My Oxford Year: A Novel

Victorian poetry functions as a recurring motif throughout My Oxford Year, symbolizing the tension between intellect and emotion that defines both Ella’s studies and her relationship with Jamie. Ella arrives at Oxford determined to approach literature with the same analytical skills that have made her successful in politics, but Jamie challenges her to move beyond detached analysis and instead feel what poetry evokes. Their first real connection occurs when Jamie has Ella read Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” aloud, pushing her to admit that the poem makes her feel “lonely” rather than asking her to interpret its meaning. This moment reveals how Victorian poetry becomes a bridge between Ella’s guarded intellectualism and the vulnerability she resists.

Other poems throughout the novel reinforce this dynamic. Ella chooses Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “A Man’s Requirements” for her first essay, a choice that mocks Jamie’s reputation for short-lived affairs but also shows her discomfort in revealing her own emotions through poetry. Later, Jamie turns repeatedly to Tennyson, whose lifelong grief over losing his friend Hallam mirrors Jamie’s own confrontation with mortality. His attachment to Tennyson’s In Memoriam and his “Oxenford” metaphor frames poetry as a language for articulating loss,