Themes (OCR A-Level English Literature): Revision Notes
Themes
Christina Rossetti's selected poems form a profound exploration of Victorian womanhood, examining the tensions between spiritual desires and earthly temptations through diverse female voices. Unlike other Victorian poets who dealt in abstract ideas, Rossetti anchors her work in the concrete realities of domestic life and female experience. Her poetry is distinctive in how it combines sensual, beautiful imagery with strict moral teaching, creating a unique tension that runs throughout her work.
These interconnected themes provide essential material for Section B comparative analysis with pre-1900 drama, revealing how Rossetti engages with questions of power, sin, and social roles in ways that both reflect and challenge her Victorian context.
Temptation, sin, and female transgression
Rossetti returns repeatedly to the biblical story of Eve's temptation, reimagining it through Victorian social concerns. She transforms this ancient archetype into a critique of contemporary society, particularly focusing on how women face and resist various forms of temptation.
Goblin Market as central allegory
Goblin Market (1862) serves as the masterwork of this theme. The poem's opening cry "Come buy, come buy...Their offers should not charm us, / Their evil gifts would harm us" introduces the goblins' dangerous allure. The fruit they sell is described with lush, sensual detail: "plump unpeckled cherries, / Bloom-down-cheeked peaches"
This Pre-Raphaelite abundance represents temptation through consumer desire and sensual indulgence. The vivid, sensory imagery was influenced by Rossetti's brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his artistic circle, who emphasized rich visual detail and natural beauty.
Laura's consumption of the fruit leads to a wasting illness that mirrors the decline Rossetti witnessed in fallen women at the Highgate Refuge, where she volunteered. The connection between temptation, consumption, and physical/moral decline is thus made explicit.
Lizzie's rescue of her sister transforms traditional narrative patterns. Her actions "She thrust a dimpled finger / In each ear, shut eyes and ran" show active resistance rather than passive victimhood. She inverts the typical masculine quest narrative, establishing female solidarity as the redemptive principle. Lizzie doesn't save Laura through male heroics but through sisterly self-sacrifice, offering her own body to be attacked by the goblins so that Laura might be healed.
Secularising the pattern
Maude Clare (1862) transposes this temptation-and-renunciation pattern into a contemporary social setting. Maude arrives at her former lover's wedding, declaring "You'll call me 'my dear, my pretty'— / Ay, take your bliss... I wash my hands thereof"
Her rejection of sentimental matrimony echoes the goblin market renunciation, suggesting that conventional marriage itself can be a form of temptation that compromises women's autonomy.
Exam tip: When comparing with drama texts, consider how Webster's Duchess of Malfi presents parallel themes. Both Rossetti and Webster celebrate transgressive femininity—the Duchess defies the convention of chaste widowhood, while Lizzie rejects the goblins' commercial seduction. However, Rossetti replaces Webster's graphic Jacobean violence with spiritual and moral economics, creating a different kind of transgression.
Renunciation and spiritual discipline
A central principle in Rossetti's work is that voluntary refusal represents a higher virtue than possession. This theme draws on Tractarian religious thought, which emphasised ascetic practices and sacramental discipline, but Rossetti transforms it into both a spiritual and aesthetic principle.
The art of saying no
Remember (1862) establishes a stoic approach to memory and loss. The poem begins with an imperative "Remember me when I am gone away" but crucially pivots at the volta (turning point) to a more pragmatic position "Yet if you should forget me for a while / And afterwards remember, do not grieve"
This turn rejects the morbid Victorian obsession with deathbed scenes and memorialisation. Instead, it privileges the living person's emotional health over the dead person's memory—a surprisingly practical and unsentimental stance.
Similarly, Song: When I am dead, my dearest instructs the living not to mourn excessively. The line "Cold he lies in the earth— / And I am glad, glad he is dead" shocks with its directness, refusing conventional grief performances.
Personal refusal as universal principle
No, thank you, John (1862) applies this principle of renunciation to courtship with wit and clarity "Why don't you see my answer plain? / You'd be ungenerous to disdain"
The poem, based on Rossetti's rejection of the painter James Collinson, transforms personal experience into a statement about women's right to refuse marriage proposals. The speaker's patience with John's persistence gradually wears thin, but her refusal remains firm and unapologetic throughout.
Key concept: Tractarian renunciation refers to the religious movement within the Church of England that emphasised ritual, sacramental theology, and often ascetic practices. Rossetti was deeply influenced by this movement, but her poetry makes renunciation personally and socially meaningful beyond its religious context.
Exam tip: For dramatic comparisons, consider Ibsen's A Doll's House. Nora's famous door-slam rejection of Torvald and his pet names parallels Rossetti's various refusals. Both writers dismantle sentimental domesticity through decisive female action, though Ibsen's dramatic realism contrasts with Rossetti's lyrical form.
Sisterhood and female solidarity
Rossetti consistently portrays female mutual aid as superior to patriarchal romance or competitive relationships. This theme subverts Victorian stereotypes of women as rivals or as seeking fulfilment solely through relationships with men.
Sororal salvation in Goblin Market
The climax of Goblin Market establishes sisterhood as the poem's governing moral principle "Lizzie kissed her sister: / White and golden Lizzie stood"
Laura's healing through consuming Lizzie's contaminated juice "She sucked until her lips were sore" inverts the earlier seduction by the goblins. Where goblin fruit brought corruption, Lizzie's sacrifice brings restoration. The poem thus establishes female physiology as a moral weapon, using the same bodily imagery for redemption that was used for temptation.
This radical reimagining suggests that women's salvation lies in mutual support rather than male rescue or religious confession. The poem ends with the sisters telling their story to their own daughters, creating a legacy of female wisdom and solidarity.
Shared exile and communal power
Shut Out (1862) explores exclusion from an Edenic garden "The door was shut. I looked between / Its iron bars; and saw it lie"
While the poem laments individual exile, the female voice gains strength through articulating shared experience. The speaking voice represents not just one woman but potentially all women excluded from patriarchal paradise.
Key term: Sororal economy means an economic or social system based on sisterly relationships and mutual female aid, as opposed to patriarchal systems based on male authority or heterosexual romance.
Exam tip: Compare with Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, where Kate and Constance's cross-generational female solidarity undermines Mrs Hardcastle's mercenary marriage schemes. Both Rossetti and Goldsmith show women working together to subvert patriarchal plans, though Goldsmith's tone remains comic while Rossetti's is more serious.
Time, decay, and eschatological hope
Rossetti confronts corporeal mortality through spiritual dualism, accepting that flesh decays while believing the soul endures. This creates poetry of simultaneous mourning and defiance, acknowledging physical loss whilst affirming spiritual continuity.
The journey metaphor
Up-hill (1861) structures existential anxiety as a dialogue between questioner and guide "Does the road wind up-hill all the way? / Yes, to the very end. / Will the day's journey take the whole long day? / From morn to night, my friend"
The road imagery transforms temporal anxiety into eschatological pilgrimage—the journey through life becomes a spiritual quest toward heavenly rest. The final stanza's promise of beds for all travellers suggests universal salvation, though only after arduous earthly journey.
Key term: Eschatological refers to matters concerning death, judgment, and the ultimate destiny of humanity. Eschatological hope means hope for redemption or reward in the afterlife, which balances earthly suffering.
Paradoxical celebration
A Birthday (1861) paradoxically uses images of natural abundance to celebrate spiritual renewal "My heart is like a singing bird / Whose nest is in a water'd shoot; / My heart is like an apple-tree / Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit"
The similes draw on corporeal and natural imagery—birds, trees, fruit—to signal the soul's eternal vitality. The poem resolves the tension between flesh and spirit by suggesting that spiritual joy can be expressed through physical metaphors.
Exam tip: Marlowe's Edward II charts a parallel temporal fall, as the king moves from power to deposition and murder. Both texts explore the relationship between earthly authority and spiritual destiny, though Marlowe's historical tragedy lacks the consoling eschatological hope that characterises Rossetti's work.
Social performance and gendered hypocrisy
Rossetti exposes Victorian femininity as theatrical performance—coquetry, sentimentality, and domesticity are revealed as roles women play rather than natural qualities. She achieves this through ironic dramatic monologues that adopt marginalised voices.
Irony and voice
From the Antique (1862) adopts a prostitute's voice with stark simplicity "It's a weary life, it is; / I have been a housewife, / And a poor one too"
The irony here dismantles the sentimental Victorian archetype of the 'fallen woman' by presenting her as practical and weary rather than morally corrupted or pathetically tragic. The voice refuses both condemnation and sentimentality.
Winter: My Secret plays with the conventions of confession and revelation "I tell my secret? No indeed, not I; / Perhaps some day, who knows? But not today"
The speaker teases the reader with the promise of intimate revelation whilst never delivering it, exposing how Victorian culture expected women to perform emotional vulnerability and transparency. This refusal to confess becomes an act of power in itself.
Performance and respectability
These poems suggest that respectability itself is a performance that requires constant maintenance. By giving voice to socially marginalised women—prostitutes, rejected lovers, defiant brides—Rossetti reveals the fragility of the boundary between 'respectable' and 'fallen' women.
Exam tip: Wilde's An Ideal Husband provides an excellent dramatic comparison. Lady Chiltern's moral absolutism parallels Rossetti's exploration of how women must perform virtue, while the play's revelation of past secrets echoes Winter: My Secret's refusal to confess. Both texts expose respectability's performative fragility.
Imperial violence and colonial witness
In her later works, Rossetti confronts British imperialism's moral cost through marginalised colonial voices, complicating Victorian triumphalism about empire.
Humanising imperial victims
In the Round Tower at Jhansi (1875) commemorates British victims of the 1857 Indian Rebellion "Until we found the deathshot... A merry English child"
The poem focuses on Amy Horne's final stand, humanising imperial victimhood in ways that complicate jingoistic responses to the Mutiny. Rather than celebrating British military might, Rossetti emphasises the human cost of colonial violence, particularly its impact on women and children.
This represents a significant departure from much Victorian imperial poetry, which typically celebrated British power without acknowledging the violence and suffering on all sides of colonial conflict.
Exam tip: Compare with Coleridge's Kubla Khan, which presents Xanadu's tyrannical splendour as aesthetically magnificent. Rossetti's Jhansi presents the opposite—besieged domesticity rather than imperial grandeur, human suffering rather than artistic vision.
Thematic integration for Section B comparisons
Understanding how Rossetti's themes interconnect provides essential tools for sophisticated comparative analysis in Section B of the exam. The unifying Rossettian principle is that female pragmatism triumphs over sentimental idealism. Whether rejecting goblin fruit, refusing marriage proposals, supporting sisters, or confronting mortality, Rossetti's female speakers choose concrete action over abstract emotion.
This principle distinguishes her work from both sentimental Victorian contemporaries and from the dramatic texts you'll compare her with. Where drama often presents grand gestures and public conflicts, Rossetti's poetry finds power in private refusals and domestic solidarity.
Effective thematic pairings with drama texts
Worked Example: Building Comparative Connections
When comparing Rossetti with dramatic texts, identify specific thematic parallels:
- The Duchess of Malfi: Compare transgressive femininity in Goblin Market's sisterhood with the Duchess's defiance of widowhood conventions
- A Doll's House: Examine domestic renunciation in Remember's stoicism alongside Nora's decisive exit from her marriage
- An Ideal Husband: Explore social performance through Maude Clare's irony and Lady Chiltern's moral hypocrisy
- Edward II: Analyse political and spiritual morality in Up-hill's dialogue compared with Marlowe's deposition rhetoric
- She Stoops to Conquer: Consider courtship refusal in No, thank you, John versus Kate's strategic deceptions
Advanced vocabulary for analysis
When writing about Rossetti's themes, these terms can sharpen your analysis:
- Pre-Raphaelite sensuality: The rich, detailed visual imagery influenced by Rossetti's brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his artistic circle
- Tractarian renunciation: The sacramental refusal of worldly goods and pleasures, drawing on Anglo-Catholic religious practice
- Eschatological pragmatism: Practical spirituality that balances earthly suffering with heavenly hope
- Sororal economy: Systems of female mutual aid that replace patriarchal or romantic relationships
- Spinster aesthetic: The creative productivity associated with celibate female vocation, rejecting the notion that women need marriage for fulfilment
Key Points to Remember:
- Rossetti's major themes centre on temptation renounced, solidarity enacted, and performance exposed, creating a coherent vision across her poems
- Female solidarity consistently triumphs over patriarchal structures—sisters save each other, women refuse unwanted proposals, and female voices gain power through communal experience
- Her work combines sensual Pre-Raphaelite imagery with strict moral teaching, creating productive tension between earthly beauty and spiritual discipline
- Renunciation is active, not passive—Rossetti's speakers choose refusal as a form of power and self-definition
- For Section B comparisons, focus on how Rossetti's spiritual pragmatism and subversive sisterhood offer alternatives to the dramatic power structures in your chosen play