Christina
Rossetti opens with “What is pink? A rose is pink / By the fountain’s brink”
then answers for other colours, before her punchline, “What is orange? Why, an
orange / Just an orange!” It’s a favourite recital in primary schools, come
October. How does the emphasis fall? Simply by her naming it we see the fruit,
but since when was it just an orange, this marvel of segmented mouthfuls and
sun-brightened rind, this ball of goodness? Victorian science reduced
everything to types, its Gradgrind demand for facts turning everything into
just oranges. Rossetti rebels, she questions, she mocks Rousseau.
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