Although she is not known as one of the great feminist writers of the Victorian era, Christina Rossetti definitely pondered the “woman question,” an attempt by thinkers of the day to determine a woman’s place in society. Ralph Bellas writes that the expectation of a Victorian lady was that she was of a certain character, “molded by renunciation, repression, sobriety, propriety, and piety” (41). In several of her poems, Rossetti explores the women polite Victorian society would rather leave invisible, those women who found themselves fallen, either through no fault of their own or as a direct result of their actions. In Victorian times, such women were often ignored, if not ridiculed. Through careful examination of several of Rossetti’s works, it is clear that she does not take the typical unsympathetic view of these women, but instead allows her faith to shape her understanding of them as imperfect but not worthless.
In poems like “Love from the North,” and “Cousin Kate,” Rossetti explores the women who have not fallen by choice, but instead are coerced by some means into sexual bondage that places them in a situation from which there is little hope for escape from society’s disapproval-a very serious plight in Victorian times. The subjects each lament their fate as a woman who ended up in the wrong. In “Love from the North,” the speaker is going about things properly, considering on her wedding day how she and her love have never had anything but pleasantries between them.
She states:
He saddened if my cheer was sad,
But gay he grew if I was gay;
We never differed on a hair,
My yes his yes, my nay his nay. (5-8)
This stanza makes the loving relationship that the speaker describes clear to the reader. There is no doubt that this young woman is heading down the path that leads to a respectable place in society. Things take a turn for the worse in the lines that follow, leading the speaker into the dark area of fallen women.
Having natural wedding jitters, the speaker consoles herself in line 12 with the thought that “‘It’s quite too late to think of nay.'” Instead of the “yea” she is expecting, however, the speaker does hear “nay.” It is not her lover who says “nay,” but instead a stranger who takes the woman captive against her will, to his home in the north. The speaker is confined, as seen in line 30. The image described here, “with links of love he makes me stay,” can be read as a metaphorical if not literal chain, with the lady forced to do the bidding of her master, with no regard to her desires. Although she may feel some “love” for her captor, the feeling is more like resignation to the fact that this is her lot in life, something she must accept. Rossetti demonstrates this attitude in the last two lines of the last stanza. The speaker notes that she has had “neither heart nor power/ nor will nor wish to say him nay” (31-32). The situation in this poem reflects Rossetti’s view that in some cases the woman has no say in her downfall, but is often the victim of the male, and therefore deserves no harsh judgment.
Regardless of who is to blame for the encounter, in Victorian society, the woman is made into the outcast, as seen in “Cousin Kate.” The speaker in these lines is a young girl from the countryside, content with her life there in her cottage. Her beauty attracts a lord who subsequently drew her into his clutches and made her “his plaything and his love” (line 12). When she becomes inconvenient or uninteresting, the lord sets her aside like a piece of discarded clothing. She must now live her life with the taint of this sexual experience upon her. Rossetti writes that the speaker is, in line 15, “an unclean thing, who might have been a dove.” In stating this, Rossetti makes it clear that she disapproves of the way that fallen women are blamed entirely for their situation. Diane D’amico states that “Rossetti, unlike many of her contemporaries, saw the fallen woman’s story as a complex and layered narrative, one in which the fallen woman was not the only sinner” (95). Indeed, from the next stanzas in the poem, it is clear that the speaker has been betrayed in more than one sense.
The multi-level betrayal occurs as the speaker’s cousin Kate has been chosen as the lord’s wife. She appeals more to the lord than does the speaker, and so is given the position of legitimacy. This turn of events does not go unnoticed:
Because you were so good and pure
He bound you with his ring:
The neighbors call you good and pure,
Call me an outcast thing. (25-28)
The attitude of the neighbors towards the speaker is typical of the age. Cousin Kate is upheld as the model of virtue, and the speaker tossed aside as an outcast, banished from polite society. In Lona Packer’s biography of Rossetti, the author notes that Rossetti was an active volunteer at the St. Mary Magdalen Home for Fallen Women on Highgate Hill. This service was a mark of the religious opinions in the nineteenth century, where many were “zealously concerned about the related problems of prostitution and the restoration of ‘fallen women’…” (Packer 153).
Rossetti’s concern for the welfare of fallen women is apparent in “Cousin Kate” as the speaker clings to her last hope for saving herself: her illegitimate son. In line 45, the speaker calls her son her shame, noting the fact that he is not legitimately born, but also her pride. He brings her pride because Lady Kate does not have a son. The speaker notes that having this son is a way for her to possibly regain an acceptable social position. If Rossetti blamed the speaker for getting herself into the predicament, there would be no escape for her. Instead of a son, the speaker would be forced into an undesirable fate, such as being forced to beg until the end of her days. Because Rossetti provides a son for the speaker, she makes it clear that there is a way out. The son functions as a savior, almost like a Christ figure in this work. This ending is a clear indicator of the faith lived out by Rossetti.
In her poem “An Apple Gathering,” Rossetti explores the life of a young woman who was in love and gave of herself expecting her lover to return her feelings with a proposal. The speaker in this poem is different from the ones in “Love from the North” and “Cousin Kate” in that she knowingly enters into a relationship rather than being forced into one. She chooses to put herself out there, much to the chagrin of her society. The first lines of the poem illustrate her attitude toward love:
I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple tree
And wore them all that evening in my hair:
Then in due season when I went to see
I found no apples there. (1-4)
The plucked pink blossoms represent her over eagerness to engage in a relationship, thereby “despoil[ing] herself of the fruit of her full harvest” (Packer 115). She has rushed into things, and now must pay the price of a barren apple tree, which in Victorian society is the outcast state featured in “Cousin Kate.” The speaker watches forlornly as other girls who have been patiently waiting for the harvest walk by with baskets brimmed to the top with apples. According to D’amico, the apples represent financial security. Because the speaker rushed into love, she now lacks financial stability; “because her tree produced no apples, she will have trouble establishing a home” (101). Willie, the man she loved, now walks with Gertrude, one of the girls with plenty of apples to spare. In revealing to Willie that she had feelings for him before marriage, the speaker now has no prospects for marriage (D’amico 101). She is instead labeled as a fast girl, and must wander about the orchard alone.
Rossetti, however, does not take the typical Victorian view of the speaker, but shows the reader that the love held by the speaker towards Willie was a true love, and not a moral downfall, the view held by her peers and neighbors. The speaker questions Willie, asking him why he values the morality of the time and the financial security a marriage with Gertrude will bring over her love. She wonders aloud:
Ah Willie, Willie, was my love less worth
Than apples with their green leaves piled above?
I counted the rosiest apples on earth
Of far less worth than love. (17-20)
This stanza marks a shift in the symbolism of the apples, from security and stability to “merely a commodity that a woman exchanges for the security of marriage…Thus while the speaker is still guilty of a sinful love, the others are guilty of placing the things of the earth before love” (D’amico 101-102). Clearly, Rossetti does not view the young woman as the only one guilty of sin. The fact that she so obviously sees the inadequacy in the Victorian system of love developing only after marriage as far as proper ladies are concerned reveals her feelings that the system must be reformed.
Rossetti also examines fallen women through the lens of Eve, the first fallen woman. While Eve’s fall was not of the same nature, that is, sexual sin, it cannot be denied that the Fall has been a major influence on the lives of women ever since that time. Rossetti uses Eve or Eden in several of her works, including “Shut Out,” “Eve,” and “A Daughter of Eve.” In these poems, Rossetti presets Eve as a woman rather than a mythic figure, while using the garden as a metaphor for the sinless condition. This realistic portrayal of Eve coupled with the symbolic use of the garden allows the reader to get a sense of sympathy for Eve and her descendants rather than a sense of shame and disapproval.
In “Shut Out,” Eve is not actually mentioned by name, and some scholars, such as Dolores Rosenblum, feel that the garden represents a sense of self. The woman in this poem would therefore be a woman who has fallen from grace, and is now tainted in the eyes of society. The speaker laments the loss of her garden, “With all its nests and stately trees/ It had been mine and it was lost” (7-8). Rosenblum suggests that in this poem, the speaker’s self is displaced (68).
If the garden represents the former self, forever changed by sin and now displaced, the gatekeeper represents Victorian morality. Because of the strict rules and expectations implemented by society, the speaker can never hope to regain herself. Like the speaker in “Cousin Kate,” the speaker here bemoans her fate, a fate brought on by society:
A shadowless spirit kept the gate
Blank and unchanging like the grave
I peering thro’ said: “Let me have
Some buds to cheer my outcast state. (9-12)
As the speaker continues to ask society to allow her back in, she is constantly shut out until finally a wall is built between her sinful self and her former state of purity, forever locking her out of her former self, the self approved of by society.
As in “An Apple Gathering,” the speaker in “A Daughter of Eve” has moved too soon in love. She states that she is a fool “to pluck my rose too soon/A fool to snap my lily” (4-5). As a result of her sin, she is now lost and alone. Her garden has been forsaken as a result of her supposed sin, and although others talk of spring and a rosy future, the speaker feels:
Stripped bare of hope and everything,
No more to laugh, no more to sing,
I sit alone with sorrow. (13-15)
The society she once loved is now a cause of pain for her, because now she sees what she has lost. This sin, while not clearly specified, does seem to be of a more aggressive nature than in “Apple Gathering.” The way that the speaker blames herself shows that Rossetti does not pretend to alleviate all blame from the guilty woman. The title of the poem traces back the condition of the woman all the way to Eve and the Fall. This linkage not only shows Rossetti’s religious view of Eve as the original woman, but also gives the reader the knowledge that the speaker in the poem was not always lacking a beautiful garden (or good position in society), but has fallen.
Eve herself is examined in “Eve,” Rossetti’s view of the first woman to fall. In this work, “one finds… [an] emphasis on divine forgiveness, an emphasis that again turns the reader from seeing the sinful woman as other and apart to seeing her as very much a part of the human community” (D’amico 117). This work shows Eve as the mother of a slain son, not the temptress portrayed in some other works of the age. She states that:
Mine eye weepeth sore
For sorrow and sin;
As a tree my sin stands
To darken all lands;
Death is the fruit it bore. (3-7)
These lines show Rossetti’s version of Eve as contrite and regretful, not that she gave up Eden, but that she helped introduce sin and death into the world. Like the speakers of the other poems, Eve regrets the turn of events that led to her current situation. While she could easily blame another for her sin, she accepts responsibility. This causes the reader to feel sympathetic towards her rather than the hatred that could easily be conjured up.
Because of her sin, her son has died at the hands of his brother. At the sight of her weeping, nature bows its head and cries as well. “Having nature mourn with Eve reinforces the association of Eve not with death but life,” an association that is typical of Rossetti (D’amico 22). In this way, all of the speakers of the poems discussed are vindicated. None of them is condemned to death as a result of their sin; each of them has at least her life, if nothing else. Rossetti seeks not to condemn the sinners, but instead the sin. In this poem, Satan is represented as the serpent, the instigator of sin, and as a result of his victory, he “grinned an evil grin and thrust/ his tongue out with its fork” (69-70). Here, Rossetti places the fault squarely on Satan, leaving Eve to be the woman who has fallen not entirely through her own devices.
Throughout Rossetti’s poems dealing with women fallen from grace, she consistently makes it clear that she does not, as was typical of her era, place the blame entirely on the shoulders of the woman. Whether the fallen woman is entirely innocent but still outcast, can be blamed, though not entirely, is feeling sorrow after being shut out of society or is Eve herself, Rossetti sees her as having worth and possibility for redemption. Casting aside society’s exclusion of these women, Rossetti brings them into the spotlight and demands that just because a woman has fallen does not mean that she cannot be picked back up. In writing these poems, Rossetti seeks to enlighten society about the true nature of and circumstances surrounding fallen women.
Works Cited
Bellas, Ralph A. Christina Rossetti. Boston: Twayne, 1977.
D’amico, Diane. Christina Rossetti: Faith, Gender and Time. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1999.
Packer, Lona M. Christina Rossetti. Berkeley: University of California P, 1963.
Rosenblum, Dolores. Christina Rossetti:The Poetry of Endurance. Carbondale: Carbondale Southern Illinois university P, IL.
Rossetti, Christina, R. W. Crump, and Betty S. Flowers. The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics). New York: Penguin Classics, 2001.
