{"id":2931,"date":"2023-11-27T00:14:57","date_gmt":"2023-11-27T05:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/?p=2931"},"modified":"2023-11-27T00:15:01","modified_gmt":"2023-11-27T05:15:01","slug":"no-means-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2023\/11\/27\/no-means-no\/","title":{"rendered":"No Means No"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christina Rossetti’s poem, No Thank You, John, is a recurring theme of how men can’t take no for an answer. Rossetti spends eight stanzas trying to reject a man named John, and he will not take no for an answer. The poem’s speaker is a woman who is assumed to be Rossetti. Thank You No John is a very blunt poem. Aside from the title, Rossetti’s forward language can be found throughout the poem. With her, “I never said I loved you John” appears twice, and “I’d rather answer no to 50 Johns Than answer yes to you.” I found that quote to be fascinating because it is so ridiculous. The fact that the woman in this poem used such intense language to get rid of this man and still had to repeat herself is baffling. In this way, I felt I could relate the poem to modern times because of the theme of men not taking no for an answer. There is a distinct parallel between the need to be friendly and polite and not hurt men’s feelings and not being taken seriously in rejection. Despite this, Rossetti makes sure to use hard language: “Who can’t perform that task” I noted that she said can’t, not won’t. It comes off as something she cannot do rather than something she just doesn’t want. He has the nerve to call her heartless in response to her rejection. In response to being called heartless, she stands her ground and concedes that perhaps she doesn’t have one and uses that against him, that he is crazy to take offense to her when she has no heat. I loved this poem so much because it feels badass and feminine and still relevant today.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christina Rossetti’s poem, No Thank You, John, is a recurring theme of how men can’t take no for an answer. Rossetti spends eight stanzas trying to reject a man named John, and he will not take no for an answer. The poem’s speaker is a woman who is assumed to be Rossetti. Thank You No … Continue reading No Means No<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5364,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169399],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2931","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\/5364"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}