Rossetti’s Poetic Images- Promises are like Pie-Crusts, they are made to be broken.

Christina Rossetti’s poem uses the beautiful and delicious imagery of the well know idiom of how promises, like pie crusts are made to be broken. Her poem and the simile in the title invites the audience to examine why one would want to make a promise at all? But what is Rossetti really telling us about her world and her self through the images in her poem.
Lets examine how Rossetti represents her intentions,
herself and her context through poetic devices
and techniques.

Context
Before we start, lets find out a little about Christina Rossetti.
Click on these links to find out more about her life and Context.
Wikipedia-Christina Rossetti
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_Rossetti
The Life of Christina Rossetti
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/crossetti/rossettibio.html
Wikipedia- Victorian Era
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_era

Promises Like Pie-Crust
by Christina Georgina Rossetti- 1861

Promise me no promises,
So will I not promise you:
Keep we both our liberties,
Never false and never true:
Let us hold the die uncast,
Free to come as free to go:
For I cannot know your past,
And of mine what can you know?

You, so warm, may once have been
Warmer towards another one:
I, so cold, may once have seen
Sunlight, once have felt the sun:
Who shall show us if it was
Thus indeed in time of old?
Fades the image from the glass,
And the fortune is not told.


If you promised, you might grieve
For lost liberty again:
If I promised, I believe
I should fret to break the chain.
Let us be the friends we were,
Nothing more but nothing less:
Many thrive on frugal fare
Who would perish of excess.




Rossetti’s poem tells of how she does not want to marry a friend of hers.


Poetic analysis.

Lets start with the title. This common idiom is a simile that compares the idea of promises to something that is intended to be broken; Pie-Crust. The use of this comparison reveals the attitude of the persona of the poem (in this, case Rossetti herself) hold about promises.

First Stanza
The poem opens with a paradox. "Promise me no promises." This seems an impossible task, yet the audience immediately understands her meaning, when her promise of no promises is followed by her mention of liberty. We understand by the poet’s diction in choosing the word “liberty” that she is talking about marriage. The context of the poem also helps us to understand that when one was to speak of being “promised”, they were speaking of intentions of marriage. The poem uses the repetition of the word "never" to introduce the idea of chance, with the ideas of true and false and the imagery of the die, remaining uncast. These symbols of chance and the persona's aversion to the idea of taking a chance, again reveals her negative attitude towards the idea of marriage to this particular friend.

Second Stanza
In this stanza we are introduced to opposing sensory images of warm and cold. The persona evokes an image of the man she is speaking with another woman. She describes it as warm and the audience evokes a sense of love and affection in this imagined memory. This is then juxtaposed with a self description of the poems persona as now feeling cold, but remembering herself once as being warmed by the sun. This imagery of the sun alludes to the idea of a divine presence, as the sun was a symbol of cosmic order. This exposes the authors religious beliefs but also appears to be another excuse not to marry, as the persona does not see their unity as a destiny “written in the stars”. The following lines referring to time, fortune telling and the fading image emphasize this idea and also reveals the persona’s self-perception. She uses the reference of the fading image in the glass to allude to her age and in evoking the image of the fortune teller reveals, marriage to this man was not something she saw for herself.

Last Stanza
The last stanza uses the imagery of grieving, to express the persona's concerns for what she fears this man might feel if they married and also uses the metaphor of the breaking chain, to show she might not remain bound in the marriage and thus would be breaking a vow to her god. Again the images of opposites in “more” and “less” reveal the balance that is maintained by their friendship. In the alliteration of “Frugal Fare”, the audience discovers that the persona appears to “thrive” on only a small amount of love, and feels that to make a promise of love to someone would metaphorically have her “perish”.

Your turn…
How do the images evoked in the poem help our understanding of her meaning?

Do you think it was common for women to reject marriage proposals in Rossetti’s context?

How does this poem represent what kind of woman Christina Rossetti is?

How do you think this poem represents the cultural expectations of women the Victorian Era?

Do you think Christian Rossetti was your average Victorian woman?

How does the poem show us this?

Do you think this image evokes the feelings expressed by Christina Rossetti in the poem?