‘I Have a Dear, Dear Brother at Present on the Scene of Action’: Felicia Hemans's Experience of the Napoleonic Wars Between Home and the Battlefield

Abstract

This article explores how Felicia Hemans' experience of the Napoleonic Wars interacted with the military experiences of her brothers, both officers in service overseas, through an intimate dialogue between the scene of war and home. Their military experiences informed her affective responses to war and allowed her to critically question the political events of the day and to negotiate her sense of self as a sister, as a young woman and as a writer. In reading alongside the siblings' war writings, we can observe similar changing attitudes to the war as they reflect on its effect on the individuals who served and their relatives at home. Bringing the domestic sphere and the scene of war within the same frame gives a new perspective on Hemans's early poetry in considering it as a reflection of the wartime dynamics of a family negotiating the anxieties of having relatives in active military service.