Critical Analysis of Christina Rossetti’s poem “Remember”

About the author

Christina Georgina Rossetti was born in London and is one of the most important women poets
in the 19th century. She was engaged to James Collinson in 1848 but it ended after he reverted
to Roman Catholicism. Influenced by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, her poetry follows
the ideas of the Pre-Raphaelite poetry. While abundantly wealthy in detail, her verse strikes for
clarity in meaning through its moderately basic rhyme scheme language. Rossetti's poetry also
contains the Pre-Raphaelite obsession with symbols. Christina Rossetti practised word-painting
in her verse, where a word or mix of words can invoke a solid, clear picture. Some of the themes
in her poetry include renunciation, excessive pride, the unworthiness of the individual etc.

Poem ‘Remember’

Christina was just nineteen. It is in the form of a Petrarchan sonnet and deals with the themes
of death, love, forgetting and life. It is divided into the octave and the sestet. Sonnets are usually
on the topic of love, although the poem is addressed to a loved one the theme of the poem is
death. Instead of directly referring to death, the poet uses a euphemism. The speaker in the
poem imagines herself having left the world and speaks to her beloved. It’s a simple poem that
combines with complex themes. The poem deals with the struggle between the physical
existence and the Hereafter.

One can understand the meaning of this poem through close reading or a formal analysis of the
syntax, the meaning, and diction. The theme can be understood by applying the principle of
Traditional Criticism which helps us keep in touch with the biography of the author. We will
begin with an analysis through the Traditional Criticism.

Summary

The poem begins with an imperative and the first quatrain of the sonnet follows the ‘abba’
rhyme scheme. The word ‘remember’ is like a command, asking her beloved to remember her.
It begins with the subject of the speaker’s death and the painful parting of the two lovers. It is
written in the form of a monologue and spoken directly to the lover where she persuades him
to remember her when she is “gone away”. Here “gone away” is used as a euphemism for
death. The finality of death of reiterated with the use of the words “gone away” in the second
line. The metaphor of “the silent land” highlights the distance placed between the lovers by her
death and her entry into the hereafter. Death also parts them in the physical sense which is
shown by the line “when you can no more hold me by the hand”. The first quatrain end with a
typical Rossetti style where there is an uncertainty. The line “Nor I half turn to go yet turning
sty” provides a sense of ambivalence, whether she should depart or not.

The second quatrain continues with the “abba” rhyme scheme and still lingers with the theme
of remembrance. The very first line of the second quatrain begins with “remember me when
no more day by day”, the lover is once again urged to remember her. The next line “you tell
me of our future that you plann'd”, uses pronouns ‘you’, ‘me’ and ‘our’. It almost feels like the
speaker was under control of her lover. It’s a reflection of the condition of women in the
Victorian society where they were under the control of their male counterparts. The next lines
show the tension, it also suggests that they were quite close and they realise the irretrievable
distance in death. Christina Rosetti was herself a very religious woman and the line “It will be
late to counsel then or pray” hints at this.

The sestet which follows consists of two tercets that follow the rhyme scheme “cdd eff”. The
first tercet which begins with a volta takes the thoughts of the speaker in a different direction.
In the opening two quatrains the word “remember” has been repeated four times which suggest
that the poet wants to maintain the bond with her lover on into death. But in the mind of the
speaker, there is a slight sense of consciousness that the memory may be a burden to the lover,
so there is a sudden shift and an effort to console him. This deliberate change is made in the
volta by the use of the word “yet”. In case the lover would forget the speaker urges him not to
grieve.

Victorian age literature was marked by mourning; it’s been said that Queen Victoria had
mourned for forty years for her husband’s death. The Victorian society would even mourn the
death of fictional characters. In this poem Rossetti, in the beginning, directs her lover to
remember her at any cost but then cleverly changes her view towards the end of the poem,
granting permission to forget her and instead remain happy. This is quite ironic because the
title is “Remember” and the poem ends on a note to forget her.
Critical Analysis (Traditional Approach)

Issue of Health

The Rossetti family had to go through a lot of health issues. Christina Rossetti’s father,
Gabriel Rossetti had a nervous breakdown in 1843 when she was just thirteen. Two years
later at the age of fifteen, Christina suffered serious health problems. Her brother William
Rossetti who was an editor and art critic has written in his memoirs that to understand
Christina’s work one should have an insight into her poor health condition which affected her
throughout her life. Rossetti was diagnosed with Graves’ disease and suffered terribly. It left
sin discolored, her eyes protruding and this left her permanently weakened. Verses was her
first collection of poetry; it was published in 1847. This was two years’ nervous breakdown
and the poems focused on the themes of corruptibility and mortality. The poem Remember
was written 1848 and if we consider her personal life, we can be analyzing it as the speaker
communicating with death that cannot be thwarted away.

Structural Analysis of "Remember"

For structural analysis we will be focusing on sound, punctuation, diction and allusion.

Sounds and Syntax

Poets selects group of words based on its sound to regulate the mood of the poem. By using
different words, the softness or harshness can be changed. The phonemes with different
characteristics have a natural flowing tone and natural stops. In the poem “Remember”,
Rossetti makes use of these qualities to change the mood of the sonnet.

Syntax refers to the way the words are arranged. In this particular poem the word “remember”
based on where it is used in a sentence changes the mood of the poem. It is repeated throughout
the poem. The word is used in the beginning of the sentence in the very first line which gives
it an imperative tone. In the last line the word appears toward the end of the sentence and the
‘power’ of the word seems very reduced.
Punctuation

Punctuation performs the function of helping the readers show how a sentence is to be read. It

also helps in the construction of sentences, what comes after a colon in a sentence is an

explanation of what comes before the colon. Similarly, a semicolon indicates elements that are

separate yet closely related. The following lines from the poem can be taken as an example.

“Only remember me; you understand” (Poetry foundation.org)

“It will be late to counsel then or pray.”

What precedes the colon is an explanation, what succeeds is an elaboration of what has been
said. This can be understood as the lover trying to explain to the beloved that it won’t be
much use to pray after she is gone. The beloved’s reminder to remember her is connected by
the colon which is followed by ‘you understand’ .

Allusion

Holding hands - Holding hands has been often used in the poetry of Dante Gabriel and it
indicates the first manifestations of love between a man and a woman. In “Remember”, the line
“when you can no more hold me by the hand” suggests a kind of possession. Soon the lovers
won’t be able to hold their hands which indicates that the speaker’s lover can no longer possess
her the way he used to.

Darkness and corruption – Darkness and corruption may me a reference to the speaker’s
physical sate after death. In the Bible the term ‘corruption’ was often used to refer to moral
decline or physical decay of death. Darkness in the Bible is usually associated with hell. The
speaker predicts a time when ‘darkness and corruption’ would leave the beloved and only a
trace of the speaker’s presence is left. The term ‘vestige’ is often used to describe something,
often a material that remains after a destruction. But this word is given a more abstract meaning
when applied to the memory of the speaker’s thoughts in the minds of the beloved.

The word ‘vestige' indicates something (often material) which remains after the destruction or
disappearance of the main portion of something. Vestige is given a more abstract meaning
when applied to the memory of the speaker's thoughts in the mind of the beloved. Even after
the speaker’s presence is no longer visible, the feelings and thoughts no longer remain.

The ‘silent land' - In the line “Gone far away into the silent land”, gone away is a euphemism
for death. Similarly, the ‘silent land’ could refer to the hereafter, based on Christian beliefs it
is the heaven. The speaker imagines this ‘silent land’ far away from the life on Earth. It is quite
obvious that it indicates the physical distance that will soon appear between the lovers. But
alongside it also hints at the obvious differences. The land which the speaker would go is very
different from the one the beloved is inhabiting. Here we can bring in the concept of classical
Hades. In the Greek mythology the underworld is to where the dead would travel. The idea of
silence can have both negative and positive meanings. In the New Testament, “heaven is
described as a place to rest for those who enter” (Revelation 14:13). It’s a place lack of any
intimacy and absence of communication.

We can understand from the allusions used that;

 The poet has a strong Christian faith and is very devout.

Themes

The role of women

The poem Remember highlights the expected role of women in Victorian society. Christina
Rosetti lived at a time when women had very limited rights, until 1870 women were not
allowed to keep any money and until 1891 women couldn’t leave their husbands even if they
were abusing them. Considering the context when the poem was written it is highly likely that
the speaker is a female. She seems to be receive dominant actions from her male beloved. The
following line shows this:

 You tell me of our future that you plann'd. (The beloved lays down the plan for her
future)
Grief

In the Victorian Britain, the high mortality rate meant that many of Rosetti’s readers had
experience with death, it could be death of the siblings, lover or friend. Being a very devout
Christian, her devotional poems provides hope to the readers with the promise of heaven where
they could live forever as mentioned in the Bible. This hope is reconciled in her non-devotional
poems in which the emotion of grief is natural when a person close to them dies.

Prayer

Christina Rosetti was a devout Christian but was against Roman Catholicism which lead to the
breaking of her engagement with James Collinson. She was a supporter of the Anglican
Church, which did not encourage offering prayer to dead people unlike the Roman Catholic
Church. In the poem the speaker suggests that it would be too late to pray for her once she is
gone. This emphasises the urgency of prayer to be done in the present.

Conclusion

One could take this poem, contextually, as being spoken to a loved one while on a death bed,
which could count for the slow, lilting pace of the poem, growing slower and slower as it
reaches towards the volta. I think this poem could also be about the death of a relationship,
about parting, leaving and breaking up rather than bodily death.... so the "silent land" is no
longer euphemistically some eternity of heaven or hell, but a land in which there is no
communication between the speaker and their lover. As the feeling of death grows closer in
Rossetti mind, the feeling of love grows stronger. She understands everyone has to die at the
end even the loved once. Thus, we see love and death feed and thrive off of each other. Hence,
the poem written in a simple language has much deeper philosophical meanings.