Shut Out Flashcards
“My garden, mine, beneath the sky,
Pied with all flowers bedewed and green.”
Shut Out:
- Possessive pronouns
- Caesura
- Preposition “beneath” reflects closeness to Heaven
- Natural imagery, reflects new life/fragility - contrasts with her struggle outside the garden
- Ironic as the speaker associates with the garden claiming it belongs to her, in reality she is forbidden to enter it
- Infantile tone, desperation to gain access like a child begging for a toy
- Religious allusion to the story of Eve
“A shadowless spirit kept the gate,
Blank and unchanging like the grave.”
Shut Out:
- Sibilance, image of a supernatural/ethereal being whispering
- Allusion to the grim reaper passing down judgement
- Nature of the spirit remains ambiguous
- Following the softness of the first line, harsh plosives to reflect the speaker’s despair
“The spirit was silent; but he took
Mortar and stone to build a wall;”
Shut Out:
- Sibilance, hushed tone
- Spirit finally attributed male pronoun
- Males blamed for being the source of the speakers banishment from the garden
- Could be argued that the male dominated society prevents fallen women from re-entering into society
- Image of a strong, impenetrable barrier isolating the speaker completely after her failed attempts to re-enter ,”But one small twig”
- The permanent barrier differs from the door as it cannot be opened or looked through, cutting her off from the garden and forcing her to confront her reality
“For nought is left worth looking at
Since my delightful land is gone.”
Shut Out:
- End-stopped, finality
- Continued use of possessive pronoun “my”
- Religious “delightful land”, she still views the garden in a positive light despite its treatment of her
- Tone of futility as she cannot even peak into the garden any more
- Hyperbolic, nothing left to see, presents males as having stripped women of their place in society
- Metaphorical blindness alludes to the Bible as the speaker is spiritually drained, relating to Adam and Eve’s loss of a relationship with God
“And good they are, but not the best;
And dear they are, but no so dear.”
Shut Out:
- Anaphora/internal repetition, reflects her continued entrappment outside the garden
- Left with the conclusion that the Lark symbolises hope, and that the violet bed represents faithfulness, but also death
- The contradicts the paradise that Rossetti would have embraced with ecstasy
