DREAM CHILDREN: A REVERIE – LAMB

DREAM CHILDREN: A REVERIE – LAMB

·         This essay was appeared in London Magazine, January 1822.

·         This essay is about a dream.

·         In the essay all characters are real except the children Alice and John.

·         Charles Lamb is referred as James Elia.

·         John Lamb died in October 1821.

·         Charles Lamb was fond of Mary Lamb.

·         Mary had an attack of Homicidal Mania.

·         Charles Lamb loved the girl Ann Simmons.

·         Ann is symbolically referred in this essay as  Alice W (Winterton).

·         Ann married the Pawn Broker of Leicestar Square, London, Mr.  Bartrum.

·         He married Alice W-n and had two children.

·         The characters John and Alice are dream children of Lamb.

·         “We are not of Alice, not of thee, nor are we children at all”.

·         The children of Alice call Bartrum father.

·         Mrs. Field is the grandmother of Lamb.

·         She was working as housekeeper for fifty years  to the Plumers  at Blakesware, Heriford shire.

·         There is a story related to the house, it was about the murder of children by their cruel uncle.

·         Alice and John came to know this story through a carved writing on a tree, which was later brought down by a rich man.

·         After the death of grandmother, house owner took away his belongings and place them in his new house where they looks ugly.

·         When grandmother was alive she uses to sleep alone but Elia was afraid of the souls of infants murdered by uncle as it was thought that house is haunted by the spirits of those children.

·         The Ballad Babes in the Wood is referred in this essay.

·         John was handsome and brave.

·         John carried Lamb when he lame later.

·         John, Lamb’s brother whose recent death was the occasion of this pathetic self-reverie.

·         At the end of the essay, Alice and John are crying after hearing all his narration.

·         They started to become faint and say to Elia or Lamb that they are not his real children and Alice is not his wife and their mother.

·         Lamb wakes up finds himself in armed chair and James Elia was vanished.

·         The whole story is based on life of Lamb.

·         He was never able to married and childless.

·         He is also regretting and remembering moments like about his brother, grandmother, his childhood.

·         The whole essay is full of melancholy and sad tone of Lamb’s life.

·         Lethe, the river of Hades who drank the water could forget all his past.

·         The idea of soul waiting for incarnation, sitting on the banks of Lethe, is platonic.

·         This essay is the most celebrated one.

·         Dream Children is called a Prose poem.

·         This essay is an appeal to primary feelings of mankind.

·         Lamb sacrificed his love for sister.

·         The whole story was in Norfolk street.

·         Mary Field is a great dancer, attacked  by cancer.

·         She knows the bible by heart.

·         He looks out 12 marble Caesar statues.

·         John Lamb interests in horse-riding & hunting.