Summary
Summary Rossetti A Birthday Analysis
In-depth analysis of Rossetti's language, structure, form and meaning
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Rossetti – An Apple-GatheringInitial 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
- speaker uses blossoms of the apple tree to make - the cruelty of sexual double standards
herself beautiful for Willie explored through symbolic images of fruit
and flowers
- no apples left→ Willie= left for another woman
- the poems heroine=a ‘fallen’ woman- one
- dangers of love, pain of abandonment, cruelty of deemed unworthy by society
sexual double standards
- heartbreak and betrayal
- every female character in the poem gathers apples
except from the speaker
- apples- extended metaphor for premarital sex
- apples= commodity that women exchange with men
for the security of marriage
- without her virginity- nothing to offer her husband
- societal rejection of fallen women- ‘My neighbours
mocked me’ - societal mockery shows how women
become outcasts and outsiders
- ‘Plump Gertrude’= bitterness? Pregnancy? Envy?
Bitterness?- points to the hypocrisy of a society
which values sex within marriage over the
preservation of community
Use of form Use of form
- ballad- first person narrative, past tense- sense of - almost fable like in its allegorical message
nostalgia
- allegorical- offered Willie her purity and innocence
- seven quatrains- alternate rhyme
- frequency of rhymes that do ont finish on a sounded
consonant add to the mournful tone
Use of structural devices (include key terms) Use of structural devices
- shifts between one evening and more distant - 7 X quatrains with ABAB interlocking
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