25 pages • 50 minutes read
Christina RossettiThe Convent Threshold
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1862A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Dramatic Monologue
A dramatic monologue is a type of lyric poem written as if it were a speech from a single character, who is definitively not the poet, and addressed to another person. The poem focuses on a critical moment in the character’s life to reveal something of the speaker’s state of mind. It was a particularly popular form during the early Victorian era. Both Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote their own dramatic monologues.
Rossetti’s speaker is a woman whom Rossetti would have labeled a “fallen” woman. This outdated term was used as a way of morally judging a woman who had premarital sex, equating her choice to a fall from the grace of God. This label was applied both to women in relationships and those performing sex work. Likely inspired at least partially by her work at the St. Mary Magdalene house of charity, Rossetti does portray her speaker with some sympathy, as she sees it as possible for these women to be redeemed.
Rossetti’s purpose centers on persuading her audience to repent. The dramatic monologue allows her to describe intense emotions. Here, her speaker expresses intense guilt for living in sin in the beginning of the poem while ending the poem with the reassuring relief of salvation. In the beginning, the speaker is “soiled with mud” (Line 7) that “tells a tale / Of hope that was, of guilt that was” (Lines 8-9). Human life is so fragile that the speaker is overwhelmed with the eternal consequences. After committing to her faith, the speaker describes how her “place is set” (Line 146) in heaven and how she will meet her lover “as once [they] met, / And love with old familiar love” (Lines 147-148). By positioning the ending of this (fictional) personal testimony as a happy ending, Rossetti seeks to persuade her reader to also confess and seek salvation.
Meter
Rossetti uses meter to control the pace, which creates the distinct voice of the speaker during all of her shifting emotions.
Most of the poem is written in iambic tetrameters, meaning that each line has four pairs of syllables that are unstressed and then stressed. This is one of the meters strongly associated with hymns. This meter, then, supports the poem’s religious themes and Rossetti’s Christian purpose.
However, this meter is broken on several occasions for two primary effects. One effect is to suggest that the speaker is attempting to break out of established and expected patterns, and these changes to trochees, a pair of syllables that is stressed and then unstressed, reflect the effort needed. The speaker’s attempt to break free from her earthly sin is described as climbing “Stair after golden skyward stair” (Line 5). Her plea to her lover to “Mount with me, mount the kindled stair” (Line 16) also breaks the pattern. As the speaker’s tone becomes more panicked and urgent, the poem’s meter changes, suggesting an increase in pace, such as when she cries to “Flee for your life, gird up your strength” (Line 39). These stresses emphasize the immediacy in her command to her audience and reflect Rossetti’s desire to persuade her audience. The lengths of the 11 stanzas also reinforce this shifting tone, as the stanzas range from eight lines to 25 lines, with an average closer to 13.
Repetition
Rossetti repeats words, phrases, and sentence structures to emphasize ideas, emotions, and questions.
Rossetti’s use of repeating words serves one of three purposes. One use of repetition supports the pacing. The repetition of “flee” in Lines 39, 40, and 42 creates a sense of urgency. Repetition emphasizes Rossetti’s purpose through her speaker’s commands. The speaker’s need for her lover to repent and Rossetti’s desire for her audience to do the same are reflected in the repetition of the word “repent” seven times in three stanzas (Lines 52, 66, 79, 81, 84). To further emphasize this idea, the use of repent is an example of epizeuxis, where a single word is repeated in immediate succession. This urgent repetition emphasizes this demand. The third purpose is to support the poem’s themes and Christian messages. In the description of the speaker’s upsetting dream, a figure seeks the light. Drawing from a key story told by Isaiah in the Old Testament, the speaker describes how his figure, likely Lucifer because his name also means light, seeks knowledge. Rossetti closely connects knowledge and light through her repetition of the word four times in closely placed three lines (Lines 92, 93, 97). The repetition of the word “light” emphasizes the allure of knowledge while subverting the image of God as the light. This link between knowledge and light is also possibly a reference to and rejection of Enlightenment ideals, which valued thinking critically and exploring rational doubt. By strongly connecting the light to the figure of Lucifer, Rossetti supports her assertion that faith is greater than knowledge.
The repetition of whole lines emphasizes the speaker's horror. Her repeated questioning of “why will you die?” (Line 50) reminds readers of their own mortality. Yet the pain does not end with death, as Rossetti makes sure to describe the punishment waiting in the afterlife for the unrepentant. Her repetition of “I tell you what I dreamed last night” (Lines 85, 110) emphasizes the importance of these dreams. By beginning these descriptions with the same line, Rossetti contrasts the dramatically different dreams.
Anaphora, a repetition of words at the beginning of a sentence, reveals the speaker’s distressed state. She repeats the phrases “Woe’s me” (Lines 53-54) and “O weary” (Lines 67-68) to express the speaker’s deep feelings of grief and guilt. Rossetti uses the combination of anaphora and rhetorical questions in Lines 56 and 57 to funnel these feelings into direct addresses to the reader to learn from her speaker and repent.
