Christina Rossetti – AO3
BIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT
- Born in 1830 as the youngest child of extraordinarily gifted family
- Father was Gabriele Rossetti (Italian poet and political exile) who immigrated to
England in 1824 as teacher of Italian in London – married Frances Polidori 1826
- 1831 Gabriele Rossetti appointed to the chair of Italian at King’s College
- Received earliest education alongside four siblings from their mother who had been a
trained governess and committed to cultivating intellectual excellence in her family
- Maria was author of study of Dante and books on religious instruction/Italian
language
- Dante Gabriel distinguished as one of the foremost poets/painters of the era
- Willian was prolific art and literary critics, editor, memoirist of PRB
- Christina had high expectations to fulfil – became one of Victorian poets
- In her lifetime opinion divided over whether herself of Browning were the greatest
female poet of the era – after Browning’s death in 1861 critics saw Rossetti as the
older poet’s rightful successor
- Dante Gabriel referred to his sister as “greatly Mrs. Browning’s superior”
- Childhood of affectionate parental care and creative companionship of older siblings
- In temperament she was like Dante – father called them the “two storms” of the
family vs the “two calms” of Maria and William
- Christina given to tantrums and fractious behaviours and fought hard to subdue her
passionate temper – later counselled a niece subject to similar outbursts
- She achieved self-control through her own self-management
- In William’s memoir of his sister ‘The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti’
(1904) he laments the thwarting of her 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 … What came to pass was of course quite the contrary”
- Considered as an adult to be overscrupulous and excessively restrained
- Frances favoured religious texts as a method of teaching e.g., ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’
or St Augustine’s writings – children generally shunned these selections and indulged
in their imaginative delights of ‘The Arabian Nights’ or ‘Fairy Mythology’
- Later enjoyed reading Ann Radcliffe and Sir Walter Scott etc.
- 1836 – boys attended school as were formally instructed in classics, maths, and
sciences
- Rossetti described her poetic influences in a 1884 letter to Edmunds Goose: “If any
one thing schooled me in the direction of poetry, it was perhaps the delightful idle
liberty to prowl all alone about my father’s cottage-grounds”
- At her grandfather’s cottage she fostered attention to the minute in nature that
marks her poetry and observed the corruptibility and mortality of the world
- In ‘Time Flied: A Reading Diary’ (1885) she reflects on childhood adventures at the
cottage – patient attendance of a strawberry blighted before fully ripening or her
burial of dead mouse and watching it decay
, - Visits ended 1839 – she was a great lover of nature forced into a city life
- One of her first attempted tales was modelled on ‘The Arabian Nights’
- Rossetti’s shifted from an Evangelical to Anglo-Catholic orientation in the 1840’s
caught up in the Tractarian/Oxford Movement – influence by poets of the movement
- Had annotated and illustrated copy of John Keble’s ‘The Christian Year’ (1827)
- From 1843 worshipped the Catholic Church and formed close ties to High Church
theologians who became her spiritual adviser
- Inconsistency of human love, vanity of earthly pleasures, renunciation, individual
unworthiness, perfection of divine love – all stem from her faith as reoccurring
themes
- Accompanied her father at home while he was dying and in 1845 herself suffered a
collapse of health
- Some biographers have assumed the physical symptoms of her illness were
psychosomatic and rescued Rossetti from having to make financial contribution to the
family by working as a governess like her mother/sister
- Some speculated of an attempt at parental incest – father’s breakdown and resultant
change in fortunes led a needy patriarch in the daily care of his young daughter
- Her nightmarish poems about a crocodile devouring his kin and poetic image of a
“clammy fin” reaching out at her, reoccurring theme of an unnameable secret, bouts
of depressions, lifelong sense of sinfulness – all suggest suppressed sexual trauma
- Her doctor speculated she was mentally ill and suffering from religious mania
- William writes that she “was an almost constant and often a sadly-smitten invalid”
- 1847 published collection of poems privately dedicated to her mother – avoided
anything resembling public display and constituted juvenile literary debut like others
- Refused to have her work read in her absence at PRB meetings – such display was
unseemly to her – had more in common with its early manifestation than later
-
OTHER WORKS BY ROSSETTI
• MAUDE: A STORY FOR GIRLS (1897)
- Considered semi-autobiographical portrait of an adolescent Rossetti
- Maude Roster is a poet whose “broken-hearted” verse dwells on themes of suffering,
world-weariness, resignation, and religious devotion
- Maude suffers a spiritual crisis and Anglo-Catholic practices are described e.g. the
Eucharist
- Main conflict of narrative revolved around Maude’s experiences incompatibility of
ladylike behaviours and poetic achievement
- Maude is torn between her pride in work and moral qualms about that pride like
Rossetti
- Heroine’s overactive conscience and endless self-recriminations provide insight into
Rossetti’s overscrupulous nature
, • MONNA INNOMINATA (1881)
- Published the same year as Dante Gabriel’s ‘The House of Life’ (series of sonnets
idealising the beauty of woman) – can be read as response
- Meaning ‘Unnamed Woman’ – women of the time effectively voiceless in literature
- Monna Innominata is an explicit attempt to correct the ludicrous literary tradition
- Rossetti refers to a male literary tradition of the glorification of women – the physical
beauty of women is idealised in sonnets, but these women rarely have a chance to
speak to the reader directly
- In the preface Rossetti sets forth a situation in which the lovers in her sonnets face “a
barrier between them” which is “held sacred by both, yet not such as to render
mutual love incompatible with mutual honour”
- Rossetti states women in men’s poetry are painted as being “resplendent with
charms, but scant of attractiveness”
- Above each sonnet Rossetti includes one line from Dante Alighieri and one from
Francesco Petrarch – two famous poets of the Renaissance – directing her words to
giving voice to the type of woman they idolised in their works (Dante’s Beatrice and
Petrarch’s Laura)
- History of European literature attempts to reconcile eros and agape – for Dante and
Petrarch they are compatible
- Rossetti presents a sincere speaker struggling between eros and agape
- AO5 Jean Hagstrum: “One of the mischiefs of love is that, while turning us to another
person, it can also turn the gaze inward and lead to dangerous self-preoccupation”
• BY WAY OF REMEBERANCE (1896)
- Quarter of sonnets that remained unpublished during her lifetime
- Explores the tensions of the moment – a crisis in Christina’s confidence as an artist,
the scandal of Gabriel’s first published poems, the challenge this scandal posed to
Christina’s religious commitments and sibling affections
OTHER FEMALE WRITERS/FEMINIST LITERATURE
• ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1806-1861)
- English poet of the Victorian Era
- Her humane and liberal perspective manifests in her work – redresses many forms
of social injustice (e.g., the slave trade in America, child labour in England, the
oppression of Italians by Austrians, and restrictions upon women).
- While more conservative poets discussed nature, pious religion or the domestic
space, Browning wrote about industrialisation, slavery, political leadership,
religious controversy, and life in the modern world
- Browning’s ‘A Man’s Requirements’ can be compared to Rossetti’s ‘No Thank You
John’ – both emphasise women’s power over their relationships
- Browning’s ‘Aurora Leigh’ and Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’ – femininity as
fertility/fecundity
BIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT
- Born in 1830 as the youngest child of extraordinarily gifted family
- Father was Gabriele Rossetti (Italian poet and political exile) who immigrated to
England in 1824 as teacher of Italian in London – married Frances Polidori 1826
- 1831 Gabriele Rossetti appointed to the chair of Italian at King’s College
- Received earliest education alongside four siblings from their mother who had been a
trained governess and committed to cultivating intellectual excellence in her family
- Maria was author of study of Dante and books on religious instruction/Italian
language
- Dante Gabriel distinguished as one of the foremost poets/painters of the era
- Willian was prolific art and literary critics, editor, memoirist of PRB
- Christina had high expectations to fulfil – became one of Victorian poets
- In her lifetime opinion divided over whether herself of Browning were the greatest
female poet of the era – after Browning’s death in 1861 critics saw Rossetti as the
older poet’s rightful successor
- Dante Gabriel referred to his sister as “greatly Mrs. Browning’s superior”
- Childhood of affectionate parental care and creative companionship of older siblings
- In temperament she was like Dante – father called them the “two storms” of the
family vs the “two calms” of Maria and William
- Christina given to tantrums and fractious behaviours and fought hard to subdue her
passionate temper – later counselled a niece subject to similar outbursts
- She achieved self-control through her own self-management
- In William’s memoir of his sister ‘The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti’
(1904) he laments the thwarting of her 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 … What came to pass was of course quite the contrary”
- Considered as an adult to be overscrupulous and excessively restrained
- Frances favoured religious texts as a method of teaching e.g., ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’
or St Augustine’s writings – children generally shunned these selections and indulged
in their imaginative delights of ‘The Arabian Nights’ or ‘Fairy Mythology’
- Later enjoyed reading Ann Radcliffe and Sir Walter Scott etc.
- 1836 – boys attended school as were formally instructed in classics, maths, and
sciences
- Rossetti described her poetic influences in a 1884 letter to Edmunds Goose: “If any
one thing schooled me in the direction of poetry, it was perhaps the delightful idle
liberty to prowl all alone about my father’s cottage-grounds”
- At her grandfather’s cottage she fostered attention to the minute in nature that
marks her poetry and observed the corruptibility and mortality of the world
- In ‘Time Flied: A Reading Diary’ (1885) she reflects on childhood adventures at the
cottage – patient attendance of a strawberry blighted before fully ripening or her
burial of dead mouse and watching it decay
, - Visits ended 1839 – she was a great lover of nature forced into a city life
- One of her first attempted tales was modelled on ‘The Arabian Nights’
- Rossetti’s shifted from an Evangelical to Anglo-Catholic orientation in the 1840’s
caught up in the Tractarian/Oxford Movement – influence by poets of the movement
- Had annotated and illustrated copy of John Keble’s ‘The Christian Year’ (1827)
- From 1843 worshipped the Catholic Church and formed close ties to High Church
theologians who became her spiritual adviser
- Inconsistency of human love, vanity of earthly pleasures, renunciation, individual
unworthiness, perfection of divine love – all stem from her faith as reoccurring
themes
- Accompanied her father at home while he was dying and in 1845 herself suffered a
collapse of health
- Some biographers have assumed the physical symptoms of her illness were
psychosomatic and rescued Rossetti from having to make financial contribution to the
family by working as a governess like her mother/sister
- Some speculated of an attempt at parental incest – father’s breakdown and resultant
change in fortunes led a needy patriarch in the daily care of his young daughter
- Her nightmarish poems about a crocodile devouring his kin and poetic image of a
“clammy fin” reaching out at her, reoccurring theme of an unnameable secret, bouts
of depressions, lifelong sense of sinfulness – all suggest suppressed sexual trauma
- Her doctor speculated she was mentally ill and suffering from religious mania
- William writes that she “was an almost constant and often a sadly-smitten invalid”
- 1847 published collection of poems privately dedicated to her mother – avoided
anything resembling public display and constituted juvenile literary debut like others
- Refused to have her work read in her absence at PRB meetings – such display was
unseemly to her – had more in common with its early manifestation than later
-
OTHER WORKS BY ROSSETTI
• MAUDE: A STORY FOR GIRLS (1897)
- Considered semi-autobiographical portrait of an adolescent Rossetti
- Maude Roster is a poet whose “broken-hearted” verse dwells on themes of suffering,
world-weariness, resignation, and religious devotion
- Maude suffers a spiritual crisis and Anglo-Catholic practices are described e.g. the
Eucharist
- Main conflict of narrative revolved around Maude’s experiences incompatibility of
ladylike behaviours and poetic achievement
- Maude is torn between her pride in work and moral qualms about that pride like
Rossetti
- Heroine’s overactive conscience and endless self-recriminations provide insight into
Rossetti’s overscrupulous nature
, • MONNA INNOMINATA (1881)
- Published the same year as Dante Gabriel’s ‘The House of Life’ (series of sonnets
idealising the beauty of woman) – can be read as response
- Meaning ‘Unnamed Woman’ – women of the time effectively voiceless in literature
- Monna Innominata is an explicit attempt to correct the ludicrous literary tradition
- Rossetti refers to a male literary tradition of the glorification of women – the physical
beauty of women is idealised in sonnets, but these women rarely have a chance to
speak to the reader directly
- In the preface Rossetti sets forth a situation in which the lovers in her sonnets face “a
barrier between them” which is “held sacred by both, yet not such as to render
mutual love incompatible with mutual honour”
- Rossetti states women in men’s poetry are painted as being “resplendent with
charms, but scant of attractiveness”
- Above each sonnet Rossetti includes one line from Dante Alighieri and one from
Francesco Petrarch – two famous poets of the Renaissance – directing her words to
giving voice to the type of woman they idolised in their works (Dante’s Beatrice and
Petrarch’s Laura)
- History of European literature attempts to reconcile eros and agape – for Dante and
Petrarch they are compatible
- Rossetti presents a sincere speaker struggling between eros and agape
- AO5 Jean Hagstrum: “One of the mischiefs of love is that, while turning us to another
person, it can also turn the gaze inward and lead to dangerous self-preoccupation”
• BY WAY OF REMEBERANCE (1896)
- Quarter of sonnets that remained unpublished during her lifetime
- Explores the tensions of the moment – a crisis in Christina’s confidence as an artist,
the scandal of Gabriel’s first published poems, the challenge this scandal posed to
Christina’s religious commitments and sibling affections
OTHER FEMALE WRITERS/FEMINIST LITERATURE
• ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1806-1861)
- English poet of the Victorian Era
- Her humane and liberal perspective manifests in her work – redresses many forms
of social injustice (e.g., the slave trade in America, child labour in England, the
oppression of Italians by Austrians, and restrictions upon women).
- While more conservative poets discussed nature, pious religion or the domestic
space, Browning wrote about industrialisation, slavery, political leadership,
religious controversy, and life in the modern world
- Browning’s ‘A Man’s Requirements’ can be compared to Rossetti’s ‘No Thank You
John’ – both emphasise women’s power over their relationships
- Browning’s ‘Aurora Leigh’ and Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’ – femininity as
fertility/fecundity
