Victorian Poetry : A Paper Collection

Victorian Poetry: A Paper Collection
By Cordelia Clark
Copyright 2011 by Cordelia Clark
Bookrix Edition

Dedication
For B. Williams, with love and devotion.


About the Author
Cordelia Clark loves poetry, especially Victorian Poetry. Her favorite Victorian Poets and Emily Bronte , Christina Rosetti, and Adelaid Anne Proctor. Prior works on smashwords include an anthology of Poetry: Chronicles of Bursts of Light and Shadow: Poems of Bipolar Depression. Cordelia loves hearing from her readers. If you would like to contact Cordelia, you may email her at inkblotsbycordelia@gmail.com

Acknoledgements
Dr. Kwaja at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA for inspiring me. For Opah, may the lord watch between me and thee while we are absent one from another. B. Williams, for support and being a love everlasting. Christina Rossetti, for your wonderful goblins. Emily Bronte, I too watch a grave. Jeanine Mason, my unofficial editor.


Seduced by Death:

Memory, Romanticism, and Time in Emily Bronte’s “Remembrance”

By Cordelia Clark

English 322: Victorian Poetry


The pathology of memory, with its nuances of light and shadow, run through Emily Bronte’s poem “Remembrance” like water through the roots of the ferns that cover the Yorkshire moors upon which she is recorded to have played as a child (Wilson, 25). It is in this poetic work that she questions the definitions of memory, as well as its meaning as it relates to recalling memory. Not only does Bronte question recollection of events, but she inquires regarding separation and what it means to forget. “Remembrance” also has a sense of irony and paradox; there is irony in the use of the words “forget” and “remember.” Simultaneously, Bronte interjects a theme of time as it relates to the memory’s definition, recollection, separation, and the indication of the failure of memory.
In the first stanza of “Remembrance,” the narrator expresses a fear of forgetting to continue to love her lover that is now dead. She also conveys a fear of disconnection. “Have I forgot, my only love, to love thee,/ severed at last by Time’s all severing wave?”(3-4). Here the source of disconnection is time, a theme which appears repeatedly throughout the work. Irony is also seen in these lines because if the narrator has actually forgotten her lover, then she would not even pose the question. The irony in these lines is especially efficient in conveying a sense of fear. This is because a statement of what has not been forgotten is more effective than a statement of what is remembered. There is also irony in these lines with relationship to the title of the poem, as the title is “Remembrance” and “forgot” appears in the third line, which leads the reader to inquire as to what Bronte is trying to convey about memory itself. Here she poses the idea that memory has a life span: “Severed at last by Time’s all severing wave”(4). It may also be interpreted that memory is a sense of mourning. “Have I forgot my only love to love thee,” (3). Because the deceased is the narrator’s “only love” there is a sense of mourning that is conveyed. These lines also inspire the question of whether or not memory is something that is a constant:
Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave
Have I forgot my only love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time’s all severing wave? (1-4).

The narrator is separated from her lover by time in the form of winter, as expressed in the first line by the use of the word cold and the description of snow. “Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee” (1). As she is separated by time and physical location, the reader may construe that the narrator feels as though she must be constantly connected to her lover through mourning, a form of remembrance. Steve Vines addresses this in his journal article “Romantic Ghosts: The Refusal of Mourning in Emily Bronte’s Poetry.”
If vision is housed in the grave in Bronte, the logic of its inurnment—and it’s spectral return—is dramatized is one of the most remarkable of the Gondal Poems, published in 1846 under the title “Remembrance” (Poem 116). This poem is an act of mourning by a female speaker for her lost beloved, who has been “Cold in the earth” for “fifteen wild Decembers”(1,9). The poem charts the speaker’s struggle to replace the beloved with “other” desires and hopes, and maps the mourner’s attempt to substitute for the lost object (110).

Here Vines reinforces that the narrator is in fact female and that she is in a state of mourning over her lover. He further discusses the mourning of the beloved as it relates to disconnection and asserts that in order to be in mourning over the beloved, the female speaker must be in “painful withdrawal” from the beloved. “According to Freud, the “work of mourning” consists in the painful withdrawal of the subject’s attachment to a loved but lost object, and its reluctant reinvestment in “a substitute [that] is already beckoning” to it”(111). She is disconnected from her lover by death in the form of physical location, as he is “cold in the earth” (1) instead of on the earth with her. In lines two and four of this stanza, the narrator expresses her fear that she is severed from her connection with her lover. Line two illustrates a loss by physical distance, with distance being the grave. “Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave.” Line four emphasizes a separation based on time, as it mention’s “Time’s all-severing wave.” Time is also alluded to in line two with the mention of “cold,” as this is a reference to winter. Thus, she is painfully separated from her lover.
Romanticism appears in the second stanza:
Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern leaves cover
Thy noble heart for ever, ever more? (5-8).

A sense of romanticism is expressed when the narrator speaks of her thoughts hovering over the grave of her beloved, as it is an aspect of sentimentality. It also appears when she gives the title of “noble” to her lover’s heart in line eight: “Thy noble heart for ever, ever more.” Repetition of the word “ever” in this line also illustrates this. Stanza two suggests that memory looses it’s romanticism due to separation. This separation occurs when the narrator’s thoughts “no longer hover/Over the mountains on that northern shore”(5-6). Bronte also illustrates the mobility of the narrator’s thoughts when she reference’s their “wings.” “Resting their wings where heath and fern leaves cover”(7). The concept of traveling thoughts implies that memory has only an idealized sense of Romanticism. This is because the mere fact that the narrator’s thoughts cease to “hover” over the grave of her beloved suggests that memory at a subconscious level moves on after a period of grieving. This period of grieving is related to the idea that remembrance is a type of mourning, and is best illustrated by conceptualizing the season change between the first and second stanza. In stanza one, the grave was covered by snow and was described as “dreary.” “Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee,/Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave”(1-2). Lines seven through eight of the second stanza describe the grave as being covered by fern leaves, which illustrates a season change: “Resting their wings where heath and fern leaves cover/Thy noble heart for ever, ever more.” Janet Gezari discusses this in her article, “Fathoming Remembrance: Emily Bronte in Context.” She connects the fear of the female speaker’s forgetfulness of her lover to Freud’s “Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis.” She states that everything conscious is subject to a process of wearing away, a process to which she feels Bronte is quite aware of, and thus it is the basis of her fear.
Bronte’s conviction that memory never dies, even in sleep, anticipates Freud. Recognizing that there is no cure for memeory, psychoanalysis presents itelse as a cure for forgetting or pretending to forget by turning symptoms, which are like monuments in the patient’s psyche, into conscious memories, available for processing. Bronte’s protest against death requires the survival of remembrance, and like Freud, she is alert to how memory threatens that survival. Her poem “Remembrance” turns on the axis of this dense psychological contradiction. Freud formulates the threat memory poses most clearly in his “Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis: I then made some short oversevations upon the psychological differences between the conscious and the unconscious, and upon the fact that everything conscious was subject to a process of wearing away (965-966).

Thus it may be concluded that Bronte is defining memory in terms of mourning a lover, as remembrance is a type of mourning. Gezari addresses Bronte’s view on recollection of events and asserts that it is Bronte’s view that as memory never dies, recollection of events is based upon how accessible the memory is to the individual.
The pervious line mentions “mountains” and a “shore,” each which are barriers. “Over the mountains, on that northern shore”(7). This suggests that there is an inaccessibility of the lover to the beloved, which ties in with the theme of separation. Interestingly, the mountains and the shore are only mentioned subsequent to the season change. This insinuates that time is, once again, involved with the separation of the lover and the narrator.
Change of season is once again picked up in stanza three:
Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers,
From those brown hills have melted into spring;
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering! (9-12).

Winter is referenced in line nine with the usage of the words “cold” and “Decembers,” as well as in line ten with the reference to “brown hills.” The repetition of the phrase “cold in the earth” here is important. In the first stanza, the phrase “cold in the earth” that appears in line one is necessary to convey a sense distance between the narrator and her lover due to time in the form of season and by physical distance illustrated in the grave. Repetition of the phrase exemplifies that time has become a stronger factor. Winter was initially referred to by the words “cold” and “snow.” “Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee,”(1). Now it is referred to using “cold” and the image of “fifteen wild Decembers.” “Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers”(9). It is in this stanza that the concept of separation by time is further modified, as the coldest and darkest month of the year is on the Yorkshire moor is used to describe it (Wilson, 76). Bronte also describes the Decembers as “wild,” which modifies the sense of time to be one that was fully desolately violent. Desolate violence, as Romer Wilson explains in her biography of Emily Jane Bronte, is a projection of her soul within relation to her relationship to the moor.
Creatures of the moor are not exempt from the strife of the moor. They get a pride, a self-pride that longs for Paradise and rejects Heaven, or perhaps they recognize the moor as home, because the devil’s pride has got them by the heart…These creatures are the dark part in us, the unmatable, the utterly alone. They have their sweet moments, their moments of beauty and rapture, but their ravings are not comfortable and not good. They do not wish those they love greater torment than they have themselves. They only wish never to be parted from their lover—either in torment or in joy….But the dark people go on to the moor to rejoice in the pride of their loneliness, to exalt their exile and their sufferings (Wilson,77-78).
The narrator of “Remembrance” has such a relationship with the moor, and is thus desolately violent because she is volatile and rejoices in being “utterly alone.” Bronte’s use of “now when alone” in line five and praise of her spirit in line 11 illustrate this. “Faithful indeed is the spirit that remembers/After such years of pain and suffering!”(11-12). Wilson asserts that “the dark people go on the moor to rejoice in the pride of their lonliness” and “exalt their exile and their sufferings.” The female speaker of “Remembrance” is doing just this when she refers to her own spirit as faithful after years of suffering.
A sense of time as separation is further developed in stanza four:
Sweet Love of youth, forgive if I forget thee,
While the world’s tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!(13-16).
Here time is once again referenced, except this time the female speaker and the beloved are separated by her placing him in past tense. The beloved is referred to as “sweet Love of youth” in line 13, which relates back to the argument regarding Romanticism of memory. As she asks forgiveness for “forgetting” her lover in the context of being caught up in “other desires” and “other hopes,” it is evident that the idealized form of memory introduced in the first stanza wears away. As this ideal wears away, the narrator’s fear is manifested, as consciousness is subject to erosion, which supports Freud’s ideas on Obsessive Neurosis discussed earlier. Vines asserts that it is through this separation of the female speaker and the beloved that Bronte undoes the theme of mourning at the same time that she creates it.
Simultaneously and mournfully, the self renounces both a lost beloved and a prohibited maternal object, weaning itself from longing and repudiating its own self destructive wish for extinction in the tomb—and the womb—of its love. But if the speaker of the poem in this way embraces mourning and substitution, obeying patriarchal law of renunciation, there is another level on which the poem fiercely refuses that surrender, and repudiates the work of mourning. In this sense, “Remembrance” undoes the work of mourning even as it performs it (111-112).

The “patriarchal law of renunciation” that Vines is referring to is the sense of romanticism that is present in the first stanza. It is also present in the fifth and sixth stanzas:
No later light has lightened up my heaven,
No second morn has ever shome for me;
All my life’s bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee (17-20).

But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,
And even Despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy! (21-24).

Elisabeth Bronfen discusses romanticism within the female construct as it relates to mourning. She uses an anecdote in her article “Dialogue with the Dead: the Deceased Beloved as Muse” about Charlotte Stieglitz, a women who, in 1834, two years prior to the publication of Bronte’s “Remembrance,” committed suicide in an effect to inspire her poet husband:
Yet even more disquieting, and for a critic even more fascinating, is the strange mixture of seduction by a false pathos of romantic and pietistic delusions and the calculation of effect inherent in her act, the doubling of deluded victim and consciously responsible actress. For she exposes the conventions of feminine self sacrifice at exactly the same moment that she fatally enacts them. Far from being innocent or naïve, her suicide is pregnant with literary citations; in fact it is a cliché—suggestive of both Werther’s and Caroline Von Guederode’s suicides after failed romances, of the iconography of sacrificial brides and martyrs dressed in white, for whom death is a mystic marriage and erotic unity with God, as well as that of women dying in childbirth (242).

Bronfen suggests here that romanticism is what seduced most women into playing the role which the female speaker of “Remembrance” definitely plays: the role of feminine self-sacrifice. Self sacrifice is exemplified in line 20: “All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee.”
Emily Bronte’s “Remembrance” discusses the definitions of memory as they relate to memory’s recollection, separation, and indication of failure. Time, a re-occurring theme, is interjected throughout the work to further describe what she expresses regarding recollection, separation, and indication of failure. Memory is defined as a sense of mourning. “Remembrance” reveals a false sense of Romanticism, which is an indication of failure. Recollection of memory, as Bronte’s view that memory never dies, is based upon the accessibility of the memory to the individual. Time’s relationship to Romanticism is that it causes the false ideology of Romanticism regarding feminine self-sacrifice to erode away, as seen at the end of “Remembrance” when the female speaker asserts that “existence could be cherished,/Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy”(23-24).

Works Cited


Bronfen, Elisabeth. “Dialogue with the Dead: the Deceased Beloved as a Muse.” Ed Regina Barreca. Sex and Death in Victorian Literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1990.


Bronte, Emily Jane. “Remembrance.” Gondal Poems. Folcroft Library Editions. 1938.


Gezari, Janet. “Fathoming Remembrance: Emily Bronte in Context.” ELH 66 (1999) 965-978


Vines, Steve. “Romantic Ghosts: The Refusal of Mourning in Emily Bronte’s Poetry.” Victorian Poetry. 37 (1999) 99-116


Wilson, Romer. The Life and Private History of Emily Jane Bronte. New York: Albert and Charles Bon Inc. 1928.


Nevermind My Bruises:
Lesbianism, Dominance, and Sexual Corruption
In Christina Rosetti’s “The Goblin Market.”
By Amanda Cordelia Clark
English 322
Paper III
Dr. Khwaja
“Come Away, O human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand.”
--William Butler Yeats
“The Stolen Child”

In his poem, “The Stolen Child,” William Butler Yeats’ entreats the human child to escape the woe of human life and join the land of the fey, on the premise that the human world holds more sorrow. Similarly, Christina Rosetti twists this idea in her poem, “The Goblin Market,” in such a way that the fairy folk provide both escape and entrapment. Through this, Rosetti weaves lesbianism, dominance, and sexual corruption. All of this, however, is hinged upon the desire that Laura and Lizzie have to be free from the sexual suppression that was characteristic of Victorian sexuality. From this comes the derivation of goblin seduction, sexual dominance in the relationship that Laura and Lizzie have with each other as well as the goblin men, the purifying power of lesbianism, and sexual corruption on behalf of both sisters.
In order to fully understand the ideas of dominance, lesbianism, and sexual corruption presented in Rosetti’s “Goblin Market,” what attracted Lizzie and Laura to the goblin men in the first place must be understood. The mention of “Morning and Evening” in line 1 with relation to the goblin men selling fruit is representative of the birth cycle of each new day. This is the first connection of the goblin men to sexuality. The first stanza lists all of the fruit that is sold by the goblin men. This represents what is attractive about the goblin men because it has sexual undertones. Constant references to fruit are references to fertility. Line 11 depicts wild fruit: “wild, free born cranberries.” As Lizzie and Laura are suppressed due to the societal nature of Victorian sexuality, they are attracted to the wild nature of the fruit. The mention of “Evening by Evening” in line 32 is forshadowing the fall of both Laura and Lizzie to the sexual corruption by the goblin men. Lizzie was attracted to the goblin men because they first seduced her sister, which is evident in line 52 when Laura “reared her glossy head.”
Lines 34-39 depict the beginning of submission to the goblins:
Laura bowed her head to hear
Lizzie veiled her blushes
Crouching close together
With clasping arms and cautioning lips
With tingling cheeks and fingertips.
This is the beginning of submission to the goblins because Laura has “bowed her head.” At the start of Rosetti’s poem, Laura is the sexually dominant in the relationship between her and her sister. This is evident in the line in which Laura commands Lizzie to “lie close.” “Lie close, Laura said” (40). Laura then moves from becoming the sexually dominant with Lizzie to being dominated by the goblin men. This is seen when Laura comes home from dealing with the goblin men and shows that she has become addicted to their wares.
Nay, hush, said Laura
Nay, hush, my sister
I ate and ate my fill
Yet my mouth waters still
Tomorrow night I will
Buy more, and kissed her
Have done with sorrow (163-169).

Lizzie is later dominated by the goblin men and then becomes the dominant in the relationship with Laura. This is seen when she orders Laura to feast on her. “Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices” (468). Perhaps Laura turns to the goblin men because she is restless in her sexual role in her relationship with Lizzie. This is seen in lines 52-55 where she is compared to a “restless brook:”
Laura reared her glossy head
And whispered like the restless brook
Look, Lizzie, Look, Lizzie
Down the glen tramp little goblin men.

Another reason that Laura may have turned to the goblin men was that when Lizzie warned Laura of the goblin men, she was simply repeating what Laura had told her, without adding her own ideas: “O cried Lizzie, Laura, Laura,/You should not peep at goblin men” (48-49). This is a repetition of what Laura had says, as she says it earlier in lines 40-45:
Lie close, Laura said
Pricking up her golden head
We must not look at goblin men
We must not buy their fruits
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry, thirsty roots.

The difference between what Laura says to Lizzie about not looking at the goblin men is that Laura actually gives Lizzie a well thought out reason for not looking at them “who knows upon what soil they fed/their hungry, thirsty roots (44-45). Lizzie simply repeats that she must not do it. Perhaps Laura wanted something that was more violent, more forbidden. Ultimately she gets what she wants because she gets a more sexually violent relationship from both Lizzie and the goblin men. Lizzie becomes more sexually violent in lines 471-472: “Eat me, drink me, love me/ Laura make much of me.” Laura’s violent relationship with the goblin men is seen in line136: “She sucked until her lips were sore.”
Lizzie originally has a resistance to becoming more dominant in the relationship because she plugs her ears, closes her eyes, and runs from the goblin men:
No, said Lizzie, no, no, no
Their offers should not charms us
Their evil gifts would harm us
She thrust a dimpled finger in each ear, shut her eyes and ran (64-68).

The seduction of the goblin men implies dominance. As the goblin men are the seducers, they are the sexually dominant. Seduction begins in lines 79-80 with “they sounded kind and full of loves/in the pleasant weather.” Laura begins to loose willpower against them in 85-86 when she is compared to a ship that is being launched, which then has the capacity to be uncontrollable: “Like a vessel at the launch/when it’s last restraint is gone.” In the lines that follow, we see that the goblins sense Laura’s weakness:
When they reached where Laura was
They stood stock still upon the moss
Leering at each other
Brother with queer brother
Signaling each other
Brother with sly brother (91-96).
More seduction is in lines 107-108, where the goblins are said to speak in tones “smooth as honey:” “The whisk tailed merchant bade her taste/in tones as smooth as honey.”
The repetition of “evening by evening” is a description of Lizzie and Laura’s relationship. Superficially they seem to be the same because Laura first issues the warning about the goblin men, which Lizzie repeats later, which could be interpreted as the foreshadowing of the stanza discussing their similarities:
Golden head by golden head
Like two pigeons in one nest
Folded in each other’s wings
They lay down in their curtained bed
Like two blossoms on one stem
Like two flakes of new fallen snow
Like two wands of ivory
Tipped with gold for awful kings
Moon and stars gazed in at them
Wind sang to them a lullaby
Lumbering owls forbore to fly
Not a bad flapped to and fro
Round their nest
Cheek to cheek and breast to breast
Locked together in one nest (184-198).
This is also the first picture presented of Lizzie and Laura living so closely together, as they sleep in the same bed. Lesbianism and sexual corruption may be linked with the working class living arrangements. Michael Mason points out how this links together when he discusses how the working class lived more closely together than the upper class:
Patterns of occupation and settlement are themselves relevant to sexuality, especially in view of certain impressions of the day (concerning, for instance, the morals of factories verses farms and other domestic servants) but their main interest here is what they indicate about class structure (107).

He continues to discuss this on page 140, where he gives a more concrete example:

Riddall Wood does cite a pair of prostitutes who said that they had been corrupted by sharing accommodations with married couples. We also have, however, the very words of a prostitute from the home countries on this question, and her testimony is oddly half hearted: ‘If it hadn’t been that we were all forced to undress ourselves before one another, and five of us to sleep in the same room, I do think—though perhaps that wasn’t the only reason—that I should not be leading this life I am now. If there had been no one else sleeping in the same room I might perhaps have fallen into this way, but I don’t think I should have gone wrong so soon.’

This is relevant as Lizzie and Laura sleep in the same bed. This is referenced in line 184: “golden head by golden head.” The sexual corruption of class structure is also relevant because Lizzie, Laura, and Jeannie, who is only mentioned once (157-160) as having been seduced by goblin men and dying as a result, all lived intimately together.
It is difficult to classify Laura and Lizzie as far as social classes go, simply because they only sometimes adhere to working class criteria. They resemble the working class in that they have no money but barter instead, which alludes to production of goods in some form. This is seen in lines 105-106 when Laura barters with her hair: “Laura stared but did not stir/longed but had no money.” It is seen later that they work on some sort of a farm:
Early in the morning
When the first cock crowed his warning
Neat like bees, sweet and busy
Laura rose with Lizzie
Fetched in honey, milked the cows
Aired and set to rights the house
Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat
Cakes for dainty mouths to eat
Next churned butter, whipped up cream
Fed their pultry, sat and sewed (199-209).

Also, they resemble the working class with their crowded housing.
Golden head by golden head
Like two pigeons in one nest
Folded in each other’s wings
They lay down in their curtained bed (184-187).

Not only do Laura and Lizzie share a bed, but Jeannie also lived with them at one time. The fact that Lizzie buried her and keeps up her grave implies intimacy:

Then fell with the first snow
While to this day no grass will grow
Where she lies low
I planted daisies there a year ago (157-160).

However, Lizzie and Laura differ from the working class in that they marry in the end:
Marriage was not common among working people who on the whole obtained their wives and husbands simply by taking up residence with them (Harrison,167).

Lesbianism is evident but also purifying, as seen in the following lines:

She cried, Laura, up the glen
Did you miss me
Come and kiss me
Never mind my bruises
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you
Goblin pulp and goblin dew
Eat me, drink me, love me
Laura make much of me
For your sake I braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men (464-474).

The purifying powers of their same sex relationship are seen in lines 485-492:
She clung about her sister
Kissed and kissed and kissed her
Tears once again
Refreshed her sunken eyes
Dropping like rain
After long sultry drought
Shaking with anguish fear and pain
She kissed and kissed her
With a hungry mouth.

In order for their relationship to be purifying, it had to burn out the sexual corruption coming from the goblin men. This is evident in lines 493-499:
Her lips began to scortch
That juice was wormwood to her tongue
She loathed the feast
Writhing as one possessed she leaped and sung
Rent all her robe and wrung
Her hands in lamentable haste
And beat her breast.

Purification is also shown in lines 507-511:
Swift fire spread through her veins knocked at her heart
Met the fire smoldering there
And overbore its lesser flame
She gorged on bitterness without a name.

This idea is supported by Leslie Atzmon’s article on goblins and in-betweens, where she declares that Laura is rescued by Lizzie:
In-betweens and goblins also characterize the illustration ‘White and Gold Where Lizzie stood’ from Goblin Market by Christina Rosetti. In Goblin Market, two sisters are tantalized by the forbidden fruit offered by a band of goblin men. Laura is tempted and succumbs, but ultimately is rescued by Lizzie. Lizzie enacts retribution for her sister’s capture by refusing to be tempted, therefore vanquishing the goblins (71).

Purification is also supported by David B. Drake:

A substantial number of critics have noted that Rosetti’s heroine, Lizzie, resembles a transfigured Christ who redeems her peccant sister by sacrificing herself to the malevolent goblins. Feminist critics, meanwhile, have designated Lizzie a pioneering member of their own movement who is earnestly determined to protect the sanctity of sisterhood against any form of patriarchal corruption (ie: goblin men). Inherent in both these persuasive exegeses is the understanding that Lizzie is an individual of heroic, or even cosmic consequence…and accordingly, her subsequent reemergence from this underworld clearly signifies a resurrection, not so much for herself, but for the moribund Laura, as well as for all maidens, since Lizzie (the seminal feminist) has emphatically demonstrated that they indeed possess more resourcefulness than the goblins, and consequently no longer need to be the victims of their misogynistic tyranny (22).
Thus, as Lizzie is the signifier of the seminal feminist and resurrects her female power in both herself and her sister, lesbianism is shown as a purifying force, rather than one to be ashamed of.
Lizzie and Laura marry in the end because that is what they are expected to do because of societal convention. However, they tell their children that “there is no friend like a sister.” Metaphorically this is the passing on of lesbian ideals to their children. Line 542 speaks briefly of their marriage: “afterwards both were wives.” They pass on lesbian ideals to their children in lines 558-560: “Then joining hands to little hands/would bid them cling together/for there is no friend like a sister.” Another way that lesbianism is justified, other than the fact that it is shown as purifying, is by the entire construct of the story. During the time period it was seen as a fairy story, and thus as it is told to the children as a fairy story it is used as a method of instruction. Mackenzie Bell cites in his biography of Christina Rosetti that William Michael Rosetti declares that “it is only a fairy story”(207). Fairy stories were often used for instruction, and still are today. An example of this is that Andrew Wright has several books on developing language with learners, and one, Storytelling With Children, deals with language development using fairy tales.
Atzmon points out that the Victorians were captivated by the idea of fairies and that the subconscious and otherwise “unnatural” feelings that were not allowed due to societal construction were allowed to come out when one was under the correct circumstances. This is related to the idea that the artistic depiction of the fey with animal like characteristics made them similar to humans in the that the fey were often involved in the emergence of the “unconscious” nature of the Victorian individual, which was seen as the part of the person that was the real personality.
Fairies captivated the Victorians, who flocked to exhibits of fairy art and lavish productions of plays involving fairies. Rackham’s believable but fantastic fairyland helped generate and sustain this fascination. Rackham’s popular illustrations played an important role in creating the Victorian images of fairies, simultaneously disclosing hidden implications for understanding the Victorian psyche. In this essay I will also discuss the ways in which Arthur Rackham’s fairies manifest, in visual form, both phrenological precepts and Victorian notions of the fearsome animalism of the unconscious mind (Atzmon,64).

Another support of the idea that the Victorians were captivated by the fey is that Lisa Steinweb mentions in her review of Carol G. Silver’s book, Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness, that many Victorians placed fairy folk in their family trees.
Yet the Victorians traced their roots not only back to these ancient tribes, but the fairies themselves. Silver finds communities from the Herbides to Cornwall, who could place mermaids, selkies, and fairy brides in their family tree (151).

Atzmon may again be cited in order to tie in the Victorian’s feelings about the relationship between the fey and humanity:
Phrenologists also explored the faculties that animals share with humans. These primitive faculties include, among others, philoprogenitiveness—the love of offspring, concentrativeness—the ability to focus on one object; combativeness—tendency to self-protection and courage; destructiveness—the desire to meet and overcome obstacles;and secretiveness—the instinct to conceal unbecoming behavior and thoughts. These propensities are most relevant to this study of fairies—who are believed to be aboriginal in the best case, and animalistic in the worst, since the propensities superficially target those attributes common to both human and animals. This group of faculties was well known among British proponents of phrenology, their physical manifestations were clearly spelled out in phrenological guidelines (65).

Christina Rosetti describes the goblins with animal like characteristics when she speaks of one goblin having a cat’s face in line 71. Atzmon herself also relates this to The Goblin Market: “Rackham goes to all lengths to blur boundaries between animal and human. Some goblins are mostly animal with subtle human nuances” (72).
The sexual corruption of the goblin men brought out the “unconscious” and therefore more natural lesbian tendencies of Lizzie and Laura. This is supported by Atzmon’s observation about Victorian psychologists:
Victorian psychologists were fascinated by the boundaries between the normal and the abnormal, which they compared to the border between the conscious, rational mind and the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind, considered an out of control beast which could come out under the right circumstances, took on a sinister quality. The emergence of the hidden beast within was a familiar theme in Victorian culture. In the image “The Kensington Gardens Are In London, Where the King Lives” Rackham places a host of imaginary creatures behind the king and the underground. That these beings emerge from the dark world “behind” and “underground” is suggestive of the emergence of the beast from the unconscious mind. Their physical appearance, which combines plant, animal, and human features, gives a clue to their phrenology. Animalistic or base character could be ascertained, many Victorians believed, from the face (Atzmon,66).

Lizzie and Laura have an alluded to sexual relationship when they are described as sleeping together as “two pigeons in one nest” (185). The sexual nature of their relationship does not become graphic until after the sexual corruption of Lizzie by the goblin men (471-472): “Eat me, drink me, love me/Laura make much of me.” Here Lizzie becomes the sexually dominant and her role of the dominant that has been suppressed is made free by the goblin men. Bonnie Zare supports this in her assertion that Lizzie becomes sexually aggressive while in the safe company of a woman:
Lizzie, who has steadfastly refused the temptation of the fruit’s sexual passion, is firey now that she is in the safe company of a woman. In fact, Lizzie’s plea has the same feverish rhythm enunciated by the goblins. Unlike the bicotiran physician Dr. William Acton, who famously stated that virtuous women are nearly incapable of arousal, [Christina Rosetti] hints that even so called virtuous women (the Lizzie’s of the world) are capable of enjoying sexual pleasure. Indeed, as Mary Wilson Carpenter’s essay, “Eat me, Drink Me, Love Me: The Consumable Female Body in Christina Rosetti’s The Goblin Market” (1991) proves, the narrative subtly confirms that her sister’s mistake is a fortunate one, for without it Lizzie would never have known desire or fulfillment (Zare,36).
The theme of sisterhood is used as a narrative vehicle for the construction and the psychological working through of the issue of lesbianism. In her article, “There Is No Friend Like a Sister,” Helen Michie discusses sisterhood as a method for working through identity issues:
Sisterhood, in Victorian culture, depends on differences between women, and provides a safe. Familiar, and familial space for its articulation. Victorian melodrama abounds with pairs of sisters who work out issues of identity and difference with relation to each other. Difference between sisters is often visually and dramatically rendered; dark and light, blind and seeing, healthy and sick sister compose themselves for the audience in a tableaux of physical contrast (Michie, 404).
This is seen because Laura becomes blind and Lizzie becomes seeing when Laura is sexually corrupted by the goblin men, becomes their creature, and can no longer hear or see the goblin men selling their wares.
Laura is sexually corrupted and therefore insane and cannot hear the goblin men, even though she searched for them. This is exemplified in lines 269-280:
Day after day, night after night
Laura kept watch in vain
In silence of exceeding pain
She never caught again the goblin cry
Come buy come buy
She never spied the goblin men
Hawking their fruits along the glen
But when the moon waxed bright
Her hair grew thin and grey
She dwindled as the fair moon doth turn
To swift decay and burn
Her fire away.
Insanity was often associated with sexual corruption.
Issues of morality were central for Victorians. With regard to morality, the Victorians believed that sex in mankind was unnatural and repression was necessary. With the strong social enforcement of these beliefs, many Victorians lived with great shame, guilt, and fear of damnation. Passion was deviant, and thoughts of sexuality would cause insanity (www.nouveaunet.com).
Tucker, in his article, “Rosetti’s Goblin Marketing: Sweet to Tongue and Sound to Eye,”discusses Laura’s insanity and explains it as Laura’s becoming the goblin’s creature because she has bought into the seduction.
By paying with a piece of her body—the negotiation enacts, incidentally, the cut rate etymology behing the shop terms coupon and retail, she affirms in form the substance of what is already a done deal, the goblin marketers’ capture of her very imagination, and thereby of her purchase of reality. This may explain one of the abiding enigmas of Rosetti’s canny fable: why henceforth Laura can no longer hear or see the goblin vendors. Having entered the market headlong and been saturated by it, she has become its creature and can therefore no longer perceive what is in distinction to what she is, or rather what it has made of her(Tucker, 125).
Thus, Laura is sexually corrupted because she has paid with a part of her body. Perhaps a link to sexual corruption is that Jeannie died as a result of dealings with the goblin men, and Dante Gabriel Rosetti wrote a poem about a mistress named Jenny. This may be an allusion to the poem because Jeannie is a French derivative of Jennifer (www.behindthename.com). Sexual corruption is seen in lines 46-50 of Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s poem Jenny:
Why Jenny as I watch you there
With all your wealth of loosened hair
Your silk ungirded and unlaced
With warm sweets open to the waist
All golden in the lamplight’s gleam.
Lizzie is sexually corrupted in an attempt to save her sister:
Their tones waxed loud
Their looks were evil
Lashing their tails
They trod and hustled her
Elbowed and jostled her
Clawed with their nails
Barking, hissing, mewing
Tore her gown and soiled her stocking
Twitched her hair out by the roots
Stamped upon her tender feet
Held her hands and sqeezed their fruits
Against her mouth to make her eat (396-407).
Joseph Bristow discusses the overtly sexual nature of the poem in his article, “The Culture of Christina Rosetti: Female Poetics and Victorian Contexts” when he addresses the appearance of illustrations of “The Goblin Market” in a 1972 issues of Playboy (501). Helen Michie’s article on sexual difference is useful again finding sexual corruption in Rosettis’ poem:
Differences between sisters, in this adaptation as well as other Victorian texts, is also reproduced explicitly as sexual difference; that is, the difference between the fallen and unfallen, the sexual and the pure woman. Sexual difference, in this formation of the term, can be powerfully translated from a heterosexual lexicon to describe the space between women; if we can rewrite sexual difference to include the differences between women, we can also begin to reframe Simone de Bovouir’s influential notion of the “other” and begin to do work of looking at what “otherness” might mean if it were applied to women’s relations with each other. In Victorian culture, sexual difference between women is expressed and contained within the capacious trope of sisterhood, which allows for the possibility of sexual fall and for the reinstatement of the fallen woman within the family. Fallen sisters, as we shall see in later discussions of works by Christina Rosetti and Wilkie Collins, are frequently recoupable throughout their sisters’ efforts in a way forbidden to other Victorian women. Sisterhood acts as a protecting framework within which women can fall and recover in their way, a literary convention within which female sexuality can be explored and reabsorbed within the teleology of family (Michie, 404).
This relates to “The Goblin Market” because Laura exemplifies the fallen women in the beginning of the poem and Lizzie the unfallen. Despite sexual corruption, the fallen woman is able to recover in her way, which in this case is overt lesbianism, which purifies her back to the pure form at which she began. In a sense, Lizzie and Laura are sexually corrupted at the end as well as the beginning because they become wives, which denies their true and what was originally their unconscious identity as homosexuals. Essentially Lizzie and Laura are taking preventative measures to keep their children from sexual corruption by binding them together and teaching them that “there is no friend like a sister.” This also implies that all the children referred to are little girls, and thus they are passing on lesbian ideals.
Interaction with the goblin men provides escape in that it releases and reveals what is Lizzie and Laura’s true sexual identity: homosexuality. Simultaneously it entraps them because they are both sexually corrupted. However through sexual corruption comes purifying awareness of true identity, and a more balanced sexual relationship, as both Laura and Lizzie take turns with sexual dominance.

Works Cited

Atzmon, Leslie. “Arthur Rackham’s Phrenological Landscape: In-betweens, Goblins, and Femme Fetales.” Design Issues. 2002. 64-84.

Bell, Mackenzie. Christina Rosetti: A Biographical and Critical Study. Ams Press.1930.

Bristow, Joseph. Reivew of “The Culture of Christina Rosetti: Female Poetics and Victorian Contexts.” Victorian Studies. 2002. 501-503.

Drake, David B. “Rosetti’s Goblin Market.” Explicator. 1992. 22-25.

Harrison, Fraser. The Dark Angel: Aspects of Victorian Sexuality. New York: Universe Books, 1997.

Marson, Michael. The Making of Victorian Sexuality. Oxford, New York: University Press. 1994.

Michie, Helen. “There Is No Friend Like A Sister: Sisterhood As Sexual Difference. ELH. 1989. 401-421.

Sternlieb, Lisa. Review of “Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness. Journal of English and Germanic Philology. 2001. 151-152.

Tucker, Herbert F. “Rosetti’s Goblin Marketing: Sweet to Tongue and Sound to Eye.” Representations. 2003. 117-133.

Referenced but not cited from: Wright, Andrew. Storytelling with Children. Oxford University Press. 1995.

Yeats, William Butler. “The Stolen Child.” The Literature Nework. http://www.online-literature/yeats/816

Zare, Bonnie. “Build a Dream World: Using Three Divergent Gynotopias Students Imagine Change.” Transformations. 2003. 35-45.

“Behind The Name: The Etymology And History of First Names: Names That Are Related to Jeannie.” http://www.behindthename.com/php/extra.php?extra=r&terms=jeannie 9 July 2010


Analysis of Adelaide Anne Procter’s “The Cradle Song of the Poor” and “Homeless”
By Cordelia Clark
Victorian Poetry

Adelaide Anne Procter weaves the theme of incompleteness, injustice, and cosmic irony throughout her works, “The Cradle Song of the Poor” and “Homeless.” She shows these themes not only in the content of each poem, but in their poetic structure as well. Further examination will show that these themes become more evident upon the dissection of meaning and rhyme.
In “The Cradle Song of the Poor,” the speaker expresses the joy and sorrow of motherhood in poverty stricken Victorian England. She expresses joy at the birth of her child in the lines 5-6: “When God sent thee first to bless me/Proud and thankful too was I.” Yet in the very next line she reveals that due to her child’s suffering she would almost wish death upon her baby. “Now, my darling, I thy mother/Almost long to see thee die” (7-8). All this is a result of the speaker’s lack of nourishment for her child. “Dear I have no bread to give thee/Nothing child, to ease thy pain” (3-4). She then speaks of her baby’s beauty fading in line 11, and alludes to the loss of her own beauty in line 31: “ I have wasted, dear, with hunger.” Incompleteness is present because the mother feels that she is incomplete because she cannot help her child and because she sees herself as living in vain. This is seen in lines 33-34 when the speaker admits that she does not even have enough strength to breast feed: “I have scarcely strength to press thee/Wan and feeble to my breast.”
The poetic structure supports a theme of incompleteness. Procter begins a pattern which she does not complete. The poem consists of five stanzas comprised of five lines each. The fourth and fifth lines of stanzas 1-4 end with the lines “Sleep my darling, thou art weary/ God is good, but life is dreary.” This creates a sing song affect similar to a lullaby, which is supported by the title, as it refers to the poem being a “cradle song.” This poetic structure changes from the mother speaking to the child to an outsider speaking to the reader. Although Procter maintains a five line stanza for the final stanza, she stops her method of rhyming evident in the previous stanzas. For example, the last word of line 2 is “vain” which rhymes with “pain,” the last word of line 4. She continues to rhyme the last word of each even numbered line, such as “I” in line 6 with “die” in line 8, “day” in line 12 with “away” in line 14, etc. The rhyming of the repeated phrase “sleep my darling, thou art weary/God is good, but life is dreary” does not exist in the fifth stanza. The words “dreary” and “weary” have two syllables, which create a rocking sensation. The last two words of the last lines of the fifth stanza, which are lines 49 and 50 are “sings” and “wings.” These words have only one syllable each, which interrupts the rocking sensation. Thus, the sense of incompleteness in the poetic structure.
Injustice is evident in the fact that the mother, the father, and the child are forced to starve to death, and despite their own wishes to die, they continue to live. This is evident in the line where the speaker addresses the father and mother’s hopelessness: “hope has left both him and me”( 16). Longing to die is seen in lines 35-36: “Patience baby, God will help us/Death will come to thee and me.”
Injustice is also seen in the poetic structure of “The Cradle Song Of the Poor.” Looking at the last stanza, it seems as though the story inspires the hearts of “God’s children” to bring peace to the mother and her family. This is evident in the lines where the speaker names the heart as “God’s bright Angel,” and then says that the cradle song inspires “the fluttering of wings” which is the action of an individual to help the poor. Upon cross-section of the poem by reading only the odd lined lines, excluding the ones that are involved in the repeated phrase, “sleep my darling thou art weary/god is good but life is dreary,” one may find an alternate ending to the story that is told in the poem. When this is done, the odd lines that go together are “thee”(1), “thee”(3), “me” (5), “mother”(7), “fading”(11), “fever” (13), “reckless”(15), “baby”(17), “early”(21), “sorrow” (23), “spirit”(25), “careless”(27), “hunger”(31), “thee” (33), “us”(35), “heaven”(37), “early”(41), “thunder”(43), “angel”(45), and “children”(47). This may be interpreted as an alternate ending to the story. First, the mother is speaking to the baby, who she refers to as “thee” twice in lines (1) and (3). She refers to herself as the mother with the words “me” and “mother” lines (5) and (7). The baby then begins to fade due to fever and become reckless: “fading,” “fever,” “reckless,” “baby,” (11), (13), (15), (17). They learn early sorrow because of the words “early” and “sorrow” (21) and (23). The spirit then becomes careless (25, 27). The baby continues to be hungry, and both the child and mother go to heaven early: (31,33,35,37,41). Thunder strikes and an angel takes all remaining starving children to an early grave: (43,45,47).
Cosmic irony is apparent in the concept that “God is good but life is dreary,” which is a repeated phrase throughout the poem, at the end of each stanza (lines 10, 20, 30,40), excluding the final one. This is also evident in the poetic structure explained above, which presents a negative reading of the poem, at the same time that the ordinary reading of the poem presents a happy ending.
Adelaide Anne Procter also weaves the themes of incompleteness, injustice, and cosmic irony into the content and poetic structure of “Homeless.” Injustice first appears in stanzas 1 and 2, where she brings to light the irony that animals are given shelter before hungry children are because they are either pets or pack animals.
My dogs sleep warm in their baskets
Safe from darkness and from snow
All the beasts in our Christian England
Find pity where they go
(those are only the homeless children
Who are wondering to and fro) (7-12).

Injustice also appears in stanza 3, when the speaker first wonders if the shadow lurking outside her window is a criminal, but then realizes that it can only be a beggar woman because criminals are housed and fed: “Nay, our criminals all are sheltered/ They are pitied, taught and fed” (19). This theme is further exemplified by even more basic examples, such as the fact that even pedlar’s goods are sheltered from the elements, in lines 31-32: “Nay, goods in are thrifty England/Are not let to lie and grow rotten.”
There is also injustice in the fact that the homeless people feel that it is both a “sin to be living” and a “sin to be dead.” (23,24). Incompleteness is shown in “Homeless” by the fact that pedlar’s pack is sheltered without the pedlar. This is also an example of cosmic irony.
Both “Cradle Song of the Poor” and “Homeless” are similar in their poetic structure. “Homeless” repeats the pattern of rhyming the last words of even numbered lines. “Homeless” is comprised of seven stanzas of six lines each, in which three of the last words of each even numbered line rhymes. Thus, the poetic structure looks like this: “feet”(2) rhymes with “street”(4) and “sleet”(6); “snow”(8) rhymes with “go” (10) and “fro”(12), “again”(14) rhymes with “pane”(16) and “rain” (18); “fed” (20) rhymes with “bed” (22) and “dead” (24); “bare”(26) rhymes with “there”(28) and “air”(30); “rotten”(32) rhymes with “cotton” (34) and “forgotten”(36); “ill”(38) rhymes with “will”(40) and “still”(42). Also, the poetic structure of “The Cradle Song of The Poor” and “Homeless” are similar in that “The Cradle Song of the Poor” is comprised of five stanzas with ten lines each, which equals 50 lines, and ten is a multiple of 50, whereas “Homeless” is comprised of seven stanzas and 42 lines, and seven is a multiple of 42.
Similar to “The Cradle Song of the Poor,” “Homeless” can also be cross-sected using the last word of the odd numbered lines to create an alternate picture of the story being told. When this is done, the poetic structure looks like this:
“listen”(1), “lady”(3), “spaniels”(5), “blankets”(7), “England” (9), “children” (11), “darkness”(13), “slowly”( 15), “lurking”(17), “sheltered”(19), “woman”(21), “living”(23), “corner”(25), “pedlar”(27), “unsheltered”(29), “England”(31), “value”(33), “England” (35), “Chattles”(37), “image”(39), “doorstep”(41).
Thus it may be read to create the following alternate story: The speaker of the poem entreats a highborn person to listen to her tale, as lines (1) and (3) and “listen” and “lady.” We assume the audience is of a higher class because she is referred to as a “lady.” The beginning here is similar to the actual poem in its entirety, because the speaker mentions the plight of the homeless and how ironic it is that even spaniels have blankets, (5, 7). The poem then takes a dark turn by informing the Children of England that darkness is slowly lurking (11,13,15,17). The speaker then reminds the “lady” that she is a sheltered woman (19, 21). Similar to the original reading, it speaks of a pedlar, only in the alternate reading the pedlar himself is actually living unsheltered in the corner, rather than the image of his bag (23,25,27,29). England is then entreated to learn its own value, which is in it’s people who are treated like Chattle and sleep on doorsteps (31,33,35,37,41).
Through unique poetic structure and harsh content, Adelaide Anne Procter brings to life political issues of Victorian England. In “The Cradle Song of the Poor” and “Homeless” she shows injustice, incompleteness, and cosmic irony. Through alternate reading of each poem based on poetic structure, the reader may construct both pessimistic and optimistic endings. Perhaps the purpose of this poetic structure that enables both readings is the ultimate portrayal of cosmic irony.
Works Cited
Procter, Adeliade Anne. “The Cradle Song of the Poor.”
Procter, Adeliede, Anne. “Homeless.”

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Publication Date: 11-08-2011

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