The Choice (Three Sonnets).

Perhaps the most important point to remember in reading these sonnets is that “the choice” offered is by no means one between alternatives. Given the preoccupations of The House of Life and DGR's work in general, each of the three alternatives here was seriously regarded by DGR, nor do any of the three develop critiques of the limitations of the others. (WMR named them “physical enjoyment”, “religious asceticism”, and “the theory of self-development”: see WMR, DGR as Designer and Writer 233 ). The sonnets therefore raise once again some of the central issues of the sequence as a whole, for each one lays down a kind of absolute demand. In doing so they call attention to the problem of “the choice”: that traditional thought has arranged these alternatives into a hierarchy of goods (with the hierarchy varying according to different places, times, and circumstances). In DGR's presentation, the imperative to make a choice, and therefore to declare a hierarchy of values, is dramatized in the opening words of each sonnet; but DGR's nonnormative approach to each alternative implicitly undercuts the possibility of making a hierarchized choice. In short, each imperative makes an absolute claim. If contradictions appear to arise from that situation, the sonnets argue (implicitly) that the problems must not be interpreted in terms of the sonnets or the arguments they represent.

Baum argued that “the sonnets do not fit well with the rest [of The House of Life], especially in thought” (see Baum, The House of Life 174 ); but their relevance is personal and historical, reflecting that relation between DGR's early and later thought that we see in all the (earlier written) sonnets that he recovered for his 1870 volume. These sonnets “are to be read as documents of the Pre-Raphaelite period” (Baum, Poems, Ballads, and Sonnets 307n ) as much as“St. Luke the Painter” and the “Old and New Art” sequence, which follow these in the 1870 and 1881 volumes respectively.

One further aspect of the sonnets deserves attention: the rhetorical structure. It makes a great difference if we understand the addressee as DGR or the reader; and, concomitantly, how we understand the source of the statements and injunctions in the sonnets. The issue becomes especially acute in the third of the sonnets.

According to WMR, all three of “The Choice” sonnets “appertain to [1847], or perhaps to an early date in 1848” (WMR, Family Letters I. 108 ). When DGR thought to include them among the works to be printed in his 1870 volume, he was “not yet quite certain” and asked his brother's opinion. WMR told him “I incline to the admission of these sonnets” (see WMR's letter to DGR of 23 August 1869, Peatie, Selected Letters of WMR, 218 and DGR's to his brother of 21 August, Fredeman Correspondence, 69. 130 ).

The Fitzwilliam composite “House of Life” sequence has corrected copies of sonnet I, sonnet II, and sonnet III; the Troxell composite “House of Life” sequence has copies of sonnet II and sonnet III.

DGR revised the text of the first sonnet considerably (and repeatedly) between its first printing in 1869 and its final publication in DGR's lifetime in 1881. The other two sonnets show revisions but even the substantive ones are relatively insignificant.

First printed in August 1869 as part of thePenkill Proofs, the sonnets remained in all proof stages and were published in the 1870 Poems and thereafter. They are The House of Life Sonnets XXXV-XXXVII in the 1870 volume, and Sonnets LXXI-LXXIII in 1881.

“The Choice I”:“Easily the best” of the three, according to Baum ( The House of Life 174 ), the sonnet imagines life under the sign of what WMR called “physical enjoyment” ( DGR as Designer and Writer 233 ). That choice of phrase is significant for it signals WMR's move to avoid the pejorative overtones of a term like “hedonism”. In this reading WMR shows his awareness of DGR's wholly positive representation of this sonnet's constellation of ideas.

The theme of death in The House of Life, elsewhere treated in a highly positive fashion through its association with certain spiritual ideas (see “Bridal Birth” and “Newborn Death”), is here given an unusual affirmation in a very different lexicon. The final three lines here are crucial (the 1870 version is much to be preferred to the 1881): the sonnet measures a death-in-life existence against a rich mortality in a manner that parallels DGR's much-loved Rubaiyat.

DGR revised the text considerably as it passed through the 1869-1870 proofs before its publication in the 1870 Poems. Further revisions were made when it was republished in 1881, and one change was made (in line 5) between the first and second editions of the 1870 volume. WMR and DGR in particular discussed in an exchange of letters the text of line 11, which underwent various alterations (see the letters of the brothers to each other of August and September 1869 and WMR, Classified Lists, 218 ).

As in the case of “The Blessed Damozel” and a number of other of his poems, DGR was concerned that readers might think he was plagiarizing in this sonnet. Here the correspondence is with Browning rather than Tennyson: “There is a very vexatious point connected with this sonnet which was one reason for my thinking of omitting the three. The idea—‘They die not, never having lived’, is identical with one at the close of Browning's “In a Gondola” [line 230]. I know that I had never read that poem, and that on first reading it this annoying fact struck me at once, but then this is not known to the world. The point is just what is wanted and not possible to alter.” DGR then adds that a similar circumstance applies to both “Love's Nocturn” and “A New Year's Burden” (see DGR's letter of 26 August 1869, Fredeman, Correspondence, 69. 139 ).

“The Choice II”: By running the octave and the sestet together DGR seems to have wanted to construct a formal equivalent for the theme of spiritual anxiety that governs the sonnet.

Like the other sonnets in “The Choice” group, this one reflects DGR's early preoccuption with ideas associated with Pre-Raphaelite programs. Here religious and biblical sources provide a point of view that can look critically at some of the more common “progressive” ideas of the Victorian period.

One manuscript of the sonnet in the Troxell Collection, Princeton University, is quite early, as the handwriting shows. It probably dates back to the late 1840s. Printer's copy for the Penkill Proofs was made from this manuscript.

The text in the Penkill Proofs undergoes only two minor revisions before it is printed in the 1870 volume, and it remains stable after that. The early manuscript of the sonnet, however, has several substantial variations.

The image at lines 6-9 focuses one of DGR's favorite Pre-Raphaelite constellations (i.e., angelic presences).

“The Choice II” is probably the most biblical of the three. The language throughout recalls various texts from both the Old and the New Testament.

“The Choice III”: This sonnet's critique of what WMR named “the theory of self-development” calls attention to the way DGR involves each of the three sonnets with the others. This sonnet takes up a key ideological locus of Victorian secular culture. Its limitations are partly defined in the sonnet itself, but partly in relation to the ideological positions defined in the other two sonnets.

DGR's habit of torquing his language for unexpected associations opens this sonnet to a self-reflexive reading. The key terms are “measured” (line 3) and “line” (line 12). To the degree that we permit the literary overtones of these words to surface, to that extent the sonnet becomes a comment on the writer's life, and perforce on the writing of The House of Life itself. Indeed, this old sonnet and its companions (written in the late 1840s, but here recovered for a further range of meaning in 1869-1870) becomes a performative instance of the semantic argument.

The text in the Penkill Proofs undergoes only three minor revisions before it is printed in the 1870 volume, and it remains stable after that.