Rossetti Context

• Rossetti’s view on suffrage; used Biblical idea of female subordination to man – argued for female representation in parliament, spoke out against sexual exploitation of women in prostitution. "Wives, submit to your own husband, as to the Lord."
• The Tractarian/Oxford Movement (renewal of Catholic thought) – reached London 1840s. Led to Rossetti’s shift from Evangelical to Anglo-Catholic orientation.
• 1843 – Rossetti’s father fell ill, leaving the whole family to seek employment. Rossetti remained at home as a companion to her ailing father.

  1845 – Rossetti fell ill herself; diagnosed with heart condition or mental illness – religious mania.

  1892 – diagnosed with breast cancer – recurred the following year, leading to her death in 1894.
• James Collison – proposed marriage to Rossetti 1848; she refused the offer due to his recent conversion to Roman Catholicism. He returned to the Church of England, his second proposal was accepted. Engagement ended in 1850 when Collison reverted to Catholicism.
• 1859 began volunteering at St. Mary Magdalene Penitentiary, Highgate – charitable institution for reclamation of fallen women. Stressed redemption through prayer.
• Rossetti was friendly with Langham Place Group – sought to improve female rights; all married women were not entitled to keep earnings. Campaign to push law – independence for earning (Married Woman’s Property Act).
• Rossetti’s sister, Maria, became an Anglican nun in 1871.
• Prior to the mid-1880s, legal systems viewed wife beating as a valid exercise of male control.

  Matrimonial Causes Act 1878 – women seek legal separation from an abuse husband – on ground of adultery, cruelty, desertion. Divorce allowed remarriage; restricted to the wealthy as complex annulment process. However, 1884 Matrimonal Causes Act continued to legalise rape within marriage.
• Prior to 1870 – money made by a woman automatically became husband’s property upon marriage. Single and widowed women were considered femme soles – right to own property in their name.

  Married Woman Property Act 1882; separate property; possible for women to live away from husbands and support their own children.
• The Angel in the House – women were expected to be subservient, chaste, self-sacrificing and powerless. These ideas spread with Queen Victoria’s devotion to Prince Albert. She wore black colours for 40 years following his passing.
• Fallen women – a woman who has fallen from the grace of God and society; loss/surrender of a woman’s chastity and female promiscuity.
• The Woman Question involved increasing ambiguity surrounding the role of women. The New Woman was a revolutionary ideal of the late 19th, early 20th century – women as independent and rejected the traditional ways of their mothers.
• The Pre-Raphaelite movement; 1848 to unite painters, poets, critics; revert deterioration of High Renaissance. Both of Rossetti’s brothers – members of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; as a young woman, she posed for paintings. E.g. The Girlhood of Mary Virgin.
• The Contagious Diseases Act 1860 – forced medical examination of women suspected of prostitution. If tested positive, placed in Lock Hospital until cured.

  Industrial Revolution – rise in capitalism: Rossetti recognised this as ‘dangerous vanity’. Women were objectified as urged into prostitution.  
• Redundant Woman – only certain number of men available for marriage – middle-class women (wealth meant protection) and prospects of marriage lowered every year.
• Echo was a nymph - cursed by Hora for tricking her to help Zeus. In response, her voice was taken, and she could only repeat words. Her hopeless love for Narcissus made her fade away; left only her voice.

  Echo
• About duchess Louise de la Valliere; she had an affair with Louis XIV and had to live in hostile conditions in French court. She bore several children to Louis XIV, one of which was legitimised by royal decree. The mistress lost favour in the Royal Courts, and Louis XIV found a new mistress. He used Louise to conceal the new affair; Louise began to lose her beauty and miscarried her final pregnancy in 1671. In 1674, she joined the Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel - became Sister Louise of Mercy; a nun.


  Soeur Louise de la Misericorde
• Liberal Feminists: Claim that although women have same capacity as men in moral reasoning, they believe that women in history have been denied the opportunity to express this in practise in society, believing expectations unequal and unfair.


  Liberal Feminists