Shut Out Flashcards
Door
‘The door was shut.’
Along with the regular envelope rhyme scheme, ABBA, the first line also indicates a feeling of entrapment, suggesting that the speaker is shut out of a place of happiness. Doors usually symbolize opening and closing rather than permanent closure, indicating a process of selection as to whom may enter. Perhaps reminiscent of the gates to heaven, beneath it a ‘garden’ that could be metaphorical of the Garden of Eden, the doors show the process of God judging who may enter heaven - this allows the reader to ponder what the narrator has done wrong, so wrong that she feels forced out of heaven even. The caesura in the middle of the first line suggests that this decision is in fact permanent, creating an errant pace to mimic her despair at it.
Iron
Violet
‘iron bars’
‘A violet bed is budding near….a lark has made her nest…but not the best’
The ‘iron bars’ echo this entrapment and allude to prison, reinforcing the feeling of wrong-doing - the person’s sin is so bad that she is forever kept out of heaven to be punished, or perhaps it is her inability to repent that keeps her away: she may not be trapped by God, but by herself and her actions. The religious connotations create the possibility of the narrator being Eve, making ‘Shut Out’ a poem about the consequences of temptations and desire. In the final stanza, the narrator uses the symbol of a ‘violet’ that is ‘budding’, popular in the Victorian era and characteristic of Rossetti, to represent faithfulness growing, with a ‘lark’ further alluding to hope and energy. Yet this is cut short, the narrator’s belief ‘not the best’, as if the narrator’s religion is not enough to overcome her sin.
Garden
‘My garden, mine…with all flowers’
‘It had been mine, and it was lost.’
Rossetti’s feeling of loss, furthermore, regret, are highlighted through her use of possessive pronouns to indicate the garden: ‘my’, along with ‘mine’, which is repeated, makes the loss more personal to her. The end-stop at ‘lost.’ indicates that she has no hope, unlike the endless feeling portrayed with an enjambment, the end-stop symbolizes her inability to carry on with life. A sense of bitterness is created as if she deserves the garden, deserves heaven therefore, emphasized through her pre-Raphaelite style of poetry: unlike the greenery that exists on earth, she suggests that the trees and flowers that grow in paradise are not subject to decay, with the word ‘all’ suggesting that the flowers do not undergo seasonal change. This juxtaposes with the nature on earth, as well as the contrast with the ‘iron bars’, intensifying her feelings of bitterness that she remains somewhere far away from heaven, trapped without warmth and life.
Spirit
‘shadowless spirit…straining eyes…quite alone…blinded with tears…delightful land gone’
Rossetti’s lexical choices regarding vision, often using hyperbole to indicate her desperation, ‘straining eyes…blinded with tears’, convey a sense of sadness which evokes pathos from the reader - it is as if the narrator has lost her way in life, uselessly seeking help. She further employs oblique rhymes, such as ‘gone’ and ‘alone’ which mimic her feelings of anguish by creating discordance, drawing emphasis on the finality of the word ‘gone’ - this allows the reader to sympathize with the narrator. The ‘shadowless spirit’, is often considered to be a religious allusion, which appears doubtful as Rossetti’s strong faith would make it unlikely to portray God as without feeling; this may instead be a physical representation of her depression, epitomizing her hopelessness.
