The artist as a mongrel girl: Mina Loy's "Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose"

Abstract

Mina Loy wrote the long poem "Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose" between 1923 and 1925. It is among the oddest of all modernist long poems, a strange combination of satire, didactic commentary and lyrical mysticism. Loy offers a pseudo-autobiographical chronicle of her family and of her own birth and childhood. The poem is made up of three sections of different length, "Exodus", "English Rose", and "Mongrel Rose." It is in this last part of the poem where the author narrates the birth of Ova, who is a representation of Mina Loy as a child, a rather ironic and sceptic version of herself. My aim in the present paper is to show that the mongrel identity Loy creates for Ova is enriching and protests patriarchal definitions of the feminine, however, Ova seems unable to overcome the conflicts derived from her mother's restrictive manifestation and practice of gender conventions. Consequently, as Ova's creativity and artistic aspirations will be seriously limited, she is not able to offer a strong alternative for female expression and power.