nursery rhymes had already been around for hundreds of years.
• Books written for children used simple language and rhyming styles.
• Stories told concrete level stories, whilst holding underlying messages and lessons.
• The Georgian period (most of Lamb's life) includes the reigns of five Hanoverian Kings - King George I, II, III, IV and King William IV.
• The Prince Regent (his first son) took charge from 1811-1820 due to mental illness of George III, in a time known as 'The Regency Period.'
• Inheritance laws meant that lands and estates were normally handed down to the eldest son.
• Women were seen as subservient; they spent their time initially under the power of their fathers, and later under the 'ownership' of husbands.
• Romanticism was an artistic, literary, musical, cultural and intellectual movement that originated in Europe in the latter half of the 18th Century.
• Romanticism is characterised by its emphasis on emotions, as well as glorifying nature and past events
• memories and settings are often colourfully described.
• It was partially in response to the scientific rationalisation of nature of the era.

Language/Structural Devices

• Lamb uses the personification of the rose tree in order to get across her ideas about envy (Personification/ Anthropomorphism)
• The humanisation of the tree serves as an extended analogy - if we are able to see how ridiculous envy would be in the natural world, why do we show it in ours?
• Alliteration and assonance are used sparingly throughout the poem, but where they are it is to clear effect.
• The poem is written in a simple form, with three six line stanzas.
• The lines are generally short throughout.
• There is a clear rhythm across the poem of 2 four-beat lines followed by a three-beat line.
• The rhyme scheme is A-A-B-C-C-B.
• 'Fret' and 'discontent' are both repeated in the poem, to show the excessive worry and unhappiness that accompanies envy (Repetition and Contrast).
• Lamb uses straightforward language across the poem to contrast negative ideas and beautiful ideas - these are adjoined to the ideas of looking at others and looking at oneself respectively.
• In several places across the poem, Lamb begins ideas with the subordinate clause (Syntax/ Anastrophe.)
• The three stanzas each serve a different purpose in helping Lamb to guide the reader towards her moral message (Structure)
• Stanza 1 discusses the nature of envy - how we are inclined to be envious of the best features in others.
• Stanza 2 concentrates on seeing the positive features within oneself.
• Stanza 3 explicitly laments the worthlessness of being envious.

Themes

• As the reader learns in throughout the poem, humanity is only one part of nature (Nature)
• The natural world can be used to mirror the complex thoughts and feelings of man.
• Images from the natural world are used to explore human emotions
• The poem teaches against being envious of others (Moral Messages)
• Lamb highlights the unnecessary pain that envy can cause oneself (e.g. through the repetition of 'fret').

Analysis of Poem (Line by Line)

• The speaker immediately begins the personification of the rose tree to address their moral point.
• The opening stanza introduces the idea that the rose tree is unable to produce other flowers (except the rose).
• The analogy is used to address human behaviour - it is pointless being discontented and envious of others, as characteristics cannot change.
• The second stanza employs the word 'fret' once more, demonstrating its importance (envy creates excessive, unnecessary fret/worry).
• The speaker then utilises the stanza to show that if the rose tree were to be envious of the flowers that other trees grow, it must have never comprehended how beautiful its own flower (the rose) is.
• The speaker is telling people to love their own qualities.
• In the final stanza, the speaker is more cutting about the futility of being envious - describing it as 'blind' and 'senseless'
• The following lines contain several words that contain dual-meanings for example 'care', 'culture' and 'flower.'