Woman In White

Madame's Nighshirt
Mrs. Peperium

- From Wilkie Collins' Woman In White

The heat had been painfully oppressive all day, and it was now a close and sultry night.

"My mother and sister had spoken so many last words, and had begged me to wait another five minutes so many times, that it was nearly midnight when the servant locked the garden-gate behind me. I walked forward a few paces on the shortest way back to London, then stopped and hesitated.

"The moon was full and broad in the dark blue starless sky, and the broken ground of the heath looked wild enough in the mysterious light to be hundreds of miles away from the great city that lay beneath it.The idea of descending any sooner than I could help into the heat and gloom of London repelled me. The prospect of going to bed in my airless chambers, and the prospect of gradual suffocation, seemed, in my present restless frame of mind and body, to be one and the same thing. I determined to stroll home in the purer air by the most roundabout way I could take; to follow the white winding paths across the lonely heath; and to approach London through its most open suburb by striking into the Finchley Road, and so getting back, in the cool of the new morning, by the western side of the Regent's Park.

I wound my way down slowly over the heath, enjoying the divine stillness of the scene, and admiring the soft alternations of light and shade as they followed each other over the broken ground on every side of me. So long as I was proceeding through this fist and prettiest part of my night walk my mind remained passively open to the impressions produced by the view; and I thought but little on any subject -- indeed, so far as my own sensations were concerned, I can hardly say that I thought at all.

But when I had left the heath and had turned into the by-road, where there was less to see, the ideas naturally engendered by the approaching change in my habits and occupations gradually drew more and more of my attention exclusively to themselves. By the time I had arrived at the end of the road I had become completely absorbed in my own fanciful visions of Limmeridge House, of Mr Fairlie, and of the two ladies whose practice in the art of water-colour painting I was so soon to superintend.

I had now arrived at that particular point of my walk where four roads met -- the road to Hampstead, along which I had returned, the road to Finchley, the road to West End, and the road back to London. I had mechanically turned in this latter direction, and was strolling along the lonely high-road -- idly wondering, I remember, what the Cumberland young ladies would look like -- when, in one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop by the touch of a hand laid lightly and suddenly on my shoulder from behind me.

I turned on the instant, with my fingers tightening round the handle of my stick.

There, in the middle of the broad, bright high-road -- there, as If it had that moment sprung out of the earth or dropped from the heaven -- stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white garments, her face bent in grave inquiry on mine, her hand pointing to the dark cloud over London, as I faced her.

I was far too seriously startled by the suddenness with which this extraordinary apparition stood before me, in the dead of night and in that lonely place, to ask what she wanted. The strange woman spoke first...

(Kate Bush performing "Wuthering Heights)

The Bronte sisters have to answer for a heck of a lot madness among females.

Comments

[Old Dominion Tory]

Today, the term for Kate Bush is "daring, conceptual artist." Yesterday, it was "just plain weird."

[Mrs. Peperium]

I think my favorite move is her withering swing of the hips with "wuthering, wuthering, wuthering heights....

[Old Dominion Tory]

I like the quasi-meme move when she "sings," "Let me in your window." That's soooooo deep.

[Basil Seal]

Tell me, who the hell is Kate Bush and why is she here? I'm beginning to worry about you people...

[Christine]

No comment.

[Christine]

(That was my attempt at charity.)

[Mrs. Peperium]

Looking at it again Old Dominion, I really think Miss Bush's knee swing in conjunction with the "Let me have it" refrain is really good. Quite good in fact. By this I mean with that move she proves there's absolutely no way to really let her "have it" which will keep her forever at Heathcliff's window doing the quasi meme thingummy...

Basil, Miss Bush is here because for reasons becoming increasingly well known to our readership, drama queens have long held a peculiar fascination for me....

[Crackie]

I think it would have added something if she had pulled off gloves. If there was a resultant display of fingers wonderfully whitened with doing nothing and staying indoors--well, we would be one "Heathcliff, you may come forward" from a major work of music video art.

[american fez]

It should be pointed out that Kate Bush was only seventeen years old when she wrote, sang and danced this song. I think it's pretty good for seventeen. And it's a zillion times better than what anyone would do today, of any age.

[Christine]

Fez,
True. But that doesn't change the fact that she looks bizarre...

[Mrs. Peperium]

She was only 17? That makes a lot of sense. The Brontes' romanticism have high appeal to girls of that age.

Strangley, the dance really appears more silent movie-ish than contemporary. If Kate weren't so tall, you could almost convince yourself this was Gloria Swanson. Or Theda Bara.

[american fez]

She's actually tiny in person. I suppose she just looks tall in the video.
I remember seeing her perform this on TV back in 1978 when I was a very young and impressionable little boy and thinking it was the most wonderful thing I'd ever seen: Goodbye tin soldiers and toy cars, hello witchy looking girls!
(This is probably more information than you want to know, my apologies).

[Mrs. Peperium]

Oh it's confession time is it? Cool. Okay. I'll admit it. I used to listen to Kate Bush all the time. Back in the mid-'80's she had a very popular album that I used to play in my office as I designed McDonald happy meal boxes and whatnot... Wuthering Heights was on that album. All I knew about Kate was that she has a huge fear of flying so if one wanted to see her perform, you had to go to England. I never saw Kate dance "Wuthering Heights" and I'd like to think but cannot say with complete confidence that had I, I would have stopped listening to her as I was also a big fan of "Squeeze" at the time...

When I was a little more than 17, Pat Benatar (remember her?) did a version of Wuthering Heights that I really liked. It came out just after I had read the novel for the first time. I thought the Brontes very good back then and read most of all 3 sisters' works. But one must recall that this was a time when I was also known to occasionally sing (along with my roommates at finishing school) into hairbushes (our pretend microphones) to Diana Ross' "Stop in the Name of Love"...yes with all of the think it o-o-o-o-over hand gestures the Supremes used to do too....

[Christine]

Surely that can't be any more embarrassing than my locking myself in my room at 17, belting out Sinead O'Connor on my guitar, and writing bad confessional poetry...

[american fez]

bad confessional poetry is so much, much better than good non-confessional poetry, don't you think?

[Christine]

Fez,
Either there is a negative missing in your sentence or you are speaking in jest; surely you aren't denouncing formalism?

[Mrs. Peperium]

Oh, that was pure Fez Christine...and he's right, bad confessional poetry is so much better good confessional poetry...one takes an enormous perverse pleasure in reading it...we know the Crack Young Staff over at Hatemongers does as they hold a bad poetry contest every year...I do too...I mean how can one not laugh when reading this by Anne Sexton:

When Man Enters Woman

When man
enters woman,
like the surf biting the shore,
again and again,
and the woman opens her mouth in pleasure
and her teeth gleam
like the alphabet,
Logos appears milking a star,
and the man
inside of woman
ties a knot
so that they will
never again be separate
and the woman
climbs into a flower
and swallows its stem
and Logos appears
and unleashed their rivers.

This man,
this woman
with their double hunger,
have tried to reach through
the curtain of God
and briefly they have,
though God
in His perversity
unties the knot.

-----

Mr. P was leaving for work when I made him read this, now he's taking another shower....oh and how dated is the line:

...and her teeth gleam like the alphabet...

We are the floridated generation. We have all our teeth meaning 32...not 26 or less like Anne Sexton and her counterparts must have had...

Oh and Anne Sexton, Sylvia Path and Stanley McCormick were all at the same nut house. Anne used to hold poetry workshops there so if you read someone took a poetry workshop with Anne Sexton, changes are it was while the person was in the Asylum...spending your days at the Asylum writing bosh like this must not have been helpful during your recovery...

Anne also ended up killing herself to keep up with Sylvia. They were in total competition with each other....seriously...read Gracefully Insane...

Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, like their ungraceful poetry, were never gracfully insane... they were merely educated beyond their capacity to think they were special and in the end were just drama queens...

[Christine]

Re: Anne Sexton's poem above, Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgghhhhh...

I don't think ALL confessional poetry is horrible; Plath had a gift, as did Lowell (though in very different ways).

William Logan has a bitingly humorous review of another uppity woymn confessional poet here:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DEEDC1E31F93BA25752C0A961948260

[american fez]

I do denounce formalism, mostly because the margins are too wide when you print it out.

[Christine]

Surely no margins are wider than when printing out that yowler Ginsberg...