[Ttha-potm] gender issues +

[carolyn mcgrath]

"Right now, I'd only say the obvious--that both poem and novel (FFMC)
emerge from the same intelligence. And the story that that intelligence
worries over has to do no less with what we now call issues of gender
(including constructions of gender) than with cultural transition or with
the relationship of human beings to the world around them and the cosmos."

A reasonable overview, David, and after a couple of rum punches too! I hope I am equally mellow on tea, it being but 3pm.

I do think, now, that there is a masculinity to the voice, not only because of the absence of markers to the contrary, but also due to the speaker's observation of the Pleiads' innocent coquetishness and maybe the 'grisly grin of things' which possibly suggests an unease with female sexuality. I think of 'guile' as cunning, and this in connection with sexual pursuit... I don't know, thinking aloud. There is also that contrast of Orion, "the Great Nebula", and the "whistling" farmer-type. It is interesting to note the sort of modesty required to achieve the admired indifference, that 'blithe uncare', and the range of things that that
'simplicity' is contrasted with. 

By the way, I didn't read Bill Morgan's posting as suggesting he supported the possible reading of identifying the persona with Hardy; I thought he promoted a more open reading which would allow wider possibilities,
such as we are discussing now. I expect he'll speak for himself at some point, but that was what I had understood.

Your valid point that the same intelligence created both works does not in itself solve the problem of the identify, or nature, of the narrating voice of either work. There may be similarities between the two, but I suppose the best way to approach it is not to worry 'who' but rather what the emotional response of the speaker is to whatever 'he' is relating. In the case of the poem, that is a far smaller, but concentrated, demand than to a novel. 

Bill Morgan has suggested 'self-rebuke', which I go along with, although I don't know if we have similar ideas as to what he is rebuking himself for. 
Certainly the speaker is knowledgeable and articulate. There is an explicit conscious manipulation of the use of language but is this by the persona or by the poet? Certainly the effect is to ensure that our attention is drawn to, what I called, the declamatory voice of the first section and the 'ordinariness' of the second. The sections are clearly marked by punctuatiuon and I think we are being asked to account for this shift in voice in the poem to make sense of what the character is all about. 

Maybe it is not a shift that the 'character' is fully in control of - it's like the 'telephone voice' people put on and then drop when they stub their toe, but the poet, of course, is in control of the voice he puts into his character's mouth. Even if this poem is 'autobiographical', there is a sense of self-dramatising for effect, so as to convey maybe a joke at his own expense. The joke has a sense of ,'Well, that taught me!" so what is it that has been learnt? I think constructions of gender are more significant in this poem than I had recognised on first reading. 

I hope more people pick up on this issue as the month of June rolls by as I would be interested to hear what others think on this. Thanks, David, for putting these issues into a wider context.

best wishes

Carolyn McGrath


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