Rossetti's Poems- Maude Clare Flashcards
Maude Clare poem summary
“Maude Clare” tells the story of an aristocrat named Lord Thomas who chooses to marry the wholesome Nell, a seemingly ideal Victorian bride, over the bold Maude Clare, whose reputation has been ruined as a result of her previous romance with Lord Thomas.
Explain how love, marriage and social expectations are shown in Maude Clare?
“Maude Clare” focuses on a Victorian-era love triangle between the aristocrat Lord Thomas, his ex-lover Maude Clare, and his new bride Nell. Though the poem suggests that Lord Thomas truly cared for the bold and fierce Maude Clare, and may even still have feelings for her, he marries the demure and wholesome Nell instead.
The poem implies that Nell better fits the Victorian ideal of a bride, making the matter of which woman Lord Thomas “loves best,” as Nell puts it, irrelevant. The poem thus highlights the pressures of societal expectations in Victorian society, revealing how rigid ideas about propriety and status lead only to heartbreak, resentment, and dissatisfaction.
Details throughout the poem imply that Lord Thomas prefers Maude Clare, who’s presented as Nell’s opposite in many ways: she is taller, “more wise and much more fair,” and Lord Thomas cannot stop looking at her, even as he kisses his new bride. Where Maude Clare looks “like a queen,” Nell looks “like a village maid,” and the poem implies that Maude Clare and Lord Thomas had an intimate relationship in the not so distant past.
Yet the love between Lord Thomas and Maude Clare was not, in the Victorian era, sufficient reason for marriage. In fact, the opposite is true: any intimacy before marriage was scandalous in a society that severely restricted the interactions of unmarried men and women. Ironically, then, Maude Clare and Lord Thomas’s relationship is the very thing that dooms her chances of becoming his bride! In society’s eyes, she is an unacceptable choice.
Maude seems righteously furious at this humiliating turn of events, and Lord Thomas doesn’t seems all that happy about it either. For starters, he is not described as a joyous groom, but instead as “pale with inward strife.” Nell gets the short end of the stick too, explicitly acknowledging that Lord Thomas has chosen her for reasons other than love; she vows at the poem’s close to “love him till he loves me best,” indicating that she knows full well that she comes in second place—even on their wedding day.
Explain how Hypocrisy and Sexism in Victorian England are shown in Maude Clare?
Throughout “Maude Clare,” the poem makes clear that Lord Thomas and Maude Clare behaved in ways that were considered unacceptable for unmarried lovers in Victorian England. Though the extent of their romance remains ambiguous, even the hint of impropriety is enough to taint Maude Clare’s reputation and ruin her chances for marriage. In contrast, Lord Thomas is able to marry another woman without any meaningful consequences. This demonstrates the sexist hypocrisy at the heart of Victorian society, and how difficult it was for a “fallen woman”—or, really, any woman who broke with Victorian ideals of femininity—to regain her footing in society.
The poem presents Maude Clare as a kind of femme fatale, described as so beautiful and alluring that Lord Thomas cannot look away from her. She’s also bold, assertive, and openly angry—all traits that go against strict Victorian expectations that women be pure, gentle, and demure.
The poem also suggests that Lord Thomas may have led Maude Clare on, or that she’d hoped for marriage before her lover tossed her aside for Nell. Maude Clare’s bold decision to confront Lord Thomas at his wedding thus briefly offers the chance for some catharsis. She makes it impossible for Lord Thomas to blithely move on to the next stage of his life—marital bliss with a more “acceptable” woman—without facing at least some consequences.
Lord Thomas seems weak and pitiful in these moments; in response to Maude Clare’s accusations, he “falter[s]” over his words and is unable to muster any kind of reply, ultimately just “hid[ing] his face” from her. Above all, the poem draws attention to Lord Thomas’s embarrassment about being called to account in such a public setting—or perhaps, more generously, his shame over how he and society have treated Maude Clare in the aftermath of their relationship.
Yet Maude Clare remains the victim in this situation. The poem’s closing lines, and the day itself, ultimately belong to Nell, the woman who keeps her rage in check and stands by her husband (though it’s worth noting that Nell marrying a man who doesn’t love her isn’t really “winning” here either). However righteous Maude Clare’s anger may be, and whatever Lord Thomas may have once promised her, it’s clear that Maude Clare has already suffered and will likely continue to suffer.
Ultimately, this fleeting moment of confrontation is the only satisfaction or retribution that Maude Clare is likely to receive, and readers might even assume that her public confrontation of her ex will only reinforce the damage to her reputation. She now faces a life permanently damaged by Victorian society’s hypocritical and sexist treatment of premarital romance, demonstrating the impossibility for any woman—even one as sympathetic as Maude Clare—to rise above such damning misogyny.
The Hearth, the Board, the Marriage-Bed symbols meanings?
The hearth, the board, and the marriage-bed together serve as a symbol of the way Maude Clare disrupts and tarnishes the new marriage of her ex-lover Lord Thomas and his bride Nell.
In the fifth stanza, having already attended their wedding and followed them out of the church, Maude Clare explicitly confronts Lord Thomas and Nell, proclaiming that she has brought them gifts:
To bless the hearth, to bless the board,
To bless the marriage-bed.
A “hearth” is part of a fireplace, and has long represented warmth, comfort, and blissful domesticity in art and literature, even giving rise to the expression “hearth and home” as a reference to one’s beloved home and family. A “board,” in Victorian speech, refers to a table—the site of shared family meals, as well as a space to invite community and provide generosity. And the “marriage-bed,” of course, refers to the literal space where a marriage is consummated, the intimate site of love and procreation.
Taken together, these three domestic sites all represent the foundation of the new couple’s married life. Maude Clare’s gifts are thus ostensibly meant to “bless” the new couple’s marriage. However, given her identity as Lord Thomas’s ex-lover (and the fact that her gifts turn out to be old tokens of their love), Maude Clare’s blessing turns out to be ironic. Instead, her gifts serve as more of a curse, as she deliberately intrudes on these symbolic sites of the couple’s new, shared life.
Lilies symbol meaning?
When Maude Clare reminds Lord Thomas of their past romance, she reminisces about a day they spent together “wad[ing] ankle-deep / for lilies in the beck.”
At first glance, this recollection of flowers on a pretty spring day simply serves as a romantic detail from a lovers’ outing. However, lilies have long been associated with purity, chastity, and fertility, and Victorian readers at the time “Maude Clare” was published would have been quick to make those symbolic associations.
Maude Clare’s reference to this particular flower thus emphasizes the romantic (and likely sexual) nature of Lord Thomas and Maude Clare’s past relationship, and heightens her veiled accusation that Lord Thomas ruined her sexual reputation.
What’s more, Maude Clare’s remark, in line 28, that “the lilies are budding now,” can be interpreted on two levels:
On the one hand, Maude Clare may simply be referring to the “budding” romance between Lord Thomas and Nell—their relationship has proven to be the fertile or successful one, whereas Maude Clare and Lord Thomas merely frolicked “amongst the lily leaves” before they were in full bloom.
On the other hand, however, Maude Clare may also be revealing, on a very subtle level, that she herself is “budding,” or pregnant, as a result of that day spent with Lord Thomas.
Either way, the presence of lilies in the poem serves as a clear symbol of the romantic relationship between Maude Clare and Lord Thomas, and hints at the possibility of sexual intimacy as well.
Maude Clare’s Gifts symbol meaning?
The two gifts that Maude Clare bestows upon Lord Thomas at his wedding—a golden chain and some faded leaves—symbolize lost love and broken promises. They help to convey Maude Clare’s ill wishes for his marriage to Nell.
Both the golden chain and the faded leaves are love tokens from the past romance between Maude Clare and Lord Thomas. Readers can assume that they each initially seemed to Maude Clare like hopeful symbols of the romantic link between herself and Lord Thomas:
The first, half of his golden chain, is a clear symbol of connection;
The second, leaves “plucked from [a] budding bough” during their romantic outing, is likewise a natural symbol of their blooming romance.
Now, however, as Maude Clare returns these items to Lord Thomas, they have lost their hopeful shine. Instead, they represent the rupture of his romantic overtures and the broken promises he made to her. Though Maude Clare claims that she offers these gifts back to Lord Thomas as blessings upon his marriage, it is quite clear, given their past relationship and the nature of the gifts themselves, that they are meant more as a curse than a blessing.
Fruit blooms and flower dew symbol meaning
The bloom-less fruit and dried up flowers in lines 35-36 represent Lord Thomas’s damaged heart—and perhaps his inability to love again after Maude Clare.
Maude Clare brings this up when offering Nell “my share of a fickle heart” and “paltry love,” in essence bestowing upon Nell whatever romantic connection remains between herself and Lord Thomas. In doing so, Maude Clare remarks that this gift, “were it fruit, the blooms were gone / Or, were it flowers, the dew.” In other words, she compares their soured romance to something more tangible, assigning physical symbols to Lord Thomas’s fickle heart and paltry love.
It is important to note that Maude Clare describes these symbolic items as permanently damaged. Blooms and dew represent freshness and vitality, but Maude Clare explicitly states that if Lord Thomas’s love took the form of fruit or flowers, these elements would be missing. The gift that she’s giving Nell—her husband’s “fickle” heart—is spoiled and dried up.
Maude Clare may refer to this offering as a gift, but the symbolism of the rotten fruit and dried-up dew makes clear that what she’s really bestowing upon the new bride is a burden and a curse. The implication of Maude Clare’s metaphor is that Lord Thomas’s heart is used up, and thus that Nell will never experience his love in its purest, freshest form.
Literacy context of Maude Clare
Christina Rossetti is considered one of the Victorian era’s finest poets. Born in England in 1830, she was the daughter of Italian poet Gabriele Rossetti and sister of poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Christina Rossetti grew up surrounded by poetry and art, and published her first poems at a young age, first with her grandfather’s private press and then in a journal printed by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the famous artistic school of which her brothers William Michael and Dante Gabriel were founding members.
Rosetti’s most famous work, 1862’s Goblin Market and Other Poems, established her as a major voice in Victorian poetry. This collection includes “Maude Clare” (though the poem was first published a few years earlier, and several stanzas longer, in the weekly magazine Once A Week). Gerard Manley Hopkins and Alfred, Lord Tennyson are among the luminaries who praised Rossetti’s work, and lauded her as the literary successor of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Unlike many poets, Christina Rossetti became popular in her own lifetime. Her literary inspirations were as wide-ranging as the works of Dante and Petrarch, the Bible, fairy tales and folktales, and the lives of saints. She was also a noted early feminist, and many of her poems, including “Maude Clare,” deal with the complexities of women’s lives in restrictive Victorian society.
Rossetti wrote more than a dozen more books, including children’s verse and religious prose. She died of cancer in 1894, after which her brother William Michael edited and published her collected works. Her poetry has been a major influence on writers up to the present day, including Virginia Woolf and Philip Larkin.
Historical context of Maude Clare?
Christina Rossetti lived in a world marked both by revolutionary change and reactionary conservatism. The Victorians (that is, those living in Britain during the reign of Queen Victoria) were innovators and empire-builders, and England reshaped itself considerably under the six decades in which Victoria reigned. A primarily rural population made an unprecedented shift to the cities as factory work outpaced farm work, and the invention of the steam engine resulted in new infrastructure like railroads, steamships, and factories. The telegraph and photograph were both invented in this era as well. Walter Besant, a late Victorian novelist, once observed that the era had “so completely changed the mind and habits of the ordinary Englishman, that he would not, could he see him, recognize his own grandfather.”
Perhaps in response to this speedy reconfiguration of the world, Victorian social culture became deeply conservative. “The woman question” became a pressing concern in Britain—a term used to describe the debates around the role and nature of women in society. Though some, like Rossetti, questioned the traditional and restrictive roles defined for women, for the most part the Victorian era resulted in a sharpening divide between the male and female spheres. Victorian women were relegated to a domestic life of homemaking and child-rearing, an ideal embodied in Coventry Patmore’s famous poem, “The Angel in the House.”
Women were also expected to adhere to a strict code of sexual morals: a woman had to be be chaste, pliant, and submissive, and any deviation could mean social exile. “Maude Clare” captures the intense repercussions that women faced for violating Victorian social norms. Rossetti herself had firsthand knowledge of how women suffered under these restrictions; for over a decade, she volunteered with the St. Mary Magdalene house of charity in Highgate, a refuge for former sex workers, or “fallen women” as they were called.
Rossetti’s feminist legacy is complex. For example, she did not fully support the women’s suffrage movement. However, she did believe in the power of female representation in government. Moreover, her literary work was part of a tide of bold and moving poetry and fiction by Victorian women, asserting the complexity and meaningfulness of women’s lives in a public literary sphere otherwise largely dominated by men.
