Matt Roth responding to:
Gary Lipon [ to Jansy's "Why a pastiche of Hazel's tragedy, along with other sad tales? Why Hazel, in particular..."] I'm honestly quite surprised, if I understand you correctly, that you don't see allusions to Hazel's story in this sequence?
JM: No! At least, not from this sequence
-------------------
MR: I'm firmly with Gary on this one. As I think I said before, it is unimaginable to think that Shade could concoct a young dead woman--who died on a "wild march night"--standing by the edge of a pond, without having Hazel in mind. Recall that Hazel died by drowning, probably in March, on a "night of blow," and later on in Canto Three, while clearly thinking of Hazel's death, Shade writes, "It is the wild / March wind. It is the father with his child." My Mathilda association is pretty speculative, while this connection, right there in the text, seems ironclad to me.
Jerry, you are of course right that Odon (or Kinbote's false memory of Odon) seems to place New Wye in New England, but you also know better than anyone the reasons why Virginia makes much more sense. As for the Yankee joke, it makes perfect sense to me but I am at a loss to explain it! And because I am a Mennonite myself, I have to correct you on the Amish thing: the word you are looking for is "English," not Yankee.
MR