23 pages 46 minutes read

Remember

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1862

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Summary and Study Guide

Overview

One of the most familiar (and beloved) poems by one of the most respected and commercially successful British poets of the Victorian Era, Christina Rossetti’s sonnet “Remember” explores a thorny dilemma: how does a person in love die, or more particularly, how does a person die knowing the one they love will survive them? In the poem, a young lover faces imminent death and attempts to counsel the lover she will leave behind how best to adjust. In examining the dynamics of mourning and the problematic strategies for handling such enormous loss, the poem tests the relationship between the selfishness of a dying lover who, of course, wants to be remembered against that same lover’s selfless wish for the surviving lover to find their way to new happiness and new purpose. Published in 1862 in Rossetti’s groundbreaking first collection Goblin Market and Other Poems, which established her reputation as one of the foremost young voices of Britain’s post-Romantic era, the sonnet itself dates to 1849 when Rossetti herself was just a teenager. Tapping into the Victorian era’s fascination with death and with the protocols of mourning, the poem skirts morbid sentimentality by lyrically describing how a person, now loving and emotionally vibrant, prepares for the inevitable transposition into becoming a memory.

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