Summary
The speaker addresses a man named John. Reminding him that she has never claimed to love him, she asks why he insists on wearing her out by begging for her love. Repeating that she never loved him—and indeed that he knew she didn't love him—the speaker asserts that she has done nothing to make John long for her, or to make him follow her around like a sad ghost. Other women would certainly love John if he pursued them. The speaker begs John not to remain single, courting her at the expense of any other potential romance. She accepts the accusation of heartlessness but points out that, if she really is heartless, it's not her fault she can't love John, and it's in fact an error of John's to expect her to.
Analysis
These opening stanzas are comprised of a striking mixture of confident, assertive statements and searching questions or musings. The opening line "I never said I loved you, John" is an example of the former, while the lines "Why will you haunt me with a face as wan / As shows an hour-old ghost?" exemplify the latter. This mixture is interesting and full of tension because of how it reveals the shifting, unsatisfying power dynamic between the speaker and her addressee. Her firm, grammatically simple statements—often starting with a first-person singular pronoun in a show of self-assurance and self-awareness—seem at first to position power over the situation in the speaker's hands. After all, by rejecting John, she seems to be in control of the future (or lack thereof) of their relationship. Moreover, her statements at first might even look like an abuse of her power. They are tonally harsh, with no softening of disappointment. The speaker's evident power, shown in these declarative statements, aligns with what readers might expect from a narrative about unrequited love: the suitor is powerless and passive in the face of his loved one's disinterest. But the use of questions (and inquisitive, questioning sentences), in which the speaker asks John to change or explain his actions, turn that expected power dynamic on its head.
Through the speaker's questions to John, we learn that rejection hasn't been enough to deter him. He's exercising his own form of power by continuing to exhaust the speaker with his pursuit of her. Moreover, he appears to be attempting to chip away at that self-assurance the speaker has displayed by making her feel guilty, accusing her of heartlessness and putting his own sadness on full display. This doesn't seem to work very well. The speaker maintains a no-nonsense attitude, seen in admonitions like "use your common sense." But John's sheer relentlessness keeps the speaker from truly feeling free. She's clearly exhausted and irritated, and possibly even a little guilty, urging John not to waste his life away seeking her love. Her harsh tone, in light of John's implied actions, starts to make more sense—it's clear from the poem that she's explained herself many times, and that she's desperate to convey her meaning to John.
The speaker has the power to reject John. But John has the power to keep her in a kind of limbo, chasing her so tirelessly that their lives remain completely intertwined. The speaker's use of questions addressed to John shows that, despite being rejected, he maintains power. He is being invited to speak; the speaker has no choice but to continue conversing with him, crafting a dialogue so that she can at least hope to understand her pursuer. By showing that John ultimately possesses the ability to mar the speaker's life, despite her nominal veto power, Rossetti takes aim at Victorian norms surrounding love and romance. She suggests that John's sadness, and in general men's possible sadness in the face of rejection, obscures the deeper fact of male control. John uses expectations of female behavior to undermine the speaker's preferences. For instance, by accusing her of heartlessness, he hints that there is something fundamentally flawed or even inhuman about her. What makes this poem compelling, however, is not only its exposure of unfair gender norms and expectations. It is also the way Rossetti overturns those expectations, at least momentarily, by portraying her speaker's intransigence. Rather than slowly losing her resolve, she remains firm and brisk, clearly frustrated but never seeming to relent.
