Milli mála - 2019, Síða 98

98 Milli mála 11/2019
GILDED CR EATUR ES STR A INING A N D DY ING
meanwhile, is an image of containment when set against the “ample”
blondness mentioned in the second stanza. One could argue that the
discordance only emphasizes the splendour of the face. In other
words, the visage is naturally so gorgeous that it is capable of making
plain clothes seem like the trappings of universal beauty. On the
other hand, the presentation of these clothing and trinkets extends
the sense of distance and remoteness that are established in the previ-
ous stanzas. The stars, firmament, and universe function as images of
expansiveness and universality, but they also provide a sense of shape-
lessness. If the appearance of the moon emblematizes the disclosure
of a feminine performer, then the body of this performer is dispersed
across the night sky, to the point that it seems to be simultaneously
everywhere and nowhere. The “body” of the performer remains as
inaccessible as the face, albeit in a different way. Although the face is
distant, it is described in intimate detail. Conversely, the body is only
hinted at through descriptions of clothing.
Thus, there might be an element of concealment and obfuscation
in the representation of a feminine body, which reaches a subtle level
of piquancy in the final line: “Her Dimities - of Blue -.” Wardrop as-
serts that this line provides a “homespun effect, after the plenitude
and much-ness of the preceding three lines” (“Body’s Body” 44).
However, the final line seems to build upon the previous ones. After
presenting banal and “safe” pieces of attire, the speaker brings in
dimities—skimpy cotton fabrics used in the nineteenth century for
bustles, gowns, and undergarments, and often worn in erotic stage
performances. Moreover, that they are blue instead of blonde or white
is noteworthy, since brighter clothing stands at odds with the sym-
bolic valences of lightness that were allied with feminine purity and
virtue in the mid nineteenth century (in the case of Lind, for
example).12 Nevertheless, these close-fitting garments also fail to re-
veal the shape of the body. Instead, they mark a possible transition
12 As Mitchell discusses, whereas light-coloured clothing belonged to a series of mid nineteenth-
century American visual markers that melded purity, respectability, and whiteness, brighter-colo-
ured clothing was associated by the same token with ostentatiousness and vulgarity. Mitchell
locates a new vogue in the symbolic value of white or light-coloured clothing in the 1850s and
60s, stating that this was a period in which the “middle and upper-middle classes of Northern
European descent in America began to reaffirm their identity in opposition to aristocratic excess,
vulgar money and other, lower, cultural and ethnic groups” (77-78).