Hutchinson context

Question 1

What is the restoration?

Answer 1

Return of the Monarchy and restoration of the King

Question 2

How does Hutchinson feel about the restoration?

Answer 2

she disfavours it

Question 3

What name is given to Hutchinson’s political stance?

Answer 3

She was a Republican

Question 4

What is Hutchinson’s religious beliefs?

Answer 4

Puritan - English Protestant who was against C of E

Question 5

How is ‘To the Sun Shining into her Chamber’ politically relevant?

Answer 5

polemical attack on the Restoration regime

Question 6

What does she grieve in ‘To the Sun Shining into her Chamber’?

Answer 6

her husband’s death

Question 7

How does her feelings of grief evolve in the poem?

Answer 7

from the agony of grief to a potent anger at the Restoration regime

Question 8

What does she believe is responsible for her husband’s death?

Answer 8

the Restoration regime

Question 9

Why is the imagery of the sun politically significant?

Answer 9

King Charles II referred to himself as the sun king
bringing sun to the darkness that he believed was the last 11 years of republican rule

Question 10

State the lines about the sun in ‘To the Sun Shining into her Chamber’

Answer 10

“thou all-seeing sun”
“reveal; their glories in full grace”

Question 11

What is the light imagery linked to?

Answer 11

Charles II
tyranny
hell

Question 12

What does she associate light with?

Answer 12

open decadence and sexual license of the Restoration court where crimes are opnely committed

Question 13

Literary context of the light imagery

Answer 13

she inverts traditional romantic associations of light

Question 14

What is the sun a sign and enabler of?

Answer 14

corruption - such corrupted times, the terrible things taking place occurring in the daytime and the sun is the witness

Question 15

Environmental significance of the sun

Answer 15

the sun is polluting the world, polluting force rather than a cleansing force

Question 16

How does the inversion of the light imagery relate to her political message

Answer 16

she imagines restoration as an overturning of natural order

Question 17

Which classical influence is the light imagery subverted from? What can we say about this?

Answer 17

Petrarch - dark inversion of the petrarchan sonnet form

Question 18

Significance of female writers during this time?

Answer 18

the restoration period / civil war period offers opportunity and impetus for females to write
have a voice publically and politically
playing with poetic conventions of their time using paradoxes and reversals

Question 19

What is the duality of grief in this poem?

Answer 19

grieving the loss of her husband
grieving the shift of politics
both within the context of the restoration

Question 20

How is the last line significant in relation to the question

Answer 20

“O that I had but sinned and died alone”
intimacy - she is alone in her grief
bitterly poignant

Question 21

What is the significance of the duality of grief?

Answer 21

represents the relationship between the personal and the political