An Understanding of Rossetti's Methods and Concerns in "Promises Like Piecrust" Yaw Guan Hong 11th Grade

"Promises like Piecrust" by Christina Rossetti relates a narrative between a speaker and beloved in regards to the other’s romantic attraction towards the speaker. The title of the poem is taken from the expression ‘Promises are like pie crust, they are made to be broken’, likening the difficulty of keeping a promise to the fragility of pie crusts, a thing that is easily broken. The title captures, in essence, the running theme throughout this Rossetti poem, that promises, and perhaps people, are fragile and fleeting.

Rossetti structures the poem in an argumentative fashion, acting as a plea to the addressee of the poem. The steady seven-syllable meter reflecting the speaker’s stable emotional and mental state when presenting her argument against her beloved, painting the speaker as reasonable and unencumbered by emotion. The alternating rhyme (ABAB/CDCD) is suggestive of a lack of mutuality between the two parties, with neither of them being able to meet the other in terms of their wants in the relationship. It suggests a sense of wavering in the speaker, who perhaps is not as certain as she seems.The paradoxical opening line in the first stanza of ‘Promise me no promises’ and the following line ‘So will I not promise you;’...