Good Friday

• AO1: In ‘Good Friday’, Rossetti explores… 

  • Religious convictions 
  • Perseverance and salvation
  • Entrapment  
  • Deeply personal poem addressed to Christ on Good Friday which reimagines the crucifixion happening now. She sees Christ bleeding to death on the cross, but she is appalled that she cannot weep for him.
• AO3:

  • Rossetti composed Good Friday in 1862, and was published in a book of Tractarian work in 1864. Combination of devotional hymns and poems with modern verses. 
  • Good Friday- the death of Jesus, day that restorated God’s relationship with humanity- Jesus’ sacrifice 
  • She turned down two offers of marriage for religious reasons
• AO2:

  Rhyme Scheme: ABBA - Chiastic (symmetrical - mirroring Christ’s perfection) structure. The rhyming couplet is trapped within the A rhyme, this mirrors sense of entrapment by their unwavering religious convictions and inability to feel the same fervour that others feel towards the crucifixion 

  4 stanzas, 4 lines each (Quadrains), lines are of unequal length. Flow of narrative matches the fluctuating emotions of the speaker. The metrical rhythm is regular.
• ‘Am I a stone, and not a sheep?’

  • ‘stone’-impediment for the speaker to connect with God, individual is blocked from resolution. / 'sheep’ - followers of Christ+ unquestioning standpoint to religion - by not connecting with these attributes: speaker feels separated from God. / rhetorical question- uncertainty- speaker's inability to feel sure about their religion. Loose iambic pentameter-lack of security- cannot truly stick to religion+ connect with God-numbness - looseness also could show potential to restore their relationship with God, as they somewhat adhere to Christian beliefs
• To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,

  • ‘drop they word towards the hold places’/ diacope - omnipresence of Christ’s suffering - contrasts victorian euphemistic lang / elongated vowels - despair + suffering 
  • Links to Remember, Goblin Market - diacope of “drop by drop” and “day by day”
• And yet not weep?

  • rhetorical question - personal disgust - the growth of the secular
• Not so those woman loved’/ ‘Not so Peter weeping bitterly’ 

  • The Refrain of ‘Not so’ is spondaic and disrupts the rhyme scheme, this conveys how the emotions felt by others is alien to the speaker, as the rhyme scheme deviates from what it previously was, just like how this passionate feelings of melancholia and grief are foreign to the speaker. 
  • ‘Those woman loved’does not feel the same strong emotions, feels disconnected. Biblical allusion to Luke 23-28, ‘women who kept mourning and wailing’
  • feminine power- God’s value in women ‘ i wished and wished i were a man’ 
• Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;

  • ‘daughters of Jerusalem weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children’ / the boundless love of Christ - semantic field - overflow of grief - endstop - victorian social norms 
• "Not so the Sun and Moon"

  • juxtaposition - the overwhelming glory of christ - ‘they shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure, Throughout all generations’ 
• "Which hid their faces in a starless sky"

  • ‘for mine eyes are upon all their ways; they are not hit from mine eyes’ / ‘your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.’ / the lack of light without the lord- argument from beauty - the existence of God can be proved by the beauty of our reality -  stars - hope - therefore we have a lack of hope 
• “A horror of great darkness at broad noon - I, only I.”

  • Links to the creation of the world. God said “let there be light”, because of the darkness there is a clear absence of God. The horror of the absence of God - her fear. Caesura, separated from herself, disconnected from herself. Diameter foot: ‘I, only I’- Chilling in its isolation.
• ‘Smite a Rock’

  • Cyclical action of stone and rock. This action results in water erupting, this water is akin to the speaker’s emotions. They have moved on to lament their nihilistic and emotionless tone , and are now able to restore her relationship with Christ. This ends the poem with a hopeful tone, reassuring that anyone can receive the likes of God. Biblical allusion- Exodus 17- the desperate people have their hopes restored.