SOURCE: "Meaning More Than Is Said: Sources of Mystery in Christina Rossetti and Arnold," in Victorians and Mystery: Crises of Representation, Cornell, 1990, pp. 251-75.

In the following excerpt, Shaw discusses Rossetti's reserved and tentative style, arguing that her language and poetic techniques reveal her religious beliefs.

[Christina Rossetti] is a heroic knower: to cross the divide that separates knowledge from belief, she must make such mystery words as "God" and "heart" mean more than she can hope to say. Rather than profane a mystery by scaling it down reductively, as Matthew Arnold tries to do when redefining religion, she prefers to be silent like Clough. Only "love," says Rossetti, can understand "the mystery, whereof / We can but spell a surface history" ("Judge nothing before the time," 11. 1-2; 2:295). By "mystery" she means something like a secret science or withheld truth, as Newman defines these difficult ideas in his Oxford...