Rossetti's use of Death

The two poems manage to capture Rossetti’s views on death and the after-life, both of which became an obsessive fascination during the Victorian era. However, she rejected the opinions of people where they believed in rituals which were not unusual for this time period: locks of hair cut from the dead being arranged and worn in lockets, or elaborate hearses at funerals, replete with black horses, ostrich feathers and flowers. Instead it was her religious beliefs that influenced her opinions, which can be seen in both poems, especially in Remember, where she seems to be unafraid of death because she believes there is an after-life where she will visit those she once knew.

'Song' is about life after death, focusing especially on how people should not stop living their lives just because a loved one has stop living their own. The death of a loved one usually means that the living friends and family’s worlds temporarily stop spinning due to the loss, but in this poem the speaker explicitly says that the dead cannot feel the bad, therefore we should not feel so much sorrow. In the poem, Rossetti uses imperatives and commanding phrases to plead with the person she is addressing. She begs for no clichés or stereotypically feminine respects to be given to her when she dies, as stated in the line, “Plant thou no roses at my head.” She also wishes for no “Sad songs” to be sung for her (implying the hymns at a classic church funeral) because she would much prefer for the grieving to be happy, never minding whether they have forgotten or remembered her. Insisting the person to “be the green grass above” infers that she wishes for them to be the closest thing to her, as well as a forever growing piece of nature. Pleading for them to be the green grass shows she wants them to be ordinary, nothing elaborate, just the same as before she died. Therefore, she does not want her death to affect the people she is leaving behind. As an alternative of viewing death as the end, to her it is thought of as the next adventure, which can be seen where she describes death as “gone away.”Similarly in the poem ‘Remember,’ Rossetti wishes the person she is leaving behind to be happy rather than to be depressed over her death. This is clearly shown in the line, “better by far you should forget smile.” 

An example that perfectly reflects the iambic trimeter in 'Song' is the line, “I shall not feel the rain;” which gives the impact on the most important words.  This line means that when someone is dead, the rain, or effectively any bad prospects of being alive on Earth, cannot impact the dead, so there is no reason for the living to pity the dead in any sense. However, a line that doesn’t fit the pattern is, “I shall not hear the nightingale.

Context of Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti

Life:

• Born to Gabriele Rossetti, an Italian poet and political exile, and Frances Polidori, in London.           
• She had two brothers and a sister: Dante became an influential artist and poet, and William and Maria both became writers.
• In the later decades of her life, Rossetti suffered from Graves’ disease, diagnosed in 1872 suffering a nearly fatal attack in the early 1870's.
• Her brother, Dante and William were a part of the radical Pre-Raphaelite group which she was later a central poet of.

Education:

• Rossetti was educated at home by her mother, who had her study religious works, classics, fairy tales and novels. This was because women of her time were not give the same education opportunities as men were.
• She was influenced greatly in her poetry by the work she was educated with, such as Keats, Scott, Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis.

Religious views:

• Rossetti was at the centre of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in the mid-to-late Victorian period, a radical group which challenged conventions about art in many ways.
• She became devoted, along with her sister Maria and their mother Frances, to High Anglicanism which became a large part of their lives.
• However, sometime around 1857 Rossetti had a major religious crisis.  Sticking to her Christian ways, she never judged women who were sexually exploited in prostitution, but instead aimed to help them. 

Role of women in the 19^th century:

• They lived in separate spheres to men, only deemed relevant for marriage, bearing children and housework. 
• Free time for women was not supposed to be spent socializing but doing other things related to the maintenance of the family.
• Women were also entirely shut out of political activity, and as a result could not vote.

Her views on the role of women:

• She argued for female representation in Parliament and spoke out against the sexual exploitation of women in prostitution.                                                    

“It’s a weary life, it is; she said:        

    Doubly blank in a woman’s lot:                    

    I wish and I wish I were a man                       

        Or, better than any being, were not:”     

        - From the Antique.

• She refused to support women's suffrage. She refuses on the grounds of the patriarchal [207/208] doctrines, values, and hierarchy of Christian orthodoxy.

Publication:

• She used the pen name ‘Ellen Alleyne’ to express views that weren’t necessarily hers.
• Her public career was short as she only published to: Athenaeum when she was 18; and the literary magazine, The Germ, published by the Pre-Raphaelites.
• She did not publish so publicly because women in her time were cone med for sharing their challenging opinions. This is why she often used a pen name when publishing publicly.
• As a result, most of her work was published after she was dead, in the 20^th century.

Identity in the poem, 'I Come From,' by Robert Seatter

I Come From by Robert Seatter

This poem illustrates a number of devices that can be used in poetry to explore the poet's, or the speaker's, identity.

Constant use of the word "I'' shows that the poem is centred on Seatter, his childhood memories, his past and more importantly, his identity. By using ''I come from,'' it is clear Seatter is publishing his identity by writing about the depths of his origins, and where he has come from in comparison to where he is today.

A stream of consciousness is evidently used (which is specific to Seatter) as the structure is loose, with only one large stanza in the form of free verse. To further this point, the structure could be like this to show he has an infinite amount of memories from his past that he wishes to share in this poem. Examples of the specificity to Seatter, the speaker, are the lines no-one can completely relate to: his "Shropshire grandma," "Chambers Etymological Dictionary," or his "rats behind the garage." However some structure is created with the repetitive, "I come from," at the beginning of 8 of the 30 lines. Enjambment is also used to show his way of mind, and that where he comes from has no beginning or end, like the hoop of life that never ends. This device also creates emphasis; specifically on the first line where at the end, is the word, "forever." This extends the word, as it makes the reader linger on the word, which puts into reality, to some extent, how long he had to wait for the train to London. Also, the final line had no end-stop, and is repetitive of the word "trains." As the poem began with a train to London, and finishes with “trains, trains, trains” it is made clear that it is a relevant, special part of his life. Focusing on the no end-sop, it could be symbolic of the fact that his life will go on and create more places he will, in time, come from; and more memories which will eventually be just as special to him.