Notes on Christina Rossetti's 'Winter: My Secret'

~'Winter' is the secret. An invitation to 'guess' the secret.

~'Winter' is a pathetic fallacy for the mood of the poem.

~The list of unreal, utopian and utimatly impossible descriptions in Rossetti's final stanza also suggests that the persona is setting up a series of impossible-to-fill criteria in order to avoid revealing her secret.

'I tell me secret? No indeed, not I;' 

~Defensive rhetorical question, challenges the prospect of the secret being revealed. 

~'No' and 'Not' are double negatives, implies further that the speaker is determined to keep themselves private.

'But not today; it froze, and blows and snows,' 

~Humerous sarcasm suggests a childlike, patronising tone and confirms the control of the speaker.

~Riddle like qualities 

~Symplistic rhyming 

'But only just my fun.' 

~Intellectual game.

~Victorian women not aloud a sense of self.

~Similar to the humour of 'No, thankyou, John'.

'Nipping and clipping thro' my wraps and all.' 

~People trying to see/understand her hidden self. 

~Similar endings of 'nipping and clipping'.

'Golden fruit'

~Unreal, utopian and ultimately never to occur.