Separation in ‘Remember’ and ‘At Home’
1- Commitment to God, rejection of earthly desires
2- Separation due to indecision
3- Tone- lamenting and critical vs martyrdom, self-sacrifice- suffering in
both
- In both ‘At Home’ and ‘Remember’, Rossetti reflects on her
separation through an account of her rejection of earthly desires
- In ‘Remember’, Rossetti presents separation to be a result of
prioritisation of her relationship to God over romantic, earthly love.
This is conveyed through the conflict of pronouns in the line, ‘you
tell me of our future that you plann’d’. The juxtaposition of ‘you’ and
‘our’ presents the speaker to be separated ideologically and
emotionally from their partner’s envisionment of their romantic
relationship, further emphasised through the dichotomy of ‘future’
and the past tense ‘plann’d’. This temporal disunion displays the
separation of the speaker from their partner, as they have
seemingly already dissociated themselves from such plans of
earthly love.
- Rossetti presents this separation as necessary in her pursuit of a
higher, divine purpose in the speaker saying, ‘It will be late to
counsel then or pray.’ This establishes the notion of living a life of
faith in preparation for salvation in death, reinforcing Rossetti’s own
Tractarian belief of renouncing earthly desires in favour of spiritual
devotion and preparedness. The definitive ‘it will be late’ presents
the importance of this separation from such earthly temptations in
the urgent tone it creates, as both ‘counsel’ and ‘pray[er]’ are
rendered as futile in death. The use of ‘pray’ is particularly
significant in demonstrating how divine intervention is inaccessible
after death, reinforcing the Christian doctrine that salvation must be
sought during life rather than after it. As such, the separation from
earthly love presented in ‘Remember’ is not merely a display of
emotional detachment, but rather a conscious relinquishing of any
such threats to eternal salvation.
- This is particularly poignant to Rossetti herself, who ended her
engagement to James Collinson on the grounds of their religious
differences following his conversion to Roman Catholicism, showing
a prioritisation of her faith over love.
- In ‘At Home’, separation is presented as a direct consequence of a
commitment to God. Rossetti’s firm placement in the past,
established by the declarative claim to be ‘of yesterday’, contrasts
1- Commitment to God, rejection of earthly desires
2- Separation due to indecision
3- Tone- lamenting and critical vs martyrdom, self-sacrifice- suffering in
both
- In both ‘At Home’ and ‘Remember’, Rossetti reflects on her
separation through an account of her rejection of earthly desires
- In ‘Remember’, Rossetti presents separation to be a result of
prioritisation of her relationship to God over romantic, earthly love.
This is conveyed through the conflict of pronouns in the line, ‘you
tell me of our future that you plann’d’. The juxtaposition of ‘you’ and
‘our’ presents the speaker to be separated ideologically and
emotionally from their partner’s envisionment of their romantic
relationship, further emphasised through the dichotomy of ‘future’
and the past tense ‘plann’d’. This temporal disunion displays the
separation of the speaker from their partner, as they have
seemingly already dissociated themselves from such plans of
earthly love.
- Rossetti presents this separation as necessary in her pursuit of a
higher, divine purpose in the speaker saying, ‘It will be late to
counsel then or pray.’ This establishes the notion of living a life of
faith in preparation for salvation in death, reinforcing Rossetti’s own
Tractarian belief of renouncing earthly desires in favour of spiritual
devotion and preparedness. The definitive ‘it will be late’ presents
the importance of this separation from such earthly temptations in
the urgent tone it creates, as both ‘counsel’ and ‘pray[er]’ are
rendered as futile in death. The use of ‘pray’ is particularly
significant in demonstrating how divine intervention is inaccessible
after death, reinforcing the Christian doctrine that salvation must be
sought during life rather than after it. As such, the separation from
earthly love presented in ‘Remember’ is not merely a display of
emotional detachment, but rather a conscious relinquishing of any
such threats to eternal salvation.
- This is particularly poignant to Rossetti herself, who ended her
engagement to James Collinson on the grounds of their religious
differences following his conversion to Roman Catholicism, showing
a prioritisation of her faith over love.
- In ‘At Home’, separation is presented as a direct consequence of a
commitment to God. Rossetti’s firm placement in the past,
established by the declarative claim to be ‘of yesterday’, contrasts
