rossetti - critics

• bristow - ‘goblin market‘ has no positive depiction of men
• bristow - ’rossetti imagines states of dreaming after death which permit her to admit her dissatisfactions with worldly life‘
• barringer - in pre-raphaelite works, women were defined in relation to their male counterparts.
• barringer - she allowed her brother to tweak her poems, allowing him to exert a kind of power
• connell - she is able to use her feminine voice to enter into debates that move beyond gender
• arseneau - ‘constant emphasis on the need to read things…in a spiritual light.’
• arseneau - goblin market can be seen as a feminist manifesto, an exploration of sexual temptation, and an allegory of eve’s temptation in the garden of eden
• arseneau - ‘the natural world has an important part to play in Rossetti’s theology and aesthetics’
• arseneau - rossetti makes it clear she sees the temptation of eve as one of disobedience, not lust
• barringer - ’masculinity is a prerequisite for members of the brotherhood’
• harrison - ‘death, in orthodox christian fashion, is an event to be welcomed rather than rationalised’
• harrison - rossettis economic metaphors align with her rejection of loves false promises and the association of this to the seductions of the marketplace
• woolf - ’even when she was quite a girl her lifelong obsession in the relation of the soul with God had taken possession of her’
• mcgann - ‘if a large part of her work is not specifically devotional, it is virtually all ‘religious‘ in orientation’
• mcgann - rossetti’s heaven and hell are always conceptualised in terms of personal love relations.
• gilbert and gubar - once laura has lost her virginity she is literally valueless and therefore not evenn worth further seduction
• gilbert and gubar - lizzie acts a a female saviour, a christ-like figure offering herself to be eaten and drunk in a womanly holy communion
• gilbert and gubar - the fruits being unnatural and out-of-season further associates them with sinful sexuality
• gilbert and gubar - rossetti has to renounce herself similarly to how the women in her poetry do
• casey - rossetti demonstrates that the female may act as both the redeemer and the redeemed
• casey - lizzie is also redeemed; she gains courage of action through laura’s fall
• casey - suffering and metaphorical death are integral to laura’s redemption and birth
• leighton - to fall, for a woman, is simply to fall short
• rosenblun - in a patriarchal culture woman inevitably experiences herself as an object
• avery - the exuberance of a birthday are apt due to the celebration of having achieved spiritual fulfillment
• feminist critics focus on the redemptive power of sisterhood
• marxist critics - separation of domestic and commercial spheres to make women into goods to be exchanged
• avery - by rejecting a suitor the speaker asserts the right to say no
• avery - her views may not be radical, but they are usually far from conservative
• pallazo - rossetti has radically rewritten the form of eve to hint that male gender oppression is the catalyst of original sin
• d’amico - due to rossetti’s involvement at highgate we can assume she believed a fallen woman need not forever be a social outcast
• flowers - disappointments experienced in earthly relationships are set up as opposites to heavenly ones
• landow - all rossetti’s poems are full of the spirit, not the technicality, of devotion
• bocher - in rossetti’s poetry, god is always present, whether in the fore or background
• bocher - rossetti predominantly expresses an emotional love, not a sexulised love
• touche - longings and cravings are ever present in rossetti’s poetry, e.g. goblin market - deeper root in sexual frustration
• scholl - the forbidden fruit may also refer to female education