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The Victorian period (1837–1901) brought new pressures to bear on love poetry. The rigid social codes governing gender, sexuality, and respectability created a culture of surfaces — of what could be said and what must remain hidden. Christina Rossetti and Thomas Hardy both wrote against these constraints, though in very different ways. Rossetti's "Remember" is a quiet, devastating sonnet in which a dying woman instructs her lover on how to grieve; Hardy's "The Ruined Maid" is a savagely ironic dialogue that exposes the hypocrisy of Victorian sexual morality.
Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) was one of the most important poets of the Victorian period. She was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle (her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) and a devout Anglo-Catholic whose faith shaped every aspect of her life and work. She twice refused proposals of marriage on religious grounds.
AO3 — Context: Victorian women occupied a deeply constrained social position. The doctrine of "separate spheres" held that men belonged to the public world of commerce and politics, while women belonged to the private world of home and family. Women poets faced the additional challenge of writing within literary traditions that had been defined by male desire — the sonnet, in particular, was a form in which men spoke and women were spoken about. Rossetti's achievement in "Remember" is to seize the sonnet form and make it a vehicle for female speech and agency.
"Remember" is a Petrarchan sonnet — an octave (ABBAABBA) and a sestet (CDDECE). The Petrarchan form is significant because it was traditionally used by male poets to address a silent, idealised beloved. Rossetti reverses this: here, the woman speaks and the man listens. The volta (turn) at line 9 is one of the most powerful in English poetry.
The Octave:
"Remember me when I am gone away, / Gone far away into the silent land"
The opening imperative — "Remember me" — is both a request and a command. "Gone away" is a euphemism for death, softened further by the dreamy "silent land." The repetition "Gone far away" extends the distance, making death seem like a journey into remoteness rather than an ending.
"When you can no more hold me by the hand, / Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay."
The physical intimacy of "hold me by the hand" is tender and specific. "Half turn to go yet turning stay" is one of the most beautiful lines in Victorian poetry — it captures the gesture of someone leaving but unable to quite leave, turning back for one more look. The line's rhythm enacts the hesitation: the stresses fall on "turn," "go," "turning," and "stay," creating a rocking motion.
"Remember me when no more day by day / You tell me of our future that you planned: / Only remember me; you understand / It will be late to counsel then or pray."
"Our future that you planned" subtly reveals the power dynamics of the relationship: the man plans, the woman participates. "It will be late to counsel then or pray" introduces a note of urgency — death is coming, and there will be no more chances.
The Volta and Sestet:
"Yet if you should forget me for a while / And afterwards remember, do not grieve: / For if the darkness and corruption touch / The thoughts you once had of me, let them go."
The volta transforms the poem. The imperative shifts from "remember" to "do not grieve." The speaker, having asked to be remembered, now gives the beloved permission to forget. "Darkness and corruption" — words that evoke the physical decay of the body in the grave — might "touch" the beloved's memories of her. If so, she would rather be forgotten than be a source of suffering.
"Better by far you should forget and smile / Than that you should remember and be sad."
The final couplet is devastating in its selflessness. The speaker sacrifices her own desire for remembrance in order to protect the beloved's happiness. The antithesis — "forget and smile" versus "remember and be sad" — is perfectly balanced, and the preference for the beloved's happiness over the speaker's immortality is an extraordinary act of love.
AO5 — Different Interpretations: Isobel Armstrong reads the poem as a subtle assertion of female power: the dying woman controls the terms of her own remembrance and, by giving permission to forget, demonstrates a generosity that the living man cannot match. Angela Leighton argues that the poem's selflessness is also a form of self-erasure — the woman disappears not just physically but also from memory, fulfilling the Victorian ideal of the self-sacrificing woman. Dinah Roe reads the poem biographically, connecting it to Rossetti's own renunciations — her refusals of marriage, her devotion to a faith that demanded the subordination of personal desire.
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