"Some Ladies Dress in Muslim Full and White"

Question 1

Themes of poem

Answer 1

• Gender
• Materialism
  *Envy

Question 2

Form/Structure

Answer 2

-Didactic tone
-Iambic Pentameter of 10 syllables

Question 3

Effect of Form/Strucure

Answer 3

-structure is controlled
-society constantly materialistic
-unoriginal

Question 4

ANALYSIS Of “some ladies, some…”

Answer 4

sectoral separation/judgement/ lack of respect between R and society/young women

Question 5

ANALYSIS Of “towering above her sex with horrid height”

Answer 5

“above”- propositional, women’s desperation to achieve more than they are supposed to.
-nvective/ insulting language- refect hatred towards young women

Question 6

ANALYSIS ‘‘Witness a man with tassels on his back; Or a woman in a great-coat like sack”

Answer 6

-imagery of apperance
-absurdity in switching gender roles
-reflecting R’s anglo-catholic movement- which influenced her on gender roles
-satire
-

Question 7

ANALYSIS of “enjoying if you them sink” and “poke them o’er the rim”

Answer 7

-Bathos/change in tone from religion
-cacophemistic expressions
“o’er” - quick/clipping- strict rhythm-reflects R’s strict values
“poke” - verb, Crot- makes tone aggressive- reflects importance/expectations within society

Question 9

ANALYSIS OF “There are some whom you would not teach to swim, Rather enjoying if you saw them sink”

Answer 9

-Volta
-biblical reference Noah’s Arc
-reflects certain women need to be left behind for world to progress better

//
-Polemic/attacks- ironic due to other poems in anthology that support women
CONTEXT: reflects behaviour of rejecting Augusta Webster’s campain for women’s right to vote- late 1870s
-rejected using letter ‘Bible was based upon…men and women, their position, duties, privileges?”

Question 10

ANALYSIS OF “Bason”

Answer 10

-another biblical reference
-alternative Anglican Church Bason

Question 11

ANALYSIS OF “sight’, ‘sack’ ‘sex’, ‘swim’, ‘girlish’, ‘tassels’

Answer 11

-tautology
-‘s’ sounds- sibilance, consonants
-underlying tone of cynicism to the polemic expressions

Question 12

ANALYSIS OF “dog-cart/a hack”

Answer 12

-criticising materialism through transport/a concrete noun
-showing how out-of-place the reformation of women’s clothing were
- similar to the random punctuation towards the end of the poem

Question 14

ANALYSIS OF “roses and geraniums”

Answer 14

-Floral imagery
-symbolic reference to femininity
-only mentioned towards the end resonates reality of feminism

-“geraniums”- endure light frosts in the winter but die in a hard freeze
-reflecting women’s obsession to “dress in muslin full and white” for vanity/ materialism cannot outlive societal gaze and judgement