Regret–yet having so much more–you think…Children,
A husband: Personal Victory, Personal Achievement…
But Emily Bronte created a family out of words, images that
Were heard through pages haunted by moors, mystery, injustice, anger, and revenge…
Heathcliff–a resentful, irate orphan wanting to wreak revenge…
Kathy–caught between two men–beholden to one in heart…
but propriety, society drew Her to another…A missing Heathcliff creates doubt that he will return; and cements her Decision to go to another–love being abandoned in her eyes…
Heathcliff–tyrannical…But Kathy’s ghost lingers…Heathcliff hears her pleas…Emily in solidarity with her writing sisters–unencumbered by A Man, the domestic prison that incarcerates
so many women…But Emily was free, So was Charlotte and Anne:
Ellis, Currer, and Acton Bell. Having to be men both Figuratively and Literally: donning a man’s name for the right to be published; and listening constantly to the muse without guilt, shame, stigma, or the calling of “Women’s Duty”…Following the heights of desire, their artistic souls on fire…Never caught in the gender-bound quagmire. Emily, Charlotte, and Anne were Uninhibited…
Emily Dickinson too–but was caught, suspended in anxiety’s time–never able to visit her best friend who lived next door…But was in artistic element creating poetic ardour, a shrine to the emotion of words and feelings fascinated by print.
Woman in white: a literary angel who often went out in moonligiht, seeking sanctuary from the closed-in walls and the anxiety that then had no name…Reclusive, a ghost haunted the manor in Amherst…
Emily Carr–a painter and author who captured Canada with her brush and pen–specifically B.C. with its native people and culture. Emily, who made a lifetime sojourn to the B.C. interior–finding her destiny by accident. Like Dian Fossey in later years, who went to Central Africa for a short time to study the mountain gorillas, but ended up returning there: staying a lifetime. Dian left a legacy of knowledge, learning, and advocacy…an admirer and protector of Nature’s Children…
Emily Carr–an admirer of Mother Earth, and an associate of the famous “seven”–listening constantly to her muse…no object of male derision, dominance, or dehumanizing…
Her Spouse is her Art: her children, the paintings born out of the liquid on her brush…And the books birthed from her fertile creativity…Emily Bronte–she needed no husband, her companions being her sisters and her Ever-present imagination…
And Emily Dickinson–she the angel of white, her poetic light evident in alphabetic figures revealing the human heart…
Her family were poems, letters to a best friend, a propensity to create, and a writing desk that hid her secret: symbolized in sheets of white…
The three Emily’s united by creative presence and artistic ability…
Women, not alone, not to be objects of pity: but free to roam the paradise of Uninterrupted creativity–not chained, not prevented by the duties of womanhood: Not shared, and done exclusively by women.
I did this poem in relation to a presentation on Dorothy Livesay, as part of a conference put on by the League Of Canadian Poets. One part of the conference was dedicated to hearing presentations by women poets whose focus was on other women poets. Dorothy Livesay was the subject of my presentation.
I understood how she at first, bought into the patriarchal view of single women artists, who never had children, and were meant to be objects of pity. But, near the end of the poem, she changes her position, and realizes that she is the one that should be the object of pity, for her creativity has often been limited by the duties of wife and mother. Dorothy Livesay, who won the Governor General’s award for poetry twice, felt this way. That made me respond in poetry. I then followed up the poem with a presentation on the history of the women’s movement, and also how the patriarchal definition of being a woman–docile, focussing solely on domesticity–is a social construct that must be removed. If women are to be free not only creatively, but as human beings who can find purpose, and be whole, engaging in life apart from being a wife and mother, this construct must be removed.
I enjoyed being part of this conference, and it was a good experience.