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Summary Rossetti Our Mothers Analysis
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In-depth analysis of Rossetti's language, structure, form and meaning
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Rossetti – Our MothersInitial Responses Development of ideas and interpretations
(red)
Meaning / Ideas / Themes constructed and explored Meaning / Ideas / Themes constructed and
by the poet explored by the poet
- women, religion, death and the afterlife - Rossetti illuminates the movement from a
focus on foremothers to a contemplation
- concerned with one's dead mothers and sisters of the place where ‘God shall wipe away
- Dedicational, retrospective, sentimental, emotive all tears’
- ‘life's sufficient school’- no need for a formal - While a contemplation of the destination
education → ‘work as we worked in patience’- idea of her cherished dead enables her to
of stoicism- the separate spheres debate- women begin her journey, Rossetti makes clear→
adopting a passive role the memories of the lessons they
exemplified in life are more valuable than
- ‘dule’- sadness/ misery a concern over what they can see from
heaven
- ‘our painful day’ → mortal life on earth = repression
and difficulty in faith and devotion - Commitment to the promise that the tears
of loved ones will be ‘wiped away’ offers
- exploration of the generational relationship between
solace in the face of separation by death
mothers and children
- two opposing ideas- women in the
- poem presents a compassionate view of the patience
present tense (alive and facing life's
and courage of women
challenges) vs women who have passed
away in ‘Paradise’ in the presence of God
looking down at their sisters
Use of form Use of form
- petrarchan sonnet- octave establishing the problem, - metre= traditionally structured- follows a
sestet resolving the problem pattern of iambic pentameter- measures,
solemn tread
- does not end in a traditional rhyming couplet-
‘whether or not you bear to look on me’- problem - rhyme scheme- ABBA ABBA CDE EDC
seems unresolved→ creates a sense of doubt- in
heaven? in the afterlife? → existential dread
Use of structural devices (include key terms) Use of structural devices
- ‘Learn as we learned in life's sufficient school’- use of - By having the rhyme scheme of the sestet
heteroglossia here to involve the voices of ‘our echo that of the patterning in the octave,
mothers’ and ‘our sisters’ the sonnet gestures back on itself to
indicate how the memories of these
- continual parallels- ‘learn as we learned’ ‘work as we lessons tempers the difficulties of the
worked’ ‘walk as we walked’ ‘hope as we hoped’ present ‘painful day’
- juxtaposition in ‘fearful in joy and confident in dule’- - octave- dedicated to the strength of the
idea of maintaining faith in God’s plan
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