Helen Alston's Channel Firing Essay

Complications of Genre: Michael Field’s “Long Ago: XIV & XXXIII”

To deny that there is a serious stigma attached to the word “Victorian” would be to subvert an entire cultural stereotype that still clings to the skirts of Victorian literature. The general understanding of this era in British history is that Queen Victoria, all in black, ruled her vast empire with an iron fist of prudence. The image of the Victorian woman is fusty, a lady in an elaborately laced corset and frilly, petticoated silk skirt, a visage perpetuated even by our course Wiki. For men, the word makes one think of straight-tailored suits, serious countenances, and walking sticks. While our class certainly touched upon the idea that not all Victorian literature is as stuffy as one might be led to believe—for example, Oscar Wilde’s satirical depiction of a certain strata of society in The Importance of Being Earnest—we regardless read very few writers who truly broadened our understanding of Victorian society. The writers Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper, better known by their pseudonym “Michael Field,” were an exception to this rule. Their deep-seated interest in both Greek literature and living complicates the reader’s understanding of what kind of literature was being produced at the time. Two important poems to include on future syllabi are “Long Ago: XXXIII” because they deal with two period ladies’ views about both Victorian ladies and gentlemen: through the lens of lines written by the Greek poet Sappho, they discuss love and companionship from a far more liberal, feminine perspective than any other poets that we had the fortune to read this semester.

The obfuscation of the name “Michael Field” complicates our understanding of the Victorian woman as well as Victorian society’s reading of their poetry. The main advantage of a pseudonym is that one does not have to own up to the lyrics that one pens: subsequently, Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper were able to discuss love between what for them was two women as if they were a man. Other female writers at the time eschewed the use of a penname and opted to go their own way, such as Mathilde Blind, another writer in our Victorian Women Poets anthology. Blind, however, wrote predominantly about the domestic sphere. Childbirth was the closest that she came to writing about a sexual or emotional relationship between spouses or lovers. Christina Rossetti wrote about her brother’s obsession with his model and a failed courtship with an anonymous John, but nothing strayed into the realm of overt sexual representation. In “Long Ago: XXXIII,” however, the authors are explicit about the sexuality of women, as well as their capability to be sexual with each other. “Field” writes:

But [maids] to manifold desire

Can yield response …

…with your soft vitality

My weary bosom fill. (l 10-11, 20-21)

In addition to expressing female sexuality, “Field” also denounces heterosexual relationships. A few lines earlier in “XXXIII,” the writers penned:

Maids, not to you my mind doth change;

Men I defy, allure, estrange… (1-2)

No poetry that we have covered on our British Victorian Literature syllabus this semester has even referenced a woman’s attitude toward relationships or sexuality. Though our anthology gently shames “Michael Field” for their identification with male writers over female ones, our syllabus featured only one poem—Christina Rossetti’s “No Thank You, John”—that indicated women might have feelings about relationships, matrimonial or otherwise, that they could potentially enter into. Though “Field” did not speak up about womens’ rights or feel particularly inclined toward the poetry other women were writing at the time, they were able to express female sexuality and independence, a terribly liberal idea, far better than women poets writing under their own names.

“Field” is also modernizing both Sappho’s form and content, meaning that rather than taking part in a continuation of the Greek tradition, the authors are broadening the perspective readers have on the subjects and viewpoints found in Victorian literature. Even though these two poems were, according to Bradley and Cooper, inspired by Greek lyrics written by Sappho, these women are not writing within a Greek lyric tradition despite the fact that they make use of some of the mythology. “Long Ago: XIV” references galingale and celadine, which English flowers and foliage, not Greek ones. Only the epigraphs of the poems were written in Greek: “Field’s” words were entirely in English, showing that they were intended for an English-speaking audience. It is also worth considering that the anthology indicates that the “Long Ago” series was composed early in their career; following their conversion to Catholicism, their writing was far less prolific. Even though Bradley and Cooper were clearly writing in an English tradition for an English audience, it is clear that they were attempting to reach outside the realms of material that were already being covered by their contemporaries.

Because these two poems by “Field” offer such unique feminine perspectives on the role of women in relationships both with other women and with men, they are worthy of inclusion in future iterations of British Victorian Literature. These two women were writing in a distinctly English tradition, though the Greeks inspired them. To say that homosexual relationships were never particularly in vogue in Victorian society would be a “Wilde” (pun fully intended) understatement, as it would be to say that “Field’s” work encapsulates widely held viewpoints among women in the Victorian period. However, their understanding of women as independent, sexual beings does complicate the traditional depiction of the Victorian society in which our oft-referenced ladies and gentlemen resided.