41 pages • 1 hour read
Arcadia
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Symbols & Motifs
The Garden
The Garden at Sidley Park summons up the Garden of Eden. The Garden is presented as a paradise on Earth, a type of Arcadia. According to Septimus, Noakes is a “serpent” who is destroying the Gardens (4) through his Romantic redesigns, suggesting that the garden helps to symbolize the transitions between the Enlightenment era and Romanticism. As Hannah notes, “The history of the garden says it all, beautifully” (27). Noakes’s transformation of the garden reflects the change from the pastoral and orderly to the Gothic and wild. As Europe shifts from the reason and logic of the Enlightenment to the emotion and wildness of Romanticism. Hannah’s work to rediscover the gardens mirrors her effort to recover the hermit from history.
The Garden is also symbolic of what it means to be English. As the cultural expectations and desires shift, the garden is redone. At first, it is “a most amiable picture” with “green and gentle” slopes, clusters of trees “companionably grouped,” with the “right amount of sheep” (12). It demonstrates the “familiar pastoral refinement of an Englishman’s garden” (12) during the 18th century. Then, Noakes remodels it. Now, the “hyacinth dell is become a haunt for hobgoblins” and the bridge has been “usurped by a fallen obelisk overgrown with briars” (12). It is now “an eruption of gloomy forest and towering crag, of ruins where there was never a house” (12). Lady Croom is critical of this change. This change is ironically inverted in the present, as the modern Lady Croom and Hannah attempt to recover this design as the true and original state of the garden. But as Lady Croom and Hannah point out, neither is actually more authentic or less cultivated than the other—they are both designed and crafted for a specific effect.
The Hermit
Hannah plans to use the hermit as a symbol in her book. She describes him as her “peg for the nervous breakdown of the Romantic Imagination” (25). Her research subject draws attention to the hermit as a symbol within the play itself: He embodies the tension between Enlightenment and Romantic ideals. For Hannah, the hermit at first represents the “whole Romantic sham” where a “century of intellectual rigour turned in on itself” (27). The hermit’s isolation in the gardens reflects Romanticism with its “setting of cheap thrills and false emotions” (7), of which Hannah disapproves.
Hannah therefore regards the hermit as representing the suppression of Enlightenment values. She describes him as “represent[ing] the Age of Enlightenment banished into the Romantic wilderness” (11). Her interpretation of historical fact illustrates how all historical facts are interpreted and recontextualized. Despite her efforts to be logical and unbiased, she ultimately believes that Septimus is the hermit without documented truth. The fact that she is correct complicates the play’s argument about the role of logic and intuition in seeking truth and knowledge, while the figure of Septimus himself unites both Enlightenment and Romantic tendencies within his character, suggesting that the gulf between them may not always be as wide as Hannah supposes.
Fire, Heat, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
The second law of thermodynamics plays a prominent part in the play, symbolizing both sexual desire and the desire for knowledge. This law describes how heat moves in one direction toward entropy. Thomasina’s description of stirring jam into rice pudding reflects this idea, as it cannot be undone. Her ability to conceive of this law before its creation despite its contradiction of Newton’s work reflects her genius. However, the symbolism of heat extends past the scientific, as it also describes the heat and fire of sexual relationships that tempt the characters even as they attempt to pursue rational knowledge.
The second law not only describes a scientific principle, but, Stoppard argues, also the impossibility of changing the past, the allure of nostalgia and regret, and the fear of a chaotic future. The second law brings together many of the ideas that are contrasted in the binary of Romanticism and Classical ideals. Stoppard suggests that these ideas are not opposites, but instead complementary.
Fire also embodies the tension between hope and tragedy. The Library of Alexandria was consumed by fire, but the knowledge has been rediscovered. Thomasina’s discoveries are revolutionary and would improve the world, but she dies in a fire before her potential can be realized. Like the Library, her discoveries disappear until they are rediscovered, tying into the play’s theme of The Importance of Knowledge and Truth.
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By Tom Stoppard
