Love through the ages: exemplar student response

Below you will find an exemplar student response to a Section B question in the sample assessment materials, followed by an examiner commentary on the response.

Paper 1, Section B

It has been said that Rossetti's poem is conventional and celebratory, whereas Millay's poem offers a very different view of love.

Compare and contrast the presentation of love in the following poems in the light of this comment.

Band 3 response

Both 'A Birthday' and 'Love is Not All' are love poems written by women but at different times, which may be why the first is indeed conventional and celebratory and the other is not. Rossetti's poem was written in the Victorian period when women would have written more romantically whereas Millay's is written in the 20th Century when women would have felt freer to express their real feelings about love.

Both poets use imagery to describe love but it is different in each poem. Rossetti uses a lot of similes in stanza one to show how she is celebrating her love. She likens her heart to 'a singing bird', 'an apple-tree' and 'a rainbow shell', which are all positive images of nature but then finishes the stanza by saying that her heart 'is gladder than all of these' and this helps us to understand how happy she is to be with her love if it makes her feel happier than a bird that is singing. In the second stanza, she improves on this imagery by asking for a dais decorated in rich colours of 'purple', 'gold' and 'silver' and exotic birds and fruits such as 'doves and pomegranates' and 'peacocks with a hundred eyes'. This emphasises the importance of her love to her because it is like rich and exotic things.

Millay, however, does not use imagery to declare how wonderful love is. Instead, she suggests what love is not, for example 'it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain.' Millay uses alliteration to emphasise some more negative things that love cannot do:

'Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone.'

This helps us to understand that she believes love is not a cure for horrible things that might happen to us. We could think that Millay does not care about love but at the end of her poem she admits that even if she were 'pinned down by pain' (she uses alliteration here again to emphasise a negative idea) she does not think  she would 'sell your love for peace, or trade the memory of this night for food.'

Both poets use imagery to show what they think of love, therefore, but where Rossetti is definitely celebratory, Millay leaves us unsure of her feelings: 'It may well be. I do not think I would.'

Both poets use structural features to show what they think of love. Rossetti repeats 'My heart is' four times in the first stanza to emphasise that she is pleased to be talking about her love and then indents the following line each time so that 'My heart is' is easier for the reader to see so they understand how proud she is of it. The regular rhyme scheme (lines 2 and 4 rhyme, lines 6 and 8 rhyme, lines 10 and 12 rhyme and lines 14 and 16 rhyme) helps to show that Rossetti's thoughts are well ordered so she is confident about her love and that is why she is able to sing out about it.

Millay also uses repetition but it is within a sentence: 'And rise and sink and rise and sink again' and makes the reader think of a rollercoaster to understand that Millay does not think love is an easy experience. She begins the poem with enjambment which often suggests a lack of order in the poets thoughts but then a rhyme scheme begins in line 5 so again the reader might think that although Millay seems negative about love to begin with she may actually feel differently.

I think the comment in the question is correct. Rossetti's poem is conventional because it is written in the Victorian period when women would have been expected to be romantic about love. All of the poetic methods used by Rossetti (nature similes, rich colours, repetition and regular rhyme scheme) help to show that she is celebrating her love. Millay's poem is different because it is not really clear how she feels about her love. She uses negative images of pain and death but then says she would not swap her love if it meant that she could escape these. Because Millay is writing in the 20th century, she can write about love without having to be romantic.

Examiner commentary

AO1

The response is structured clearly and ideas are sensibly ordered. The task is always in mind. The candidate uses terminology in an appropriate way.  The writing is clearly expressed and mainly accurate.

AO2

There is straightforward understanding of some of the methods used by the poets and the candidate integrates relevant comment on how aspects of structure and imagery evident in the two poems shape meanings. 

AO3

There is a straightforward understanding of how the time in which the poems are written influences the attitudes conveyed by the poets although their related gender or their choices of structure and imagery are not contextualised.

AO4

There is straightforward comparison of the poems on a number of points. Relevant comments are made about how the poets present love similarly or differently in light of the given view in the question.

AO5

The candidate is clear in offering a straightforward judgement that Rossetti's poem is conventional and celebratory and Millay's poem offers a different view. Different reader responses to Millay's poem are tentatively suggested but not fully explored.

Overall: Straightforward and relevant. This response seems to fit the Band 3 descriptors.

The resource is part of the Love through the ages resource package.