In both ‘Song’ and ‘Remember’, Rossetti articulates several different attitudes towards death, avoiding any one set approach. In ‘Song’, she uses techniques involving the structure and tone of the poem to communicate that she is in fact happy to be out of the relationship. However,...
‘A Christmas Carol’ by Christina Rossetti is a devotional poem that has been set to music many times, most famously by Gustav Holst in 1906, and remains a choral favourite today. It is centred around the birth of Jesus Christ, as told from the perspective...
Christina Rossetti’s poem ‘Remember’ is a 14-line sonnet that explores the ideas of loss, grief, and separation. As often observed in her poetry, strong visual imagery alluding to the concepts of life, death, beginning and end, is elicited through her use of linguistic and structural...
Christina Rossetti’s poems were viewed as moral pieces, especially in comparison to her brother Dante’s sensual and even sexual poetry. However, Rossetti’s poetry is demonstrative of the Victorian mindset in that, it is not simply dutiful and preaching. Rossetti’s poems, like the Victorians, are full...
A torrid lesbian love affair. An acerbic commentary on the commercialization of sex. A dire struggle between physical temptation and spiritual good. A child’s nursery rhyme. “Goblin Market” encompasses a wealth of interpretations, some of which smoothly blending together, others remaining diametrically opposed. It symbolizes...
It is not difficult to see the parallels in the lives and works of Christina Rossetti and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Both poets suffered bouts of depression, both were involved in the Tractarian movement – with Hopkins converting to Roman Catholicism and Rossetti remaining High Anglican...
Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market beautifully illustrates sin and sacrifice in the lives of twin sisters Lizzie and Laura. These sisters are so alike and separate they can be likened to the ying and yang. It has been argued that they are one person split in...
Christina Rossetti grew up among a family of skilled writers and artists whose muses had to do with contemporary life and past scholarship, yet they were strictly evangelical Christians. Christina Rossetti strictly followed the expectations of this ideal (Everett). There has been much conjecture that...
Most of Rossetti’s poetry has links to the concerns of love and passion, with some displaying it as enjoyable if not exciting. However, on the other hand much of her writing condemns passion, making links to religious texts such as in “Soeur Louise de la...
In Literary Theory: The Basics, H. Bertens asserts that even in the works of culturally and sexually liberal male writers such as D.H Lawrence and Henry Miller, male characters are “denigrating, exploitative, and repressive in their relations with women.” In the poems Goblin Market and...
First Impressions When I first read Christina Rossetti’s “Promises Like Piecrust,” I was struck by how she uses such a simple metaphor – comparing promises to pie crust – to talk about something way deeper. Like, we all know pie crust breaks easily, right? That’s...
Despair is a very common theme in many of Rossetti’s poems and is particularly important to her poem, ‘From the Antique’. It is typical of her attitude towards despair, since Rossetti appears to be having a moral dilemma between her religious fanaticism and her desire...
The idea of romantic love being presented as invariably negative in 19th century literature is questionable to some extent. Romantic love is often characterised as being damaging and hurtful in Rossetti’s poetry through the contrast with divine love in poems such as ‘Soeur Louise de...
Thomas Richards, in his 1990 critical exposition, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising and Spectacle, 1851-1914, states: “In the mid-nineteenth century the commodity became the living letter of the law of supply and demand. It literally came alive.”(Richards, 2) The “commodity” adopts a corporeal...
Poetic verse has been used as an outlet of strong emotions and feelings for centuries. The elegance of poetry has long been thought of as more refined than that of prose writing, and thus as a better vessel for conveying strong feelings. Subjects such as...
This poem was written by Christina Rossetti and the name of it is ‘What is pink?’. It is basically about colours but on a deeper level, showing us the positive side of it. There is unity in this poem and no stanzas . In lines...
Christina Rossetti was one of the most important of English women poets both in range and quality. She excelled in works of fantasy, in poems for children, and in religious poetry.
Works
Goblin Market and other Poems (1862), The Prince's Progress (1866), A Pageant (1881), The Face of the Deep (1882)
Themes
The transience of material things is a theme that recurs throughout Rossetti's poetry, and the resigned but passionate sadness of unhappy love is often a dominant note.
Style
Rossetti`s writing is indulged in religious faith and moral lessons so the overall tone and mood of her writings are dark. Her writing style is mainly gothic and this is another reason for her dark moods in her works.Her poetry is also marked by symbolism and intense feeling.
Quotes
“One day in the country
Is worth a month in town”
“Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad”
“Choose love not in the shallows but in the deep.”
