From the Antique

● In From the Antique, the speaker expresses weariness and disillusionment with life, lamenting
the limitations placed upon women in society. The poem's contemplative tone and focus on the
speaker's inner feelings create a sense of emotional depth that resonates with the darker themes
present in Goblin Market.
● While Goblin Market employs a narrative structure and vivid symbolism to convey its message,
From the Antique relies more heavily on the speaker's introspection and reflection. Both poems,
however, invite readers to consider the constraints placed upon women and the consequences of
defying societal expectations.
● By comparing Goblin Market and From the Antique, we can gain a deeper understanding of
Rossetti's ability to explore complex emotions and themes using different poetic techniques.
These works showcase her sensitivity to the struggles faced by women in the Victorian era and
her talent for expressing these sentiments through powerful and thought-provoking verse.

Women's Oppression

In "From the Antique," being a woman feels like a worse deal than being nothing at all. The

poem's main speaker—a world-weary woman whose speech is narrated by a sympathetic, nearly

silent listener—is fed up with "a woman's lot," the kind of life allowed to women. Sometimes,

she wishes she were a man. But even such a transformation, she reflects, might not be enough to

lift her spirits at this point. Being a woman has worn her out so thoroughly that she thinks she'd

prefer to be "nothing at all in all the world" than to go on existing in any form. The poem

suggests that sexist oppression has driven thinking, feeling women to despair "from the antique,"

since history began.

The main speaker in this bleak poem sees life in general as "weary" and tiresome, but a

"woman's lot" as "doubly blank"—a hyperbolic phrasing suggesting that women's lives are

blanker than blank, offering a vista of nothing but nothingness. Though she doesn't elaborate on

what's so exhausting and meaningless about her life, readers might find it easy to guess—

especially if they imagine her as a Victorian contemporary of Christina Rossetti's, living in an era
during which women's choices were severely restricted. This speaker seems to have little to do

but "wish and [] wish [she] were a man."

But wishing she were a man, at this stage, simply isn't enough: a life of oppression has made her

feel it would be better to be "nothing at all in all the world" than to go on living. Her suffering is

so deep that she feels prepared to renounce not just her "body," but her "soul": she doesn't want

merely to die, but to never have existed, to be annihilated altogether. A constrained "woman's

lot," the poem thus suggests, can be soul-destroying, robbing women of even the tiniest grain of

hope or meaning. The sympathetic presence of the narrator (in whom the speaker seems to be

confiding) suggests that many women suffer as the speaker does.