rossetti context

song: when i am dead my dearest

- rossetti diagnosed with TB, leading to her obsession with death

- rejection of victorians' frivolous, performative gestures of grief and mourning

remember

- published during national mourning period following prince albert's death

- inspired by romantic poets

- victorians obsessed with death + mourning bc of high mortality rates

echo

echo and narcissus painting by john waterhouse of the pre-raphaelite brotherhood

good friday

rossetti's yearning for a greater connection to god, perhaps brought on by the mental breakdown she experienced at 14

shut out

- rossetti's exclusion from the pre-raphaelite brotherhood (seen by the fact that the speaker is distanced from a garden, reflecting pre-raphaelite focus on nature)

- original title 'what happened to me'

uphill

- john bunyan's 'the pilgrim's progress' depicting man's journey to redemption

- christina's own arduous journey to christianity from her childhood

twice

christina rejection of romantic love in favour of godly love when she rejected a marriage proposal from james collision and charles called for religious differences

goblin market

- rossetti's work helping fallen women

- privately, in a letter to her publisher, said it shouldn't be marketed to children

- rossetti's sister-in-law (dante's wife) died of a drug overdose following a long struggle with addiction

no thank you john

- dante tried to dissuade christina from including this poem as it was 'utterly foreign to your primary impulses'

- possibly about john brett, an overly-enthusiastic and smitten mariner

maude clare

similar to thomas hardy's 1866 poem 'the ruined maid' and/or elizabeth barrett browning's 1856 poem 'aurora leigh'

from the antique

- simone de beauvoir's discussion of women being othered in 'the second sex'

- john keats poem 'when i have fears that i may cease to be'

- never published in rossetti's lifetime, likely due to how radical it is

in the round tower

- based on events of the 1857 indian mutiny

- upon marriage women were no longer recognised as a separate legal entity to her husband

- feme covert - married women

soeur louise de la misericorde

- louise de valliere: mistress of king louis xiv who became a nun

- rossetti's sister became a nun; perhaps an attempt by rossetti to understand her decision

- rossetti's obsession with earthly desires

- rossetti's work with fallen women