Christina had various of themes within her poems and lyrics, the one that was the most interesting to me was the death themed poems; this stood out for me as it is not common for someone to think about death so often enough to write poems and poems on it, she seems to look at the negative side of situations as well as the positive which is another uncommon theme I personally see. A death themed poem of Christina Rossetti I found the most appealing is “Remember”, my favourite line is as follows; “Remember me when I am gone away, / Gone for away into the silent land”. I chose these two lines as this is not something a typical human being would think about from time to time, although I can relate that there are days where I think about death and the “silent land”.
She also wrote about real life every day activities situations, either her life or just a well known person in general; the difficulty between love and fame. This is something that other famous people could relate to and feel comforted as they may not be the only person in the situation, as Christina continued to write poems such as that; she continued to inspire many people.
As time went by Christina Rossetti started to break away and went against some of the literal rules, showing her unprofessional manner; in the 19th century this may had been something that was frowned upon so she started to get judged. As a modern day audience this is something I personally see as inspirational, not because she broke rules, but it showed her true self and she still came out successful despite the trouble she may have gone through. She was neglecting the world and holding everything inside her, making people become suspicious and curious of how unprofessional this for a poet; however she then came out with a breakthrough poem book that included Goblin Market which I have studied in class. This shows how committed she was in to her job and poems, neglecting what most people find difficult to neglect to come out bigger and brighter than ever before.
An Victorian critic Edwin Hood described Goblin Market as “Rare delight and refreshment”, this is something I can relate to as I would agree with him; even in today’s society this poem would be seen as rare, the whole Goblin association would be common especially to fairy tales and children’s TV but it is unusual for it to be in a poem that sounds and looks like would be a 18+. However the reviewer also mentioned “delight”, this could imply that he actually saw the eating fruits actions and words actually eating fruits and nothing sexual; making it easy for people to relate to it as most people do eat fruit often and enjoy eating it.
Some people see the Goblins, in the poem is symbolism for men in society; and the sisters are women that sacrifice themselves for less fortunate, for pointless reasons or because of men. This would’ve been appealing to the 19th century audience as men and women were a lot different to how they are in today’s society, a few things they were treated different would be that it was expect for the husband to go work whilst the wife stays at home.
React!