Discuss the presentation of inner conflict in Rossetti’s Shut Out. In your answer explore the author’s use of language, imagery and verse form, and consider ways in which you find the poem characteristic of Rossetti’s work in your selection.
At the beginning of the poem the speaker establishes that the place she has been shut out from is “my garden, mine, beneath the sky”. This immediately shows that the speaker is assertive and possessive, and therefore potentially resentful; the repetition of the possessive pronouns could be showing bitterness at being unable to reach the place again. Alternatively, repetition could also suggest that already the speaker is starting to doubt their place in the garden; once “the door was shut” she might feel …show more content…
“Mine” is encased between two commas, visually isolating the word and visibly portraying the sense that the speaker is confined and only has a small space through which she can see what is hers. Declaring that the garden is hers here contrasts with the final line of the second stanza, wherein her tone changes: “it had been mine, and it was lost” - the self-assurance and possessive nature is gone, implying she is divided about whether the garden remains hers. The finality of “it was lost” is indicated by the full stop at the end of the stanza, as if the speaker now believes that this statement is objective and there is no possibility she will be able to return to the garden. The sibilant sounds at the end of “was lost” connotes a resigned softness, giving the line a more mournful tone, conflicting with her earlier possessiveness in “my garden, mine,”. This tone is more pronounced following the rest of the stanza, which contains long vowel sounds such as in “from bough to …show more content…
An alternate rhyme would allow for progression and development as the poem progresses, whereas the enclosed rhyme featured emphasises stasis instead, in how the speaker cannot go anywhere, trapped behind the permanent iron and is, on the contrary, becoming more excluded as the poem continues. Thus the rhyme scheme symbolises the conflict between the speaker’s desire to be free and the physical boundaries of the door and how she can only “look between / its iron bars”. As well as alluding to the Fall of man out of Eden, the confinement in Shut Out is reminiscent of the way in which women were confined to the role of “angel in the house” in Victorian era, as they were expected to dote on their husbands and live in entirely separate social ‘spheres’ to their male counterparts. The poem was written in 1856, and until 1891 it was custom for a woman fleeing a restricting marriage to be captured and punished; again this image of the subservient housewife was counterbalanced by the conflicting image of the “fallen woman”. Such a position was looked down upon in society yet the era was fascinated with it, and it became popular in Pre-Raphaelite art and literature, such as Dante
At the beginning of the poem the speaker establishes that the place she has been shut out from is “my garden, mine, beneath the sky”. This immediately shows that the speaker is assertive and possessive, and therefore potentially resentful; the repetition of the possessive pronouns could be showing bitterness at being unable to reach the place again. Alternatively, repetition could also suggest that already the speaker is starting to doubt their place in the garden; once “the door was shut” she might feel …show more content…
“Mine” is encased between two commas, visually isolating the word and visibly portraying the sense that the speaker is confined and only has a small space through which she can see what is hers. Declaring that the garden is hers here contrasts with the final line of the second stanza, wherein her tone changes: “it had been mine, and it was lost” - the self-assurance and possessive nature is gone, implying she is divided about whether the garden remains hers. The finality of “it was lost” is indicated by the full stop at the end of the stanza, as if the speaker now believes that this statement is objective and there is no possibility she will be able to return to the garden. The sibilant sounds at the end of “was lost” connotes a resigned softness, giving the line a more mournful tone, conflicting with her earlier possessiveness in “my garden, mine,”. This tone is more pronounced following the rest of the stanza, which contains long vowel sounds such as in “from bough to …show more content…
An alternate rhyme would allow for progression and development as the poem progresses, whereas the enclosed rhyme featured emphasises stasis instead, in how the speaker cannot go anywhere, trapped behind the permanent iron and is, on the contrary, becoming more excluded as the poem continues. Thus the rhyme scheme symbolises the conflict between the speaker’s desire to be free and the physical boundaries of the door and how she can only “look between / its iron bars”. As well as alluding to the Fall of man out of Eden, the confinement in Shut Out is reminiscent of the way in which women were confined to the role of “angel in the house” in Victorian era, as they were expected to dote on their husbands and live in entirely separate social ‘spheres’ to their male counterparts. The poem was written in 1856, and until 1891 it was custom for a woman fleeing a restricting marriage to be captured and punished; again this image of the subservient housewife was counterbalanced by the conflicting image of the “fallen woman”. Such a position was looked down upon in society yet the era was fascinated with it, and it became popular in Pre-Raphaelite art and literature, such as Dante