Zut la femme

I sit here reading "Marriage", a poem by a female Victorian writer, Coleridge's great-grandniece or something like that, that's how she's defined they share the last name so clearly there must be made some sort of clarification - wow she's of Coleridge's bloodline let's have a look at that.

I don't know what I believe about women writing about women. Looking back now, with the consciousness and burden of feminism weighing above our fashionably styled heads I really want to be sick with how pretentious it all sounds. Marriage results in "a matron walking sedately" as opposed to a maiden "Wantonly free." Okay okay we know what you feminists think let's all take our bras off Germaine Greer-style and grow a moustache (believe me it's feasible) and maybe some armpit hair. Problem is, I love my bras. I ain't givin' them up.

But then I think again. I think pre-60s, pre-suffragettes, before women like me took every possibility in the world for granted; and I think about what a typical day in the life of a pre-Victorian or Victorian woman was like. Wake up, take hours to get dressed appropriately, sit around all day, write loads of letters, maybe read?, have tea, wait for husband/guests/kids, have an atrociously long and formal dinner, retire to the drawing room etc. Again. and AGAIN.

So when Ms. Mary E. Coleridge imagines the return of her married sister describing her as 'walking sedately', I can now see why this is such a great statement to make. The wildness of the female spirit, everything instinctive is actively suppressed. Is it sex that does it? Is the fact that the girl is no longer a 'maiden', that she has been defiled that sedates her? Is it a slow process or an overnight thing? Is she sedated like a patient, in order to control some sort of mania? And why is a single woman, an 'untouched' woman, such a threat? When she is "Flashing with laughter" is she a danger? Is her radiance in fact too hard to handle? Are her hopeful expectations intolerable and in need to be thwarted?

I hate myself for raising such issues, issues that have been branded the now horrifying term "feminist", that's been conflated with other irrelevant stuff like hatred for men, lesbian love etc etc. This is just a reminder that it wasn't always like that, and that it actually took some balls for Ms. Coleridge to write what she did.

Marriage

BY MARY ELIZABETH COLERIDGE

No more alone sleeping, no more alone waking,

Thy dreams divided, thy prayers in twain;

Thy merry sisters tonight forsaking,

Never shall we see, maiden, again.

Never shall we see thee, thine eyes glancing.

Flashing with laughter and wild in glee,

Under the mistletoe kissing and dancing,

Wantonly free.

There shall come a matron walking sedately,

Low-voiced, gentle, wise in reply.

Tell me, O tell me, can I love her greatly?

All for her sake must the maiden die!