The Convent Threshold

“The Convent Threshold” by English poet Christina Rossetti was published in 1862 in her first collection called Goblin Market and other Poems. This collection immediately placed Rossetti among the greatest poets of the Victorian era. Though “The Convent Threshold” is not one of her most widely recognized works, it does contain images and ideas that Rossetti returned to throughout her career, like expressions of her deep Christian faith and her use of the “fallen” woman as the poetic speaker. Rossetti’s faith was a defining aspect of her life and more than half of her poetic output is devotional, without considering poems that have strong religious themes and imagery. As a result of this, Rossetti gained a reputation as an overly devout and conservative recluse, but more recent critics have worked to create a fuller picture of the writer.

Rossetti is often associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, an artistic and literary movement founded in part by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Her earlier work shared some of their ideals, such as realism, religious themes, love, and death. Recent critics have argued that these elements are overemphasized, especially as Rossetti’s later work and the evolution of the Pre-Raphaelites further diverged. Her poetry both reflects and rejects the wider Victorian poetry movement.

While Rossetti’s poetry has never fallen out of the public eye, recent scholarship has reassessed the work to acknowledge the previously understudied complexity in her poetry’s thinking and aesthetics. In addition to the biographical reading usually applied to her work, contemporary scholars seek to read her poetry through the lenses of history, theology, and feminism.

Poet Biography

Christina Rossetti was born on December 5, 1830 in London, England. Her father was a poet and an Italian political exile. Rossetti was the youngest of four children. All four children were successful and artistic, with her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti also becoming an especially prominent artistic figure, most influential as a painter and poet. Rossetti’s childhood was notably happy, and her education was dictated by her mother and father. She studied religious texts, fairy tales, and classic novels. Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarch, and other Italian writers she read influenced Rossetti’s later writing.

Rossetti’s happy childhood became more troubled in the 1840s, when her father’s health deteriorated and the family’s finances suffered. As a result, Rossetti’s mother began teaching and Rossetti’s sister became a live-in governess. Her older brothers were already out of the household, so Rossetti felt increasingly isolated and suffered a nervous breakdown at age 14. During this period, the Rossetti women became more devout in their Christian faith, something that would continue to inform Rossetti’s poetry throughout her life. The family, as a part of the larger Oxford Movement occurring in London, shifted towards the Anglo-Catholic branch of the Church of England.

By age 16, Rossetti wrote more than 50 poems. In 1847, her grandfather privately printed a collection of these poems, dedicated to Rossetti’s mother. While not a public literary debut, this printing was a tradition among other women poets of the time like Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Felicia Hemans. Rossetti’s early poems often were imitations of favorite poems. She experimented with forms like the sonnet, hymn, and ballad and often used stories found in the Bible, folk tales, or saint’s lives to inspire her narratives. Other poems dealt with death and grief.

Starting in 1859 and continuing until 1870, Rossetti began her volunteer work at the St. Mary Magdalene house of charity, which would substantially inform her future poetry. This charity worked with what Rossetti and others of the time referred to as “fallen” women or “prostitutes.” These outdated terms reveal the moral and religious judgment these women experienced after having participated in sex work. While still highly critical of their choices, Rossetti became more sympathetic towards these women as she came to know them.

In 1862, Rossetti’s most influential and notable collection, Goblin Market and other Poems, appeared. This collection was critically applauded, and Rossetti was then considered one of the most important women poets of her day and a natural successor to poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who died the previous year. Rossetti continued writing and publishing throughout her life. Her later works were largely devotional texts and children’s poetry. She published a collection of short stories called Commonplace and Other Short Stories (1870) and a collection of children’s poetry called Sing-Song (1872).

Despite becoming more reclusive in her later years, Rossetti became more politically outspoken. She petitioned to raise the age of consent to protect children from forced sex work. She opposed slavery and criticized imperialism. She objected to military aggression. Most passionately, she criticized cruelty to animals, especially in vivisections. In contrast to these more progressive beliefs, Rossetti was ambivalent to women’s suffrage. These political feelings have created an ambiguity difficult for scholars to solve. Despite her reservations about contemporaneous women’s issues, many recent scholars have argued for feminist readings of her poems. While Rossetti sought to create societal change, her poems are often more concerned with individual salvation rather than social reform.

In the 1870s, Rossetti’s health began declining. She suffered a near-fatal attack from what would be later diagnosed as Graves’ disease. In 1892, Rossetti was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a mastectomy performed at her home, but the cancer returned the following year. On December 29, 1894, Rossetti died. She is commemorated by the Church of England annually on April 27.

Her only living sibling, William, sought to document her life and edit her works. He edited and annotated poems from a variety of publications and included many previously unpublished poems from Rossetti’s life. This collection was published in 1896. The poem “Maude” was published in 1897 and the collection The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti in 1904.

Poem Text

There's blood between us, love, my love,

There's father's blood, there's brother's blood;

And blood's a bar I cannot pass:

I choose the stairs that mount above,

Stair after golden skyward stair,

To city and to sea of glass.

My lily feet are soiled with mud,

With scarlet mud which tells a tale

Of hope that was, of guilt that was,

Of love that shall not yet avail;

Alas, my heart, if I could bare

My heart, this self-same stain is there:

I seek the sea of glass and fire

To wash the spot, to burn the snare;

Lo, stairs are meant to lift us higher:

Mount with me, mount the kindled stair.

Your eyes look earthward, mine look up.

I see the far-off city grand,

Beyond the hills a watered land,

Beyond the gulf a gleaming strand

Of mansions where the righteous sup;

Who sleep at ease among their trees,

Or wake to sing a cadenced hymn

With Cherubim and Seraphim;

They bore the Cross, they drained the cup,

Racked, roasted, crushed, wrenched limb from limb,

They the offscouring of the world:

The heaven of starry heavens unfurled,

The sun before their face is dim.

You looking earthward, what see you?

Milk-white, wine-flushed among the vines,

Up and down leaping, to and fro,

Most glad, most full, made strong with wines,

Blooming as peaches pearled with dew,

Their golden windy hair afloat,

Love-music warbling in their throat,

Young men and women come and go.

You linger, yet the time is short:

Flee for your life, gird up your strength

To flee: the shadows stretched at length

Show that day wanes, that night draws nigh;

Flee to the mountain, tarry not.

Is this a time for smile and sigh,

For songs among the secret trees

Where sudden bluebirds nest and sport?

The time is short and yet you stay:

To-day, while it is called to-day,

Kneel, wrestle, knock, do violence, pray;

To-day is short, to-morrow nigh:

Why will you die? why will you die?

You sinned with me a pleasant sin:

Repent with me, for I repent.

Woe's me the lore I must unlearn!

Woe's me that easy way we went,

So rugged when I would return!

How long until my sleep begin,

How long shall stretch these nights and days?

Surely, clean Angels cry, she prays;

She laves her soul with tedious tears:

How long must stretch these years and years?

I turn from you my cheeks and eyes,

My hair which you shall see no more,--

Alas for joy that went before,

For joy that dies, for love that dies.

Only my lips still turn to you,

My livid lips that cry, Repent!

O weary life, O weary Lent,

O weary time whose stars are few!

How should I rest in Paradise,

Or sit on steps of Heaven alone?

If Saints and Angels spoke of love

Should I not answer from my throne?

Have pity upon me, ye my friends,

For I have heard the sound thereof:

Should I not turn with yearning eyes,

Turn earthwards with a pitiful pang?

O save me from a pang in Heaven!

By all the gifts we took and gave,

Repent, repent, and be forgiven:

This life is long, but yet it ends;

Repent and purge your soul and save:

No gladder song the morning stars

Upon their birthday morning sang

Than Angels sing when one repents.

I tell you what I dreamed last night:

A spirit with transfigured face

Fire-footed clomb an infinite space.

I heard his hundred pinions clang,

Heaven-bells rejoicing rang and rang,

Heaven-air was thrilled with subtle scents,

Worlds spun upon their rushing cars:

He mounted shrieking: "Give me light!"

Still light was poured on him, more light;

Angels, Archangels he outstripped,

Exultant in exceeding might,

And trod the skirts of Cherubim.

Still "Give me light," he shrieked; and dipped

His thirsty face, and drank a sea,

Athirst with thirst it could not slake.

I saw him, drunk with knowledge, take

From aching brows the aureole crown,--

His locks writhed like a cloven snake,--

He left his throne to grovel down

And lick the dust of Seraphs' feet:

For what is knowledge duly weighed?

Knowledge is strong, but love is sweet;

Yea, all the progress he had made

Was but to learn that all is small

Save love, for love is all in all.

I tell you what I dreamed last night:

It was not dark, it was not light,

Cold dews had drenched my plenteous hair

Through clay; you came to seek me there.

And "Do you dream of me?" you said.

My heart was dust that used to leap

To you; I answered half asleep:

"My pillow is damp, my sheets are red,

There's a leaden tester to my bed:

Find you a warmer playfellow,

A warmer pillow for your head,

A kinder love to love than mine."

You wrung your hands; while I like lead

Crushed downwards through the sodden earth:

You smote your hands but not in mirth,

And reeled but were not drunk with wine.

For all night long I dreamed of you:

I woke and prayed against my will,

Then slept to dream of you again.

At length I rose and knelt and prayed:

I cannot write the words I said,

My words were slow, my tears were few;

But through the dark my silence spoke

Like thunder. When this morning broke,

My face was pinched, my hair was gray,

And frozen blood was on the sill

Where stifling in my struggle I lay.

If now you saw me you would say:

Where is the face I used to love?

And I would answer: Gone before;

It tarries veiled in Paradise.

When once the morning star shall rise,

When earth with shadow flees away

And we stand safe within the door,

Then you shall lift the veil thereof.

Look up, rise up: for far above

Our palms are grown, our place is set;

There we shall meet as once we met,

And love with old familiar love.

Rossetti, Christina. “The Convent Threshold.” 1862. The Project Gutenberg.

Summary

The poem centers on the speaker’s struggle between uncertainty and her Christian faith. The speaker, seemingly a young woman, addresses her lover. Her guilt resulting from their premarital sexual relationship drives her to seek repentance and beg her lover to also seek spiritual forgiveness.

The poem opens with the speaker contrasting the blood of human choices with the act of climbing towards the skies. She wants to make this choice to purify herself and ends the first stanza with a plea for her lover to climb the stairs towards heaven with her.

In the second stanza, the speaker describes the lover’s earthly gaze in contrast to her own heavenly gaze. The speaker describes how she can see the beauty of heaven. Righteous souls feast next to angels.

The speaker returns to her lover’s earthly gaze in the third stanza. In contrast to the heavenly celebration, the young people on earth drink while flirting with each other. While they seem equally happy, the speaker is quick to remind her audience that these earthly celebrations are fleeting. The speaker then builds upon this idea, using the next stanza to further convince her lover to repent as time is short and fragile.

The speaker reminds her lover that they sinned together, presumably when they had sex. As they sinned together, she argues that they should now use their bodies to repent together. The speaker does not want to spend her time in heaven guilty and alone; she wants to reunite with her lover. While life ends, repenting will allow them to celebrate with angels for eternity.

Starting in the seventh stanza, the speaker describes two of her dreams. The first dream features a figure, likely Lucifer, who battles for power, light, and knowledge. After his quest, the figure falls. The speaker interprets this dream to show that love is sweeter and stronger than knowledge.

The next dream describes God questioning the speaker. The speaker’s audience has subtly shifted from her lover to God, whom the speaker treats as another lover whom she has disappointed. God asks if she was dreaming of him, and, when the speaker tries to reject the idea, both God and the speaker are devastated. The speaker’s guilt and devastation trouble her. She continues to alternate between troubling dreams and fervent praying until she becomes old and gray.

The audience of the final stanza is more ambiguous. The speaker wonders if her audience, possibly still God or possibly her lover, will recognize her after her religious experiences have transformed her physical appearance. As a result of her repentance, she hopes to lovingly reunite with God, and possibly her lover, in heaven.