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On Christina Rossetti (ENGL 221)
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ENGL 221March 16th
On Christina Gabriel Rossetti (1830-1894)
Required readings: Goblin Market
Relationship to the Romantics
● Admirer of Keats and his luscious imagery
● A splendid metricist
● Like Blake, sees a duality, but for Rossetti the duality is between the worldliness of the
world and the purity of heaven.
● Was friends with Lewis Carroll (who wrote Alice in Wonderland)
● While she didn’t support women’s suffrage outright, which was gaining ground at this
time, her work tries to elucidate the conditions of women
○ Exploring and increase understanding of the conditions of women
○ Acceptance of patriarchal norms partly came from the way she read the Bible
● The ideal position, the Christ-like condition, is often inhabited by women in her poetry
○ Once Laura is redeemed, she can bear the Christ-like position in the story
○ Lizzie always bears the Christ-like position in the story
Illness and Ideology: Anthony H. Harrison
● At 14, Rossetti experienced some sort of “attack” or “illness” (and experienced periods of
depression throughout her whole life)
○ She may have been very uncomfortable with puberty
● Because the attack coincided with the onset of menses, it has often been associated with
“hysteria.”
○ In Victorian times, hysteria was associated with fear of sex and maturation
○ Alternatively, it was argued that female hysteria “resulted from unsatisfied sexual
(or maternal) drives.”
○ Often, the hysteric was unable to eat because of that feeling of choking in the
throat which is linked with not being listened to or not recognizing their voice
● “Hysteria” is a difficult word because it was used as a psychological term
Treatments for Hysteria
● The most radical treatment was a clitoridectomy
○ Rossetti is talking about the oppression of women
● Least radical: immersion in “moral texts”
● Containing and redirecting the passions (religious ania)
● “the goal of most physicians was to enforce self-control, that is, obedience to culturally
dominant, and one might add, generally repressive, standards of conduct and behavior in
every aspect of a young girl’s life” (424)
Passionate Religiosity (Harrison)
● Later, she became heavily involved with the Oxford Movement
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