Rossetti Critics

Question 1

Cluley

Answer 1

“Ripening fruits can be likened to a rush in sexual maturity”

Question 2

Escobar

Answer 2

“If a woman fell, she fell utterly”

Question 3

Avery

Answer 3

Rossetti’s poems are “uncompromising in their analysis of women’s place in society”

Question 4

Gill

Answer 4

Rossetti is “thoughtfully aware of the plight of fallen women”

Question 5

Rosenblum

Answer 5

“A woman inevitably experiences herself as an object to others”

Question 6

Curran

Answer 6

“[Rossetti] is just a simple pious woman”

Question 7

Galt

Answer 7

Rossetti is “a woman whom the conventions of society could not shake”

Question 8

Woolf

Answer 8

1918 - “first she starved herself of love, which also meant life”

Question 9

Griffith

Answer 9

“Great poet of disappointment”

Question 10

Mermin

Answer 10

“Christina Rossetti stopped trying to rebel: in her devotional writings she finds an appropriate place for a conventional woman’s voice”

Question 11

Woolf (2)

Answer 11

“A God who decreed that all pleasures of the World were hateful to Him… Everything in Christina’s life radiated from that knot of agony and intensity in the centre.”

Question 12

Landow

Answer 12

“All Miss Rossetti’s poems are full of the spirit, though not the technicality, of devotion.” (good for A Birthday)

Question 13

Touché

Answer 13

“Longings and cravings are ever present in Christina Rossetti’s poetry”