Romantic literature is deeply concerned with the manifestations and attainment of the sublime. The notion itself asserts gender on both subject and object, and permeates any attempt to acquire historical knowledge. This fetishization of the sublime does not, however, prevent the concept from being subverted, consciously and unconsciously, in the literature of the time. William Wordsworth and Charlotte Smith's poetic conceptualization of the sublime has a fracturing effect on the constructed nature of gender, as well as the sublime itself. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay Caught in the “masculine-feminine” dialectic, the sublime is stereotyped and confused with “masculine” characteristics. In a supposedly gender-neutral paradigm, the sublime “… concerns the solitary individual… the most powerful feelings of terror or pain… [and] a sense of height or height…” (Trott 72). In a more philosophical context “…Kant analyzes…the sublime as the presentation of an indeterminate concept of reason” (Trott 73). Although these definitions may at first glance seem direct and simply designate the signifier; they also reveal the agenda underlying such distinctions. Rationality, reason, and logic are all so-called “masculine” characteristics in the Romantic worldview, and this is why sublimity is associated with the masculine. The struggle against abstractions and feelings of intellectual terror become masculine tasks, and women are relegated to purely concrete concerns. To varying degrees, William Wordsworth's relationship with the sublime represents a stereotypically "masculine" notion of this aesthetic construct. In Tintern Abbey, the sublime is something that the speaker was not able to experience as a young man, uneducated in rationality. His inability to appreciate or perceive this quality of nature is due to the “grosser pleasures of… the days of young children/and their joyful animal movements…” (Wordsworth 73-74). Relating it to youth feminizes this lack of appreciation. His feverish enjoyment is rejected due to the absence of the “masculine” trait of reason. Once the speaker learns to reason, the natural world becomes a model of abstraction and he places within it “A movement and a mind that impels/All thinking things, all objects of thought…” (Wordsworth 100-101) . Predictably, the text creates an obviously “masculine” figure to function as the sublime. This sublime “spirit” only affects the men of society and the questions that concern them. It is to this aspect of sublimity that the speaker turns to “…in solitary rooms and amid the din / Of towns and cities /…In hours of weariness [for] sweet sensations, / Felt in the blood and felt along the heart…” (Wordsworth 25-28). When exhausted by the fatigues of urban life, the speaker ruminates on his encounters with the sublime, and these thoughts invigorate and restore his “masculine” faculties. Of course, this leaves no room for a discourse on the femininity of the sublime because that would involve women possessing mental faculties capable of perceiving it. On a superficial level, Wordsworth's textual sublime seems to encompass only that which is "masculine" and "masculine." However, by confronting this text beyond its explicit notions of the sublime, we see that the gendered character of the sublime is revealed. In the preceding quote, the speaker seeks comfort in his memories of the sublime, but when he does so, he finds “…sweet sensations, / Felt in the blood and felt along the heart…” (Wordsworth 27-28 ).Such sensations would normally be associated with passion and overwhelming emotion, rather than rationality. The pleasure brought by the sublime is here “feminine” in the romantic paradigm. This is obviously contradictory since this piece of text also affirms the “masculinity” of the sublime. The feminine continues to encroach on the sublime of the text by allowing the speaker's sister to share her knowledge. She is able to begin to experience it because the speaker and her sister share “the spirit that is in [them]…” (Wordsworth 126). This can be interpreted as the man having a “feminine” mind or vice versa. Either way, the concept of gender as an essential characteristic linked to physical reality is turned upside down. The availability of the sublime for women is also at work. The text decenters and its idea of ​​the sublime to the highest degree by the speaker declaring “…Nature never betrayed/The heart that loved her…” (Wordsworth 122-123). The real entity of the sublime, or at least that which inspires the sublime, is articulated as feminine. The speaker's emotional involvement is also paradoxical if we consider the standard notion of sublimity to be the rational one. By simultaneously affirming and denying the sublime as a “masculine” construct, “Tintern Abbey” fragments not only Romantic sublimity, but also the attempt to demarcate gender. Appropriating the concept of the sublime from male poets, Charlotte Smith's texts attempt to reconfigure the sublime in a "feminine" perspective. The “feminine” sublime contained in his texts is not that of magnificent reflection or spiritual advancement; rather, it is the burden of rationality in a time and place that does not recognize the beholder. This can be seen as a subversion of the sublime and of genre. In "To Night" the speaker experiences the sublime without enjoyment, instead it simply represents an escape "...as sad as you are;/For in your quiet darkness the exhausted heart/Is calm, although miserable; desperate, but resigned” (Smith 10-12). A feeling of oppressed rationality permeates the text, revealing that the “feminine” sublime does not lack difficulties of perception. Rather, it is a refuge for women of the Romantic period from the dominant gender notions that confine them during the day. Notably, the presumed speaker does not react emotionally to this encounter with the sublime, which further conflicts with accepted ideas of the “feminine.” “Written in Middleton Churchyard in Sussex,” a morbid example of the sublime, considers a scene in which the sea has eroded the wall of a churchyard and the corpses have been washed into the sea; the speaker is “…doomed by life's long storm,/to gaze longingly upon their dark rest” (Smith 14-15). The effects of the sublime are again liberating in a very abstract way and with a feeling of despair. This oppositional attitude completely contrasts with the traditional vision of sublimity and aims to reposition it in a “feminine” space. Smith's manipulation of this ideologically significant concept provides a basis from which a more "feminine" space can arise. The masculine is also present in Smith's texts in a very unconventional form, which disrupts both sublimity and "masculinity." The domination of man over woman is addressed in “Written in Late Spring” by referring to “…tyrannical passion and corrosive care…” (Smith 11) as destructive to the woman. This lifts the veil of rationality as “masculine” and replaces it with raw emotion, which would normally be considered a “feminine” quality. Although this text does not directly address the, 2005.