Context

Question 1

‘Angel in the house’

Answer 1

The Angel of the House by Coventry Patmore (1854)

Question 2

A book that suggested that gender should define the dynamic of a relationship

Answer 2

Beeton’s ‘Complete Etiquette for Ladies’ (1876). She opened with the statement that the mistress of the house should consider herself as the ‘commander of an army’. Her intention was to make middle-class women feel that the domestic sphere was just as important as the public world to which their husbands returned each morning.

Question 3

Law that limited the amount of force men were allowed to use against their wives

Answer 3

Criminal Procedure Act (1853)

Question 4

Law that allowed a married woman to legally own and control any property she earned on her own after marriage, and what it did

Answer 4

First Married Women’s Property Act (1856)
It included wages, gifts, inheritance, or income from investments. It also protected these things from her husband’s debtors.

Question 5

The early women’s organisation that had a journal that Rossetti wrote for

Answer 5

The Society for Employment of Women (1860)

Question 6

Statistics for rape convictions in Victorian England

Answer 6

21% of men accused of rape stood trial
Of this, 40% were convicted

Question 7

Quote from Kathryn Hughes to describe George Cruikshank’s Beehive illustration.

Answer 7

depicted class divisions as ‘natural and unchanging’

Question 8

Who was William Acton and what did he say about women’s sexual desires?

Answer 8

A doctor. He said that ‘the majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind.’

Question 9

What was the Contagious Diseases Act and when and why was it put into place?

Answer 9

1860 - it allowed, in certain towns, the forced medical examination of any woman who was suspected of being a sex worker. If she was found to be infected with a sexual disease, she was placed in a ‘Lock Hospital’ until she was cured. It was put into place because many doctors (eg Acton) were worried about how prostitution spread sexual disease among the male population.

Question 10

What is the statistic for the number of women who worked in the 19th century?

Answer 10

While most men worked, only one-third of all women were in employment at any time in the 19th century, against two-thirds in 1978 for comparison.

Question 11

Quote from Greg Buzwell about the New Woman.

Answer 11

‘served as a mirror in which to reflect the attitudes of society.’

Question 12

Quote from Judith Butler about gender being performative.

Answer 12

‘Gender reality is performative which means quite simply that it is real only to the extent that it is performed.’

Question 13

What did the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 say?

Answer 13

Women could be divorced on the grounds of their adultery alone, while it had to be proved that men had exacerbated adultery with other offences.

Question 14

Who did Rossetti turn down proposals from, and why?

Answer 14

James Collinson and Charles Cayley, on grounds of religious incompatibility.

Question 15

What was Rossetti’s connection to the Pre-Raphaelite movement?

Answer 15

Her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was one of the founding members.
She was their head poet.
She modelled for several paintings by Pre-Raphaelite artists.

Question 16

Rossetti’s work at the St Mary Magdalene Penitentiary, Highgate.

Answer 16

She helped prostitutes escape their lives on the streets by retraining them for domestic service.

Question 17

Rossetti’s sister, Maria

Answer 17

Maria Rossetti became an Anglican nun in 1873.

Question 18

Rossetti’s religious crisis

Answer 18

She suffered at least one religious crisis around 1857.

Question 19

Louise de la Valliere (1644-1710)

Answer 19

The mistress of Louis XIV, bearing him five children before losing his favour and being replaced by various other mistresses. Humiliated and dejected, she sought spiritual solace by leaving the French court and joining a Carmelite nunnery in 1674 (the date Rossetti includes at the very beginning of the poem). Soeur Louise de la Misericorde, or Sister Louise of Mercy, was the name given to Louise when she took her vows in 1675. She stayed there for thirty-six years, writing Reflections on the Mercy of God, a semi-autobiographical text exploring God’s grace for sinners, particularly former courtesans who repented and sought God’s forgiveness.

Question 20

Rossetti literary context

Answer 20

Growing awareness of an audience for the female writer

Symbols and motifs

Literary form, structure and devices employed to convey message (from an AO1 perspective)

Elements of Pre-Raphaelite painting (realism and symbolism, precise photographic detail, eroticism)

Biblical allusion / focus on death / afterlife

Construction of a convincing persona

Heightened emotion

Question 21

Ibsen literary context

Answer 21

Realism

Naturalism

Features of 19th Century melodrama and The Well-Made Play

Powerful dialogue

Symbols and motifs

Entrances and exits

Characters with psychological depth

Question 22

When was the Declaration of Independence and what was it?

Answer 22

1814, separated Norway from Denmark.