If you were in class today, you got the handout with two Behn poems (by popular demand). We'll be talking about one of them, "The Disappointment" in class on Wednesday; it's a response to "The Imperfect Enjoyment" by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, which you can find on p. 562 of the Longman anthology. You can find "The Disappointment" (along with another, shorter poem: "To the Fair Clarinda") here, and over there in the sidebar under "Readings" if you didn't get a copy in class.
We won't be spending a lot in class on the first poem, "To the Fair Clarinda," but since it's short, have a look at it and post your thoughts here for blog credit. What's going on in this poem? Why is the poet so drawn to Clarinda?
Deadline: Wednesday (4/20), start of class.
12 comments:
The poet is conflicted with his love for Clarinda because Clarinda is a hermaphrodite. Part of the attraction is the typical wanting-what-you-can’t-have syndrome. He doesn’t know what to make of Clarinda’s dual sexuality. He considers it both natural and taboo – “For sure no crime with thee we can commit; / Or if we should – thy form excuses it” (lines 14-15). At first he claims the impossibility of sex, but then backpedals to say if the deed did occur no one could blame him for being attracted to such a “beauteous woman” (line 8).
What I find problematic is my assumption that the narrator’s voice is male. I find myself confused on the interpretation of the title - “To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me, Imagined More than Woman.” Is it a reference to Clarinda as “imagined more than woman” aka both male and female? Or is it saying more than just women imagine making love with Clarinda, implying that both men and women fantasize about having sex with her? Maybe the obscurity of the title is a reference to the duality of hermaphrodites, a type of play on words? Anyone else have any thoughts on this?
I read the poem differently than you, Katie, and yet I have similar questions. For example, is the narrator male or female?
In the first 8 lines of the poem, the narrator speaks in singular using “me” and “my”. In line 9, “me” becomes “we”, and I’ll be dipped if I can determine who “we” is. I’ve read and reread the poem, and I’ve looked up relatively common words in the Oxford English Dictionary to make sure there’s not some odd usage from C17 which gives a clue. One word that might be helpful is “swain” (l. 11). Swain is a verb and it means to play the lover or wooer. (Usually, according to Oxford, swain is used with the word “it”.) The usage of a verb at that point of Behn’s poem doesn’t seem to fit. The use of a noun seems to fit better. There is a noun derivative of swain: swain-ess. Swain-ess means a female lover. This meaning would not only fit for the poem, but would perhaps clarify Behn’s meaning. Though Behn does not add the “ess” to swain, was she taking artistic license with the word swain? Was she adding more ambiguity to the poem? Maybe someone else in class knows.
I differ in interpretation when looking at the narrator’s feelings about Clarinda. I think the narrator is entirely appreciative of Clarinda’s “beauteous wonder of a different kind” for it allows “innocent” love. This, however, does not resolve the question of the narrator’s gender because, once again, interpretation allows for either a male or female.
KW pointed out it was socially acceptable for a man to take part in homosexual love as long as he was the penetrator. Given this insight, it makes perfect sense that our narrator is male. The poem’s title, “To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me …” {emphasis mine} seems to suggest the narrator was the penetratee. If that is the case, a male narrator would be arguing his submissive part in the lovemaking was excusable for he wooed a maiden with no idea a “snake [lay] hid beneath the fragrant leaves.”
On the other hand, using a similar argument, a female narrator might appreciate the hidden maleness of Clarinda because it hides the “crime” of being penetrated by someone other than a genuine member of the family line. There is also the idea that hermaphrodites cannot reproduce; another safeguard against an imposter heir.
The ambiguity that me-thinks notes about the speaker's use of we" is consistent with the poem's broader theme of sexual ambiguity. The speaker avoids discussing Clarinda in terms of a fixed identity by using second person pronouns: "thy charms," (9) "thou giv'st us pain,"(10) "no crime with thee we can commit" (14). By not using what are supposedly stable gender identities, the speaker is able to discuss the combination of masculine and feminine qualities that Clarinda exhibits. Titles such as "Fair lovely maid" (1) are deemed "Too weak, too feminine" (2) to accurately describe Clarinda, for they do not account for the "manly part" (20) that s/he displays. Using second person pronouns frees the speaker from relying on one set of gendered qualities that are shown to be insufficient for describing Clarinda.
The female speaker addresses her lover Clarinda, a female, who plays both masculine and feminine roles in her sexual conquests of women. Unlike with an individual who is anatomically male, the speaker feels unconstrained and free to give in to her desires, probably because of the lack of social consequences (no risk of pregnancy or loss of virginity). The speaker pursues Clarinda "without blushes" also suggests that their same-sex relationship has an unusual intimacy. The speaker implies that she has nothing to hide; the two are both women, fully aware of the existence and nature of a woman's sexual desire. Because Clarinda is both masculine and feminine (or to use the speaker's pun on "hermaphrodite," both Hermes and Aphrodite), qualities that are traditionally defined as masculine (aggression, impulsiveness, strength) can be found in women, as "feminine" traits such as passivity, virtue, and weakness can be found in men. Suggesting that anatomy doesn’t need to constrain the roles we play.
(I'm assuming the narrator is a female)
There is a lot of play going on in this poem. On the one hand, the speaker is pursuing, yet two lines down the speaker is struggling in vain. The pursuit is probably mutual, but is being drawn out into a game. Perhaps there is also some competition, as implied by the switch to the first person plural 'we'. Clarinda is also playing a part in this teasing;
"When e'er the manly part of thee, would please / Thou temps us with the image of the maid".
I believe the speaker must be male and the "we" he refers to is males. They 'struggle against her charms'. Clarinda is a hermaphrodite. The speaker calls her "fair lovely maid", but says that is too feminine and that he should call her "lovely charming youth", which is more ambiguous and could refer to either sex. I find this passage very telling:
"In pity to our sex sure thou wert sent,
That we might love, and yet be innocent:
For sure no crime with thee we can commit;
Or if we should -- thy form excuses it.
For who, that gathers fairest flowers believes
A snake lies hid beneath the fragrant leaves."
The speaker is saying that men are attracted to her and want to have sex with her, which would be sinful if she were a woman. But if they have sex with her, it's okay because she has male genitalia.
Another piece of evidence that she's a hermaphrodite is the line "Soft Cloris with the dear Alexis joined", which are the names of a man and a woman. Footnote three explains that "hermaphrodite" comes from a Greek myth where a god named Hermaproditus refuses the love of a nymph named Salmacis, and she prays that they would be joined together for eternity and they take the form of both sexes at once. So Clarinda's "beauteous wonder of a different kind", is the kind of a hermaphrodite.
There is little left to say. However, what no one has mentioned is the focus on the non-speaker's youth. In response to the question "why is the speaker attracted to Clarinda?", it seems to me that it's because of her youth and maidenhood. The speaker (whose gender I still leave questioned) calls her "fair lovely maid" in the first line, and "lovely charming youth" in line four. Additionally, the language of "charms" and "nymph" were generally terms directed toward salacious young women; and the reference to "thy form" would also allude to young women, because *cough* the form of older women before strenuous exercise was common for women could not have been called sexy by any means.
On a side tangent, if the object of this poem is indeed an androgen-resistant hermaphrodite (which would render her outrageous beautiful and yet without reproductive capability), this kind of beauty would make sense: she would be without any testosterone-related characteristics like extraneous hair and certain aspects of aging.
Seems to be some disagreement here about what precisely is going on in this poem, starting with the gender of the speaker.
The footnotes, which give readers the choice between viewing the hermaphroditic Clarinda as "a freak" or "a symbol of the creative union of opposites," don't exactly illuminate matters.
Some hints:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF59nPVCUsw
plus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QaeojQLGQ8
As for why Clarinda is so attractive to the speaker, I was equally confused as to the precise gender of the two main personae but found that gender did not necessarily alter the overall meaning of the poem for me, regardless of how I tried to read it. I definitely focused in on the youth of Clarinda and the fact that this youth and beauty seems to make loving her an innocent rather than sinful act. In particular the lines "In pity to our sex thou wert sent/That we might love, and yet be innocent" seem to suggest that whatever form Clarinda takes, she was sent to the speaker in order to provide an innocent sort of loving. I think the speaker suggests some quality in Clarinda which transcends any physical qualities they may possess. I think that it is this ambiguous "other" quality which makes the assignment of gender irrelevant. The conflict then, is not so much regarding Clarinda's gender, so much as it is regarding the speaker's ability to fore go any social need to assign type or sex and instead love Clarinda innocently whatever form she/he may take.
I think that with this poem, the poet is fantasizing sexually about her friend, Clarinda, as indicated in the title of the poem: "Imagined More Than Woman."
The poet seems to be drawn to Clarinda because of her dual gender qualities. Although Clarinda is a female in an anatomical sense, she not only is a "fair lovely maid" but also a "lovely charming youth," which is a description that would be associated more with males (lines 1, 4). Thus, Clarinda is both masculine and feminine like a hermaphrodite, but the speaker finds herself attracted to the masculine side of Clarinda.
She seems to be asking Clarinda to let her imagine her has a masculine character, saying, "Permit a name that more approaches the truth / And let me call thee, a loving charming youth" (lines 2-3). The poet also admits to being the "too weak, too feminine" for the "nobler" Clarinda, indicating that she is the feminine one in their relationship.
The poet continues with her sexual fantasy, saying, "That we might love, and yet be innocent," which means that if they performed sexual acts with each other, they would still be virgins. She also fantasizes about Clarinda's hermaphroditic qualities of having both male and female genitalia through her language of "fairest flowers" and a "snake lies hid beneath the fragrant leaves."
And since the poet is "imagining" all of this, I think it's safe to say this poem is just an erotic fantasy poem that Behn wrote to exercise her skills as a masculine writer. showing that even women are capable of expressing sexual desires through words.
I thought it was ironic that the speaker of “To The Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love To Me, Imagined More Than Woman” implied that he or she had nothing to hide. I thought that perhaps Behn was hiding private homosexual urges and feelings from the public and this poem was a way to put these thoughts onto paper.
Also, my interpretation of the speaker’s sexuality is that the speaker is a female who is a homosexual. The poem’s tone with its use of phrases that end in rhymes leads me to envision a female addressing another female who is “so much beauteous.” I thought the poem contained words that a female speaker would be more inclined to say such as “charming,” “blushes,” and “fragrant.”
Reading this I am a bit confused to what is exactly going on and the gender of the speaker. For a couple of reasons: In the beginning of the poem the other person is referred to as female. The speaker repeats it a couple of different instances.Then further down in the poem, the poet refers to "our sex" as to be relating it to another sex other than female. If the speaker is referring to the same sex relationship, it is not clear. The text on the side of the poem has some inclination to a hermaphrodite but it still isn't that clear.
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