Remember

• "Hold me by the hand, nor I half turn."

  • alliteration
  • reflects the desperate, almost pant-like pleading of the speaker (sense of urgency)
• "Silent land."

  • euphemism
  • describing heaven (links to her religion)
  • likens death to a journey
  • avoids explcitiy using the word 'death' as to not distress her lover
  • communicates the distance between them
• "Only remember me; you understand."

  • Caesura
  • in separating the pronouns, they are representing the distance between the living and the dead
• "Remember"

  • repetition
  • used as an imperative
• "You tell me of our future that you planned."

  • male control
• Written by Christina Rossetti who was deeply religious and it was alleged that she never married because of this. She suffered a mental breakdown at age 14 and her father suffered from TB and poor mental health so she was exposed to illness and death from a young age.
• Written in the 19th Century when Queen Victoria was in mourning so there was a rise in poems about death
• LINKS TO GATSBY

  • speaker is dwelling on the power of memory and love like Gatsby
  • unlike Gatsby who is stuck in the past, the speaker is embracing the ability to forget
  • underlying themes of male control
• CRITIC (AO5)

  • Feminists would argue that it shows the passive role of women in Victorian society as he has dominance over her, stripping her of her autonomy
• Volta

  • "Yet..."
  • changes rhyme scheme
  • changes the message to the fact that she would rather her lover forget her if it brings him too much pain
• TITLE

  • reflects the poem's simplistic style
  • alludes to key themes of the poem (loss/memory)
• FORM

  • petrarchan sonnet
  • the rhyme scheme begins simply but becomes more complex as her argument does