{"id":653,"date":"2021-09-08T23:44:30","date_gmt":"2021-09-09T03:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/?p=653"},"modified":"2021-09-08T23:44:30","modified_gmt":"2021-09-09T03:44:30","slug":"fear-of-indulgence-in-fields-underneath-the-bough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2021\/09\/08\/fear-of-indulgence-in-fields-underneath-the-bough\/","title":{"rendered":"Fear of Indulgence in Field’s Underneath the Bough"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was drawn to the section of stanzas on page 18 of Michael Field\u2019s Underneath the Bough, <\/em>starting with the lines \u201cThrough hazels and apples\u201d.\u00a0 These stanzas describe the speaker and their love traveling through a garden in the morning.\u00a0 It closely followed ideas described in the background article for Underneath the Bough.\u00a0 <\/em>In that article, Robert Fletcher describes this work as having different and simultaneous accounts of desire; Michael Field\u2019s work seems to have \u201c\u2018a desire to tell and not to tell\u2026\u2019\u201d (114).\u00a0 In these stanzas, the speaker describes the act of eating apples, but also simultaneously describes themselves as being \u201cUnfed that day\u201d (Field 19).\u00a0 They seem to declare something, but also rescind these statements two stanzas later.\u00a0 This connects to the end of the second stanza from this grouping.\u00a0 Here Field states, \u201cBy one rare rose: \/ Did we smell at the heart, \/ And then depart?\u201d (19).\u00a0 The speaker and the lover seem to indulge themselves in the garden, but then immediately flee.\u00a0 Additionally, each stanza ends in a question mark, as if to say that the speaker is questioning their actions or questioning the truth of the interactions between the two of them.\u00a0 The speaker desires to describe the morning interactions but doesn\u2019t completely commit to them as absolute truths.<\/p>\n

On the surface, these stanzas seem to describe a morning outing between two lovers, but it also has deep sexual implications and innuendos.\u00a0 Eating the fruit in this garden seems to signify a passionate sexual encounter between the speaker and their love.\u00a0 However, the speaker has eaten in the first stanza but seems to end the third stanza feeling unfed or unsatisfied.\u00a0 Reading these stanzas in a sexual lens perhaps offers the question of whether the circumstances of this erotic relationship, forced to take place \u201cback by the alley\u201d, is satisfying and fulfilling for the speaker (Field 19).\u00a0 They soon depart this setting after three short stanzas, but it seems that the speaker wishes to live in a place of \u201croses and apples\u201d, since the third stanza ends with the speaker grappling with their own personal circumstances.\u00a0 These three stanzas can certainly connect with the rest of the work as well, since Field frequently uses sexual innuendo to make this romantic relationship more tangible.\u00a0 Frequently throughout this work, erotic relations, such as the one described in these stanzas, are regarded as equal, if not more important, than any verbal expression of love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was drawn to the section of stanzas on page 18 of Michael Field\u2019s Underneath the Bough, starting with the lines \u201cThrough hazels and apples\u201d.\u00a0 These stanzas describe the speaker and their love traveling through a garden in the morning.\u00a0 It closely followed ideas described in the background article for Underneath the Bough.\u00a0 In that … Continue reading Fear of Indulgence in Field’s Underneath the Bough<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3893,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145909],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}