Essays on Christina Rossetti

In Rossetti's poem she talks about the mirror that gave back all the "loveliness of the nameless girl"- the saint, the angel. In Carol Ann Duffy's poem we are taken through the looking glass and into the rather sceptical mind of the "Queen in opal or in ruby dress" rather than gazing on the painter with "true kind eyes" instead she looks at the painter with a tough and un-sentimental gaze. Duffy's model is under no illusions about who she…...

Explore and compare the ways in which the poets present the relationships between men and women in 'To His Coy Mistress' by Andrew Marvell, 'Cousin Kate' by Christina Rossetti and 'The Beggar Women' by William King. Consider the social and cultural contexts in which the poems are set. For most pre-twentieth century writers, love and marriage provide ways to talk about relationships between men and women. Marvell, Rossetti and King, however, ignore marriage in favour of sex, and love, in…...

In this essay, I am going to compare the poems 'Remember' by poet Christina Rossetti and poet Dylan Thomas' 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night'. The poem 'Remember' reflects poet Rossetti's life towards the end, when she was slowly dying of cancer. She knew she was inevitably going to die, just as the narrator does in 'Remember'. Poet Dylan Thomas wrote the poem 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night' when his father was gravely ill in…...

'Cousin Kate' is a pre-twentieth century poem, which was written by Christina Rossetti. It is about a young woman who works as a cottage maiden, she falls in love with a lord and sleeps with him. She finds out that she is pregnant with the lord's baby but is dumped for her cousin. The second poem, 'The Seduction', is a more modern poem. It is about a teenage girl who meets a boy at a party, they get on well…...

Christina Rossetti’s poem entitled “In an Artist’s Studio” is a depiction of two characters having connection with one another – the painter and the model. The painter saw different light from the model that he is painting. The model was not a usual woman but an angel or a saint that comes from heaven. He was mesmerized with the captivating aura of the woman who seemed to be simple in the past. Through the painting process, light comes within the…...

In this essay I will be looking strongly at the language of the poems of Christina Rossetti 'cousin Kate' along with 'I wish I could remember'. Christina Rossetti came from a large Italian family, which was very famous, she also wrote the Christmas carol 'in the bleak mid winter' and wrote a variety of other poems like "goblin market". Christina Rossetti was born in 1830 and sadly died in 1894. She had very strong religious beliefs, which you can witness…...

Appreciation and comparison of modern and pre-twentieth century poetry: "Cousin Kate" by Christina Rossetti and "Manwatching" by Georgia Garett 'Cousin Kate' is set in a feudal society. A feudal society is where there are two classes, the rulers (Lord) and the ruled (peasantry). The feudal Lord had complete power and expected absolute loyalty and obedience from the lower orders. In exchange they had his 'protection'. In this poem there is a cottage maiden who had a happy life in medieval…...

Remember by Christina Rossetti I chose 'Remember' because of the depth of the feeling of the sonnet. 'Remember' is a sonnet by 'Christina Rossetti'. A sonnet has a typical regular rhyming scheme. This type of sonnet includes fourteen lines. It was written in the Romantic era, the poet talks to her lover and informs him to remember her when she dies by happiness rather than grief and sorrow. It is largely autobiographical, as she wrote it when she was in…...

In Christina Rossetti's poem 'Goblin Market' the goblin men's luring call attracts naive Laura to the market and consequences soon follow. The poem is a long metaphor for the marriage market. In the market, ignorant women who do not understand the market for its purpose face veiled dangers. The need for young women to grasp how exactly the marriage market works is proposed nearing the conclusion of the poem. The 'Goblin Market' is an allegory for the marriage market, warning…...

"Too late for love, far too late for pleasure, too late, far too late!" (1 ). This is the opening line from the poem "Bride-to-be Song", by Christina Rossetti. The poem has to do with a female ("the bride"), who lived her life waiting on her love ("the groom") to come for her. She died alone, never having actually enjoyed another man, all that time waiting on him to return, however, he was too late, and returned only in time…...

“Remember” is a sonnet by a poetess of Victorian England, Christina Rossetti. The poem was written in 1849 but was first published in 1862 in “Goblin Market and Other Poems” by Rossetti (Petacovic, 2009). Rossetti suffered from ill health throughout her life (Shanks, 2010); she seemed to be obsessed with her death and therefore wrote several poems (“Song”, “The One Certainty”) exploring the theme of death. Christina Rossetti was only 19 when she wrote “Remember”. Scholars believe that the poem…...

"Romantic"-- this word holds several connotations and evokes a collection of various images. It can be "fanciful, impractical, unrealistic"; it can be "ardent, enthusiastic, fervent"; and it can be "fictional, fictitious, or magnificent". According to the dictionary, "romantic" is an adjective defined by a fixation with love, or by the idealizing of love or one's precious. In the three poems I have selected-- "Let me not to the marital relationship of real minds" by William Shakespeare, "La Belle Dame Sans…...

The three poems Remember written by Christina Rossetti, A Mother In A Refugee Camp by Chinua Achebe and Poem at Thirty-Nine by Alice Walker share the same negative theme of loss and separation. Remember explores the pain felt by losing loved ones. A Mother In A Refugee Camp emphasizes the relationship between a mother and her child living in a refugee camp. Poem at thirty nine is a poem about the reminiscences of a loved one. Remember expresses the pain…...

"Uphill" by Christina Rossetti is an allegory about life and death. Rossetti is considered one of the finest religious poets of her time and her many spiritual beliefs are conveyed in her poem "Uphill". H.B. de Groot said, "Undeniably, her strong lyric gifts are often held in check by her moral and theological scruples" (Groot). The dialogue style Rossetti uses mimics the parables told by Jesus in The Bible. In "Overview of Christina (Georgina) Rossetti" one author stated that during…...

"Far from being repressed, woman in Rossetti's poems are defiant" How far do you agree with this view? I agree with this view to a certain extent, as there are elements of both repression and defiance within many of Rossetti's poems. Firstly, in the poem Maude Clare rather than women it seems to be the man that is repressed to some extent as Maude Clare and Nell are both defiant as they both seem to have strong opinions that are…...

How is Marxism presented as a metaphor in Christina Rossetti’s poem ‘Goblin Market’? In Goblin Market, Rossetti presents Marxism as a metaphor through a number of different characters and through the language used. It could be argued that in the poem there is this idea that consumerism is bad, and that we are never satisfied with what we have which is essentially the theory behind Marxist views. An example of this in the poem is that once Laura has had…...