Elinor Wylie

[titania7]

Originally Posted by lionel

It's just Sarah Teasdale's expression 'Astride my belly'. Surely that suggests the missionary position, and why should there be such an assumption? Wouldn't Wylie have chosen to be astride the belly of the man she was with?

Lionel,
You never can tell about such things. Perhaps Ms. Wylie had a somewhat submissive streak .

~Titania

[titania7]

I quoted Elinor Wylie's poem, "Velvet Shoes" in a previous post. However, I think I must re-post this poem because of some of the points I'm going to be making about it. So, here goes:

"Let us walk in the white snow
In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
At a tranquil pace,
Under veils of white lace.

I shall go shod in silk,
And you in wool,
White as a white cow's milk,
More beautiful
Than the breast of a gull.

We shall walk through the still town
In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
Upon silver fleece,
Upon softer than these.

We shall walk in velvet shoes:
Wherever we go
Silence will fall like dews
On white silence below.
We shall walk in the snow."

What's interesting to note, as is pointed out in The Life and Art of Elinor Wylie by Judith Farr, is the emphasis on snow, which happens to point, on a deeper level, to whiteness. It seems that poets from Francis Thompson to Oscar Wilde to Yeats, have had a bit of an obsession with whiteness. With it's tie-in with virginity and purity, it's easy to see that whiteness might inspire a lot of poetry. For instance, such phrases as "snow-white words, lily-white words, words of ivory and pearl, words of silver and alabaster, words white as hawthorn and daisy, words white as morning milk, words whiter than Venus' doves, and softer than the down beneath their wings" were used by Richard Le Galliene in "White Soul" (from Prose Fancies) to praise a young girl's virginal innocence.

As for Wylie, she confessed, "I love words opalescent, cool, and pearly". She says the white snow in "Velvet Shoes" is like "white silence." It is newly fallen snow, still virginal, untouched and uncorrupted. There is a certain sensuality to this concept, particularly when you think of stepping on the snow--the "silver fleece"--in velvet shoes.

Wylie herself was described as "the white queen of a white country". In the nineteenth century, as Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar speak of in more detail in their book, The Madwoman in the Attic, white clothes had a special significance for women, especially women artists. For Wylie, wearing the color white may have been an attempt on her part to convey a certain aura of sexual aloofness. She was also quite fond of silver (some of her silver dresses, designed by Paul Poiret, were heavily beaded like armor). Both colors lent to Elinor's aspect a certain frigidity and purity, if not a strange magical power. She enjoyed being told that she resembled "iced chalk".

More to come on Ms. Wylie.....

~Titania