Background to the poem

This poem could have been a conventional Victorian morality poem about the dangers of being envious. However, Adelaide Anne Proctor approaches the theme from a dramatic and unusual perspective. Envy here is personified and, in this concise, taut lyric, the reader witnesses the speaker battling not just against envy but with Envy, presented as a male figure that wins every race and is blessed with good fortune. He ‘conquered the place’ and ‘Men loved him’. When he sinned he was pitied, but when she did she was made to feel ‘only shame’. She exists in the shadows while he basks in the sun.

What examples of competition does Proctor use to reflect both the character of Envy and her own personality and attitudes? Notice how the shorter lines two, four and six in each verse seem to stress unambiguously with their emphatic rhymes the inevitability of Envy’s victory.

In the final verse, a startling twist is introduced with Envy apparently defeated by Death, and yet, even at this moment, Envy is still victorious and ‘blest’. The speaker is jealous of Envy’s escape from life while she remains ‘cursed’.

About Adelaide Anne Procter

Adelaide Anne Proctor’s father was a poet, and her mother actively encouraged her daughter’s interest in poetry. She submitted her early work to Charles Dickens’s publication Household Words under the pseudonym Miss Berwick. When Dickens became aware that Miss Berwick was Proctor, he continued to publish her work in his popular periodicals.

In 1858, Proctor published a two‑volume collection of poetry, Legends and Lyrics. Its appealingly direct language and edifying themes ensured it ran to multiple editions.

A convert to Catholicism, she committed herself to progressive, philanthropic work, arguing for women’s equality in property rights, employment and education. She supported Catholic widows and orphans through the Providence Row Night Refuge and was active in the Society to Promote the Employment of Women. In the last ten years of her life, before her early death at thirty‑nine, poetry, campaigning for the rights of women and social reform were all inextricably linked.