Stoppard uses the tension between Romanticism and the Enlightenment to highlight the conflict between emotion and the intellect. The Enlightenment, also called the Age of Reason, favored empiricism and reason. Romanticism, on the other hand, emphasized subjectivity and valorized individual emotions. Their approaches to knowledge are thus in conflict, and the play creates two modes of thinking and being based on these movements: the rational and the emotional.

The play opens with a version of this conflict. Thomasina interrupts her math lesson to ask a question about sex, suggesting that while she may have an interest in the rational pursuit of mathematics, she also feels intrigued by the more emotional and impetuous side of life. Hannah and Bernard’s approaches to knowledge also reflect the divide between these two movements: Hannah focuses on proof and rejects the advances of Bernard, Valentine, and Gus, while Bernard follows his gut and presents his paper without complete verification simply because he feels that it is true. The country house’s garden also reflects this symbolic tension, as its upgraded designs replace the former orderly, Enlightenment style of the grounds with the more Romantic style, turning it into “an eruption of gloomy forest and towering crag” (12).