{"id":1380,"date":"2018-11-28T10:20:21","date_gmt":"2018-11-28T15:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/?p=1380"},"modified":"2018-11-28T10:20:21","modified_gmt":"2018-11-28T15:20:21","slug":"unrequited-love-in-christina-rossettis-a-triad-and-a-pause-of-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2018\/11\/28\/unrequited-love-in-christina-rossettis-a-triad-and-a-pause-of-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"Unrequited Love in Christina Rossetti’s “A Triad” and “A Pause of Thought”"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Victorian England, a woman\u2019s desire to marry for love was discouraged and shunned as a part of the society\u2019s standards and expectations for women. It was more important for a woman to properly present herself in the marriage \u201cmarket\u201d than to choose her husband by means of love or passion. In Christina Rossetti\u2019s \u201cA Pause of Thought,\u201d the speaker of the poem yearns for \u201cwhich is not, nor can be\u201d in a society that restricts women to the role of being a suitable wife (Rossetti 32). She longs for the person she loves, but she feels hopeless the longer she waits for her love to be returned. In the last verse, the speaker claims that she is \u201cfoolish\u201d for her feelings of longing, as she is \u201cunfit \/ for healthy joy and salutary pain\u201d simply due to the fact that she is a woman (Rossetti 33). She claims that the \u201cchase (is) useless,\u201d suggesting that a woman\u2019s pursuit after love is hopeless and cannot be fulfilled within the Victorian Society\u2019s restrictions on women. Rossetti\u2019s \u201cA Triad\u201d has a similar message, as it describes three women who are fooled or disappointed after falling in love or feeling no love at all: \u201cOne shamed herself in love; one temperately \/ Grew gross in soulless love, a sluggish wife; \/ One famished died for loved\u201d (Rossetti 18). Rossetti suggests that, for a Victorian woman, love only leads to disappointment. Furthermore, this implies that it is hopeless, and even foolish, for a woman to fall in love in Victorian society, as her longings and desires are constrained, and only men are granted to choose someone to marry and love.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Victorian England, a woman\u2019s desire to marry for love was discouraged and shunned as a part of the society\u2019s standards and expectations for women. It was more important for a woman to properly present herself in the marriage \u201cmarket\u201d than to choose her husband by means of love or passion. In Christina Rossetti\u2019s \u201cA … Continue reading Unrequited Love in Christina Rossetti’s “A Triad” and “A Pause of Thought”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3881,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125359],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3881"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}