Historically, men and women had set roles. Men were hunting and women cooked and collected fruits. Back then these roles were naturally inevitable; however, even today that survival is not an essential part of daily life to most societies anymore, many women are still disadvantaged at workplace or oppressed by their husbands. This reality of men still holding the predominant role in family and society limits not only their opportunities, freedom, and independence but the potential of our civilization.

Nowadays, many human rights such as the right for free speech, religion choice and a right to education for every child seem normal and commonly understood by us. However, back to the 18th century, these regularly protected as legal rights today were just been discussed which caused society abruption. If we looked into our history, our society was rebuilt through the blood of many revolutions and the battles for fighting the human rights. The most significant one was the French Revolution.

The French revolution was a revolutionary movement that shook France between 1787 and 1799. It was a movement that people demanded to abolish privilege of the aristocracy and established the individual human rights for man and French citizens. Whereas, it also provoked arguments for social reforms. Intellectuals whose writings to inspired to these arguments were certainly influenced the west countries, but they came to very difference conclusions.  There are the two most important perspectives about the French revolution.

Edmund Burke, one of the most famous British intellectuals accused the French revolution of being an irrational uprising that would end disastrously. His argument of the revolution that is was based on the “digest of anarchy.” He believed the revolution’s fervor would destroy the French society in the end. He thought the tradition of the society should be maintaining on its way, which means the absolute monarchic system of France. He worried that the French revolution would result in a huge impact on England and changed England more or less. Unlike Burke, Percy Bysshe Shelley has absorbed the thoughts of French evolutional deeply. He disputed the feudal system and advocated the French revolution. He saw the revolution was a change of a better world, which beginning from the rights that people pursuing in the French revolution.  The main opposite of them opinion was based on the reasons and the tradition. Burke believed the traditions had their reason to keep common people obeying, because that was the basic processing step of our society. The monarchy is the correct way to rule the society, which Shelley doubted and hold a verse view.

In spite of Burke and Shelley have difference opinions on the French revolution, but there also has similarities between them. Both they were valuing the existing meanings and spirits of human life, such as friendship, love and emotion. The abstract and philosophical ideas they wrote embodied and emphasized the rational human virtue.

After the French revolution happened in late eighteenth century, people started to thinking what our ideal community supposed to be based on? Would change bring positive influence to our community or not? In both Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France and Shelley’s A Defense of Poetry, they agree that our community should base on something that is external and never should be replaced by wholly new things, for Burke is authority and law, for Shelley is love and beauty. Burke considered that change would break our social hierarchy and order, but if poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, then change is possible because poets is not subjected by anything (403). Thus, Burke argues that authority is not supposed to be overturned but preserving the unchangeable tradition in terms of social hierarchy and power that has been handed down by our ancestors because it brings stability to our community. However, Shelley believes poetry can changed our community based on tradition which is love and beauty.

One of the most delightful words, equality, has been commonly issued in this century.  This is because equality is directly connected with rationality.  People are seeking more good and authority that they are not only demanding their social statue, but also certain power of his/her rights.  In the story of Bewitched, main character, Toyo-o, always tried to find his rationality through his love journey.  Not to mention that rationality can be differed by some reasons like geographically, culturally, and personally.  In the European Enlightenment, people did not hesitate about their authority.  They asked more power of their social statue and also mentioned the equality as well.  They are required to present their rationality to fight with higher classes like monarchy.  Those two different rationality have similarity and dissimilarity because central idea is different.  Privilege is one of the reasons that some people are already taken it and some of are not.  Some of higher class people would think they are privileged; nonetheless, they do not appreciate about their possessions.  European enlightenment supports what is privileged and what is right and what is human-being.  On the other hand, in the Bewithced story, toyo-o has a loyal family that he had special privilege from his father.  Nevertheless, he did not realize about his owns.  There are some contrasts about privilege and rationality.  Each term would represent freedom, authority, and heritage.  However, it does not mean all the time that there is certain answer for these questions.

The revolutions that happened in Europe had marked a significant point throughout the human history which the Industrial Revolution accelerated the development of modernizing economy environment that everything is fast-forwarded by the machines.  On the other hand, French Revolution, was a period of time that more and more people got a chance to express their ideas freely during a social and political upheaval. It was a time that inspired people to encourage people to seek for individual rights. Enlightenment was meant to awake those lost and limited freedom. Despite Edmund Burke shares the same idea with Shelley that tradition should be inheritable, he has a different view from Shelley about the measure of freedom. They both agrees that enlightenment was one way that helps people retrieve what is been losing since the world has been changing over time. It was a time that rebuilds the sentiment that was lost under the pressure of the society. People ought to fight for their freedom, the spirit of believing in individual rights, by reason. Rational is a power that pushes people to look forward to the truth. In a sense that Shelley claims that “poet are the unacknowledged legislators of the world” which they help inspire and guide people into a right way of thinking. Shelley thinks that freedom is ought to be equally if people question the authority while Burke believes that freedom is still limited by some sort of status.

The government was ruled by tradition which is absolute monarchy until French Revolution in 1789. French revolution was arouse by people who was oppressed by government, wanted their freedom, and to be ruled by their reason. There were two writers who were from aristocrats’ families but had totally different stance on French Revolution. Edmund Burke published the book namely “From Reflections on the Revolution in France”. The politician and writer Burke was against for the French Revolution and supported their authority which was legitimized by old tradition. From the view of Burke, Tradition is “an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers”. On the other hand, the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley advocates for revolution and enlightenment, saying poetry is “..follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution” on A Defense of Poetry. I will more closely discuss how each of them understands the society in terms of Reason, Freedom, and Tradition, has different vision of ideal community, their authorities in this paper. All information is based on our textbook “The Norton Anthology World Literature Volume E”

French revolution was one of the biggest changes is European countries, and rest of the world. During the ruler of Napoleon, the brave warrior and king of France ruled most of the Europe countries and made many changes during his time: this also effected many citizens of France and slaves. Percy Bysshe Shelly and Edmund Burke explained the great changes in man’s freedom and tradition. Shelly speaks more about romanticism and believes in the possibility of realizing an ideal of human happiness as based on beauty, whereas Burke explains the point of how this French and Industrial revolution changed the society.

It’s acceptable to run away from what we want to know to avoid an interior deception, it’s a question that our judgment often experiences when confronted with the will. This is how the struggle of the inner self develops in each person and hence their personality and perspective of the external world. In this case, the melancholy and anxiety caused by not knowing the result of acts interrupted by the desire to consolidate a goal or by the fear of the result of having reached it produces a kind of fear that makes the writer use a paper to form repressed ideas that are giving place to others and thus going to look for an explanation to all the sensations that they go on experiencing throughout the real life and the fantasy. Wanting to come to an explanation, all this is focused on the literary field of the authors resulting in a kind of evasive romanticism, melancholy and disappointment, provoking in them the transmission of ideas emphasizing an inner tear in situations or scenarios outside the ordinary according to what they transmit in their descriptions when writing their works. Reviewing in detail the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire, there is a constructive criticism about the correctness of each of their writings, but also how they will affect them in situations like those of real life based on fictitious ideas. Arriving at a judgment of conclusions on own criteria.

Nowadays, people tend to rationalize any novelty they have encountered. However, this way of thinking was not emphasized or widely accepted among the people until the Enlightenment period. During that period, people were advocated to question things actively and thus had developed many creative thoughts. Varying from the Enlightenment ideology, Romanticism brought a theoretical alternative referring to the existence of other abstract factors, such as passion and loyalty. Although it’s hard to explain them with logic reasoning, these factors all play an important role in people’s life. In the story “The Man of the Crowd,” Edgar Allen Poe describes the inability of reason to explain unknowns, while Charles Baudelaire uses his poems “To a Woman Passing by” and “Crowds” to demonstrate the fulfillment of encountering variety of possibilities without actively using reason. Both authors bring up a point that reason is not the only tool people can use to explain their lives, implying that the failure in finding the truth via rationalizing actually helps encourages new way of thinking and imagination.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s the Man of the Crowd, we observe that the man’s reviving from the verge of death during his convalescence is due to his yearning to the unknown and pursuit of the truth. The narrator is once enchained by a decrepit old man’s absolute idiosyncrasy and examines this mysterious man by following him in the dark streets of London. Eventually, the narrator realizes that he could never read this old man by observation and only comes into the thought that the old man with diamond and dagger “is the type and the genius of deep crime” and “he is the man of the crowd.” Here, the old man is the truth for the narrator. Poe shows us the way that the narrator tries to use reason to know the world, the limitation of reason’s ability, and the possible failure of pursuing the truth. However, this failure should not be taken as meaningless or irreparable. In fact, knowing his impossibility could teach us an alternative way to better approach truth. That is, by Baudelaire’s idea, a return towards childhood, to re-be the figure of child, to look at the world through a child’s fascinated eye with curiosity and interests, and to go back to the moment before we are taught reason.