Revisiting the wreck: PJ Harvey's Dry and the drowned virgin-whore

Extract

This is the place

And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair

streams black, the merman in his armoured body

We circle silently

about the wreck

we dive into the hold

I am she: I am he ...

(‘Diving into the Wreck’: Rich 1973, p. 24)

Were Adrienne Rich to dive again today into the wreck – of history, of collective memory, of identity – she might be surprised to find Polly Jean Harvey already there, feasting in the depths on plots and symbols, greedily stuffing her storytelling sack. Like Rich, with her dual-sexed narrator (‘I am she: I am he’), Harvey enjoys playing at multiple selves, and in doing so, she tells stories that are fuelled equally by the fires of female and male, hetero- and homosexual desire. In the final stanza of her celebrated poem, Rich creates another memorable conundrum of syntax: ‘We are, I am, you are/by cowardice or courage/the one who find our way/back to this scene’ (Rich 1973, p. 24). With her suggestive pronoun games, Rich calls for a uniting of forces in the excavation of a troubled past. This seems to be Harvey's conviction as well. Hers is a musical dramatic stage upon which multiple characters, in combined voices and disparate musical styles, act out disorienting and sometimes disturbing tales of identity, sexuality and power.