Rossetti: Gender and Identity - critical interpretations

Kathleen Jones - women oppression

'her articulation of the struggle of a voice within a creed which consistently denied it to her…articulates the central conflict of a woman writer in the 19th century.’

Simon Avery (Winter: My Secret)

‘The speaker asserts the woman’s right to say no and to claim independence and agency for herself’

Gilbert and Gubar - Renunciation

Rossetti was known for her ‘aesthetics of renunciation’

Charlotte Lucas - No, Thank you John / Maude Clare 

marriage was ‘the only honourable provision for a well-educated woman of small fortune’ 

Lindsey Stewart - No, Thank you, John

marriage is an ‘onerous prospect’

Kathleen Jones (william rossetti)

He ‘felt free to, [post-humous], tone down the sensuality’ of Christina’s poems

John Hathaway - Soeur Louise

‘Louise gladly sought depravations as she thought it to be part of the penance she ought to pay after her life as a mistress’

‘they (the depravations) reminded her of the far greater suffering she experienced in the French Court.’

Wallner - Twice

being a woman in Victorian Britain meant that you were doubly judged by both men and God

Gaynell Galt - Goblin market

It has a ‘contrived redemptive ending’

Gaynell Galt - No, Thank you, John

Rossetti ‘convinces her audience that she is a woman whom the conventions of the society could not shake, she had her own agenda.’