Summary A-Level OCR English Literature Christina Rossetti Poetry
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Course
Drama and poetry pre-1900
Institution
OCR
A-Level OCR English Literature Christina Rossetti Poetry. Includes all 15 poems from the collection with quotations and some context. Also includes criticism
Context:
As early as when she was fourteen years old, she suffered a nervous breakdown that saw her withdraw
from her school and receive a home education with a notable religious element; Christina Rossetti,
along with her family, became deeply involved in Anglo-Catholicism. This led to the declining of three
separate engagements offered to Rossetti in her teenage years, and she never married in her adulthood.
By the time Song was written, Rossetti had turned down her suitors already, so it seems likely that the
“dearest” addressed to in the poem was meant either as a general mark of fondness, or as an address to
a family member. Shortly before the poem’s publication, Rossetti experienced a crisis of faith that arose
from a bout of depression. Dealing with all of this, her Song was likely written as a means of comforting
her own self, and accepting the potential realities held by death
Her father died when she was quite young
When I am dead, my dearest
“When I am dead, my dearest, sing no sad songs for me” – challenging traditional mourning standards
“Haply may I remember and haply may forget” – contradicts traditional Christian belief if we were to forget
when we die about our loved ones
Remember
“Remember me when I am gone away”
“Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad”
Echo
Context:
Written in 1854. In 1850, James Collinson, Rossetti’s fiancé, left her to become a priest, but then he left
the priesthood but did not come back to her. Perhaps this poem is an echo of her previous love for him
“O memory, hope, love of finished years”
“O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bittersweet whose wakening should have been in Paradise, where souls
brimfull of love abide and meet” – makes it sound like a poem directed towards someone who has died. Or
perhaps paradise means sexual relations because she cannot directly refer to sex. Paradise for Rossetti is
brimfull of love where you rest and stay peacefully
“Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live my very life again tho’ could in death” – echoes are imitations and so
are dreams. Perhaps dreams are an alternative to Paradise. Seems as though it may be the speaker who is in
paradise
ABABCC rhyme scheme – separation of couple in first bit, unity of couple in second half
Romance
In the Round Tower at Jhansi (Indian Mutiny)
Context:
This is Rossetti’s perspective on the Indian Mutiny, a very Victorian perspective. She is sympathetic to
the British and now we would have sympathy for the Indians
“Not a hope in the world remained”
“Young, strong, and so full of life: the agony struck them dumb”
, “Close his arm about her now, close her check to his”
“I wish I could bear the pang alone” – the wife says this – challenges the traditional assumption of a woman’s
weakness and subordination to her husband
The poem has the feeling of being unfinished – they have been robbed of the rest of their lives (they die young,
and their lives are unfinished) as we are of an ending. They have the last say (with their goodbyes) rather than
Rossetti commenting on the last seconds of their lives
Pace = choppy and dramatic
Birthday
Context:
Written in 1861 when she was 31. She is likely looking forward to life beginning again after James
Collinson who had married someone else 3 years before the publishing of this poem
Biblical references as Rossetti were highly religious. Suggest human love is not enough
The Pre-Raphaelite components are so apparent in Rossetti’s poetry that we find ‘carved pomegranates’
and ‘gold and silver grapes’ and veritable still life of statuesque fruit in an uncanny banquet of the dead,
such as in ‘The Dead City’. The photographic detail and colourful abundance of her fruit actually recall
the decorative fruits of Pre-Raphaelite art. And the Pre-Raphaelite influences shaping
Rossetti’s verse would certainly have heightened her desire to represent faithfully and at length the
variety in the natural world.
“My is heart is like” in every line of the first stanza, it shows the narrator cannot express her joy through
language. That is, the narrator’s joy is inexpressible, and cannot be defined in word
“Raise me”, she means that she wants herself to be raised in his (Christ’s) honour. Rossetti never tried to hide
the religious meaning of her poetry. Moreover, the use of biblical imagery does not necessarily make a poem a
devotional one. The use of images in the first stanza are not only figures ‘recalled in their natural element,’ but
each represents a moment of fulfilment in a sense both sensual and sexual. Let’s take, for example, the ‘singing
bird’ which has found a mate and expresses his joy in song – as the poet wishes to express hers.
“The birthday of my life is come, my love is come to me” - The conclusion is a satisfying resolution, in which the
poet embraces her ‘birthday’, the spiritual love that is the culmination of her life.
Gender
Context:
Increasing recognition of women’s roles beyond the traditional housewife and mother. However,
Rossetti herself was not supportive of women’s rights and did not support women going to university
or having the vote
Married Women’s Property Act, 1865 – woman could own up to £200 of their own property
Society for the Employment of Women established in 1860
Rossetti was middle-class and did not experience the hardships that working-class women will have
experienced
From the Antique
“She said” – the fact that the poem begins in third person suggests that Rossetti does want to be the mouthpiece
for women rather than reflecting her own beliefs
“Doubly black in a woman’s lot” – oppression of women
“I wish and I wish I were a man: or, better than any being, were not” – worse to be a woman than to not exist –
nihilism (a belief that life is meaningless)
Shut Out
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