Before 'Goblin Market': A new reading of Christina Rossetti's early life

Driver, Gemma (2023) Before 'Goblin Market': A new reading of Christina Rossetti's early life. PhD thesis, University of Liverpool.

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Abstract

Christina Rossetti was considered among the great poets of her era but within a few decades of her death, she was relegated to the status of a minor poet. Since the 1990s her poetry has been restored to a more central place in the literary canon, but her life and character have still not been sufficiently reassessed; old myths and errors remain in force which are still routinely cited as a way of deciphering her poetry. Studied predominantly through her poem ‘Goblin Market,’ her early years have been neglected and her critical reception as a real person has reduced. This biographical study offers a portrayal which challenges a widely accepted narrative that the poet’s early years were dominated by ill-health, religious mania, self-denial and sexual repression and that these provide the keys to decoding her poetry. Rather than offering new readings of the poetry, new contexts are offered from which the poetry may be read. The thesis is invested in reclaiming Christina Rossetti’s material and domestic life as interesting in its own right. Extending the feminist project of recuperating Christina Rossetti’s familial, literary, intellectual and religious community, it scrutinises the poet’s interactions with various female aspirational models and friends which have hitherto been overlooked. The thesis mainly draws on primary sources, in particular letters by Christina and others. Reconstructing the ‘texture’ of the poet’s lived experience, this thesis also makes use of multiple digitized resources and manuscripts, including nineteenth century maps, census records, newspaper archives, church records and diaries. Unveiling the sharp divisions of poverty and wealth in the poet’s immediate neighbourhood, the thesis argues that Christina Rossetti’s Polidori family members had more of a significant social, religious, and poetic influence on her early life than that of her father. The study also traces the vital literary and social influence of the Heimann family on this young woman poet. Scholarly evidence of the poet’s alleged teenage ‘religious mania’ is analyzed and weighed against new research. The poet’s unsuccessful relationship with James Collinson is presented as it unfolded for her alongside analysis of how she engaged with both seeing and being seen, and how her poetry explores the parameters of love. I also suggest that the poet’s encounters with aristocratic models of female independence impacted her self-perception and stance towards the impoverished. The patterns, tensions and limits of female friendship are examined, through analysis of her correspondence. Whilst her poetry and prose had reflected conflicting emotions of boredom, powerlessness and suppressed envy whilst teaching in Frome for a year, the writer’s return to London prompted a new poetic summons for revival. Finally, I argue that as her social and literary acumen developed, the writer’s relative ignorance of female reproduction was counterbalanced by an escalating interest in natural history and her maintenance of an aquarium. Christina's poetry reveals how she employed aquatic life symbolically to explore and reveal facets of her own life and the shared experiences of the women of her era.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Divisions:	Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of the Arts
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	08 Feb 2024 11:47
Last Modified:	08 Feb 2024 11:48
DOI:	10.17638/03176894
Supervisors:	Roberts, Jonathan Bradley, Matthew
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3176894