2. Biography English poet sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Born in London she suffered ill-health in her youth educated privately already writing poetry in her teens. Many of her poems were aimed at children. She produced her first published verse under the pseudonym Ellen Alleyne. engaged to a painter, James Collinson broken off because of religious differences she was High Church Anglican. Tended to be a bit solitary 1874 Illness left her an invalid rejected the social world of her brother's "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood“
3. Themes: renunciation and self-denial vs. lush visions of plenitude and desire. Mixture of religious and sensual imagery In Rossetti’s poetry, feminine yearning is often the result of failed male-female relationships. Women are betrayed, silenced, or objectified by men: ie: the “nameless girl” of “In an Artist’s Studio,” who is painted “Not as she is, but as she fills [the male artist’s] dream” (line 14). critical appraisal of Victorian gender relations.
4. Goblin Market combination of fairytale motif and sensual imagery puzzling What do the “Goblin-men” represent? cautionary tale against unruly female appetites? religious allegory of sin and redemption? the struggle between temptation ideal Victorian “angel,” female (hetero)sexuality, homoerotic imagery What is the role of Jeanie, the “fallen” woman who dies as a result of her submission to the goblin men?
5. Goblin Market - continued traditional attitudes toward women in the nineteenth century. Lizzie supports middle-class Victorian views of ideal women: self-sacrificing nurturing On the other hand, Lizzie’s heroic actions blur traditional boundaries between private and public spheres: she moves freely between the spaces of home and marketplace examine the “epic” conflict between the goblin men and the two sisters; the violent action of the men: (their “claw[ing]” [line 401] and “[s]tamp[ing]” [line 405] result in Lizzie’s “bruises” [line 467])
6. Goblin Market- continued It is striking, moreover, that the conflict between men and women takes place within an economic framework. poem’s suggestive economic language: Equates sexual exchange with mercantile exchange: action revolves around buying and selling fruits in “goblin market,” Laura’s “golden lock” (line 126) is paralleled with “coin” (line 116). In nineteenth-century slang, a “goblin” = a gold so the goblin men could actually be equated with money How is the poem is critical of conventional gender relations and of domestic ideology?
7. In an Artist’s Studio Elizabeth “Lizzie” Siddal, the model in the sonnet later Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s wife. The model remains “hidden just behind those screens” (line 3)—that is, behind the canvases, “mirror” the desire of the painter concealing the real woman’s complex desires, disappointments, and aspirations. The artist depicts his model in all the conventional forms of femininity: “A saint, an angel” But the painter shows her “Not as she is, but as she fills his dream” (line 14). This poem speaks to the treatment of women as “aesthetic objects”.
8. Trivia: Christina herself was painted as the Virgin Mary by her brother in the painting Ecce AncillaDomini [“The Annunciation”]
9. Trivia While posing for Millais' Ophelia (1852), Siddal had floated in a bathtub full of water to model the drowning Ophelia. Millaispainted daily into the winter with Siddal modeling. He put lamps under the tub to warm the water. On one occasion the lamps went out and the water slowly became icy cold. Millais was absorbed by his painting and did not notice. Siddaldid not complain. After this session she became very sick with a severe cold or pneumonia.
10. Trivia - continued After Rossetti buried the book of his poems with his dead wife, several of his friends engaged in a moonlit act of grave robbing to retrieve them. One of the men in attendance was a friend of a then obscure Irish writer named Bram Stoker. The account of Lizzie's exhumation became the basis for the scene of the vampire Lucy Westenra's destruction in Dracula!
