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ran over her like a garment, curving to the curve of her body in the way all shadows do. But as she stood there striped and laced with the darkness of it, there came a queer shifting in the lines of black tracery, a subtle, inexplicable movement to one side. And with that motion, she vanished. |
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The mysterious tracery of the pattern thus functions in a metaphorical sense, opening the way into the female creative space, in the same way that, in the words of Hélène Cixous, écriture féminine, 'the language of 1,000 tongues which knows neither enclosure nor death' enables the female artist 'to pass . . . into infinity'. The parallel between the pattern and female creativity is even more obvious in Moore's story 'Scarlet Dream' (1934). As in 'The Tree of Life' a pattern is the means by which Smith enters a world clearly aligned with the female principlethis time a pattern woven into a piece of cloth, which, when he studies it, gives him the impression of hidden power, opening the normal world to 'undreamed-of vastnesses where living scarlet in wild, unruly patterns shivered through the void'. The piece of cloth is in fact a shawl, and its bright scarlet colour, as well as its association with an item of exclusively female apparel, is reminiscent of the dangerous female sexuality of Shambleau and Julhi. The power of the pattern is such that it becomes, in Smith's dreams, 'one mighty Word in a nameless writing, whose meaning he shuddered on the verge of understanding, and woke in icy terror just before the significance of it broke upon his brain'. |
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Eventually, of course, the twisting design leads him to the other world that is awaiting him below the surface of the text. And again it is clearly associated with the female space. In this realm of literal representation, a symbolic colour (scarlet) actually becomes that which it symbolises in all of Moore's storiesblood, described by the critic Susan Gubar as 'one of the primary and most resonant metaphors provided by the female body'. Blood has always been closely associated with women through the biological processes of menstruation and childbirth, and it is also commonly associated in feminist criticism with female art, symbolising 'woman's use of her own body in forms of artistic expression', and echoing the plight of 'the woman artist who experiences herself as killed into art . . . bleeding into print' (Susan Gubar). In 'Scarlet Dream' the metaphor is surrounded by a strange, yet meaningful, ambiguitythe inhabitants of this world drink blood for their food, yet they also shed it as random victims of a nameless 'Thing'. Blood is thus simultaneously associated with life and death, in the same way as it can create both the space and the means for female creativity, |
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