 Hello and welcome to our video summarizing all you need to know about Christina Rossetti as well as her best known poems. My name is Barbara and in this video I'll cover all the Rossetti poetry you'll be expected to know in depth if you're studying her poetry as part of your A-level or university courseworks or exams. In this video we'll begin by discussing a little background and context relating to Christina Rossetti before we move on to analyzing several of her best known poems in detail. Do make sure you have your anthology handy as you'll need to pause the video before we analyze each poem. Read it then watch the analysis as we go along. In this way you can better have an understanding of the poem and get a lot of value out of this video. So let's get started. Now when it comes to Christina Rossetti herself she was born in 1830 and passed away in 1894. She was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic devotional and children's poems and she's famous for writing goblin market and remember both of which you're going to look at. Christina was born in London to Gabriel Rossetti, a poet in political exile from Vasto Arbruzzo since 1824 and Frances Poli Dori, the sister of Lord Byron's friend and physician John William Poli Dori. She had two brothers and a sister Dante Gabriel became an influential artist and poet and William Michael and Maria both became writers. Christina who is the youngest was a lively child. She dictated her first story to her mother before she learned to write. Rossetti was educated at home by her mother and father who had her study religious works, classics, fairy tales and novels. Rossetti delighted in the works of Keats, Scott and Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis. They influenced the work of Dante Algieri and Petrarch and other Italian writers filled the home and would have a deep impact on Rossetti's later writing. The home was open to visiting Italian scholars, artists and revolutionaries. So let's start with the first poem when I'm dead my dearest. Now when you're analysing this poem it's firstly important to understand that it has two stanzas which are very balanced and symmetrical to juxtapose the experience of death for those left behind and for the person who's died. The poem directly addresses the lover in the first stanza with affection. It is a series of imperatives instructing the lover on how to behave. The repetition of negatives emphasises the speakers' dislike of traditional funeral rituals, no songs, roses or cypress trees. These are symbolic of exhibitionist grief, love, melancholy, which the poet does not want or rather the narrator doesn't want. She chooses instead green grass which is natural and eternal. It will always be watered by showers and dew drops and will last forever, showers represent tears. The end of the first stanza ignores all the previous imperatives and offers the lover the choice of remembering or forgetting. There's no sense one is better than the other, the living must deal with death as they choose. The second stanza is from the point of view of the dead. It begins with more negatives but this time it is the sense which no longer work for the dead person. They cannot see, feel or hear, however the things they are unable to discern are all negative. Shadows, rain and songs of pain. Does that mean that death is a better place? Death is imagined through the metaphor of asleep. She's dreaming in a perpetual twilight. Dreaming sounds positive and the twilight suggests she's neither dead nor alive but in a limbo. The poem ends on the uncertainty of perhaps happily. She's not sure what will happen, this is outside her control. Echoing the end of the first stanza, we shall have the lover to determine their reaction. The dead speaker wonders if she'll remember or forget. This suggests that her consciousness will continue after death and therefore she'll be in the same position as her lover. Remember is another poem to be aware of? So this is a Petrarchan sonnet, a form which was normally employed by men to write love poetry to women and it's obviously interesting that Rosetti, who's a woman, employs this form. Both the subject matter and the voice have been radically altered by the poet to create something startling. Instead of romantic love, the poem is about a great type of love beyond the physical and human which wants happiness for a loved one, even when one cannot be with them. The fact that the passion is expressed while a woman is equally startling for its time. The poetic voice is authoritative and passionate, directly addressing the lover. The octave is a series of repeated imperatives to remember me. This is directly addressed to the lover, we as readers are eavesdropping. The repetition suggests that the voice is desperate to live in the lover's mind. It possibly suggests that it's anxious that death will cancel the love out. The repetition of gone away suggests the vastness of death. Death is a long journey removing her from her lover. Death is imagined as a silent land. This metaphor creates a sense of death and the afterlife is a lonely and remote place where she will hear no one. This contrasts with her life with her lovers. It will be a time when he can no longer hold her hand. This image suggests physical affection but also a sense of restraint. He's battling against death and trying to keep her. But this won't work. She's also unable to control her own death. She'll be unable to decide if she wants to stay. There's a sense of death removing her authority which she tries hard to reassert through the poem which is repetitive and spoken in imperative sentences. These devices then come to show the insecurity rather than confidence. The Volta in line 8 of this poem changes the direction of this sonnet. The final cess-tet begins with yet showing that the speaker is hesitant. She runs on rapidly in the cess-tet with Anjamp Mont creating one long sentence. It's as if the final sentiment is overwhelming and has to be expressed rapidly. She thinks about what will happen when he forgets her for a while and wants him not to feel bad about this inevitable moving on. She'd rather he forgot her and lived a happy life than remembered her and was sad after she's gone. Death is imagined more actively in the cess-tet. Instead of being a distant land, it's a place of darkness and corruption. This suggests something sinister and decaying and it's frightening. The vestige of the thought suggests that she hopes even in the horror of death a part of her consciousness will stay and will realise that this happiness is more important than her desire for him to remember her. It becomes a self-sacrificing cess-tet sentiment. The title remember is therefore ironic as by the end of the poem she knows that the kindest thing she could hope for her lover is that he will forget her and move on with his life. Now looking at the poem from the antique it's a weary life it is she said. So the poem is in four stanzas which begin and end with the weariness of life. This suggests that living has no meaning and it's just hard and tiring. There's a sense the character cannot escape this thought as their dears never progress beyond it. It's not the poet speaking but a character, a woman with no name. Why is she denied a name? Does she represent all women or is she so insignificant in the world that she doesn't even deserve a name? The speaker speaks of the whole of the rest of the poem which is left there as a pronouncement for us to judge and consider. It's not the poet's thought but a character created by her telling us an opinion which must be contemplated. Life is described as weary but double blank for a woman. This image makes life seem twice as bad for a woman. However it's not just wearing for women it's blank. This implies that it is entirely empty. The life of a woman must be without meaning or worth. Repetitions throughout this poem suggest a sense of depression and exhaustion and a desire for something better. The repetition of wish elicits a feeling of a fairy tale but this wish is to become another gender she wants to be a man. What would this represent for her? Perhaps it'd represent a lack of blankness and ability to do something worthwhile? But even men would be better not being alive as life is so tiring where not is a euphemism for death perhaps or it could be the suggestion that people should just not exist in this world. The second stanza imagines a world of no people neither physically nor spiritually. She uses the image of vastness to illustrate a grain of dust is tiny and a drop of water from pole to pole suggests the expanse of the world in which there's nothing human. In stanza three the repetition of still shows that the character knows the world would carry on. The verb wag suggests the world would go on without the weariness of human life. Wag makes it sound easy and light hearted indeed nature without people seems really positive with seasons and blossoms and cherries and bees. It remains a more beautiful world without people. Finally the woman says no one would miss her and there will not be any grief expressed for her loss. In this case she concludes it'd be better she should be nothing but the rest of humanity should carry on living as she's so unimportant. The description of the cycle of life is habitual and negative. Life is imagined as one day in which people wake, grow tired and sleep. It's all just a process of exhaustion which nature is not part of and it all seems to be man-made. This poem is an insight into character without a spiritual belief. Does it suggest that life without Christianity is perhaps blank? The other poem to be aware of is called Echo. The title suggests a sound memory. This is a poem about communicating with something which is now in the past or dead. The poem describes how she can communicate to the dead lover while she's dreaming. The echo is the sound he has left for her. The first stanza is full of urgency. She repeatedly begs him to come to me. Although it's an instruction it sounds desperate rather than authoritative because of this repetition. She begs him to come in the silence of the night but this is ironic as it's when it is apparently quiet that she's able to hear him and communicate with him. This paradox is highlighted in the oxymoronic language of the speaking silence of a dream. The dream is able to communicate with her although it's quiet and no one else can hear it. The way she imagines a dead lover with rounded cheeks and bright eyes suggests that in the dream he's not dead or sick but looking healthy and alive. She uses the simile of his eyes as bright as sunlight on a stream. The image suggests daytime and life which is the opposite of what he now is. The oh is an exclamation of extreme emotion. She's desperate. She wants him to come back even if it calls a sadness tears. She wants the love of the time which now is over or finished. The second stanza begins with more emotion. Oh but this time she's happy because she's in the dream world which brings him to life. The dream is sweet but the repeated two suggests that the fantasy is too good and it's damaging. The oxymoron of bittersweet shows the confusion of emotions. When she wakes from sleep she's no longer in paradise. Paradise seems to be both being with her lover and death as that would bring the two of them back together. It's the place where the souls can live and meet. She imagines in the place where her dead lover is her thirsting longing eyes. They're hungry and full of desire for him. She's describing an immense passion and desire. The eyes watch a slow door which is a symbol of the barrier between the two world. It's an obstacle to the communication as well as an entry point for her to reach him. The door is opening because it's death and letting people in but it can never let them leave. She's watching the door for him but she can't yet enter. The final stanza begins with yet or however she's brought back to reality. She still wants him to come to her in dreams so she can live her life over again even though it's actually dead. If he comes back in dreams she can be equal to him. Her description of the meeting is sensual and passionate. She meets him with her pulse, breath and speech remembering how they were long ago but her dream crumbles in the truth of reality and she exclaims how long ago the intimacy now was. Her dream has not succeeded in reviving him. It's reminded her of how much time has passed since they were together. The next poem to be aware of is called Shout Out. Now the seven stanzas in this poem have a regular rhyme scheme of A, B, B, A. This regular rhyme and rhythm belies the agitation of the poetic voices experience. The poem opens with the door shut but the title tells us that she is shut out. This suggests she's trapped outside somewhere she wants to enter. It forces the reader to reassess ideas of entrapment and imprisonment. One can be trapped outside something when one is actually free which is ironic in a sense. The door has iron bars which allow her to peep in. The iron is symbolic of something hard and impenetrable. The garden is not to be accessed easily. The fact that she sees it lie in front of her suggests double meanings of deceit and openness. The repetition of possessive pronouns my and mine remind the reader that what she looks at once was hers. However she's lost her home. The description of the garden pied with flowers suggesting it's dappled with many different colors. The be-dewed is both natural but also reminiscent of be-dewed. Therefore the garden is both precious and natural. The speaker describes the garden with songbirds, flowers and nests. The items are both delightful to hear and see. The moths and bees suggest both productivity and morality working together. They represent the day and night working simultaneously. This means the garden must have eliminated time and decay. It's beyond mortality. It's paradise. The garden was hers but it's now been lost. The sibilance of shadowless spirit conjures up the idea of something without substance and existence. It exists without the sun or time. This is important in a poem about sight. The spirit is constant described using the simile like the grave. It's permanent and unbending. She begs at first for buds which suggest new life and then for a tweak. She wants an item to remind her of home but more importantly to make the garden remember her and wait for her to come again. She's hopeful that she can return to it in the future. The spirit silently denies her building a wall. This is a permanent barrier unlike the door. It also will not allow her to see paradise. Left alone she cries until she can't see but this is of no matter as there's nothing worth looking at. She notices a violet bed and a lark. Violets represent faithfulness. Does this mean she'll be loyal to her vision of paradise and persist in working towards it? The lark represents hope and life. They're both dear and good but they're not the best. They're pill versions of the perfect platonic image of paradise which she must settle for now. Now in the Round Tower at Jansse June 8 1857 of course published in 1862. This poem is interesting as it's based on historical events reported during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 although Rosetti wrote a footnote for the poem in 1875 explaining that it had subsequently been revealed that the scheme family did not commit suicide but they were captured and killed. This poem is a dramatic poem of five stanzas of regular rhythm and rhyme scheme ABAB. The regularity highlights the horror of the events described. The voices of the couple are dramatized and hearing them speak makes the event seem immediate and urgent. The relationship between the couple is powerfully rendered. The love and bravery is described. The opening stanza suggests that there are lots of Indians attacking them and there's no hope. The loss of hope is underlined by the description of the rebels who are dehumanized. They're swarming like bees and howling like wolves. These metaphors suggest the number and savagery of these rebels. The repetition of gained shows that the rebels are relentless and inevitable. The poem presents the traditional racial stereotypes between the civilized westerns versus of course the uncivilized savage Indians. Now we're introduced to the key characters scheme in his life. She's pale due to fear and she's left without a name. Her only significance is as an appendage of her husband. They've clearly planned the suicide pact as she asks if the time has come. Scheme takes charge and tells her it has. It's a very traditional picture of patriarchal authority. It revels in the stereotypes of masculine authority and female submission and obedience. We're given the dialogue to make them more real and immediate. In response to her question of how much it will hurt, he replies that he wishes he could take the burden from her. However she then replies saying I wish I could bear the pan alone. This produces a stereotype of the Victorian brave wife. Moreover she then goes on to encourage her husband to be brave. Courage dare she says. She's very much a brave partner and one who is active in their choice of suicide. The description of the actions repeats the word close. First describe physical intimacy and love that they share and then to describe Scheme raising a pistol to his wife's head. The reader is given a shocking contrast between the closeness of love and suicide. The poetic voice erupts with exclamation. God forgive them this to show that a probrium heaped on suicide but in this case is presented as brave. They end by kissing each other and saying goodbye just before the moment of the gunshot and the suicide. The dialogue in the stanza does not clearly delineate which person is speaking. It suggests instead that at the end they're so united that the voices are indistinguishable and the readers left to admire the love and bravery. The next poet to be aware of is a birthday. So this poem is divided into eight line stanzas each with an irregular rhyme scheme. The poem is spoken by somebody who's found an intense and perfect love which they want to celebrate. The poem says that the true day a person is born is the day when they meet the person they love. This is when they really come to life. This love could be for a lover or for Christ. The images suggest spring time and could refer to Easter and Jesus's resurrection. The first stanza is a series of repetition of my heart is like each simile attempts to describe perfect love. However the fact that she keeps adding more new images suggests that each one is inadequate in describing the beauty and passion that she feels. The poem seems to say that words are unable to express perfect love the similes are all natural. Her joy is like a singing bird an apple full of fruit and a rainbow shell. The images span different types of nature they include different senses of hearing and sight as well as ideas of abundance and nourishment. However by the end of the stanza she's not yet explained how glad she is as her heart is more happy than all these because her love has come. The second stanza moves to man-made high status images which are the opposite of the first stanza. Here she describes a birthday feast to celebrate her love which is full of precious objects. There is dais or altar covered in silk and veer which is squirrel fur. The purple dais suggests something royal the dolls represent peace and the pomegranates are a symbol of love in the perceptual myth and also of rarity and exoticism. The peacocks gold and silver are also rare commodities. Finally the fleur de lice represent the french royal family an arrogant part of the weaving of majestic and precious images to describe the feast with which her love deserves. The poem concludes with an explanation this must happen because her life has only just begun because she's now found love. Now when it comes to Maud Claire the poem is written in the ballad form of 12 standards of four lines however instead of the typical ballad rhyme scheme of A B A B Rosetti employs A B C B which makes it seem more awkward and full of tension. The poem dwells on the idea that marriage is not an ideal of fulfilled love. After the wedding ceremony Maud Claire interrupts the bride and groom. She's like a queen showing her indignation which makes her majestic while Nell's diffidence reduces her to the level of a village maid. The pre-existing relationship does not seem to have disguised as Sir Thomas's own mother knows the situation and advises him on it. This shows that such behavior is really common and ideals of married love are false and questionable. The mother tells him not to worry as the same thing happened to her husband 30 years ago in other words he was unfaithful. Clearly marriage has always been blighted by other lovers. Nell and Sir Thomas pale at this suggestion and seem not to take it well. Sir Thomas is pale from turbulent emotion while Nell is pale for embarrassment. Maud Claire presents them with gifts. This is appropriate for a wedding but she does not do it to celebrate but to humiliate instead. She offers Sir Thomas the half of the chain he gave her and the leaves are collected together. Each item suggests that they were whole only when together. The chain symbolically suggests that they've also been born together but not in a marriage ceremony. The intercourse has been in nature with naked feet in a stream plucking Lily's. The image is really sexual and informal showing that they have been intimate outside of marriage which of course is against Christian customs of purity before marriage. Lily's normally represent purity with the virgin Mary and the enunciation. Maybe they suggest that love could be pure and true perhaps. Do they also suggest that like Mary Maud is also pregnant. The leaves are an image of decay showing something which has not lasted. The lilies are budding now so there's new life. Sir Thomas tries to match Maud's emotions but his words are faltering. His lines have a caesura to show he breaks off and cannot speak to her. Is this due to guilt or love? He also doesn't know what to call her switching between Lady and Maud Claire. He hides his face showing his shame. She then offers Nell Sir Thomas's fickle heart and meager love. Nell responds with dignity. She takes what's left and says he's her lord for better and worse echoing the marriage ceremony. Doesn't scorn her husband but accepts and loves him. Her restraint is a stereotype of the good Victorian wife who's passive. She says her love and persistence will mean in the future he will love her more than Maud. These two women are polar opposites of each other. On the one hand there's a scorned outraged woman full of anger and expressing her sexual indignation even though this removes her from polite society and on the other hand you've got the good wife who's restrained emotionally and simply advised by her vows. Rosetti does not just say which woman she admires most but the poem is entitled Maud Claire which gives us a clue. Now when it comes to uphill the poem consists of eight questions and answers. The structure is typical in devotional verse as it gives the reader the opportunity to contemplate the open answer to the questions. The regular rhyme scheme of ABAB means each speaker is given a different rhyme to separate the voices. The consistent pace of the lines mimics the pace of the journey uphill. Each question is posed by a traveller to a guide. The guide expresses the traveller as my friend this is what Jesus called his disciples. The poem consists of an extended metaphor of the journey. The journey seems to be of life which is uphill and therefore consistently hard until one gets to the top. The question is whether or not the inn at the top is death or heaven. Is the traveller to experience some respite from this arduous journey? The traveller is concerned that they must travel all day until there's no light. The darkness could represent death or troubles in life. The guide reassures them that even in the dark there's an inn which can be seen. They're reassured that they'll meet other wayfarers who've gone before. The suggestion is that they must knock or call intimates that each person must look for and seek out comfort. This could be Christian confession of sin to gain admittance to heaven. The traveller is reassured that there's comfort and respite at the inn so that there will be an end to the arduous endeavor. This could be heaven where there's no more toiling uphill and others are there to be companions. Now when it comes to the poem no thank you John. The poem is written in dramatic monologue with an unnamed woman turning down John's proposal of marriage. The woman's character is remarkable in its frankness, sense of equality with the man in desire not to marry him. John's voice is only heard through the responses of the speaker. He's silenced so only her voice dominates. Is she simply a remarkably forthright woman of her day or is she a prostitute who's beguiled a customer who's become tiresome? The fact is it seems so odd at this time for a woman to reject a loving man showing how society, according to this poem at least, expects women to want male admiration. The first two stands as a question wondering why he keeps teasing her with begging. She wonders why he haunts her like a ghost. John is depicted as subservient and also sick with love. He looks wane or pale like a ghost newly dead. Lovers made him unwell. She says she can't marry him and that he should not remain single. She suggests the names of other women who would take pity on him. This makes John seem very vulnerable and weak. His masculine power is removed by the speaker's apparent efforts to console him. John suggests that she has no heart outside the lines of the poem and she replies that if that is the case he's foolish to expect her to return his love. Her logic is cold and implacable. She reasons with him like a stereotypical man while his behaviour is more typically female full of emotion and bleeding. She finally suggests in the masculine way that they should call a truce. This dictation is military and masculine suggesting a meeting of equals which will not be typical between the sexes and particularly at this time during the Victorian era. She recommends that John sees the day of sees the happiness rather of today and she'll turn a blind eye to what he said about love. This offers to save his pride. Her suggestion that they should strike hands is quite again masculine. She wants an equal friendship which does not expect ulterior motives. This means she's not playing games and is speaking quite frankly and openly to him. This is again untypical female characters. She finally offers friendship but not love. Her denial is polite with a no thank you. Her good manners suggest she's courteous and simply has chosen a different sort of female life. Now when it comes to Good Friday, this is a deeply personal poem addressed to Christ on Good Friday which reimagines a crucifixion happening again. She sees Christ bleeding to death on the cross and she's appalled by the fact that she cannot wait for him. She asks if she's a stone or a sheep. A stone is a metaphor for an emotionless, un-christian person who can't respond to Jesus and his suffering. It also eludes the Greek word for Peter which means rock. Jesus said he was his rock. A sheep suggests however someone who's part of Jesus's flock already, they're a disciple. Her description of the crucifixion is also poignant. Christ is slowly bleeding to death in front of her. She sees the drops of blood. Then the speaker remembers all the people on things which were removed which were moved to tears by Jesus's crucifixion. She emphasizes how many of these were by repeating the words not so at the beginning of each line to underline that others reacted differently to her. The women who love Jesus are his mother and Mary Magdalene who are both present at the crucifixion. Peter is one of the disciples who also wept while a thief being crucified next to Jesus was moved by his plight. Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him thrice before the cock crowed on the day of his crucifixion and Peter did this. He then went on to found the Catholic Church in Rome and has crucified himself upside down because he said he did not deserve to die in the same way as Christ. Even more astonishingly the Son and Moon are personified hiding the faces from the side of Jesus's death by creating a eclipse in the middle of the day when Christ died. The third stanza ends with I, only I, to show she's the only person who is unmoved by Jesus's sacrifice. The final stanza brings hope. She begs to Christ that he should seek her out. She eludes the Exodus story of Moses. After taking the Jews from Egypt they were complaining of thirst and Moses asked God what to do. God told him to strike a stone with his staff and when he did so it erupted with water and quenched all the Israelites. The speaker says Jesus is greater than Moses and just needs to strike the rock of or her and then she will erupt with water or emotion and be able to feel moved by his crucifixion. The poem ends with hope but remains dependent on Christ coming to get her. Now when it comes to the goblin market this is a fairly detailed and very long poem. It's now starting with part one which is lines 1 to 140. The sisters Laura and Lizzie hear the cries of the goblin men selling their fruit. Laura is so tempted by the wares that she ghosts them and in exchange for a lock of her hair she gorges on the fruit. The narrative poem is written in an irregular rhyme scheme made up of loose iambic tetrameter which gives it a swift pace. This underlines the urgency of Laura's plight as well as the movement of the goblins through the glen. The speaker of the poem is often assumed to be Laura cautioning her children but if this is so then she is self-dramatizing. There seems to be a poetic voice which erupts in places. The title of the poem suggests that the focus of the work is both the goblins and the market or world of financial exchange. This is important as a goblin seem to represent male society or sexuality as well as the idea of a marriage market or women as financial commodities. The name Laura could be reminiscent of Paytrux Laura to whom he wrote his sonnet cycle. In the sonnet she's a passive object of love while here Rosetti makes her an active and sensual woman who seeks satisfaction. The name Lizzie could refer to Elizabeth I who had great phallic power and is seen as a dominant woman whose power rests in her unwillingness to lose her virginity. The poem begins immediately with the threat of the goblins who can be heard by maids or virgins morning and evening. This means the temptation is ever present. The goblins shout come by. It's important that they repeat this throughout. They're not offering free enjoyment they want to solicit solicit a contractual exchange in which they get something back from the maids. The fruits that offer are all ripe and perfect yet they are from different parts of the world and are harvested at different times of the year. This hints that the wares are not natural or wholesome. Some of the fruits are personified to emphasize the sense that they're sensual and bodily. The fruits are described as sweet to the tongue and sound to eye. They feed the senses. Laura bows her head to hair while Lizzie veiled her blushes. They're both attracted to goblins. Laura initially tries to resist calling a sister to lie close and not look. Laura goes on to dwell on the origins of the fruit wondering what soil cultivated the hungry thirsty roots. These images of phallic suggesting that it is potent male sexuality which may come from a forbidden origin which she does not understand. Throughout this section Laura's head is repeatedly described as golden and glossy. This whole shadow is a lock of hair she must exchange for the fruit. It also suggests her unwillingness or rather her willingness as her head is constantly attracted to them. Is the emphasis on head also fell because it implies that Laura is aroused by the goblins? Lizzie says their gifts would harm us and sticks her finger in her ears, shuts her eyes and runs away. Therefore it's not that Lizzie is not aroused by them it's just that she does not succumb to this temptation. However Laura is curious and she lingers. Sometimes curiosity is seen as a female sin but it's important to note that Laura's own identification of the more of the story is not something negative but rather a positive belief in the importance of sisterhood. The goblins are repeatedly called merchants so their selling is important. They're then described in really animalistic terms as cats, rats, snills, wombs and so on. Does this perhaps suggest that all men are bestial in their desires or that these goblins are a particular type of sexually threatening men? This is left unclear. Laura is described in a number of stanzas using lists of similes. These change throughout the poem. In line 81 Laura is like a swan, a lily, a branch and a vessel which has broken from its anchor. These images are both of purity but also transgression. When the goblins find her their brotherhood is emphasised and the ways they are layering at each other. They see her as a delight that they can share. They display their fruit but Laura has no money. She's very firm about not wanting to pearloying their wares. She's afraid of being a thief therefore she's concerned to have a fair exchange with the men but they are not honest merchants. They request a lock of her hair. This is reminiscent of The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope in which the cutting of hair is symbolic of the loss of virginity. Laura cuts her own hair and weeps more rare than a pearl. Pearls are usually symbolic also of virginity. Then she's sacked their fruit globes. The image is deeply sexual as it seems to suggest fellatio and the juice is sweet and strong. The verb to sark is repeated again and again. She's not describing a stewing or eating. This makes Laura appear out of control, childlike or even sexually voracious. All she's left with is a kernel stone. Again this seems to be a testicular reference or possibly a suggestion that the experience has hardened her. The stone is significantly inedible. She's left with nothing which will sate her. She leaves inebriated. Knew not was it night or day. The men disappear and she returns home. Now moving on to part two lines 141 to 319. Returning home Laura is reminded of the tale of Genie by Lizzie. Genie ate the fruit and then wasted away and died. Laura begins to long for the goblin fruit but unlike Lizzie she can no longer hear their cries and therefore can't access what she needs. Instead she pines and dwindles. Lizzie is waiting to meet Laura admonishing her that twilight is not good for maidens. This suggests that as light diminishes virginity is threatened. She reminds Laura of Genie who after eating goblin fruit pined and pined away seeking them but neither were finding them again. She prematurely aged and died. Her grave is infertile and no grass grows there or daisies. This suggests that Genie lost the opportunity of becoming a sexually fertile married woman because of her treased with the goblins. Laura tells her sister that she ate but her mouth watered still. There seems to be images of female sexual arousal. The experience has not sated her. It's actually created an appetite. She offers to bring Lizzie fruits the next day so that she can be done with sorrow. Therefore briefly Laura is happy. Together the sister that sleep like two pigeons in one nest. The unity is not diminished by Laura's intercourse of the goblins. They remain as close. Indeed the similes which describe them still refer to Laura like snow and ivory. These are images of virginity and impurity. Does this therefore mean that she's not lost her maiden head but has experienced a sexuality outside of penetration focused on female pleasure? Even nature wants to ensure they have a good sleep and so that owls avoid flying. The next day the sisters do the work as usual but Laura is longing for evening when she can return to the goblins. Note that their work and their home is significantly without men. They seem to live outside their patriarchy. Why is this world outside of men? Why are the only male figures ravening goblins? However when the evening comes Lizzie can hear the goblins but Laura cannot. They go to collect water. Water could represent washing something clean but it's also an image dripping arousal. Laura wants to linger but Lizzie fares rain will drench us through or they might get lost. Her fares are strange as surely these things have already happened to Laura. Laura is distraught as she cannot regain her pleasure. Her tree of life drooped from the root. This is an image of detume essence. It appears that Laura cannot find her sexual potency and it's odd now the potency is described wholly in phallic terms. As she goes home Laura's jug of water is dripping all the way. This suggests that she's aroused but without an outlet for her desires and that night she weeps. From then on Laura looks for the goblins but she can't find them. Her hair grows gray and she starts to die. She desperately plants the stone kernel but will not grow. She has been blighted with sterility. Also she can't create a root which again suggests her inability to arouse a phallus. Laura is imaged through a simile as a traveler in a desert who's thirsty but only sees mirages of oases. She stops doing her domestic jobs. Lizzie wants to share her sister's pain but she's afraid to pay too dear. The image of financial exchange hair is used to underline the terrible consequences transgression could inflict on a woman. Lizzie is reminded again of Jeannie who should have been a bride but for who Joyce Brides hoped to have fell sick and died. This seems to say directly that it's Jeannie's enjoyment of sexual pleasure outside a marriage which kills her. It's now moving on to part three lines 320 to 446. Fearful Laura will die. Lizzie seeks the goblins and offers them a silver penny. However they want her to eat it in front of them and when she refuses the press the fruit on her. Lizzie keeps keeps her lips sealed while she is attacked so nothing penetrates her. Frustrated with her the goblins disappear after tossing back a silver coin. When Lizzie realizes Laura is close to death she no longer worries about the risk to herself and putting a silver penny in her purse. She seeks the goblins. In Elizabethan times a silver penny was slang for female genitalia. She goes to find the goblins. The goblins laugh at her when they see her. They described approaching her with a series of active verbs which showed their enjoyment as well as their energy. They're often active in the poem while women are conventionally passive. Meeting Lizzie the goblins immediately touch her. They describe their fruits using the possessive pronoun hour which makes it sound like part of their body. They offer an apple first which reminds us of the Garden of Eden. At line 362 Lizzie appears to interrupt a sales talk. Instead she takes control of the transaction. She's active not passive. She holds out her apron for them to fill and tosses them her penny. Interestingly because she tossed the penny she doesn't touch them. She remains intact and distant from them. She establishes a fair economic relationship but the goblins don't like her contract. They want her to eat with us. It's important that the goblin fruit is not really the location of the evil. What they want in a purient and voyeuristic way is to watch the women eat the fruit. This suggests that they want to watch women taking pleasure. This must be an exchange of female masturbation or rather an image of female masturbation and a reference to male pornography and the exploitation of female self-pleasure and bodies. Pornography is also a financial transaction in which a woman's body is sold. However Lizzie breaks the transaction but by ensuring it is she who pays and who refuses to pleasure herself in front of them. When the goblins refuse to sell her the fruit unless she eats with them, Lizzie demands her penny back. She's confident in her rights as a consumer. She's not to be exploited and at this point the goblins begin to abuse her. They start by calling her names and then they physically molest her. She's being attacked for not participating in the patriarchal game of women as objects of pleasure for men to exploit. However as they abuse her they try to force a fruit into her mouth. Lizzie is described with the cities of similes which liken her to lily in a flood, a rock and a tide, a lighthouse and a storm, a fruit tree beset by wasps and a town besieged. Each image makes Lizzie powerful against her assault. She's depicted as impervious. Many of the images are also quite phallic, the rock which is blue veined and the beacon especially. Lizzie's reluctance to open lip from lip is a yonic image of her refusal to be penetrated by men. Her mouth stands in for her vagina in their salt. She's covered by the juices of the fruit which drip and splash in a face like her. This is an ejaculatory image, the fruit juices are semen. Wary with her resistance the goblins fling back her penny and disappear, importantly not leaving root or stone or chute. Each of these is a phambolic image so despite ejaculating over her they have not satisfied the phallic desires. So now moving on to part four, lines 447 to 567. Lizzie delighted to re-returns to Laura and tells her to suck the fruit off her body. Now Laura hates the fruit but having eaten it she goes through a kind of death and in the morning she awakes well. Later the sisters are married until the story to their children. Using it to teach the moral there's no friend like a sister. When Lizzie leaves her encounter, Rosetti repeats the line, she knew not was it night or day. This suggests that although Lizzie has resisted their penetration she's still taken pleasure from the event. Moreover she's done so without paying for it. She returns with her penny intact. She runs home not pricked by fear. She's unafraid of the phallus. At home Lizzie calls Laura and tells her to kiss and suck the juices from her. Eat me, drink me, love me. The image of love is again one of consumption but this time Lizzie offers a contract for free. She gives the sister fruit not because she wants anything in return but because she loves her. Initially Laura is concerned for Lizzie but she kisses and sucks away at the fruit but this time it is foul to her. She rips off her clothes and becomes active leaping around. The poetic voice erupts from into the poem with the pronouncement are four to choose such part of a soul consuming care. This exclaims against Laura's gorging this time on fruit which is bitter to her. She fell at last. Laura falls this could refer to her moral fall. She passes the night as if dead but in the morning she awakes with her innocence returned to her. Her hair has gone from being gray back to gleaming gold. This could be a religious resurrection with Laura as a christlike figure. The final stanza reassures her that they experienced did not harm the sisters. They married and had children. Laura tells the little ones of the goblin men and how her sister saved her but there's no friend like a sister. Interestingly the moral of the tale is not against transgression but to approve the bravery and companionship provided by the sisterhood. It's a celebration of female solidarity and courage. The next generation learns this lesson. Now when it comes to the poem twice this title refers to the act of offering her love which occurs twice with two different outcomes. The structure of this poem uses lots of repetition to emphasise that the act could not be repeated because the male lover fails to accept her. The male lover is shown to be cruel or perhaps careless with her emotion. Perhaps it is him who's not mature enough for love. The poem suggests that men are often to blame for relational difficulties even though traditionally much is blamed on women. The poem opens with the female taking her heart out to give to him. The heart is a metaphor of love but not just romantic love. It seems also to encompass spiritual love and love of oneself. The echoed voice saying oh my love shows the death of her passion for the man. She speaks him to for the first time once hear me speak to profess her love. Her bravery is underlined by her willingness to live or die. She concedes that conventionally it should be the man who speaks and not the woman because women's words are meant to be weak but clearly he's not spoken and her supposed her to take the lead. Her bravery and unorthodoxy rather are not rewarded. He takes her heart in a friendly way suggesting he does not love her but may have misled her into loving him. He scans her heart with a critical eye. They shows that he judges her. There's not a loving act. He discards her love by setting her heart down. He tells her that she's too immature for love and is not ready. He employs natural metaphors of the heart as an unripe fruit and the necessity of waiting for a harvest. His words could disguise his own unreadiness for love or they could suggest that he does not understand or appreciate her or that he's simply cruel in response to her love. As he puts her heart down he breaks it. She remains brave and does not flinch. Instead she smiles at his words. Her bravery and restraint are almost stereotypically masculine. Her self-respect keeps her from letting him know the damage he's done. Since that time the many negative words show us that she does not smile or enjoy nature. Once again she gives her love. This time she gives her heart to God. She gives him her broken heart to make good again. She asks him to judge her. Notice that she never asked for the man's judgment but she got it anyway. She explains hope was written on sand. This metaphor shows that she knows her love was impermanent and could be easily obliterated by the tide. She asks God to perfect or refine her broken heart and using a metaphor from metal smelting she asks him to use the fire to take away the dross and keep the gold. This will undo what the condemned or scornful man has done to her. It will resolve the ruined day he made her of her life. Once God has helped her she can take back her heart and live again. She offers her love to God knowing he will smile to receive it. She concludes that she shall not question much. Therefore has she become a more forthright woman than the one in the beginning who thought her words were weak? Now when it comes to the poem Winter My Secret at the beginning of this poem someone seems to have asked her to reveal her secret. The rest of the poem is a response to this request saying she will not reveal it. There are lots of questions in the poem which could suggest the uncertainty of the speaker or simply emphasize the curiosity of the questioner. Note that Rosetti dwells on the perils of curiosity in other works. The speaker uses a personal pronoun many times throughout this poem. The repetition of I underlines her strength of character and a strong sense of her identity as something she wants to protect. She's as metaphors of the seasons to describe the untrustworthiness of the world and whether or not she is therefore in a position to reveal the truth. Does this suggest that her world is unfriendly and cruel? Is it his winter and is it too dangerous to venture into openly? At the start of the second stanza she suggests that there may not be a secret at all and that she could be joking. In this manuscript form the poem was entitled Nonsense. This might imply that there's no secret and that the focus of the poem is more about the relentless curiosity of the questioner. She goes on to describe the current world as nipping and biting. These personifications of the times are predatory and cruel trying to consume her. She has to retreat into disguises with veils and cloaks and wraps. This hints at the clothes or social conventions that can be used to disguise or conceal the truth of a woman and that society does not allow women to reveal themselves fully. She imagines herself indoors sheltering from the cold where she will not open the door to any person who knocks. She describes a time of danger outside herself and the necessity to keep herself safely removed from others. She even compares the current world to the snowy waste of Russia where people die from exposure. She refuses to test the goodwill of the questioner in case they wish to peck at her. Again the images are of consumption. She fears being eaten and destroyed if her secret emerges. In the final two stanza she looks at other seasons which might make it easy for her to reveal the secret. However spring is not to be trusted as its brief and its flowers can be destroyed by frost. Spring is imagined as vulnerable and ephemeral. Finally she pictures summer but her description is so specific it seems impossible. There must be not too much sun or cloud and wind which is neither still nor loud. This suggests there will never be a season appropriate for a woman to reveal her secrets that the world will never be perfect for her. Now when it comes to the poem Sir Louise de la Miséricorde the poem is set in the historical period of Jancyism which is an austere Catholic movement of the 17th century of France. The movement encouraged renunciation and living in religious orders. The speaker is a former royal mistress of Louis King Louis who presided between 1661 and 1667 called Louise de la Valière who has become a Camillite nun to renounce her sins called Sister Louise of Mercy. The poem is a dramatic monologue spoken in the voice of the nun called Louise. Despite being sequestered the nun is tormented by the desire and longing and this has wasted her life. The stanza opens suggesting that she's both desired and being desired. This implies that she's had a sexual and passionate experiences and she's had a full sexual experience. Her days of desire have been ended by becoming a nun but ironically she's still clearly full of the emotion of desire even though she has been removed from it. She uses the metaphor of a fire for her desire. The word is repeated in every stanza to reiterate the inescapable nature of her longing. Her aging body is described as dust and dying embers which laugh at her desire. The persistence of her desire is ridiculous because she's too old and too locked away to enjoy it. The image of dust is reminiscent of the funeral service suggesting that she's near the end of her life. She wonders what payment or recompense hire she has had for the life she's lived. Each stanza ends with an exclamation of vanity of vanity's desire. It's an outpouring of emotion which royals against desire she cannot stop feeling. This line alludes to Ecclesiastes from the Old Testament, vanity of vanity's all is vanity which says that all human endeavors are pointless. This line is a refrain showing she cannot escape the emotion. She juxtaposes the long vowel sounds of longing and love with the crisp alliteration of perished pleasure to show how quickly her love has been destroyed. She creates the neologism disenkindled to show that her fire was once alive but has now been undone. The word kin is also hinted at which implies that due to her religious life she's been denied, she has denied her family and children. She had five children by the king but was tortured by her conscience all the time. The word Maya is repeated to show that her memories cannot escape from the muddiness of her remembrances of passion. Her emotions are hyperbolically expressed. Her love has become a fountain of tears perpetually overflowing. There's no end to her passion and misery. Now brings the reader back to her present misery. Her heart is dying. The stanza suggests her past quite all penises. The trickling could be an ejaculation whilst the idea spent desire implies that her sexual experiences happened and left her bereft. Another phallic image is evident in the prickles of the rose that her life has become. Her life in anonary has destroyed her because it's thwarted her desire and made her unhappy. Finally she laments that her desire has prevented her from retaining a greater relationship with God. This is an image through the metaphor of a garden turning to sterile mud. The phrase death struck plays on the expected phrase love struck to show that her life has been blighted by something deadly instead of life giving. The fact she ends in the same exclamation shows that her thoughts have not progressed since the beginning of the poem and thus she has failed to resolve her emotions. The end of the poem has the speaker still unhappy and trapped in the motion of desire. So that's all. If you found this video useful do subscribe to our channel and give us a thumbs up. But also do remember that on our website we do feature lots of model answers, past papers and material that you can use to practice and strengthen your knowledge around poetry but also around other areas when it comes to English, history and lots of different topics. So do visit our website which is www.firstratetutors.com. Thank you so much for listening.