Muhammad Mohsin Atta

Victorian Poet

Poetic Characteristics

Christina Rossetti

Overview Rossetti is best known for her ballads and her mystic

religious lyrics.

Her poetry is marked by symbolism and intense feeling. She excelled in using words to invoke the particular aesthetic of the movement.

She based some of her work on her own life experiences and observations of nature, but more commonly, Rossetti wrote about about her thoughts on mortality and spiritual existence.

SymbolismIn “Uphill” Rossetti uses the device of an allegory which uses an abstract idea or "pictorial device" to represent "a deeper symbolic meaning."

The inn = Heaven Uphill= the difficulties encountered along the way The dark hours=death

Rossetti discusses the difficulties that a person faces in life. She is hopeful that after the hard travail there will be a place peace and solace when she gets to the end of her life.

By using the image of hand-holding in Remember, Rossetti suggests a kind of possession. By indicating that her lover will no longer be able to hold her by the hand the speaker suggests that he will no longer have any part in her or be able to possess her in the same way as he was perhaps used to.‘Come buy' – Goblin Market opening words echo a famous invitation in the Bible from God to his people:

Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; 

and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! 

Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.

The Natural World

Gardens Flowers

Fruits

Most of her poetry is based upon the natural environment and these are the most occurring natural elements in her poetry.

FruitsFruits are featured in many of the poems: In A Birthday, the description of the ‘apple tree / Whose

boughs are bent with thickset fruit' (lines 3-4) reflects the speaker's joy

In Goblin Market, the goblin men attempt to lure Laura and Lizzie with a long list of their produce which they describe as ‘All ripe together / In summer weather' (lines 15-16).

FlowersIn many of Rossetti's poems, flowers convey the fragility of life. For instance: In Winter: My Secret, the speaker laments that in

May it takes just one frost to wither flowers (lines 26-7)

The association of flowers with fragility is also suggested by the scentless and colourless rose in Summer is Ended.

The violets in Shut Out are fragile and far inferior to the violets that bud within the enclosed garden.

GardensGardens are a feature of many of Rossetti's poems. In some, she uses the image of the garden to symbolise the human soul. In others, she looks back to the Garden of Eden as she contemplates an eternity in Paradise:

In Shut Out, Rossetti positions her speaker on the outside of an enclosed garden. This is a feature that is central to many Renaissance texts and paintings.

Drawing on this heritage, Rossetti utilises the image of the enclosed garden to teach her readers about God's love, the soul's existence and the state of the fallen world.

Religious Poetry — Sexual Frustration and Infertility

After the publication of Sing-Song and the recovery from her illness, Christina Rossetti turned almost exclusively to devotional writing. Although Sing-Song marks a good-bye to the possibility of having a child, the longing for a child and husband did not end.As a deeply religious woman she was afraid somebody "could come between a woman and her love of God“[Flowers, 165].

After her disappointments with "worldly men," she now turned to the love of God.Longings and cravings are ever present in Christina Rossetti's poetry, especially in poems such as "Goblin market".

How much she struggled with "unfocused dissatisfaction" can be seen in a poem like "Roses on a Brier"

Roseson a brier,Pearls from out the bitter sea,such is earth's desireHowever pure it be. Neither bud nor brier,

Neither pearl nor brine for me:Be stilled my long desire;There shall be no more sea.

Be stilled my passionate heart;Old earth shall end, new earth shall be:Be still and earn thy partWhere shall be no more sea.

The speaker of the poem is dissatisfied with "earth's desire" even if it was "pure." She compares the desire to wild roses and to pearls. While the roses grow outside the garden and thus may be unprotected, the pearls come out of a "bitter sea," which might be a metaphor for life. Though both are rare and beautiful, they are also surrounded by a hostile environment.

Therefore the speaker refuses both of them in the second stanza. She speaks to herself when she says "Be stilled my long desire/ There shall be no more sea," then asking her own desire to stop longing for something which she cannot have. "Sea" seems to be a metaphor for the emotional upheavals of life.The meaning becomes clearer in the third and final stanza. Again the speaker demands her heart to be still. Death ("old earth") will be a turning point. In heaven ("new earth") there will be a fulfilment to what the speaker longs for ("earn thy part/where shall be no more sea").

Rossetti's Substitute Love for Jesus

Christina Rossetti's "unfocused dissatisfaction" had now found a focus and a relief. Rossetti's turn to devotional writing is depicted by Dorothy Mermin in the following way:

"Christina Rossetti stopped trying to rebel: in her devotional writings she finds an appropriate place for a conventional woman's voice“.

Her "desire for Christ, the ideal lover and "visions of fulfillment in all-embracing love in Paradise" helped her to find a new sense of purpose in her life and inspired her to 'new' poetry.

Christ had become "the ideal lover "and the only one to satisfy her needs. These needs are expressed in the same sensual descriptions that highlight, for example "Goblin Market."

The desire and lusting for Jesus becomes evident in a poem such as "Like as the desireth the water brooks", which opens:

"My heart is yearning:Behold my yearning heart,And lean low to satisfy,Its lonely beseeching cry,For Thou its fullness art. . . . " [231

In this poem the lyrical self expresses her "yearning" for Jesus. As the title (taken from a psalm) already indicates, she is longing for Christ as a deer longs for "water brooks."

These water brooks are a place where one is safe. They also deliver water, which is the source of all forms of life on earth.

Just as she could not exist without the life-giving water, she could not exist without the life-giving spirituality of Jesus. He is described like a protector, who should "behold" her heart.

At the same time he should also "satisfy" this heart, which is begging ("beseeching") to him, for he is "its fullness," all this heart needs to be fulfilled.