The Full Text of “Maude Clare”
1Out of the church she followed them
2With a lofty step and mien:
3His bride was like a village maid,
4Maude Clare was like a queen.
5“Son Thomas, ” his lady mother said,
6With smiles, almost with tears:
7“May Nell and you but live as true
8As we have done for years;
9“Your father thirty years ago
10Had just your tale to tell;
11But he was not so pale as you,
12Nor I so pale as Nell.”
13My lord was pale with inward strife,
14And Nell was pale with pride;
15My lord gazed long on pale Maude Clare
16Or ever he kissed the bride.
17“Lo, I have brought my gift, my lord,
18Have brought my gift, ” she said:
19To bless the hearth, to bless the board,
20To bless the marriage-bed.
21“Here’s my half of the golden chain
22You wore about your neck,
23That day we waded ankle-deep
24For lilies in the beck:
25“Here’s my half of the faded leaves
26We plucked from the budding bough,
27With feet amongst the lily leaves, -
28The lilies are budding now.”
29He strove to match her scorn with scorn,
30He faltered in his place:
31“Lady, ” he said, - “Maude Clare, ” he said, -
32“Maude Clare, ” – and hid his face.
33She turn’d to Nell: “My Lady Nell,
34I have a gift for you;
35Though, were it fruit, the blooms were gone,
36Or, were it flowers, the dew.
37“Take my share of a fickle heart,
38Mine of a paltry love:
39Take it or leave it as you will,
40I wash my hands thereof.”
41“And what you leave, ” said Nell, “I’ll take,
42And what you spurn, I’ll wear;
43For he’s my lord for better and worse,
44And him I love Maude Clare.
45“Yea, though you’re taller by the head,
46More wise and much more fair:
47I’ll love him till he loves me best,
48Me best of all Maude Clare.
The Full Text of “Maude Clare”
1Out of the church she followed them
2With a lofty step and mien:
3His bride was like a village maid,
4Maude Clare was like a queen.
5“Son Thomas, ” his lady mother said,
6With smiles, almost with tears:
7“May Nell and you but live as true
8As we have done for years;
9“Your father thirty years ago
10Had just your tale to tell;
11But he was not so pale as you,
12Nor I so pale as Nell.”
13My lord was pale with inward strife,
14And Nell was pale with pride;
15My lord gazed long on pale Maude Clare
16Or ever he kissed the bride.
17“Lo, I have brought my gift, my lord,
18Have brought my gift, ” she said:
19To bless the hearth, to bless the board,
20To bless the marriage-bed.
21“Here’s my half of the golden chain
22You wore about your neck,
23That day we waded ankle-deep
24For lilies in the beck:
25“Here’s my half of the faded leaves
26We plucked from the budding bough,
27With feet amongst the lily leaves, -
28The lilies are budding now.”
29He strove to match her scorn with scorn,
30He faltered in his place:
31“Lady, ” he said, - “Maude Clare, ” he said, -
32“Maude Clare, ” – and hid his face.
33She turn’d to Nell: “My Lady Nell,
34I have a gift for you;
35Though, were it fruit, the blooms were gone,
36Or, were it flowers, the dew.
37“Take my share of a fickle heart,
38Mine of a paltry love:
39Take it or leave it as you will,
40I wash my hands thereof.”
41“And what you leave, ” said Nell, “I’ll take,
42And what you spurn, I’ll wear;
43For he’s my lord for better and worse,
44And him I love Maude Clare.
45“Yea, though you’re taller by the head,
46More wise and much more fair:
47I’ll love him till he loves me best,
48Me best of all Maude Clare.
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“Maude Clare” Introduction
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"Maude Clare" tells the story of an aristocrat named Lord Thomas who chooses to marry the wholesome Nell, a seemingly ideal Victorian bride, over the bold Maude Clare, whose reputation has been ruined as a result of her previous romance with Lord Thomas. Using the traditional ballad form, the poem elevates this Victorian love triangle into a tragic tale of sexism and hypocrisy. By depicting the spurned Maude Clare with sympathy—and turning an unflinching gaze on the callous, consequence-free actions of Lord Thomas—"Maude Clare" reveals the misogynistic double standards at the heart of Victorian society.
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“Maude Clare” Summary
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Maude Clare followed the newlyweds out of the church, walking with poise, head held high. Lord Thomas's bride, Nell, looked like a simple country maiden, while in contrast, his ex-lover Maude Clare looked stately as a queen.
"My son, Thomas," his mother said to him, smiling through her tears of joy, "I hope that you and Nell are as faithful to each other as your father and I have been for years."
"You know," she added, "your father faced a similar predicament, torn between love and marriage, before our wedding thirty years ago. But he did not seem quite as conflicted as you do, and I was not as anxious about his first love as Nell seems."
Indeed, Lord Thomas seemed so torn with indecision that he had turned white. Nell was white-faced too, but with pride and relief that she had won his hand. Yet Lord Thomas could not look away from Maude Clare, herself white-faced with anger, even as he kissed his new bride.
"Excuse me," Maude Clare interrupted, "I have brought you a wedding gift, my lord. May this gift be a blessing on your shared hearth and home, your shared table, and indeed your shared marital bed."
"Here, take back my half of the golden chain you gave me. You wore the other half around your neck, you will recall, on that day we spent together, wading barefoot in the mountain stream, looking for lilies."
"And here, take back my half of the wilted leaves we plucked, back when the trees were beginning to bud. Remember our bare feet among the sprouting lily leaves? Now the lilies are in full bloom."
In response, Lord Thomas tried to meet Maude Clare's contempt with his own, but stuttered and failed. "Lady," he said, then more intimately, "Maude Clare, Maude Clare"—before at last he turned away, unable to even face her.
Maude Clare turned to Nell, his new bride, instead. "My lady Nell," she said, "I have a gift for you too. Though I should note, if this gift were fruit it would be spoiled or eaten by now, or if it were flowers, the dew would be all dried up."
"Here, Nell, take my portion of Lord Thomas's unfaithful heart, my share of his weak and worthless love. Take it or leave it, in fact. I don't care, I am through with him."
"I'll take your leftovers," Nell said. "I'll wrap myself in the remains of the love you've rejected—because he's my husband now, for better or worse, and I love him, Maude Clare."
"Yes, that's right. I know you are taller, and smarter, and prettier than me, but I am his wife now, and I will love him until he loves me back and loves me back. Indeed, I'll love him until he loves me better than you, Maude Clare."
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“Maude Clare” Themes
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Love, Marriage, and Social Expectations
“Maude Clare” focuses on a Victorian-era love triangle between the aristocrat Lord Thomas, his ex-lover Maude Clare, and his new bride Nell. Though the poem suggests that Lord Thomas truly cared for the bold and fierce Maude Clare, and may even still have feelings for her, he marries the demure and wholesome Nell instead. The poem implies that Nell better fits the Victorian ideal of a bride, making the matter of which woman Lord Thomas “loves best,” as Nell puts it, irrelevant. The poem thus highlights the pressures of societal expectations in Victorian society, revealing how rigid ideas about propriety and status lead only to heartbreak, resentment, and dissatisfaction.
Details throughout the poem imply that Lord Thomas prefers Maude Clare, who’s presented as Nell’s opposite in many ways: she is taller, “more wise and much more fair,” and Lord Thomas cannot stop looking at her, even as he kisses his new bride. Where Maude Clare looks “like a queen,” Nell looks “like a village maid,” and the poem implies that Maude Clare and Lord Thomas had an intimate relationship in the not so distant past.
Yet the love between Lord Thomas and Maude Clare was not, in the Victorian era, sufficient reason for marriage. In fact, the opposite is true: any intimacy before marriage was scandalous in a society that severely restricted the interactions of unmarried men and women. Ironically, then, Maude Clare and Lord Thomas’s relationship is the very thing that dooms her chances of becoming his bride! In society’s eyes, she is an unacceptable choice.
Maude seems righteously furious at this humiliating turn of events, and Lord Thomas doesn’t seems all that happy about it either. For starters, he is not described as a joyous groom, but instead as “pale with inward strife.” Nell gets the short end of the stick too, explicitly acknowledging that Lord Thomas has chosen her for reasons other than love; she vows at the poem’s close to “love him till he loves me best,” indicating that she knows full well that she comes in second place—even on their wedding day.
Even Lord Thomas’s mother seems to be in the know; she praises her son’s choice of bride, subtly implying he might have decided otherwise. She also suggests that Lord Thomas’s father faced a similar predicament before his own marriage, underscoring the longstanding power of the social expectations guiding love and marriage in Victorian culture.
Thus, though the poem implies that Maude Clare and Lord Thomas’s love was sincere, readers will perhaps sense that Lord Thomas was always going to make the socially acceptable choice to marry Nell. In other words, the question of which force would win out—romantic love or societal status—was never in doubt. It does not matter who Lord Thomas “loves best,” however much Nell may wish to one day win her husband’s heart; it only matters who society will judge as suitable on his arm at the altar.
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Hypocrisy and Sexism in Victorian England
Throughout “Maude Clare,” the poem makes clear that Lord Thomas and Maude Clare behaved in ways that were considered unacceptable for unmarried lovers in Victorian England. Though the extent of their romance remains ambiguous, even the hint of impropriety is enough to taint Maude Clare’s reputation and ruin her chances for marriage. In contrast, Lord Thomas is able to marry another woman without any meaningful consequences. This demonstrates the sexist hypocrisy at the heart of Victorian society, and how difficult it was for a “fallen woman”—or, really, any woman who broke with Victorian ideals of femininity—to regain her footing in society.
The poem presents Maude Clare as a kind of femme fatale, described as so beautiful and alluring that Lord Thomas cannot look away from her. She’s also bold, assertive, and openly angry—all traits that go against strict Victorian expectations that women be pure, gentle, and demure.
The poem also suggests that Lord Thomas may have led Maude Clare on, or that she’d hoped for marriage before her lover tossed her aside for Nell. Maude Clare’s bold decision to confront Lord Thomas at his wedding thus briefly offers the chance for some catharsis. She makes it impossible for Lord Thomas to blithely move on to the next stage of his life—marital bliss with a more “acceptable” woman—without facing at least some consequences.
Lord Thomas seems weak and pitiful in these moments; in response to Maude Clare’s accusations, he “falter[s]” over his words and is unable to muster any kind of reply, ultimately just “hid[ing] his face” from her. Above all, the poem draws attention to Lord Thomas’s embarrassment about being called to account in such a public setting—or perhaps, more generously, his shame over how he and society have treated Maude Clare in the aftermath of their relationship.
Yet Maude Clare remains the victim in this situation. The poem’s closing lines, and the day itself, ultimately belong to Nell, the woman who keeps her rage in check and stands by her husband (though it’s worth noting that Nell marrying a man who doesn’t love her isn’t really “winning” here either). However righteous Maude Clare’s anger may be, and whatever Lord Thomas may have once promised her, it’s clear that Maude Clare has already suffered and will likely continue to suffer.
Ultimately, this fleeting moment of confrontation is the only satisfaction or retribution that Maude Clare is likely to receive, and readers might even assume that her public confrontation of her ex will only reinforce the damage to her reputation. She now faces a life permanently damaged by Victorian society’s hypocritical and sexist treatment of premarital romance, demonstrating the impossibility for any woman—even one as sympathetic as Maude Clare—to rise above such damning misogyny.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Maude Clare”
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Lines 1-4
Out of the church she followed them
With a lofty step and mien:
His bride was like a village maid,
Maude Clare was like a queen.The first stanza sets the scene by describing a woman who follows a bride and groom out of the church on their wedding day. The bride, the speaker notes, "was like a village maid," whereas the other woman, Maude Clare, "was like a queen."
These similes not only introduce the two women, but also immediately juxtapose the pair. The parallelism between these phrases (note how lines 3 and 4 follow the same grammatical structure) emphasizes the sharp contrast between the two women: the bride seems humble and unsophisticated, while Maude Clare is bold and regal, walking "with a lofty step and mien."
Notably, Maude Clare is the only character named in this stanza. Though later the bride and groom are identified as Nell and Lord Thomas, here Nell is defined merely as "his bride" and Lord Thomas is even more obscured, his presence hinted at only through the pronouns "them" and "his." While Maude Clare's identity as Lord Thomas's ex-lover is not clarified until a little later, the poem's use of her name in both the title and the first stanza emphasizes her role as its central figure.
Finally, this first stanza establishes the poem's rhyme scheme, meter, and form. It uses alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and trimeter, meaning odd-numbered lines have four iambs (four da-DUMs) and even-numbered lines have just three. Take lines 3-4 as an example:
His bride | was like | a vil- | lage maid,
Maude Clare | was like | a queen.There are variations here, as with the spondee (stressed-stressed) that draws extra attention to Maude Clare's name, but the rhythm is still clear. This meter plus the ABCB rhyme scheme (lines 2 and 4 rhyme, but lines 1 and 3 don't) indicate that the poem is a ballad.
This is a traditional form of English verse, often set to music and used to recount legends and myths. By using this particular form to tell the story of "Maude Clare," the poem instantly associates itself with a poetic tradition of high romance and tragedy.
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Lines 5-8
“Son Thomas, ” his lady mother said,
With smiles, almost with tears:
“May Nell and you but live as true
As we have done for years; -
Lines 9-12
“Your father thirty years ago
Had just your tale to tell;
But he was not so pale as you,
Nor I so pale as Nell.” -
Lines 13-16
My lord was pale with inward strife,
And Nell was pale with pride;
My lord gazed long on pale Maude Clare
Or ever he kissed the bride. -
Lines 17-20
“Lo, I have brought my gift, my lord,
Have brought my gift, ” she said:
To bless the hearth, to bless the board,
To bless the marriage-bed. -
Lines 21-24
“Here’s my half of the golden chain
You wore about your neck,
That day we waded ankle-deep
For lilies in the beck: -
Lines 25-28
“Here’s my half of the faded leaves
We plucked from the budding bough,
With feet amongst the lily leaves, -
The lilies are budding now.” -
Lines 29-32
He strove to match her scorn with scorn,
He faltered in his place:
“Lady, ” he said, - “Maude Clare, ” he said, -
“Maude Clare, ” – and hid his face. -
Lines 33-36
She turn’d to Nell: “My Lady Nell,
I have a gift for you;
Though, were it fruit, the blooms were gone,
Or, were it flowers, the dew. -
Lines 37-40
“Take my share of a fickle heart,
Mine of a paltry love:
Take it or leave it as you will,
I wash my hands thereof.” -
Lines 41-44
“And what you leave, ” said Nell, “I’ll take,
And what you spurn, I’ll wear;
For he’s my lord for better and worse,
And him I love Maude Clare. -
Lines 45-48
“Yea, though you’re taller by the head,
More wise and much more fair:
I’ll love him till he loves me best,
Me best of all Maude Clare.
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“Maude Clare” Symbols
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The Hearth, the Board, the Marriage-Bed
The hearth, the board, and the marriage-bed together serve as a symbol of the way Maude Clare disrupts and tarnishes the new marriage of her ex-lover Lord Thomas and his bride Nell.
In the fifth stanza, having already attended their wedding and followed them out of the church, Maude Clare explicitly confronts Lord Thomas and Nell, proclaiming that she has brought them gifts:
To bless the hearth, to bless the board,
To bless the marriage-bed.
A "hearth" is part of a fireplace, and has long represented warmth, comfort, and blissful domesticity in art and literature, even giving rise to the expression "hearth and home" as a reference to one's beloved home and family. A "board," in Victorian speech, refers to a table—the site of shared family meals, as well as a space to invite community and provide generosity. And the "marriage-bed," of course, refers to the literal space where a marriage is consummated, the intimate site of love and procreation.
Taken together, these three domestic sites all represent the foundation of the new couple's married life. Maude Clare's gifts are thus ostensibly meant to "bless" the new couple's marriage. However, given her identity as Lord Thomas's ex-lover (and the fact that her gifts turn out to be old tokens of their love), Maude Clare's blessing turns out to be ironic. Instead, her gifts serve as more of a curse, as she deliberately intrudes on these symbolic sites of the couple's new, shared life.
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Lilies
When Maude Clare reminds Lord Thomas of their past romance, she reminisces about a day they spent together "wad[ing] ankle-deep / for lilies in the beck."
At first glance, this recollection of flowers on a pretty spring day simply serves as a romantic detail from a lovers' outing. However, lilies have long been associated with purity, chastity, and fertility, and Victorian readers at the time "Maude Clare" was published would have been quick to make those symbolic associations.
- Maude Clare's reference to this particular flower thus emphasizes the romantic (and likely sexual) nature of Lord Thomas and Maude Clare's past relationship, and heightens her veiled accusation that Lord Thomas ruined her sexual reputation.
What's more, Maude Clare's remark, in line 28, that "the lilies are budding now," can be interpreted on two levels:
- On the one hand, Maude Clare may simply be referring to the "budding" romance between Lord Thomas and Nell—their relationship has proven to be the fertile or successful one, whereas Maude Clare and Lord Thomas merely frolicked "amongst the lily leaves" before they were in full bloom.
- On the other hand, however, Maude Clare may also be revealing, on a very subtle level, that she herself is "budding," or pregnant, as a result of that day spent with Lord Thomas.
Either way, the presence of lilies in the poem serves as a clear symbol of the romantic relationship between Maude Clare and Lord Thomas, and hints at the possibility of sexual intimacy as well.
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Maude Clare's Gifts
The two gifts that Maude Clare bestows upon Lord Thomas at his wedding—a golden chain and some faded leaves—symbolize lost love and broken promises. They help to convey Maude Clare's ill wishes for his marriage to Nell.
Both the golden chain and the faded leaves are love tokens from the past romance between Maude Clare and Lord Thomas. Readers can assume that they each initially seemed to Maude Clare like hopeful symbols of the romantic link between herself and Lord Thomas:
- The first, half of his golden chain, is a clear symbol of connection;
- The second, leaves "plucked from [a] budding bough" during their romantic outing, is likewise a natural symbol of their blooming romance.
Now, however, as Maude Clare returns these items to Lord Thomas, they have lost their hopeful shine. Instead, they represent the rupture of his romantic overtures and the broken promises he made to her. Though Maude Clare claims that she offers these gifts back to Lord Thomas as blessings upon his marriage, it is quite clear, given their past relationship and the nature of the gifts themselves, that they are meant more as a curse than a blessing.
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Fruit blooms and flower dew
The bloom-less fruit and dried up flowers in lines 35-36 represent Lord Thomas's damaged heart—and perhaps his inability to love again after Maude Clare.
Maude Clare brings this up when offering Nell "my share of a fickle heart" and "paltry love," in essence bestowing upon Nell whatever romantic connection remains between herself and Lord Thomas. In doing so, Maude Clare remarks that this gift, "were it fruit, the blooms were gone / Or, were it flowers, the dew." In other words, she compares their soured romance to something more tangible, assigning physical symbols to Lord Thomas's fickle heart and paltry love.
It is important to note that Maude Clare describes these symbolic items as permanently damaged. Blooms and dew represent freshness and vitality, but Maude Clare explicitly states that if Lord Thomas's love took the form of fruit or flowers, these elements would be missing. The gift that she's giving Nell—her husband's "fickle" heart—is spoiled and dried up.
Maude Clare may refer to this offering as a gift, but the symbolism of the rotten fruit and dried-up dew makes clear that what she's really bestowing upon the new bride is a burden and a curse. The implication of Maude Clare's metaphor is that Lord Thomas's heart is used up, and thus that Nell will never experience his love in its purest, freshest form.
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“Maude Clare” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Anaphora
Anaphora is most evident in "Maude Clare" in the dialogue spoken by Maude Clare herself. First, she repeats "to bless" three times in quick succession in lines 19-20, claiming that her wedding gifts for Lord Thomas serve:
To bless the hearth, to bless the board,
To bless the marriage-bed.Shortly thereafter, Maude Clare delivers the gifts themselves, and uses anaphora once again to introduce them, repeating "here's my half" at the opening of subsequent stanzas:
"Here’s my half of the golden chain
[...]
"Here’s my half of the faded leavesIn both cases, Maude Clare's use of anaphora draws attention to her rather shocking actions: delivering ill-intentioned wedding gifts that cast a shadow over the newlyweds by reminding Lord Thomas, his bride, and his guests of his past relationship with Maude Clare. The repetition creates a rousing rhythm, drumming up emotion and helping express Maude Clare's barely-concealed fury and frustration.
Later in the poem, however, Lord Thomas's new bride Nell also uses anaphora to deliver a rebuttal to Maude Clare:
“And what you leave, ” said Nell, “I’ll take,
And what you spurn, I’ll wear;Similarly, the parallelism of these opening clauses helps convey Nell's emotion. By turning the tables on Maude Clare and using the same poetic device to explicitly lay claim to her husband, Nell also asserts her own dominance in the love triangle as Lord Thomas's wife.
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Assonance
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Caesura
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Dialogue
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Imagery
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Irony
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Juxtaposition
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Metaphor
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Parallelism
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Repetition
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Simile
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Alliteration
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"Maude Clare" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Lofty
- Mien
- Strife
- Hearth
- Board
- Beck
- Bough
- Scorn
- Faltered
- Fickle
- Paltry
- Thereof
- Spurn
- Fair
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Noble, in character and spirit; haughty and overbearing.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Maude Clare”
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Form
"Maude Clare" is a ballad, a traditional form of English verse that tells a story. One of the oldest poetic forms in English, ballads were often set to music and captured the local legends or romantic stories of rural communities. The tales of Robin Hood, for example, can be found in many ballads. By the time "Maude Clare" was written, however, the ballad had become a more formal poetic tradition, employed by likes of Robert Burns and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Though "Maude Clare" does deviate a bit from the ballad's classic rhyme scheme, on the whole the poem adheres faithfully to the formal conventions of the ballad. It is made up of twelve stanzas of four lines each (making them quatrains), which alternate between iambic tetrameter and trimeter. (More on the poem's rhyme and meter in the Rhyme Scheme and Meter sections of this guide.)
Likewise, the poem's tragic tale of a love triangle fits right into the ballad's typical subject matter. However, "Maude Clare's" sympathetic rendering of a fallen woman, and its emphasis on the sexist hypocrisy of Victorian mores, make this poem an unconventional ballad in its willingness to highlight and confront unjust societal norms.
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Meter
"Maude Clare" alternates between lines of iambic trimeter and iambic tetrameter, meters with three or four iambs (poetic feet with a da-DUM rhythm) per line. This is the typical meter for a ballad, a form of English poetry that was often set to music, and whose conventions "Maude Clare" follows quite faithfully.
The poem starts with a line of iambic tetrameter (four metrical feet, or eight syllables) and alternates with iambic trimeter (three metrical feet, or six syllables) from there:
Out of the church she followed them
With a lofty step and mien:
His bride was like a village maid,
Maude Clare was like a queen.The poem's syllables do not always fit perfectly within this metrical pattern, however! Line 1 probably reads more naturally by stressing "Out" and creating a trochee (essentially, the opposite of an iamb: DUM-da): "Out of." The second line, meanwhile, requires readers to read the words "With a" together as one swift syllable in order to maintain the iambic rhythm. This awkward fit into a strict metrical pattern happens in other instances throughout the poem, mirroring the stifling social constraints that the poem's main characters face and which cause so much grief and drama.
Nevertheless, on the whole the poem maintains a rhythmic and musical metrical consistency, giving "Maude Clare" the romantic feel inherent to the ballad form. The love triangle between Lord Thomas, Nell, and Maude Clare thus takes on a certain grandeur, as the meter helps elevate what might otherwise read as an unseemly or vulgar story of sex and betrayal to the level of literary tragedy.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Maude Clare" uses a consistent rhyme scheme, with every stanza adhering to the following pattern:
ABCB
This is the typical rhyme scheme of a ballad, the poetic form "Maude Clare" follows. In addition to giving the poem a cohesive feel, it creates a strong sense of lyricism, an especially significant feature of the ballad given its musical origins. This sing-song cadence is also key to elevating the tale of Lord Thomas, Nell, and Maude Clare from everyday scandal to the stuff of legend or romance, akin to the ballads of King Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere.
Readers should note that the sounds associated with the ABCB pattern do change from stanza to stanza. For instance, the first stanza's consistent end rhymes (the Bs in the ABCB pattern) are "mien" and "queen," while the second stanza instead rhymes "tears" and "years," the third stanza "tell" and "Nell," and so on and so forth, differing every stanza. This allows the poem greater flexibility of word choice, while still maintaining its sing-song cadence and the reassuring regular rhyme of the ballad form.
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“Maude Clare” Speaker
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The speaker of "Maude Clare" is a first-person observer attending Lord Thomas and Nell's wedding. For the most part, however, this speaker serves as a passive witness. The speaker recounts the scene beat-by-beat much as the narrator of a play or novel might do, without revealing their first-person perspective until the fourth stanza, when the speaker twice refers to Lord Thomas as "my lord."
This use of a speaker who remains almost entirely in the background of the scene allows the poem to accomplish two things:
- First, the speaker's low profile lets the poem focus on the faithful transcription of the main characters' dialogue and actions, granting readers direct access to the confrontation between Lord Thomas, Nell, and Maude Clare, much as a third-person speaker might. Readers are immersed in the moment, watching the scene unfold in real time, which heightens the stakes of the characters' decisions, and adds drama and tension to the poem.
- Second, by subtly alerting readers to the fact that the poem's speaker is in fact a distinct individual with a first-person perspective, the poem reminds readers of the active presence of an audience at this confrontation! In other words, readers are not alone in watching the confrontation unfold—Lord Thomas, Nell, and Maude Clare are also being observed by all of the wedding guests, which include lower-class individuals like the speaker, for whom Lord Thomas is their lord. By reminding readers that even Lord Thomas's subjects are present, the first-person speaker adds another layer to the public embarrassment that Lord Thomas endures at Maude Clare's hands.
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“Maude Clare” Setting
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"Maude Clare" is set outside a church in the moments immediately after the wedding of the aristocrat Lord Thomas and his new bride Nell. Consisting entirely of one scene in which Lord Thomas's ex-lover Maude Clare confronts the newlyweds, the poem does not describe its setting in any detail. Only the first line—"Out of the church she followed them"—establishes where this scene is taking place. More broadly, however, readers can assume that this church is located in pastoral England, based on other references in the poem to "village maid[s]" and "lilies in the beck," as well as the characters' names and titles.
More fundamental to "Maude Clare," however, is the Victorian era in which the poem is set, and in which it was written. This 63-year period in England marked the duration of Queen Victoria's reign, and defined the nation's cultural and social mores for multiple generations. During this time, men and women's roles became more sharply defined, and there was an increased emphasis on female chastity and virtue. These cultural expectations—and the way they clash with the reality of human behavior—provide the dramatic fuel for "Maude Clare." All of the characters' actions are shaped by the strict prescriptions of their era, whether, in Lord Thomas's case, this means adhering to Victorian norms, or, in Maude Clare's case, breaking them.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Maude Clare”
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Literary Context
Christina Rossetti is considered one of the Victorian era's finest poets. Born in England in 1830, she was the daughter of Italian poet Gabriele Rossetti and sister of poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Christina Rossetti grew up surrounded by poetry and art, and published her first poems at a young age, first with her grandfather's private press and then in a journal printed by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the famous artistic school of which her brothers William Michael and Dante Gabriel were founding members.
Rosetti's most famous work, 1862's Goblin Market and Other Poems, established her as a major voice in Victorian poetry. This collection includes "Maude Clare" (though the poem was first published a few years earlier, and several stanzas longer, in the weekly magazine Once A Week). Gerard Manley Hopkins and Alfred, Lord Tennyson are among the luminaries who praised Rossetti's work, and lauded her as the literary successor of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Unlike many poets, Christina Rossetti became popular in her own lifetime. Her literary inspirations were as wide-ranging as the works of Dante and Petrarch, the Bible, fairy tales and folktales, and the lives of saints. She was also a noted early feminist, and many of her poems, including "Maude Clare," deal with the complexities of women's lives in restrictive Victorian society.
Rossetti wrote more than a dozen more books, including children's verse and religious prose. She died of cancer in 1894, after which her brother William Michael edited and published her collected works. Her poetry has been a major influence on writers up to the present day, including Virginia Woolf and Philip Larkin.
Historical Context
Christina Rossetti lived in a world marked both by revolutionary change and reactionary conservatism. The Victorians (that is, those living in Britain during the reign of Queen Victoria) were innovators and empire-builders, and England reshaped itself considerably under the six decades in which Victoria reigned. A primarily rural population made an unprecedented shift to the cities as factory work outpaced farm work, and the invention of the steam engine resulted in new infrastructure like railroads, steamships, and factories. The telegraph and photograph were both invented in this era as well. Walter Besant, a late Victorian novelist, once observed that the era had "so completely changed the mind and habits of the ordinary Englishman, that he would not, could he see him, recognize his own grandfather."
Perhaps in response to this speedy reconfiguration of the world, Victorian social culture became deeply conservative. "The woman question" became a pressing concern in Britain—a term used to describe the debates around the role and nature of women in society. Though some, like Rossetti, questioned the traditional and restrictive roles defined for women, for the most part the Victorian era resulted in a sharpening divide between the male and female spheres. Victorian women were relegated to a domestic life of homemaking and child-rearing, an ideal embodied in Coventry Patmore's famous poem, "The Angel in the House."
Women were also expected to adhere to a strict code of sexual morals: a woman had to be be chaste, pliant, and submissive, and any deviation could mean social exile. "Maude Clare" captures the intense repercussions that women faced for violating Victorian social norms. Rossetti herself had firsthand knowledge of how women suffered under these restrictions; for over a decade, she volunteered with the St. Mary Magdalene house of charity in Highgate, a refuge for former sex workers, or "fallen women" as they were called.
Rossetti's feminist legacy is complex. For example, she did not fully support the women's suffrage movement. However, she did believe in the power of female representation in government. Moreover, her literary work was part of a tide of bold and moving poetry and fiction by Victorian women, asserting the complexity and meaningfulness of women's lives in a public literary sphere otherwise largely dominated by men.
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More “Maude Clare” Resources
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External Resources
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Gender and Power — Read about the role of gender and power in Christina Rossetti's work.
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"Maude Clare" in "Once A Week" Magazine — Scroll down to see the original 1859 printing of "Maude Clare," including verses later cut from the poem.
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The Pre-Raphaelites — Explore the artistic and literary context in which Christina Rossetti worked.
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The Fallen Woman — See different artistic representations of the Victorian archetype of the "fallen woman."
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Christina Rossetti's Biography — Read about the poet's life and work.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Christina Rossetti
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