I think that Michael Field was a really interesting author for this project, because it wasn’t really the authors name. The poems published under Michael Fields name were largely love poems, including “Methinks My Love in Thee Doth Grow” and they appear to be written for a women. The interesting part, is that the poems were also written by women.
Works published under the pen-name of Michael Field were actually the work of Katherine Harris Bradley, and her niece Edith Emma Cooper. There seems to be no distinction between which of them wrote specific poems, or even if every poem was a collaborative effort. It is suggested, though never proven to be positively true, that the two were having a lesbian relationship with one another. This could have been one of the reasons they chose to publish under a pen-name.
Using a male pen-name make an unknowing reader assume they are reading the words of a man, which is who they would typically expect to be writing about love for a woman. The pen-name Bradley and Cooper used also unified them together as one person. It took the bond between them to a very strong level. It also helped to hide the fact that there was a lesbian relationship at all, whether there was or not people would have wondered, even then. Hiding the lesbian relationship overall helped to hide that it was potentially one between and aunt and a niece.
If we can assume that the poem is written by one woman or the other, it seems likely that “methinks my love in thee doth grow” is written by the aunt, Bradley, because it discusses a child growing, learning, and wanting to potentially find their own goals in space. The first line of the last stanza declares “my love is grown.”
This poem is also interesting with the themes, because there are some religious references. While we are learning that Queer lifestyles were more common in the Victorian era than we might have expected, there still would have been religious tension there, as many read the bible to say God wanted love and marriage to be between one man and one woman. The first stanza of the poem states that the beloved wants to find God, and may leave the lover because of it, but the lover feels she “cannot blame thee.”
I really liked how this poem fit the theme of Victorian Queer Literature, even though you had to look a little deeper to find it. It wasn’t blatantly about two men falling in love with each other, because it was covered in layers of secrecy.
Good post and great poem! I like how, in the second stanza, the speaker uses fire as a metaphor for her passion and/or desire. She’s willing to let the flame grow large so it will warm her “chilled hands” (11). That’s a great visual. The speaker’s unwillingness to douse the flames with water may be an allusion to her rejection of the Christian ritual of baptism as a form of purification. The speaker may be refusing to douse the flame because she wants her homosexual love or desire to persist despite its socially-perceived religious immorality.
I like that you comment on the religious portions of the poem. There’s an interesting conflict between the speaker, her lover and both of their reverence for the religious ideology they’re familiar with. It’s kind of painful when she says, “And do not blame thee/ Nor break intrusive on the Holy Ground/ Where thou of God art found.” She views her love as an intrusion of her lover’s faith and can do nothing about it.