rossetti

remember context 🚨

rossetti was exposed to illness and death from a young age because her dad has suspected tuberculosis

long customs of mourning and high mortality rates at the time

man holds power, speaker talks about a future that he planned rather than one they planned together

remember 🚨

- anadiplosis of 'gone away' and repetition of the simple command 'remember me' emphasises finality of death

- 'silent land' is afterlife, soul sleep context, disconnect between earth and heaven

- 'hold', 'hand', 'half' - fricatives show affection / love, speaker still has hope the partner will remember them

- repetition of 'you' and 'i' - intimacy, there's no resentment

- 'only' - redefining love as simply remembering, doesn't ask much of her partner because she doesn't want them to 'grieve'

- no enjambment or caesura in first six lines shows strict control of emotion / anxiety in petrarchan sonnet form

- last two lines almost monosyllabic, almost sounds like a song, speaker wants their partner to just have a happy life after speaker dies

- 'half turn to go' - hesitancy to die, push pull of love

- 'remember me' - strong desire to be remembered, 'only remember' - loses willpower to push to be remembered, 'remember' - loses personal connection because no more 'me'

volta halfway through signals the change in viewpoint. octave is issue = not being forgotten after death. setset is solution = acceptance they may be forgotten.

strict iambic pentameter shows restraint and emphasises the difficulty of talking about death

palindromic abbaabba rhyme scheme emphasises hesitancy about death, shows cycle of life

'only remember me;you' uses semicolon to show the distance between the living and the dead

the world

- 'soft', 'fair' = feminine and gentle world that 'woos' her

- garden of eden 'fruits' reference, the truth subversively is revealed in night rather than day. - night = no prayer = evil temptation.

- medusa reference, sibilance creates sense of evil

- unique indentation forces readers eyes all over the page, mirrors the shock / confusion the speaker feels

- victorian anxiety about female sexuality being scary and women always wanting to be 'satieted'

- 'cloven' feet are irreversible impacts of being tempted by otherworldly evil

- after volta, what the world would look like if we let women give in to their evil sexuality (anglo catholic view)

echo

- mythological story, echo can only repeat what narcissus says

- repetitive setset structure because echo can only repeat, speaker only wants lover to be alive again

- water imagery, water is flowing, tears flow, fast running water is unreachable like an unreachable love

- only 'me', no 'you' or 'they' because speaker is yearning alone

- mourning atmosphere, victorian multi year mourning

- rossetti having to perform silence as a woman

- repetition of 'sweet' makes the word redundant, the speakers only escape is heaven which only opens and doesnt let people out

- rising rhymes mirror how memories of love are just echoes of love

may

- 'when may was young' when relationship was fresh and she didnt have to consider anglo-catholic reality of cant marry / have kids with someone not anglo catholic

- 'left me old and cold and grey' her view at 25 of how unwed women would be left

- liminal space between spring and summer is may

- she wants to stay with 'not born' poppies but in first line she says shes not meant to say things like this (about wanting to be unwed, no kids etc)

maude clare 🚨

context - rossetti rejected multiple men due to their religion

context - a victorian audience may be in nell’s favor more than maude clare’s as maude clare is the scorned woman who slept with a man outside of marriage

- maude clare name is spondee which brings attention to her as a fallen woman

- opens with 'out' because maude clare will be cast out of society

- man has little presence in poem with lots of false starts, is called 'my lord' mockingly because he couldn’t choose between two women + ‘my lord was pale with inward strife’

- 'bless' harsh plosive repetition and acts as pagan imagery

- mention of lillies for sex because virgin mary is associated with lillies

- 'the bloom is gone' because tom is maude clare’s leftovers

- she is 'like a queen' and threatens tom with pregnancy, his wife is ‘like a village maid’

‘may nell and you but live as true as we have done for years’ - singsong tone/format because toms parents view the format of marrying someone else (even if tom was interested in maude clare first) as a normal process even though tom is ‘pale’ (unhappy)

at home 🚨

- 'when i was dead' immediate harsh plosive opening

- 'passed the door' liminal space

‘i listened to their honest chat’ - the ghost is stuck at home so can only listen, like how women were often stuck at home

‘plod plod’ - insistence on using simplistic language emphasises bitterness

use of ‘i’ shows the ghost has grown jaded and gotten an ego? from being trapped alone

‘sucked the pulp of plum and peach’ - plosive alliterative emphasise the sound of chewing fruit which the ghost presumably can’t do anymore

could be metaphor for women marrying and then becoming stuck at home lest theyre seen out and risk seeming like theyre committing adultery

lots of caesura slows down the poem and emphasises how slow and torturous the life of a ghost is

passing and glassing 🚨

• lack of regular rhythm puts reader off balance like how life passes both slowly and quickly

• opening line suggests it is women who are the ones who look at themselves and each other the most rather than men

• anadiplosis of ‘faded lavender is sweet, sweet’ symbolic of how even older women are expected to offer themselves up to be fetishised

• ‘dried up violets’ it is inevitable that women will fade like how flowers all die

• unconventional line length forces eyes around the page, similar to how we look at all parts of our faces and analyse ourselves

• violets are associated with innocence and purity, speaker may be saying that even though you are older you can still be ‘sweet’

• rossetti was diagnosed with graves’ disease not too long before this was published, so she recently had to start confronting the idea of fast aging and loss of beauty

• older women were often mocked and kept out of art and literature like how theyre mocked in great expectations

as froth on the face of the deep 🚨

• short length symbolic of how life will be short and meaningless without god

• final line (about god) stands separate from the rest of the poem in terms of which parts are stressed or not stressed so the line about god could stand out

• emphasis is placed on the word ‘god’

• anaphora of ‘as’ means we’re presented with no resolution to the hopelessness in the poem other than turning to god to avoid them

• ‘gourd’ is a kind of fruit with a hard shell - continues rossettis pattern of often using fruit imagery

• ‘harvest that no man shall reap’ = the crops exist for no purpose just as without god rossetti would exist without purpose

• ‘dreams at the waking of sleep’ are useless because dreams are meant for when you’re asleep, so life without god is useless

babylon the great 🚨

• title refers to a great prostitute in the book of revelation, a woman who represents the allure of worldly pleasures and false religions

• religion of ‘thro’ emphasises that this woman is not of godly values

• repetition of ‘gaze now upon her’ suggests the woman has magical qualities that draw people to her no matter what

• end stopping of ‘set on fire.’ suggests there is a finality, if you follow this woman then you will die

• ‘no wine is in her cup’ means her inner soul lacks morality

an apple gathering

• first line has plosives which gives the poem an uneasy, harsh tone + mirror the sounds of picking fruits

• motif is fruit and nature to represent sex and the sins of the garden of eden

• ‘i found no apples there’ short sentence draws attention to the promiscuity of the speaker who has loose ‘hair’ and is initially proud of it

• ‘plump gertrude passed me with her basket full’ - the speaker sees other women perform their societal roles

• sex is ‘of far less worth than love’

• plucking the ‘pink’ flowers rather than waiting for the apples to be ripe = having sex before marriage

• willie ‘stooped’ to talk which suggests he views the speaker as below him

• caesura in final narrative symbolic of how her life has slowed to a halt due to having sex before marriage

some ladies dress in muslin full and white

• anaphora of some emphasises that only some other women act this way, not rossetti herself probably

• shorter poem unpublished until her death makes it more of a personal, true to her opinion poem

• criticism of wealthy people and those who pretend to have an aura of wealth

• ‘girlish pink’ - criticism of women who have not accepted their roles as adult women in society

• ‘if you saw them sink’ - use of you rather than i separates rossetti from this opinion but its still probably her actual opinion

uphill

• simple rhyme scheme represents the predictability and inevitability of struggle in life

• two narrators kept separate through ABAB rhyme scheme

• one speaker is unsure and questioning, while another is confident and has been in this position before

• represents how we often go through hard times but ever single time we often still find it new and scary

a helpmeet for him

• title comes from the book of genesis and refers to a compassionate person (usually a wife)

• ‘meek compliances veil her might’ - speaker doesnt say women aren’t strong but that if they are they need to hide it for ‘mans delight’ - rossettis confusing opinions on women’s role in society

• repetition of ‘woman was made’ emphasises that women were made to be alongside men, like how eve was made from adam’s rib

• ‘tender and faithful’ which is how jesus christ was also described - if women want to be christlike they need to be compliant to men

twice

• ‘i took my heart in my hand’ - monosyllabic possessives, she is taking agency

• ‘o my love’ refrain is potentially not vocalised, the words she really wants to say to her lover who has rejected her

• complete absence of male voice

• ‘yet a woman’s words are weak; you should speak, not i’ - rossettis own confusing views on a woman’s role in society, caesura between ‘you’ and ‘i’ separates speaker from lover who has rejected her

• ‘o my god’ not in brackets unlike earlier refrain because the women has openly converted from erotic love to religious love

• ‘smile thou and i shall sing’ - speaker is willing to be judged by god but not by other men

• her lover was not willing to sleep with her because she was ‘unripe’

• ‘this marred one heedless day’ - she doesnt want to return to the life of almost becoming a fallen woman