Rossetti poems Flashcards
1
Q
Goblin Market summary
A
- two sisters Laura and Lizzie hear the enticing sounds of goblins selling their wares
- Laura goes out to meet the goblins despite Lizzie’s warnings
- Laura is tempted by the goblin’s fruit but has no money to pay for this and pays with a lock of her golden hair
- Laura returns home and begins to wither
- Lizzie meets the goblins and resists their temptations and resists their force feeding
- Laura kisses the fruit off of Lizzie and is cured (long and painfully)
- the poem ends when the sisters are older and tell their children the story of the goblins and fruit to emphasise the importance of sisterly love
2
Q
Goblin Market interpretation
A
- tale of the importance of sisterly love and stressing the dangers of temptation
- psychoanalytical: Laura is the id - driven by instinct and desire, while Lizzie is the ego - rational part of the mind
- R exploring different forms of love - Laura’s passionate obsession with the fruit is representative of earthly love, whereas Lizzie’s devotion is virtuous, pure love
3
Q
Goblin Market context
A
- Victorian patriarchy - goblins are a male entity striving to oppress female gender
- Laura is lured towards patriarchy, there is no escape, though Lizzie resists patriarchy with faith and virtue
- Biblical story of the Fall (forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden)
- Pre-Raphaelite interest in symbols is evident, concern with detail, simple storytelling and emphasis on nature
- written when R was volunteering at St Mary Magdalene’s, Highgate, which helped fallen women - the poem can be read as how patriarchal forces lure women into protestation
4
Q
Goblin Market key quotes
A
- ‘She sucked until her lips were sore’
- ‘Squeezed her and caressed her’
- ‘One had a cat’s face’ - animalistic goblin men, unnatural, corrupting
- warning of Jeanie ‘she pined and pined away’
- ‘golden head by golden head’
- ‘white and golden, Lizzie stood, like a lily in a flood’
5
Q
When I am dead, my dearest summary
A
- song
- addresses lover and presents death as a morbid liberation from life
6
Q
When I am dead, my dearest context
A
- subverts Pre-Raphaelite portrayal of love from a male perspective by shoeing this from a female perspective
7
Q
When I am dead, my dearest interpretations
A
- first stanza reflects Victorian ideal of doting wife as the narrator asks the husband not to mourn her
- second stanza subverts expectation by showing distance of wife from husband
- R subverts Victorian expectations of women, as the speaker shows independence from her husband, death is seen as a release from life
8
Q
When I am dead, my dearest form
A
- lyrical form (song obvs)
- use of rhyme to create lyrical feel and use of fairly regular rhythm
9
Q
When I am dead, my dearest key quotes
A
- ‘Plant thou no roses at my head’
- ‘And if thou wilt remember / And if thou wilt, forget’ anaphora
- ‘dreaming through the twilight’ pleasant description of death and freedom
- ‘Haply I may remember/ And haply may forget’ mirrors first stanza, cyclical structure
10
Q
Echo summary
A
- the speaker calls from beyond death and longs for their lover who is left behind in life
11
Q
Echo context
A
- written after the end of her engagement with Collinson - could be longing for what their relationship could have become
- tension between earthly and spiritual love
12
Q
Echo interpretations
A
- speaker is calling from beyond death and misses earthly love experienced with their lover
- the voice sounds like an echo - the speaker is an intangible thing that calls out to the lover
- missing earthly love that was left behind for devotion to God
13
Q
Echo form
A
- regular rhyming structure
- regular rhythm of stanza creates impression of echo until the final longest line - the voice reaches out in one last act of desperation
14
Q
Echo key quotes
A
- ‘Whose wakening should have been in Paradise’
- ‘thirsting longing eyes’
- ‘pulse for pulse, breath for breath’ earthly love of longing
15
Q
Shut Out summary
A
- the speaker longs for her home and is denied access to the garden which is seen to be the garden of eden
- conflict between earthly devotion and spiritual love
- the speaker is ultimately denied access to the garden and perhaps because she is still concerned with earthly love and cannot fully devote herself to God
16
Q
Shut Out context
A
- Rossetti was practising increasing devotion to God
- influenced by Romanic era interest in spirituality and the use of nature as a nourishing force
17
Q
Shut Out interpretations
A
- the speaker could be R herself or Eve who is denied access to paradise
- the ambiguity of the speaker makes the poem relatable to individual readers
18
Q
Shut Out form
A
- extended allusion to the biblical Garden of Eden and presents the speaker as longing fr but denied access to the garden
- regular rhythm reflects the monotony of the speaker’s situation
- enclosed rhyme represents reader’s trapped position
19
Q
Shut Out key quotes
A
- ‘iron bars’
- ‘from bough to bough the song-birds crossed’
- ‘mortar and stone to build a wall’
- ‘good they are, but not the best’ purgatory, consequences for earthly love
- ‘blinded by tears’
20
Q
A Birthday summary
A
- an unusually happy poem
- joy at a day of rebirth - religious epiphany
- speaker celebrates love for God with natural imagery
21
Q
A Birthday context
A
- shortly after R had been diagnosed with ‘religious mania’ because she was so devoted to her religious beliefs
- influenced by the PRB and Romantic era
- PRB interest in intensity of emotion
- implicit spiritual and nature themes (Romantic)
- had just ended engagement with Collinson as he converted to Catholicism from Anglicanism
22
Q
A Birthday interpretations
A
- birthday could refer to rebirth - rebirth of God into speaker’s life?
- nature of love is ambiguous - earthly or spiritual? likely to be spiritual due to context (Collinson earthly love)
23
Q
A Birthday form
A
- lyrical form - joyous
- Romantic nature imagery to express joy at love reborn in her life
- regular rhyming scheme - song-like, joyous tone
24
Q
A Birthday key quotes
A
- ‘my heart is like a singing bird’ ‘my heart’ anaphora, intense emotional experience
- personified nature, power and vivacity
- ‘the birthday of my life / is come, my love is come to me’, repetition emphasises importance, return of love
25
Q
Uphill summary
A
- conversion between speaker and guide
- question and answer format
- spiritual devotion throughout hardship will be rewarded in the afterlife
- earthly vs spiritual, endurance etc.
26
Q
Uphill context
A
- Romantic era concerns with spirituality
- Romantic artists exploring ideas about religion
27
Q
Uphill interpretations
A
- conversation between speaker and guide
- extended metaphor for the journey of life and hardships represented by the winding road
- or road is representative of faith and by sticking with it reward waits in heaven
- or represents journey through purgatory (Catholic view)
28
Q
Uphill form
A
- poem constructed as conversation, regular form used to create sense of consistency and monotony - consistent faith will have rewards
29
Q
Uphill imagery
A
- the road: metaphor for journey, though winding it is well-trodden
- the inn: the reward for endurance. alludes to inn in the bible where Joseph and Mary sheltered for Jesus’ birth - comfort, security, spiritual significance
- the door: alludes to ‘to those who knock, the door shall be opened’, coming together with God
- the beds: seeks beds and rest, alludes to death (eternal rest) but not threatening - a desired reward for enduring hardships of the road
30
Q
Uphill key quotes
A
- ‘Does the road wind up-hill all the way?’
- ‘You cannot miss that inn’
- ‘travel-sore and weak’
- ‘Of your labour you shall find the sum’
- ‘beds for all who come’
31
Q
No, Thank You, John summary
A
- the speaker rejects John’s marriage proposal, infantilising him and highlighting transactional marriages in the Victorian period
- it is also a rare example of a woman exercising autonomy
32
Q
No, Thank You, John context
A
- written around the time that Rossetti refused a proposal from John Brett, an artist who was associated with the PRB
- R was also taking a growing interest in the plight of the Victorian patriarchy and would soon begin her volunteer work
- for a contemporary female reader, this is an uplifting articulation of how a woman can press the boundaries of patriarchy while maintaining decorum
33
Q
No, Thank You, John interpretations
A
- female figure is presented as calm and rational while the male is the opposite
- didactic portrayal of how to handle oneself in the oppressive patriarchy
- rebellion against the Victorian notion of the ideal woman
34
Q
No, Thank You, John form
A
- monologue - empowering portrayal of the female gender
- voice is given only to the female, male voice is controlled
- strict alternate rhyme - speaker’s voice a calm and rational juxtaposed to the male’s outbursts
- patronising tone?
35
Q
No, Thank You, John key quotes
A
- ‘With always “do” and “pray”?’
- ‘Use your own common sense’
- ‘false
- ‘I’ll wink at your untruth’
- cleverly turns accusations against John ‘I have no heart?’ then says he cannot get upset for her not being able to give what she doesn’t have
36
Q
Good Friday summary
A
- depicts the crucifixion of christ from the perspective of a passive follower
- unsure of faith and needs a sign to believe
37
Q
Good Friday context
A
- Rossetti volunteering at St Mary Magdalene’s penitentiary for fallen women (former prostitutes)
- mirrors R’s own experiences where she struggled with true devotion to God
38
Q
Good Friday interpretations
A
- speaker struggles with Godly devotion and witnesses the crucification but is filled with sorrow at the fact that she can’t cry
- wants to witness a sign of Godly power to reinvigorate her faith
39
Q
Good Friday form
A
- regular rhythm emp words with strong emotions
- imagery includes the cross, Peter, the women and the thief who all weep, also lager cosmological natural elements all hide from the crucifixtion to show their sorrow, all contrasted to the speaker’s inability to feel emotion
40
Q
Good Friday key quotes
A
- addresses Christ himself ‘O Christ’ ‘Thy’
- draws a parallel with lack of emotion and blood ‘drop by drop’
- ‘smite a rock’ ‘Am I stone’
41
Q
Twice summary
A
- Rossetti contrasts earthly and spiritual love by directly contrasting the response of men and God to the gift of a heart
42
Q
Twice context
A
- written during volunteer time at St Mary Magdalene’s, R’s attitudes towards men may have hardened while working with women who have been exploited by men
- Victorian/Romantic era interest in spirituality and responds to the literary trope of chivalrous, idealised male figure by focusing on negative aspects of male desire
43
Q
Twice interpretations
A
- contrasting experiences of earthly and heavenly devotion
- compares the time the speaker offered her heart to male to offering it to God in the present
- the male lover was fickle and cruel, but the speaker finds acceptance and offers her heart fully to God
44
Q
Twice form
A
- heart as central image - shapes reader’s vulnerability but also portrays devotion as something that can be controlled by the one who holds it and made consciously
- commodification emp fickleness of human desire
45
Q
Twice key quotes
A
- ‘a woman’s words are weak’ ‘you should speak’
- ‘with a critical eye you scanned’
- ‘it is still unripe’
- ‘O my love, O my love’ ‘O my God, O my God’
46
Q
Remember summary
A
- death poem but happier than usual
- the speaker encourages the lover that she addresses to remember her but not be overtaken with grief, and forget if that ensures their happiness
- death presented as an escape
47
Q
Remember context
A
- fell deeply in love with Charles Cayley whose proposal she would refuse later on the grounds that he was agnostic
- was also working at St Mary Magdalene’s at this time
- Romantic-era themes - experience of the afterlife
- theme of love from a female perspective, in contrast to the PRBH emphasis on love from the male perspective
48
Q
Remember interpretations
A
- like when I am dead, concerned with how the lover should remember the dead partner
- more insistent that lover should remember her, but volta where the speaker becomes more gentle and wishes her lover would forget her than suffer pain
49
Q
Remember form
A
- sonnet form
- similar to Shakespearian sonnets
- uses form to link love to death - regrettably intertwined
- tragic images of lonely man after speakers death
50
Q
Remember key quotes
A
- ‘remember me when I am gone away’
- ‘darkness and corruption’
- ‘tell me of our future that you planned’
- ‘forget and smile’ ‘remember and be sad’
51
Q
From the Antique summary
A
- R laments the position of women in the Victorian era as subservient to men
- states that she would rather be anything else apart from a woman and presents the insignificance of women while the world continues
52
Q
From the Antique context
A
- embittered women of the Victorian period who feel unimportant and dismissed in the patriarchy system at the time
- scathing critique of Victorian patriarchy and was not published during her life time
53
Q
From the Antique interpretations
A
- criticising the lack of status for Victorian women
- tone of surrender and bitterness
- self-nihilistic imagery to propose that women may as well be dead as nothing in the Victorian era
- similar to Remember, when I am dead, the speaker imagines the world as if she has passed from it, but unlike those love poems, the world wouldn’t notice her absence
54
Q
From the Antique form
A
- tone of bitter surrender, using nihilistic imagery to articulate frustration of women in the Victorian period
- imagery of the natural world continuing its cycles negligent of the woman’s absence - powerful visualisation of the lack of impact the speaker feels women are entitled to in the Victorian era
55
Q
From the Antique key quotes
A
- ‘its a weary life, it is, she said:/ doubly blank in a woman’s lot’
- ‘not so much as a grain of dust’
- ‘still the seasons come and go’
- ‘none would miss me in all the world’
56
Q
In the Round Tower at Jhansi (Indian Mutiny) summary
A
- describes the historical event of an Indian mutiny
- presents the man and his wife as youthful and innocent and forced to sin (kill themselves) to escape a painful fate
57
Q
In the Round Tower context
A
- account of the fate of the Skene family during the Indian uprising
- Indian people were fed up of the oppressive rule of the colonial British forces
- Skene was superintendent at Jhansi, R believed that the Skenes committed suicide while fort was under siege (instead they were duped into coming out by the Indians)
- poem was written very soon after the event and there would have been much sympathy among readers for the plight of British forces in India
58
Q
In the Round Tower interpretations
A
- the fate of the Skenes is dramatised and romanticised
- they are portrayed as youthful martyrs against an insurmountable enemy - indicative of R’s sympathy for the vulnerable and oppressed in Victorian patriarchy?
- how love listed to death? (when I am dead, remember, echo) love is always threatened and made ephemeral by the presence of inevitable death when the love will end
59
Q
In the Round Tower form
A
- narrative form of poetry dramatises the tragic story of the Skenes and elicits sympathy for them from readers
- dramatic image evokes patriotic sympathy in readers
60
Q
In the Round Tower key quotes
A
- ‘swarming howling wretches below’
- ‘pale young wife’
- ‘God forgive them this!’
- ‘kiss and kiss’
61
Q
Maude Clare summary
A
- Thomas has scorned his passionate love for the fallen woman Maude Clare for Nell and Maude Clare confronts them on their marriage day
- Nell promises love and commitment to T, emphasising the transactional nature of marriage in the Victorian period
62
Q
Maude Clare context
A
- transactional nature of marriage in the Victorian period, an essential component of stable society - it was seen as unusual and frowned upon for people to go through life without marrying
- romance out of wedlock was a dishonour for women (not so much men)
- Nell embodies the ideal Victorian woman who is subservient and loyal as a foil to the more exciting femme fatale figure of MC
63
Q
Maude Clare interpretations
A
- division in the marriage between N and T, and division between contrasting female figures of N and MC, division of status between men and women in the Victorian patriarchy
- R presents both women as victims and we sympathise with both
- interpret heroic sacrifice of Nell or scorn her for her pathetic subservience
64
Q
Maude Clare form
A
- ballad form, dramatise with direct speech to give an exciting and tragic portrayal of divided love and subjugation of women in the Victorian era
65
Q
Maude Clare key quotes
A
- N ‘village maid’, MC ‘queen’
- ‘Heres my half of the golden chain’
- ‘hid his face’
- ‘take my share of a fickle heart / mine of a paltry love’
‘I’ll love him till he loves me best’
66
Q
Soeur Louise de la Misericorde summary
A
- a mistress is banished to a convent and scorns her desire as fickle and repents
- earthly vs spiritual love
67
Q
Soeur Louise context
A
- R’s own struggles with the concept of feeling desire and its conflict with religious piety
- mistress of Louis XIV of France left the French court to join a convent
- parallel between R - both devoted life to God but perhaps reminisced over earlier, earthlier desires
68
Q
Soeur Louise interpretations
A
- pleasure of desire linked closely with pain
- speakers voice of agony suggesting the pain caused by desire and now scorns this due to conflict with Godly devotion
69
Q
Soeur Louise form
A
- internal monologue to present intense and personal portrayal of desire
- enclosed rhyming structure - link to speaker being fixated on feelings about desire
- imagery such as fire, rose juxtaposed with descriptions of their decay
70
Q
Soeur Louise key quotes
A
- ‘I have desired and I have been desired’
- ‘Oh vanity of vanities, desire!’
- ‘pangs of a perished pleasure’
- ‘my rose of life all gone to prickles’
- ‘garden plot to barren mire’
71
Q
Winter: My Secret summary
A
- the speaker playfully teases the fact that she has a secret and doesn’t reveal this to the reader
- power of knowledge and gossip
72
Q
Winter: My Secret interpretations
A
- possess a secret and teases playfully about revealing this secret to the reader
- R’s own r/ships with men?
- commentary on the power of art, language, play and poetic practice
- narrator is God himself?
- Greenwood: secret represents female virginity (link to GM)
- reader is subjected to the same treatment as a Victorian woman - teased by knowledge that is inaccessible to them
- at a time when women had little agency, the speaker is empowered by her agency to keep knowledge withheld from the reader
73
Q
Winter: My Secret key quotes
A
- lively, teasing, playful voice rejoices in empowered position
- ‘Perhaps my secret I may say, / or you may guess’
- ‘a nipping day, a biting day’
74
Q
Winter: My Secret form
A
- iambic rhythm stresses words linked to the speaker’s authority
- key image of the speaker being battered by winter but still protecting her secret
