critical quotes

• Rossetti provides a 'clear critique of dominant masculinity'- Simon Avery
• 'For all her constant talk of religion, Christina very seldom spoke of its joys'- Frances Thomas
• Her Christianity didn't seem to make her happy, cutting her off from others, leading her to live a life of 'isolated devoteeism'- George Norton
• Rossetti's poems encourage women 'to claim independence and agency'- simon avery
• 'an allegory of sexual transgression'- Barbara morden (goblin market)
• 'the idea of love turned inexorably to the idea of death'- C.M Bowra
• 'Rossetti's poems repeatedly struggle with religious doubt, frustration and fear.'- simon avery
• 'In Rossetti's poems, the female figure is depicted as entrapped or confined-physically psychologically or both.'- avery
• 'Her views may not always be radical as such, but they are usually far from conservative and often questioning, challenging and potentially subversive'- Avery
• 'Women were often idealised as [...] goddesses of hearth and home whilst simultaneously being denied the economic and social freedoms enjoyed by men'- Mold
• 'Goblin Market can be understood as a conventional parable of temptation, sacrifice and salvation'- Morden
• 'Rossetti examines women's position in society through consideration of the institution of marriage.'- Simon Avery
• 'in a patriarchal society, women can only assert power, ownership and control over something as ephemeral as a secret'- suzanne williams
• 'imbued with an entirely non-critical view of Empire'- Williams
• 'a stereotypical view of female selflessness'- Landow (When I am dead my dearest)
• 'so wearying is the position of women that annihilation is preferable'- Simon Avery
• Christina Rossetti's poems 'expressed frustrated, unrealised love.'- Edna Kotin Charles
• Rossetti 'did represent Victorian women's internal struggles by substituting fantasy for anger.'- Kaplan
• 'an intriguing study in the manipulation of power'- Avery (on Winter: My Secret)
• 'Rossetti loses herself in the aesthetics of renunciation, experiencing an almost extreme self-pity and self-congratulation at her self-denial'- Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar
• 'Rossetti's speakers demonstrate both an awareness of, and resistance to, those social and political expectations which define acceptable roles for women'- Simon Avery
• ''Maude Clare' engages in a discourse of hegemonic definitions of Victorian femininity [..] which in turn either reinforce or challenge these gendered ideals'- Andrew Stewart and Alexandra Russel
• 'love released a melancholy desire for death- Bowra
• 'death [...] is an intermediate condition between sleeping and waking'- Bowra
• 'focus is not on the possibility of fulfilling earthly love'- Harrison
• ‘To reject a marriage proposal seemed counter to the Victorian mentality, and for Rossetti to assert herself in such a way […] adds to her character a sense of strength’- G. Galt