Hearkening to the Voices of Women

In his aesthetic criticism, Coleridge divides the art of language into “poetry of the ear, or music; and poetry of the eye.” This distinction between eye and ear also involves the location of personhood in other people: the eye sees the face, which could be blank or angry and therefore unreliable or repugnant, and the ear hears the voice, which comes from within the other person and reverberates with breath and heart beat. Throughout Coleridge’s writings, gazing and listening—faces and voices—alternate. Particularly in his efforts to understand women as persons, Coleridge makes a significant aesthetic and ethical transition when he shifts from seeing women to hearing them.1 He consciously learns to listen when he tells Thelwall, “I am an immense favorite, for I pun, conundrumize, listen and dance” (Feb. 6, 1797; CL 1, 308). By underlining the word “listen” he points to the peculiarity of his doing so and to his deliberate intention to cultivate that skill. He listens to women’s voices in their poems and in their singing, and comes to associate music with women.