Split identity is one of the main themes of the Victorian Era. It is prominent in the literature written during its time, particularly in the pieces we read written about gender, sexuality, and morality. Throughout the first three weeks of our reading, we encounter Coleridge, who spoke of peering into one’s own eyes and recognizing that there are two identities; a forced-to-be-private identity and the identity women had to wear as a mask in order to survive in the Victorian Era. Swinburne explores the split identity within sexuality; the physical, male body clashing with the feminine soul or vice versa, or a combination of both. These pieces reveal the face underneath the etiquette the Victorian Era is so widely known for.
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In The Other Side of a Mirror by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, an invisible door opens through the mirror the narrator peers into, a door that allows contemporary readers to reach out and relate in their own individual, contemporary ways. The split identity described in this piece is on the much more extreme side, considering these women were literally forced up against a wall by an entire society (including other women). But women have had to put a mask on for centuries, and this poem is powerful because of that fact. Coleridge’s imagery and description of the narrator gazing at her own reflection is powerful and depicts her raw soul beneath the persona she plays away from the reflection’s reach. As Carol Rumen analyzes in her article, this “banished identity” that cannot escape the narrator reveals what the “ideal” Victorian woman was experiencing; an unimagined silence.
“Her lips were open - not a sound
Came though the parted lines of red,
Whate'er it was, the hideous wound
In silence and secret bled.
No sigh relieved her speechless woe,
She had no voice to speak her dread.”
Came though the parted lines of red,
Whate'er it was, the hideous wound
In silence and secret bled.
No sigh relieved her speechless woe,
She had no voice to speak her dread.”
As Rumen points out, the poem’s reality is magnified at the end of the poem when the narrator mentions the shadow of a ghost, as if the narrator is saying “let this ‘real me’ be unreal, let her be merely a ghost,” (Rumen). The split identity women had was forced upon them by society, which differentiates from the other split identity examples we come across in the other pieces.
Algernon Charles Swinburne’s subject of split identity resides in and around his poem Hermaphroditus. Swinburne’s dive into androgyny unveils the position he had with sexuality, which caused many in this time to question his morals. Although Swinburne describes an individual facing a symbiotic relationship of some sort with themselves (male vs. female), the language and images used in the poem also indicate a fascination with sex and the curiosities of it. According to Jessica Simmons at Brown University, many during Swinburne’s time believed he “exhibited a poetic fascination with the complex nature of the perverse and the grotesquely unacceptable”. However, knowing that Victorians considered homosexuality as perverse, Swinburne’s description of an individual facing two identities is distinguishable and appears genuine. It feels as though the title he gave his poem was the poem’s own mask in a society and time period when nothing farther than androgyny was considered moral; and even androgynous was considered grotesque! Swinburne’s last few lines in the second stanza read:
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“But on one side sat a man like death,
And on the other a woman sat like sin.
So with veiled eyes and sobs between his breath
Love turned himself and would not enter in.”
And on the other a woman sat like sin.
So with veiled eyes and sobs between his breath
Love turned himself and would not enter in.”
These lines depict the internal struggle many had to endure during the Victorian Era, and Swinburne’s critics exemplify the wide and common opinion of homosexuals (and others). As Jan Marsh points out in her analysis of gender ideology and separate spheres in the 19th century, we see how in the early years of the Victorian era, “sexual codes were governed by religious and social moralism”, which changed when science began to sprout and grow in popular thinking. Oscar Wilde’s arrest for sodomy is one of many examples of this social opinion. This poem, however, also contains such lovely descriptions of love, comparing it to flowers and “night’s dew”, making it sound all the more genuine, rather than a gross depiction of sexual curiosities.
Erica Schreiner – untitled video still from Stars ©2012