Christina Rossetti: Shut Out Flashcards
The poem could be considered an allegory of which biblical story?
The story of Genesis: the speaker could be Eve, excluded from the Garden of Eden for giving in to temptation and causing the Fall of Man.
What was the subtitle of this poem, and what does it suggest?
The subtitle given by Rossetti was “what happened to me”, which suggests the poem has more of an autobiographical meaning to Rossetti. It could have been about many aspects of her personal life: her previous relationship with James Collinson, her inability to indulge in certain pleasures due to her religion, her lack of freedom as a woman or her position as a single, childless woman in society.
What does the speaker say they “looked through” in the first stanza, and what is the symbolism of this image?
In the first stanza, the speaker says they “looked between [the] iron bars” of a door, which was shut. The iron bars symbolise imprisonment and restriction, reinforced by the closed door which has connotations of exclusion and isolation.
Who or what “kept the gate” of the garden in the poem? What might they symbolise?
A “shadowless spirit” kept the gate; they seem to be a figure of oppression but it is unclear who or what exactly they are meant to represent. It could be a symbol of the patriarchy, God, or biographer Margaret Satwell even interpreted the spirit to represent Rossetti’s mother and sister who disagreed with Christina’s relationship with Collinson.
Complete the quotation: “the spirit was _____, but he took _____ and _____ to build a _____”
“The spirit was silent, but he took mortar and stone to build a wall”
This emphasises the speaker’s sense of isolation and exclusion; they can no longer even ‘peer’ through the gates to the garden, depriving her of all happiness and comfort.
The poem has an ABBA rhyme scheme- what is the correct name for this and why is this significant?
The correct name for this rhyme scheme is an envelope stanza. The cyclical nature of the rhyme scheme emphasises the lack of progress the speaker makes, no matter how desperate they are to access the garden.
In 1850, Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote an elegiac poem using the same envelope stanza structure which became a huge influence on the poetry of the next decade or so- what was the poem called?
The poem was called In Memoriam. The envelope stanza structure, due to its use by Tennyson, became very much associated with mourning and elegy, and looking back on the past with some sense of regret. Rossetti possibly wanted, and expected, contemporary readers to have this in mind as they read Shut Out
Whose 17th century depiction of God features an angel guarding a door with a fiery sword?
A. Ben Jonson B. Alfred Lord Tennyson C. William Shakespeare D. John Milton
D. John Milton
Milton, in Paradise Lost, reimagined the Fall of Adam and Eve in which an angel aggressively guards the door of the garden, preventing sinners from entering. In Shut Out, this could be mirrored by the “shadowless spirit” that guards the gate to the garden in that poem
Who said Rossetti’s poetry was “unequalled in its objective expression of happiness denied”, and what is meant by this?
20th century poet Philip Larkin made this comment about Rossetti’s poetry. The observation means that Rossetti’s poetry captures unhappiness, or the denial of any happiness, better than any other poet of her time. When you consider all of the poems studied so far this observation is unsurprising!
How could the final two lines “and good they are, but not the best, and dear they are, but not so dear” be interpreted as a comment on Rossetti’s own childlessness?
Rossetti never had children of her own, but was extremely close to her nieces and nephews (and oddly, later in life, the children of her former fiancé James Collinson). Perhaps her comments in Shut Out could be comparing her relationships with the children around to the way she believes her own experience as a mother could be.
