Only God Knows: An Argument Against Various Interpretations of Hood's "The Bridge of Sighs"

             Through Hood's "The Bridge of Sighs," the tale  of a fallen woman (a prostitute, most likely) who had made the decision to take her own life by leaping off of a bridge and into a river to drown. is told But when her body is recovered, the shamed, fallen woman is "purified" and is actually lamented by the narrator - an act that was greatly against general societal feelings toward this type of woman. As I was going through the pages of the blog, I couldn't help but notice that nearly everyone interpreted the fallen woman's suicide as an act of cleansing and redemption. If you examine in a little bit closer and contextualize it, this cannot be true. Let's take another look at both the penultimate and final stanza of the poem:

Perishing gloomily,                  (95)
Spurr'd by contumely,
Cold inhumanity,
Burning insanity,
Into her rest.--
Cross her hands humbly,          (100)
As if praying dumbly,
Over her breast!

Owning her weakness,
Her evil behavior,
And leaving, with meekness,    (105)
Her sins to her Saviour! 

          To begin, the woman did not jump off of the bridge to purify herself, a fact that Hood explicitly states in lines 96-99. He says that she was "Spurr'd by contumely" (Contumely is insolent or insulting language or treatment), cold inhumanity, and burning insanity into her rest. Society's hatred of her forced her to her death, she did not have any sort of righteous thoughts behind it. She could not handle the stress or hate.
         But what's the most curious to me are lines 100-106. As established earlier in the poem, this woman committed suicide. In most faiths, this is a huge sin. As England, Hood's homeland, was Christian, we'll take a look at what Christianity has to say about suicide. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, suicide is "seriously contrary to justice, hope, and charity. It is forbidden by the fifth commandment" (Paragraph 2325). The fifth commandment states that "Thou shalt not kill." By her suicide, she isn't cleansing herself in the face of God, she's condemning herself. If you look closer at the  final 7 lines, it isn't the woman that is crossing her hands to pray, but either the narrator or someone in the crowd. They're attempting to try to give her some form of faithfulness to God, some reason that her soul may not be condemned to hell for her mortal sins that went beyond prostitution and even committed murder. She isn't actually "owning her weakness" or her "evil behavior" and leaving "her sins to her savior" -  they crowd only wishes that for her. According to traditional Christian faith, her soul is already condemned to Hell. The narrator's action is just a feeble attempt to save her.
         But Hood doesn't leave the woman with just this small shred of hope of her corpse's hands fashioned for prayer; earlier on in the penultimate stanza, he mentions "burning insanity" (98). Assuming he's saying that the woman was insane, there is hope for her, although not too much. Paragraph  2282 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church mentions that "grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide (my italics). If this woman was truly insane, she has the chance of having a lesser punishment for her sin. Although the chances are implicitly slim, there's still a shred of hope for her. Is Hood really saying that the fallen is redeemed, or is he just casting an illusion? Only God can know.




References:
http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/2325.htm
http://www.olrl.org/Lessons/Lesson38.shtml
http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/2282.htm