Christina Rossetti's Feminist Theology (review)

Lynda Palazzo's Christina Rossetti's Feminist Theology has great relevance for Rossetti studies, offering new evaluations of Rossetti's relationship to the major religious and artistic movements to which she has been linked, as well as a new relationship to feminist literary and theological history. In its conception, method, and theoretical approach, Palazzo's book reminds us that although women were excluded from institutional religious authority in Victorian England, they nevertheless found creative ways to revise androcentric religious doctrine to suit their own religious needs. Palazzo convincingly demonstrates the fruitful connections between literary analysis of nineteenth-century women's writing and contemporary feminist theology. This book, however, will not satisfy readers seeking a meticulously crafted argument or detailed readings of texts.

Palazzo charts the development of Rossetti's Christian theology from her early poems through her last book of devotional prose, arguing that "by the end of her life, Rossetti was engaged in the critique of theological practice, was not the passive religious figure so often presented and was particularly concerned with the problems women encountered in their relationship with Christianity" (2). This important and useful argument repositions Rossetti in relationship to Tractarianism, and some of the best moments in the book come when Palazzo rereads and contextualizes Rossetti's links to other religious thinkers and movements of her day. Surely Palazzo is right to suggest that we need a fuller analysis of gender discourse in studies of the Oxford Movement (xii), and her exploration of Rossetti's theological links (and breaks) with prominent male clergy like William Dodsworth, John Keble, R. W. Littledale, Edward B. Pusey, and Isaac Williams help to initiate that project.

Palazzo also positions Rossetti in relation to prominent feminist theologians and activists of her day including Barbara Bodichon, Bessie Parks, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Rightly showing how Rossetti is not fully aligned with either orthodox Tractarian (male) or activist feminist thought of the period, Palazzo suggests that Rossetti develops a unique woman-centered methodology of Christian interpretation. To make this argument, Palazzo puts Rossetti in context with twentieth-century Christian feminist theologians, including Carol Christ, Mary Daly, Sallie McFague, and Rosemary Radford Ruether. The theories of these feminist theologians provide a "ground map and a critical vocabulary" (140). Palazzo also associates Rossetti's work with that of earlier "feminist" Christians, like Hildegard of Bingen and Julian of Norwich.

While I found many of the connections between Rossetti's theology and later feminist theologians compelling, Palazzo occasionally pushes the links to contemporary discourse too far. For example, of a prayer in Annus Domini (1874) she writes, "Rossetti has taken the human dimension of 'Son' from within the experience of a woman....The growth of a child within the womb is like a plant putting out roots, flowers, and fruit, and like this growing and developing embryo, we may all nurture Christ in our hearts and return the fruits of this gift to God" (53). While the passage Palazzo cites from Annus Domini does indeed talk about "Root," "Flower," and "Fruit" (52), it is hard to decipher how this description is linked to literal womb and embryo imagery.

Such interpretive disagreements may be related to other problems I had with Palazzo's argumentation. In too many places, Palazzo fails to provide detailed close readings of the really complex passages of Rossetti's prose and, to a lesser extent, her poetry. Having worked with some of Rossetti's fascinating devotional prose, I can attest that it is not always easy to decipher; indeed, Rossetti's complex maneuvers and re-interpretations of biblical text, metaphor, and allusion are what make the prose so fabulously radical. Palazzo's style tends to leave large chunks of Rossetti's prose under-read, as if its meaning were self-evident. For example, in discussing the poem "A Christmas Carol" (1871), Palazzo quotes eight lines and writes: "The poem does not mention Mary by name...