Lesson video

Hello everyone, thank you very much for joining me, I'm Mister Blackburn.

Today, we're going to look at the themes of Charlotte Smith's poem, To A Nightingale.

Before we start, you'll need to make sure that you have a pen and paper.

You'll need to make sure that you have turned off any notifications, anything which might distract you, and if you can, you'll need to try to find somewhere quiet to work, and once you've done that, let's get started.

And here's our plan for today.

Firstly, we're going to recap everything you already know about the poem.

Then, we're going to look at two themes in particular.

The first is the theme of power, and the second is the theme of freedom.

So before we go any further, let's test your knowledge of the poem.

Here's a paragraph about To A Nightingale by Charlotte Smith.

But you'll notice that accidentally, lots of words have been missed out.

Luckily, the list of words that have been missed out is all jumbled up at the bottom.

What I'd like you to do is pause the video, copy out this paragraph and fill in the missing words using the list at the bottom, so that you have a complete paragraph about To A Nightingale by Charlotte Smith.

Pause the video take as long as you need and when you're finished, come back to check your answers.

And here are the correct answers.

Charlotte Smith's To A Nightingale is a sonnet, a type of poem, which has 14 lines; specifically, it is written in the Petrarchan form of this poem.

In the poem, Smith addresses a nightingale, which is a symbol for the poet herself.

She feels trapped and powerless and is ultimately jealous of the bird's freedom.

Well done if you've got all of those answers in the right places, don't worry if you didn't, you can always pause the video for a minute just to fill in the answers.

We're going to start off by looking at the theme of power.

A theme is a big idea which runs through a poem, something which that poet wants to draw our attention to.

And Charlotte Smith starts by making us think about the theme of power.

Now, in the poem, Charlotte Smith uses a nightingale as a symbol for herself and expresses how powerless she feels in her own life.

The nightingale feels similarly powerless.

All it does is sing to the moon at tale of woe, but, there's one difference between the nightingale and Charlotte Smith.

The nightingale could always choose to fly away, but it's choosing not to.

Smith however, doesn't have the option to leave.

So, what we learned from Charlotte Smith throughout the poem is that she's jealous of the freedom the nightingale can enjoy.

But why might Smith have felt powerless? Well, society's attitudes towards women were generally different than they are today.

Women were thought to be less important than men.

Charlotte Smith didn't have a husband, she got divorced, and women would generally rely on their husbands at the time.

Charlotte Smith had a very large family, she'd given birth to 12 children.

Two of them fortunately died very young, but she had a family of 10, plus herself to look after.

And this would have meant that she also had money troubles and how to use her writing as a way to support her family.

This means that Smith didn't have a regular income.

All of these by themselves feel like they probably be quite stressful, but put them all together and we can understand why Charlotte Smith might have felt powerless in the position she was left in.

Now, here's some statements about power and Charlotte Smith, two of them are true.

Can you decipher which two are true? Option one says, Smith might have felt powerless because of the way her husband treated her.

Option two says, Smith might have felt powerless because of society's expectations of women.

Option three, says Smith might have felt powerless because she was a writer, and option four says Smith might have felt powerless because it was difficult to make money as a writer.

Which two of those are true? Three, two, one, these two are true.

So because of the expectations society placed on women, Smith might have felt trapped in her life.

She wasn't necessarily conforming or living up to all of those expectations of women.

Equally with a large family and an irregular income, it was difficult to feel financially secure while Charlotte Smith was writing her poetry.

Now, here's the poem again, I'll read it to you and I want you to think about where we see the theme of power displayed in the poem.

Poor melancholy bird, that all night long Tell'st to the moon thy tale of tender woe; From what sad cause can such sweet sorrow flow, And whence this mournful melody of song? Thy poet's musing fancy would translate What mean the sounds that swell thy little breast, When still at dewy eve thou leav'st thy nest, Thus to the listening night to sing thy fate.

Pale Sorrows victims wert thou once among, Though now released in woodlands wild to rove; Say, hast thou felt from friends some cruel wrong, Or diedst thou - martyr of disastrous love? Ah, songstress sad, that such my lot might be; To sigh and sing at liberty, like thee! Can you find any references to power in the sonnet? I think here are some references to power, poor melancholy bird, they tale of tender woe, such sweet sorrow and mournful melody.

Now the nightingale is described using words which make it seem weak and fragile, and this makes it seem powerless against the world.

So the theme of power is shown here with reference to the lack of power that the nightingale, and therefore Charlotte Smith feel they have.

Here is another example, Thus to the listening night to sing they fate.

The only way the nightingale could communicate its sorrow is by singing to the moon.

It's powerless because it's lonely.

Also the word fate means that it doesn't have any power over its own life.

So not only is it described as being powerless and fragile and helpless in the world, it's described as being lonely, another way to take away power.

And everything that applies to the nightingale, we can assume applies to Charlotte Smith too.

What about this one? Say, hast thou felt from friends some cruel wrong, Or diedst thou - martyr of disastrous love? Well, maybe the nightingale has found itself powerless through no fault of its own.

Maybe the nightingale is powerless because it's been hurt by other people.

What I'd like you to do now is think about these three quotations that show powerlessness.

How can we make links between these quotations and Charlotte Smith's writing? Now this might seem difficult, but I don't think it is.

We already know a lot about Charlotte Smith and we already know a lot about her poem, so we're just trying to meet links between the two.

I'll do the first one for you so that you understand what I'm expecting from me.

The quotation is, poor melancholy bird, and I'm asking you to think how we can link that to Charlotte Smith's life.

Here's my answer.

Charlotte Smith might have felt sad and melancholy herself because her life wasn't the way she imagined it to be.

She was not what society expected of women at the time.

So she is describing herself as a poor and melancholy person and there's why.

I want you to do the same with the next two quotations, thus to the listening night to sing they fate and felt from friends some cruel wrong.

And I've given you some sentence starters for the second one and an idea to start with for the third one.

What I'd like you to do is pause the video, complete the grid, and come back when you're finished to see if your answer is much mine.

Welcome back I hope you didn't find it too difficult, here are my answers and yours might look different and that's okay, if you want to borrow something from my answers, you're more than welcome to.

Or if your answers are better than mine, then that's brilliant.

So for this second quotation, I have suggested that like the nightingale, Smith might have felt lonely and isolated and she had to spend all of her time working to support her family.

So perhaps she didn't have anyone around her to listen just like the nightingale didn't.

The only thing that would listen to Charlotte Smith was the moon.

And for the third quotation felt from friends some cruel wrong, I've written, throughout her life Smith had been hurt by other people, for example, when her husband left her.

Maybe the nightingale reflects Smith's feelings towards other people.

So again, if your answers look like mine, excellent, if your answers are better than mine, fantastic.

If my answers have some information which you don't think you've included, then do feel free to borrow that information right now.

Now we're going to look at the way that Charlotte Smith uses the theme of freedom in the sonnet.

We've already experienced her feelings of powerlessness, and now it's time to look at how she expresses her ideas of freedom.

We know that Charlotte Smith wasn't literally imprisoned, but her life made her feel as though she was.

We've looked at society's expectations of women which would have made her feel trapped.

Now, the hurt that was caused to her by others might also have made her feel as though her everyday life and routine was a way that she was trapped.

She couldn't escape the routine, she couldn't escape having to look after her family.

She couldn't escape the fact that she was a divorced woman when that was frowned upon.

These are always that Charlotte Smith might have felt trapped.

In contrast to this, the nightingale, the symbol for her freedom has the ability to fly away.

If something's worrying it, it can always take wing and fly off over the horizon.

Charlotte Smith is jealous of that because she can't escape her problems so readily.

Unlike the nightingale, she has no escape from her metaphorical imprisonment.

So the whole poem is addressing the nightingale's ability to fly away and how Charlotte Smith is envious of that fact.

So, here's the poem again, I want you to read it very quickly and see if you can find any links to the theme of freedom.

I'll help you out.

I think that 12 of those 14 lines are about how Smith feels trapped.

So almost the entire poem is talking about how sad and melancholy the bird is, how trapped that bird is in its endless cycle of sadness, and I think that that is also true for Charlotte Smith.

She's telling us that she couldn't escape this cycle of sadness that she's stuck in.

But, the last two lines, the last couplet, because that's what we call two lines of poetry, change the terms slightly.

She talks directly to the nightingale and she says, Ah, songstress sad, that such my lot might be; To sigh and sing at liberty, like thee! Now, it's an important couple of lines because I think it says a lot.

Firstly, Smith talks directly to the nightingale and makes it sound as though the two of them, they're friends.

So this is more conversational perhaps than the rest of the poem.

where she says, Ah, such my lot in life might be; the lot in life is kind of the cards you're dealt with, how your life is going to or expect it to pan out.

And she realises I think at this point, that her life might never change.

She might never be able to escape from the cycle of sadness she's found herself in.

But, the last line To sign and sing at Liberty, like thee!, liberty means freedom.

And this is where Smith tells the nightingale that she's jealous of it, it can escape easily.

And I think it's the happiest line in the poem because Smith is telling the nightingale that it can fly away and it should.

In contrast, Charlotte Smith can't fly away and is trapped.

So throughout the poem, we've seen Charlotte Smith and the nightingale, both being presented as powerless.

And we've seen at the end of the poem, in this couplet, a contrast between the way that they can deal with their powerlessness.

One, the nightingale has the opportunity to leave if it chooses, but, according to the sonnet it's choosing not to, whereas the other is powerless to leave, it's powerless to escape.

Charlotte Smith hasn't got the freedom that the nightingale has.

Here's what I'd like you to do now.

On your screen, there are three questions and I'd like you to answer them in full, grammatically correct sentences.

And these are all to do with the theme of freedom in To A Nightingale.

The first question asks, list three reasons why Charlotte Smith might have felt trapped.

The second, why might Smith have used the bird as a symbol in her poem? And the third, what does Smith wish she could do in the final couplet of the poem? Remember, the final couplet is the last two lines.

Pause the video, answer these questions and resume the video once you're finished to check your answers.

Welcome back, here are my answers, yours might look slightly different and that's all right.

If there's something in my answers that you want to borrow, that's also okay.

The first question asked, list three reasons why Charlotte Smith might have felt trapped, and I've written, Charlotte Smith might have felt trapped because she was a single parent who was looking after a large family.

She may also have felt trapped by society's expectations of women, or by her needs to work and make money.

So all things that would have made her feel trapped in her life.

Question number two asked, why might Smith have used a bird as a symbol in her poem? And I've answered, Smith might have used a bird as a symbol for freedom in her poem as birds are able to fly away and escape what makes them unhappy.

And the third question asked, what does Smith wish she could do in the final couplet of the poem, the final two lines? And I've answered, in the final couplet of the poem, Smith wishes that she was able to fly away and sing, just like the nightingale.

You might have added in that she can't do that because unlike the nightingale, she's trapped where she is.

If your answers look like that, amazing.

If your answers are better than mine, fantastic.

But if you need to add something in, then pause the video for just a couple of seconds and write down anything you might have missed.

Excellent work everyone, you've worked really hard today.

We've examined why Charlotte Smith might have felt powerless in her life, we've examined the theme of freedom through the way that she's jealous of the nightingale for it's ability to fly away.

The last thing I'd like you to do is take the quiz at the end of this lesson to prove how much you know about the poem.

Well done for everything you've achieved today, goodbye.