Life During The Enlightenment Era

Human beings almost always live in accordance to some definition. That definition, whether it stems from a religion, another being, the Earth, a God, or within oneself, causes one to embody a certain persona. And often, because people build relationships with other people, a group of humans living among one another begin to alter and mesh all of their individual definitions into one identity. This identity, or genre of definitions, then becomes a set of characteristics that define a specific length of time, or an Era. Literature, art, music, and other records from a specific Era are studied to extract these cultural characteristics.
It doesn’t take much effort to acknowledge that the societal trends during the Enlightenment period are determined mostly by a sort of ranking according
They turned their focus away from people and found value within nature. In William Wordsworth’s The World Is Too Much With Us, he angrily expresses, “Little we see in nature that is ours; / We have given our hearts away” (3-4). Romantics like Wordsworth recognize the tendency people have to focus on things, such as wealth and power, which ultimately have no sincere meaning to humanity. These things are manmade idols that, as time passes, die with the rest of the world. Wordsworth describes the beauty and timelessness of nature as he states, “This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; / The winds that will be howling at all hours, / And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers” (5-7). He saw the serenity the world around him lacked because of the neglect to find assurance in nature. They, instead, relied on the instability of human nature. One can only assume Wordsworth is commenting on the characteristics of the futile societal structure, such as that described in Oroonoko, and often seen throughout the Modern