Soeur Lousise de la Miscericorde Flashcards
Desired
{expectations of women}
‘I have desired, and I have been desired’
The first line is a strong statement of equality – there’s no attempts to claim a distance from desire. This is characteristic of Rossetti’s speakers, who often own their desire, rather than rejecting it. Women were expected to repress their desire, and this poem may be a response to these assumption. Rossetti did, after all, argue for better representation of women in Parliament, and this may be another aspect where attitudes towards women could be improved.
Dust
{death and desire, religion over desire}
‘dust and dying embers mock my fire’
‘drop by drop’
Rossetti uses a lexical field of decay to create connotations of funerals and death, indicating that the speaker was once fueled my desire, but this has now been burned out, leaving nothing behind - perhaps even mocking the speaker’s previous view that desire was important: based on a real person, Sister Louise of Mercy who was once a mistress of Louis XIV. The slow pace of phrases like “drop by drop”, repeated, elongates the line and draws out the life-in-death quality of the poem, rather ironic considering the theme of love and desire. Rossetti, working with fallen women, would have seen the destruction that can be caused by unbridled desire, and combined with her Christian faith where desire outside of marriage was forbidden, she may be encouraging people to reign in their desire, just as Sister Louise did when she converted to Catholicism and became a nun.
Longing
{reminiscent about desire}
‘longing and love’
The alliteration of here, repeated on two lines, elongates the sound and draws attention to the pleasures of love. Aided by the trochee of “longing” interrupting the previously iambic rhythm, as if her feelings interfere with the morals she lives her life by, there may be an indication of her regret at not following through with her desires - this was published when Rossetti was in her fifties, and has a reminiscent tone to it, maybe of unfulfilled desires.
Perished
{pain caused by desire}
‘pangs of a perished pleasure…memory a bottomless gulf of mire…love a fount of tears’
The next alliterative phrase with its plosive sound makes desire sound almost painful rather than loving. The harsh, unpleasant imagery at the end of the stanza, with metaphors of memory and love indicate the pain to be endless and persistent. These two lines, with the introduction of anapests mid-way through, also continue the disruption of the rhythm, as if the speaker’s life has been interrupted by her desire. This negative view of desire, as if it deceivingly appears to be ‘longing and love’ at first, may be a warning against desire.
Drop
{uncontrollable desire}
Linguistically, the semantic field continues to be of loss in the third stanza –’ trickle’, ‘drop’, ‘dross’, ‘spent’, ‘gone’. The rhythmic pace here is slowed down as well; a combination of iambs, anapests and trochees means that it’s sometimes difficult to take hold of, perhaps like the desire itself - this acknowledging the futility of trying to control it. . The speaker mourns the destruction that her desire has caused, and the use of ‘fire’ in all four stanzas for desire demonstrates it’s all-consuming nature, repeated in every stanza to show it’s persistence.
Love
{love and desire together}
‘love’s deathbed…death-struck love’
Repeated in the last stanza is the idea of ‘death-struck love’, linking to the previous stanza’s ‘love’s deathbed’, connecting the two so closely as to suggest that love has died. This unconventional imagery for love portrays it in a negative light rather than the conventional romantic imagery. It’s unclear, though, whether love has died because of desire – it’s too impure, not able to withstand the fires of desire – or is love ended now that desire has gone. because the two are so intertwined that one cannot exist without the other?
Refrain
{religion vs desire}
‘Oh vanity of vanities, desire!’
While ‘vanity’ could take it the meaning of one’s pride in their appearance, it could otherwise refer to the quality of being worthless, as if desire is futile - perhaps this is because Rossetti cannot act on her desire due to her Christian faith. Despite a certain struggle, Rossetti chose her religion over her feelings, breaking off one engagement, and declining another. This indicates her struggle with the concept of feeling desire, given her religious fervour. The refrain might represent an outpouring of emotion, the poem an appeal that her desire is too much. The dramatic monologue with a speaker based on a true person may have been chosen to reinforce her faith over her desire. Just as Sister Louise overcame her desire, Rossetti may be hoping to through the reassurance of this poem.
