Feminist Reading of Victorian Literature 

Discuss Dickens’ views on women with respect to the female characters in Great Expectations. 

Or 

The suppression and the regulation of the feminine through various moral and psychological factors forms the crux of Jane Eyre. Give a reasoned answer. Or 

Though set in England Jane Eyre is implicated in the politics of colonialism and imperialism. Discuss. 

Or 

Discuss the dramatic monologue with reference to Tennyson and Browning. Or 

Victorian women were subordinated and imprisoned by patriarchy. Critically examine the above statement with reference to at least two poems and two novels from the Victorian literature. 

The Camelot provides the funeral voyage adorning the boat and ferry of the Lady of Shalott towards the destination of sea shore; dispelling mysteries and caprices of the mirror, the weaving, the curse, the spell, the song, the river and island. “Out flew the web and floated wide” and “The mirror cracked from side to side” resonates the Tennysonian inscription of the workings of mimesis and the nature of poetic identity reveal the tapestries of the lady a dim unreality: imitations of shadows from a mirror. The Lady of Shalott transforms poetry into fiction in a moment of eloquence through her web [a poetic creation as long as it is produced in solitude—–the Lady literally ignorant of life in any active sense] flies out and floats wide when she turns round with that desire of making an impression upon another mind—-when she beseeches Lancelot. The imaginative medium for perceiving the real world in poetic isolation is shattered—–“The mirror cracked from side to side”—-but the web has floated wide of the destruction and out beyond the tower walls. The poem, like the Lady’s boat remains to stare back and remind Tennyson and the reader of their

bondage to mortal limits—-rhyme and words. Action, fullness and inscription replaces emptiness, passivity, echoes, whispers and rumours. Echoes swell to full sound; the fairy name takes on form and becomes the inscribed names; once empty skies and placid rivers swell with the rain. The Lady emerges as a Lancelot as she gleans; she reflects; she is the one who is paradoxically to cut through and to remind the onlookers of the absence of wholeness —-the analogy of Lancelot’s hypocritically Satanic is a metaphorical illusion since Tennyson would never intrude into the Lady’s vessel even though the impulse was towards the mystical and non representational was strong within the poet laureate. The Lady inscribes her name on the prow of the boat and floats down to Camelot, she turns her back on the vision of her past and inserts herself into a metaphoric relationship with her surroundings and herself from a brilliantly meteoric metaphoric vision with her glossy countenance she becomes both mirror, seer and object. With her death and the descent of daylight and hustle-bustle, she moves into a realm where the elements —-light, space, time and place—-which form and binds words, sounds and images neither present nor absent. Walter Benjamin extrapolates that, “Names have incomplete and inadequate mirrors of meaning. They are the facts of knowledge; not knowledge itself. Names name the death of oneness and are dependent upon representation.” 

The Lady of Shalott’s funeral voyage upon the pilgrim bark journeying the Camelot towards the sea-shore dispels the caprices of the mirror, the weaving, the curse, the song, the river and the isle. The lady is no lady in the ordinary sense, that she is “embowered” not only by the impenetrable walls of her tower but also by the mysterious fear evoking power of magic. By the alchemy of the imaginative faculty and the connotative powers of the details of life which she envisions in her mirror inverted reflections and later translates them into the mystical and magical cocoon of web; is itself a ritualistic and ceremonial project work sanctioned by the aesthetic ideal of magical patterns created by the art cult and the love permeated by the patterns of human life. Peasant reapers, crimson clad page, surly village churls, red cloaked marketgirls and the abbot are the personalities harmonizing the communal and seasonal province of Yeats-ian ceremonial of innocence. Climactically the Lady of Shalott’s witnessing two

most archetypal ceremonials of life include the “two young lovers, lately wed” and “funeral with plumes and lights” makes her half-sick of shadows as equivocated in “I am half sick of shadows,” said the Lady of Shalott”/ Wedding and funeral are not faintly the perception sexual connotations but of facsimiles of death. A emblazoning red cross knight kneeling in chivalrous heroism to the damsel beauty riding through the barley sheaves in the personae of the blast of angelic trumpet and dazzlement of brazen grease accoutrements — the representative of sanctified love traditionally symbolic of affinity in purity and faith—epitomizes the Lady’s Church or Truth as felt by the Lady of Shalott in the aphorism : “tirra lirra I have felt”. Lancelot is illuminated not merely by sexuality but of celestial love glancing from the shield that is itself celestial, stellar and cosmicized flashing upon the crystal mirrors the way Tennyson’s own mystical experiences so often flash upon him to make a morally dead phenomenal world come alive with meaning and purpose. 

The Lady of Shalott’s pilgrim bark drifting towards Camelot is purgatorial in the sense of the penitential soul’s spiritual pilgrimage. Tennyson implicitly explicates that an essential loneliness is the one element of the artistic condition that cannot be revoked even by the expanse of love; that the extension of the pilgrim bark portends; despite the vainglorious exhibitionism of the “crown of pearls” and “blinding diamond” by the “dead cold” parchment to her bosom. / “They crossed themselves, their stars they blest!”/ “She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace.” / Her self-immolation and self-consummation in the abundance of her own love opens up to the spectacle of Lancelot and Guinevere’s moral depravation and decay, and provides the key to a despairing vision that is a prefiguration of the doom of Camelot itself. The death-in-life transcends to liberate her from the bondage of egotism and thereby paves the path towards the inclined equivocation of joy in the beloved. Christine Paulson discusses a feminist viewpoint and suggests: “the Lady of Shalott’s escape from her tower as an act of resistance, a symbolic of feminine empowerment.” She thus disentangles herself from emotional intricacies and come to terms with female sexuality. Her Crucifixion is the archetype of self-sacrifice and further emphasizes the ideal that the Lady of Shalott fails to represent. Paulson also considers this representation of the subjectivity in the context of changing

women’s roles in the 1880s and 1890s, suggesting that it served as a warning of imminent death to women who abdicated from their conformity to stereotypical conventional roles and explored their desires. Fables tradition of the fictional fantasy realm exemplifies the narrative of the Lady of Shalott’s self-immolation or self-consummation: “in her death [she] has become a Sleeping Beauty who can never be wakened symbols of perfect feminine passivity.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee” —The Sonnets from the Portuguese is either a testimonial of Victorian womanhood or the “angel of the hearth’s” humbleness into the acceptance of norm conforming chronicle of her growth towards marriage or a poetess pioneering struggle in finding her voice in the authoritative patriarchal cult of Victorianism —-the culture of poetic genre that traditionally silences or subdue the women in order to foreground the male poet’s subjectivity. “Talking upon paper” correspondence between the poetess with her future husband is the revelatory note of courtship letters with the utmost assertive diction and declamatory tone: “And if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death”. As Sarah Paul extrapolates in poststructuralist gender and feminist criticism that the speaker’s inferior stance is in fact a vehicle of self aggrandizement, serving at once as shield against objectification and as a cover for the controversial strategies that she uses to manifest herself as a woman and a poet.” 

Romantic melodrama unfolds in the literal and figurative exquisiteness and sophistication of the love poems. “How instinct with real and life, feigned emotions they cannot be!” The appeal of this amatory sonnet tradition chiefly lies in the romanticization and fantasy of Victorianism as embodied by the culture of carolines and corsets, waiting ladies and conquering men, secret letters and stolen kisses; emblems of romantic love witnessing the testimonial of women’s subjugation to the destiny of patriarchy. By the end of the twentieth century Sonnets from the Portuguese was known widely as the dedicatory epistle and poetic manifesto of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s blossoming and fruiting alliance to the affinity of her future husband Robert Browning. Poet personae’s rescue, conquest, admiration, scruples and surrender imitate the mimesis of objectified male gaze. Dorothy Mermin’s explanation of the selfhood and poethood “the speaker has qualities…both of the male Victorian poet as introspective, self doubting lover and the female figures in which Tennyson embodies passive, withdrawn and isolated aspects of the poetic character.” 

Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Or The Modern Prometheus are fascinatingly parallel readings of feminist perspectives subverting the conventions of masculinity within the hegemony of patriarchy. George Levine’s “The Realistic Imagination” suggests that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Or The Modern Prometheus; the monster is “a kin to the oppressed women and children of Victorian fiction.” Andrew Griffin in Fire and Ice examines the parallel use of symbolic realism and imagery to express passion and alienation, fire representing anger, passion or sexuality, and representing ice, isolation and rejection. Edward Fairfax Rochester’s initial desire of pantomiming Jane Eyre in “satin and lace” prompts her to protest: “I shall no longer be your Jane Eyre, but an ape in a harlequin’s jacket.” “I saw a robbed and veiled figure, so unlike my usual self that it seemed almost the image of a stranger.” Jane Eyre here stands on the brink of becoming not a mistress but a fabrication, a forgery of Mrs. Rochester wrought by her would-be-husband. This incident correlates the monster’s association with the De Lacey household in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Or The Modern Prometheus. The solace Jane Eyre finds in nature also suggests the experience of the monster who delights in the sights, sounds and tangible sensations of the natural world as they crowd into his developing consciousness: the sky, the moon, the stars, the shade of trees, the song of birds, the cool water of the brook and wild berries that assuage his thirst and hunger. Jane Eyre’s redemptive nature of absolving others the blame for her alienation and isolation takes on greater significance when considered in conjunction with the depths of her degradation and hopelessness. Jane’s culminating triumph in her “marriage of true minds” with Rochester is thus amplified by an implicit contrast with the fate of permanent and destructive alienation, the alienation of the monster, which she has escaped. “And what coarse hands. And what thick boots!” become central subjective gaze of the protagonist in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. “I took the opportunity of being alone in the courtyard, to look at my coarse hands and common boots […] They had never troubled me before, but they troubled me

now as vulgar appendages.” Judged and shamed by Estella’s gaze, Pip is “humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry,” everything but critical of the condescending gaze that evaluates and defines him. The novel subverts the patriarchal society’s positioning of placing men as subjects and women as objects, as the power and pleasure of taking shifts between male and female characters. Shortly before the appearance of Magwitch at his London apartment, Pip and Estella return to Satis House, where Miss Havisham looked at Estella, “as though she were devouring the beautiful creature she has reared.” This fairy God mother of Pip’s expectations becomes the witch tale of revenge whose tutelage and protégé ingrained Estella’s heart to be ‘stock and stone’ and ‘cold-hearted’ being. “She’s proud, haughty and capricious even to the last degree, and has been brought up by Miss Havisham to wreak revenge upon all the male sexes: “Break their hearts, my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy.” The novel’s education stands over the convict-communion plot and represses Pip’s sense of association with the taint of criminality— an association initiated in one of the novel’s primal scenes, the terrifying first encounter with the convict. If one pair of plot revolves around Pip’s relationship with Magwitch, the other pair revolves around Miss Havisham and the contrast between the dream of a Fairy Godmother fulfilling his expectations and the nightmarish witch tale of revenge. The “energy released in the texts by its liminary primal scene—-in the graveyard —–by the early visits to the Satis House”, Brooks states, “simply is not and cannot be bound by the bindings of the official, repressive plots.”

Further Reading 

Earl Daniel’s “The Younger Generation Reads Browning and Tennyson, The English Journal, October 1929, Volume 18, No. 8, pp. 653-61, National Council of Teachers of English. 

David M. Martin’s Romantic Perspectivism in Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”, Victorian Poetry, Autumn 1973, Volume 11, No. 3, pp. 255-256, West Virginia University Press. 

Flavia M. Alaya’s Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”: The Triumph of Art,

Victorian Poetry, Winter 1970, Volume 8, No. 4, pp. 273-289, West Virginia University Press. 

Marianne Van Remoortel [University of Ghent] Regendering Petrarch: Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets From The Portuguese, Studies in Women’s Literature, Fall 2006, Volume 25, No. 2, pp. 247-266, University of Tulsa Phyllis Pearson Elmore’s Elizabeth Barrett Browning :Argumentative Discourse In “Sonnets From The Portuguese”, Studies in Browning and His Circle, 1992, Volume 20, Selected Papers From An International Conference: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Victorian Culture Part II, 1992, pp. 95-105, Armstrong Browning Library Baylor University. 

Michael K. Johnson’s Not Telling The Story The Way It Happened: Alfonso Cuaron’s “Great Expectations”, Literature/ Film Quarterly, 2005, Volume 33, No. 1, pp. 62-78, Salisbury University Press. 

Examine the close reading of the reunion between Edward Fairfax Rochester and Jane Eyre with references to critical interpretation and metaphorical associations of the Red Room. 

“I am strangely glad to get back to you, wherever you are is my home—-my only home.” Prospective fiancé and Jane Eyre’s future husband Edward Fairfax Rochester takes the geographical space in more traditional bildungsroman; Jane Eyre is finally relocates and stations herself in the harbours of the Ferndean Manor. Despite the red room macabre of 

Gothic fiction modeled after the haunted enclosure casements and apartments of Victorian Gothicism, Jane Eyre pursues the tour-de-force aftermath of burning of Thornfield Hall. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar discuss the red-room as “a kind of patriarchal death chamber” haunted by “the patriarchal spirit” and “the authority of elite male adult”. Gloomy, chilly and claustrophobic pillard be with hanging dark deep damask curtains and windows always with its pines drawn upon; half- shrouded by festoons and fall of drapery and overshadowed walls. Elaine Shawalter characterizes the red-room to be “a paradigm of inner female space” […]: “With its deadly and bloody connotations, its Freudian wealth of compartments, wardrobes, drawers, and jewel chests; and the red room has strong associations with the female adult body. 

“No woman as ever dearer to her mate than I am; ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh” […] “I love you better now, when I can be more useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence,” Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar read the reunion and reconciliation between Edward Fairfax Rochester and Jane Eyre as “the marriage of true minds” nonetheless shrewdly observes, “that the physical isolation of the lovers suggest spiritual isolation in a world where such egalitarian marriages as theirs are rare, if not impossible.” Echoing these counterfeiting viewpoints mimetic positioning of servitude

and passivity to the castrated Rochester, Susan Fraiman writes of the blinded and crippled Rochester’s wife, “this role as interminable caretaker bears an uncanny resemblance to the maternal role women conventionally play in relation to men, and servants in relation to masters;” she sees Jane as eternally bound to Rochester’s service. “I love you better now, when I can be more useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence” amplifies and expands in the metamorphoses of herself as “his vision” and “his right hand”—-literally the apple of his eye. He [Rochester] is like a toothless and declawed lion Jane is now free to tease him and “comb out his shaggy black mane.” 

Further Reading 

Sharon Locy’s [Loyola Marymount University] Travel and Space in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Pacific Coast Philology, 2002, Volume 37, pp. 105-212, Penn State University Press On Behalf of the Pacific and Ancient Modern Language Association [PAMLA]

Whore’s Row

– Take the body, the body?
– What is your name?
– Some say queen of the night, some say whore.
– Is it the name of a girl?
-What do you do with it? I do not sell my name; sell the body. You can look a little differently. There is a special offer today.
Buy for one hour free all night! Incredible offer!

– What are you saying!
– I sell at the price of time.
– I am not such a man
– One in all men. Men do not hate women. Police, doctors, lawyers, leaders, ministers, industrialists, rickshaw pullers, are equal in one place. Here Hindu, Muslim, Vaidya, Christian do not have different taste ? Here is the song of equality.
– It is not right to talk like this. Not everyone is the same.
– I’m wrong again, I’m a whore. Well, what is a whore’s penis?
– I don’t know.

-Ha ha, you couldn’t? I know, you can’t. The night a man spends with a woman is pure. Pure men! Women are corrupted.
– Can’t you do anything else?
– No.
– No, why? It looks like learning.
– Lack, I  lack a lot . Lack of body folds. Lack of mother’s bosom Lack of father’s clothing. Education alone does not lead to employment. Money or Mama is must. I don’t have anything. I also want experience. However, I do not need experience in this work. Inexperienced people are more expensive here. Ha ha ha
– You talk too much.

– I talk too much but tell the unloved truth.
You sell talent and I sell youth. Both of them are sellers. Someone rapes the mind. Take the body, the body?
–  Does not it shame you?
– No, I was raped by civilizations. Fear of dying again. give me money
– What money?
– of my time.
– How much money?
– Five thousand rupees is very much needed. – Why?
-For my drug addict husband and sick mother.

– Are you married?
– By no means.
– Addicted husband?
– Yes. He helps a lot even if he puts his hands on it sometimes. It’s just a sign board. But because he is there, the vultures cannot dissect me at night.
– Take five thousand rupees for your mother.
– You are very good. Where to do it? Should you go to the hotel or your flat?
– You go now. I am not a man, but a good man.

-Even if you turn me away, some man will embrace me.

Un Amour Interdit (A Forbidden Love)

The ancient eight-track player plays a tape of the short-lived super group Blind Faith’s eponymously titled, only studio album. Steve Winwood’s soulful tenor reaches out through the speakers to grab the listener with “Well All Right,” the Buddy Holly classic. Into the darkened room stumbles a young 20-something woman, giggling, only half-dressed and in the process of disrobing. A young man of like age follows close on her heels, divesting himself of shirt, trousers and shoes as he proceeds. He moves with the clunkiness of the inebriated.

The woman’s scent is musky and exotic; he finds it intoxicating and hard to resist, yet he stops himself. She is lying back on the bed, waiting for him. The fruity scent of inexpensive wine is in the air.

“Aiden,” she says coyly, “don’t you want me?” He looks down at her. She is clad now in only her undergarments. She hooks a finger under her wispy bra strap. stretches it and asks again, “don’t you want me?” Aiden draws a great breath, releases it. He too is down to his shorts.

“I…I’m not sure.” His swollen manhood gives the lie to that statement. He blushes, thinks of his girlfriend, back at the apartment, but his thoughts are fleeting.

“Well, when you figure it out, you let me know, okay?” She turns over onto her belly, pulls down her panties and waits expectantly.

Breathing heavily now, Aiden crosses the room, climbs atop the bed and, pulling down his shorts, grabs her hips and without a word slips inside the girl, filling her up. She moans with satisfaction and he begins stroking in and out. He grips her shoulders for better leverage and is soon pumping rapidly. After only five minutes, he climaxes with a little moan, then, pulling himself out and off of her, he apologizes.

“Sorry, Lynn,” he says, embarrassed.

Lynn smiles. “Not a problem,” she says, turning around and gripping his manhood. “Let’s do it again.” And they do, several times. By the end of the evening of wine, weed and sex, Aiden can hardly remember his girlfriend’s name. The two lovers climb under the covers and sleep, their bodies still entwined.

Six hours later, when he awakens, Aiden can think of nothing but Yvonne–he has at last remembered the name of his cohabiting girlfriend. The sun is bursting through the window on the east side of the bedroom, and is shining in his eyes, telling him that it is morning. He moves his head and feels the alcohol stupor from the night before.  A dense wave of regret passes over him. He groans.

His voice wakens the girl–Lynn, he now recalls–and she stirs. Turning over, she says brightly, “Hello–lover!” Aiden’s heart sinks and recriminations batter his body. He averts his eyes. “What’s the matter, Aiden?” she asks. “Are you being shy? You weren’t shy last night,” she tells him. “You gave me a workout; I never saw a man come so much…”

He puts up his hand. “Please, Lynn,” he said, “don’t.”

“Why not?” she comes back at him.”

“I have a girlfriend,” he explains.

“I know you do,” she says. “That’s the whole point, you little jerk.” Her voice is cold.

“What do you mean?” he asks. “You knew I was seeing someone?”

“Of course. I know you’re living with Yvonne Malone.” She smiles cruelly. “That’s why I seduced you.”

Aiden squints his eyes. “But why? What’s Yvonne to you?”

“You are so clueless,” remarks Lynn with scorn. “Yvonne and I have a history. Long time ago, we were in high school together. We used to hang out.” When Aiden doesn’t reply, she continues, “I was dating this really cool guy, right, and Yvonne was dating, like, his brother. We used to double date sometimes. Well, she thought it might be fun to lay my boyfriend, you know, do brothers? So she ruined it for Brad and me.”

“Why would she do that?” asks Aiden, baffled.

“Because. She. Could.” replies a vengeful Lynn.

“So that’s the reason that you…” begins Aiden.

“Look, you’re alright. You’re cute, even. And you’ve got a….lot of energy, but your being Yvonne’s lover is what did it; nothing else. Sorry to burst your bubble, Aiden.”

Aiden just sits there, an absorbent sponge, taking in all that the girl he’d coupled with had to say. He remains sitting on the bed.

“One other thing, Aiden?” says Lynn. He looks up.

“Beat it, okay?” she mutters around a cigarette. “I’m done with you for now.”

                                                       —————————–

That night, Aiden lay with his head on the pillow in his bed at the apartment he shares with his girlfriend. He is waiting for her to return from her bartending job that supports the two of them while he attends college. Yvonne had completed school the previous semester. He hears a key turn in the lock and the door open and then close. Aiden’s mind is awhirl with thoughts that he had betrayed the woman he at least thought that he loved. His self-recriminations and abject guilt have become a boulder that he is desperately trying to push uphill. Suddenly she’s framed in the doorway, smiling at his prone form in the dim light of the bedside lamp. She is so beautiful, he thinks; how could he have cheated on her?

“Hello, lover,” she greets him. He freezes; that’s how Lynn had greeted him this morning, after their night of debauchery. “Are you awake, Aiden?” she whispers, dropping her purse on the bureau. He sees by the clock on the dresser that it’s past 3:00am.

“I’m awake,” he whispers back, wondering if his voice will betray him.

Yvonne begins to remove her clothes, dropping them onto a chair.

“How was your night?” he asks. He has to act normal, he tells himself.

“The usual,” she replies, pulling down her tight denim jeans. From his place beneath the covers, Aiden begins to get hard, then curses himself; that’s how he got in this position in the first place.

Completely nude now, Yvonne slides under the covers and spoons with her lover. “Ooh,” she coos playfully. “I see you’re ready to play,” and she laughs lightly. Her laugh is musical, like ice tinkling in a glass. She reaches out and touches him under the covers. His physical reaction is not what she’d been expecting. “What is it, Baby?” she asks. Aiden’s cheeks turn crimson. “Are you being shy tonight?” she asks.

Why, wonders Aiden, does she keep using the same words and phrases that Lynn had?

Yvonne tries to rekindle the fires of romance for a moment, then says, “Don’t feel like playing tonight? That’s alright. I had a long night. It is a first, though,” she remarks, then wrapping her arm around Aiden’s waist, she is soon fast asleep.

                                                     ___________________

Aiden is busy dust-mopping the floor of the student union two days later, his part- time college work study job, when he is startled by a hand on his buttocks. Turning swiftly around he finds his newest and worst nightmare: Lynn is standing behind him, her hand still on his ass. Hurriedly, he bats her hand away.

“S’matter, Lover?” she asks in a sing song voice. “Are we getting shy again?” She titters merrily. He wishes Lynn and Yvonne would stop parroting one another.

“What do you want?” he asks with a frown. He had been supposed to work overnight in the building the night he ended up spending with Lynn. Now what?

“That’s more like it,” she says approvingly. “Let’s just get to the meat of our conversation, shall we?” She makes a playful grab for his crotch, but he backs hurriedly away. She laughs aloud. He gazes at her. She isn’t nearly as attractive as she’d appeared the other night. Funny what a couple of joints and a bottle of wine would do to your judgement, he thinks yet again.

“Have you told her yet?”

“What?” he asks fecklessly. He knew what.

Lynn smirks. “You haven’t, or else you wouldn’t play stupid.”

“Why do you even care, Lynn?’ he asks. “It’s between her and me.”

“Strictly speaking, that’s not true,” she asserts.

He furrows his brow. “What do you mean?” he asks.

“Another party knows your secret,” she explains. “Me.” She pokes a thumb into her chest.

“What…are you going to do?” he asks, suddenly afraid.

“I’m gonna tell her, Aiden–if you don’t.” she replies smugly. “But I think it would be more delicious coming from you.”

“But why? Do you hate me that much?” he asks.

“Not you; Yvonne! I told you about her and Brad. I hate that bitch!  You,” she adds with a dismissive wave of her hand, “are immaterial.” And she walks off, takes an elevator to somewhere. Though Aiden doesn’t know it now, he’ll never see the woman again. But her effect will continue to be felt.

                                                           ________________

“What is wrong, Aiden?” Yvonne asks for the umpteenth time in the last week. Ever since his night with Lynn, Yvonne has seemed to be on his case, asking questions, relentlessly interrogating him. In fairness, he realizes, he has been acting odd, unaccountably paranoid and just off kilter. Also, he hasn’t been able to perform in bed, a trouble he’s never experienced before. He has to cut Yvonne a break. “You can tell me…anything,” she said with obvious difficulty. What was that about? he wonders. “Do you want to take me to bed?” she asks hopefully, putting her hands around his neck the way she always did.

“No!” he all but shouts, pulling away. “Is that all you think about, sex?’ he asks irrationally. That was rich, he knows, coming from him.

“I just thought,” she begins. “You’ve had…a little trouble lately, is all, and…” He stares at her. “It’s natural,” she said, “it’s normal. Everyone goes through it.” He immediately feels remorseful. But then she makes it all worse, with “I love you, Aiden. And I’d love you even if we never had sex again. But, is it something I’m doing, or not doing?” He expels a tortured breath.

“I’m sorry, Yvie, ” he says. “It’s not you; it’s all on me.” She stares expectantly at him, saying nothing. “I…I was unfaithful to you,” he mutters wretchedly.

Unbeckoned, Yvonne approaches him, put her arms around Aiden’s neck and rests her head against his chest. “Is that all?” she asks softly.

“Is that all?” he repeats incredulously. “Yvie, I cheated on you, I screwed around,” he goes on.

“Are you proud of it, Aiden?” she asks, pulling back and with a serious look in her eyes.

“No. No, of course not,” he assures her.

“Do you love her?” she asks next.

“No. Definitely not.”

“It’s alright, then,” and she nuzzles him some more.

“Wow,” he says, relieved. “I didn’t think you’d react this way.”

“How did you think I’d react?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Anger, tears, I don’t know.”

“Aiden, I’m twenty seven years old; I’ve been cheated on by lovers before. Anyone can slip. We’ll get past this.” At this Aiden smiles with relief. She pulls back from his chest again. “But don’t ever do it again.” He nods. “We won’t mention it again,” she says. She grows suddenly quiet, then looks up at him again. “I don’t know her, do I?” she asks. Aiden doesn’t reply but unfortunately, Yvonne doesn’t let it go. “Do I know her? Aiden?”

He closes his eyes in contrition. “It was Lynn,” he tells her.

It was Yvonne’s turn to remain quiet. “Lynn?” she repeats. He nods. “I don’t know any Lynn,” she says.

“She said her name was Lynn,” he says.

“Where did you meet?” she asks.

“At work.”

“In the union? She’s a student?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. There’re twenty thousand students enrolled, I don’t know them all. She invited me to a party after work, and….”

“Describe her,” said Yvonne. Aiden did. “That description could fit a thousand girls,” she remarks. “Did she have any distinguishing characteristics? An accent, anything?” she asks.

Aiden turned over in his mind whether to tell her about the tattoo, decided to come totally clean. “She did have a tattoo, now that you mention it.”

“Where?” asked Yvonne.

Now Aiden wishes he’d never brought the tattoo up. “Uh, inside her thigh,” he says awkwardly.

“Left thigh, even with her vagina?” asks Yvonne unexpectedly.

‘Yeah,” says Aiden. “How did you know that?”

“Her name’s not Lynn,” Yvonne tells him, “It’s Diana.”

“So you do know her, then.” She said nothing. “She told me how, in high school, you stole her boyfriend, had a one-night stand with him, and you were dating his brother, and…” Aiden realizes she isn’t really listening to him. “Hey,” he says, touching her sleeve, “is any of that true?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “None of it.”

Aiden has been secretly hoping it was all a lie. He doesn’t like the idea of his woman sleeping around. The irony of  this is quite lost on him. “How do you know Lynn…Diana, then?” he asks. “Did you know her in high school?”

“Yes,” she says shortly. “We were lovers.”

Aiden couldn’t help it: his eyes bug out. “Lovers?” he exclaims, louder than he had meant to.

“Don’t sound so shocked,” she admonishes gently. “A lot of girls pass through a lesbian phase when they’re young. Didn’t you have any homosexual experiences when you were a boy?”

“No!” he says, shuddering self-consciously. “How could you?”

“How could I what?” asks Yvonne. “Eat pussy?” Aiden’s eyes bug out again. “Why not?’ she says lightly. “You have no problem doing it. In fact, you’re pretty good at it; not as good as a girl, though,” she adds in a thoughtful aside to herself. She checks her boyfriend’s expression, winces, and said, “no, that’s not true: you’re very good.” Aiden is frowning darkly now. “This doesn’t make a difference, does it?” she asks. “What I did in high school, I mean. It all happened more than a decade ago!” Aiden still says nothing. “I mean, I don’t hold it against you what you did before we met.”

“Well, I didn’t suck any cock before we met,” he says with disgust in his voice.

“Well, don’t look down on it, Aiden,” she scolds. “You like it well enough when I go down on you, don’t you?”

“That’s different,” he snaps.

“How?” she snaps back at him.

He turns away. “Please don’t turn your back on me, Aiden.” she implores him. “Let’s talk about this. I’ll answer any questions you’ve got.”

Aiden thinks about this for a moment, then says, “I don’t see how you can have sex with a girl.”

“You have sex with girls,” she points out.

“Don’t start that again,” he says. “It’s different, and you know it.”

“Women’s bodies are beautiful,” she says. “To everyone. You know what I’m saying?”

Aiden thinks about this for a moment, concedes that Yvonne is right. Women’s bodies were beautiful. “Well,” he says, “so long as that lesbian shit is all in your past.” When she purses her lips thoughtfully, he adds, “It is all in the past, isn’t it?”

“I have a rather wild past,” she admits. “But I’ve told you before, I’ll never lie to you, Aiden,” she says. He frowns anew. “I’m with you; I love you. I love you more than any partner I’ve ever had and I’m committed to you.” When he releases a relieved breath, she goes on, “But we’re not engaged. We’re a couple, but does that mean we’ll be together forever? Neither of us have pledged to one another for an eternity or anything. And if and when we do break up, I can’t say for sure that I won’t take another lover–of either sex.”

“So you’re deep down, still a freakin’ lesbian?” he says accusingly. He knows that he isn’t handling this well, but he hadn’t bargained on this…whatever “this” was. And the bickering continues into the night.

“We’re at an impasse, Aiden,” says Yvonne at last. “You no longer trust me, and you’ve given me ample reason not to trust you. It’s not the infidelity I mistrust you for,” she explains. “It’s that I don’t think you have my back anymore. “You think less of me than you did last night. Or maybe I’m wrong; maybe you never did think a lot of me, as a woman–as a person.”

                                                           _______________

Aiden sits in the lobby of the Hilton, waiting. He isn’t sure why he’s even come, but Yvonne had said she was anxious to see him again. She had said over the phone that she wanted Aiden to meet the man she was engaged to be married to. Also, she had a really important question for him. Aiden had had quite enough of romance himself, having just exited his third marriage in rapid succession. He had never again found someone he was as content with as he had been with Yvonne. She’d said that this would be her own second trip down the aisle. Well, he thought, it could happen to anyone. He drummed with his fingers on the arms of the chair, impatient in spite of any misgivings about a reunion. He wonders if Yvonne has changed much in the eight years since her abrupt departure. He’d gained a few pounds. He looks down as his thickening middle, frowns. He hears his name called. He looks up, spies her, coming his way. My God, he thinks, she is still beautiful.

“Aiden,” she says happily, so glad to see him. With effort, he pulls his bulk from the overstuffed chair, steps forward for her embrace. She still places her hands just so around his neck. She kisses him on the mouth. “It’s so great to see you!” she exclaims with warmth. “You look great!”

“Now,” he chides. “You said you’d never lie to me, remember?” She laughs. She seems so happy. Whoever this guy was, he’d better treat her right, he thinks proprietarily. “So where’s your better half?” he asks.

She glances behind her. “Oh! Here she comes.” He freezes, uncertain he’d heard right.

“She?” he inquires almost inaudibly. Well, he thinks glumly, she never technically said that she was marrying a man, only that she was engaged.

Her joyous expression doesn’t change. “Uh huh. And you’re going to just love her.” For a moment Aiden experiences his own personal nightmare: would it be Diana, the erstwhile Lynn of both their pasts? He shivers involuntarily. What cruel irony, he thinks, but then looks up to see a stranger peeping over Yvonne’s shoulder.

“Aiden,” says Yvonne lovingly, “this is Chloe!” They both look at each other uncertainly for a moment, but then Aiden’s features relax into a broad smile. Chloe is about Yvonne’s age and very pretty–not stunning like Yvonne, but then few women are.

“Nice to finally meet the man of Yvonne’s dreams,” she says with a bright, easy smile, and sticks her hand out for a shake.

“Hell with that,” scoffs Aiden, and sweeps Chloe into his arms and twirls her round and around. Chloe laughs giddily.

“I told you that you’d love him,” laughs Yvonne.

As the trio sits around the hotel bar, deep into the afternoon, sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them, Aiden reminds his one time lover, “You said you had an important question to ask me.”

Yvonne and Chloe exchange a glance. “I do, Aiden.”

“Save the ‘I do’s’ for the ceremony,” he jokes lightly. Both women roll their eyes and grin.

“Chloe and I are getting married in a month…” Aiden nods. “Would you stand up for us?”

Aiden blinks in mild confusion. “Which one?” he asks.

“Both of us,” chorus the women.

Yvonne says, “We want you to give the brides away!” They all laugh joyfully.

“On one condition,” says Aiden.

“Name it,” says Yvonne.

“That I get both garters,” he says with a giddy laugh. It occurs to him that the three off them were getting pretty loaded. The table was covered with empty glasses.

Chloe, quite reserved at first, but who has become steadily more loquacious with the consumption of spirits, remarks, slurring her words a little, “Aiden, Yvie has told me all about you! Chloe’s eyes are shining. Aiden looks at Yvonne; her eyes seem brighter too, glittering like diamonds. “Do you like Hawaii,” Chloe asks. He agrees that he does.

“Then,” she suggested, with an eerie grin, “we might even take you along on the honeymoon!”

Vassily Aksyonov, Say Cheese! (epigraph & opening line; trans, Antonina W. Bouis) 

After the movies, photography of all the arts is the most important for us! —V. Lenin or J. Stalin

When and by which of the two possible authors this quotation was spoken is not known with accuracy.

Ah Lenin’o, ah Sta’ lēēn

Axe  ion  is  off   (& running a’gen then)

Well it’s hardly the new sentence is it …

Take my photo, Koba

tyranny of the signified

It’s like trying to see

the air itself

Your agitprop chop

nixed

— say cheese

Martin Amis, Lionel Asbo: State of England

In his outward appearance Lionel was brutally generic—the slablike body, the full lump of the face, the tight-shaved crown with its tawny stubble.

A novel     a’miss

sweet FU     UK

                Thuggish louts

(en route, NYC)

ASBO signified yob

bruter than signifier boy

Tyranny becomes fetish

one lump or two?

Say please

Ivo Andrić, Bosnian Chronicle (opening line; trans, Joseph Hitrec)

At the beginning of the year 1807 strange things began to happen at Travnik, things that had never happened before.

Strange b’place, Kin v. Art

one brow low one high

Stranger than wingnut

num(b)·er·ology

One ate one nought fewer

non bond·ouble “0” sevens

1807’s a master “Sixteen”

Positive integer, karmic 

numb’er

“Vibrational properties,” they say

One lump v. two

Flight re·route Sarajevo Blue

Donald Antrim, Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World

“Duck!”… From the skies it came, a gargantuan blue tome, one of those Compact Editions of the Oxford English Dictionary, end over end hurtling in projectile descent, pages fluttering and tearing in the wind, a screaming index of printed and bound lexical data, half a language heavy with gravity and gathering velocity. I dove for turf and covered my head as the OED cruised thumping to the earth.

Hurtling screaming index

d’ lexical data

Each ’tum point

a     s  p  a  c  e     ate

inside da’ words

Torque you round

shift yr ground

Ring tha’ blank space

Be you’m 27^th letter

Google say two plus seven

we’s buzzing on

Cloud Nine

Say “Duck!”       Sniper shots

cross street, Sara day-glo

heavy gravity for sure

 Re: “Tyranny [or fetish] of the signified…” Two source critical texts underlie many of these poems: Stephen Fredman, Poet’s Prose: The Crisis in American Verse and Ron Silliman, The New Sentence

 ASBO: (Anti-Social Behaviour Order): UK’s Blair gov’t restraining order for thuggish louts— this novel being Amis’ parting shot at Britain when he moved permanently to NYC. A different type of tyranny/fetish has been causal for avant poetry’s “demolition of the conventional relationship between the active (dictatorial) writer and the passive (victimized) reader…” (George Hartley, Textual Politics and the Language Poets)

  Tra’v’nik, Bosnia: Andric’s birthplace—Obrnuto (Bosnian for “in reverse”: kin v art). The Sarajevo ref is to another Bosnian poet & short story writer Semezdin Memedinović’s biting/numbing war collection Sarajevo Blues (trans, incidentally, by Charles Olson scholar Ammiel Alcalay) with SM’s debt to fellow Bosnian writers Ivo Andrić & Danilo Kiš

 “The new sentence is a decidedly contextual object. Its effects occur as much between, as within, sentences. Thus it reveals that the blank space, between words or sentences, is much more than the 27th letter of the alphabet. It is beginning to explore and articulate just what those hidden capacities might be.” (Silliman, The New Sentence, p. 92)

See previous poem’s footnote re: Sarajevo Blues—ducking sniper shots while crossing streets during the Bosnian war

Stephen Bett is a widely and internationally published Canadian poet with 25 books in print (from BlazeVOX, Chax, Spuyten Duyvil, & others). His personal papers are archived in the “Contemporary Literature Collection” at Simon Fraser University. His website is StephenBett.com

Arti-Blog (AB) : *Shatta Wale Sets Record @ Blue Top Villa 

 #BTV Hotel *.

 It’s sunny day-light and cool evening at the Blue Top Estates in Kasoa, Central Region of Ghana, West Africa. Well, it’s been weeks of thorough event-planning as the Prime Manager (PM) of *Blue Top Villa* #BTV Hotel in the person of Sir *Joel Bremang* and Events Organizer as well Programmes Manager of *Lucky TV*,Mr *Osei* had office meeting with Mr *Samuel Atuobi Baah* (Sammy Flex) as Artiste Manager of the Iconic Dance-Hall King *Shatta Wale*,thus as a means to host him on a show dubbed *Home-Coming Of Dance-Hall King Shatta Wale*. It’s highly publicized event on the main-stream media with both radio and television stations such as *Base One TV*,*Sammy Flex TV* and *Lucky TV* being media partners. There’s influential social media promotions and publicizations to ensure audience attractions.

      Factually, from eye-witness perspective it’s incredible sold-out ticket event coupled with tight security measures so as to ensure orderliness and success. Quite remarkably, at 5pm the surroundings of Blue Top Estate, off Nyanyano Road, started attracting fans of *Shatta Movement Empire* #SME and other music lovers. Specifically, as a means to ensure ticket purchase in order to pave the way of entrance and corporate celebration of the Christmas Eve (24th December,2023) in a grand style. It’s an outlook like Caribbean Carnival! Well, some of the lesser known Artiste who performed in the evening includes: *Angie Wood*,*Odeneho Cannella*,*Don Milla* just to mention a few.

      Indeed, one of the Top-SM-Leader in Kasoa to give worth-while mention is popularly known as *Shatta Sabali*,a close long time friend of the Dance-Hall King *Shatta Wale* as he coordinated well with the entire event planning team in Kasoa. The duo-primary MCs of the show were *MC Barimah* and *MC Big* alongside *DJ Richie*,*DJ E Fresh*,*DJ Crampy* (Baby DJ) as well as Shatta Wale’s personal DJ on his performance selection of songs. It’s evening of fire-works in the air and continuous cheerful chants of ‘Wale, Wale, Wale’ by the multitude at the Event Arena of *Blue Top Villa* #BTV Hotel. Thus, making history as Super-Star A-List Musician to Set Record in terms of populous attendees ‘over flow’ inside the premises and outside various routes of the Blue Top Estate in Kasoa, Central Region of Ghana, West Africa. Believe you me, it’s visible outlook of vehicles ranging from cars, bicycles and tricycles at various part of the residential area. Incredibly, drown captions of the event was like helicopter hovering over the *Blue Top Villa* #BTV Hotel.

      Finally, his ‘In Coming’ I mean entrance of the premises was through strategic back-stage door-opening with enormous security personnel such as the Police, Army, Bouncers as well as Body Guards on orderly arranged queue, viz straight to the stage. Momentarily, it turned all lights-off to bring about thunderous and joyous dramatic stage appearance of Africa’s Dance-Hall King *Shatta Wale* the ‘Multi-Award-Winning Artiste’. It’s beautiful Christmas dawn of 3AM Monday,25th December,2023 as he commenced unstoppable hours of outstanding electrifying performance coupled with dances of ‘Shatta Movement’ #SM fans from all walks of lives. It’s well attended festive season event remarkably sponsored by the CEO of *Blue Top Villa* #BTV Hotel in the high profile personality, Mr *Samuel Bremang* an Industrious dual citizen of United Kingdom ‘UK’ and Ghana respectively. 

       Arti-Blog ‘Written’ By *Ike Boat* 

Robert Fleming (b. 1963) is a visual poet from Lewes, Delaware, United States. Robert follows his mother as a visual artist and his grandfather as a poet. His art is influenced by the artists Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, and Pablo Picasso. My digital graphics series April 1, 3026 Rocky Mountain news report imagines the end of the earth. Each image answers one of the five reporter questions: who, what, when, where, and why.

This series was inspired by my October, 2023 visit to the Rocky Mountains when I noticed that the mountain surface has texture and I wanted to write on it. Further, I was inspired by visiting the Rocky Mountains’ city Leadville, CO @ elevation 10,158′, where I only had 85% blood oxygen and survived @ St. Vincent’s hospital.

I used the computer software Canva to create image layers which makes the illusion of writing on the Rocky Mountains. Follow Robert at https://www.facebook.com/robert.fleming.5030 . Buy Robert’s visual poetry book White Noir, * ARRIVING 11.21.23 white noir by Robert Fleming – Devil’s Party Press (devilspartypress.com).