I Lock My Door upon Myself

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I Lock My Door upon Myself
Summary The year is 1890, and Edith Margaret
Freilicht is an eccentric, red-haired beauty who
grows up in a small town in Eden County, New
York, where she remains an enigma to others. A
strange child, she wanders the countryside like a
sleepwalker, and insists on being called Calla,
the name her mother gave her before dying in
childbirth. At seventeen she is married off to a
coarse, much older neighboring farmer whom she
fights on her wedding night and for months
afterward. Bitter, unhappy, and increasingly
estranged from those around her, Calla leads a
life of quiet desperation until something
miraculous and tragic occursshe falls in love
with Tyrell Thompson, a tall black itinerant
water diviner whose trade brings him unbidden to
her her door. The townspeople are soon enraged .
In the novel Callas granddaughter recounts the
haunting resolution of this unwise passion in a
beautifully paced, measured prose spun fine as
poetry and as magnificently deep.
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Context

• People lived differently then, did things for
  life, they made gestures that lasted for life . .
  .Whose story is I Lock My Door Upon Myself? The
  fiction chronicles the life of Edith Margaret
  Freilicht, born 1890 and called "Calla" by her
  mother who died birthing her. Elusive, willful,
  eccentric, Calla is an enigma to the town of
  Shaheen, Eden County, New York, to her family,
  her husband, her children a flame-haired beauty
  who views her surroundings and circumstances as a
  sleepwalker moving through a dream landscape. A
  woman whose life comes to be defined by her
  association with a black itinerant water diviner,
  Tyrell Thompson. The fiction is told by Calla's
  granddaughter, in part to reach an understanding,
  a recognition Because we are linked by blood,
  and blood is memory without language. One of
  the magical things about Joyce Carol Oates's
  talent is her enduring ability to reinvent not
  only the psychological space she inhabits when
  writing, but herself as well, as part of her own
  fiction. She is one of the most talented and
  versatile writers of our time.

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Setting and Characters

• Setting 1890-1908- Shaheen, Eden County, New
  York1911-1912- Chautauqua River
  Valley1928-1967-
• Characters Calla (Edith Margaret Honeystone
  Freilicht)George Freilicht (freedom/light) (15,
  34)Tyrell Thompson (34-36, 43)Enoch, Edward,
  Emmaline (89, 93)

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Structure Three Parts

• Part I (3-52) Sec. 1-23identity--narrator/Calla 
  narrator--italics Callas thoughts narrators
  voice praying to God, addressing to the
  public/to the readerCalla goes on a religious
  journeyCalla's appearance--"red" hair (passion,
  desire)disposition--wild animal (wandering in
  the heath) kept silent might have been of
  unusual intelligence and sensitivity might
  have been touched in the head. Callas name
  (5) Calla--"lilies" in the field water
  /funeral flowersNarrator-Calla relationship Why
  "She was my mother's mother but not my
  grandmother...? (5)the narrator disowns Calla
  on the intellectual level?Autumn (34) meeting
  Tyrell Thompson (43) "Water dowser"WATER
  religious journey for Calla (46, 48)Well well
  of life? finding water --art--magic --Calla (29)

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• Part II (55-79) Sec. 24-35 Waterfall
  episode rolling along with the current of the
  river, not against itChoosing suicide /freedom
  following her naturetears/water (65)a passage
  wild animal pure water/spring

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• Part III (83-98) "Return" cyclingCalla always
  returns to the houseThompson always comes back
  to Calla at the end Calla returns to the past
  after the waterfall episode Calls returns to the
  house.generations--narrator/mother/Calla
  relationship)life/deathwomanhood (90-91)

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Style

• long-line sentences yet smooth readinghyper-symbo
  licpsychological/realistic novel

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Motifs

• selfhoodself-recognition/self-awarenessmadness
  (insanity)--sanity (83, 91)room/womb--prison/sanc
  tuary (bear children) exile (10)--an open bible
  a room of her own lock herself in lock the
  world outwomanhood woman's identity/experience/l
  iberationwater imagery (29...)seasonal cycle
  autumn (34)colors--white (5) green (24) yellow
  (71) black (36) redblack/white racism (Ex.
  64-65)

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• faith Christianity/ Public inhumanityhumanity
  love Vs. inhumanity in townspeople
  (anonymous)--inhumansocial identity--roles
  people playChoice Vs. fate choose to die to
  lock herself in to come out to help...love
  (spiritual/quality)/property (material/quantity)p
  ictures/charactersspiritual search
  dreampassion (nature)--reason (society/social
  convention)Language (10, 20, 75,
  85-86)id/shadow Vs. superegowillingness

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I Lock My Door upon Myself painted by
KhnopffOil on Canvas (Neue Pinakothek, Munich) 

• This work takes its title from a poem by
  Christina Rossetti, "Who Shall Deliver Me" (a
  title Khnopff used himself for another work of
  the same year)
• "I lock my door upon myself, And bar them out
  but who shall wallSelf from myself, most loathed
  of all? . . . Myself, arch-traitor to
  myselfMy hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,My
  clog whatever road I go".

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• "His painting is a self-indulgent but nonetheless
  penetrating portrayal of neurosis. The expression
  on the young woman's face suggests she is
  savouring a morbid state with all its familiar
  ambiguities and subterfuges...This female anima,
  obedient to the familiar Symbolist pattern, has
  withdrawn from the world and enclosed herself in
  her own solitude. The moral of this strange
  painting is that a world devoid of any generally
  acceptable meaning locks each individual into the
  intimacy of his own solitary experience. This
  experience becomes the sole foundation of a
  meaning that is private and largely inadequate,
  since such solipsistic make-believe naturally
  finds its refutation in the individual's death."
  (Michael Gibson, "The Symbolists",1984) Choice
  I do what I do, what I do is what I wanted to
  have done. (37, 55, 77) Tyrell Calla cross the
  border of conventions. Like Jacob, Calla pays
  dearly, but is rewarded with blessing when she
  lived to an old age. Many people in the novel do
  not have choice (ex. George), but Calla and
  Tyrell do. They choose to love, to die together.
  Calla is possessed by love, while the others, by
  property. When Calla gives her name, Calla, to
  Tyrell, she also gives him the power over
  her.Calla did not have a language to express
  herself then the narrator (the grand-daughter)
  has to piece together Calla's story through
  imagination, understanding, and spiritual
  identification.

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WHO SHALL DELIVER ME? 

• God strengthen me to bear myself That heaviest
  weight of all to bear, Inalienable weight of
  care.All others are outside myselfI lock my
  door and bar them outThe turmoil, tedium,
  gad-about.I lock my door upon myself,And bar
  them out but who shall wallSelf from myself,
  most loathed of all?If I could once lay down
  myself,And start self-purged upon the raceThat
  all must run! Death runs apace.

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• If I could set aside myself,And start with
  lightened heart uponThe road by all men
  overgone!God harden me against myself, This
  coward with pathetic voiceWho craves for ease
  and rest and joysMyself, arch-traitor to
  myselfMy hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,My
  clog whatever road I go.Yet One there is can
  curb myself,Can roll the strangling load from
  meBreak off the yoke and set me free.Christina
  Rossetti, 1876

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General Study Questions

• 1. Explain why in the very beginning the narrator
  says She Calla was my mothers mother but not
  my grandmother in any terms I can comprehend
  (5). 2. What is the meaning of Calla? How is
  Calla the right name for Edith Margaret? Why is
  her name specially ordained, fated (5)? 3.
  Describe Callas appearance and comment on her
  disposition.4. How does the italics function in
  the text? Who is the speaker? To whom these lines
  are addressed?5. The narrator says, Yes it is
  unimaginable that is why I must imagine it
  (10-11) and If this is not my dream, for how
  should I know the language in which to dream it?
  (20) and If this is a dream it is not my dream
  for how should I know the language in which to
  dream it (75). What does the narrator have to
  imagine and dream? What is the language the
  narrator uses? 

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• 6. The statement I do what I do what I have
  done is what I have wanted to do appears
  respectively on pages 37, 55 and 77. Who is the
  I speaker? What does the speaker do or have
  done? 7. She has faith in that life that was
  unnameable and she thought with a sudden
  half-angry conviction I am not drowning, really.
  I will swim free (29). Why does Calla say that
  she 'will swim free'? 8. How significant it is
  that Tyrell Thompson is a water dowser and a
  black? (hint Finding water and Calla both as
  social outcasts) 9. In her setting and in her
  choice of charactersCalla Honeystone and Tyrell
  Thompsonwhat is Oates suggesting by nature,
  especially water, imagery? 10. Why does Calla
  'lock her door upon herself'? Is the room her
  prison, sanctuary or womans womb (90)?
  Give reasons for your answers. 

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