Three women sit in a room and idly chat about their love lives. One wears a mini skirt with a low-cut blouse and ruby-red lipstick. She places her heels on top of the table and speaks of the many men she has loved. Another dons golden hair that falls in soft waves against her rosy-pink cheeks and blue eyes. She speaks in a low voice and gushes about how much attention she receives from the opposite sex and her particular affection for one young man. The third wears faded layered garments with unkempt grey locks loosely fitted into a braid. She describes the life of an old woman knitting needles and still waiting for the right man to knock on her door. These three distinct women can all be found in society today. Though they are different in appearance and have divergent avenues of life, they have one quality in common: they are all hopelessly searching for love. In Christina Rossetti’s sonnet “A Triad,” Rossetti offers the audience three types of women who are pursuing love on misguided paths: a harlot, an object of beauty, and a spinster.
Rossetti uses society’s idea of a harlot to describe the disillusion associated with seeking fulfillment of love through promiscuity. Rossetti introduces the promiscuous woman as the “one with lips / Crimson, with cheeks and bosom in a glow, / Flushed to the yellow hair and finger-tips” (1-3). Though red lipstick holds a reigning position in the world of beauty today, during Rossetti’s era, lipstick was typically seen as a perverse method of seduction. However, most cultures today still consider cleavage-bearing shirts to be inappropriate and licentious attire. The meaning of Rossetti’s phrase “flushed to the yellow hair and finger-tips” seems unclear, but the idea of a “loose” woman suggests a person with unrestrained sexual desires, meaning her passion reaches every part of her body, even her hair and finger-tips. Later in the poem, Rossetti states, “One shamed herself in love” (9). This line connects to the promiscuous woman because she garners a negative impression from society and ignores her moral codes by attempting to find love in various outlets. Though the woman may believe love lies in this precarious mode of living, she never finds true love and ends up feeling lost and empty.
Rossetti capitalizes on the appearance of a beautiful woman to address the vain pursuit of beauty in place of love. In the poem, Rossetti writes, “And one there sang who soft and smooth as snow / Bloomed like a tinted hyacinth at a show” (4-5). A graceful singer has always been considered an emblem of beauty to the world. In addition, fairer complexions, similar to the color of snow, characterize delicate and attractive women. Rossetti also uses the brilliant colors of hyacinth flowers to further describe the woman’s alluring nature. Because the woman has such an appealing appearance, she most likely attracts a lot of male attention, so it should not be surprising to readers that out of the three women, the beautiful one seeks love through marriage. Rossetti states, “one temperately / Grew gross in soulless love, a sluggish wife” (9-10). Since the man only married the woman for her beauty, he neglects her when she grows old and unattractive. The woman dwells in soulless love because the man’s love for her was only skin deep and did not involve her heart.
Rossetti depicts the life of a loveless old maid to illustrate the negative effects of a life in sole pursuit of love. Rossetti says, “And one was blue with famine after love, / Who like a harpstring snapped rang harsh and low / The burden of what those were singing of” (6-8). The spinster may have had previous experiences with affection, but she never found true love. The phrase “blue with famine after love” suggests that she dwells in old age, dismal from the shortage of love in her life. Because of the old maid’s lack of love, her demeanor becomes bitter and aggrieved. Rossetti chooses to compare the resentful maid to a broken harpstring since the harpstring makes a “harsh and low” sound when it snaps, similar to the woman’s harsh outlook on love. Rossetti writes, “One famished died for love” (11). The woman famishes during the “famine” she experiences because of love’s absence. The old maid spent her entire life seeking love, wasting her limited days on earth and eventually died in vain before finding fulfillment.
Though Rossetti does not make it clear which one of the women “droned in sweetness like a fattened bee” (13) and which two “Took death for love and won him after strife” (12), the reader can decipher the possible meaning. The harlot could be the bee since she seeks love in many sources, filling herself with the sweet juices of deception dressed as affection like a bee growing fat from collecting pollen and nectar from countless flowers. The beautiful woman might have mistook the man’s love of her appearance for love of her soul and left life an unloved woman when her beauty faded. However, Rossetti does make it evident that the spinster died in hopeless search for love. Though all three women looked for love in different ways, Rossetti states that they were “All on the threshold, yet all short of life” (14). Because all three women tried to find love on misguided paths, they inevitably discovered themselves at death’s door before stumbling upon true love. Rossetti’s poem offers her readers harsh realities and applicable advice about love. Love cannot be discovered in sex or beauty, and a life should not be wasted in sole pursuit of love.
