Analyzing the narrative shift after the introduction of The Shape

What is even more interesting than the introduction of The Shape itself is how the marriage narrative is impacted after its arrival. When it has entered the scene, the Witch-Bride is no longer ‘fair.’ Instead, as she lay in his arms in the “dead of night” (which is a time people often self-reflect and come to important realizations), she is a “thing more frightful than mouth may say.” The same wife, who has in no way changed within the narration since her introduction, is no longer an object of desire, but an object of fear instead. This realization only being come to not only at night, but with the introduction of The Shape, is a realization that the heteronormative marriage he has with his wife is not one that he desires. Instead of staying with her, or communicating any of the feelings he has with her, he chooses to “[rise] in haste, and [follow] the shape,” the first physical and tangible evidence of him deciding to pursue queerness, or queer desire. This pursuit is no short-lived one, either, as he “[followed] still / When sunset sainted the western hill.” He, by this point, has all but abandoned his marriage in the pursuit of something that intrigues him more– the elusive shape. 

Further damning the wife, and by extension the hetero-normative marriage, is how her chasing after him is described. With his following the shape, the narrative puts both a physical gap and a metaphorical one between him and the love he had shared with his wife, if it had ever been genuine in the first place. However, even still, the narrative finds a way to guilt the wife for this, not the husband (who is explicitly male), and not the shape (who has no defined gender)— note that only the explicitly-stated woman in the plot takes the blame— by saying that she “clung” to his side. Not only that, but while “mocking and thwarting,” no less. The ‘witch’ who had been “fair” and worthy of a kiss a few lines prior is now a “foul witch bride,” and all because a man chooses to chase after a queer dynamic rather than committing to the one he had chosen already. With this, we also see that the queer narrative being portrayed here is not one that sheds a positive light on queerness a a whole– which is ironic considering queerness and queer desires are represented by a Shape surrounded by light in the poem itself. While pursuing queer desires in and of itself is not an offense, adultery is. The husband’s pursuit of passion here comes at the expense of the wife who did, presumably, nothing wrong. The queerness here coming at the neglect of the sanctity of marriage paints queerness in an antagonistic light overall– and so while there is queer exploration, this does not end positively for anyone involved. The husband chases after the shape, but never really reaches it. The wife is seeming to fight for her marriage, chasing after him, and “[clinging] to his side.”