Claire Jenns
the speaker is painted as a witch within the reader ’ s mind but a compassionately vulnerable one to all appearances .
This impression changes upon the third stanza , as the poetic voice abruptly switches and talks of the previous speaker in the third person , indicating that a threshold has been crossed textually as well as physically . The second speaker tells us that ‘ Her voice was the voice that women have , / Who plead for their heart ’ s desire ’ ( TW , ll . 15-16 ), emphasising the power of voice in a metanarrative sense through Coleridge ’ s use of this to build ambiguity . It would seem that the generalised gendered stereotype of this ‘ voice that women have ’ ( Ibid ) has been used by the previous speaker to her own advantage in gaining access to the space . In addition , this makes the reader question whether we have fallen prey to this voice ourselves in its potentially affected vulnerability in the previous stanzas . She seemingly has enough power to enter the domestic setting , as ‘ She came – she came – and the quivering flame ’ ‘ never was lit again on my hearth ’ ( TW , ll . 17 , 19 ). The consecutive caesura and repetition of ‘ she came ’ ( Ibid ) highlights the moment of arrival and forces the reader to stop and dwell on the undetermined consequences of her entrance .
SOTA Anthology 19 / 20
We are only told that she extinguishes the fire , with the line ‘ Sunk and died in the fire ’ ( TW , l . 18 ) once again inviting association with witch-trials and witch-burning in particular . She is clearly at odds with the domestic scene she has been searching for . We now question whether her refrain of ‘ Oh , lift me over the threshold , and let me in at the door ’ ( TW , ll . 7 , 14 ) is one of self-protection or invasion , as the caesura now appears ominous in its function as a palpable boundary within the lines . This unpredictable status of character is Coleridge ’ s intention , as explicitly stated in a letter where she asks ‘ What do you think of her ? Is she bad ? Or not so very bad ?’. Of course , neither question can be definitively answered . While the first speaker has entered the figurative space of the second speaker , the latter has the last word within the space of the poem , and is presented as more active than passive as they ‘ hurried ’ ‘ To lift her over the threshold , and let her in at the door ’ ( TW , ll . 20-21 ). They have seized the voice of the first speaker in their duplication of her refrain . As we reach the conclusion , we realise the word ‘ witch ’ within the title does not appear anywhere in the body of the poem and is emphatically assigned to neither of these two voices . With the agency of these shapeshifting figures so ambiguously organised , the reader