Who told my mother of my shame,
Who told my father of my dear?
Oh who but Maude, my sister Maude,
Who lurked to spy and peer.
Cold he lies, as cold as stone,
With his clotted curls about his face:
The comeliest corpse in all the world
And worthy of a queen’s embrace.
You might have spared his soul, sister,
Have spared my soul, your own soul too:
Though I had not been born at all,
He’d never have looked at you.
My father may sleep in Paradise,
My mother at Heaven-gate:
But sister Maude shall get no sleep
Either early or late.
My father may wear a golden gown,
My mother a crown may win;
If my dear and I knocked at Heaven-gate
Perhaps they’d let us in:
But sister Maude, oh sister Maude,
Bide you with death and sin.
Christina Rossetti with Frances Rossetti, her mother.
Overview
How wicked is ‘Sister Maude’?
This seems the main concern preoccupying the reader in this creepy and unsettling poem. For Sister Maude is a poem which explores the purposeful malevolence of Sister Maude herself, a woman so jealous of her sister’s happiness that she destroys it in every way she can.
The narrator of the poem relates here a tale of shocking sibling rivalry which poisons the lives of every one concerned.This poison is shown through the disturbing details of the poem as the narrator reveals the shocking extent of her sister’s interference in her life and that of her lover and close family.
The poem progresses quickly through such details ending with the profoundly bitter last line where Sister Maude is condemned to ‘bide (you)with death and sin.’ The accumulative effect of this final declaration is powerfully corrosive. There can be no forgiveness, no spiritual sanctuary for Sister Maude, even in a poem littered with religious references. This religion leads to the binary choices/ oppositions between heaven and hell.
Further Thoughts.
How ironic might it be that the poem’s ‘ballad’ form ( arranged in quatrains with regular metre) reveals a sordid tale of sibling betrayal precipitated by romantic rivalry? The regularity of the poem’s form is set against the conflict and disorder of the relationship between the two sisters. This incongruity adds to the dramatic effect of the poem and makes the words have a very special ‘pulse’ as we read about the destructiveness of jealousy.
Thus the sound of the poem, its rhythm, communicates an escalating sense of inevitability as the characters move through the ballad to their own fate in either heaven or hell. Perhaps the poet is revealing the way that our choices have consequences that reverberate far beyond this ‘petty’ world and we may damn ourselves forever by our negative actions here.
Stanza One.
Who told my mother of my shame,
Who told my father of my dear?
Oh who but Maude, my sister Maude,
Who lurked to spy and peer.
Cold he lies, as cold as stone,
With his clotted curls about his face:
The comeliest corpse in all the world
And worthy of a queen’s embrace.
The second stanza reveals the lover as both handsome and dead. The repetition of ‘cold’ shows the despair, even disbelief of the speaker at her young lover’s death.The alliterative ‘c’ emphasizes the cries of the speaker as her anguish causes her to choke out her words. The vision before her is unbearable to gaze upon.
This is a dreadful vision to behold,precipitated most horribly we presume, by the jealous war fare leading up to his slaughter.
For this is a shocking and probably unnatural death as his cherubic ‘clotted curls’ may indicate the presence of congealed blood. Has the lover been bludgeoned to death and if so, by whom? The juxtaposition of ‘clotted’ and ‘curls’ creates unease, a terrible conflict between the visual and the emotional. The framing of the handsome face in this way engenders pathos and despair.
And what of our role in this poem as observers? For are we positioned in the same room as the dead lover as we listen to the narrator’s sorry tale? Is the poem therefore a lament over the dead man, teeming with strong emotion and thoughts of retribution, where the reader/listener is invited to judge?
The rhapsodic worship of the dead man’s physical form, ‘the comeliest corpse in the world’ , reveals the tenderness and erotic passion of the speaker and presumably the desirability of the dead man who has been fought over by the sisters, literally to the death!
In death, the male seems still gorgeous , significantly feminized( in his objectification) through a lexis that engenders a sense of his innocence and purity, as well as their sexual passion.
We are all gazing upon his handsome form, culminating in the hyperbole ‘worthy of a queen’s embrace.’ Who could resist this gorgeous man? The speaker compliments her lover ecstatically, perhaps intentionally distancing his transcendent unobtainable beauty from the petty pursuit and vulgarity of Sister Maude, with her sneaky ways and terrifying vengefulness.
Could the murderer be Sister Maude?The poem suggests YES!
Stanza Three
You might have spared his soul, sister,
Have spared my soul, your own soul too:
Though I had not been born at all,
He’d never have looked at you.
The third quatrain directly addresses Sister Maude through the use of the pronoun ‘You’. The speaker uses the repetition of the word ‘soul’ to reveal the wider implications of Sister Maude’s sin. For in killing the lover, Maude has also killed her own sister metaphorically(she may die of heartbreak presumably) and even herself as she is damned to hell for committing this spiteful murder.Everyone in this family is thus suffering terribly as a result of Sister Maude.
There is a very pointed pause between the words ‘soul’ and ‘sister’ in the first line. Anguish, bitterness and irony all interfaced through the powerful use of a comma. These words seem estranged, unfit to run on together,reflecting the hellish destination of Sister Maude.
The almost clinical simplicity of this quatrain reveals the futility of Sister Maude’s jealous passion. This is a deeply religious poem, where the behaviors of the characters have a direct consequence upon the afterlife. The sustained, repetitive sibilance of ‘spared‘ and ‘soul‘ and ‘sister’ give the speaker’s voice an insinuating tonality.
It is as if the speaker is talking in a loaded whisper to her sibling, perhaps because of the haunting presence of the dead lover. I am not sure if the sisters are together in the room or if the narrator is being respectful in her head as she imaginatively maintains this mental dialogue with Sister Maude.
The resounding dismissal of Sister Maude’s romantic intentions give lines 3/4 of this quatrain a heavily ironic turn. Maude could never be worthy of the dead lover, even if her rival had never ‘been born at all.’ Rivalry and grief combine to deliver an emphatic verdict upon Maude’s attractiveness and by implication the speaker’s own.
Look at the weighted meaning and rhyming sound of the pronoun ‘you’ as it is end stopped at the end of stanza 3. We linger over the angry connotations of this pointed dismissal. We can only imagine the emotional turmoil wrought by the sisters’ rivalry.
Stanza Four.
My father may sleep in Paradise,
My mother at Heaven-gate:
But sister Maude shall get no sleep
Either early or late.
Family bereavement surrounds the speaker. Father’s heavenly refuge is guaranteed; mother seems on the brink of death, hovering about ‘Heaven’s gate.’ The full colon after ‘gate’ allows reader and speaker time to reflect upon the magnitude of these family losses. It seems also interesting that the repetition of the pronoun ‘my’ underlines the exclusion of Sister Maude from this family unit. Sister Maude’s behaviour has permanently ruptured the family relationships.
The qualifying use of the word ‘but’ again reinforces estrangement or separation. I am struck by the absolute certainty of the speaker’s pronouncement about the fate of Sister Maude who ‘shall get no sleep.’ Sleep is a metaphor for peace and heavenly rest. Think of Shakespeare’s Macbeth where the eponymous protagonist recognizes that his betrayal and murder of King Duncan has consigned him to everlasting night and hell.’ Macbeth hath murdered sleep.’
I do find there is a slight awkwardness(despite being a clean rhyme) about the last line of this stanza. It seems slightly forced and ‘gate’ and ‘late’ too trite or snatched’ a rhyme to fully satisfy the reader. Maybe this awkwardness reflects the inadequate punishment left for Sister Maude in the light of her crime, hence a form of bathos to reflect the weakness of revenge. It is as if the speaker is losing energy and abandoning her forceful rhymes just , gathering herself finally for the last stanza where the quatrain is abandoned in favour of a six lined stanza instead.
Stanza Five.
My father may wear a golden gown,
My mother a crown may win;
If my dear and I knocked at Heaven-gate
Perhaps they’d let us in:
But sister Maude, oh sister Maude,
Bide you with death and sin.
The last stanza expresses the salvation and sanctity of the speaker’s dead father. He has attained heaven through his good conduct on earth and wears a ‘golden crown’; a haloed effect we assume links him to angelic presence. Her mother too seems likely to gain this heavenly acknowledgement and we sense relief that both parents will be safe in the afterlife.
Even though the speaker’s relationship with her lover brought ‘shame’ as it was a sexual relationship outside marriage, such is their love that heaven seems attainable. ‘Perhaps they’d let us in’. The speaker believes the power of their love will allow them the sanctuary of heaven, though this is not completely certain hence the end stopped hiatus generated by the full colon on line 4.
Only Sister Maude remains beyond any possibility of heavenly salvation. Her murderous conduct has consigned her to hell. Once again we hear the repetition of ‘Sister Maude’ and realise how punishing this final outburst must be. The outrage the speaker feels at her sister’s murder of the lover, and her abject failure as a dutiful, loving sister, leaves the last line inevitable. ‘Bide you with death and sin.’ The pointedly italicised pronoun ‘you’ permanently separates out Maude from all peace and forgiveness.
Tender intimacy is ruined forever. Sister Maude’s only union is with destruction and everlasting hell.
