Maude Clare

‘Maude Clare’

Lord Thomas and Lady Nell are married because his parents wanted them to be, but Thomas isn’t in love with Lady Nell. He is in love with a woman called Maude Clare, but he cannot be with her. This is because Lady Nell has come from a wealthy family whereas Maude Clare has not, and so he has to keep tradition by marrying a woman of the same/similar status to his family.

Thomas – Although he doesn’t speak much, when he does he shows emotions such as lust and misery, due to the fact that he cannot be with his true love.

Thomas’ Lady Mother feels sorry for him. When the narrator describes her ‘with smiles, almost with tears’ I have interpreted this as his mother knows exactly how he feels as she has been through something similar with his dad. She is trying to hide her tears behind a smile. We know this because his mother states ‘Had just the tale to tell’. However, she also states that ‘But he was not so pale as you, Nor I so pale as Nell’ and this is suggesting that Thomas’ parents accepted the fact that they had to be together because of status instead of fighting it for the person who his father wanted to be with.  Also, when his mother says Thomas’ dad had the same ‘tale to tell’ and then ‘was not as pale as you’, the rhyme pattern has become inconsistent. This could symbolize the fact that they might not want to conform to the expectations of society. The character of Thomas’ dad might have wanted to be with the woman he was in love with, but because of rules and expectations that society has come up with he couldn’t. 

What point do you think Rossetti is making about the Victorian class system in this poem?

I believe the point Rossetti is trying to make is that upper/higher class people will always be better than lower/working class. This is because although Rossetti has shown Lord Thomas’ character as in love with Maude Clare, he cannot be with her due to the fact that his family is rich and wealthy and her family is not. When Rossetti uses the character of his Lady Mother to say ‘Your father thirty years ago, Had just the tale to tell’, this shows that even though there was no sparks to the relationship, they had to stay together and gradually they learned to somewhat love each other. This symbolizes wealth, and if you were wealthy/had status then you had to marry someone of the same class. Also, at the end when Rossetti uses Lady Nell’s character to say ‘I’ll love him till he loves me, me best of all Maude Clare’, this shows that Nell’s character has power and is more powerful than Maude Clare could ever be because she gets the final word. This could symbolize her and Thomas, as Lady Nell gets the last word in the argument, and also is the last person to get Thomas.

‘she followed them’ ‘Maude Clare was like a queen’ – Even though Maude Clare’s character is being described as queen like, she is still downgraded from the beginning as she’s following them out of the church. 

‘golden chain’ Gold is valuable and so Maude Clare is saying that she doesn’t care about money or wealth she only cares for Lord Thomas. Also, the word ‘chain’ has been used to symbolize Maude Clare’s freedom, as chains tie people down but she’s giving back her half of the golden chain.

“Lady” When Thomas says ‘Lady’ he could be referring to Lady Nell because he is only with her because of status and business, however he calls Maude Clare by her full name which shows he cares more for Maude Clare.

However, he could also be referring to his Lady Mother because he could be trying to tell her that he does not want to be with Lady Nell, and instead he longs to be with Maude Clare.

Maude Clare’s character speaks for nearly half of the poem, and this shows she could have power because she has dominated the poem. Although, it could also show that she is not powerful and will never be because she is lower class and no one really listens to her other than Lady Nell who gets the last word.

When the narrator says ‘My lord was pale with inward strife’ this could show the character of Maude Clare having some power over him as the word ‘my’ means possessive and so it could suggest that she has some control/power over Lord Thomas.

Christina Rossetti

Life;

Christina Rossetti was born in London on December 5th 1830. She was the youngest of four children, and her parents were Italian. Both Rossetti’s father (Gabriele Rossetti) and her brother (Dante Gabriel Rossetti) were also poets, and they founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Rossetti first started writing when she was 12 years old in 1842, and these poems were printed by her grandfather into a private book. When Rossetti was 19, she started contributing some of her poems to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s journal, The Germs.

Education;

Rossetti was home schooled by her mother, and she was made to study religious education, classics, fairy tales and novels. The influences of the work by Dante Alighieri, Petrarch and other Italian writers filled the home and had a great impact on her writing later on.

Roles of women;

The roles of women in the 19th century were that they had to stay at home and be the ‘excessive carer’. This is because the men were seen as the ‘bread winners’ and so the women would have to stay at home and do the housework whilst looking after the children and meeting the family’s emotional needs.

Publicatoin;

In 1870, Rossetti wrote a letter to her brother, Dante. In this letter she compared herself to Elizabeth Browning, a great female predecessor. Part of what she wrote said ‘It is not in me, and therefore, it will never come out of me, to turn to politics or philanthropy with Mrs. Browning: such many-sidedness I leave to a greater than I’. This shows that she thought of her own work as not good enough to be listened to when there are people much better. She also created a pseudonym (fake name) called Ellen Alleyn. She did this to get away from the criticism she thought she would receive because of her writing. Her writing about her views on the roles of women was controversial and so she felt like she needed to hide away from them and so she created the fake name.

Religious views;

Rossetti was an Anglican Christian. Her religious beliefs had a major impact and influence on her writing. Christina, along with her sister Maria and their mother Frances, maintained a strong commitment to High Anglicanism whilst her brother Dante instead became more free-thinking and withdrew from his beliefs. She also worked for the Anglican sisterhood at the St Mary Magdalene Penitentiary, Highgate, to help prostitutes escape their lives on the streets by retraining them for domestic service.

Rossetti's views on the roles of women;

Christina Rossetti had complicated views on female suffrage and equality. She sometimes used the ideas of the Bible that women were less important than men because they had to stay home, and because men were seen as the stronger sex they would go to work. Men were expected to control their wives and their property. At other times she would argue for female representation in Parliament and spoke out against the sexual exploitation of women in prostitution.

Annabelle Hunt