Emily Pfeiffer was an educated Victorian lady, and as Eric Robertson noted in his introduction to English Poetesses: A Series of Critical Biographies, her sonnets ”deal with the two great questions of the day - evolution and women’s sphere”. In this sonnet she is dealing with the first of these themes, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species having been published just fifteen years earlier in 1859. To the Blind Architect… was the last of a series of seven sonnets she published in 1874, which were later collected in Sonnets and Songs in 1880. This set of sonnets can be seen as a thematic series, dealing with the concept of Darwinian evolution and Pfeiffer’s response to it: while she clearly accepts evolution (and even corresponded with Darwin himself on interpretations of natural selection), she was somewhat horrified by its implications. Karen Dieleman, in her article Evolution and the Struggle of Love in Emily Pfeiffer's Sonnets1 interprets her attitude towards evolution as revealed in the sonnets as:
These sonnets concede evolutionary theory, rage against its
implications, and strain toward an alternative hope—a hope that
frequently collapses under such straining but that eventually settles
on an ethic of Love as the restructuring force of the universe.
and describes her personal attitude towards the theory of evolution as:
In short, an intermixed acceptance of it as the new reality under
which we must live, a dismayed protest against that reality, and — at
this early stage — an unsuccessful effort to envision alternatives.
To answer the first question asked, the sonnet is concerned with the general topic of biological evolution. The first three sonnets in the series were addressed "To Nature in her Ascribed Character of Unmeaning and All-Performing Force”, and this appears to be the case here as well. The use of a “blind architect” to personify the undirected processes of evolution and natural selection (i.e. “Nature”), as opposed to an all-knowing Creator, is a common metaphor, famously used, for example, by Paley’s description of a “blind watchmaker” (an image taken up later by Richard Dawkins).
The sonnet opens on an optimistic, almost triumphant note, marvelling at the complexity achieved by blind evolutionary forces: “How true thy work, blind Builder of the homes which throng the paths of Life”, the “homes” being the bodies of living creatures, namely the “beasts, fishes, birds”. She then describes living creatures as “bodied words”. This perhaps calls back to the previous sonnet in the series, Broken Words which begins in a similar mood celebrating the triumph of science:
RIPE fruit of science—demonstrated fact—
We grasp at thee in trembling expectation,
We humbly wait on thee for explanation:
and goes on to introduce the metaphor of words (the bolding is mine)
Words of the Universe, enshrined in act!
Words, pregnant words, but only parts of speech
As yet, curt utterance such as children use,
With meanings struggling through but to confuse,
And hinted signs which soar beyond our reach.
This itself connects back to John 1:1, where God reveals himself through “the Word”. In an analogous way, evolution is revealed through the forms of living organisms. In contrast to God’s word, which is perfect, for the natural world “meanings struggle through”, can be confusing, and hint at meanings “beyond our reach” (probably any scientist will identify with this viewpoint, where a current imperfect theory provides frustratingly veiled hints for a subsequent improved interpretation).
Returning to To the Blind Architect…, the poem tells us that since the “Builder’s art” is true, the “bodied words” (living creatures) tell their “unmeant meanings”, underlining the fact that although the natural world may seem as if it has been designed, it is all “unmeant”, driven by randomness with no overall purpose behind it.
In the final five lines of the sonnet, the poem suddenly makes a brief return to Christian imagery, imagining Man to be the final and greatest creation of God, and referencing the Bible’s description of the human body in 1 Corinthians as a temple of the Holy Spirit:
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who
is in you, whom you have received from God?
(1 Corinthians 6:19).
As soon as this suggestion is made, however, the poem furiously rejects it. Man is not a temple, nor even a church, but a mere “meeting-house” (these words making contact with the title of the sonnet). Unlike other living creatures, Man has invented the concept of god (and thereby imagines himself to be “a temple for a God’s indwelling), and by making this wrong turn has become the Blind Architects’s "sole false work”. The poet calls for the “lying altar” to be cast down, since if God is superfluous, godlike functions instead being replaced by science, the very concept of a temple has no meaning.
1. DIELEMAN, K. (2016). Evolution and the Struggle of Love in Emily Pfeiffer’s Sonnets. Victorian Poetry, 54(3), 297–324.
