Rossetti - Biographical Context

Question 1

What is Rossetti’s family history? (6 points)

Answer 1

Her family was very intellectual and well-educated​ - filled with scholars and artists

Her uncle was John Polidori, Lord Byron’s physician​

At 14, she was diagnosed with religious mania after a nervous breakdown​

Never married but had a very close relationship with her siblings and mother - lived with her mother for most of her life. ​

Became very ill herself later in life, suffering from Graves disease for nearly 20 years

She eventually died of breast cancer in 1894.

Question 2

What was Rossetti’s relationship history (4 points)

Answer 2

In her late teens, she became engaged to James Collinson, a painter in the Pre-Raphaelite movement with Dante - broke it when he became a Catholic

Charles Cayley ( a noted linguist) later proposed but she rejected him because he couldn’t share her Anglican faith - remained close friends until his death

She was also proposed to by John Brett, but refused him as well. ​

Rossetti had a continual sadness about being childless.

Question 3

What were Rossetti’s beliefs about women in society? (5 points)

Answer 3

Christina and her sister both volunteered at the St. Mary Magdalene Penitentiary, a refuge for former prostitutes and fallen women. ​

Many of Rossetti’s poems express distaste for the double standards of the time, particularly regarding sexual morality - disliked the presentation of women as either ‘Angel of the House’ or ‘temptress’. ​

She had a particularly progressive view that a mistake or sexual misdemeanour should not condemn a woman for the rest of her life​

Women’s rights changed enormously during the Victorian era, but most of the time Rossetti was writing, married women could not own property

In 1870, Rossetti was asked to support a campaign to give women the vote - refused based on her beliefs about the role and responsibility of women (equal but different)

Question 4

What is Rossetti’s religious history? (5 points)

Answer 4

Was an Anglican, specifically a Tractarian – a branch of Christianity that emphasizes ritual and ceremony in worship

Rossetti believed that all individuals can be assured of their place in heaven after death

She read and studied the Bible

Rossetti was writing at a time when Darwin’s ideas were being explored - has no engagement with the conflict of science and religion.​

Rossetti’s poetry sometimes explores a conflict of earthly and heavenly joy, with the belief that one must be sacrificed to enjoy the other