The Convent Threshold

Last lesson we moved on to a new Christina Rosetti poem named, 'The Convent Threshold'. For this poem, we began to explore different themes involved with characters, destination etc. The poem is written in the 1st person which seems to be becoming apparent as one of Christina Rosetti's writing styles.

When looking at the character aspect of the poem, we concluded that there are two characters in this poem, a man and a woman - who we also believe is the narrator. Although this seems to be the case, there is one point when she adresses the other character as "she" so it cannot remain certain. It is also clear throughout the poem that the two characters are in love as it is one of the main themes.
We also looked at the point of view aspect of the poem. With this, we concluded that the narrator holds a biased point of view as it is written in the 1st person. Because it is written in this style, I believe this poem may be a form of Rosetti venting her own feelings through the narrator. This could be the case when you consider the strong feminist and religious themes in the poem, examples including the constant mention of "Heaven" and "Hell", "paradise", "Sky-ward stair", "far off city grand", "Repent", "Give me light!". Although from these examples it is apparent that religion is a more obvious theme, which isnt surprising as it was a large part of Rosetti's life.

When looking at the different aspects of this poem it seems as though religion, love and feminism are key themes in the poem, 'The Convent Threshold'. All three of these themes are also strongly present in the last two Rosetti poems we looked at so her writing style is becoming more and more clear as we go on. However, from what we have seen already, i believe that religion is the most influential and important theme in the poem.