A-well-a, everybody's heard about the bird

In his entry entitled “Bird and Birds and Birds,” Whitman writes about the numberless species of birds that he’s been seeing all April. “Such oceans, such successions of them,” he writes. He goes on to catalog them all—Black Birds, Woodpeckers, Quails, Turkey-Buzzards, Cuckoos, Owls, Cat-Birds. The list is extensive. It's really intriguing since we see so many catalogs in  “Song of Myself” and elsewhere in Leaves of Grass. It seems to have been something that he did quite naturally; a kind of pastime. He undoubtedly would have been able to refer back to such catalogs as well in the event that a poem needed a list.

Frances Wright & Whitman

Born in Dundee, Scotland, Frances Wright became a prominent feminist, abolitionist, and liberal crusader of the 19^th Century. After traveling to the United States in 1818, Wright published Views of Society and Manners in America, a critique and celebration of American society that garnered praise from people like Thomas Jefferson and Henry Clay, much like Alexis de Tocqueville’s later Democracy in America. After becoming an American citizen, Wright formed a utopian community, called Nashoba, where slaves Wright had purchased and liberated worked alongside white volunteers. The community turned out to be a failure. Wright became a public speaker, arguing for free love, birth control, equal rights for women, and separation of church and state. Among her critics, she was known as “The Great Red Harlot.”

Wright enchanted Whitman. Even as a small boy, he would have been familiar with Wright’s periodical The Free Inquirer, which his liberal father subscribed to. Perhaps as early as the age of ten, he saw her speak in New York. He later described her as “a woman of the noblest make-up” and “a most maligned, lied-about character—one of the best in history though also the least understood.” Whitman was a big fan of her A Few Days in Athens, a factually inaccurate book about the philosopher Epicurus. John W. McDonald states that, in her book, Wright made Epicurus into a determinist, and that this possibly led to Whitman’s interest in determinist philosophy and “the inevibility of all things.”

Song for Occupations: Revising Revisions

I. Initial Reaction to “Song for Occupations” (1855)

In “Song for Occupations,” Whitman immediately takes up where he left off in “Song of Myself.” Once again there’s that call for physical and spiritual union, and Whitman continues to make the case that his poems are essentially each and every one of us--that he is not “the head teacher or charitable proprietor or wise statesman.” He's talking again about the uniformity of experience, the democratic nature of his identity. It does seems to differ from “Song of Myself” in that Whitman addresses the reader far more directly. He broaches us with question after question:

“Why what have you thought of yourself?

Is it you then that thought yourself less?

Is it you that thought the President greater than you? or the rich better off than          you? or the educated wiser than you?

The urgency and sheer number of these questions show that Whitman is crushing the barriers set up between poet and reader to an even greater extent than he did in “Song of Myself.” It’s almost as if he  expects us to answer. It’s rather galvanizing in that way. The other effect it has is didactic, for he’s laying it all out for us without abstractions or innuendo. He’s taking a very no-nonsense approach in the poem to tell us what he has to tell us.

Interesting lines abound in the poem. The following passage for instance:

The sum of all known value and respect I add up in you whoever you are;

The President is up there in the White House for you . . . . it is not you who are          here for him,

The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you . . . . not you here for them,

The Congress convenes every December for you,

Laws, courts, the forming of states, the charters of cities, the going and coming of          commerce and mails are all for you.

Here Whitman likens American institutions (Congress, the White House, etc) to his poetry, reiterating the importance of the individual, the worker, and we the readers. Like American institutions, the ultimate purpose of Leaves of Grass is to benefit us. Without us the poetry is useless, as useless as a government without a people to serve.

II. Alterations Made to “Song for the Occupations” in Later Editions.

In 1856, the poem became “Poem of the Daily Work of The Workmen and Workwomen of These States.” We see that the same stylistic changes have been made  that were made to “Song of Myself.” In the 1860 edition, the poem becomes part of the “Chants Democratic” sequence, and so, clearly, has been given less indiviual significance. (However, it does keep its place toward the beginning of Leaves of Grass.) Here, the poem been altered in such a way as to sound more like a chant. Exclamations such as “American Masses!” and “Workmen and Workwomen!” have been added to make it sound like Whitman is directing a rally.

In the 1871-72 edition, the poem becomes “Carol of Occupations” and appears in the middle of Leaves of Grass. The poem has been drastically revamped in this version. Lines have been reorganized or removed completely, and certainly some of the oomph has been lost in the process of these alterations. Most significantly, perhaps, the ending that appeared in the 1855 edition has been cut:

When the psalm sings instead of the singer,

When the script preaches instead of the preacher,

When the pulpit descends and goes instead of the carver that carved the supporting          desk,

When the sacred vessels or the bits of the eucharist, or the lath and plast, procreate          as effectually as the young silversmiths or bakers, or the masons in their          overalls,

When a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and child convince,

When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the nightwatchman's daughter,

When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite and are my friendly companions,

I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them as I do of men and          women.

 However, in the 1881 edition, many of these changes were scraped. The poem, now back to “A Song for Occupations,” looks more like the original  that first appeared in 1855. The stylistic changes have been revised, so that the lines are long again. Also, the original ending has been revived, and the sections have become longer. By the time we get to the 1881-92 edition, Whitman seems to have more or less satisfied himself with this version. 

It's worth noting how the poem changed from a "song" to a "chant" to a "carol" and then back to a "song." Each of those has its own associations. We typically associate a chant to a rallying crowd, and a carol of course has its religious connotations. There's something about a song that, I think, is useful to Whitman--it suggests music, something universal and something that's valuable in itself. Chanting and caroling have  specific functions for specific people. There's also something about a song that has more appeal to the masses. And  songs themselves are diverse--there's drinking songs, working songs and so forth.

Original Hipsters

The Bowery B’hoy, a phrase coined in the 1840s, referred to the young men who belonged to New York City’s most delirious, drunk, and carnivalesque quarter, dubbed the Bowery. The neighborhood was infamous as the poor man’s section of the city—or the working-class quarter—and was known for its notorious bar scene, lurid lights, eclectic street vendors, and street performers (among them, apparently, an Englishman who could slip swords down his throat). Bowery B’hoys dressed sharply—oiled hair, silk hat, upturned collar, boots—and had a peculiar “swing” in their gate. They disdained everything bourgeois (they never dressed too sharply), possessed a sense of adventure, and took great pride in their independence. They embodied the neighborhood, and it became part of their identity. 

It comes as no surprise that Walt Whitman was infatuated with the Bowery—its bustling energy, night life and diversity would have been a constant source of fascination to him. He said that the neighborhood had “the most heterogeneous melange of any street in the city: stores of all kinds and people of all kinds are to be met with every forty rods.” Much like Whitman’s interest in the American Museum, Whitman found in the Bowery oddness, a misfit character, and a medley of social classes coalescing in the streets and bars. And like how we can think of Leaves of Grass as like the American Museum, so we can think it as like the Bowery. Indeed Whitman has been referred to as the “Bowery B’hoy of literature.” 

The New Leaves

The picture above that appeared in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass replaced the casual, working-class mannered Whitman that opened the first edition. That simple change in portrayal tells us everything about how the 1860 edition differed from the 1855 edition. In this portrait, Whitman has the appearance of a "proper" poet--a rather cerebral curiosity marks his face, and he's dressed in some type of formal smoking jacket (or something). He's certainly not altogether "proper," but it's a significant change in appearance. And indeed, the alterations Whitman made to Leaves of Grass--added poems and refined style alterations--similarly helped transform his image into a more orthodox poet.

Comparing the original “Song of Myself” (as it would come to be known) with the version that appeared in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass, one is immediately stuck by how much the poem has been groomed, for better or for worse. The relaxed prose element in the first version has yielded to a traditional verse structure. The long lines have been tucked and trimmed; the dazed, roaming nature of the poem has a more fixed direction; the unchecked free-spiritedness has been dressed so as to become more conventional, more “respectable.” The result reads smoothly; one can better grasp the language because the lines conform to our expectations as readers—the way we tend to normally read poetry, that is. Whitman really placed this emphasis on clarity in the second version, it seems, for its apparent not only in his line breaks, but in his denoting sections with numbers. Whitman wanted to be read—his poetry, more than the majority of others that preceded him, depended on it actually being read—so it would make sense for these alterations to have been made on behalf of the reader.

With regards to content, however, the alterations Whitman made are actually toward the abstract. For instance, in “Song of Myself,” “As God comes a loving bedfellow and sleeps at my side all night and close on the / peep of the day / And leaves for me baskets covered with white towels bulging the house with their / plently...” becomes in the 1860 version “As the hugging  and loving Bed-fellow sleeps at my / side through the night and withdraws at the / peep of day / And leaves for me baskets covered with white towels / swelling the house with their plenty...” It’s an interesting change—it turns from somewhat devotional to vaguely homoerotic. We also see in the blue book that Whitman made changes to this second version as well, so that it reads “with stealthy tread / leaving me baskets...” in the 1867 version. This too underscores the homoerotic element of the poem, but still resists telling us anything outright.

What else do we see Whitman doing in the blue book? For one, he eliminates “ed” from past tense words and replaces them with simply “d.” One of my favorite images in the poem, that of the suicide sprawled on the floor, started rather badly with “It is so—I witnessed the corpse—there the pistol had fallen,” but was immeasurably improved when it became “I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol/has fallen.” Another section that has a lot of work being done to is on page 44 (page number within book). What’s interesting to me on this page is the elimination of the line “Not merely of the New World, but of Africa, Europe, / Asia—a wandering savage.” It seems that by eliminating this line in the 1867 edition, Whitman was making a conscious decision to indeed only be of the New World; to firmly ground his poem in America.

In All People

Filmed at the Chinese New Year Parade with iMovie dramatic stuff 

Tweet of the Week: Oneida Community

An unorthodox Christian sect living in Oneida, New York beginning in 1848, the Oneida Community practiced the teachings of John Humphrey Noyes (1811-1886). Noyes, the son of God-fearing New England parents, believed in what he called “Perfectionism,” the idea that once one has converted to Christianity, one has been vindicated from all sin forever (Noyes attended one revival meeting and claimed it had done the job). One of the defining practices of the Oneida Community was polygamy, or the principle of “Complex Marriage” as Noyes called it. “Complex Marriage” ruled that, within the community, every man was married to every woman, and every woman married to every man. It prohibited couples from being exclusive with one another, and even adolescents in the community had to comply with the rule. “Complex Marriage” was associated with “free love” and the rejection of conventional marriage vows, which in most cases unjustly benefited the husband at the cost of his bride. "God did not intend,” said Noyes, “that love between men and women be confined to the narrow channels of conventional matrimony."

Upon the publication of Leaves of Grass, and because of its overtly sexual content, Whitman immediately became associated with the “free love” movement and its beliefs. Emerson associated him with the movement; and when Boston banned the 1881 edition of Leaves of Grass, it was The Free Love League that came out to protest the ban. David S. Reynolds writes in Walt Whitman’s America that Whitman did indeed have a lot in common with the free love movement:

“Like them, he saw profound defects in the relations between the sexes. Also like them, he tried to repair these defects by appealing to natural passion and attraction. Just as they equated marriage with slavery, so the reason he gave for not marrying was ‘an overmastering passion for entire freedom, unconstraint’ (though his attraction to men was a more likely reason).”

However, as Reynolds goes on to explain, Whitman had his objections to the free love movement. Certain editorials he wrote for the Daily Eagle indicate that he held the institution of marriage in high esteem, calling it “the root of the welfare, the safety, the very existence of every Christian nation.”  He also believed that men and women should have certain social and moral responsibilities, that they shouldn’t be able to hide from those responsibilities under the flag of free love.

Tweet of the Week: Barnum's American Museum

P.T. Barnum’s American Museum, located in lower Manhattan from 1841 to 1865, housed a wide range of entertainment on its five floors, from the trashy to the intellectual, and attracted people from nearly every social class in Manhattan. Whitman interviewed Barnum for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and he must have been affected by the encounter, in addition to the eccentric museum. Donald D. Kummings in A Companion to Walt Whitman writes that section 31 of "Song of Myself" alludes to the museum and that "the lines also contain what is likely an intentional and rather direct comparison between the poet and Barnum's Museum." We can think of "Song of Myself" as almost being like the museum in a number ways, in the sense that the poem was less bookish and formal for the time, considered an uncivilized, homo-erotic rant by some, but nonetheless, sophisticated, wise, and probably appealed to people of different social classes.

Specimen Days: "My Tribute to Four Poets"

Whitman is responding to his critics, those that think he regards his contemporaries with ill will, by openly expressing admiration for his peers, including Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, and Whittier. “I can’t imagine any better luck befalling these States for a poetical beginning and initiation,” he writes. Did the critics believe he was “deriding” these poets simply because his style and approach was markedly different from theirs? It seems so. But Whitman corrects them by not only announcing his appreciation for these poets’ work, but reasons for that appreciation—Emerson for his “vital-tasting melody”; Longfellow for his “rich color”; Bryant for “ever conveying a taste of open air”; and Whittier for his “moral energy.”

In my previous blog post, I pointed out the differences in style between Whitman, Bryant and Whittier. This did not mean that Whitman detested that kind of work. He recognized these voices as the beginning of a distinctly American poetry. He clearly respected them. However, it’s hard to say from the entry whether Whitman actually enjoyed the poetry of Bryant and Whittier. When he says that they constitute a “beginning” and an “initiation” to poetry in America, I think its rather indicative of his thinking. Maybe he believed that these poets had built a foundation, and that now a new poetry could be built, and would be built on that foundation.. It's worth noting that both Bryant and Whittier have fallen into obscurity since their time, and that their names mean next to nothing to most people in America, unlike Walt Whitman.

Whitman's Peers

William Cullen Bryant totally upset

INSCRIPTION FOR THE ENTRANCE TO A WOOD

by William Cullen Bryant

Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs


No school of long experience, that the world


Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen


Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares,


To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood


And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade


Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze


That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm


To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here


Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men


And made thee loathe thy life. The primal curse


Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth,


But not in vengeance. God hath yoked to guilt


Her pale tormentor, misery. Hence, these shades


Are still the abodes of gladness; the thick roof


Of green and stirring branches is alive


And musical with birds, that sing and sport


In wantonness of spirit; while below


The squirrel, with raised paws and form erect,


Chirps merrily. Throngs of insects in the shade


Try their thin wings and dance in the warm beam


That waked them into life. Even the green trees


Partake the deep contentment; as they bend


To the soft winds, the sun from the blue sky


Looks in and sheds a blessing on the scene.

Scarce less the cleft-born wild-flower seems to enjoy


Existence, than the winged plunderer


That sucks its sweets. The massy rocks themselves,


And the old and ponderous trunks of prostrate trees


That lead from knoll to knoll a causey rude


Or bridge the sunken brook, and their dark roots,


With all their earth upon them, twisting high,


Breathe fixed tranquillity. The rivulet


Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed


Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks,


Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice


In its own being. Softly tread the marge,


Lest from her midway perch thou scare the wren


That dips her bill in water. The cool wind,


That stirs the stream in play, shall come to thee,


Like one that loves thee nor will let thee pass


Ungreeted, and shall give its light embrace.

William Cullen Bryant, here and in other poems, sounds like a pessimist. He begins “Inscription For the Entrance to a Wood” by telling us “the world is full of guilt and misery,” and that all of us would greatly benefit—loathing our lives as we do, and each other—from checking out the trees, that awesome wind, and the (stoked) squirrels and birds that dwell away from cities, commerce, buildings, trade, politics, technology, and all other men, women, and children. In short, away from life. Unlike Whitman, Bryant seems dead set on this romantic ideal, evoking places and images that are disengaged from society and what would have been the world he lived and worked (Bryant, I have read, lived in New York City where he edited The New York Evening Post). The poem has a steady beat, alternating between nine and ten syllables each line, that similarly sounds out of touch. However, the phraseology is, with a few exceptions, relatively simple like Whitman’s. Both poets obviously have good things to say about nature, and certainly many of those good things are exactly the same. But I’m reminded of that moment in “Song of Myself” where Whitman admires animals because, among other things, “They do not sweat and whine about their condition.” I imagine Whitman reading  “the world is full of guilt and misery” and rolling his eyes. In Bryant’s case, nature is a place to escape to because the city, and the ways of humanity, tick him off. In Whitman’s case, nature is not an alternative, but something else entirely. In some respects, nature and mankind are one in the same thing.

Brown of Ossawatomie

by John Greenleaf Whittier

John Brown of Ossawatomie spake on his dying day:
'I will not have to shrive my soul a priest in Slavery's pay;
But let some poor slave-mother whom I have striven to free,
With her children, from the gallows-stair put up a prayer for me!'

John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led him out to die;
And lo! a poor slave-mother with her little child pressed nigh:
Then the bold, blue eye grew tender, and the old harsh face grew mild,
As he stooped between the jeering ranks and kissed the negro's child!

The shadows of his stormy life that moment fell apart,
And they who blamed the bloody hand forgave the loving heart;
That kiss from all its guilty means redeemed the good intent,
And round the grisly fighter's hair the martyr's aureole bent!

Perish with him the folly that seeks through evil good!
Long live the generous purpose unstained with human blood!
Not the raid of midnight terror, but the thought which underlies;
Not the borderer's pride of daring, but the Christian's sacrifice.

Nevermore may yon Blue Ridges the Northern rifle hear,
Nor see the light of blazing homes flash on the negro's spear;
But let the free-winged angel Truth their guarded passes scale,
To teach that right is more than might, and justice more than mail!

So vainly shall Virginia set her battle in array;
In vain her trampling squadrons knead the winter snow with clay!
She may strike the pouncing eagle, but she dares not harm the dove;
And every gate she bars to Hate shall open wide to Love!

Walt Whitman and John Greenleaf Whittier knew each other. Supposedly the latter was firmly opposed and even disgusted by Whitman's poetry. And Whitman wasn’t an abolitionist, and more than likely opposed John Brown, the radical abolitionist who Whittier honors in this poem. It comes as no surprise then that the poets are apples and oranges in terms of style. Whittier's poem is in rhymed couplets, each with fourteen syllables. It's condensed and bounces around with lots of music. When we think of Whitman's lines in "Song of Myself," we think of long and undisciplined, repetitious and erratic. None of that is here. Wittier's poem is polished and meticulous, and despite the restrictions that the form demands, the poet still manages to convey some passion. However, it doesn't approach the passion that "Song of Myself" exudes. Indeed, the form of Whittier's poem doesn't really suit the content. He's talking about John Brown--somebody who vehemently opposed slavery, who attempted to arm slaves, who killed people for the cause and was executed for it. It's rather strange that Whittier  used such a conservative style to honor such a radical man. The way that "Song of Myself" is written suits the content because this was some revolutionary stuff. It's passionate, sensual, urgent, all encompassing and vast.

Bathing the Self

Note: by bathing here, I mean "wash by immersing one's body in water" (New Oxford American Dictionary).

Bathing is one motif we come across in “Song of Myself.” Of course, it encompasses and overlaps with other motifs—nakedness, water, and swimming for instance—that should also be considered when discussing its meaning. But what does bathing specifically represent within the poem? Here are a handful of passages where the motif is presented, directly or indirectly:

Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes

       age,

Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things,

       while they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and

       admire myself.

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any

        man hearty and clean,

Not an inch nor a particle of any inch is vile, and none shall

        be less familiar than the rest.

The speaker wonders admiringly at his naked body in this passage, and admires the bodies of others as he does elsewhere in the poem, regarding each one as equally perfect and sublime as the rest. Indeed, the beauty of the human body and everything about it captivates our speaker. He celebrates its appetites for food, drink, and sex; its imperfections and blemishes (Undrape! You are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded). Few things are as diverse as the human body, and our speaker naturally appreciates this. (I'm thinking of Walt Whitman marveling at the bodies flowing through the streets of Manhattan, all different, all similar.) The act of bathing here, therefore, suggests that our speaker is doting on his physique. He’s paying homage to it, performing an act of love and gratitude. We can easily say, too, that this is cherishing life itself, celebrating and coddling existence. He’s absolutely gushing over this breathing, functioning, ubiquitous thing.


                                                  *                                         *                

The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside, 


I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile, 


Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him

       limpsy and 
weak,

And went where he sat on a log and led him in and

       assured him,


And brought water and fill'd a tub for his sweated body

       and bruis'd feet....

In the scene with the runaway slave—arguably one of the most crucial moments in the poem—we come across this remark about bathing. Here, our speaker fills a tub for the runaway slave, and we can presume that, in light of his bone-tired condition, our speaker bathes the slave himself. There is something deeply maternal and innocent about the scene. Much like a mother or father bathes their innocent new born or infant, so our speaker takes it upon himself to tend to the slave. He regards the slave as an innocent and treats him as an innocent. We can also think about what bathing meant in the context of the previous passage—a celebration of the body and existence—so that by bathing the slave, our speaker is essentially celebrating his existence as well.

Returning to this idea of innocence, it’s possible that Whitman was making connections between bathing and Baptisms, both of which indicate a “cleansing” of some kind. Traditionally, Baptisms were conducted by submerging converts naked into water, where they would then be “reborn.”  One would be cleansed of sin and saved, reverted back to innocence. Here are a few things about Baptisms from Wikipedia that are worth noting:

“...as Adam and Eve in scripture and tradition were naked, innocent and unashamed in the Garden of Eden, nakedness during baptism was seen as a renewal of that innocence and state of original sinlessness. Other parallels can also be drawn, such as between the exposed condition of Christ during His crucifixion...”

“...so the stripping of the body before for baptism represented taking off the trappings of sinful self, so that the "new man," which is given by Jesus, can be put on.”

“Baptism is considered to be a form of rebirth—"by water and the Spirit"—the nakedness of baptism (the second birth) paralleled the condition of one's original birth.”

What kind of cleansing is Whitman’s? Of course, it wouldn’t be sin (And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is). Rather, it seems, Whitman asks us to cleanse whatever denies or inhibits the self, including the belief in sin and the fear of God. To be cleansed in the Whitman sense is to be cleansed of  hate or discontent with life. To be cleansed is to, as has been mentioned before, to celebrate and coddle existence. It’s too live with voracious appetites, to love. In short, all the ideas that are put forward in the poem; so that, ultimately, the whole poem works as a Baptism. He is cleansing us as readers with his words, and all are innocent, all are saved, as long as they accept and cherish the self.


                                                         *                                    *    

Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore, 


Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;

Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank, 


She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the

       window.

Which of the young men does she like the best? 


Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you, 


You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your

        room.

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-

        ninth 
bather, 


The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved

        them.

The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran

        from their long hair, 


Little streams pass'd all over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies, 


It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies

        bulge to the 
sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them, 


They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant

        and bending 
arch, 


They do not think whom they souse with spray.

This last passage is highly erotic and differs in many ways from the previous two. Here it might be safe to say that by bathe Whitman means “spend time in the ocean or a lake, river, or swimming pool for pleasure (New Oxford American Dictionary),” rather than suggesting washing or cleaning that the other two passages hinted at. However, we’re still dealing with the appetites, in this case sexual appetites, and therefore the self. Here a lonely woman gazes out from the confines of her home at the twenty-eight bathers (quite a ridiculously large amount of men, one might add) with intense desire. In her mind, she becomes the twenty-ninth bather, but remains stuck in her home. It says something about the metaphorical significance of bathing in that she becomes a twenty-ninth bather without actually entering the water. But what makes her a bather then? Is she a bather because she’s entertaining her sexual reveries, and is Whitman saying something about the woman’s right to sexual liberty and therefore the self? There is clearly a sense that she is trapped. Moreover its possible she’s an unhappily married woman, seeing that she is rich, handsome, and “owns the fine house by the rise of the bank.” What does that say about her sexual desires?

It’s difficult to say. If one does read it as an erotic moment, perhaps she is a bather because she is willing to entertain those sexual fantasies. We might even suppose that she is pleasuring herself (An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies, / It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs). However, it’s worth noting that “the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.” Perhaps we can read this as an insinuation that the woman's attraction and love for the men is not sexual, per se, but an attraction to the mens’ outright celebration of the human body, life, and the self.