‘At Home’ by Christina Rossetti
Christina Rossetti
Rossetti was
born in London in 1830 into a remarkable family of artists, scholars and
writers. Her father was an exiled Italian revolutionary and poet and her
brothers William and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were founding members of art
movement the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Rossetti had her own first book of
poetry privately printed by her grandfather when she was 12 years old. Aged 19
she contributed poems to Pre-Raphaelite journal The Germ, under the pseudonym
Ellen Alleyn.
The women in
her family were committed High Church Anglicans and as a teenager, Rossetti suffered
a nervous breakdown that was diagnosed at the time as 'religious mania'.
Rossetti fell in love with several suitors, but rejected them all because they
failed to share her precise religious convictions. In 1862, at the age of 32,
she published her first full collection, Goblin Market and Other Poems. A
sensuous fairy story, Goblin Market is a heady tale of repressed sexuality and sisterhood. Her
concern with female fellowship was played out in real life as Rossetti devoted
ten years as a volunteer at St Mary Magdalene's penitentiary for prostitutes
and unmarried mothers in Highgate.
Religious
themes dominate her work but Rossetti never preaches, instead exploring the
tensions between earthly passions and divine love. Graves Disease took its toll
on Rossetti in later years, and the loss of beauty was a recurrent theme:
"Youth gone and beauty gone, what doth remain?/ The longing of a heart
pent up forlorn" (Youth Gone, And Beauty Gone). She died in 1894.[1]
Form
‘At Home’ is
an extremely personal poem, spoken by someone who “was dead”. This immediately
raises problems for the reader in terms of determining who the speaker is. Much
of the poem is written in iambic tetrameter, but there are points where the
metre is disrupted, bringing a sharp sense of discord to lines such as
“Feasting beneath green orange boughs”. The final line of each stanza is iambic
trimeter. Alternate lines rhyme with each other, with the rhyming pattern
becoming stronger in the third and fourth stanzas.
Structure
The poem
starts with the speaker talking about an experience she had when she “was
dead”. Her “spirit” went to an “oft-frequented house”. She did not enter but
looked in, and saw her friends indulging in delicious-sounding food and drink.
They are laughing and love each other.
In the second
stanza, her friends talk about their plans for the future. They seem full of
excitement about the pleasures of exploring the natural world together.
She explains
that her friends were “strong with hope” and live in “the pleasant way”. They
were focused on the present and future but she “was of yesterday”.
She, in her
spirit form, “shivered” but she made a choice not to “cast” a “chill across the
tablecloth”. She explains that she was sad to stay and watch but also sad to
leave them. However, she does leave because she “had passed away” “from love”.
She compares herself to being a mere memory of a guest who had stayed for only
one day.
Language choices,
imagery and possible interpretations
“When I was dead”: the verb “was” is in the past tense.
How could she have been dead but not be so now? If she is a ghost, she would
say that she is still dead. Could this be a metaphorical death in some way?
Even so, does this suggest that this situation is no longer the case?
“the pulp of plum and peach”: the alliteration here adds to the
sensuality of the fruit being described—the act of “sucking” the fruit juices
out sounds more physically pleasurable because of the repetition of the ‘p’
sound
“They sang, they jested and they laughed”: like most tricolons, this builds up
to the third one in the series, suggesting that the fact they “laughed” was the
most important action.
“for each was loved of each”: the final four lines of the first
stanza incorporate pairs or threes; this creates a sense of planned unity in
each line
“Said one:” the sense of unity among the friends
is continued by the way their conversation is reported with the anaphora in the
second stanza (“Said one:”) and third stanza (“Tomorrow”)
“plod plod”: the repetition of the onomatopoeic
verb “plod” verges on humorous. It is as though the friends’ plans for their
future is lacking in meaning or direction. They believe that through their
actions they will get to the “eyrie seat” (an eyrie is the large nest of an
eagle or other bird of prey, built high in a tree or on a cliff)
“To-morrow shall be like/To-day but
much more sweet”: the
friends are extremely optimistic and are clearly in search of sweetness in
life, as shown by their desire to suck “the pulp of plum and peach”
“strong with hope”: the friends get strength from their
optimism, which seems to contrast strongly with the speaker’s ephemeral nature
“dwelt upon the pleasant way”/”no one
spoke of yesterday”: the
speaker seems critical of her friends’ view of what is important in life, or
perhaps feels mildly resentful of the fact that she was “all-forgotten”
“Their lives stood full at blessed
noon”: The metaphor
of a clock at midday shows how her friends would continue to live, having
reached only a midpoint in their existence, in contrast to her consignation to
“yesterday”.
“comfortless”: the speaker was not comforted in the
same ways that her friends were
“cast/No chill across the tablecloth”:
the speaker seems
benevolent to the friends how have forgotten her; she did not want to spoil
their pleasure
“I passed from the familiar room,/I
who from love had passed away”: the spirit leaves the room that she had once known well, and
talks about how she had died “from love”. There are a number of interpretations
(see below) of what that could mean.
“tarrieth”: stays temporarily; this is a Biblical
form of the verb “tarries” and contrasts with the simplicity of the rest of the
language in the poem.
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Interpretation 1: This is a poem about a woman who has
died and goes back to see that her friends are enjoying life. Although she is
sad that they are moving on with their lives and are still a unified group,
even without her, she is pleased that they are happy and doesn’t want to haunt
them in any way. She feels as though she had no more importance in her friends’
life than she would have if she had merely been a short-term guest in their
lives. Human love is shown to be essentially disappointing and there is some
sense of betrayal. “I whom from love had passed away” could mean that she died
of a broken heart.
Interpretation 2: In other poems, such as “The Dead
City” and “Goblin Market”, Rossetti “lusciously described fruits” which
“represent the temptations of self-indulgence and pleasure”[2].
Critics often view the pleasure experienced from eating the fruits as a
euphemism for sex. Rossetti was viewed as an ascetic: she thought that the mind
was more important than the body. Could it be that she is critical of her
friends for being too interested in relationships rather than using their
minds? “I whom from love had passed away” could mean that she chose to reject
love (rather than actually dying).
Interpretation 3: This poem may be about
hope. It could reflect a shift in Rossetti’s view of the role of hope in life,
and how changing her view of the world alienated her from her friends. The
phrase “but tarrieth but a day” is a quotation from an obscure book of the Old
Testament (‘The Wisdom of Solomon’), which is rarely included in the Bible. The
original reads:
“For the hope of the Godly is like dust that is
blown away with the wind; like a thin froth that is driven away with the storm;
like as the smoke which is dispersed here and there with a tempest, and passeth
away as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day.”
The end of
the poem is clearly an allusion to this verse in ‘The Wisdom of Solomon’. These
similes suggest that hope is ephemeral and not something the people who are
“godly” rely on; it is a pleasant experience, in the same way that a short-term
guest is, but is not a permanent feature of life. Rossetti may have believed
this from her reading of older texts, and could have felt alienated from her
friends who believed in “tomorrow”. “I whom from love had passed away” could
mean that the alienation from her friends meant that she could no longer
experience their love.
Interpretation 3: This poem could be
about a religious schism between Rossetti and those around her who looked for
answers in more modern religious texts. Rossetti, with other members of her
family, made a religious change when they became more ‘high-church’. One aspect
of the Oxford Movement to which she belonged was a focus on older texts rather
than new ones. Rossetti was extremely well read and liked to incorporate
religion into her poems in a way that only those similarly scholarly would
understand.
The phrase “oft-frequented house” appears in the Hadiths
in Islam. It is a place in the seventh heaven before a soul can finally come to
meet God. Seventy thousand angels pray there every day in their final moments
before moving on forever.
Could it be that Rossetti is criticising her
friends who explore modern religious texts (including the Koran and Hadiths),
instead of looking for truth in older texts (such as the Apocrypha, which The
Wisdom of Solomon is in)? The reference to reaching the “eyrie seat” could
symbolise a quest for God; perhaps she is suggesting that her friends were
looking in the wrong place for this enlightenment.
Significance of home
The “much-frequented
house” that the speaker is describing seems to be one in which the inhabitants have
a world-view at odds with that of the speaker. She feels distanced from any
sense of belonging. In this poem, the home is a place of:
decadence
pleasure for the inhabitants
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