ROSSETTI CONTEXT

Marital rights?

- Prior to the mid-1800s, most legal systems viewed wife beating as a valid exercise of a husband's authority over his wife.

Matrimonial Causes Act, 1878?

- Made is possible for women to seek legal separation from an abusive husband. Allowed legal separation on grounds of adultery, cruelty or desertion.

- Divorce allowing remarriage was therefore, de facto, restricted to the very wealthy, as demanded with complex annulment process or a private bill, both very costly.

A married woman's property?

- Before 1870, any money made by a woman through earnings, investments, by gift, or through inheritance automatically became property of her husband once she was married.

- Once a woman married she had no claim to her property as her husband had full control and could do whatever suited him regarding the property.

- 'From the early thirteenth century until 1870, English Common law held that most of the property that a wife had owned as a 'feme sole' came under the control of the husband at the time of the marriage.'

- Married women had few legal rights and were by law not recognised as being a separate legal being. Once a woman married she could still own land or a house but no longer had rights to do anything with it.

- Single and widowed women were considered to be feme sole, and they had right to own property in their name.

- Married women could not make contracts or incur debts without her husband's approval.

Married Women's Property Act, 1870?

- The Married Women's Property Act of 1870 provided that wages and property which a wife earned through her own work or inherited would be regarded as her separate property.

The Married Woman's Property Act, 1882?

- Principle of separate property was extended to all property, regardless of its source or the time of its acquisition.

- First time it was theoretically possible for women to live away from their husbands and support their own children themselves.

- Widowed women, as feme soles, already had right to own property and support children.

Women's suffrage?

- The Victorian period witnessed massive changes in thinking about women's roles in society with much debate concerning women's education, employment opportunities, marriage, sexuality, and the right to vote.

- Finally succeeded through two laws in 1918 and 1928.

Rossetti's view on female suffrage?

- At times she used the Biblical idea of a woman's subordination to a man as a reason for maintaining the status quo, while at others she argued for female representation in parliament and spoke out against the sexual exploitation of women in prostitution.

- In many ways this shows her to be a particularly complex thinker about the position of women in society and it is certainly a concern which she comes back to time and again in her poetry.

- Her views may not always be 'radical' as such, but they are usually far from conservative and often questioning, challenging and potentially subversive.

When was Rossetti born?

1830

Rossetti's family life?

- 3 siblings; Maria Francesca, Dante Gabriel and William Michael.

- Dante Gabriel distinguished himself as one of foremost poets and painters of his era; William was prolific act and literary critic, editor and memoirist of the Pre-Raphelite movement.

Literary context?

- Opinion was divided over whether she of Emily Barrett Browning was the greatest female poet of the era.

- Readers have generally considered Rossetti's poetry less intellectual, less political and less varied than Browning's; conversely, they have acknowledged Rossetti as having the greater lyric gift.

Rossetti's temperment?

- She was most like her brother Dante Gabriel: their father called the pair the 'two storms' of the family in comparison to the 'two calms', Maria and William.

- Christina was given to tantrums and fractious behaviour, and she fought hard to subdue this passionate temper.

William laments the thwarting of Rossetti's high spirits?

- 'In innate character she was vivacious, and open to pleasurable impressions; and, during her girlhood, one might readily have supposed that she would develop into a woman of expansive heart, fond of society and diversions, and taking a part in them of more than average brilliancy. What came to pass was quite the contrary.'

- As an adult Christina Rossetti was considered by many to be over scrupulous and excessively restrained.

Mother often read to Rossetti?

- Favoured religious texts such as John Bunyan's The Pilgrims Progress.

- Influenced her devotional poetry.

Grandfather's house in Holmer Green where she first witnessed death?

- Observed the corruptability and mortality that became key notes in her work.

- Her reminisces in Time Flies: A Reading Diary (1885) include reflections on childhood adventures at the cottage: her patient attendance on a strawberry, only to find it blighted before it had fully ripened, and her burial of a dead mouse and later observation of its decay.

Religion?

- Caught up in Tractarian/Oxford movement (renewal of catholic thought) when it reached London in 1840s, Rossettis shifted from Evangelical to an Anglo-Catholic orientation, and this outlook influenced virtually all of Rossetti's poetry.

Importance of Rossetti's faith?

- More than half of her poetic output is devotional, and the works of her later years in both poetry and prose are almost exclusively so.

Gabriele Rossetti's (father) health collapsed in 1843?

- Left him virtually blind and unable to work.

- All family, except Dante and Christina, took employment.

- Christina remained at home as a companion to her ailing father.

1845?

- Rossetti suffered a collapse in health.

- Some critics have surmised that physical symptoms were psychosomatic and rescued Rossetti from having to make financial contribution to the family.

Rossetti's illness?

- Diagnosed as having a heart condition, but another doctor speculated that she was mentally ill, suffering from a kind of religious mania.

Paternal incest?

- Biographer, Jan Marsh conjectures that there may have been an attempt at paternal incest.

- Father's breakdown and the resultant changes in family fortunes left a needy patriarch in the daily care of his pubescent daughter.

- Christina's poetry includes recurring motif of an unnameable secret, Marsh suggests, this could be an indication of suppressed sexual trauma.

The morbidity in Rossetti's poetry?

- Rossetti had bouts of serious illness throughout her life.

- William suggests, references to morbidity were attributable to Christina's ill health and the ever-present prospect of early death rather than her innate disposition.

- Rossetti 'was an almost constant and often sadly-smitten invalid.'

Pre-Raphelite Brotherhood?

- Dante Gabriel was gathering around him the circle of young men who named themselves the Pre-Raphelite Brotherhood.

- Assumed that Christina would participate, but she was never a member of the artistic and literary group.

- Refused to have her work read aloud in her absence at its meetings.

James Collison?

- One of the Pre-Raphelite brethren, James Collison, proposed marriage to Rossetti in 1848.

- She refused the offer, giving Collison's recent conversion to Roman Catholicism as the reason.

- Collison promptly returns to the Church of England, proposed a second time, and was accepted.

- Opinion is mixed as to whether Rossetti was ever in love with him.

- Engagement ended in 1850 when Collison reverted to Catholicism.

Rossetti's financial support?

- For most of her adulthood, Christina was financially supported primarily by William, a debt that she made provisions in her will to repay.

1854, during the Crimean War?

- Rossetti volunteered to join Florence Nightingale's nurses but was turned down.

1859, St. Mary Magdalene Penitentiary?

- In early 1859, Rossetti began volunteering at the St. Mary Magdalene Penitentiary in Highgate, a charitable institution for the reclamation of 'fallen' women.

- Influence can be seen in her poems about illicit love, betrayal, and illegitimacy.

- Her interest in this topic reflects the Victorian concern about prostitution as a social evil.

1892?

- In 1892, Rossetti was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy that was performed in her own home.

- The cancer recurred the following year, and after months of acute suffering she dies on 29th December 1894.

When did Rossetti die?

29th December 1894

Tennyson's death in 1892?

- Rossetti had attained fame as a poet.

- Some even speculated, after Tennyson's death, that she would make a suitable successor to the laureateship.

William's power over sister's work?

- Critics have expressed suspicion of William's reconstruction of his sister's life, his censorship of her letters, and his revisionist editing in the posthumous collections of her poetry.

Rossetti Renaissance?

- In 1890s, Rossetti renaissance began as feminist critics undertook a reexamination of her poetry.

- Explored Rossetti's representation of sororal bonds, female creativity, and sexuality and her critique of patriarchal amatory values and gender relations.

Greatness of Rossetti?

- Christina Rossetti has often been called the greatest Victorian women poet, but her poetry is increasingly being recognised as among the most beautiful and innovative of the period by either sex.