Transcript Document 7218137

‘I Am My Own Riddle’—A. S.
Byatt’s Christabel LaMotte:
Emily Dickinson and Melusina
By Nancy Chinn
Papers on Language & Literature
37.2 (Spring 2001): 179-204.
Presented by Sherry Lu
The Models in Possession
 Robert
Browning—the 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).
LaMotte & Dickinson
 Being
an artist: the necessity for
isolation.
 “The Lady of Shalott”—a metaphor
for the lives of both Dickinson and
LaMotte.
 Both LaMotte and Dickinson are
influenced by the British female
literary tradition. Example: Charlotte
Bronte’s Jane Eyre.
LaMotte & Dickinson
Emilie—LaMotte’s grandmother’s 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).

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).
LaMotte & Dickinson
 Personality:
Roland’s first view of
LaMotte—“shy 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).
LaMotte & Dickinson
Another characteristic—the riddle.
Ex: “Who are you?” (54)
“ I’m nobody,
who are you?” (288).
 The riddle: a reminder that—
(1) many Dickinson’s 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.

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.

LaMotte and Melusina
 Physical
descriptions: Melusina— “How
lovely- white her skin her Lord well
knew” (121); LaMotte— “She was very
fair, pale-skinned” (274).
 Melusina—a serpent image; LaMotte—
Sabine describes her as “some sort of
serpent, hissing quietly like the pot in
the hearth” (366).
LaMotte and Melusina
LaMotte’s three lyrics:
1. “Our Lady—bearing—Pain”: a comparison
to the Virgin Mary’s pain to her son’s.
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 LaMotte’s never being able to
acknowledge her daughter.

LaMotte and Melusina
 LaMotte
suggests that she is being
punished for keeping Ash’s child from
him.
 Just as the curse on the Ancient
Mariner is broken by “bless[ing] them
unaware,” so, too, does little Walter
break his grandmother’s curse by
accepting her.