Point of View

“Remember” consistently maintains a first-person singular perspective through the regular use of pronouns such as “I” and “me.” However, throughout the progression through the body of the poem, Rossetti’s first-person selfhood is defined, paradoxically against an increasing sense of her self negation. The remembrance of “me” begins to appear in scenarios of increasing forgetfulness, especially evident from Rossetti’s prediction of how there will come a time when “no more day by day / You tell me of our future that you plann’d” (5-6). At the end of the poem, Rossetti goes so far as to accept her “I” being completely forgotten, which runs completely contrary to the titular subject of remembering – “if you should forget me for a while … Better by far you should forget and smile / Than you should remember and be sad” (9, 13-14). As such, the first person perspective that is...