“A Girl” Analysis - Catchy Title, Huh?

Before I even begin this mini-explication about Michael Field’s poem “A Girl” I need to express how weird it is that Edith Cooper and her aunt, Katherine Bradley, had a lesbian relationship. The lesbian part has no bearing on my opinion about this relationship. I swear I saw this on “Maury” a few weeks ago right after the “Baby Mama Drama Paternity Test Extravaganza.”

This poem is full of analogies to various parts of the female genitalia (the vagina itself and clitoris) and expresses one key point that Hall addresses in the Queer Theory chapter of his book – sexuality is not just physical, but emotional as well. First, the poem makes numerous references to the vagina, which consist of a nod to the clitoris, a part of the vagina that is often called a “pearl,” there is a comparison to a flower, “A face flowered for heart’s ease,” and the poem mentions the proverbial “lips” of the vagina. These subtle references to the vagina not only reveal the sexual feelings that the onlooker is feeling towards the girl, but also show how delicate they view her to be, like a flower. In regards to Hall’s point, it is as if the viewer of the young girl not only has the physical attraction, which is made quite obvious, but also an emotional love, “From her tempestuous heart. Such and our souls so knit.” This also proves that this connection between the two shapes their life and knowing it could be viewed in a harsh way (for being unorthodox to the heterosexual way of life), the girl is viewed from afar/in hiding, “Seen through faint forest-tree,” which goes back to Hall’s point about social attitudes changing. At this time, same-sex relationships were frowned upon, which is why they may never meet until after death, “The work begun Will be to heaven’s conception done, If she come to it.”