How is sex and sensuality presented in Isabella?

In his poem Isabella Keats presents sex and sensuality as being physical and highly dependent on the senses, whilst also representing it as a consuming and connecting force.

Keats explores the way that physicality is needed to maintain love, and the way that the denial of this affects love. Throughout the poem there are references to Isabella’s then Lorenzo’s physicality, with him enjoying her ‘full shape’ and how he is unable to live without ‘tast(ing her) blossoms’, whilst she becomes much more obsessed with his physicalness once he is dead and she can no longer possess his soul. The way she ‘com’d’ his ‘wild hair’ and ‘Pointed each fringed lash’ gives her an obsessive and yet motherly quality, as combing can be seen as a bonding activity between a parent and their child, and Keat’s emphasis on the word ‘each’ makes her sound meticulous and as though she has become absorbed in menialities. This could perhaps relate to gender stereotypes as men are often seen as more lustful and women as more faithful, and yet both suffer when they are apart. This could suggest both are in constant need of each other’s presence, or that the desire for each other physically makes them ‘sick with longing’, with the word ‘sick’ connoting both a hunger and need for each other, and that their emotions are strong, intensified through absence which drives Lorenzo to ‘watch’ as ‘constant as her vespers’. The word ‘vespers’ could signify his religious devotion, and perhaps contains hints that he needs her as much as humans need Jesus’ body through during communion, painting her as saving him and bringing light into his life. Alternatively however, Keats also portrays love and sex as being physically detrimental to the body, or at least the absence of it ‘makes their cheeks paler’, perhaps connoting the denial of sensual pleasure takes the life from their cheeks, suggesting the idea that physical closeness is the basis of love and sexual desire, both through its absence and its fulfilment, with references to the soul focused mainly when Lorenzo’s soul is absent from his physical body. Perhaps Keats is suggesting that while souls are important for long term affection, the body is the driving force behind physical attraction and desire.

However, the poem is also full of sensuality, with Keats exploring the connection between it and the senses and proximity. There is a music lexis running through the poem, with Isabella’s seeming to give out music with her ‘laugh full musical’, and ‘lute-string giving out an echo of his name’, whilst wishing that Lorenzo’s lips would ‘breathe... love’s tune’. This reliance of sound emphasizes the barriers between them, and their inability to be together physically which heightens the importance of their senses. That Lorenzo knows ‘whose gentle hand was at the latch’ before he’s seen Isabella shows the way that the denial of physical pleasures has deepened the connection between them, and how not being able to see her ‘hand’ at the ‘latch’ makes his expectations and longing much stronger than if they were together all the time. The word ‘hand’ highlights the way that imagination and yearning have taken a more prominent role in their relationship, so much so that Lorenzo has to speak out even when Isabella is ill, to tell her of his intense cravings to touch her. The way he describes their being together through natural metaphors such as a ‘ripe warmth’ as opposed to the manmade ‘in-door lattice’ could perhaps suggest that their love is natural and pure, and is organic instead of restrictive as the ‘lattice’ is. It also connects to Song of Songs, comparing their love to that of Solomon, elevating it to a higher plane, however the use of the words ‘ripe’, ‘lusty’ and ‘blossoms’ make their relationship sound much more sexually orientated, perhaps connoting that delayed gratification makes it all the stronger. Isabella and Lorenzo’s relationship involves all the five senses at first, but this changes after his death as she appears to lose her senses, as she ‘forgets’ everything sensual about the natural world that Lorenzo used to compare her too, letting go of the feeling of a ‘breeze’, hearing the ‘waters run’ and seeing the ‘stars, the moon and sun’. Instead, one sense grows stronger: her sense of smell. That this is the only sense not particularly involved in the early stage of their relationship indicates the way it has changed, with the loss of him giving her no use for her senses. The fact that basil smells so strongly however, with Keats remarking ‘it smelt more balmy than its peers’, is perhaps not only to mask Lorenzo’s decaying head, but also is intoxicating, and its strength could be overpowering her other senses and leaving her fixated upon itself, keeping her from the world around it. The smell’s strength could even remind her of the extreme sensuality she felt with Lorenzo, or it could have such power because the basil has grown out of him and consequently might have the same intoxicating effect. Either way Keats, highlights the links between the senses and emotions, and the way that sensuality can be a wondrous, loving thing or a poisonous, trapping one.

The way that sensuality and sex and be a connecting and a consuming force is also traced through the poem, with Keats exploring the implications of sexual desire and love. At the beginning of the poem, Lorenzo and Isabella’s love is shown to be both connecting as they are ‘twin roses’, and consuming, as the lovers become ‘pale’ and ‘nightly weep’. The fact that they cannot ‘sleep’ is indicative of suffering for love, and the denial of each other’s presence as making them ‘sick’ as they are so connected they need to be together all the time. However, this could also be seen as a consuming force, as their senses and emotion become so concentrated in one another the rest of the world seems unimportant. Furthermore, Keats could be suggesting this all-consuming love is the most devastating of all, because when the ‘twin roses’ become separated by death, Isabella ‘withers’, sacrificing both her mind and eventually her life to her devastating loss. So consumed is she that she kisses Lorenzo’s decaying and mouldy head, losing all sense of reason and hope and becoming utterly absorbed in maintaining his memory. This is another example of how love and desire consume, with Isabella growing ‘thin’ whilst the basil growing out of Lorenzo grows ‘thick’, with it feeding of her in a vampiric way, sucking any life or hope of moving on from her. The way that she wraps herself around her circular ‘garden pot’, feeding it with her won bodily fluids (her tears), is much as a mother feeds her growing child from her own body, with the pot perhaps symbolising the womb. This is a profoundly disturbing image, particularly as ‘basil’ is such a trivial thing that it is not worth giving up your lifeblood for, and her utter absorption in it, not noticing ‘day’ or the ‘new morn’ illustrates how love and desire can become warped and utterly consuming, and perhaps Keats is warning of the dangers of such as profound and complete investment.

In conclusion Keat explores the way the sensuality is driven by physicality and proximity, but also how it can be a dangerous force in the way that it can consume people.