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I Am My Own RiddleA. S. Byatts Christabel
LaMotte Emily Dickinson and Melusina

• By Nancy Chinn
• Papers on Language Literature 37.2 (Spring
  2001) 179-204.
• Presented by Sherry Lu

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The Models in Possession

• Robert Browningthe model for Ash.
• The model for LaMotte?
• --Christina Rossetti too Christian, too
  self-destructive.
• --Emily Dickinson a kind of Lady Shalott. (188)
• --Melusina I have been Melusina these thirty
  years (501).

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LaMotte Dickinson

• Being an artist the necessity for isolation.
• The Lady of Shalotta metaphor for the lives of
  both Dickinson and LaMotte.
• Both LaMotte and Dickinson are influenced by the
  British female literary tradition. Example
  Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre.

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LaMotte Dickinson

• EmilieLaMottes grandmothers name (36) a
  spelling Dickinson used off and on from age
  seventeen to thirty-one (Sewall 380).
• Family relationship a close father and a distant
  mother.
• Dickinson Could you tell what home is (Letters
  475)
• LaMotte What is a House? (210).

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LaMotte Dickinson

• Characteristic of writing style no titles
  iambic tetrameter (210) six quatrains and
  capitalized word (35) dash (128).
• Images of death and pain in their poems.
• Ex the caller and the guest are death (37).

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LaMotte Dickinson

• Personality Rolands first view of LaMotteshy
  poetess (38) so is Dickinson.
• LaMotte My Solitude is my Treasure, the best
  thing I have (137).
• Dickinson The Soul selects her own Society
  (303).

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LaMotte Dickinson

• Another characteristicthe riddle. Ex
  Who are you? (54) Im nobody, who are
  you? (288).
• The riddle a reminder that
• (1) many Dickinsons poems remain
  unsolved.
• (2) the quest to solve a work of literature
  or define a writer is never complete.
• Both of them sent poems in letters and wrote
  letters that are poems themselves.

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LaMotte and Melusina

• share the experience of motherhood.
• Melusina a fallen angel a fertility fairy the
  mother of many children a victim of curses and
  misfortune.
• LaMotte shares these characteristics she is
  creative as a writer, as a Muse for Ash, and as
  a mother and grandmother. Moreover, her life
  changes dramatically, and she becomes an exile.

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LaMotte and Melusina

• Physical descriptions Melusina How lovely-
  white her skin her Lord well knew (121)
  LaMotte She was very fair, pale-skinned (274).
• Melusinaa serpent image LaMotteSabine
  describes her as some sort of serpent, hissing
  quietly like the pot in the hearth (366).

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LaMotte and Melusina

• LaMottes three lyrics
• 1. Our LadybearingPain a comparison to the
  Virgin Marys pain to her sons.
• 2. LaMotte speaks of the actual birth and seems
  to suggest a stillbirth.
• 3. The initial interpretation of this poem is
  that the child died, which is consistent with
  LaMottes never being able to acknowledge her
  daughter.

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LaMotte and Melusina

• LaMotte suggests that she is being punished for
  keeping Ashs child from him.
• Just as the curse on the Ancient Mariner is
  broken by blessing them unaware, so, too,
  does little Walter break his grandmothers curse
  by accepting her.