Comparing Christina Rosetti's Approach to the Subject of Death in After Death, Remember, Song and Dream

Certain laws even made it nearly impossible for women to divorce their husbands. This being the case, most women were completely financially dependent upon men.

In “Whoever We Are, Loss Finds us and Defines Us”, by Anna Quindlen, she brings forth the discussion grief's grip on the lives of the living. Wounds of death can heal with the passing of time, but in this instance, the hurt lives on. Published in New York, New York on June 5, 1994, this is one of many Quindlen published in the New York Times, centered on death's aftermath. This article, written in response to the death of Quindlen’s sister-in-law, and is focused on an audience who has, currently is, or will experience death. Quindlen-a columnist for the New York Times and Newsweek, Pulitzer Prize winner and author-has written six bestselling novels (Every Last One, Rise and Shine, Object Lessons, One True Thing, and Black and Blue) and has

“What the dead don’t know piles up, though we don’t notice it at first,” is an insight in Roger Angell’s descriptive memoir, “Over the Wall” (414). Emotional responses, stimulating thoughts and solid feelings are elicited through the use of personal reflection, regarding the death of his wife, Carol. This literary nonfiction, memoir uses the present tense, a constant tone, and an informal view to help add immediacy, by keeping the reader involved step by step as the author connects his personal present and past experiences regarding death. Readers are continually intrigued by Angell’s literary nonfiction essay, with provoking thoughts focusing on death, while using figurative language to keep Carol alive, with the use of vivid personal reflections and descriptive personal experiences.

Death is something that at some point will come to each of us and has been explored in many forms of literature. “The Raven” and “Incident in a Rose Garden” are two poems that explore common beliefs and misconceptions about death. Though both poems differ in setting, tone, and mood there are surprising similarities in the literary tools they use and in the messages they attempt to convey. The setting and mood establish the tone and feel of a poem. In “The Raven” we are launched into a bleak and dreary winters night where a depressed narrator pines for his dead girlfriend.

Divorce from marriage would break the bounds of normality for this time period. Traditionally, women were stay at home who tended to the children, house chores, and duties when needed.

As one of the most frequently used themes, death has been portrayed and understood differently throughout modern history as well as by poets Christina Rossetti and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in “Remember” and the “Cross of Snow.” It appears in literature as the preeminent dilemma, one that is often met by emotions such as grief, hopefulness, depression, and one that can encompass the entire essence of any writing piece. However, despite Rossetti’s “Remember” and Longfellow’s “Cross of Snow” employing death as a universal similarity, the tones, narratives, and syntaxes of the poems help create two entire different images of what the works are about in the readers’ minds.

Each individual has a unique way of coping with death, and this is evident throughout Christina Rossetti’s, “Remember” and W. H. Auden’s “Stop all of the Clocks”.

Death is a controversial and sensitive subject. When discussing death, several questions come to mind about what happens in our afterlife, such as: where do you go and what do you see? Emily Dickinson is a poet who explores her curiosity of death and the afterlife through her creative writing ability. She displays different views on death by writing two contrasting poems: one of a softer side and another of a more ridged and scary side. When looking at dissimilar observations of death it can be seen how private and special it is; it is also understood that death is inevitable so coping with it can be taken in different ways. Emily Dickinson’s poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died” show both

Typically during this time people did not marry young because they could not yet economically support themselves.

When Eve is diagnosed with brain cancer, she finds herself fighting the temptation of not giving in to the fear of death. Sickness forces her to overcome mental challenges that present themselves with being removed from her family and feeling death constantly loom around her. Eve admits to Enzo, the narrator, one night that “It's [cancer] bigger than me [her]. It's everywhere” (Stein 161). In this moment Eve feels that giving into fear is her easiest option. Despite this, Eve triumphs over her previous thoughts of death by finally accepting her situation. “Do you see? I'm [She’s] not afraid of it [death] anymore… Because it's not the end” (Stein 161). Eve realized that fighting death itself was not what she was battling, rather fighting her urge to give into the fear that comes with dying. In contrast to her previous anxious and doubtful mentality, Eve’s perseverance over her fear lead to a yet anticipated, but

Society believed women inferior to men. They were considered property of their fathers until marriage and once married, all her personal possessions became her husband. Women often married young to men significantly older then themselves and bore children very soon after marriage. Carol Berkin explains in her book “First Generations:

Marriages and pregnancies were fragile due to diseases, widows were prized, and the chief purpose of women was to bear children

This was the mindset for males and females alike, for a man to be seen as a success he must have a wife, and a women must have a husband to survive. “When a woman got married she could not own property, even inherited property, and her wealth was automatically passed to her husband. If a woman worked after marriage, her earnings also belonged to her husband” (Lythgoe). For during the 1800s it was abnormal for women to own land, most people if you were in the middle class you married up, for a house. Once the majority of women got married most of their possessions went to the male, this strayed many women away from marriage at this time. There are some exceptions, such as Lady Catherine de Bough, for her father died and there was as no males upon either side of the family so she got the wealth, but those cases are very rare.

marriage for women was younger than that in France, as well, they also had more children. A

Many laws of this time and era disallowed woman to have the same opportunities as men. Women belonged to their fathers, and then to their husbands. If a woman came from wealth, often were allowed to marry from the starting age of 12. A reason Queen Elizabeth never married was so she wouldn't lose her power to man. Women were