Compare the ways that feelings are presented in Nettles and Sister Maude

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Compare the ways that feelings are presented in ‘Nettles’ and ‘Sister Maude’

Scannell’s ‘Nettles’ shows how a powerful relationship can spark protective impulses; when the persona’s son ‘fell in the nettle bed’, he ‘slashed in fury’ at the nettles to halt their destructive consequences. However, in ‘Sister Maude’, Rossetti demonstrates how an equally powerful relationship can evolve into a destructive drive with negative results, whereby she claims that her lurking sister ‘shall get no sleep’.

Both poems account the persona’s violent responses to provoking events. In ‘Nettles’, Scannell employs a strong iambic pentameter that runs throughout; the iambic feet in the line ‘and then I took my hook and honed the blade’ conveys the persona’s sheer anger at the nettles that have hurt his son and add an accumulative effect to the poem. The repetition of the ‘o’ sound (assonance) in ‘took’, ‘hook’ and ‘honed’ adds to this affect which shows the reader how the father is becoming increasingly infuriated. The line after contains an irregularity, with an extra syllable attached to the end of the line to emphasise the words ‘with it’. This adds to the fury as the angry father tries to avenge his son’s suffering and illustrates the father’s feeling that he should always be there to solve his son’s problems for him; the iambic feet give a sense of perfect strikes as he cuts down the nettles successfully, demonstrating his feelings of triumph of revenge. Similarly, Rossetti also incorporates an iambic metre to heighten her feelings of fury and revenge, just as Scannell uses it to portray the father’s fury and sense of vengeance. The line ‘bide you with death and sin’ shows the reader the persona’s certain feelings that Maude’s fate will be an eternity in Hell; the plosive ‘b’ in ‘bide’, followed by the heavy  stress exerted on ‘you’ conveys to the reader the persona’s furious feelings towards her sister and how she took her lover’s life. However, it could also be the intentions of the persona to have this line as the last of the poem as a way for the reader to see a stark contrast between the fate of Maude and the rest of the family; this could mean that the persona is feeling very satisfied at Maude’s certain fate, which contrasts to the father’s feelings of regret in ‘Nettles’.

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Both Rossetti and Scannell present relatively minor events as huge aspects of the persona’s life. In ‘Nettles’, the father seems to be intent on getting revenge; the part of the poem where he is ‘[slashing] in fury’ contains enjambment, and no line is end-stopped, which reflects how his son getting hurt is a huge thing for him; in this way, Scannell shows how the father feels that it is his duty to protect his son on the basis of their fatherly relationship. He uses the words ‘my son’ twice which conveys to the reader how he is very protective and ...

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