RP+ADH: Critic Quotes

Question 1

ADH:

‘A free bird never longs for a cage’ ~ Henrik Ibsen

Answer 1

RP:

‘(Rossetti) used biblical idea of women’s subordination to man as reason for maintaining the status quo’ ~ Simon Avery

Question 2

ADH:

‘It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life’ ~ Henrik Ibsen (Ghosts)

Answer 2

RP:

‘Resignation to a life of anonymity and obscurity was not in her nature’ ~ Barbara Morden

Question 3

ADH:

New ending, ‘a barbaric outrage, ~ Henrik Ibsen

Answer 3

RP:
Rossetti has ‘the same tendency to darken poetic thoughts with pietistic or transcendental transports, the same occasional gift of unsurpassed melody’ ~ Edmund Gosse

Question 4

ADH:
‘(It is) women’s disproportionate confinement in private spheres (that) correlates with women’s subordinate status’ ~ L.Code 2000

Answer 4

RP:
‘Christina Rossetti’s universe was settled was settle before she came of age and it neither changed nor developed…Her poetry is largely devoid of sharp observation, whether intellectual or imagination she falls back on pretty language, the bane of so many women poets ~ Stuart Curran, late 20th century

Question 5

ADH:
Ibsen himself insisted that he was ‘more of a poet and less of a social philosopher’ and that he was not ‘even very sure what women’s rights really are’.

Answer 5

RP:
‘Does it not appear as if The Bible was based upon an understood unalterable distinction between men and women, their position, duties and privileges?’

Question 6

ADH:

‘A thousand words leave not the same deep impression as does a single deed ~ Henrik Ibsen

Answer 6

RP:
‘We can assume that since Rossetti was involved in a cause that sought to reform these women, even return them to the family structure, she must have believed a fallen woman need not forced be a social outcast’ ~ D’Amico

Question 7

ADH:

‘The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom - these are the pillars of society ~ Henrik Ibsen

Answer 7

RP:
‘But if I were bringing a case against God, she is one of the first witnesses I should call. It is melancholy reading, first she starved herself of love, which meant also life, then of poetry in deference to what she thought her religion demanded…poetry was castrated too’ ~ Virginia Woolf 1918

Question 8

ADH:

‘The play manifests on frequent anxieties about parental legacies’

Answer 8

RP:

‘Rossetti spent much of her time devoted to the aspect of death’ ~ Lars Wallner

Question 9

ADH:

‘The plat exploded like a bomb into contemporary life’ ~ Halvdan Koht

Answer 9

RP:

Rossetti’s poems are ‘uncompromising in their analysis of women’s place in society’ ~ Simon Avery

Question 10

ADH:
‘People are delving more deeply into human nature from every angle, in science as well as art…And in art of this current naturalism renewals itself in theatrical terms in a strong demand for individualisation’ ~ B.Bjoerson

Answer 10

RP:

‘Rossetti’s love for God trumps that of another human’ ~ Joshua Bocher