Mary Elizabeth Coleridge's poem, entitled "The Witch,"
focuses on the wish to achieve acceptance as seen in the line, "lift me over the
threshold, and let me in at the door," which is used twice in the poem. Based on
research, the wish of the "exile to be allowed to enter, to cross the threshold" is not
an uncommon theme in Coleridge's poetry. In "The Witch", the figure is permitted to
cross, and it..."disrupts or irrevocably transforms its new
surroundings."
It is felt that Mary Coleridge's poetry is
directed at that of her great-great uncle, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A poem at the center
of Mary's "The Witch" is S.T. Coleridge's "Christabel," written about one hundred years
before Mary's poem. The theme of "entering in" or "breaking through" is exhibited by
Mary's poem and besides the content of Mary's verse, it has used Coleridge's
"Christabel" to become a part of Mary's poem.
Though based
on research, and comparing the Coleridge authors' work, without background, the poem can
stand alone; and since poetry speaks differently to each reader, "The Witch" can have a
variety of understandings attached to it.
For my part, the
title speaks to me before the verse. The witch may be the woman who enters into the
home, or the woman who welcomes the traveler.
The sensory
details lead me to believe that the woman walking ("the maiden") is alive as she walks:
traveling over snow—"neither tall or strong"—but her clothes are wet, and she may be
clenching her jaw with the cold. It has been a hard trip, but I don't think "fruitful
earth" refers to the present as there is snow on the ground; perhaps it refers to the
journey that has lasted so long while she has traversed the world, sometimes fruitful—in
spring—to arrive at this moment. She has never been to this home, but pleads to be
picked up and carried inside.
The weather is described in
the next stanza: the wind is biting cold and the speaker cannot stand it—her hands may
feel like stones because they are cold (perhaps numb) and she can barely speak but only
make sounds ("groans"). "...the worst of death is past" may refer to those who have died
around her, OR may simply mean she is past fearing death because
she is so battered by her trip.
In the brief stanza that
follows, she says she is "a little maiden still," which could refer to youth,
or might refer to her size and the
fact that she has never slept with a man, which "maiden" could infer. Again she begs to
be lifted and brought inside.
For the final stanza, the
first person point of view changes to third. The story takes on, perhaps, elements of
the supernatural (a common theme in Coleridge's poems). The new speaker describes the
woman at the door as one with a voice common to women who "plead for their heart's
desire." To me, it seems that the woman of the house rushes to lift her and let her
inside, while at the same time, the spirit of the woman—even a
vision at the door—enters and puts out the fire. My first
impression is that she goes into the fire, douses the "quivering" flame, sinks and dies
there. Another alternative may be that she literally comes into the house and the woman
welcoming her dies, never to light a fire in her hearth
again.
Having read Samuel Coleridge's poem "Christabel,"
there is a parallel between Christabel finding Geraldine and trying to help her, though
Geraldine seems already dead. It's possible this poem does mimic
the structure of the earlier one. If so, the maiden is the
witch.
