Loss and Suffering in "soeur Louise De La Misericorde"

“Loss and suffering are familiar conditions in the human experience”

The persistent garden metaphor in Soeur Louise de la Misericorde is not atypical of Rossetti’s work. Other poems like “Shut Out” have used the imagery of a garden (either an impossibly perfect garden, or a diminished one) and almost always in relation to a woman. In “Shut Out”, a woman is ostracised from the garden she once held dear, presumably due to her sinfulness. In “Goblin Market” the fruits of a garden are sold to women foolish enough to find themselves tempted. In Soeur Louise, however, the garden metaphor is used as an inversion of this.

Instead of losing her garden in the physical sense of being “Shut Out” from it, Soeur Louise loses her “garden plot” in a more depreciative sense. Soeur Louise recognises that her “plot” has become “barren mire”, or that her “garden” is slowly decaying. If one is to relate this metaphor to women, as is popular with critics like Simon Avery, this “barren mire” can be read in a more specific way: the effect of menopause. In the third stanza, Soeur Louise complains that her “rose of life [has] gone all to prickles” – in other words, she can no longer bear children. Soeur Louise reminisces of the “desires” of her youth and the “vanity” with which she used to celebrate her desire with, and how this has been lost to age.

The menopause reading takes on greater agency when considering the time at which Rossetti was writing. Critical consensus puts the publication date of this poem being very shortly after her 50th birthday, which may suggest that Rossetti was at that point affected by menopause. In the era Rossetti was writing (and for many years hence) menopause was seen somewhat as an emblem of death – the sign that a woman was reaching the end of their utility. An archaic point of view, but one that Rossetti may well have found herself conflicted by. This may account for the different attitudes toward desire in this poem to, for instance, “Shut Out” or “Goblin Market”. Earlier in her career, she clearly positioned herself within the Christian denouncement of desire. This poem may expose a change of heart.

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