Maude Clare - Christina Rossetti

Alternative transcript:

Clare Maude Clare says a lot, but does not make it clear why she has been rejected Thomas is almost inarticulate but we do not know what is the cause of his inward strife The repetition of 'brought my gift' and 'to bless' in the fifth stanza as being used to emphasise Maude Clare's scornful tone as she sarcastically presents her anger as gifts and blessings. Nell is clearly happy to take Thomas as her husband but we can only speculate as to why she is the chosen bride The Impact of the Ending I'll love him till he loves me best, Me best of all, Maude Clare." Though not the blushing, bubbling bride that one might stereotypically expect, Nell gets the last word, but not the last thought. Rossetti's choice to emphasize Maude Clare's name in the finale leaves the reader to ponder the impending doom of Thomas and Nell's marriage. With the looming presence of Maude Clare at their wedding, acting as a bad omen for the marriage in general, it's unlikely that Thomas will ever love Nell the best, as she hopes. The tragedy lies not in a spiritual love lost by means of mortality, but instead in the interplay of a love triangle that leaves all parties unsatisfied, confused, and still longing for an ill-manifested vision of love. Kate Moller It is interestingly left to Nell to confront the intruder. For in the poem's final two stanzas, it is Nell who takes over the speaking voice, directly addressing Maude Clare and asserting, in a phrasing which rings out a challenge, that she will take what Maude Clare spurns. Nell both subtly wrestles power back from the ex-lover and asserts her centrality in relation to her husband. Maude Clare might have dominated the scene throughout, yet it is Nell's determination and defiance which strike home at the end. Simon Avery Context - Publication Rossetti composed Maude Clare between 1857 and 1858 and first published it in Once a week, in 1859. This was an illustrated magazine which often contained serialised fiction as well as poetry. Rossetti later published Maude Clare in her first collection of poetry, Goblin Market and Other Poems, in 1862. The original manuscript version of the poem contained forty-one stanzas. When it appeared in Once a Week it had been cut to fifteen and when it appeared in Goblin Market and Other Poems it had been cut again to only twelve. According to Anthony H. Harrison, the more detailed, longer version paints a picture of Maude Clare as a sympathetic character with whom the reader can truly identify. How does Rossetti portray Maude Clare in the shorter, 1862 version? Can the reader empathize with her or is her disruption of the wedding scene depicted as nasty and underhanded? Context-Rossetti's life Christina Rossetti volunteered at St Mary Magdalene house from 1859 to 1870, where she was known as 'Sister Christina'. In the mid-19th century it ame socially acceptable for middle-upper class Christian women to work at refuges. The advertisement reflects this trend, referring to the charity's reliance on 'self-devoted women to co-operate in the work'. When on duty, Rossetti is believed to have lived in' at the 'house' for up to a fortnight at a time. Poems written by Rossetti before 1859, such as 'Maude Clare', indicate her prior interest in the 'fallen woman'. Her later poetry, including 'Cousin Kate' and 'Goblin Market', which engage with themes of sisterhood and prohibited love, reveals the enduring influence of her first-hand experiences at Highgate. Context-Victorian Literature It is interesting that the names Maude, Clare and Nell (monosyllabic names in keeping with the ballad idiom) had all had recent fictional histories: the eponymous heroine of Tennyson's 'Maud' (1855) dies during the poem's narrative; Ada Clare in Dickens' Bleak House(1852-3) is left a young widow, for all her beauty, at the end of the novel; the death of Little Nell in the same author's The Old Curiosity Shop moved the nation to tears in 1841. Perhaps Rossetti is imagining that true love can have a happy ending? Simon Mold, emagazine . Critical Interpretations The climax of the ballad, if one can call it that, is not, however, a sensationalist last-minute calling-off of the wedding, but a reaffirmation of the power of love. In a twist, the tall-is-handsome motif of many a fairy-tale is rejected in favour of a bride who, in conventional terms, is less attractive. Is Rossetti comforting herself by such means, or her lovelorn female readership who could rarely live up to the ideal of womanhood that patriarchal literature tended to present? Simon Mold, emagazine "Maude Clare also emphasizes the insidious effects on female relationships of women's powerlessness in the competitive marriage market. Neither Maude Clare nor Neil is allowed moral authority in Rossetti's version of their confrontation, even though Nel! has profited from Lord Thomas's faithlessness, and Maude Clare may be a compromised woman (she has exchanged love tokens and waded barefoot in the beck with Lord Thomas). Rossetti refuses to place exclusive value on either purity or wronged beauty. Rather, both women are implicated in the morally dubidus enterprise of devaluing each other, the more subtle but equally destructive consequence of their participation in a market of sex and marriage." Elizabeth K. Helsinger