English critics- Rossetti & Ibsen

Suzzanne Williams

“Maskering her assertion of autonomy with the use of stereotypical feminine wiles as a kind of smoke screen”

Alice Kirby on Christina Rossetti as a Proto-feminist poet?

Maude Clare is 'unashamed and proud', by displaying unexpected behaviour for a woman in her station, Rossetti is 'questioning societal values of the time' in a proto-femininst manner

Simon Avery on No thank you John & independance

Simon Avery (No, Thank You, John)

Christina Rossetti: gender and power
'the poem asserts the woman's right to say 'no' and to claim independence and agency for herself'

Richard Redwood linking ADH & Goblin Market

States 'Rossetti, in contrast to Ibsen, sees both Laura and Lizzie finding safety in marriage'
Contrasting the 'set dramatic arc' of a play, Rossetti can 'offer multiple views'

August Strindberg, 1884 on Ibsen

marriage was revealed as being a far from divine institution

Ibsen, 1898 on social purposes

I have never written any play to further a social purpose

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1990)

repeated acts within a regulatory framework which congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance
'doing gender'

Ibsen in Notes for the Modern Tragedy

A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society

Muriel Bradbrook dark night

'She went out into a very dark night'