True Woman (group of three poems)

Baum's commentaries are useful, not least for their critical sympathy with the ideology of these remarkably Victorian sonnets. As he observes, in these works “Anything like intelligence, anything like an individuality of her own, anything more than being an ornament and comfort to man, is not desiderated” (149). WMR has a similar comment, though given from a point of view more attentive to the Swednborgian/Blakean orientation of the sonnets (see the third): “A certain interchangeability of idea and of imagery—the things of time symbolizing the things of eternity, or vice versâ—appears to me to be one of the most ruling qualities of Rossetti's poetry, and a leading source of that difficulty or elusive character which many readers feel in it. The present sonnet is a prominent example. The reader's mind remains in suspense as to whether the poet is speaking of what takes place in heaven (in the ordinary sense of that term), or of what takes place on earth. It appears to me that, by strict attention to the contents of this sonnet, one finds that he only speaks of what takes place on earth.” (223) That last sentence undercores the “fleshly” emphasis that pervades what readers, especially early readers, were apt to call the “mystical” character of DGR's peculiar neo-platonism.

DGR seems to have written these sonnets in late November-December 1880, as we see from his letters of that period. That he had them all completed by 17 December is evident from his letter of that date to Hall Caine: “I wish I had you by me to hear 3 sonnets with which I wind up Part I of The House of Life. They are called True Woman and are my best” (see Fredeman, Correspondence, forthcoming) and Bryson, DGR and Jane Morris Correspondence, 165 ).

The earliest draft of “True Woman. I. Herself” is at Princeton in the same folder with the earliest (pencil) draft of “True Woman. III. Her Heaven”.

Separately at Princeton is the composite “House of Life” sequence which has five manuscripts: for “True Woman. I. Herself” a fair copy; for “True Woman. II. Her Love” a fair copy and a corrected copy; and for “True Woman. III. Her Heaven” a lightly corrected and a heavily corrected copy. The Fitzwilliam composite “House of Life” sequence has three fair copies, one each for “True Woman. I. Herself”, “True Woman. II. Her Love ”, and “True Woman. III. Her Heaven”. There is also a fair copy of the three sonnets in the Bodleian's miscellaneous collection of DGR's verse.

Several draft scraps of these sonnets appear in DGR's notebooks. There is a prose cartoon for the three sonnet sequence as well as a draft of lines 13-14 of “True Woman. III. Her Heaven” scripted in Notebook III (Duke University Library). The Ashley notebooks also have drafts: in Notebook II, line 1 and lines 13-14 of “True Woman. III. Her Heaven”;

First published in the 1881 Ballads and Sonnets and collected thereafter.

In his commentary on the sonnet WMR observes that his brother was painting The Day-Dream when writing these sonnets, and that the painting was originally ornamented with snowdrops (not honeysuckle).

“II. Her Love”: Baum focuses on the conceit of the mirror and observes: “No one but Rossetti or John Donne could, or would, have treated it” in such an extended fashion (151). The remark is acute. Also worth noting is the deliberateness with which DGR continues to elaborate the figure of the mirror (see “The Dark Glass” and its related sonnets).