Christina Rossetti- Notes

Christina Rossetti:
Background:
• Strong Italian Routes, Father was a political exile, obsessed with Dante.
• Very literary family, 4 children, Christina was the youngest, and lived a happy London childhood
• Had a religious education from Mother, though education was not demur- was encouraged to read fairy stories and classical novels.

Personality:
• Cheerful, confident and bouncy child
• A little stormy, not quiet
• During puberty shifted into a more troubled problematic child with a melancholy undertone
• Suffered a mental breakdown at the age of 14. Later in life again suffered with depression.
  • Was concerned about joining the Pre-Raphaelites, as didn’t want to be considered too controversial for the times. Even when being painted she was always being painted as someone else, never as herself.

  Poetry:
• Bright, vibrant, jewel like comes through in the tone of her poetry.
• Devote Christian; therefore often Christian themes are displayed.
• Wrote about controversial topics such as sex, class etc. Using perhaps more everyday situations to illustrate society’s flaws.

Maude Clare- Christina Rossetti:

Maude Clare- A Brief Summary:
Maude Clare is about a lower classed woman who fell in love with a man of a higher class than herself. Though this man (Thomas) loved her, he was unable to marry her as a result of the confines of his privileged social standing, and instead has had to marry Nell, a woman whom he does not love but must marry. In the poem, Maude Clare displays more dignity than those of a higher class, as she maintains a regal air. This is Rossetti’s way of commenting on the ludicrous Victorian class system.

In the poem Maude Clare, Rossetti is trying to display just how invalid and worthless the Victorian Class system was. Though Maude Clare would appear to be more powerful- described as “like a queen”- her social status means that she has less power, as despite being “taller…more wise and more fair” (as confessed by Nell) she has lost out on her love as a result of overbearing social standards. In this way Rossetti shows how corrupt the Victorian Class system was, as those who should logically be the higher achy are undermined by the aristocracy just because of their birth place/name.

 

Christina Rossetti was a poet in the 1800’s, in a time when male perceptions of women were anything but positive. Many male critics discredited her poetry-pronouncing it as having “no passion” or “not much high or deep feeling”. Her work was dismissed as “sweet” but nothing important. Her own brother, William Michael, discredited her work- insinuating that her work was worth much less than that of her male counterparts.

Rossetti was heavily religious. Even as her brothers moved away from religious beliefs, she remained true to her High Anglicanism upbringing, with the subject of religion being a common undertone in her poems. Christina turned down two potential suitors on the grounds or religious incompatibility.
 

In 1862, at the age of 32, she published her first full collection, Goblin Market and Other Poems. A sensuous fairy story, Goblin Market is a heady tale of repressed sexuality and sisterhood. Her concern with female fellowship was played out in real life as Rossetti devoted ten years as a volunteer at St Mary Magdalene's penitentiary for prostitutes and unmarried mothers in Highgate.