From The Antique

Form

Ballad → quatrains, ABCB

Lyrical → emotional, personal

Amount of syllables per line varies → no regularity but more natural

“weary”

First and last line

Cyclical, ongoing, repetitive

Context

Never published, written in 1854, time not right

Nihilistic/suicidal overtone. Struggle

Too progressive?

Feminist interpretation

• Women as “other” → men see them as less important and just ‘there’ (Simone de Bouveiar)

• Questions existence of women in patriarchy

“Antique”

• Woman being objectified. On show

  • Way it always has been. Life is dull

“she said”

Giving every women a voice while hiding behind anonymity of character

“Woman’s lot”

Woman’s life is nothing. Better to be nothing

Nihilistic (destroy)

“grain of dust”

Funeral ceremony, ash to ash, dust to dust

“Still the world would wag on the same”

Chinwag = unimportant. No woman voice

World would still continue and not be changed, no matter if she is here

“Blossoms boom as in days of old, cherries ripen and wild bees hum”

• Focus on little things that come and go that no one notices. For her little things are a struggle

• New beginning, living and growing, idyllic

• Focus on beauty compared to first and last line. Pre-Raphaelite

“How much less”

No one is lower than her so who would care or weep for her