Winter: My Secret Flashcards
Secret
‘I tell my secret? No, indeed, no I.’
The personal pronouns in the first line signify the narrator’s strong, independent identify, and the line both begins and ends with ‘I’, suggesting that the speaker’s voice is dominant, endless even, and that the inquirer can’t beat her down. The possessive pronoun, ‘my’ expresses the speaker’s secret as her property, and therefore hers to divulge. By using reported speech, the narrator implies that the inquirer(s) has no voice, and instead uses his question to further her rejection, asserting herself - assuming the speaker is female, this defies the expectations for women to be submissive in the Victorian era.
Winter
‘But not today: it froze, and blows, and snows…nipping and dipping….come bounding and surrounding me, come buffeting, astounding me….mask for warmth’
The colon acts as a caesura that emphasizes the movement between the ‘to’, from ‘today’, and ‘fro’, from ‘froze’, mimicking the persistent ‘to’ and ‘fro’ between the narrator and the inquirer - this creates a relentless feel from the inquirer(s), evoking sympathy from the reader for the narrator. The internal rhyme and plosive sounds emphasis the fast pace of winter, a cruel attack where the narrator is prey to people’s curiosity - winter here is an extended metaphor for the inquirer’s relentless pursuit. The anaphora, and assonance, echo the metaphor of winter surrounding the narrator, as if the people desire her inner most thoughts - this evasiveness demonstrates the lack of privacy that women in the Victorian era were forced to accept. Suggesting that she wears her ‘mask for warmth’, the speaker indicates that it is a form of comfort. serving to hide her from curious onlookers who seek to find out her secret.
May
March with its peck of dust….Nor even May, whose flowers one frost may wither thro’ the sunless hours’
The fact that flowers, which have the potential to bring joy in May, can wither after just one frost points to the notion that the pleasures derived from nature can be short-lived, and deceivingly so. The speaker suggests that the the cold wind is to be preferred to the ‘peck of dust’ that March brings, since it motivates a person to action, protecting herself from negative influences. The speaker describes summer as a ‘languid’ time - in view of the lethargy that the summer weather gives rise to, she suggests that the season is the one in which her secret is most likely to be revealed. Without the need for ‘a mask’, she is not protected as she might be and therefore, stands in danger of revealing more than previously.
