Rossetti critics Flashcards
Avery - from the antique
‘i wish and i wish i were a man’
‘doubly blank in a woman’s lot, Or, better then any being, were not:’ - sense of longing and despondency - womans position is so wearying that annihilation is preferable (to escape from gender expectations and imposed identities)
Avery Maude Clare
tension in the messages of redemption held in Victorian society - hypocritical to hold standards of no redemption
church becomes site of conflict - N and ML are set up as opposite ‘like a village maid’ ‘like a queen’
increasingly ML rather than new bride who is focus of attention
dominates meeting and offers ‘share of fickle heart’, reversal of friendship and community traditionally associated with a wedding gift, examines womans position in society through consideration of institution of marriage
“Thomas remains significantly silent throughout, hiding his face and barely able to stutter Maude Clare’s name – a clear critique of dominant masculinity – and it is interestingly left to Nell to confront the intruder.”
‘He faltered in his place’
Avery No thank you john
idea of womans choice and determination in relationship - effectively turns own arguments against him
asserts womans right to say no and claim independence and agency for herself
‘i have no heart? perhaps i have not’
the suitor isn’t given a voice, showing the power dynamic as she turns his argument against him
Aspects of sonnet form - in iambic pentameter - inverts typical love poet - instead of man pursuing women, rejecting man
Avery Winter my secret
defies expectations and conventions - study of manipulation of power, privacy is not to be intruded on
- skilfully withholds autonomy and control
‘i cannot ope to every one who taps’
‘Perhaps my secret I may say’
Weathers sisterhood of self
‘Certainly one of the major motifs in her mythic fabric is that of the fragmented self moving or struggling toward harmony and balance’
lizzie - fragment of whole self
laura - withdrawal from reality into illusion of goblins/ childish and impulsive self which must die in order for the other to grow wiser
market - illusory and dangerous but tempting state of mind
‘life out of death’ after which she learns greater restraint, hugging lissie only once but not ‘twice or thrice’ - difference from previous insatiable desires
Sisters as two sides of the same self- fractured then brought together again
‘Like two blossoms on one stem’
‘Their lives bound up in tender lives’
- fragment of self (trauma, mental illness)
‘shadowless spirit’ sinister + undefined, the paradoxical negative description connotes darkness and shadow rather than lightness
Weathers Jeanie
pure virginal state from which she falls due to sexual curiosity
or childlike state which invariably lost in the human experience if we are to mature
“she thought of jeanie in her grave”
Fall is inescapable
‘Do you not remember Jeanie, how she met them in the moonlight, Took their gifts both choice and many’
‘Dwindled and grew grey; Then fell with the first snow’
Mermin Goblin Market - male and female
lizzies heroic rescue mixes ‘lily in a flood’ and ‘rock of blue vein’d stone’, male and female qualities
‘bounce’ of unspent penny is an image both economic and sexual
world in which men only serve purpose of impregnation (only mentioned with ‘wives’)
Mermin Maude Clare
marriage is not depicted as wholly desirable
rossetti’s readers see many qualities in nell that they find impossible to achieve and attain to be a good wife
- humble, uncensorious
“ill love him till he loves me best/ me best of all maude clare”
female strength comes from rejecting a man
‘his bride was like a village maid/ maude clare was like a queen’
Holt Goblin Market - home
home is direct antithesis of goblins glen
isolation in implicit contrast with prolific trade
independent production vs exotic fruits (oranges/pomegranates ‘all ripe together’)
‘neat like bees’ - self sufficiency
HOWEVER goblins words ‘smooth as honey’ - inevitable contamination and tainted
Mermin negative phrases Goblin Market
‘nor was she pricked by fear’
‘Not one goblin scurried after her’
- why mention?
- unnameable threat - gives power
- acceptance of goblins figural complex language
harrison - love and art
the only true and permanent fulfillment of love is to be found in the art it gives birth to
‘a birthday’ - “Carve it in doves and pomegranates”
- palazzo - can only be an exploration of the poetic itself
GM- “Laura would call the little ones/ And tell them of her early prime”
‘For there is no friend like a sister’
bowra - love and death
love releases a melancholy desire for death
souer louise - brief presence of love only leads to the pain of life dragging on
‘oh vanity of vanities, desire’
biblical reference from ecclesiastes - points towards transience of passion - fickle/purposeless
echo - Love is mirrored in the title itself + in ‘dream’ - lingering, fading remnant - depleted and diminished, not unique but simply lasting
Anaphora of ‘come to me’ - pleading repetitive effect
the adverb ‘too’ suggests that the felicity is so excessive, exorbitant that it swings around in a circular pattern until pain is reached
bocher - god
God is always present, is always there - Rossetti’s love for god always trumps the love of another human
- tractarian branch
‘Apple tree..bent with thickest fruit’ - Edenic imagery of knowledge, immortality with God
Motifs of abundance connote the emotional completion and satisfaction that love of God contributes to
‘like a rainbow shell’
‘As you set it down it broke’ presents problem of heartbreak + callousness of men
‘I take my heart in my hand’ - she can take back control - eternal unconditional devotion empowers and brings eternal fulfilment - reaches a solution with the idea of redemption
“Purge Thou its dross away-“
I shall not die, but live,–
wedding vows allusion - spiritual ‘all that I have I bring’ - connotations of resolution - regards mortal love as substitute for or distraction from the rewards of faith
palazzo - GM
Rossetti has radically rewritten the Fall of Eve in terms of the social and spiritual abuse of women which she sees around her
- male gender oppression be interpreted as original sin.”
“squeezed their fruits
Against her mouth to make her eat.”
challenge the decidedly patriarchal perception of women within Victorian culture and also to reconstruct the Christian idea of redemption
resurrection/matyr - “white and golden lizzie stood”
“life out of death”
‘Eat me, drink me, love me’
describing ‘fruit forbidden’ and ‘tree of life’ implicitlu aligns laura to the archetype of the fallen woman, rbr
Weathers Nietzche GM
‘Such Nietzschean terms such as the Apollonian and Dionysian may help to understand the fundamental drama of ‘Goblin Market’… eternal polarities of self, the one, the Dionysian, leading to tragedy, the other, the Apollonian, leading to survival’
Laura being the Dionysian (impulse and desre) and Lizzie the Apollonian (reason and restraint)
‘Like a lily from the beck’
‘Like a lily in a flood’
