Milli mála - 2019, Blaðsíða 94
94 Milli mála 11/2019
GILDED CR EATUR ES STR A INING A N D DY ING
teenth-century literary works, blondness acquires a dialectical volatil-
ity, with the traditional connotations now invoking opposite mean-
ings. In works such as Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” (1862)
(featuring the blonde sisters Laura and Lizzie), purity gives rise to
sensuality, innocence to sexual experience, and marriageability to
commercial value. The best way for an author to avoid this dialectic,
it seems, was to reinforce the earlier associations of blandness, creat-
ing eminently good and one-dimensional characters, as Charles
Dickens did with Lucie Manette in A Tale of Two Cities (1859).
How and to what extent does Dickinson’s poetry take up this
cultural and stylistic transition? She deploys the term “blonde” selec-
tively in her poetry, often linking it to sunlight, fire, or gold. She also
makes numerous references to amber—as Rebecca Patterson notes,
amber is the second most frequently mentioned gemstone in
Dickinson’s oeuvre, behind pearl (497). The meanings of “blonde” in
her poetry are diverse, hinting occasionally at hair colour, as in lines
like “Her Forehead is of Amplest Blonde” (Fr735), “Horses of Blonde
- and Coach of Silver -” (Fr286), and “The blonde assassin passes on.”
(Fr1668).11 However, in other poems, blondness describes the colour
of the sea in sunlight (“You’ve seen Balloons set - Hav’nt You?”), a
flame (“Banish Air from Air -”), and the hue of a chrysalis (“Color -
Caste - Denomination -”). This article focuses on “The Moon was but
a Chin of Gold” and “You’ve seen Balloons set - Hav’nt You?” to
explore interconnections among blondness, ideals of feminine ethere-
ality, and bodily performance.
In the context of these interconnections, the unifying thread be-
tween “The Moon was but a Chin of Gold” and “You’ve seen Balloons
set - Hav’nt You?” involves a series of literary elements that speak to
dualisms and contradictions which developed within mainstream
constructions of blondness in mid nineteenth-century America.
11 The last line comes from “Apparently with no surprise,” a poem Dickinson wrote in 1884. Patrick
Keane comes closest to offering an interpretation of blondness in Dickinson’s poetry in his study
of this work. Keane notes that it is surprising that the assassin in the poem is blonde, since the
etymological origins of the word invoke Arabic culture. He further argues that the incongruity is
meant to emphasize that the pale assassin is, like the flower it destroys, “luminously beautiful—
pure, prismatic, pristine, glistening” (134). Given the ubiquitous connections between flowers and
femininity in Dickinson’s poetry, it seems likely that the assassin is intended to be masculine, so
the familiar connotations of blondness—including purity and fragility—become ironic in this
context. It should be noted, however, that this conflict between the traditional symbolic meanings
of blondness and oppositional meanings also emerges in earlier poems.