Dave,
You previously asked me for some input here, but there's very little I can add to Karin's thoroughgoing examination of the elements in your picture. (I've recently acquired the ability to PhotoShop web images, but I'm glad Karin got to this one before I did, because I have little skill with the software.) I would mostly reiterate some of the advices already offered.
The lamp and table, as Karin indicated, are problematic compositionally and thematically, not because of the way they're rendered (indeed, they're painted very competently). There isn't a good answer here to the question, "Why are these elements included in this particular picture?" I will presumptuously say that you included them because you wanted to experiment with a picture that "contained its own light source". Those are often fascinating works (one of my favourites is van Honthorst's
The Denial of Peter) [I've just discovered that the site doesn't accept hyperlinked contact, so go to
www.artsMIA.org and search for "Honthorst"], but to be most successful, the light source would be something we'd "expect" to see in this particular painting (as we'd expect to see the candlelight, and not a modern lamp, in van Honthorst's picture). And so, in a different composition -- say, in a nursery or a setting that is obviously a little girl's room -- a lamp of a design that we'd identify as belonging in a children's environment might well have worked fine. That's the thematic part, but there's a compositional challenge as well, because the very nature of that self-illuminating element means that the greatest contrast between lights and darks in the picture is going to be at and around that light source, which is to say that that area and no other is going to wind up being the focus of interest in the picture. If, as in your composition, the light source is quite apart from the "real" subject -- the little girl -- we find ourselves looking at the lamp first, and then at the girl, illuminated in both a low key and a narrow range of values. And even if that key and range were manipulated to bring the girl into greater visibility and interest, there remains the "duality" of subject, the lamp and table having nearly the same "weight" as the portrait subject.
Karin's itemization of elements to look at is so complete that I really can't add anything else to it.
By the way, in your original post, you referred to your "less than successful 'Melody & Melvin'. Quite the contrary -- it was most successful, though perhaps not in the way you expected. Deepak Chopra writes that the very best thing that can happen in your life is what's happening right now. Consider how much you learned in making that picture and, yes, even in wading through the critiques. The piece was completely successful, insofar as it provided the experience and information to move on to another picture, which in turn will beneficially inform your later work. If there wasn't any challenge, there wouldn't be any education and there wouldn't be any fun.
Steven