Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the poem, "The Double Looking Glass" in which the biblical legend of Susanna and the Elders gets a novel twist. Australian poet A. D. Hope depicts Susanna in an autoerotic mood in which she imagines a naked youth watching her at the same time the bawdy elders do.

From the Paper:

"The looking glass provides multiple and surprising perspectives, for the poem converts the story into a study of female erotic fancy. Susannah strips the "lily" (an emblem of purity from medieval iconography) of herself and, as she slips into her garden pool (the closed garden motif), she feels aroused by her sensual nakedness; she thrills as her "flesh reverberates its own surprise / And startles at the act which makes it bare" (Selected Poems 84 ). The poem pivots on a characteristic Hope stratagem: he turns the original story of the elders' sexual extortion of lily-pure Susannah into an exhibit of autoeroticism, which incites Susannah to lust for an imagined male even while the voyeuristic elders plot to ravage her."

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