Andrew's Wiki
Curse Nation

Content

• An angel visited her last night and told her to write a curse for America b/c of slavery. She tries to say no, she loves America, but the angel says that’s why she has to curse them: a curse out of love. She says she’s too busy writing about capitalist ills (her heart is “sore” for her nation’s “own ills” b/c it’s “oligarchic”). She says she can’t curse b/c she’s a woman who can only weep (!), but the angel says, All the better! “A curse from the depths of womanhood” is all the better.
• Religion must be at the back of her political action
• Femininity has to be excused for, made an excuse for… and yet the woman’s feeble power—to cry—has the power of an angel’s curse
• She points out the contradiction that America is the symbol of freedom but has slaves
• What’s the curse?
  • The curse is that it will make them unable to help anyone else: while other nations commit injustices, they will no be able to help or speak out: and the curse of knowing that the “flag” set next to these injustices is America’s own flag
  • The curse is that their consciences will make them suffer more than anyone else’s accusations
  • The curse is that they can’t curse anyone else or any other unfair system.
    • What about Browning herself? Well, b/c she curses the unfairness within Britain, she’s allowed to. Perhaps there’s a bit of bad conscience underneath it b/c of her family’s slave money (money of father’s Jamaican plantation owner grandpa; even tho’ father herself supported abolition)

Style

• Two parts: a prologue and a curse. The prologue is longer.
• “patriotic virtue starved to vice”
• Prologue: four-line verses iambic hexameter, second line iambic tetrameter (half as long); to make it chatty
• Refrain: “This is the curse. Write.”
  • Coming at the end of each verse, it authorizes the next verse!
  • Cf “Hiram Powers’ ‘Greek Slave’” which now we see is really a way to justify her own poetic political agitation