FEAR DEATH BY FIRE

Zelda Fitzgerald burning her dresses in the bathtub.

Sylvia Plath burning her manuscript, a revenge fantasy.

Ingeborg Bachmann burning in her bed.

Clarice Lispector singed by a cigarette.

Edna St. Vincent Millay burning the candle at both ends.

Jean Rhys burned her own manuscripts.

Vivienne Eliot's notebooks went up in a garage fire.

Zelda burned alive while at the institution, her only remains a single charred ballet slipper.

All that remains.

What remains?

The self-immolating woman.

Jean Rhys' and Charlotte Bronte's Bertha Mason, tumbling out of Rochester House, a burning braid (in Bronte's version an act of madness, in Rhys' an act of righteous revenge.)

Colette Peignot's (Laure) delight at a burning church.

Cassandra runs into the house being set on fire.

Esther Greenwood on the Rosenbergs: I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive, all along your nerves.



(I have videoed myself reading from Jelinek along with a spoken blog about Laure and nakedness and frivolity, I will post on Monday)