Rejection of Romanticism

Although Emerson embraced and celebrated Romanticism during a lot of his writing career in the nineteenth century, towards the later years of his life he began to reject Romanticism and then began to completely shy away from it and changes his ideas and belief regarding philosphy and life in general. In my opinion, Emerson first started to reject Romanticism early on because of the many different hardships that he experienced during his life. First, his wife died when she was only nineteen years old and he was in this twenties. Emerson reportedly refused to mourn the death of his wife (Edmundson) and continued on with his life. Although he may have refused to mourn this loss outwardly, their is a very good chance that the emotional pain took its toll on Emerson. And then only a few years after the death of his wife, Emerson also lost one of his brothers; the one he had always been closest to. Losing loved ones, especially spouses or siblings, causes a lot of tragic emotional pain. The pain that must have come along with these various losses must have been hard on Emerson, and probably eventually made him rethink his life and what he believed in. I think that as Emerson continued to experience loss throughout his life, he started to give up on the idea of Romanticism, and along with it, the related ideas of Transcendentalism.

Transcendentalism is a branch of Romanticism that calls for people to view different objects of the world as just small versions of the whole universe. It also says to trust one's own intuition (Define). I think that as Emerson continued to go through life and experience struggles and more loss, he started to rethink his support of the ideas that go along with Romanticism and with it, Transcendentalism. I do not blame Emerson for this change of heart- I think that these ideas probably sounded good to Emerson at first. He liked the aspects of nature and beauty that went along with Romanticism, and therefore he believed in it and wrote his essays and other works in the style. However, as Emerson grew older, he experience hardships that caused his outlook on life to change pretty dramatically (Edmundson). After he endured the loss of his wife and brother, Emerson later lost his son, Waldo. He continued to change his philosophies, and I do not think that it makes him a hypocrite. As his life changed, his ideas began to change as well.

As Emerson began to move away from the ideas of Romanticism, he moved towards some Freudian ideas instead, like the belief that condensed liberation is inadequate (Edmundson). I think that as Emerson aged and experienced different things, his ideas continued to change as well. Mostly, I think that he began to reject Romanticism and Transcendentalism simply because those beliefs and ideas just did not work out for him and the things that happened in his life. He gave up on them because that was not the way his life was going.


"Define Transcendentalism." Dictionary.com. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. .

Edmundson, Mark. "Emerson and the Work of Melancholia." Facts on File. Web. 11 Nov. 2010.