Rossetti context and critics

• Was well regarded in her time
• Was politically active as she worked at highgate penitentiary with fallen women such as prostitutes and widows to help rehabilitate them
• Explored the afterlife letting go of worldly desires to be able to be one with God
• Explored how religion treats women vs how she feels about how women should be treated
• Wrote and published around Victorian fin de siecle around the emergence of the new women
• Victorian poetry was characterised by sadness with death everywhere
• Pre raphelite movement was characterised by:

  -Women in nature (such as when she modelled for them-objectification)

  -Religion common in paintings (Rossetti's tantrum)

  -Bright colours

  -Explore sexuality

  -Expressinism