field notes

i wonder what aemelia lanyer would think about saltburn

for one of my classes this semester, i had to watch saltburn for the first time. i did not like it! but thats not important right now. our class discussion was interesting though...we were talking about how the desire in the film and if its actually sexual/romantic or just about class and status. my professor kept asking if oliver actually had feelings for felix or if all the longing and eroticism was either manipulative or a desire to BE felix. im of the belief that the two cant really be separated. any desire that is that intense becomes erotic at a certain point. further, the desire to be like the one we desire is a pretty common notion. granted, saltburn takes this to an extreme that makes it hard to justify as the sole cause, but i digress.

we were talking about the bathtub scene and the desire to be close to someone through consuming parts of them (cannibalism to the extreme), or being near things they have touched intimately in some capacity. i started thinking of the moving waterlilies (call me by your name arose as the more well known example but it somehow wasnt the first thing that came to mind. in waterlilies, a french film by celine sciamma, a young girl ends up in the bedroom of the girl in her class that she desires; ultimately, she digs through her desk drawers and trash, and finds a discarded apple core that she chews on. this trope is becoming more and more frequent, but i wanted to turn to a 17th century connection i made to this trope of third party object fixation as a means to reach the person we desire, and the blurring of romantic/erotic/class desire.

aemelia lanyer (spelling varies by source) was an english poet, best known for her 1611 piece "salve deux rex judaeorum" which focuses on the passion of christ and includes a feminist defense of women, "eve's apology". her father was the musician of the court of elizabeth i, so she was close to the court circle, and eventually become the mistress of lord hundson. when she became pregnant, she was married to a musician of the court to protect lord hundson's reputation. her connection to the court, led her to tutor and companion margaret clifford, countess of cumberland, and her daughter, anne.

"the description of cookeham" is noted as the first country-house poem, and is lanyer's ode to her time at the estate of the countess (and the countess herself). lanyer describes the beauty of the property and its service to the countess in a way that makes one suspect she is not just talking about the property itself. towards the end of the piece, lanyer is describing the deep sadness of leaving the estate because the countess is leaving/selling the property. she is only tied to this property because of the countess having hired her. as they leave, the countess kisses a tree as a mark of her love of the property. what follows is lanyer's dramatic retelling of her jealousy towards the tree for having received such a kiss from the countess, and how she attempted to take it back by kissing the tree herself. in this piece, like saltburn, lanyer's adoration and yearning for the countess that seems homoerotic is complicated by the conflation of the person with the place and the status it symbolizes.

the power swap of saltburn is also mirrored in this piece. lanyer, like oliver's victorious dance through the halls in the final scene, ends her piece by exclaiming that despite the "rich chains" that tie her to the countess, she is the one with the power as her writing will outlive her and continue to tell the story of their connection.

i had to tell my 17th century lit professor from a few semesters ago about this and she thought it was brilliant. yay me. i also sent her a fanfic i found based on a piece we read in class #fire