Interpretation In In An Artist's Studio By Christina Rossetti

The nineteenth century English poetess Christina Rossetti was known for her engaged and avant-garde positions concerning opposition to animal cruelty, support of pacifism and women 's rights. Her engagement in gender issues is presented to us in the Petrachan sonnet "In an Artist 's Studio" through the story of a creator and a woman, who is his source of inspiration. We are going to attempt to analyze how the various poetic components that Rossetti uses perfectly add meaning to the sonnet.

The poem focuses on the relationship of a painter and his muse. When reading the first two verses of this poem, we learn that the artist chooses to only paint this woman and no one else. Her representation may vary but her appearance is always the same …show more content…
The man thinks of her as a saint, angel, queen that is fair, joyful and lovely when in reality she is nameless to him because he only focuses on her beauty. The superficiality of the painter gave her only one meaning and is causing her sorrow. The poetess uses the word mirror insists on the fact that for him only the appearance counts. In the second verse of the octet, we are told that the woman does evolve, she sits, walks and leans yet her face remains the same. The s alliteration in the same verse gives a soft gentle effect as the artist was the one describing his muse. This impression is also given when reading the similes of the eleventh verse, the artist would be the one making the comparison of the woman, moon and light. We are under the impression that he wants her to be incomparable to anything human, that her looks are far too superior to them. Only an equivalence with nature, the artists greatest source of inspiration, is possible for him to make. The repetition of the word "one" in the first two verses already sets the tone to the poem and his obsession, their can only be one muse. The use of enumeration of the many things the she is to the man "a queen, saint, angel" shows that she has multiple facets yet has only one true meaning to him : her appearance. The antithesis of these terms with "a nameless girl" causes the reader to think that she has lost all intellectual value for him and that their relationship is only based on his glorifying of her beauty. The nouns used verses five and seven are not Rossetti 's but his since they are hyperbolas and exaggerations of her looks.The ending of the last three verses in "not" could be Rossetti telling us that sadly the painter will never change his superficiality, as do most artists in regards with women at the time. This repetition could also be interpreted as how