She Walks in Beauty

The “she” symbolizes the importance of the individual—a critical part of the Romantic program. While the description of the “she” may fetishize and objectify this person, the objective “she” is still a human. The human is the focal point of the poem, and it was at the center of the Romantic agenda. The woman represents the subjective individual experience. Countering Enlightenment ideas, human life isn’t rational but a product of mysterious and intangible elements. The “she” remains enigmatic since the speaker never tells her name. They also don’t clarify what kind of a “she” the person is. It’s left up to the reader to decide if she’s a woman, a young woman, or, as the biographical circumstances of the poem indicate, a girl. The woman’s obscure identity reinforces the Romantic idea that much of life is illegible—it’s humans confronting and embracing mostly unfathomable factors.

At the same time, the “she” or woman symbolizes a relatively standard portrait of feminine beauty. The poem presents the woman as sweet and innocent; it turns her into a delicate object. Here, she’s not so much a human but a commodity. Her value depends on her looks and maintaining her purity—expectations that societies don’t often apply to men. The woman symbolizes the sexist, condescending tropes that existed during the 1800s, before the 1800s, and that continue to impact women today.