"Grown Sick with Hope Deferred": Christina Rossetti's darker musings

Papers on Language and Literature, Summer 1996 by Sullivan, Brad

Our appreciation of Christina Rossetti's poetry, our estimation of her work against that of other Victorian poets, has been limited by at least two critical errors. Critics have devoted much more attention to her "devotional" poems than to her "secular" works, creating an image of her as a Christian poet whose work is informed, and perhaps limited, by "the firmness of her religious conviction" (Mayberry 114). And they have all too often emphasized her technique at the expense of her ideas, propagating the assumption that her poetry lacks intellectual complexity and depth. Both of these errors have contributed to a critical failure to penetrate beneath the pleasing surface presented by the "simplicity and directness of her language" (Sisson 9) and her "firm technical control and simple diction" (Dombrowski 70) to the troubling ideas which often lurk below that surface.

Much of Rossetti's poetry-both "devotional" and "secular"-arises from her conception of nature and the human self as entities which are forever poised between self-assertion and self-destruction. Nature's repetitive cycles are stressed by references to the turning of the seasons; images of decay, destruction, and threat are often starkly juxtaposed with images of renewal, creation, and harmony. Rossetti's personas often identify with, and feel ensnared by, the fruitless cycles and frustrating selfcontradictions of the natural world. Her natural imagery often suggests the complexities of the human self-the hope, love and creative energy that must be both expressed and repressed, that offer us meaningfulness, but deny us fulfillment. The surface calm of Rossetti's lyrics, the control and grace of her style, is imposed on an underlying vision of worldly existence which is full of alienation, complexity and uncertainty. A powerful tension between control and chaos, between self-assertion and selfdestruction, creates much of the intensity of her poetry.

The only resolution offered for this tension in Rossetti's work is death. Her "hope" for meaning and clarity and completeness must be "deferred" until she can escape from the self-destructive cycles of worldly existence. But unlike her "devotional" poems, many of her darker lyrics suggest that her waiting for heavenly fulfillment, her "hope deferred,"1 is made bitter by doubt and questioning. Why has God created a self-consuming world, giving us a self with great creative potential and then insisting that we deny that self, eventually even destroy that self, in order to serve Him? And why must a woman, who is as capable of great creativity as a man, deny herself free creative expression in Victorian England in order to serve her (God-given) function? These bitter questions contribute to the sense of longing which pervades Rossetti's work, a longing which often becomes a longing for the peace of eternal sleep. Whether she ends up in the arms of Christ or in the embrace of the cold earth, she often seeks poetically the only final resolution to earthly chaos and frustration: the resolution of death.

The "firm technical control and simple diction" so typical of Rossetti's work often generates surprising inner tensions. In "Enrica, 1865" (1875) for example, self-assertion and self-repression do battle in language which is calm and modulated. The persona expresses admiration for the richness and warmth of a woman "from the South" by contrasting her with "Englishwomen." Speaking for a group of Victorian women, or for 'the Victorian Woman,' the persona claims that "Our dimness brightened in her smile, / Our tongue grew sweeter in her mouth" (1: 193) . Enrica is a woman too, but she is fundamentally different from

We Englishwomen, trim, correct, All minted in the selfsame mould, Warm-hearted but of semblence cold, All-courteous out of self-respect. (1: 194)

The repression of Victorian women is evident here in the language. Words like "trim," "correct," and "cold" are contrasted to the "full-blown blossom" and "liberal glow" of Enrica. The controlled uniformity of Victorian women, who were "minted in the selfsame mould," is contrasted with the vital individuality of Enrica, "who from Italy came forth / And scaled the Alps and crossed the foam" (1: 194).

Yet the underlying similarities are stressed as much as the obvious differences. The persona asserts herself, and asserts the hidden power of Victorian women, by paralleling them with Enrica. Like her, they are warm-hearted, courteous, and graceful, but for different reasons and under different circumstances. And deep within the cold and proper exterior required of them, they too are "strong and free." Rossetti ends the poem with a very interesting image in which the sea represents the plight of the Victorian woman:

But, if she found us like our sea, Of aspect colourless and chill, Rock-girt,-like all she found us still Deep at our deepest, strong and free. (1: 194)

This stanza represents an assertion of womanhood, of the secret potential of the female self, despite self-denial and repression. The sea becomes a symbol for that self: mysterious, inscrutable, filled with hidden life though "colourless and chill" to outside observers, "deep" and filled with submerged energy though strictly bounded and "Rock-girt."