An Apple Gathering

Question 1

Persona

Answer 1

Dramatic monologue, been wronged.
AO3- Victorians fond of this style.

Question 2

Title

Answer 2

Religious connotations.
Harvest as a metaphor for work, union, community, God’s love.
Fertility.
Sexual connotations of fruit, codification of sexual interest.

Question 3

1. “I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple tree”
2. “that evening in my hair”.
3. “Then in due season when I went to see”
4. “I found no apples there”

Answer 3

1.’plucked’ suggests rushed, impulsive, active. ‘mine’- takes ownership for actions, the tree as a metaphor for beauty (gentle feminist notion of the woman dictating her life?).
2. AO3- Bocca Baciata painting with connotations of promiscuity.
3. Shift marked by ‘then’ . The symbolism of ‘season’ as a metaphor for marriage- barron.
4. Symbolic, harvest metaphor is a repeated trope, no fruit grown. Apples= sex, sexual transgression, metapor for sex before marriage. AO3- the ‘fallen woman’. The emptiness juxtaposes the intial pride/joy.
ABAB- Suggests the regularity of suffering.

Question 4

2. ‘As I had come I went the selfsame track’
3. ’ My neighbours mocked me while they saw me pass’
4. ‘So empty-handed back’

Answer 4

2. She hasn’t deviated from the path, subverts the heteronormative ideals of the woman. Continued path motif.
3. ironic biblical illusion of ‘love thy neighbour’
4. Contrasts the fertility of the grass. Melancholy image. The apples are valuable and represent maturity, marriage.

Question 5

1. ‘Lilian and Lilias smiled in trudging by.’
2. ’ Their heaped-up basket teazed me like a jeer’
3. ’ Their mother’s home was near’

Answer 5

1. Floral connotations of the lily as innocence and purity. Character doubling depicts society’s version of the model women.
2. Underlying jealousy. The personification of the basket represents society as a whole (microcosm? objective correlation?) . Similie, metaphor.
3. Pastoral setting employed, the cyclical role of women is demonstrated.

Question 6

1. ’ Plump Gertrude passed me with her basket full’
2. ’ A stronger hand than hers helped it along’

Answer 6

1. Gertrude as a model of the expectation of women. The persona’s self-reflective voice as she compares herself to these model women.
   Cross section of female autonomy and enforcing the victorian stereotype.

Question 7

1. “was my love less worth… Than apples with their green leaves piled above”.
2. ‘I counted rosiest apples on earth… Of far less worth than love’

Answer 7

1. Phallic imagery deviates from the story. Rhetorical Q gives rise to self castigation/ defacing.
2. Connotations of loveless marriage.

Question 8

1. ’ I let my neighbours pass me, ones and twos.’
2. ‘Fell fast I loitered still’

Answer 8

1. Passive in the final stanza, she goes unnoticed in stasis, metaphorically. Removal of herself is her only refuge as a fallen woman/
2. Juxtaposes the meaning of Eve West’s “solitary waiting female”- she isnt waiting for a man, she is waiting to be liberated from prejudice.