“Stronger than Death”: The Song of Songs in Michael Field’s Poetry and Life-Writing

Michael Field is the pen name of Katharine Bradley (1846–1914) and her niece and lover Edith Cooper (1862–1913). In the first article devoted exclusively to Michael Field’s reception of the Song of Songs, I argue for the importance of the Song of Songs 8:6, notably the asseveration that love is strong as death, or, rather, for Michael Field, stronger than death. In so doing, I draw extensively on unpublished archival material, thereby providing fresh insights. In the first section, I introduce readers to Cooper and Bradley’s use of the Song of Songs as their attempt to blur the division between the discourses associated with romantic and familial intimacy. It is this slippage between the two kinds of love that enables Cooper’s deceased mother, Emma Cooper, her daughter, and Bradley to become a creative triumvirate and ensure Emma’s immortality through artistic creation. In the second section, the discussion of the death of the women’s beloved dog, Whym Chow, leads to the exploration of Cooper and Bradley’s religious conversion and their submission to suffering in the name of Christ as a means of reuniting with beloved ones in heaven. In the final and longest section, I discuss Cooper’s impending death by focusing on the use of flower imagery from the Song of Songs as a reminder of life’s brevity and Michael Field’s desired aim of becoming the eternal Bride of Christ.