Context of Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti

Life:

• Born to Gabriele Rossetti, an Italian poet and political exile, and Frances Polidori, in London.           
• She had two brothers and a sister: Dante became an influential artist and poet, and William and Maria both became writers.
• In the later decades of her life, Rossetti suffered from Graves’ disease, diagnosed in 1872 suffering a nearly fatal attack in the early 1870's.
• Her brother, Dante and William were a part of the radical Pre-Raphaelite group which she was later a central poet of.

Education:

• Rossetti was educated at home by her mother, who had her study religious works, classics, fairy tales and novels. This was because women of her time were not give the same education opportunities as men were.
• She was influenced greatly in her poetry by the work she was educated with, such as Keats, Scott, Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis.

Religious views:

• Rossetti was at the centre of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in the mid-to-late Victorian period, a radical group which challenged conventions about art in many ways.
• She became devoted, along with her sister Maria and their mother Frances, to High Anglicanism which became a large part of their lives.
• However, sometime around 1857 Rossetti had a major religious crisis.  Sticking to her Christian ways, she never judged women who were sexually exploited in prostitution, but instead aimed to help them. 

Role of women in the 19^th century:

• They lived in separate spheres to men, only deemed relevant for marriage, bearing children and housework. 
• Free time for women was not supposed to be spent socializing but doing other things related to the maintenance of the family.
• Women were also entirely shut out of political activity, and as a result could not vote.

Her views on the role of women:

• She argued for female representation in Parliament and spoke out against the sexual exploitation of women in prostitution.                                                    

“It’s a weary life, it is; she said:        

    Doubly blank in a woman’s lot:                    

    I wish and I wish I were a man                       

        Or, better than any being, were not:”     

        - From the Antique.

• She refused to support women's suffrage. She refuses on the grounds of the patriarchal [207/208] doctrines, values, and hierarchy of Christian orthodoxy.

Publication:

• She used the pen name ‘Ellen Alleyne’ to express views that weren’t necessarily hers.
• Her public career was short as she only published to: Athenaeum when she was 18; and the literary magazine, The Germ, published by the Pre-Raphaelites.
• She did not publish so publicly because women in her time were cone med for sharing their challenging opinions. This is why she often used a pen name when publishing publicly.
• As a result, most of her work was published after she was dead, in the 20^th century.