My Darling

The poem My Darling by Michael Field is a very interesting poem. When I first read this poem I couldn’t figure out if the name ‘Atthis’ was supposed to be spelled that way or if someone forgot to put a space in between to make it ‘at this’. Either way I think the poem would still work, so I am going to go with the assumption that it was the name ‘Atthis’ that was supposed to be in the poem.  It is interesting because if one did not know anything about Michael Field they would assume that it was a man talking to a woman.  But Michael Field was actually Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, making this poem about a woman—or two women—talking to another woman.  This fact makes their use of the term darling appropriate because that is a very gender neutral term of affection.  The authors do use several feminine clues to possibly indicate the feminine attraction, by referring to dawn as “Queen Dawn”.  Referring to dawn this way is something that I have never heard of before, as the sun is usually associated with a masculine image.  The reason they hid this is because of the societal norms that were in place during that era.