Not "As She Fulfills His Dreams" but "As She Is": The Feminist Voice of Christina Rossetti

Not "As She Fulfills His Dreams" but "As She Is": The Feminist Voice of Christina Rossetti Terry L. Spaise University of California, Riverside The "canonization" of Christina Rossetti as a woman and poet gained considerable momentum after her death due primarily to the number of platitudinous obituaries written about her and to William Michael Rossetti's idealized (and vastly edited) construct of his sister 's life and his attempts to censor and/or alter the mood and content of her previously unpublished poetry. Some of these works he suppressed altogether, possibly because their message was too personal or contradictory to the picture he had painted of his sister, and, in many cases, he "felt free to alter words in some of the poems ... to tone down the sensuality which is one of the strongest characteristics of her poetry, but which seemed inappropriate to her brother" (Jones 228). As a result of all of these posthumous actions, Rossetti's artistic successes and talents were stressed far less than the example she supposedly set of the perfect Victorian woman who posed no threat to the masculine portion of her society in either a personal or professional capacity. Her verses were lauded as examples of her life of self-sacrifice, simplicity, personal suffering, and lack of egoism and were professed to indicate her wholehearted support of the patriarchal social system in which she lived. At the time of her death, very little was mentioned of her work as a lay helper at Highgate, a sanctuary for fallen women, her active support of antivivisection , her interest in projects for women's education, and her acquaintance with the organizers of a Factory Girls' Club (Leighton 123). Even less was revealed about her volatile temper, failed love affairs, and her devotion to her art. Today, much of the research on Rossetti has focused on who the real Christina Rossetti was, how she really viewed the world in which she lived, and how those views and feelings manifested themselves in her verses. Scholars have attempted to answer such questions as how her religious canon exemplifies and explains her philosophy about life and God, what her succession of passive and dying women reveals about her thoughts of male/female relationships , and what her poetry tells us about her views of woman's place in this world and the next. Because Rossetti herself was an intensely private person who resisted revealing any personal information about herself (indeed, as Kathleen Jones states, she destroyed 53 54Rocky Mountain Review almost all personal material before her death), and because of William Michael's attempts to hide the real woman behind an idealized one, the answers to the above questions may be difficult to discover . Where, then, do we look for insights to Rossetti's social, political, and moral sentiments and attitudes? Where else but her poetry, which contains a magnificent breadth of style, theme, and craftsmanship. In the limited correspondence available to us, it is obvious that Rossetti was a serious artist who worked hard to perfect her skills as a poet. It is also clear that, at least early in her writing career, she needed the security of Dante Gabriel's approval of her verses and valued his observations and suggestions for change. After all, she was continually reminded by both her family and the general public of her brother's genius, and, true to the sentiments ofher age, she did not presume to place her own verses on a par with his. However, as she grew more secure with her art and talent, and as her work achieved a marked degree of public acceptance and praise, she was more reluctant to follow the critical advice of her brothers. She became very cognizant of her own artistic vision and voice, and on more than one occasion refused to follow Dante Gabriel's suggestions for revising both the theme and content of her work, which he felt was too radically challenging to contemporary values.1 It is this "radical" aspect of her verse which I want to explore in this article. To call Christina Rossetti a feminist may be a bit misleading and inaccurate, particularly considering her belief, based primarily on religious...