Views of Death in 'Song' and 'Remember' by Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti wrote the poems ‘Song’ and ‘Remember’ during Victorian times, which was when people had a fascination with death, and by this time people had reasonable expectations of living to old age, which is why death at a young age was considered tragic. Funeral and burial arrangements became more extravagant at this time as well, and loved ones were expected to mourn for a long time. Christina Rossetti’s poems ‘Song’ and ‘Remember’ contradict the Victorian views on death in many ways.

Firstly, both poems are about the speaker, who is going to die soon, telling a loved one that they should not mourn them. ‘Song’ contains the line saying that they do not want a  ‘shady cypress tree’, which is a tree which lives for a very long time and is used as a way of saying that a person’s spirit lives on, also allowing people to remember them for a long time. By saying that they do not wish to have one of these trees, they are implying that they do not wish to be mourned and remembered, and would rather their loved ones moved on. This goes against what the Victorian attitudes towards mourning, and is Rossetti’s way of saying that the traditions have to change.

‘Remember’ builds up to the climax of ‘Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad’, which show how Rossetti rejects the Victorian ideal of mourning and not being allowed to be happy for a certain amount of time after someone has died, as she would rather her loved ones be happy rather than be obligated to feel sad. Christina Rossetti also uses a euphemism in the poem ‘Remember’ for death which is, ‘when I am gone away’ as oppose to in ‘Song’ when she uses the line ‘when I am dead’. This gives the impression that the speaker in ‘Remember’ hasn’t come to terms with their own death as much as the speaker in ‘Song’ has.