Through Michael Field, I discovered the meaning of truth. I found the “I” in “we” – and the “we” in “I.” I dissolved physical and textual boundaries, experimented with gender, and crossed time and space. Through Michael Field, I fell in love with the power of persona and performance. I entered a space where creative and critical language co-exist. This piece speaks not to analysis, arguments, theories, or solutions, but to personal realizations, process, and passion.

In 1890, novelist, dramatist, and literary critic George Moore wrote, “I only have to say that it is not publicly known who is the writer or writers disguised under the name of Michael Field. Some say it is a woman; others incline to the opinion that it is a man and a woman; others hold that Michael Field represents the work of two women” (St. James Gazette, August 18, 1890[1]). The name Michael Field certainly suggests an individual male, but Field represents two English women: Katharine Bradley (1848-1914) and Edith Cooper (1862-1913), an aunt and niece whose collaborative published efforts included 25 dramas and 8 books of poetry. Romantic friends, some critics say. “Poets and lovers evermore,” Katharine and Edith called themselves (Donoghue 67).[2] But they were more than poets and lovers. More than aunt and niece. They were playwrights, Victorians, pagans, Catholics, muses. They were devotees of art and beauty. They believed writing could bring them closer to God, perhaps even transform them into gods themselves. With their words, they could create and control worlds, make fantasy reality, and bend expected rules of the body as well as the self. With their art, they could achieve the ultimate power: immortality. Unfortunately after their deaths, the identity and work of Michael Field became sadly neglected.

Most people do not know Michael, Katharine, or Edith. In fact, I just met them two years ago in The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Poetry and Poetic Theory (Collins and Rundle 1076-1086). A mere eighteen lines presented this author, these authors, by way of a formal introduction, followed by a tidy collection of eighteen poems. Intrigued, I searched for them on the Internet and in academic databases like the MLA International Bibliography and Literature Online. To my dismay, I unearthed a mere handful of anthologies, book chapters, and articles. The scarcity of information compelled me to investigate further, to hunt down the truth of why this work, this unusual threesome, ended up in literary exile. Was it homophobic taboos? The speculation about Katharine and Edith’s incestuous relationship? The expectations they challenged? Their collaboration? I became determined to find the single, most plausible, explanation. My obsession grew.

Certain professors grimaced each time I mentioned focusing my dissertation solely on the complex identity of Katharine and Edith: “Are you sure you want to study them? Maybe there was a good reason they were forgotten. Is their work even worthy of resurrection? I think you might want to broaden your topic a bit.” They only made me more resolved to find a way to challenge, interrogate, and cultivate my passion. I savored Michael Field’s work and devoured the only biography written about them within the last seventy-six years, a colourful and comprehensive overview of their life called We Are Michael Field by Emma Donoghue. I poured over articles by Virginia Blain, Holly Laird, and Yopie Prins, and trapped Katharine and Edith within the confines of seminar and conference papers on collaboration and identity. I discussed how seeing Michael Field merely as a metaphorical field of collaborative desire neglects the larger, more complex picture of what Katharine and Edith did with – and within the traditional construct of authorship. I examined how, in creating Michael Field, Katharine and Edith appropriated, redefined, and reformed (re-formed) the conventional identity of the Author. But footnotes and theories did not bring me anywhere closer to the truth I sought. So I traveled to Oxford, City of Dreaming Spires.

At the Bodleian Library, I read postcards and letters Katharine wrote to Edith and Edith wrote to Katharine. I did not tell anyone how I hardly breathed when I opened their boxes. I did not tell anyone how I got jealous thinking of other scholars touching those fragile pages, running their fingers lightly across the handwriting. Reverently, I held the letters in the slant of morning sunlight that warmed the scratched brown desk. Katharine spoke first.

Each afternoon, I sat in my room at Brasenose College and scribbled notes. I kept trying to fit their letters, their words, into some kind of thesis, something I could prove or disprove. I returned home with nothing but more questions - and a desperate need to understand why I still was not satisfied with slicing Michael Field into nice, neat abstracts for academic papers.

To me, Michael Field represented more than a pseudonym that some scholars suggested was a way for Katharine and Edith to explore and express their love for each other, or a cover under which to claim masculine rights and desires. I believed Michael Field went beyond a pen name to an independent form of sorts, one that completed an extraordinary triangle; after all, Katharine and Edith referred to themselves as “We of the Word Made Flesh” (Sturge Moore 245). In this way, Michael Field existed beyond artifice to something real; Katharine and Edith created – chose – this identity for themselves. Before Judith Butler even existed, they were allowing gender, sexuality, and identity to collide, connect, and merge. To perform. I decided, with much trepidation, to follow their lead. That decision changed my direction.

A theatre class entitled “Performing Auto/Biography” gave me the chance to explore the conflicts, expectations, and unexpected surprises on my journey with Katharine, Edith, and Michael Field. Here, I could entangle my life with theirs and reach beyond the limits of traditional academic study to a realm of free play and experimentation where I could be subjective, hands-on. Performing Katharine, Edith, and Michael would allow me to get under their skin, to put their words in my mouth, to speak those words for people who had never heard them before. Words like these, from their volume of poetry called Wild Honey from Various Thyme:

I had no previous acting experience, not to mention that part of me feared the undeniable power and agency certain to be unleashed once I uncoiled this tightly-bound knot of three. In trying to negotiate the slipperiness of their simultaneous masculinity and femininity, I might expose something raw. The question of what defines man and woman suddenly pulsed against the question of what defines morality. What would people think of me, so impassioned about an aunt and niece who were lovers and whose work fairly trembles with that love? Would they think their desires are mine? What would happen if they did? But more importantly, how would I see myself?

The stage became the place where I wrote my text, where I slowly, cautiously, unearthed, tangoed with, and worked through, my fascination with this being, this real-unreal amalgam of desires, genders, and authenticities. As scholar/performer, I transcended the cautionary tales I’d received from seasoned and sapient members of academe, those who said I should think about the future job market and carefully consider the impracticality of uncovering two eccentric writers who should stay buried. I produced two scripts describing my relationship to the research and recovery of Katharine, Edith, and Michael. My first, Act I, “An Invocation, An Infatuation, An Introduction,” conjured the spirits of Katharine and Edith for an audience, my classmates, who knew nothing about them. I immediately invited them into Katharine and Edith’s world:

In Act II, “Masking and Unmasking Michael Field,” I began, through the idea of persona, to emerge:

That was power: the ability to choose and change identity, body, and mind. Truth, I realized, was not one answer or one question. I imagined going to the London Borough of Richmond-Upon-Thames and knocking on the door of Number 1, The Paragon, one among a row of red and yellow brick. I wanted to breakfast with them by the fireplace, or pop in for tea in green Italian cups. I wanted to sit with them on their yellow sofa, watching the sunset or a barge blow down the canal. I wanted to talk with them about the time they kissed Emperor Otto’s tomb in Germany when the guards weren’t looking and ask Katharine why she wore fur in the middle of a hot Italian summer. I wanted to ask them why they decided to write a play about second-century former Roman empress Stephania, widow and gang-rape victim turned courtesan/murderess. Or about William Rufus, better known as Red William, second surviving son of William the Conqueror, who stole the crown from his brother and supposedly had a thirst for blood. I wanted to ask these questions, not because I sought a particular answer, but because I wanted to embrace all the possibilities.

I am still writing Act III. I only have a title: “Unsheathed.” My performance instructor, Lynn C. Miller, wants our class to talk about what auto/biography means to us, after having spent the semester performing. Still reeling from this journey of identity, of womanhood, and of self-discovery, I have a difficult time articulating. She invites a few of us to perform at a signing for a book she co-edited, Voices Made Flesh. Sitting there in the front row, facing a panel of women whose scripts shaped the book, I have a revelation. This space is what I have been searching for: a community of scholars who do not believe in the Death of the Author, who purposefully entwine themselves with others so the truth can breathe. All of these women, these writers and performers, are interested in the same thing I am – how the self is defined, manipulated, created, empowered, misplaced, neglected, forgotten, and recovered. Through the study and celebration of auto/biography, they are reviving voices and bodies, remembering. I now see there is a space in academia for creativity and research to coincide, to collaborate. I see a space where passion and theory meet and tangle, where the “I” is allowed in a variety of forms. This space is Michael Field.