Secondary Quotes Rossetti

Feminist reading of W:MS

Feminist reading of W:MS

"If there's a serious undertone it might be this: women at the time were so beholden to men that the only thing they could call their own was something as intangible as a secret" Simon Mold (x)

marriage vs. love

"Marriage is not equivalent to love." Jerome M McGann (1990)

Nonsense interpretation of Winter My Secret

"The narrative voice consistently highlights the indeterminacy of meaning; exploring and exploiting the reader's desire to know the truth by setting up enigmas that have no solution, riddles that ultimately resist interpretation" Jenny Bourne Taylor (1999)

Rossetti's crisis unknown

"the Rossetti family built a wall of silence whenever Christina went through the formative crises in her life...But the nature of the crisis cannot now be determined, since the family members who knew anything neither confided nor recorded" Frances Thomas London (1994)

Flawed Marriage

"Rossetti shows marriage to be a deeply flawed institution that all too often destroys a woman's individuality and spirit" Ronald Morrison (1990)

Powerless women turning to heaven

"If a woman felt powerless and insignificant in this world...she could turn to the promises of heaven" Diane D'Amico (1990)

Maude Clare and masculinity

"a clear critique of dominant masculinity" Simon Avery (2014)

Doubt in faith

"Doubt is part of the Christian experience; it is not opposed to the Christian life but answered by faith". Tom Moole (2019)

Uphill - biblical allusions

"A Chen tau of biblical allusions." Tom Moole (2019)

Dante's memoir --> Rossetti responsibility to write

Dante's memoir of Rossetti says that she believed "to write anything for publication is to incur a great spiritual responsibility".

Duality in sacred and secular meaning in A Birthday

"common things continually at hand...acquire a sacred association, and cross our paths under aspects at once familiar and transfigured" Christina Rossetti (1879 after a Birthday)

Christina's spontaneity in writing (link to W:MS & In the Round Tower)

Christina's "habits of composing were eminently of the spontaneous kind" William Micheal Rossetti (1886 - Preface to New Poems by Chrstina Rossetti)

Sexual interpetations of W:MS

"a verbal striptease" Dinah Roe (2010)

Falliabilty of love A Birthday

"Rossetti's highly aesthetic consciousness...is concerned with surmounting the inevitable betrayal of love's transient pleasures...by memorialisng such pleasures in art" Anthony H Harrison (x)

Love and Betrayal

"The great value of Christina Rossetti's work...lies in the pitiless sense that the world is a scene of betrayal and that betrayal appears most clearly, and most terribly, in the relations between men and women." Jerome J McGann (1990)

Deception that comes with love

"[Her poems] represent the dependency relation of women to men, they associate that relation with deceptions, fears and the inabillity to bring understanding and control into human affairs (for men and women alike)." Jerome M McGann (1990)

Lone/Single Heroine

"Her heroines characteristically chose to stand alone." McGann (1990)

independence

"Independence is a function of the ability to have a secret which the sanctioned forces of society cannot invade." Jerome J McGann (1990)

Uphill image of the beds (careful with the year!)

"a far sight from the image of paradise" Jerome J McGann (1983)

natural cycles

images of decay...are often starkly juxtaposed with images of renewal" Brad Sullivan (1861)

Natural imagery

"Her natural imagery often suggests the complexities of the human self - the hope, love and creative energy that must both be expressed and repressed" Brad Sullivan (1861)

Remember

"a discussion of the value of memory" Bowra (1949)

Echo and Remember - Gothic Themes

"a kind of dark gothic rewriting of the sort of selfless love we saw in Remember" Tom Moole (2016)

souer Louise consequence of adultering

"Rossetti leaves us under no illusions: this is a woman who feels empty and hopeless as a direct result of her experience as a courtesan" Hathaway (2022)

desire dangers Soeur louise

"Whereas Rossetti elsewhere seems to challenge the passive position of the fallen woman...this poem seems to be written as a didactic warning about the dangers of desire, with no fairy tale happy ending of the kind Lizzie experiences in ‘Goblin Market’ " Hathaway (2022)

reassurance in Soeur Louise

"There is no reassuring answering speaker to offer comfort" Hathaway (2022)

power in Winter My Secret

"Behind this playfulness, however, is an intriguing study in the manipulation of power... This therefore becomes an intriguing poem about what is not said, where the speaker skilfully withholds power and control." Avery (2014)

Nell vs. Maude Clare

“throughout the poem, Nell and Maude Clare are set up as opposites” Avery 2014

Radical Rossetti

"Her views may not always be ‘radical’ as such, but they are usually far from conservative and often questioning, challenging and potentially subversive." Avery (2014)

Fallen men

"there were, after all, no 'fallen men' in Victorian discourse" Hathaway (2022)

Confidence in Christ

"Even when Rossetti's speakers seem on the verge of despair, they have confidence that ultimately Christ will intervene" Norton (2019)

difficulty of salvation

“But interestingly, this doesn’t assure us that it’s going to be easy. It reassures us that it’s going to be difficult.” Moole (2019)

emotionalism in Good Friday

"'Good Friday'...can be read as an implicit critique of Evangelical emotionalism, endorsing...the stoic speaker's restraint" Norton (2019)

self-sacrifice

"Rossetti indicates that the self-sacrificing love Victorian women were to embody should not be seen as angelic but Christlike" Norton 2019

Lizzie as Christ

Lizzie is “a symbol of the Christ who willingly undergoes suffering to redeem a sinner” Brownley (1979)

post lapsarian wolrd and goblin market

"Lizzie and Laura's experience reveal that the world of Goblin Market is a post Psarian and post-incarnational world" Arseneau (1993)

Laura and Jesus - Victims

"[Laura] is only a victim as Jesus is a victim: she is  a suffering servant" McGann 1980

Lizzie and Laura morality

"the passage does not draw any moral distinctions between Lizzie and Laura. In the perspective of Christina Rossetti's poem, Laura remains fundamentally uncorrupted" McGann 1980

point of desire

"In Rossetti's world, desire has no object. It is pointless" Mermin (1983)

Lizzie the hero

"Lizzie is painted as a hero, an unusual role for a woman at the time" Mermin (1983)

Goblin Market conclusion

"The only rule pertaining at the end is that sisters should stick together" Casey (1991)

Goblin market pov

"It is...a vision of the Pre-Raphaelite world from a woman's point of view" Mermin (1983)

Lizzie and Laura save each other

"Lizzie does not "save" Laura" McGann 1980

evil of temptation

"The ultimate evil of the goblin merchants is that they tempt to betray, promise but do not fulfil" McGann 1980

Reassurance in Sourl Louise de la Misericorde

"there is no reassuring answering speaker to offer comfort and encouragement as in 'Uphill' " Hathaway 2022