Sunday, April 8, 2012

Michael Field's "A Girl": The Physical and Beyond

In this poem, Fields seems to author a dual meaning.  There seems to be some intangible "love" for lack of a better word, as well as some deep sexual overtones    The second line illustrates this early and rather robustly.  It reads, "Her soul a deep-wave pearl".  The double meaning that I find here is rooted in the words "soul" and "deep-wave pearl".  There seems to be an inherent connection between the stimulation of the physical being -- "the pearl" which can be stimulated, the result of which is that "deep-wave" of the woman's reproductive organs -- and the stimulation of the soul.  Fields also uses some contrasting ideas to describe the girl in the poem saying "Dim, lucent" which could be interpreted as saying dark and shining, implying that the girl is more than just a simple being.  Not only that, but there are all of these references to nature, such as "seas", "forest-trees", "breeze", "flowered", "wave", and "pearl".  This introduces the idea that the alleged lesbian relationship described by the poem is natural.  Moving back to the dual meaning of the poem, lines 10 through 14 describe some half completed work and a notion that the girl may complete it if she so wishes.  Following the mention of the soul in line 10, the idea of completeness of one woman depending on another seems to reference love and since there is this implicit and natural connection between love, the soul and physical sexuality between these the female narrator and the female subject then it would seem that the narrator is made whole or fulfilled by the girl's presence and consent to engagement of the narrator.

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