Section xiii offers a more personal look into the interactions of the speaker and her lover and illuminates different functions of intimacy in their relationship:
[…]
The speaker notices “Something taking shape” and repeats the word “new” four times in one stanza, which emphasizes the novelty and growth that she is experiencing in the early stages of this relationship. However, her recognition of part of this new expansion and reinvention as an “illusion” illustrates that this love remains somewhat “suspect” (Loy 57, 53). She later uses the same parallel line structure of two words of description per line, but with “very” repeated and the negative attributes of “jealous,” “suspicious,” “conservative,” and “cruel” following it in order to reveal a darker side of attachment and love. The phrase: “[…] welded together / They shall become god” invokes religious imagery in relation to a sexual act, implied by the “weld[ing] together,” which is an unorthodox, subversive combination, yet portrays the coupling of the lovers as holy and set apart. At the end of block-quoted section, the speaker proclaims, “Oh that’s right,” which has a distinctly sexual connotation, followed by, “Keep away from me […] Don’t let me understand you Don’t realise me” (58). This seemingly sexual plea for emotional distance is ironic and demonstrates the speaker’s—and, more generally, the modern lover’s—conflict between physical and emotional intimacy and how to reconcile the two in modern romance.
Previous: Close Reading Section I Next: Close Reading Section XV
