rbadac (August 22, 2000)Go Jim! Percipient points all he's given us in this very character- driven Gothic; the gender ambiguity is definitely used to mime what seem to be principles of action and inaction. Mrs Oke, the "second Alice," is the stronger personality of the two, despite her general malaise much of the time when she is in thrall to her reverie of the past, and is exhibited in male form at the moments of her prime influence, even as the first Alice Oke cowardly murders her lover in her groom guise when, in vanquishing her equally cowardly but wealthy husband in a fair fight, threatens to escape the bonds of their illicit love affair and become not only inconvenient but too real to support the rarefied poetic devotion which is all she really wants of him.Re-reading the story also illuminates the insistent motifs-- I noticed the bleating of lambs used like a Greek chorus throughout, the final time coupled with *psychopompos* crows and their "unearthly loudness of caw" heralding sacrifice and culmination. Then there is also the use of odors and perfumes of which Jim gives a handful of examples-- armed with this insight one discovers half a dozen more of them, in fact-- all implying the inadequacy of the other four conventional senses, and helping to create this fascinating "hole" in the text where a ghost goes, without one actually being provided. Back when Bill A. and I were doing the Fontanas I remarked that this story was more proof that "a ghost, if properly handled, doesn't even have to be there," and this is what we have here-- a silhouette, if you will, similar to the one the portrait-painting narrator exclaims would be a sufficient likeness of his elusive subject Mrs Oke could he but pull her elements together. *La Vita Nuova* is indeed a happy choice of reading matter for her-- Mrs Oke wants nothing so badly as to be Lovelock's Beatrice, but manages only to be personified in his poems to her as "Dryope," alluding to the nymph seduced by Apollo and, amusingly, Greek for "oak- faced."
The jealousy of Mr Oke and the mocking disdain of his wife contribute to the sharp outline of a spectral cuckolding, a space Mr Oke strains to fill (being denied any others) with his sightings of Lovelock, and finally fills with a bullet. In his extremis Mr Oke gains a second sight; his remark that there will be "no hops at all. No hops this autumn" while surrounded by a fruitful harvest means there will be no hops for him, none that he himself will see. When he drags the narrator to the bow-window of the yellow drawing room to peer inside and witness the assignation of his wife and Lovelock, he obviously thinks that Lovelock is visible-- and though the narrator only sees Mrs Oke on the couch alone, she is nevertheless in the attitude of a woman being kissed. Mr Oke's shot immediately afterward finds its mark so deliberately that it could only have been meant for what interposed in between.
The narrator however is indeed woefully inadequate to intervene in the mounting tragedy, and professes to understand so profoundly only the shallowest of explanations, though Vernon Lee of course makes him allow us to see more than he sees himself. His biggest blind spot is the naked hatred Mrs Oke has for her husband (he calls it merely "teasing," coupled with her acknowledged morbidity)-- as the unrecognized trait it is, it screams for identification. There may well be two ghosts in this story without ghosts, one a silhouette, the other staring us in the face the entire time, with the malignant audacity to be named for itself, even dressing up in its own clothes for us and speaking to us in its own voice throughout.
rbadac
Jim Rockhill wrote:
> Vernon Lee's A PHANTOM LOVERGo read it!
oOo
Jim Rockhill (August 23, 2000)
Dang! The bleating lamb motif and the name Dryope were on my list of things to address before I ran out of steam, but I could not have done either one better than you have. Can we pretend that my piece was an anticipated reply to yours?The hop crop scene would make an interesting study in itself since so many of the different motifs climax there - fragrance, bleating lambs (now with crows obbligatto), barrenness (of landscape and character), the obtuseness of the narrator, etc., etc. Furthermore Lee's description of landscape and storm in this chapter are beautiful - mostly dark with bright details like a painting by Casper David Friedrich.
What amazed me so much about this tale on this reading, and you say much about this, is the number of different ways Lee uses to hint at the presence of the ghost(s). One could probably find patterns in the landscape alone.
I could go on, and already have excessively.
Thank you for the many interesting points. As paranoid as any of us might get about running up against each other's pieces, I do not know why more than one piece should not appear in the WEIRD REVIEW about any one work, especially if the work under review is as complex as this. I had not intended to write a piece on A PHANTOM LOVER, but this second reading so bowled me over, I wrote myself a note at least every other page, I could not help myself. There are few writers of supernatural fiction for whom I have greater respect than Vernon Lee.
Jim
oOo
Jim Rockhill (August 24, 2000)
> When he drags the narrator
> to the bow-window of the yellow drawing room to peer inside and
> witness the assignation of his wife and Lovelock, he obviously thinks
> that Lovelock is visible-- and though the narrator only sees Mrs Oke
> on the couch alone, she is nevertheless in the attitude of a woman
> being kissed. Mr Oke's shot immediately afterward finds its mark so
> deliberately that it could only have been meant for what interposed in
> between.If we recall Mrs. Oke's narrative of Lovelock's murder after taking the narrator on the wild cart ride to Cotes Common in Chapter 6 -
"the groom suddenly rode up behind and shot Lovelock through the back."
(p. 323)- this adds a dangerous ambience to what later occurs at the window to the yellow drawing-room in the final chapter. Lee's use of the preposition "through," rather than "in," not only suggests the violent passage of the murdering bullet, but also prefigures the death of the second Mrs. Oke shot by her "cuckolded" husband through the back of what he perceives as an interposed lover. In a rather neat twist, the second Mrs. Oke, becoming ever more the first Mrs. Oke, or perhaps just "the Oke-faced one" (if you pardon my pun on Dryope) is killed as if by the same blow that struck down Lovelace centuries before.
If the reader is not careful, this tale will haunt them, placing curious thoughts and patterns into the brain at all hours of the day and night.
Jim
oOo
rbadac (August 25, 2000)
(snicker)...proving that Lovelock obviously did NOT have his pocket- sized copy of SISTER BENVENUTA with him at either time!Killed by the same shot. Nice, Jim! Thanks for pointing that out!
rbadac, wishing more stories had this kind of density
oOo
Jim Rockhill (August 25, 2000)
These things just pop into the head (nothing being in the way to impede their progress) unbidden.
Jim
ooOoo