In Emily Dickinson's poem 251, she talks about strawberries over a fence and how she would like to climb that fence in order to get to the red fruit. In class it was suggested that this was a metaphor for growing into a woman due to the connotations of the colour red. I found it difficult to accept this as a version of what Dickinson was implying because that suggests she had to climb the fence, as if there was a certain amount of discretion involved in growing up when this is a natural change. Why, then, would she also mention this He character expressing that same desire to climb the fence in order to relish in the red? Boys don't go through the same changes as women do, and yet if we are going by this metaphor, then they obviously do. I'm not saying that this is wrong, but I just don't see it myself. There are many things a metaphor could possibly be, and I think it is quite short-minded to set on one explanation.
By that same token, here is a metaphor that I devised based upon an explicit event in my life which is undoubtedly a flash-bulb memory:
Like ships sailing away
Straining with their load.
You know how it is -
Returning, you find the
Ships sailing, always too
Soon, too imminent.
Nothing but a spectator,
Yet painful to witness.
Despite what you may or may not get from this metaphor, what it's really about is when I came home from sixth form to find that our German Shepherd, Kelly, had to be put down. I had grown up with Kelly and she was getting on, and yet you never want it to get to this point. It's always too soon.
It's more likely that the strawberries 'over the fence' are a metaphor for sexual discovery which usually begins (in some form) at the same time as puberty - so the two are inextricably linked. Perhaps her fear that, were she to climb the fence and stain her apron, she would be scolded by God and yet, if He (not necessarily God) wished to climb he could, could be interpreted as the double standard of attitudes towards sexuality in men and women. The Victorians (if we lend that term to the Americans for now) were notoriously puritan publicly but not always so behind closed doors.
ReplyDeleteRe: Your sustained metaphor - it works and is a rather elegant expression of sorrow at being parted from a loved companion. Be careful not to unintentionally supplant a double entendre where a metaphor is meant to be though (see second line).
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