What could Jane Eyre, Rebecca and Emily Dickinson all have in common? Well, for one, they are all referenced in Taylor Swift’s brand new album Folklore and Evermore. Here is the breakdown of some of the literary references scattered along Taylor’s albums that will make any reader’s heart warm.
- Jane Eyre and the invisible string:
One of the most repeated motifs (the literary term for a recurring or dominant idea in artistic work) in the Folklore/Evermore universe is that of an invisible string. The so-called invisible string can be found in both the ‘Cardigan’ and ‘Willow’ music videos with of course, there being a separate song being titled ‘invisible string’.
Here taylor sings: “Isn’t it just so pretty to think, all along there was some invisible string tying you to me?”
This couldn’t be a clearer reference to the classic novel, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.
In the novel Rochester declares his love to Jane by saying: “As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you.”
What makes this Jane Eyre delusion more complex and intricate is that on the folklore tracklist, it is placed right next to a track called ‘mad woman’. Now the term ‘mad woman in the attic’ is common in Jane Eyre and many other 19th century novels. The term essentially means and refers to how madness is used to discredit women throughout history and literature to suggest they didn’t deserve the right to vote and make other important decisions. This draws onto the idea of Jane Eyre and how Rochester’s ex-wife is locked away and deemed as mad.
In the song Taylor sings, “No one likes a mad woman” and “Everytime you call me crazy, I get more crazy.” This refers to how men like Kanye West and Scooter Braun have unjustifiably presented Taylor in this light and the idea that women aren’t inherently crazy but are driven crazy by the system of patriarchy.
There has been a lot of speculation about the album, Evermore, being released on the birthday of Emily Dickinson.
Dickinson in her poem ‘One Sister Have I In Our House’ says in the finishing line: “From out the wide night’s numbers-Forevermore!”
The song ‘Evermore’ does actually echo the idea of this Dickinson term ‘forevermore’ when Taylor sings: “She’ll walk right in, and be with me for evermore.”
Taylor herself, in an interview for the Rolling Stones, has said she loved the book ‘Rebecca’. The novel, by Daphne de Moriere is principally a story about a woman named Rebecca who is married to a man still in love with his dead ex-wife (who he had himself murdered). What is particularly interesting, however, is that Rebecca is killed in the novel, in exactly the same way that the man in ‘no body, no crime’ is killed.
Taylor says: “Good thing my daddy made me get a boating license when I was fifteen
And I’ve cleaned enough houses to know how to cover up a scene”
And in the book, the dead body is found on a sunken boat years later with “nobody and no crime”
These are just a few of the numerous literary references that Taylor has sprinkled throughout her most recent albums. Nonetheless, these examples bring out Taylor’s beautiful lyricism and actively demonstrates how much detail is packed into each song and every line. With this, it’s safe to say that Taylor has swiftly charmed the world with her music.