Our Mothers Lovely Women Pitiful

Question 1

What is ‘Our Mothers Lovely Women Pitiful’ about? (2 points)

Answer 1

It is a dedication to women as mothers and to the broad sisterhood of all women

Presents two opposing ideas:
+ Women in the present alive and facing life’s challenges
+ Dead women in ‘Paradise’ in the presence of God, looking down at their sisters still struggling on Earth

Question 2

What is the form and structure of ‘Our Mothers Lovely Women Pitiful’? (5 points)

Answer 2

Form: Fourteen-line Petrarchan sonnet

First 8 lines are an octet/octave dedicated to the strength of women who struggle through life.

After the volta/turn is the sestet, or six lines, which presents the view of women ‘looking back to earth from Paradise’.

Metrical rhythm: Iambic pentameter - creates a
measured, solemn tread suitable for the subject matter

Has a complex but classic rhyme scheme that follows the pattern - ABBA ABBA CDE EDC

Question 3

What are the language and devices used in ‘Our Mothers Lovely Women Pitiful’? (5 points)

Answer 3

Voice: First person narrator - probably the poet

The octet refers to the collective ‘we’ and ‘our’, drawing in all female readers

In the sestet she uses the more personal ‘I’.

Tone: warm and loving, conveying universality rather than personal emotion

Syntactic parallels in Lines 4-7 create a moving, rhythmic flow

Question 4

What other poems does ‘Our Mothers Lovely Women Pitiful’ link to?

Question 5

What is the relevant context of ‘Our Mothers Lovely Women Pitiful’? (4 points)

Answer 5

Women were barred from higher education and poor women lived lives of drudgery in Victorian times

Rossetti worked voluntarily with ‘fallen women’ — prostitutes — to rescue them from their dangerous, abused and impoverished lives

The poem makes her seem sympathetic to their plight - she didn’t judge them morally

Rossetti was not a feminist (e.g. didn’t support the suffrage) but had great sympathy for the difficulties faced by women living in poverty and their lack of legal rights