rossetti context Flashcards
1843: rossetti’s father
rossetti’s father fell ill
1845: rossetti’s illness
rossetti became ill with a suspected heart condition
developed a mental illness
life of women in victorian britain
lack of education
forced to cook and clean
upper class were raised to be wives
echo and narcissus
- echo falls in love with narcissus
- cursed to only repeat the words of others
- he rejects her for his reflection
- he dies and leaves a flower where his body was
1850s: feminism
first feminist movement: focused on equality in education, work and electoral rights
NOT supported by queen Victoria
1870s: married women’s property act:
allowed married women to be the legal owners of the money they earned, and to inherit property
other poets
many victorian poets, including Tennyson focus heavily on the traumatic nature of loss, in poems such as ‘in memoriam’
rossetti’s experience of grief and loss
lost her father (and financial security) at the age of 24
rossetti’s loss of love
chose to end engagements for religious reasons:
* collinson & catholicism
* causley & lack of firm religious faith
goblin market intertextuality
- biblical imagery: adam and eve, the last supper
- poems ‘cousin kate’, ‘maude clare’ and ‘an apple gathering’ (all 1862)
- charlotte bronte’s ‘jane eyre’ (1847)
- elizabeth barrett browning’s ‘aurora leigh’ (1857)
psycholinguistic theory in goblin market
- goblins: advertisers, seducing women to buy products
- laura: “a sucker who will never get an even break because no actual commodity can match the consuming appetite”
rossetti and religion
- devout anglican
- gave up pursuits that gave her happiness
- broke off her engagement to james collinson when he converted to catholicism
- refised to marry charles causley as he had ‘no firm religious faith’
- found life physically and emotionally painful, looked forward to death and joining god
- wrote almost exclusively devotional poems after graves disease
- worked for highgate penitentiary
