Christina Rossetti

Winter; my Secret
1. Secrecy
  1. "I tell my secret? No indeed, not I"
    1. First line, I in position of power, starts and ends with I directing the secret inwards to oneself, the no shuts the question down
      1. Selfhood- bookended like wrapping herself up in the secret of herself- value of privacy
    2. Implies secrets have a value- exchange and worth - entail the power to disclose- ownership of the secret itself is the power
  2. Only, my secret's mine and I wont tell
    1. Power and strength on the self- emphasis on mine (ownership)
  3. "Leave the truth untested still"
  4. "Perhaps my secret I may say,/ or you may guess"
    1. evokes fairy tales such as Rumpalstillskin that implies guessing will grant access
2. Temptation
  1. "And you're too curious; fie! You want to hear it?"
    1. short, teasing tone with an abrupt ending - shuts it down again
  2. "Perhaps there's none/suppose there is no secret after all/but only just my fun"
    1. She takes the secret away- makes reader more curious-playful/less serious
3. Sensationalism
  1. Today is a nipping day, a biting day;/in which one wants a shall,' a veil, a cloak and other wraps
  2. Let the draughts come whistling thro' my doors
  3. "Perhaps some languid summer day/ when drowsy sing less and less and golden fruit is ripening to excess"
    1. Decadence- the same as in the Goblin Market- something which can decay/rot as well
4. conceal and reveal
  1. "a veil, a cloak and other wraps/ I cannot ope to everyone who taps"
  2. "Come bounding and surrounding me/come buffeting, astounding me/nipping and clipping tho' my wraps and all"
    1. Mirrors the Goblin's actions towards Lizzie - sensationalist
    2. come bounding is a command like the Goblin's "come by"
  3. "I wear my mask for warmth; whoever shows/whose nose to Russian snows/to be pecked at by every wind that blows?"
    1. the mask is self-servicing as well protecting - keeps her self protected as well as keeping others out
    2. nose/snows- childlike rhyme scheme- playful
    3. Russian snows- war connotations- nature of what she is protecting herself from- gender undertones
5. Poetic technique
  1. Voice is asking questions and so is in direct communication with the reader
  2. "Both flirtacious and deeply resonant"- Isabelle Armstrong
    1. is winter the setting or the secret of the poem- It maps seasonal changes
    2. as though she is in dialogue with someone who is silent
      1. Always involving someone else
    3. Untypical of Rossetti's other poetry which is preoccupied with death/self-abnegation- whereas this is playful/teasing
  3. wearing the mask for protection from winter but also stops intimacy with the reader-an anti-confessional/anti-romantic poem, not self-expressive
    1. goes against the idea the poem should reveal the deep, interior truth of the self
      1. ends in tautology- my secret is secret
    2. the language of self-protection if similar to Lizzie's resistance to the Goblins
      1. the colon seperates winter as something needing elaboration- the subject matter of the poem - requires a pause
      2. Form- couplets and triplets increasing the pace at which the poem is read (anticipation) eg: snows, shows, blows - speed at which she wants to hide her secret and notion that the person she is talking to is persistent.
        Internal rhyme- froze, blows, snows /bounding, surrounding, astounding- increased pace.
        meter is iambic- reflecting the conversational and expressional style of speaker even as she tried to hide behind a mask - ensures rhyming sounds are always stressed eg: S sound in snowed- sibilance
        first paragraph- stress on words of temptation
        Punctuation- question marks, semi colons (create a caesurae - hesitation)- reflects speaker's decision to tell his secret or not
    3. Versus the Artist poem- one is public other is self/private
In An Artist's Studio
1. Gender
  1. "A saint, an angel/ every canvas means/ the same one meaning/neither more nor less"
    1. Irony- calling her a saint/angel- not necessarily a positive thing
      1. unsubstancial ideology
  2. "He feeds upon her face by day and night/and she with true kind eyes looks back on him"
    1. consumption- living off someone else
    2. irony- personifying a form of passivity, clichés, easy symbols of feminity- she's unchanging because she's not real
  3. "Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:/ not one with waiting, not with sorrow dim;/ not as she is, but was when hope shone bright:/ not as she is but as she fills his dream"
    1. Objectifying/reflecting on the 'type' of women- there are variations of superficial details but are all representing the 'male gaze' - the title of the poem is also through the male gaze
    2. poetics of negation and renunciation- repetition of not; but also negates the negation with the word 'but'- makes her sound helpless in her false representation- not a true portrayal
2. Representation
  1. "One face looks out from all his canvases, / One self same figure sits or walks or leans"
    1. Disparity between the real self and its projected image- not clear what real feminity would look like it: through a woman's eyes
  2. "That mirror gave back all her loveliness"
3. Secrecy
  1. "We found her hidden just behind those screens"
    1. the true woman is hiding behind the canvas- womanhood is often hidden/concealed
4. Sensationlism
  1. "A Queen in opal or in ruby dress,; nameless girl in freshest summer greens"
5. Poetic tecnique
  1. Rossetti uses typical poetic forms to articulate more transgressive messages
    1. Petrarchan sonnet- ABBA, ABBA, CDC, DCE- Octave, Sestet, Volta - turn on the line "he feeds upon her face"- change in tone- more violent
  2. Consistent ideas through different styles and tones- compare to Goblin Market
Critical
1. Stephanie. L. Johnson
  1. "move back and forth between representations of the material and immaterial so fluidly that we cannot distinguish between psychological and physical states or between desire for what is beyond the self and for the self."
2. Helena Michie
  1. the "linguistic codes that create the gap between the reader and the Victorian heroine's body" simultaneously enclosing and disclosing it

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Christina Rossetti

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