Sarah Canary Q5 - '“The Wild Woman does not recognize herself in a mirror”'

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What does Sarah Canary have to say about women and their place in society? Is this a feminist novel? There are very obvious scenes that demonstrate the mistreatment of women and minorities in the book, but is there something deeper here?

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    Adding comment so I see what others say about this.

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    Actually there is something that I would like to add here, not so much about the questions but the starting quote “The Wild Woman does not recognize herself in a mirror”. Mirrors can come in all forms, and the ones which are most in focus here are (I think) the ways we find mirrors of ourselves in other people - most commonly and frustratingly, flaws and faults in them which reflect the same ones in ourselves.

    So I think that in this metaphorical sense, irrespective of the literal sense, Sarah did not recognise herself in any of the people around her. And said people did not really see reflections of themselves, except in the limited sense that they saw the thing they wanted her to be, rather than the thing that she was (whatever that might be?)

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    I can't see much deeper. The book really does hammer home that it's a dreadful time and place to be a woman or one of a minority. And even generally decent people casually accept or embrace some prejudice - though most people in the book cannot even be called "generally decent" apart from the main three.

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    As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm wondering if the phrase in the question has to do with women somehow not recognizing themselves - or with certain women (wild women) not recognizing other women when they see them. It's a bit too subtle for me to quite put my finger on, though.

    Later in the book, Harold quotes a few lines from a poem by Coleridge. This is the passage:

    “I don't mind telling you, I see things quite differently now. I see things quite differently since I've been wearing this dress.”
    Chin had a moment of inspiration. “Half woman, half man,” he said. And Harold answered:
    “All look and likeness caught from earth,
    All accident of kin and birth,
    Had passed away.”
    “That's poetry, Mr. Chin. That's Coleridge.” Harold unhooked the dress from his neck and slid it from his shoulders. He held it out to Chin.
    “She, she herself, and only she,
    Shone through her body visibly.”

    These last lines are perhaps pointing to the same idea? The poem itself is interesting. Coleridge wrote it as a description of a woman named Sara Hutchinson, and it seems to reference the soul shining through the body. I found a nice, short, write-up about it:
    https://stuffjeffreads.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/phantom-by-samuel-taylor-coleridge/

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    I also think the line about calling attention to ugliness when it could otherwise be ignored (BJ on Miss Dixon) is very much the philosophy of the book when talking about prejudice and sexism.

    It's certainly feminist in the same way that something like the Handmaid's Tale is feminist - it showcases an ugly society that mistreats women and certainly doesn't view them as equals. And by doing so calls out some of the lingering prejudices in current society.

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    @Apocryphal said:
    Later in the book, Harold quotes a few lines from a poem by Coleridge. This is the passage:

    “I don't mind telling you, I see things quite differently now. I see things quite differently since I've been wearing this dress.”
    Chin had a moment of inspiration. “Half woman, half man,” he said. And Harold answered:
    “All look and likeness caught from earth,
    All accident of kin and birth,
    Had passed away.”
    “That's poetry, Mr. Chin. That's Coleridge.” Harold unhooked the dress from his neck and slid it from his shoulders. He held it out to Chin.
    “She, she herself, and only she,
    Shone through her body visibly.”

    These last lines are perhaps pointing to the same idea? The poem itself is interesting. Coleridge wrote it as a description of a woman named Sara Hutchinson, and it seems to reference the soul shining through the body. I found a nice, short, write-up about it:
    https://stuffjeffreads.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/phantom-by-samuel-taylor-coleridge/

    This all has a very local resonance for me - Sara Hutchinson was Mary Hutchinson's younger sister; Mary became William Wordsworth's wife in 1802, and Sara was a frequent visitor, often for months at a time, to Dove Cottage, here in Grasmere just out of sight of where I am writing this. Sara helped write out in neat form numerous of William's poems, and is regarded as having the best and clearest hand-writing of all the women who did this. Coleridge became obsessed with Sara but the relationship was never consummated for various reasons - Sara's sense of propriety, Coleridge's marriage (to another Sara) and his own feelings of conflicted morality about the possible liaison, and his growing ill health. A large piece of rock called the Rock of Names has the initials of several of "the gang" including Coleridge and Sara. It was formerly north of here, but was moved to Dove Cottage when Leathes Water was greatly enlarged and turned into Thirlmere reservoir. Coleridge wrote of her under the private name Asra which has a whole collection of associations (for a brief exploration see https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/2017/11/01/sara-hutchinson-coleridges-asra/)

    One feature of Sarah Canary that is often commented is her ugliness: Sara was described as large-chinned large-nosed, dumpy and tiresome by some, but attractive, lively and curvaceous by others. Presumably it's all in the eye of the beholder... Sara died in 1835, well before the events of Sarah Canary.

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