context

Question 1

pre-Raphaelite movement

Answer 1

celebrated sensuality, minute detail and sexual yearning

Question 2

marriage

Answer 2

Rossetti refused three marriage proposals from two men between 1848 and 1866

Question 3

rossetti often

Answer 3

resists patriarchal values and sexual double standards

Question 4

her work is

Answer 4

unrelenting at exposing female suffering, resilience and male power over women

Question 5

british power

Answer 5

and influence overseas increased as british manufacturing became dominant in the world

Question 6

Tractarians

Answer 6

drew attention to the importance of the bible and tried to finds ways of addressing the problems that they felt were corrupting Victorian society

Question 7

parliamentary representation

Answer 7

campaigns to give women the vote gained popularity in the second half of the 19th century

they believed they were entitled to the same rights

Question 8

lots of males viewed women

Answer 8

as needed to be directed and guided and so saw little need to give them parliamentary representation

Question 9

rossetti and parliamentary vote

Answer 9

she believed there was an “unalterable distinction” between men and women, so refused to take part in the campaign to get votes for women

Question 10

rossetti’s poems challenged

Answer 10

the sharp line that her male contemporaries drew between the pure woman and the seductress, to present a much more balanced picture of womanhood

Question 11

during the 1860s

Answer 11

she worked with fallen women

in her poetry she often uses the figure of Mary Magdelene to highlight the fact that women can overcome being prostitutes

Question 12

influence of the Pre-Raphaelites

Answer 12

her poetry is rich in detail, yet strives for clarity in meaning through simple rhyme schemes and language

she also draws on literary sources from the past

Question 13

The Married Women’s Property Act 1882

Answer 13

allowed women to own and control property, significant change in English law

Question 14

The victorian period

Answer 14

witnessed massive changes in thinking about women’s roles in society

Question 15

her devout religious belief

Answer 15

her poems are often overtly concerned with religious issues

Question 16

she was writing at a time

Answer 16

when established religious beliefs were being challenged by developments in science, for example, Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ 1859

Question 17

In Rossetti’s poems

Answer 17

women are often in very difficult situations: they are tempted, ignored, forgotten or oppressed

Question 18

the tones her women use

Answer 18

are often regretful, resentful, frightened or hopeless

Question 19

in an age when

Answer 19

the status of women was under debate - the so-called ‘woman question’ - Rossetti presents a “dark assessment” of the female lot - Richard Gill

Question 20

unlike Rossetti’s contemporaries

Answer 20

like William Action, publisher of ‘Prostitution’, she does not dismiss fallen women with hasty judgement - by contrast is of “thoughtfully aware” of their plight - Richard Gill

Question 21

Rossetti lived in an era of

Answer 21

patriarchal attitudes

in a male-dominated and phallocentric world

Question 22

The Contagious Diseases Acts

Answer 22

passed in the 1860s, enshrined in British law that women were a source of contamination

as Josephine Butler has said it “ruled a crime in women, which is not to be a crime in men”

Question 23

phallocentric ideology

Answer 23

seen in the CD Acts

the debates which led to their repeal in the 1880s were a powerful stimulus to the Women’s Movement