Fraudulent Marriage Between the Titular Witch-Bride and her Husband

For centuries, the straight white male perspective has dominated literature; much of what is written and highly regarded was written by people who fit these categories, and written to be consumed by them primarily. As such, much literature is (or at least can be read as being) riddled with misogyny. There is never an excuse for this misogyny– women in literature should not be stripped of their agency; they should not be cast aside in favor of the advancement of a man. However, it is interesting to look at these texts through a 21st century lens to see if any rationale at all can be applied to these dynamics– though not making excuses for these viewpoints and implications, it is interesting to determine the root causes behind them. In the case of William Allingham’s ‘The Witch Bride,’ misogyny can be read through the perspective of someone who is repressing their queerness to try to adhere to societal expectations of heteronormativity, and fails to be able to continue to do so. Through its rejection fo the sanctity of marriage of its main characters, the man and the ‘witch-bride,’ the poem provides a space for the portrayal of queer exploration. 

With this poem, we are first presented with a marriage, a marriage that takes place almost immediately after the characters meet for presumably the first time. The first line, “a fair witch crept to a young man’s side,” already establishes the label of ‘witch’ to the foremost and possibly only woman in the text. The descriptor ‘crept’ being used here is also an interesting decision, as the connotation for it is somewhat negative. ‘Creeping’ is not used in a positive light,and it serves as a juxtaposition to her being labeled as a ‘fair witch,’ already; from her very introduction, there is an air of antagonism and conflict. A woman, labeled in the narration as a “witch” despite showing no supernatural abilities, is written alongside a man that is not painted in a negative light in the slightest, despite coming to show a lack of dedication to his marriage. However, this conflict did not stop the man, in the very next line, from “[kissing] her and [taking] her for his bride.’ We lack enough context to label this arrangement specifically as a nod to a proper courtship, or possibly an arranged marriage– we also lack the specified time-frame that would clarify whether or not this marriage was set in stone as spontaneously as it seemed to be, but these are no-doubt intentional choices by Allingham. Here, there is an allusion to the expectation of quick marriages and settling down that are prevalent in society; there is an allusion to men, or more broadly people in general, rushing into marriages without fully being vindicated in them prior to their cementation, which does not lead to a happy marriage. Despite the oddly chosen descriptors for the wife herself, the man taking her as his bride is still following the formula of “man chases woman,” which is expected in hetero-normative scenarios. The mentioning of a kiss can be seen as a sort of ‘honeymoon phase’ before their flimsy basis begins to crumble in the next lines. 

People unhappy in their marriages, if they decide to stay in them, often do not respect them or what they stand for. Oftentimes, the adultery comes into play to seek out the passion and satisfaction that, for whatever reason, one is not finding within the confines of their marriage. This is true with the introduction of The Shape in the poem– the same Shape that is the representation of queerness and queer desire. The shape, representing the other, representing a queer and gender non-conforming being in an otherwise explicitly gender-binaried text, establishes its dominance from the moment it enters, coming into the already established setting of a marriage and “[filling] the room with snowy light.” This paints the new addition as bright and enticing but also implies that prior to its entrance there was an absence of light, a darkness. The queer figure coming into the story in a bath of light also allows for queerness as a whole in this text to be represented by light; The Shape upon introduction is associated with words that have positive visual imagery and connotations, which is a stark opposition to the Witch-Bride who had been assigned mixed signaled descriptors, and ones such as ‘crept’ with explicitly negative implications.