“And I Heard Your Voice”: Exploring the Gothic Imagery and Repressed Feelings in Florence + the Machine’s Lungs and Ceremonials
Florence Welch stands on stage in a black gown with an ornate design of gold and white swirls. She holds her hand to her chest and gazes at something that’s perhaps beyond this material realm. She looks otherworldly, as if she is a soul who seeks communion with bats.
Like countless people, I have been enchanted by Florence + the Machine. I first came across their music online when I was nineteen and was blown away by their performance at the Royal Albert Hall. In support of Teenage Cancer Trust, Florence Welch sang songs off of their first two albums with a lush, orchestral arrangement. For me, it is the peak of artistic expression and worth spending an hour to watch.
Florence Welch’s powerful contralto can dazzle even the most fastidious of us. The band’s classical instrumentation done with the use of a harp, violin, and cello in combination with the heavy drumming best heard on tracks like “Blinding” and “Heartlines” evokes such deep, primal feelings that are balanced by a sensitivity and vulnerability achieved through the instrumentation and Welch’s emotive vocals.
It’s difficult to describe the kind of music the band creates. In an interview with The Guardian, Florence Welch described the genre of their second album Ceremonials as “chamber soul”, a combination of chamber pop and soul. However, there are many other musical influences at play here, such as indie rock, baroque pop, and art rock. Lyrically, there is also a gothic element to their music that I believe gets overlooked but is very much part of the band’s musical identity. In an interview with WFUV, Welch described herself as a “secret goth.” The singer described to Venus Zine that her appearance on stage was “The Lady of Shalott meets Ophelia…mixed with scary gothic bat lady.” It’s a mashup of many different influences that at times pays homage to the billowing stage dresses Stevie Nicks wore.
Like her style on stage, Welch’s songwriting is a mix of influences, artistic and otherwise, that cover topics as big as religion, myth, fantasy, love, sex, and death. In an interview with TimeOut, Welch, whose mother is a Renaissance scholar, says that her “visual landscape as a child was the inside of a lot of these old churches.” It’s a visual landscape you could say Welch has carried with her into adulthood. The official music videos for “Drumming Song” and “No Light, No Light” take place inside churches. The ocean in “Never Let Me Go” is a “cathedral where you cannot breathe.”
But it’s not just religious imagery such as churches and devils that make their way into her songwriting. It’s a whole mix of esoteric references, allusions, and gothic imagery you wouldn’t hear in a typical pop song. Ghosts show up in numerous songs. There’s a boy who “makes coffins for better or worse.” Haruspicy, the ancient art of divination, gets mentioned in “Heartlines” with the lyrics “I’ve seen it in you, the entrails of the animals.” (In ancient Rome, a haruspex practiced haruspicy by reading the entrails of sacrificed animals.) Welch, a fan of novelist Cormac McCarthy, borrows one of his lines from Blood Meridian in the song “Between Two Lungs:” “Gone are the days of begging / the days of theft.” Welch sings a whole song about werewolves in “Howl.” Welch makes allusions to ancient Greek myths with Midas and Atlas in “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)” and “What the Water Gave Me.” In fact, Welch makes an allusion to Virginia Woolf’s suicide in “What the Water Gave Me”, the title itself a reference to a painting of the same name by Frida Kahlo. Her lyrics are fantastic flights of imagination within a fantasy world — for example, Welch alludes to Sleeping Beauty and mentions Snow White in the song “Blinding” — and action that takes place only if for a brief moment. Things happen in these songs however briefly; it’s not just her expressing her feelings in a vague way. All of these fantastic and gothic elements makes me wonder what other wonderful and weird things are inside her brain and what else you could discover within her lyrics.
With stunning gothic imagery, Welch sings in a language of myths and metaphors about unwieldy topics like love, death, and sex. (Take, for example, the song “Bedroom Hymns”, an extended metaphor for sex as a religious experience.) At this point, let me make a crucial distinction between the two kinds of songwriting Welch has done: the fantastic, gothic kind focused on producing a sense of euphoria in the listener and the more personal, at times confessional kind. The band’s third album marked the beginning of a departure from their fantastic, gothic roots. That departure continued to their fourth album, High as Hope, in favor of more personal lyrics. Now, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty and focus more on Welch’s songwriting from their first two albums Lungs and Ceremonials and why they can be considered contemporary gothic texts.
Firstly, what is gothic literature? Gothic literature originated in Europe in the eighteenth century and had its heyday from the years 1764, when the seminal gothic novel The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole was published, to the mid-nineteenth century, around the time when Jane Eyre was published. Gothic literature was born out of Romanticism, a literary period that strongly emphasized the use of imagination and high emotions (hence the melodrama). Edgar Allan Poe remains perhaps the most well-known and stereotypical gothic writer, but gothic literature didn’t die out in the nineteenth century. It continued into the twentieth century with authors like Shirley Jackson (author of The Haunting of Hill House) and Angela Carter and exists today. Gothic literature is a somewhat nebulous term, but here are some key elements that help define the genre:
- an eerie atmosphere
- plenty of mystery
- plenty of dread
- ghosts
- vampires
- a castle or manor that’s abandoned and isolated and/or falling apart that heightens the fear of characters not being able to find help (For example, “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe)
- an innocent protagonist who may be an orphan or a virgin and is preyed upon by a powerful man
- melodrama (characters becoming emotionally unstable the more spooky things they see)
- prophetic dreams, omens, or visions of horrible things that will take place in the future or give characters insight into a haunted past (Danny Torrance’s ability to shine in Stephen King’s The Shining is one example)
- characters trying to repress emotions and/or sexual desires and seeing their failure to do so play out in the form of ghosts (what happens to the governess in The Turn of the Screw and Eleanor Vance in The Haunting of Hill House)
- modern technology in a medieval or ancient setting that creates an uncanny feeling (For example, the automaton in Angela Carter’s short story “The Tiger Bride”)
- physical and mental deterioration occurring at the same time in somebody (what happens to the protagonist in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”)
- constant doubt over the supernatural and spiritual and the fear that comes from the uncertainty of living in a world with things beyond human power and reasoning
- In general, a return of the repressed that calls attention to societal problems that have been largely ignored
It is this last bullet point that needs some elaboration since it’s the top banana of gothic literature elements. In her thesis “The Return of the Repressed: Gothic Horror From The Castle of Otranto to Alien”, Valdine Clemens discusses what role repressed things play in gothic fiction: “Something — some entity, knowledge, emotion, or feeling — which has been submerged or held at bay because it threatens the established order of things, develops a cumulative energy which demands its release and forces it to the realm of visibility where it must be acknowledged.” Protagonists in gothic literature may try to bury unwanted thoughts and (sexual) desires in their subconscious only to find it return to their attention in the form of a horrifying ghost. The point is to show that the thoughts/feelings/knowledge these characters try to repress cannot be ignored completely.
Plenty of ghosts populate Florence + the Machine songs. So what rhetorical purpose might they serve? Clemens argues that “it is through the evocation of intense creature-terror that Gothic stories achieve their critical ends of admonishing, foretelling, and instructing.” Perhaps the intense creature-terrors act as omens, criticism of a protagonist’s current behavior, or as a guide toward living properly. It’s this last role that we see play out in “Only If For a Night”:
And I heard your voice
As clear as day
And you told me I should concentrate
It was all so strange
And it’s so surreal
That a ghost should be so practical
Only if for a night
This song about a spectral visit has origins in Welch’s personal life. Welch has said in an NME interview that the ghost of her grandmother visited her in a dream one night: “She told me to — and I can remember the exact wording — ‘concentrate on your perfect career.’” It’s strange to think that a ghost would give practical career advice. You’d expect a ghostly encounter to be more terrifying than anything else. Rather than showing the narrator the terrible consequences of what could happen if she didn’t concentrate, Welch lessens the intensity and creates a ghost that provides caring instruction. Although quite different from your typical ghost in gothic horror, it does have something in common with one: it reveals to the protagonist a message from her unconscious mind: her current behavior won’t help her at this point in her life and she needs to change.
“Blinding” is another song where the narrator becomes aware in a nightmarish fantasy that her behavior needs to change:
No more dreaming of the dead as if death itself was undone
No more calling like a crow for a boy, for a body in the garden
No more dreaming like a girl so in love, so in love
No more dreaming like a girl so in love, so in love
No more dreaming like a girl so in love with the wrong world
Welch sings as someone who was recently in “some dreaming state” until she finally saw the true nature of a lover who treated her as if he was drowning her: “it was you who held me under.” Sounds as awful as the brooding, obsessive, and violent Heathcliff in Emily Bronte’s gothic novel Wuthering Heights. Welch makes just a brief allusion to a Byronic (anti)hero, but it’s enough to conjure up images of abuse that an innocent protagonist, often preyed upon by a powerful male in gothic literature, should run away from.
No creature-terrors like ghosts or vampires appear before her to act as an impetus for personal change. Instead, her realization is described as a metaphorical storm that tells her she cannot return to a formerly comfortable past: “All around the world was waking, I never could go back.” Welch uses gothic imagery — a crow call and a body in a garden — in criticism of the narrator’s previous habit of idealizing her lover, but they aren’t used to call attention to long-neglected issues. Like, “Only If for a Night,” the lyrics evoke more of a mysterious atmosphere than a frightening one.
Now, the creature-terrors that show up in Florence + the Machine songs aren’t just ghosts that reveal to the narrator that their behaviors should change. They can also show up as the manifestation of regrets as they do in the song “Shake It Out”:
Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
And all of the ghouls come out to play
And every demon wants his pound of flesh
Here, Welch brings abstract concepts like regret to life with her use of an extended (and mixed) metaphor. Indeed, Lungs and Ceremonials are filled with metaphors that marry the physical with the spiritual. The regrets in “Shake It Out” are the all-consuming kind. They eat away at her as demons, make her feel helpless, and refuse to let her leave behind a past she finds burdensome to carry: “I’m always dragging that horse around.” It’s a past with regrets she’d rather keep private as revealed by the line: “But I like to keep some things to myself.” What she regrets is never clear and never implied, but the narrator does have a monumental struggle in breaking free of them. This idea is quite similar to the hidden guilt that gothic protagonists must wrestle with, and Welch makes it clear that we all must confront any dark past of ours:
Shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it’s hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa
Welch follows the gothic tradition of highlighting the societal need to confront long-neglected issues. In this case, they are the personal regrets one would rather repress. And she does this in a unique way. Rather than scaring the heebie jeebies out of you as a warning, she encourages you to shake off your personal demons in a chorus that sounds as if it’s sung by someone recently empowered. This is quite different from the first verse whose despondent narrator “can see no way” to move forward with her life.
With “Howl”, Welch continues to use decontextualized gothic imagery: werewolves, full moons, and plenty of howls. In the song, the narrator becomes enraptured by a werewolf who makes her howl with delight. The lyrics do lend themselves to a sexual interpretation similarly to how the fairytale “Little Red Riding Hood” does. Traditionally, in folklore, the werewolf is a creature who suffers from some kind of excessive behavior. Perhaps he is too rough or perhaps he is sexually deviant (Wilson). He gives into impulses and lives in a very primal way as a beast. The relationship the narrator has with the werewolf in “Howl” makes her revel in her newfound ability to reconnect with her more primitive nature:
If you could only see the beast you’ve made of me
I held it in but now it seems you’ve set it running free.
Her repressed sexual desire doesn’t present itself to her in the form of an intense creature-terror. Instead, the werewolf is presented as a primitive beast that violently satisfies his sexual needs. Rather than becoming scared and calling into question her current behavior, she has the violent urge to “hunt for [him] with bloodied feet across the hallowed ground.” She’s completely surrendered to her sexual desire and becomes intensely focused on finding her lover to destroy him sexually. It’s imprisoning in the sense that it is an all-consuming desire.
This kind of effect that sexuality has on this young lover is somewhat similar to how sexuality is typically used in gothic literature. Male heterosexuality in gothic literature is typically used as a tool to trap young women or to lord over their power. You can see this in Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian where the character Schedoni traps Olivia into marriage by raping her. Olivia sought to “retrieve her honour” by marrying him (Fall). By contrast, the narrator in “Howl” isn’t trapped by a social institution but rather by the all-consuming, even violent feeling she has for the werewolf after being bitten.
Whatever repressed feelings are described in Florence + the Machine songs are finally released unrestrained with Welch’s thunderous voice. These unrepressed feelings may come about as the result of seeing a ghost or a scary creature and realizing a change in behavior is needed. Or repressed feelings may be revealed after completely surrendering to sexual desire. Welch uses so much drowning and water imagery to describe being overwhelmed by a feeling, in several cases repressed feelings that are finally released. The ghosts that populate Florence + the Machine songs act alternately as guides and manifestations of regret, but at times the gothic imagery is used as part of a metaphor for sudden realizations or irresistible sexual desire.
In their songs, Florence Welch lives in a gothic fantasy world with werewolves and ghouls, devils and saints. She runs to towers where church bells chime and makes sacrificial offerings. She deals with devils in her house and follows the heartlines on her hands. She is never far from an altar (or drowning.) She offers a strangely charming mix of the gothic and the fantastic with plenty of religious imagery. (And at times it can be tricky to parse out what she is saying with her mixed metaphors, which can be fairly criticized. It’s an overdose of imagination that overwhelms you. Whether that’s good or bad is up to you.) As several YouTube users have commented, she is a John Waterhouse painting come to life. On stage, she doesn’t seem to be of this world, but she uses frightening gothic imagery to reveal the necessity for all us to confront our dark emotions.
References
Burgess, Adam. “An Introduction to Gothic Literature.” ThoughtCo, Dotdash, 15 Sept. 2019, www.thoughtco.com/what-is-gothic-literature-739030.
Clemens, Valdine. “The Return of the Repressed: Gothic Horror From The Castle of Otranto to Alien.” University of Manitoba, SUNY Press, 1999, pp. 1–274.
DiCrescenzo, Brent. “Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine: Interview.” Time Out Chicago, Time Out, 9 Nov. 2011, www.timeout.com/chicago/music/florence-welch-of-florence-the-machine-interview.
Fall, Wendy. “e-Publications@Marquette.” Marquette University, epublications.marquette.edu/gothic_sexuality/. Accessed 31 December 2020.
Florence + the Machine. Lungs. Island Records, 2009.
Florence + the Machine. Ceremonials. Island Records, 2011.
Horner, Al. “Florence + The Machine Interview: Read Her 2011 NME Cover Feature, On ‘Ceremonials’, Seances And Defying Expectation.” NME, 31 Mar. 2015, www.nme.com/features/florence-the-machine-interview-read-her-2011-nme-cover-feature-on-ceremonials-seances-and-defying-ex-756620.
Kennedy, Patrick. “What Is Gothic Literature?” ThoughtCo, Dotdash, 23 Jan. 2020, www.thoughtco.com/gothic-literature-2207825.
Manning, Kara. “Florence Welch On Being A ‘Secret Goth,” The…” WFUV, 21 Nov. 2009, wfuv.org/content/florence-welch-being-secret-goth-little-mermaid-and-hangover-inspirations.
Nicholson, Rebecca. “Florence Welch: ‘My Heart Was Going Crazy’ — Video.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 26 Oct. 2011, www.theguardian.com/music/video/2011/oct/26/florence-welch-interview-video.
Marcus, Laura. “Style Idol: Florence Welch.” Wayback Machine, 9 Aug. 2010, web.archive.org/web/20120401014322/www.venuszine.com/articles/fashion/looks/7531/Style_Idol_Florence_Welch.
Wilson, Tracy V. “How Werewolves Work.” HowStuffWorks Science, HowStuffWorks, 17 Oct. 2020, science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/strange-creatures/werewolf.htm.
