Throughout the Broadway show Hamilton, songs are used to not only show the audience what is happening, but to convey the emotions of various characters in various points in time. This can be done through the repetition of certain lines from previous songs, but also through the type of music is used for the song in question. While the more upbeat and charged songs provide a lighter feel, it is when the melody is slowed and the emotions more raw when a character is made to feel isolated and vulnerable.
Nowhere is this done better than in the second act with Eliza’s solo “Burn”.
“Burn” is the last song in a sequence full of betrayal and change. Eliza has found out of her husband’s fidelity, which he had published for the public. She is left in a state of shock and bewilderment. Suddenly, the letters of love and promise Hamilton wrote for Eliza mean nothing. On stage, she is wearing a gown to emphasize her innocence and for the audience to “access” her vulnerability (p.
228). In this moment, Eliza’s world is a nightmare; she is left alone in the dark with only the moon. She has lost the husband she married and tries:
“Searching and scanning for answers
in every line,
for some kind of sign” (p. 238)
To hold onto the thought that Hamilton, the man she married and bared several children for, is still hers. Unfortunately, she shifts into the realization that the woman he had an affair with, Maria Reynolds, and the world are engrained in his words as well.
The way he has intertwined his legacy and his family is one that adds more agony and suffering for Eliza:
“[Hamilton] published the letters [Maria] wrote you.”
…Brought this girl into our bed.
…The world has no place in my heart.
The world has no place in my bed.” (p. 238)
As a result, now she and the rest of the Hamilton family are thrust into the spotlight. She lacks the control women have in her point in time. With little else to do, she finds solace in reversing the power Hamilton’s words had on her.
The way Eliza first fell in love with Hamilton were the words he wrote for her. In the first act, Hamilton’s words leave Eliza breathless, literally and figuratively helpless (as seen in the first act in “Helpless”) and in amazement. She states how each letter he wrote her made her life “get better.” This gives Hamilton’s command of language an uplifting and powerful effect. This becomes a more powerful effect in the second half of the musical when Eliza states how his words that once
“Flooded [Eliza’s] senses
[Hamilton’s] sentences left me defenseless
you built palaces out of paragraphs
you built cathedrals.”
Now, Hamilton’s words are poison and no longer sacred; they destroy herself, her family, and Hamilton himself:
“[Hamilton’s] sentences border on senseless
And you are paranoid in every paragraph.”
With the music becoming louder and intense, Eliza takes her own from of power in the words her husband once wrote for her. He had made his indiscretions public and “in clearing [Hamilton’s] name”, he “ruined [our family’s] lives” (p. 238). Due to this, Hamilton must be punished in a way that will clearly destroy him personally and emotionally. She is seen alone with the letters Hamilton wrote her, a lantern, and nothing else (p. 228). In the second half of her solo song, her voice rises as she takes the letters she saved and burns them. With this action, Eliza effectively “erases herself from the narrative” of her husband’s personal and political life:
“You forfeit all rights to my heart.
You forfeit the place in our bed.
You’ll sleep in your office instead,
with only the memories
of when you were mine.
I hope that you burn.”
In this section, Eliza is no longer publicly and privately calling herself Hamilton’s wife. She is leaving his with his memories of their life together as she destroys one of the most important things to her husband, his legacy. The final proclamation of Hamilton burning has duel meaning; Eliza hopes her memories of him in her life burn as well as his legacy will burn.
From the beginning, Alexander Hamilton was someone who wanted so much to make a legacy for himself. From the beginning, he is a “bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman” immigrant wanting to achieve status. One of the ways he accomplishes this is by marrying Eliza, who in turn becomes Hamilton’s legacy as she bares him a child.
With Hamilton’s affair now part of his developing legacy, he has now damaged his reputation. Eliza references a letter she received from her sister Angelica where Hamilton is compared to Icarus, a man who falls to his death when flying too close to the sun. The juxtaposition of Hamilton’s shortsightedness in making a name for himself and Icarus’s desire in reaching the heaven’s parallel the consequences of climbing up the social ladder; result in both of the men’s figurative and literal falls.
It is Hamilton’s choices that burn the words that meant so much to Eliza and that scorn Eliza’s faith and love in him. His place in Eliza’s narrative is burned away. Her place in his narrative and her presence in the story on a larger scale mean nothing to Eliza; she would rather “future historians wonder how [she] reacted when [Hamilton] broke her heart.” Whether or not she is remembered in history is irrelevant to her.
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