Soeur Louise De La Misericorde

Question 1

context

Answer 1

The title refers to a French woman, Louise de la Valliere, who was initially a mistress of King Louis XIV.

Question 2

desire

Answer 2

I have desired, and I have been desired;

getting old, ms linde nobody to live for - a woman’s role

Question 3

embers

Answer 3

Now dust and dying embers mock my fire;

The dust and ashes call to mind the funeral service: ‘ashes to ashes and dust to dust’. Given her ageing body, the narrator realises that the desire she had is spent and irrelevant now.

Question 4

hired

Answer 4

Where is the hire for which my life was hired?

Her life belongs to God, she has no real ownership of it.
or is owned by a man

Question 5

vanaties

Answer 5

Oh vanity of vanities, desire!

refrain/anaphora, repeated

his line is a reference to the first line of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament. This allusion to Ecclesiastes 1:2 has shown how the speaker is battling against the pull of earthly desires to achieve a more spiritual life.

Her thoughts are cyclical. No matter how much she thinks about it, nothing changes. She is in the same situation at the start and end of the poem.

Question 6

longing

Answer 6

Longing and love, pangs of a perished pleasure,
Longing and love, a disenkindled fire,

These two lines are syntactically parallel. The first is alliterative with repeated ‘l’s and ’plosive ‘p’s. The mood created seems to be one of contempt; she is looking back with apparent regret, as expressed in the last line.

Question 7

drop

Answer 7

Drop by drop slowly, drop by drop of fire,

onomatopoeia - was in good friday too

Question 8

trickles

Answer 8

Now from my heart, love’s deathbed, trickles, trickles…. Alas, my rose of life gone all to prickles,–

The lexical field of negativity continues. Note the alliterative percussive consonants in ‘trickles’ and ‘prickles’.

Question 9

stunting

Answer 9

Stunting my hope which might have strained up higher,

The ‘hope’ refers to God. She cannot develop her relationship with God any further because of her past actions.

If we compare this with Goblin Market, where Laura achieves redemption, we see a clear difference. The repeated transgressions of Sister Louise and the fact that she was the King’s mistress for so long may, she believes, result in her damnation.

The line is harsh; ‘stunting’ and ‘strain’ are uncomfortable, limiting words. The conditional ‘might have’ indicates regret,

Question 10

struck

Answer 10

Oh death-struck love,

similar to romeo and juliet and in the round tower