Not "As She Fulfills His Dreams" But "As She Is": The Feminist Voice of Christina Rossetti Author(s) : Terry L. Spaise

Not "As She Fulfills His Dreams" but "As She Is": The Feminist Voice of Christina Rossetti
Author(s): Terry L. Spaise

Source: Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, Vol. 51, No. 1 (1997), pp. 53-68
Published by: Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association
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Not "As She Fulfills His Dreams" but "As She Is":
The Feminist Voice of Christina Rossetti
Terry L. Spaise
University of California, Riverside
The "canonization" of Christina Rossetti as a woman and poet

gained considerable momentum after her death due primarily to the
number of platitudinous obituaries written about her and to William
Michael Rossetti's idealized (and vastly edited) construct of his sis-
ter's life and his attempts to censor and/or alter the mood and con-
tent of her previously unpublished poetry. Some of these works he
suppressed altogether, possibly because their message was too per-
sonal or contradictory to the picture he had painted of his sister,
and, in many cases, he "felt free to alter words in some of the
poems . . . to tone down the sensuality which is one of the strongest
characteristics of her poetry, but which seemed inappropriate to her
brother" (Jones 228). As a result of all of these posthumous actions,
Rossetti's artistic successes and talents were stressed far less than
the example she supposedly set of the perfect Victorian woman who
posed no threat to the masculine portion of her society in either a
personal or professional capacity. Her verses were lauded as exam-
ples of her life of self-sacrifice, simplicity, personal suffering, and
lack of egoism and were professed to indicate her wholehearted sup-
port of the patriarchal social system in which she lived. At the time
of her death, very little was mentioned of her work as a lay helper at
Highgate, a sanctuary for fallen women, her active support of anti-
vivisection, her interest in projects for women's education, and her
acquaintance with the organizers of a Factory Girls' Club (Leighton
123). Even less was revealed about her volatile temper, failed love
affairs, and her devotion to her art.
Today, much of the research on Rossetti has focused on who the
real Christina Rossetti was, how she really viewed the world in
which she lived, and how those views and feelings manifested them-
selves in her verses. Scholars have attempted to answer such ques-
tions as how her religious canon exemplifies and explains her
philosophy about life and God, what her succession of passive and
dying women reveals about her thoughts of male/female relation-
ships, and what her poetry tells us about her views of woman's place
in this world and the next. Because Rossetti herself was an in-
tensely private person who resisted revealing any personal inform
tion about herself (indeed, as Kathleen Jones states, she destr
53
54 Rocky Mountain Review
almost all personal material before her death), and because of

William Michael's attempts to hide the real woman behind an ideal-
ized one, the answers to the above questions may be difficult to dis-
cover. Where, then, do we look for insights to Rossetti's social,
political, and moral sentiments and attitudes? Where else but her
poetry, which contains a magnificent breadth of style, theme, and
craftsmanship.
In the limited correspondence available to us, it is obvious that
Rossetti was a serious artist who worked hard to perfect her skills
as a poet. It is also clear that, at least early in her writing career,
she needed the security of Dante Gabriel's approval of her verses
and valued his observations and suggestions for change. After all,
she was continually reminded by both her family and the general
public of her brother's genius, and, true to the sentiments of her age,
she did not presume to place her own verses on a par with his.
However, as she grew more secure with her art and talent, and as
her work achieved a marked degree of public acceptance and praise,
she was more reluctant to follow the critical advice of her brothers.
She became very cognizant of her own artistic vision and voice, and
on more than one occasion refused to follow Dante Gabriel's sugges-
tions for revising both the theme and content of her work, which he
felt was too radically challenging to contemporary values.! It is this
"radical" aspect of her verse which I want to explore in this article.
To call Christina Rossetti a feminist may be a bit misleading and
inaccurate, particularly considering her belief, based primarily on
religious grounds, that a woman's place was second to that of a
man's, her views against universal women's suffrage,2 and the large
number of seemingly passive female figures which populate a large
number of her verses. However, with the 1990 publication of
Rossetti's previously unpublished work, we can see that, despite her
apparent comfort with the traditional gender positions of her society
on a religious/theoretical basis, she was highly critical of them on
more realistic grounds.
Early in her career, Christina Rossetti was very interested in the
"Woman Question," and throughout her life she devoted herself to
women's issues both in a creative and private sense. The most com-
mon targets of her criticism were marriage as a form of female
bondage, women being treated as objects of desire, and the double-
standard within male/female relationships. Her interest in women
and their social, political, and economic status within Victorian soci-
ety is evident from these themes and the general tenor of much of
her work. Despite her seeming acceptance of "the lowest place," she
remained highly critical of how women were treated and shaped by
Terry L. Spaise 55
her world, and her vie

negative.
Throughout most of h
seducers who abandon
wives as much as their wives love them, and lovers who consider
women as objects rather than as people. This may partially explain
her tendency, as noted by Pamela Gilbert, to create a female world
in which men are either "absent, weak or threatening" and where
bonds of sisterhood are stressed (2). "Goblin Market" (1859)3 is a
particularly good example of this feminine dominant world since the
focus is on the relationship between the two sisters, Lizzie and
Laura, and the threat to their bond by the goblin men. And although
we know from the last stanza that these sisters eventually become
wives and mothers, their husbands are conspicuously absent from
the poem and are clearly less important to the women than is their
own connection. As Laura teaches her children
For there is no friend like a sister

In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands. (562-67)
These would seem to be the traditional duties of the nineteenth-cen-
tury husband, but Rossetti has assigned them to the female instead,
which further calls into question her views about the importance
and necessity of male/female relationships in a mutually supportive
sense.
Several critics have pointed out that one of t

themes in Rossetti's poetry is her criticism of
For instance, Diane D'Amico feels that Rossett
tioned the value Victorian society placed on m
Ronald Morrison states that "Rossetti shows marr
flawed institution that all too often destroys a w
and spirit" (20). Whether Rossetti rejected th
cause, as D'Amico suggests, her "faith actually
the unmarried state closer to God" (219), or because she was aware
of the socioeconomic disadvantages of marriage to women of her era
and chose not to place herself in such a position is- open to specula-
tion. Whatever the reason for her antipathy toward the marriage
state, we do have ample evidence from the content and tone of such
poems as "After Death," "Dead Before Death," and "A Triad" to sup-
port its existence.
One of the problems in attemptin

toward marriage and husbands is
ferring to a secular marriage with
tual marriage with Christ. This "
found in medieval verse, runs th
which focus on the lover or the husband. For instance, in "Love
From the North" (1856), the speaker is about to marry a man who
"waited on my lightest breath, / And never dared to say me nay" (3-
4), but she prefers the man from the north who stops her wedding
and carries her off to his own home where
He made me fast with book and bell,

With links of love he makes me stay;
Till now I've neither heart nor power
Nor will nor wish to say him nay. (29-32)
Although Rossetti may be referring to two human lovers, ther
also the distinct possibility that the choice faced by the speake
between the secular life in a relationship which offers no emotiona
challenge and the spiritual life (the life of bell, book, and cand
which forces her to question her feelings; obviously, the speake
prefers to devote herself to the latter.
There is much less ambiguity about the physicality of the hu
band in "After Death" (1849) who "did not love me living; but o
dead / He pitied me .. ." (12-13). Marriage for this speaker is sho
to be a less than ideal state, since she is fully aware of her hus
band's lack of feeling for her and quite clearly loves him much mo
than he loves her. In fact, she seems to view her death as a hap
release for both of them from an empty marriage. As examplif
here, marriage is often shown by Rossetti to be a disappointment f
women rather than a life fulfilling experience. The very fact that
husband refers to his wife as "poor child" demonstrates her no
adult status, both in personal and legal terms, and it is this lack of
woman's political and social power within male/female relationsh
which Rossetti often tried to project in her poetry.
But it wasn't only marital relationships which Rossetti presen
as being imbalanced; she is equally critical of a social order whi
passively accepts the conduct of a male seducer and actively pu
ishes the female victim of that seduction. Her reformatory work
with women at Highgate from 1860 to 1870, and the fact that she
devoted a number of poems to this theme, indicate her interest in
the fate of the "fallen woman" in Victorian society. As Morrison
points out, in works such as "A Triad," "Cousin Kate," "Light Love,"
and "Maude Clare," Rossetti juxtaposes the fallen woman with the
Terry L. Spaise 57
wife to emphasize how

are defined by their s
ticularly precocious ex
(1844), written when R
contrast is set up betw
time periods.
"Forget me not! Forg
The maiden once di
When to some far-off battle-field
Her lover sped away.
"Forget me not! Forget me not!"
Says now the chamber-maid
When the traveller on his journey
No more will be delayed. (1-8)
Within two short stanzas, she demonstrates th
and the chamber-maid are often used and aba
that this is a situation which can, and most likel
ture time periods. This concern over the treatm
occurs repeatedly in her poetry and is particu
works only recently published, in which the soc
economic status of women is distinctly prese
standard is vilified.
Ironically, Rossetti herself was a victim of what, to an artist,
would be a more vile defilement than that of the body because of
William Michael's attempts to create a "perfect" image of his sister
after her death. During her lifetime, Christina kept much of her po-
etry very private, not even sharing it with her brother or other fam-
ily members. In this way, she retained control over her words and
their intended meaning. However, because many of these poems ex-
pressed views contradictory to the image William Michael wanted
people to have of his sister, he actively repressed and edited many of
the poems which came to light only after her death. One of these
works which has been tampered with is "Look On This Picture and
On This," composed July 12, 1856, in which a male protagonist is
trying to choose (or justify his choice) between two women-one
whom he calls a devil and one a saint.
In his 1896 edition of his sister's works, William Michael writes:
"In my sister's MS. this poem is a rather long one, fort[y]-six
triplets; I have reduced it to twenty-three-omitting those passages
which appear to me to be either in themselves inferior, or adapted
rather for spinning out the theme than intensifying it" (Crump 3:
460). In its complete form, this poem is full of passion and fire (and a
great deal of intensity) in the arg

toward his passive, saintly love;
has completely altered the force
any negative references to the b
However, Christina intends the
sivity and her cold response to h
driven him away and into the ar
sion and warmth. Both of the foll
rate representation of the speak
omitted from the poem as origi
"saint," the lover says,
A pitiless fiend is in your eyes
If you were dead I verily believ
The home you love, the man y
loved-avaunt. (64-66)
while he describes his feelings

No it's not her beauty bloo
Not her pomp of beauty too
It's her eyes, her witching
teach. (10-12)
In its edited state,

as a temptress wh
saint-like lover an
form, it is the sa
cisely the behavior
The argument itse
sion to censure to
from William Mich
traditional Victor
edited version wo
tone and causes th
tional gender beh
laudatory and em
views with regard
contemporarily u
which is found in
these poems that
roles, specifically w
dent and her humo
we can see in thes
have only recently
Terry L. Spaise 59
In the sonnet, "In an

1856, the idea of "wom
acute analysis of Dant
women in general. The
canvasses," is quite lit
idealize and mold the
figure.4 What Rossett
of woman-the view D
which Christina quite
never truly exist or b
loveliness, both in phy
an angel; beautiful to look at, she is also adoring and pure. Yet
Rossetti shatters this ideal image created in the opening quatrains
in the sestet in which she forces the reader to view Dante Gabriel's
actions in a very different and highly destructive light-both to th
woman and to himself. The man "feeds upon her face by day an
night," obviously forsaking living women for this illusionary one h
has created himself, and the woman, captured in time, looks ba
with kindness and joy, thereby reinforcing his view of her as an ob
ject of desire. But Rossetti looks beyond the face on the canvas to s
the woman as she is in reality-"wan with waiting" and "with sor
row dim." This real woman has been completely objectified by t
male artist; her image is hidden behind the screens (he wants t
keep her only to himself), she is nameless (if no name, no identity
individuality), she is voiceless (a voice gives identity and power,
canvases cannot speak), and, finally, the last word in the sonnet em
phasizes the figure's position as an illusion ("Not as she is, but a
she fills his dream"). Taken by itself, this poem is a rather poin
critique of her brother and an acute observation concerning the psy
chological nature of his creativity; viewed as a part of Rossetti'
whole canon, however, it is a clear example of her awareness of and
dissatisfaction with how her gender was viewed by Victorian men i
general, and how women were expected to repress their own em
tions and more lively personalities if they wished to gain male
approval.
Another interesting example of this idea of woman as object is
found in the sonnet, "In Progress," written March 31, 1862. Rossetti's
sarcasm, which is found in several poems in volume 3 of Crump's
collection, leaps out in the last two lines of the work and effectively
changes the initial interpretation of the first two lines of the poem.
Obviously, a great change has taken place with regard to this
woman since "Ten years ago it seemed impossible / That she should
ever grow so calm as this." The key words here are "impossible" and
"calm," which suggest that this wo

that those around her thought it
tive) part of her personality. Th
Patmore's Angel in the House (18
society's expectations of proper fe
shell. Rossetti's woman is described with the words "dim," "ex-
hausted," "slow-speaking," "silent," "monotonous," and "wearied."
Whatever she once was, ten years in this household have completely
erased her individuality and sense of self. As we move through the
sonnet line by line, the picture of this woman becomes more and
more depressing and dark as we see her "Slow-speaking when she
has some fact to tell" (5) and "Mindful of drudging daily common
things" (9). Rossetti has effectively created a picture of domestic
servitude and tyranny, and the last three lines-"Sometimes I fancy
we may one day see / Her head shoot forth seven stars from where
they lurk / And her eyes lightnings and her shoulders wings"-is a
most sarcastic allusion to her angelic status. Yet this description
also alludes to the woman's possible escape (or wish to escape) from
her current passive position since the stars "shoot" from her head
and lightning issues from her eyes-both very active occurrences.
Moreover, she has now sprouted the wings which will allow her to
fly away from this repressive atmosphere.
These last three lines from "In Progress" also seem closely related
to chapters 1, 2, and 12 from "The Revelation of St. John the Divine"
in the Bible. Chapters 1 and 2 refer to the angel of the church of
Euphesus who holds seven stars in his hand, and chapter 12 focuses
on a woman with a crown of twelve stars who bears a son who rules
all nations with an iron rod. Since both the angel and the woman
are presented as powerful figures, Rossetti's allusion to them in her
poem would seem to support the idea of the need and wish for femi-
nine power on the part of the female subject of the poem.
We have further indications of Rossetti's dissatisfaction with a
woman's allotted place in the social order in "From the Antiqu
(December 10, 1852), in which the female speaker voices her bore-
dom and an awareness that men lead fuller and more interesting
lives than do women.
It's a weary life, it is; she said:-

Doubly blank in a woman's lot:
I wish and I wish I were a man;
Or, better than any being, were not: (1-4)
But even though the speaker feels the world offers more to me
than to women, she is also convinced that true happiness and fulfill
ment can only be achieved in the afterlife.
Terry L. Spaise 61
The tone of the entire

to the place of men an
projects the idea that
tioning or developmen
strates this fact in stan
there were no people, "
the seasons go and com
merging the secular and
zas one and four focus
ings of alienation, bor
three extend these ideas to include all of mankind. The world offers
nothing to the speaker, and she feels "none would miss me in all the
world" (13). And since she cannot change her gender and perhaps,
thereby, find some meaning or use in the world, her answer is to "be
nothing." As in "In Progress," Rossetti presents a picture of restric-
tive options for women within her society, and she emphasizes how
inhibiting to personal growth and mental stimulation such a life can
be. But while the woman in "In Progress" seems on the verge of
some sort of change or action with regard to her predicament, the
speaker in "From the Antique" has lost all hope of escape or change
and passively accepts her fate.
The idea that marriage changes women profoundly is also found
in the September 27, 1846, poem, "Song" ("I saw her; she was
lovely"), in which a rejected lover watches the progress of the object
of his love through courtship, marriage, and widowhood. In the first
stanza, the young girl is described with the words "Lovely," "bright,"
and "merrily." She is quite lively and happy during the period of her
courtship, and the speaker laments the fact that "her heart was
given to another / Not to return again" (7-8). In stanza two, we wit-
ness her marriage to her chosen mate, and we also see a change in
her demeanor from stanza one-now she paces down the aisle and
her smile is quiet and holy; she, like the woman in "In Progress,"
has lost much of her animation with the advent of marriage.
However, Rossetti makes it very clear that, at this point in time at
least, the woman is more than content with her choice: "A smile of
certain happiness . . . lighted up her face" (15-16). She has confi-
dence in her choice and believes she will live happily ever after.
However, by stanza three, the mood has definitely changed. Her
husband is now dead, and she is found kneeling beside his bed as a
proper wife should. However, we know that her "certain happiness"
from stanza two was an illusion, because his death leaves her empty
and emotionless. What happened to destroy her earlier happiness
and "joie de vivre?" Rossetti alludes to this in lines 21-22 when she
says "From the body of her husban

sun's rays] chased away." If the g
her husband that it altered his c
assumption that it (and perhaps he)
as well, which resulted in the destr
this woman? The last lines, "And sh
And hailed the coming day" (23-2
point when we realize she will no
looking forward to a life without h
lars or details, Rossetti has offered
vacity which, after marriage, has
woman's life, most probably becau
wish to mold her into a "proper" V
a whole-hearted endorsement of th
Compromise is a part of any relationship; however, Rossetti
seems to feel that this burden falls exclusively and unfairly on the
woman. As a result, women become mere shadows of what they once
were because these supposedly "outer" changes have a much deeper
effect on the inner person. This less than admirable change is also
seen in "Once" (1850), in which the individuality of the female sub-
ject has given way to proper, conventional female behavior.
Now she is a noble lady,
With calm voice not overloud;
Very courteous in her action,
Yet you think her proud;
Much too haughty to affect;
Too indifferent to direct,
Or be angry, or suspect;
Doing all from self-respect. (22-29)
Even though she is now dressed in ermine and gold a
the traits of a "proper" lady, the speaker feels "Yet
her more / In the simple time before" (6-7). Rossetti's
how women are forced (overtly and subliminally) to sh
themselves into something they are not and how they
themselves in the process.
The need to conform or change one's natural beha
was something Rossetti herself experienced. As Kath
notes in her excellent and informative biography of Ro
Gabriel and Christina were known as the "two storms,"
inheriting their volatile Italian temperaments from their
father. Christina was the more fractious of the two, pas-
sionate and given to terrible tantrums. (5)
Terry L. Spaise 63
As she grew older, h

older sister, Maria, wh
cious of the four [sibl
and had the narrowest outlook on life. Yet, because she had the
stronger and less sensitive personality of the two, Maria had a great
influence on shaping Christina and restricting her naturally lively
tendencies. Although on the surface Christina seemed to accept
these alterations as necessary, both for social and familial accep-
tance, from the evidence of such poems as "Once" and "Look On This
Picture and On This," it is obvious that she questioned whether the
ends were worth the sacrifice in terms of the loss of one's individual
spirit.
However, if Rossetti was critical of the political and economic in-
equality of men and women within marriage, she was even more
censorious of men who used and discarded women, and of the society
which perpetuated the double standard with regard to male and fe-
male sexual purity. This is most evident in "Margery" (October 1,
1863), which is a pointed condemnation of a man who seduces and
abandons his lover. What makes the poem particularly interesting
is the tone it takes toward the man, Margery herself, and traditional
social reactions to the event. Once again, it is the man who suffers
the brunt of Rossetti's disparagement, although the passive behav-
ior of Margery herself is also open to a certain amount of criticism.
What stands out, however, and the point Rossetti keeps coming back
to, is "What now to do with Margery?" At no time in the poem does
the speaker think of abandoning Margery, only of helping her. The
speaker feels a great deal of pity for Margery and her situation.
Margery is described as heartsore, "guileless," and "foolish," and, as
we see in stanza two, her only crime is in mishandling her relation-
ship with the man.
A foolish girl, to love a man
And let him know she loved him so!
She should have tried a different plan;
Have loved, but not have let him know:
Then he perhaps had loved her so. (6-10)
Of course, this explanation of the event is highly prejudicial in f
of Margery; it is also an interesting psychological comment a
male/female relationships and the myth that a man will only rem
interested in a woman if she is aloof and mysterious rather than
honest about her feelings for him.
At the heart of this poem are two very pointed observations which
illustrate Rossetti's viewpoint with regard to seduction. In stanza
four, the speaker admits that "

true: / girls should not make th
mitted Margery's mistake, the s
stead, her main concern is how
Margery get on with her life. Thi
demption is reinforced in stanza
the reader/society by telling us
It was her own fault? so it was.
If every own fault found us out
Dogged us and snared us round about,
What comfort should we take because
Not half our due we thus wrung out? (31-35)
The tone and content of this stanza is quite similar to Jesus' words
to the Pharisees when they came to him with the problem of the
adulterous woman. His answer was simple and to the point: "He
that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her"
(John 8:7). Margery made a mistake, as Rossetti is quick to ac-
knowledge, but she is also entitled to a little Christian understand-
ing, something Rossetti's own society was quick to withhold from
women in Margery's position.
At the same time that the speaker is absorbed with trying to find
a solution to Margery's problem and in reawakening in her a desire
to live, she is also extremely critical of the man who has placed
Margery in this position in the first place. From stanzas five and
eleven, we get a picture of him as a heartless, cold and very unfeel-
ing individual who has seduced this innocent young girl and aban-
doned her without a thought, something the speaker cannot
understand from purely a humanitarian point of view.
I think-and I'm of flesh and blood-
Were I that man for whom she cares
I would not cost her tears and prayers
To leave her just alone like mud,
Fretting her simple heart with cares. (21-25)
The speaker's anger is quite evident in this stanza, and the sarcastic
tone is continued in the final stanza of the poem in which her con-
demnation of the man is pronounced.
Yet this I say and I maintain;
Were I the man she's fretting for
I should my very self abhor
If I could leave her to her pain,
Uncomforted to tears and pain. (51-55)
Terry L. Spaise 65
There is no question in
ties is more culpable an
This callous abandonment of Margery is, in Rossetti's mind, a
greater crime than Margery's giving of herself to a man whom she
truly loves and who she believed loved her.
In addition to this final, negative view of the male seducer, we are
also left with the hope that Margery, in time,
... may forget,
Not all at once, but in a while;
May come to wonder how she set
Her heart on this slight thing, and smile
At her own folly, in a while. (46-50)
This stanza alone confirms Rossetti's belief that what h
Margery should in no way impact on her future ability
happy life for herself. Unlike the woman in Dante Gab
and painting "Found" (1881), who having once erred be
outcast from home and hearth, Margery's future looks
positive.
In a perfect world, and with an ideal application of the concept of
Christian charity, there would be none of the injustices toward
women which Rossetti witnessed and was compelled to explore in
her poetry. And this, naturally, leads us to the vast number of
poems in which the speaker rejoices in being able to leave her
earthly bonds and achieve an existence of true equality in the after-
life. As D'Amico notes, "In heaven there would be neither male nor
female, and all would be equal before God. If a woman felt powerless
and insignficant in this world, she could . . . turn to the promises of
heaven" (214), as Rossetti's female speakers did over and over again.
The question of appearances and truth in male/female relation-
ships was something which apparently troubled Rossetti from the
beginning, since one of her earliest poems, "The Novice" (1847), fo-
cuses on the unenduring nature of secular love. This question is
clearly presented in the opening stanzas:
I love one, and he loveth me:
Who sayeth this? who deemeth this?
And is this thought a cause of bliss,
Or source of misery?
The loved may die, or he may change:
And if he die thou art bereft;
Or if he alter, nought is left
Save life that seemeth strange. (1-8)
Of the two possible conclusions

the loved one is obviously more
ings for the speaker, since the la
A weary life, a hopeless life,
Full of all ill and fear-oppres
A weary life that looks for re
Alone after death's strife. (9-12)
As with her later poetry, the answer is for the

faith in a spiritual relationship which is hon
completely fulfilling. Once again, Rossetti has
flesh and blood lover for the spiritual one be
former only empties her life by expecting her
to his view of how women should act while the
lowing (or even forcing) her to search deep wit
who she really is.
As a woman and artist, Rossetti continually
similar situation as her family encouraged h
poetry and personality to better fit their id
should project and the person she should strive
death, William Michael was still trying to m
letters and poetry and offering an extremel
mental biographical picture of his sister. De
reactionary and subversive nature of her poetr
rapher Kathleen Jones says, "her articulation
voice within a creed which consistently denied
hood which at the same time must be self-less,
tral conflict of the woman writer in the ninet
With our access to the full and unedited (tha
of Rossetti's poetry, it is now possible to gain
rate understanding of her views of male/fem
of their many guises. In her work she was urg
be honest in expressing their feelings for ea
blame equally for their negative or destructi
another. While her strong religious beliefs t
Victorian viewpoint that women should take
men, these beliefs also demanded that there should be a moral
equality between the sexes with regard to personal behavior, and if
change was necessary within a relationship, it should be shared by
both parties and not be regarded as solely the woman's duty.
Although it is doubtful that Rossetti would have labeled herself a
feminist who believed in full equality between the sexes, there is no
denying that she was aware of the social, political, and economic
Terry L. Spaise 67
inequalities suffered b
concerns and opinions
as can be evidenced b
edit or suppress her w
as a person and as an a
Notes
'For a fuller discussion of this topic, see Sharon Smulders and Kathleen
Jones.
2According to Sharon Smulders, Rossetti opposed the suffrage movement

because she felt it did not uphold Christianity, but she did feel that married
women should be given the vote and be allowed to sit in Parliament.
3In all cases, I have given the date the poem was written, not the date of
first publication of the work.
4Lizzie Siddal, who later became Dante Gabriel's wife, was the model for
a number of his paintings, but even when he used other models, the women
in his work more often than not resembled Lizzie.
Works Cited
D'Amico, Diane. "'Choose the stairs that mount above': Christina Rossetti
and the Anglican Sisterhoods." Essays in Literature 17:2 (1990): 204-
21.
Gilbert, Pamela K. "'A Horrid Game': Woman as Social Entity in Christina

Rossetti's Prose." English 41:169 (1992): 1-23.
Jones, Kathleen. Learning Not To Be First: The Life of Christina Rossetti.

Gloucestershire: Windrush Press, 1991.
Leighton, Angela. "'When I am dead, my dearest': The Secret of Christina

Rossetti." Modern Philology 87:4 (1990): 373-88.
Morrison, Ronald D. "'One droned in sweetness like a fattened bee':

Christina Rossetti's View of Marriage in Her Early Poetry." Kentucky
Philological Review 5 (1990): 19-26.
Rossetti, Christina. The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti, 3 vol. Ed. R.
W. Crump. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990.
Smulders, Sharon. "Woman's Enfranchisement in Christina Rossetti's
Poetry." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 34:4 (1992):
568-88.

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Not "As She Fulfills His Dreams" but "As She Is": The Feminist Voice of Christina Rossetti

Author(s): Terry L. Spaise

Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,

The "canonization" of Christina Rossetti as a woman and poet

almost all personal material before her death), and because of

her world, and her vie

For there is no friend like a sister

Several critics have pointed out that one of t

One of the problems in attemptin

He made me fast with book and bell,

wife to emphasize how

great deal of intensity) in the arg

while he describes his feelings

In its edited state,

In the sonnet, "In an

"calm," which suggest that this wo

It's a weary life, it is; she said:-

The tone of the entire

says "From the body of her husban

As she grew older, h

four, the speaker admits that "

Of the two possible conclusions

As with her later poetry, the answer is for the

2According to Sharon Smulders, Rossetti opposed the suffrage movement

Gilbert, Pamela K. "'A Horrid Game': Woman as Social Entity in Christina

Jones, Kathleen. Learning Not To Be First: The Life of Christina Rossetti.

Leighton, Angela. "'When I am dead, my dearest': The Secret of Christina

Morrison, Ronald D. "'One droned in sweetness like a fattened bee':

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