‘ I Am My Own Riddle ’— A. S. Byatt ’ s Christabel LaMotte: Emily Dickinson and Melusina

1. ‘I Am My Own Riddle’—A. S. Byatt’s Christabel LaMotte: Emily Dickinson and Melusina By Nancy Chinn Papers on Language & Literature 37.2 (Spring 2001): 179-204. Presented by Sherry Lu

2. The Models in Possession • Robert Browning—the model for Ash. • The model for LaMotte? --Christina Rossetti: too Christian, too self-destructive. --Emily Dickinson: a kind of Lady Shalott. (188) --Melusina: “I have been Melusina these thirty years” (501).

3. LaMotte & Dickinson • Being an artist: the necessity for isolation. • “The Lady of Shalott”—a metaphor for the lives of both Dickinson and LaMotte. • Both LaMotte and Dickinson are influenced by the British female literary tradition. Example: Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.

4. LaMotte & Dickinson • Emilie—LaMotte’s grandmother’s name (36); a spelling Dickinson used off and on from age seventeen to thirty-one (Sewall 380). • Family relationship: a close father and a distant mother. • Dickinson—“Could you tell what home is” (Letters 475) LaMotte—“What is a House?” (210).

5. LaMotte & Dickinson • Characteristic of writing style: no titles; iambic tetrameter (210); six quatrains and capitalized word (35); dash (128). • Images of death and pain in their poems. Ex: the caller and the guest are death (37).

6. LaMotte & Dickinson • Personality: Roland’s first view of LaMotte—“shy poetess” (38); so is Dickinson. • LaMotte—“My Solitude is my Treasure, the best thing I have” (137). • Dickinson–“The Soul selects her own Society—” (303).

7. LaMotte & Dickinson • Another characteristic—the riddle. Ex: “Who are you?” (54) “ I’m nobody, who are you?” (288). • The riddle: a reminder that— (1) many Dickinson’s poems remain unsolved. (2) the quest to “solve” a work of literature or define a writer is never complete. • Both of them sent poems in letters and wrote letters that are poems themselves.

8. LaMotte and Melusina • share the experience of motherhood. • Melusina: a fallen angel; a fertility fairy; the mother of many children; a victim of curses and misfortune. • LaMotte shares these characteristics: she is creative as a writer, as a Muse for Ash, and as a mother and grandmother. Moreover, her life changes dramatically, and she becomes an exile.

9. LaMotte and Melusina • Physical descriptions: Melusina—“How lovely- white her skin her Lord well knew” (121); LaMotte—“She was very fair, pale-skinned” (274). • Melusina—a serpent image; LaMotte—Sabine describes her as “some sort of serpent, hissing quietly like the pot in the hearth” (366).

10. LaMotte and Melusina • LaMotte’s three lyrics: 1. “Our Lady—bearing—Pain”: a comparison to the Virgin Mary’s pain to her son’s. 2. LaMotte speaks of the actual birth and seems to suggest a stillbirth. 3. The initial interpretation of this poem is that the child died, which is consistent with LaMotte’s never being able to acknowledge her daughter.

11. LaMotte and Melusina • LaMotte suggests that she is being punished for keeping Ash’s child from him. • Just as the curse on the Ancient Mariner is broken by “bless[ing] them unaware,” so, too, does little Walter break his grandmother’s curse by accepting her.