Kate Bush and her women ... part 3

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@ifi.uio.no>]

This is the third part of the article called "Kate Bush and her women"
by Johann Grip. 

 larsi@ifi.uio.no



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In the second part of this record, "The Ninth Wave", which is an
allusion to Tennyson's "The Coming of Arthur", we meet a somewhat
different thematization of this situation than we have encountered
earlier. However, here it is not the acquisition or the destruction
of this "I am God" as symbol of creativity that is focused on.
Instead we meet the exploration of female motives that one could
call The Mirror Motive, The Painful Discovery that The Other Woman,
The Monster or The Mad Woman in the Attic, in fact is the Woman
herself.
	Let me start with he closing lines of the first song, "And
dream of Sheep," where the journey starts when "They" say that they
are going to bring the Woman (that has acquired the light in
"Cloudbusting") home:

	"And they say they take me home.
	 Like poppies, heavy with seed.
	 They take me deeper and deeper."

This "home" soon reveals itself as a gallery of images of women
that the Woman has earlier been bound to. In "Under Ice" we are
presented with the Mirror Image and the Other Woman. The woman
above the ice is skating and enjoys the speed and the control. The
the picture is soon changed:

	"In the ice, splitting, splitting sounds
	 Silver heels, spitting, spitting snow"

Something is moving, trapped under the ice. One is tempted to
equate the ice to a mirror. There is something that's trying to break free, 
but it doesn't seem to manage it. In one - frozen - moment the skater 
painfully realizes that this dangerous something that is trying to
get out, is herself, trapped behind this scarred ice-mirror. 
	In "Waking the Witch," a song with Faustian shape, with the
witchtrial as theme - throwing the witch into the water to see
if she floats - we meet a scene where the witch is going to confess
her sins to a Priestly figure. "Under" this scene we can also hear
another voice, the trapped bird we almost met in "Get Out of My
House," but that changed into a mule. One of the reasons is
explained here. The bird, now a "Blackbird", is described as tied,
trapped.

	"(Help this blackbird, there's a stone round my leg)"

Neither this metaphor or the witch-metaphor fits this Woman who
wants to see her "real" mirror image. Both the witch and the
blackbird is in the domain of the water which is the domain
of the patriarchy. Something that is expressed in the line "I am
responsible for your actions," which is said by the Priest, a
hellish figure in "Waking the Witch."
	One could carry on, dig deeper in. And I will, but I will
only sketch it out, as I have already written too much. In
"Watching You Without Me" we meet the Invisible Woman in "her
fathers house," where she is reduced to nothingness, where she
comes and goes like a ghost. The invisibility does, however, give her
one advantage. She can objectify Him, explore Him and at least have
her invisibility and freedom of motion to herself. 

	"You didn't hear me come in
  	 You won't hear me leaving"

One should say more. But that will have to do, even though we
haven't been introduced to the old woman, the Fortune Teller in 
"Jig of Life" or the Woman in "Hello Earth" that has replaced God 
and is controlling the world for a while, or the Woman in "The 
Morning Fog" who is reborn, but really just "repairs" everything 
she has done when she conquered "the light," how she becomes a nice 
girl again and fills the role as an all-loving mother:

	"I'll tell my mother
	 I'll tell my father
	 I'll tell my loved one
	 I'll tell my brothers
	 How much I love them"
	 
You'll have to look yourselves. What is left is simply a classical
summation of what is caught in the article's mirrorframe: "And
when self-concieving women from Anne Finch to Emily Bronte and
Emily Dickinson stepped out of the glass coffin of male-authorized 
text, when they burst out of the queen's mirror, the old dance of
death turned into a dance of triumph, a dance of authority."


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Well, could anybody out there understand my English? I won't
make any comments on the article, as this is much too long already.
Just one thing: The opening line to "Hounds of Love" should probably
be "It's in the trees! It's coming!" Well, that's it.


 larsi@ifi.uio.no  *  <Lars Ingebrigtsen>