Let Women be Unfettered from the Moon
The Metamorphoses of the Moon from Oscar Wilde’s Salomé to Mina Loy’s The Lost Lunar Baedeker
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36399/GroundingsUG.13.152Keywords:
Oscar Wilde, Mina Loy, Female Consciousness, Moon, Femininity, Salomé, The Lost Lunar BaedekerAbstract
The moon, for Oscar Wilde and Mina Loy, in contrast to its traditional mythologised conception, is a symbolic representation of female subjective consciousness, as indicated by the forms of female sexual desire lying beneath the surface of Loy’s poetic language and Wilde’s allusions. This paper converts the moon motif into a critical apparatus that allows for tracing of both the misogynistic provenance of the metaphorical association and its reformulation in the hands of writers alert to these problematic notions; as the title suggests, ‘metamorphoses’ not only indicates the phases of the moon as a reflection of women’s natural growth, but also alludes to the development of the symbolism of the moon from a traditional figuration of femininity into a critical feminist discourse.
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