By Lucy Verlaque ’25

Major: English; Minors: Creative Writing, Journalism, Editing, and Publishing and Gender Studies

Contributor Biography: In her time at Washington College, Lucy has loved being involved with student-run publications; over the years, she has served as associate and managing editor of Washington College Review, a staff writer and copy editor for The Elm, and prose editor and Editor in Chief of Collegian. She has also worked as an interlibrary loan assistant in Miller Library, a peer writing consultant at the Writing Center, and a poetry screener for Cherry Tree. In her free time, Lucy enjoys drinking coffee, watching silly TV shows with her friends, and obsessing over Jane Austen.

Brief Description: This comparative analysis examines the written works of fourteenth-century Persian poet Jahan Khatun and twelfth-century German mystic Hildegard von Bingen in conversation with each other. Though the two women wrote in very different contexts, there are striking similarities in their use of heat-based imagery to describe feelings of desire and agency. Interrogating the commonalities between such vastly different works illuminates the ways in which women of different backgrounds can find a shared sense of empowerment through writing. 

The following was written for ENG 303-10: Women Writers to 1800

Though too often overlooked, women’s writing has a rich history spanning thousands of years and various cultures. Studying work from different points in global history enriches our understanding of the writing women have produced for centuries and reveals ways in which they found autonomy within oppressive societies. Jahan Khatun and Hildegard von Bingen were both prolific, well-known writers during their respective times. These two women wrote within very different contexts—Hildegard in twelfth century Germany, Jahan in fourteenth century Persia—and their writing took on distinct forms, with Hildegard producing dense prose and Jahan constructing succinct formal poetry. Despite the contrasts between their lives and work, however, reading Jahan and Hildegard’s writing in conversation with each other reveals striking similarities in their use of literary techniques, particularly their shared use of light, fire, and heat-based imagery to convey intense feelings of desire. Inspecting the commonalities between the work of such vastly different women illuminates the way that writing provides women with a sense of empowerment, regardless of the context in which they write. Examining Jahan and Hildegard’s works together highlights how their similar uses of literary technique allowed them to convert internal experiences into tangible concepts and, thus, navigate a sense of agency within their writing. 

While both Jahan and Hildegard were hesitant to begin writing in the first place, they were also both able to subvert the power dynamics restricting them through writing. Jahan did not begin writing poetry until she learned of the long history of Arab and Persian poets who came before her. She began writing formal lyrical poetry, specifically in a form called the ghazal, which often traces themes of love and grief. Traditionally, this style implies that the poem’s speaker is male; throughout the poem, though, the speaker suggests that their subject is in a position of power over them. While writing from a male voice inherently subverts the gender roles Jahan faces, images in her writing additionally subvert the power dynamics of the form, compounding the sense of agency she demonstrates through her writing. In her poem, “Since you have left me,” Jahan writes of her lover leaving her behind, with lines such as “I don’t deserve you” and “Although you’ve shown that you / Don’t care for me, / My soul still wishes you / Prosperity” (Khatun 137) that illustrate the conventional power dynamic between herself and the subject she invokes. On a surface level, framing herself as undeserving of her beloved puts the beloved in a higher position than herself. Clarifying that she still wishes her beloved the best although they “Don’t care for [her]” contributes to this uneven dynamic. However, Jahan’s uninhibited expression of her desire illustrates the autonomy she has in choosing how to navigate and portray her emotional journey. In describing the “misery” she feels in missing her beloved, she writes that “a heart on fire / [Is] all of me” (137). By attaching the all-consuming feeling of burning to her heart, she conjures associations of passionate desire, shedding light on the depth of her feelings. In continuation of light-based imagery, she adds, “I long to see / The sunlight of your face / Shine here, for me” (137). Comparing her beloved to “sunlight” indicates the high esteem she holds them in; yet, being able to openly express her “long[ing]” for her beloved to “shine” for her puts Jahan in the active position of pursuit, subverting gendered expectations of passivity. Through visceral language and active verbs pertaining to these images, Jahan exerts clear control over the expression of her emotions. 

Similarly to Jahan’s experience, Hildegard was nervous about writing, hesitant to record her visions and searching for approval to do so. In a letter to Christian mystic and abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, Hildegard appeals to Father Bernard’s sense of power in seeking his permission for her to share her words; in seeking his reassurance, though, Hildegard defies the inferior role she is expected to adhere to by describing vivid, fire-based images of her visions. Hildegard explains that she has “seen great wonders since [she] was a child” and that she feels God is compelling her to share these visions through her writing (Hildegard 3). She clarifies that she feels “miserable” in her “womanly existence” (3) for not being able to properly express herself, hinting at the societal conventions which prevented women from sharing their writing and her place within that restriction. She describes her vision of Father Bernard as “a man able to stare at the sun without flinching, a courageous man” and herself as “timid” (4), further emphasizing the power dynamic between them. Hildegard describes her “vision, which touches [her] heart and soul like a consuming fire” and explains that, at times, she becomes “confined to [her] sickbed” due to its intensity (4). Despite her insistence of her inferiority as a woman, Hildegard subverts the weakness associated with her gender through her pointed use of imagery. Like Jahan, her reference to feeling “a consuming fire” that “touches [her] heart” indicates the intense passion she associates with not just her vision but her need to share it. She effectively conveys the strength of these emotions, which are impossible for her to ignore, by connecting them to heat-based sensory language. In doing so, Hildegard takes control of the narrative she hopes to later share with others before even receiving Father Bernard’s permission to do so. By employing this imagery to reflect her passion, she demonstrates the empowerment she gains from expressing herself in writing. 

Both Jahan’s and Hildegard’s writings communicate forms of desire, namely Jahan’s desire for her beloved and Hildegard’s desire to share her visions. By conveying these feelings through distinctive imagery, each writer exhibits the control she has over the story she aims to tell. In her poem, “If you should kiss me,” Jahan compares the love she feels for her beloved to a pot on a flame: “I’m like a cooking pot / That’s placed upon love’s fire— / All day and night I seethe / And bubble with desire” (Khatun 144). The “cooking pot” being “placed upon love’s fire” creates a direct connection between the speaker and the source that provokes her feelings of desire. The ferocity of these feelings is heightened even more by the active phrase “I seethe / And bubble with desire.” By once again situating herself alongside the performing actions related to her desire, which takes on sensory-rich connotations in “seethe” and “bubble,” Jahan takes ownership of her emotions and the way in which she relates them to readers. The function of image in “If you should kiss me” compares to the function of image in Hildegard’s version of the story of creation, titled “Redemption.” In this work, Hildegard describes God’s voice as it speaks to her. She explains that the voice comes from “the living fire” of her vision and that it tells her: “Though as a woman you are uneducated in any doctrine of fleshly teachers in order to read writing with the understanding of the philosophers, nevertheless you are touched by my light, which touches your inner being with fire like the burning sun” (Hildegard 10-11). Hildegard uses the image of “fire like the burning sun” to defy the societal gender role she is confined to. In her interpretation of God’s word to her, she acknowledges the social and educational restrictions she faces; however, she uses the forceful image of God’s “light” to reflect the overwhelming, “burning” desire she feels to share her understanding of her faith. She is directly connected to God through this light, which actively “touches [her] inner being” and thus allows her to break free from the societal limitations she faces based on her gender.  

Jahan’s and Hildegard’s uses of imagery affirm their sense of empowerment, even in instances in which inferiority has seemingly been established. In her poem, “Come here a moment, sit with me, don’t sleep tonight,” Jahan asks of her beloved, “let your face’s presence lighten me” (Khatun 154); once again, she compares her subject’s features to images of light, seemingly putting them on a pedestal above herself. However, she goes on to contrast this insistence of her beloved’s power with a more authoritative tone, ordering them: “Don’t sweep me from you like the dust before your door; / Dowse all the flames of longing you ignite, tonight” (154). By commanding her lover to not only acknowledge the “flames of longing” she feels but to “dowse” them, Jahan demonstrates her intention to make her desire known to her beloved and to act on her feelings. Once again, her active pursuit of her beloved as represented by desire-fueled, fiery imagery portrays her sense of agency in writing. Similarly, in “Redemption,” Hildegard clarifies her womanhood as a weakness only to reaffirm her sense of power in the following line. She first explains that, as a woman, she is “neither ablaze with the strength of strong lions nor learned in their exhalations, remaining in the fragility of the weaker rib” (Hildegard 9). Despite using the fire-related word “ablaze” to depict the confines of the gender roles forced upon her, she proceeds to detail how she saw “a shining fire, unfathomable, inextinguishable, fully alive and existing full of life…brightly burning in the gentle breeze, and as inseparable from the shining fire as a human being is inseparable from his inner organs” (9). The “shining fire,” as she later notes, represents God’s creation; to be witness to such an “unfathomable” image as she describes contradicts her previous claim of weakness. The “bright[ness]” of this image, which is so “full of life,” reveals the sense of empowerment she gains through depicting the wonders she sees in her visions.  

Though physically separated by time, Jahan and Hildegard manage to speak to each other through the intense, empowering imagery in their writings. Through specific language choices used to craft descriptions of heat, light, and fire, Jahan and Hildegard both depict their respective feelings of desire. By effectively communicating these deep passions, both writers are able to enact a sense of apparent autonomy throughout their writing, speaking not only to each other but to all readers and writers who find empowerment in their words.