"Asleep, poor jenny, hard and fast,--/So young and soft and tired. " Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Jenny is smooth and flowered poetry. Lines such as the selected portion above are sprinkled throughout each stanza. The poem is widely recognized as a classic. Questions regarding the speakers' voice and his intentions are just as widely existing. The language that Rossetti chooses to express the speakers vision of Jenny, clouds the very condescending view, present throughout the speakers voice.
[...] Jenny and the patriarchal voice in Rossetti's poem “Asleep, poor jenny, hard and fast,--/So young and soft and tired.[1]” Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Jenny is smooth and flowered poetry. Lines such as the selected portion above are sprinkled throughout each stanza. The poem is widely recognized as a classic. Questions regarding the speakers' voice and his intentions are just as widely existing. The language that Rossetti chooses to express the speakers vision of Jenny, clouds the very condescending view, present throughout the speakers voice. [...]
[...] It is as if he begins to view himself as another would see him watching Jenny and in a moment of embarrassment proclaims “must I mock you to the last,/Ashamed of my own shame.[4]” Here the reader is finally able to understand the motives of the speaker, whether they were known to him as he began or not. His desire for her cannot be realized because she is too shameful, and with that emotion he imposes shame upon himself. A secondary feeling throughout the poem is the speakers own guilt. [...]
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