Question

What is the inner meaning of the snail by william cowper ?

Answer 1

No doubt the snail is a creature of anti-sensibility, but in the most romanticized sense. That is, the snail is not one of the scuttling crowd who, fearful of vis-a-vis contact with others, make their way conventionally through life, lonely but in good company. Instead, the snail is a prince of sorts. He is not homeless; he has his house, which not only secures him, but stands as a frightful dominion of power. The snail is not un-social, he is energetically anti-social. In the snail, sensibility doubles back on itself. The self-collecting power which facilitates a full retreat at the mere touch of the horns must be read as over-sensibility, not insensibility. In fact, the snail much resembles the poet of sensibility, "Well satisfied to be his own/ Whole treasure"; this could even be Clarissa Harlowe. Cowper represents how easily a sensible withdrawal from society can turn into a feeding frenzy. Sensibility can speak for or against integration into the social--in a sense it builds its own crises as fast as it finds solutions--this is the case for the snail.