Christina Rossetti Poetry Critics Flashcards
(17 cards)
Virginia Woolf (religion)
‘pressure of a tremendous faith circles and clamps’
Virginia Woolf (femininity)
‘beauty is vain and beauty passes’
Palazzo (feminism)
‘Christina Rossetti’s Feminist Theology: has radically rewritten the Fall of Eve’
Palazzo (feminism)
‘Rossetti has radically rewritten the Fall of Eve in terms of the social and spiritual abuse of women’
‘male gender oppression is interpreted as original sin’
Avery (resistance to position of women)
‘resistance to societal and political expectations which define acceptable roles for women and which leave them powerless’
Galt (social commentary, defies Victorian conventions)
‘a woman whom the conventions of society cannot shake: that she had her own agenda’
Harrison (desire/ religion)
‘inevitable culmination of compulsive amatory passions - renunciation’
Rosenblum (position of women)
‘valued for its affirmations of female piety, passivity and submission’
Simone de Beauvoir (feminism)
‘Second Sex’
Mold (feminism)
‘An observation into the lives of women’
Christina Rossetti (equal rights)
‘The highest functions are not in this world open to both sexes’
little to no indication of her approval or contemptment with this statement
Christina Rossetti (government)
‘need for mother MPs, and female representation of parliament’
this suggests Rossetti is exercising domestic feminism
Riyah Solomons
‘Critical of slavery, imperialism, military aggression, committed to anti vivisection movement, but lacks empathy for the Victorian female’s conditions of marginalisation.’ Personally, this suggests Rossetti exercises caution when addressing internal affairs in light of her father’s political exile.
Samuel Mount
‘Rossetti is weary of the potential repercussions of self empowerment, as a female’
Augustus Egg (polarisation of genders)
POLARISING – Augustus Egg
The theme of the triptych is the discovery of the woman’s infidelity and its consequences
An apple has been cut in two, the one half (representing the wife) has fallen to the floor, the other (representing the husband) has been stabbed to the core.
Jessica Chasten (expectation of women)
‘The position of her arms and the bracelets round her wrists give the impression that she is shackled.’
When critiquing Jessica Chastain’s portrayal of Nora in Stef smith’s 2018 modern day production of ADH.
In Victorian England a man could safely take a mistress without fear of recrimination, but for a woman to be unfaithful was an unforgivable crime. As Caroline Norton, an early feminist, wrote, ‘the faults of women are visited as sins, the sins of men are not even visited as faults’
Caroline Norton (inequality and double standards)
In Victorian England a man could safely take a mistress without fear of recrimination, but for a woman to be unfaithful was an unforgivable crime. As Caroline Norton, an early feminist, wrote, ‘the faults of women are visited as sins, the sins of men are not even visited as faults’
