23/2/07 - English Literature - Marvell: Upon Appleton House

Upon Appleton House was written by Andrew Marvell around 1651 (actual date unknown). It is part of a little-known genre of poetry called 'country house' poetry or more appropriately for this poem, 'estate' poetry. It is about a particular place and written for a particular person (that is, it is written about Appleton House, and for Lord Fairfax). Like Jonson and Lanyer, Marvell deals in specifics of time and place. Because of this, we need a clear sense of what was happening then and there at the time the poem was written, and who the people are, and what the relationship of the poet to the house and family is. This understanding of history helps to fix the poem in its place.

Andrew Marvell was a young aspiring poet. He was trying to develop a public role for himself but his work was not yet in print (his poems were published posthumously). He did however have connections to public figures and public circles; consequently he knew the Fairfax family.

The Fairfaxes were a public family. Thomas Fairfax was the leader of the parliamentarian armies and he had great success in the 1640s. He turned his back on public affairs after the execution of King James VI because he did not approve of the decisions that had been made by the government. Despite his best efforts, his public role went with him into retirement and he was still a major figure. His absence was surely felt by the parliament.

Nunappleton was the quiet country retreat in York to which he retired. It was therefore both a public and a domestic family house. The country estate was set back from the main road, where the public went back and forth between London and the north/Scotland. It was especially busy at times when there was conflict between royalists and the Scottish.

Marvell was employed by the Fairfaxes as secretary and as tutor to their daughter Mary. He was therefore involved in Fairfax's public affairs, private life and projects. It is likely that they held intellectual conversations with each other. The poem Upon Appleton House comes out of the intellectual relationship between them.

Lines 1-10: The house. An assessment and interpretation of the building. This entails not just a guide book description, but also the building's significance and what it does. A moral and theological meaning is imposed on the building. It begins with a sober frame. Lots of wealthy people had large houses, yet Nunappleton is described as modest and virtuous. Marvell paints a picture of the house's setting (hence 'estate' poetry). The poem meanders and digresses to the house's fate...
11-34: Nuns! They are not to be trusted: the narrator finds the female community of peace and pleasure dodgy. These women are not producing heirs so their lives must be false, delusional and indulgent. Isabel is "rescued" for fertility to produce Fairfaxes and the saviour is hailed. The house 'speaks' its history. It is a kind of digression, yet it does describe the house's history.
35-46: The garden. A quaint but quasi-military space. A conceit is developed ; the layout of the garden represents military area. The way in which military and horticultural life may be brought into a relationship is explored. The military is used as a metaphor for things that normally happen in gardens. This slips on its head so that the garden becomes the metaphor of safe military/political situations. Nunappleton changes from an entertainer of safe military likeness to becoming a metaphor itself of public events. This pattern repeats itself - it seems safe at first, then turns on itself and becomes a problem.
47-60: The meadows and the season. Agricultural people, e.g. mowers. Marvell watches the labour of midsummer. The meadows become infected with images of war: mowers' scythes killing a bird, heaps of hay likened to heaps of corpses, women become pillagers.
61-81: The woods, the birds (and the bees). Described as safe yet wild. Poet is absorbed into the wood, he speaks to the birds, engages in communion with nature... which is eroticised (74-5). The narrator has the urge to give himself up to nature. He sees himself as Narcissus.
82-93: Maria. Human power?
94-97: Eden and the Antipodes in shoes.

The sequence of the poem follows family history, national history and then world history. The poem's frame works to interpret our own lives. The Fairfax family speaks of national history and of political and public struggles. "What should he do?" can be asked of Thomas Fairfax with reference to public struggles and choices. The family's history is made sense of in terms of national and world history, in terms of prospect, knowledge and the Fall from Paradise. The poem demonstrates the Fall. As it looks for context it encounters difficulties in form. It engages in disruptions of perception. In line 47, the narrator goes into the meadows, and such vocabulary as "abyss", "unfathomable" and "grasshoppers like giants" is used. That is, going into the meadows is like a fall into the abyss, something of unknown depth and impossible to understand. Marvell is mapping and trying to understand form yet he comes up to vertiginous drops and unfathomable depths.