Christina Rossetti and Emily Dickinson: Intersections

UNIVERSITY OF ZAGREB FACULTY OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

GRADUATE PROGRAMME ENGLISH LITERATURE SECTION

Mirna Čudić Christina Rossetti and Emily Dickinson: Intersections

Graduation Thesis

Supervisor: Professor Tatjana Jukić, Ph. D. 2013

CONTENTS

I. Introduction ...... 3 II. Rossetti and Dickinson: historical and cultural background ...... 5 III. Crucial preoccupations: religiosity, death, transience, afterlife ...... 7 3.1. Christina Rossetti and her self-assertion as a poetic subject ...... 7 3.2. Biblical allegory, carnal sin, and grace in Rossetti’s narrative poems ...... 9 3.3. Bible as Victorian Codex echoed by the verses: between transience and afterlife ...... 18 3.4. Emily Dickinson: poetic Self and paradoxes of marketing...... 21 3.5. Puritan Dickinson: between tradition and rebellion, transience and Transcendentalism ...... 23 IV. Conclusion ...... 32 V. REFERENCES ...... 35

I. Introduction

My graduation thesis will be centred upon analysing the recurring themes and motifs in the works of the two poetesses, one English and one American, both pertaining to the Victorian period: Christina Rossetti and Emily Dickinson. Their respective oeuvres feature a bitter awareness of the inevitable transience and vanity of all worldly pleasures caused by sin and decay burdening the fallen humanity, potently imbued with a poignant sense of longing for afterlife.

The remarkable emergence of Christina Rossetti and Emily Dickinson, accompanied by the affirmation of other poetesses in Victorian Britain, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Laetitia Elizabeth Landon (Rosenblum, 1986: 12-13), is to be viewed within the framework of the 19th century’s renewed interest in female poetic creation, conditioned to a great extent by the reawakening of, as Dolores Rosenblum puts it, the “spectral presence” of the mythic Sappho, a poetess of ancient Greece: as if her melancholic lute, as well as her tragic, suicidal persona (Brown, 2006: 181) had returned to haunt female verses, in spite of the fact that no Victorian woman, unless classically educated (which was very rarely the case) was capable of reading her poetry in the original (1986: ix).

Even though both Rossetti and Dickinson, with their predominant themes of human as opposed to divine love, transience as opposed to transcendence, obviously partook of the common Victorian legacy, each in her own unique personality, appeared to be conditioned to a significant degree by their respective cultural and geographical backgrounds, notwithstanding the symptomatic divergence between their religious convictions, i. e. Rossetti’s Protestantism, as well as her subsequent affinity to Anglo-Catholicism (Scheinberg, 2000: 164; Hill, 2005: 456), as contrasted to Dickinson’s Puritan Calvinism (Gelpi, 1971: 50, 55; Martin, 2002: 1), as will be further duly discussed in subsequent chapters. What is more, to both Christina Rossetti and Emily Dickinson Cynthia Scheinberg’s claim on Victorian poetry as “essentially linked to religion” could be rightly applied (2000, 164).

It is perhaps partially due to this denominational diversity, and partially to their distinct personalities, that there emerges a crucial divergence in their respective attitudes towards woman’s lot and suffering conditioned by the rigid conventions of patriarchal society in the Victorian Age. Rossetti, as sustained by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, embraces woe and suffering by adhering to the “aesthetics of renunciation” “as necessity’s highest and noblest virtue” (1979: 539, 564), or, to evoke Rosenblum’s syntagm, “poetry of endurance” (1986: 5), identifying herself, despite sporadic manifestations of weariness, in an enraptured surrender akin to mysticism, with Christ’s Passion, her several devotional poems featuring a profoundly intimate and confident dialogue with Christ. Dickinson, conversely, seems to outpour in her devotional verses either a spirit of rebellion to suffering, combined with “existential dramas” featuring a constant questioning of God’s will regarding her female woe and privation (White, 2002: 91), either a bitter, dejected resignation to pain and suffering, as part of divine decree and thus unavoidable (Humiliata, 1950: 148).

The oeuvres of the two secluded poetesses seem to reveal, according to Dolores Rosenblum, each in its own right, a peculiar response to woman’s position in the predominantly patriarchal 19th century society, both in Britain (even though ruled by a female monarch), and in the rigidly Puritan New England. It is this Victorian decorum, as Rosenblum claims, that is simultaneously embraced and resisted by Christina Rossetti on one hand, as well as embodied and mocked by Emily Dickinson on the other (1986: xi). Furthermore, I will venture to argue that, unlike Dickinson’s disinterested detachment from the outside world, accompanied by her sense of aristocratic superiority (Erkilla, 2002: 23), Rossetti, however paradoxically, uses her strict adherence to the orthodoxy of faith proclaimed in her poetry, to resist and overtly fight rigid, often pitiless judgments of the Victorian society, reserved mainly for strayed women deemed beyond redemption, unmasking them as downright disregarding, even opposing, the essential commandment of Christian charity.

II. Rossetti and Dickinson: historical and cultural background

In order to do justice to the artistic contribution of Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894), one ought to take into account the peculiar historical circumstances which helped to mould her poetics. It is along these lines that I would like to situate her oeuvre in its proper historical, cultural, and religious context, so as to account for potent echoes of intertextuality in her verses. Christina Rossetti matured, both as a woman and artist, surrounded by an equally artistically inclined family: with John Polidori, her maternal grandfather, being a famous translator of Milton, her father Gabriele, an Italian immigrant and a prominent intellectual as well, and, last but not least, her brother, the celebrated painter and poet, one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a pictorial school which drew inspiration from the Italian painting style preceding Raphael (Rosenblum, 1986: xii). Furthermore, Christina Rossetti, although baptised as an Anglican and brought up by her mother as such (Rosenblum, 1986: 29), in 1843 began to adhere strongly to the intensely catholicised liturgy (Anglo-Catholic or High Church rite) promoted by the Oxford Movement, led by John Henry Newman (later converting to Roman Catholicism), John Keble and Isaac Williams, also known as the Tractarians. It is the strong urge of the Movement to facilitate the return of the Church of England to the accentuated sacramentalism of the belief in Christ’s Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist, which came to permeate, as I intend to demonstrate, Rossetti’s poetry (D’Amico, Kent, 2006: 93, 96). What is more, the revival of female religious communities within the Tractarian Movement, after the Roman Catholic model, as Herbert Sussman argues, came to seriously threaten the masculine integrity of the Brotherhood (qtd. in Jukić, 2008: 26). Rossetti, therefore, even though largely contributing to the artistic life of the Brotherhood through her publications in the Germ magazine, came to be excluded from the male-centred society, even though it was to her poetry, among other things, that her brother and his peers owed their popularity. Moreover, Dante Gabriel Rossetti ventured to justify such a denial of the honorary membership as her voluntary withdrawal, although hailed by Algernon Swinburne as having “led, like Jael (the Old Testament heroine) their hosts to victory” (qtd. in Rosenblum, 1986: xii-xiii). It was precisely this exclusion of women, sisters as opposed to the brethren, which defined Christina Rossetti’s poetry as being, paradoxically enough, “produced within yet outside Pre-Raphaelitism”, or else within and yet outside of masculinity (Jukić, 2008: 24), insofar as the sisterhood of solidarity within Rossetti’s poetry,

cf. “there’s no friend like a sister”, (Goblin Market, 1862: 562, qtd. in Rosenblum, 1986: 83) proves crucial for the reputation of the Brotherhood. Christina Rossetti’s poetry or, as argued by Isobel Armstrong, Victorian female poetry in general, might thus be viewed as a sort of rereading the legacy of Romanticism: as almost an oxymoronic synthesis of Romantic sentimentalism and its repression by the strict tenets of Victorian morality, the Victorian society itself being uneasily concerned with the rapid changes in both economic and scientific area, accompanied by a dissipation of the Romantic ideals (1993: 6, 333). Rossetti’s verses appear to echo, apart from the Italian literary legacy of Dante, Petrarch and Tasso (which she both considered her own because of her ancestral homeland, and felt irrevocably alienated from (Rosenblum, 1986: 50), the influences of the Romantics such as Keats, Coleridge and Blake, along with the metaphysical religious poets like George Herbert, notwithstanding the “timeless conventions” of the Bible (Rosenblum, 1986: 36-37).

The poetry of Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (1830-1886) presents an almost eclectic mixture of various influences, ranging from the traditional orthodoxy of Puritan Calvinism, the Christian denomination in which she was baptised and raised, whose doctrine was dealt with by Jonathan Edwards, in order to go so far as to demonstrate some traces of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Unitarianism, almost verging on pantheism, which ventured to deny many Christian doctrines, including that of the Original Sin and the subsequent Fall of Man (Gelpi, 1971: 55-57). It is this Emersonian deviation from religious orthodoxy, to my discernment, which stands behind Dickinson’s rebellious spirit, as well as her attitude towards religious issues permeated with deep anguish and insecurities. In spite of her deviation, Albert J. Gelpi stresses the failure of her verses to detach themselves completely from New England religious tradition which nevertheless determined her personality (1971: 55). It is due to this inseparable identification with the religion she belonged to by Baptism that her verses, like those of Christina Rossetti, even though lacking her confident surrender, appear to be permeated, as Cristanne Miller claims, with quotations from the Bible and church hymns, which intrinsically accompanied her childhood and youth (1987: 32). It is due to these contradictions deeply underlying her entire poetic persona that she might be defined, thematically, a Byronic, dark Romanticist, with some repercussions of Melville’s Captain Ahab (Gelpi, 1971: 36-44), S.T.Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, or even Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, as well as a precursor of Modernism in poetry, at least in terms of irregularity of

meter and peculiar, even idiosyncratic usage of capitalisation, punctuation, morphology, and syntax (Miller, 1987: 49-112).

III. Crucial preoccupations: religiosity, death, transience, afterlife

3.1. Christina Rossetti and her self-assertion as a poetic subject

With an aim of corroborating Jukić’s observation that Rossetti’s poetic persona appears to be intrinsically linked to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, although, as a woman, being denied official membership (2008: 25), I intend hereby to interpret a sonnet both establishing her self-identification with other sisters essential to the Brotherhood (more specifically, her sister- in-law, Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal), as well as reaffirming the position of both of them, i.e. Miss Rossetti and Mrs Rossetti (being married to the poetess’s brother, Dante Gabriel), as frequent models of his paintings, the sonnet being appropriately entitled, In an Artist’s Studio (cf. William Michael Rossetti, qtd. in Crump, 2005: 1136). “One face looks out from all his canvasess, / One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans; / We found her hidden just behind those screens, / That mirror gave back all her loveliness.”1 (1856: 1-4; emphasis mine).

The poem, referred to by William Michael Rossetti (qtd. in Crump, 2005: 1136) as a rather obvious reference to the painter’s apparently ignored and mistreated betrothed, and only later, wife, Elizabeth Siddal (Jukić, 2002: 43; Pollock, 1988: 135), strikes one as being a highly sensitive and sympathetic portrait of intimate suffering of a sadly undervalued and humiliated woman. This similarity of fate is further enhanced by the fact that, according to Griselda Pollock, insofar as Rossetti’s and Siddal’s poems were subject to strict revisions of their brother and husband respectively (which Christina often resisted - Chapman, 2000: 64; Pollock, 1988: 137), both herself and her sister-in-law functioned as both subject and object of representation, the relationship between Dante Gabriel and his wife as painter and model, thus being, to quote Griselda Pollock, that of “masculine dominance vs. feminine subordination” (1988: 135). Moreover, I discern strong coincidences of Siddal’s destiny with

1 All quotations from Rossetti's poetry have been taken from the following edition: Rossetti, Christina. The Complete Poems. Ed. Rebecca W. Crump. London: Penguin Books, 2005.

that of a painter’s wife featured in a story by E. A. Poe, Oval Portrait, as discussed by Elisabeth Bronfen in a chapter of her book Over Her Dead Body. Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic, bearing the title “The lady is a portrait”. The lifelikeness of the lady’s portrait in reality serves to cover the humiliation endured by her husband who neglects her while worshiping his Art, which results in his wife’s withering away into death, all of which passes unnoticed by the painter, immersed in his artefact, praising triumphantly his painting as ‘Life itself’ (1992: 111-112). It is this deeply disturbing, sarcastically paradoxical contrast that seems to be reproduced in the sonnet, between the woman’s fading reality: “wan with waiting” and “with sorrow dim” ( l. 12), and her idealised depiction: “fair as the moon and joyful as the light”, as she “was when hope shone bright”, “as she fills his dream” (ll. 11, 13- 14). Moreover, her real self and her artificial reproduction appear literally devoured by his lust: “He feeds upon her face by day and night” (l. 9), reducing her to the mere mirror of herself (l. 4) only to awaken the benign gaze of the depicted face, filled with truthfulness and kindness (l. 10). The dream-like character of the portrait is further corroborated by a poem of the very author of the painting, Dante Gabriel Rossetti himself, entitled simply The Portrait, also quoted by Bronfen, with a line, “This is her picture as she was” (1992: 117) indicatively resonating a similar line in his sister’s sonnet: “Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright; / Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.” (ll. 13-14), as if juxtaposing the luminosity of her long-gone hope and her painted portrait with the dimness of her real, sorrowful self, longing in vain to be truly loved by her husband, who is enamoured of an imagined, idealised version of herself, instead (cf. l. 14). As if evoking the association with a devotional poem entitled The Descent from the Cross, depicting Christ’s disfigured face, as a sort of counterpart to the emaciated Siddal’s face, Rosenblum perceives both Elizabeth Siddal and Christina Rossetti as types of female Christ, alluding to Christina’s woe and lot at witnessing her spiritually and morally impoverished brother, in his inability to love a woman “as she is”, instead of only frenzily worshiping her non-existent icon (1986: 119).

This abuse, as endured by women, is certainly something Rossetti could sympathise with, insofar as witnessing how her brother undervalued his betrothed and, subsequently, his wife. I have attempted to demonstrate in this subchapter, based upon the chosen examples, how both Rossetti’s fragile and yet courageous womanhood and her voluntary identification with other women sharing the common lot led her to resonate with these concerns in her verses.

3.2. Biblical allegory, carnal sin, and grace in Rossetti’s narrative poems

In this subchapter I intend to deal with Rossetti’s narrative poems, ranging from allegorical fairy-tales encoding biblical concepts and moral truths (e.g. Goblin Market), to poignant ballads unmasking the problem of stigmatisation of fallen women (e. g. The Iniquity of the Fathers upon the Children), both these narrative poems dealing with, each in its particular manner, the Christian notions of sin, repentance, forgiveness, grace, and divine mercy.

Far too often dismissed either as a mere children’s fairy-tale, a “deformed literary autobiography” (Jukić, 2002: 253, 255, 256), or a “subversive fantasy” (Rosenblum, 1986: 64), Goblin Market was initially denied the attention and evaluation it deserves, with “suggestive incidents” it unravels (W. M. Rossetti, qtd. in Rosenblum, 1986: 65), replete with intertextual echoes (Bible, Milton) (Gilbert / Gubar, 1979: 567). Indeed, Rosenblum insists upon the obvious intertextual link between the fairy-tale and Rossetti’s devotional poems, without whose moral implications Laura’s imprudent act of plucking the fruit would appear to be better suited to a rather banal fairy-tale plot, whereas viewed in light of its biblical background it entails Laura’s yearning for bliss, albeit misplaced (1986: 69). Beginning with its opening lines, the poem creates a mysterious atmosphere of peril by delaying the visual manifestation of the goblins in the title, making resonate instead, through the verses, their beguiling call, “Morning and evening /Maids heard the goblins cry: / ‘Come buy our orchard fruits, / Come buy, come buy’ ” (1862: 1-4; emphasis mine) only to escalate in a suspicious remark, uttered by Laura, one of the maidens (Rosenblum, 1986: 72), as if undermining the flattering promise of l. 30: “Who knows upon which soil they fed / Their hungry thirsty roots?” (l. 45). This suspicious admonition, uttered by Lizzie, as to the nature of the soil which made their roots grow seems to reflect the fear of the Otherness manifested as disease and contagion deeply embedded in Victorian mentality (Jukić, 2002: 128), as if testifying, according to Marylu Hill, to the frightening fact of the apparent anomaly in roots themselves, growing on fallacious, poisonous soil which leaves them famined, and, moreover, behaving like hothouse fruits, ripening “at all hours” (l. 153) (2005: 460). The vast variety of the fruits as enlisted by the goblins in minute detail (ll. 5-29), as Sean C. Grass warns, even though reduced to the collective and traditionally interpreted as standing for a single Edenic fruit, ought to be located within the framework of the Tractarian theology and its almost sacramental

celebration of nature as “sign of the Creator” (1996: 358, 360-362), which proves the unfoundedness of the claim that her poetry is a renunciation of this world. However, what constitutes the danger hidden by the wonders of nature is to celebrate them for their own sake, failing to recognise the Wisdom of the Creator in them (Roe, 2007: 52). While I agree that Laura’s uncritical enthusiasm, verging on misplaced idolatry of nature, constituted her downfall, I hesitate to deny that there was something satanic in goblins’ fruits, insofar as being anomalous and deceitful, a prudent admonition voiced by her sister Lizzie: “Their offers should not charm us, / Their evil gifts would harm us” (ll. 65-66). Unmindful of her sister’s warning, Laura ventures to abandon herself to the deceitful pleasures of the fruits (ll. 105-136). Laura’s sinful feast, of which she can never have enough (“I ate and ate my fill, / Yet my mouth waters still”, ll. 165-166), is, as Rosenblum intriguingly observes, a derisive parody of Christ’s Eucharistic feast of Love as a pre-taste of that “full enough available only in paradise” (1986: 73-74). This mockery of the Eucharistic feast, verging on blasphemy, as enacted by goblins, is even more obvious when Laura surrenders to the flattering bargain of the goblins by paying for the fruits with her golden curl, as if metaphorically giving away the “totemic” essence of her femininity (Rosenblum, 1986: 73), and marketing (cf. the title) her sexuality (Jukić, 2002: 279). The flavour of these fruits of the “unknown orchard” is compared to the “honey from the rock” (l. 129), reminiscent, almost blasphemically, of the metaphorical meal offered by God in Ps. 81: 16 (D’Amico, 1999: 71), as if reinforcing the parody of the Eucharistic meal. What is more, as asserted by Mary Arseneau, by the comparison of her tears with pearls (l. 106) reminiscent of Christ’s identification of pearls as heavenly treasure, Laura consciously deprives herself of the treasure of the Kingdom of Heaven (1993: 90), an act of betrayal which seems to rise above the mere act of sexual lust. Laura’s denial of Christ is reinforced by the fact that, at dawn following the demonic feast, the cock crows (l. 200; cf. St Peter’s denial of Christ, Matthew, 26:34) (Arseneau, 1993: 90). Rossetti, as an attentive reader of Milton’s Paradise Lost, considered the essence of Eve’s sin to be not sexual promiscuity, but the act of disobedience and mistrust of God (D’Amico, 1999: 70), with both Milton’s Eve and Laura betraying a whim of fatal curiosity and idolatry (Gilbert / Gubar, 1979: 567-568). It is along these lines that I am inclined to question the statement made by Lesa Scholl, that, given the mere fact that Laura’s succumbing to temptation did not immediately shake her relationship with her sister, the two of them “co- mingling” “like two pigeons in one nest” (l. 185), implies that Laura did not fall or, at least,

that her fall was not moral or spiritual (2003: n.p.). Laura’s behaviour, however, the following night, deteriorates frighteningly into symptoms of obsessive frenzy (hardly reconcilable with Rossetti’s ideal of sobriety) and “cankerous care” (l. 300), especially if juxtaposed with Lizzie’s peace of mind: “(...) Lizzie most placid in her look, / Laura most like a leaping flame. (...) Till Laura dwindling / Seemed knocking at Death’s door:” (ll. 230-232, 320-321) It is at this point that the spectral presence of Jeanie, another maiden of defiled chastity who withered away to death, approaches to haunt the narrative, as if spreading death and contagion (Chapman, 2000: 152), her tragic doom resounding in Lizzie’s words and thoughts (cf. ll. 147-162). The allusion to contagion stressed by Chapman is linked to the deeply Victorian fear of fallen women spreading contagion, with Jeanie traditionally identified as a prototype of such, bearing a homophonous echo of a poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, entitled Jenny, also featuring a prostitute (Jukić, 2002: 276). This association notwithstanding, Diane D’Amico offers an explicitly biblical reading of the “bridal joys” forfeited by Jeanie (cf. l. 313), enriching its literal allusion to her loss of innocence out of wedlock, with the biblical status of the Old Testament Israel, wooed by God as His bride, only to be punished in Jer. 2: 20 and Isa. 5: 624 for the ‘adultery’ of worshiping idols (1999: 72), in order to enhance the gravity of both Jeanie’s and Laura’s transgression of betrayal of God as the Bridegroom, once again along the lines of the perception of their sin, similar to that of Eve’s disobedience, i.e. the breach of the Covenant with God.

Confronted with the sight of her sister’s languishing away, which frighteningly reminds her of Jeanie’s fate, Lizzie firmly decides to bring her medicine in those same fruits which poisoned her life, as a “fiery antidote” (l. 559), resolute, however, to deny the goblins her body, paying them with a penny instead (l. 367). Eager to defile her, they attempt to make her swallow the fruits by force, but she keeps her mouth closed, “resisting penetration through metaphors of law, economy, and sexuality”. As a substitute for sexual gratification, she offers them “the economic metaphor”, i.e. money (Jukić, 2002: 280). It should be noted that the feast the goblins beguile her with in l. 371 is yet another blatant mockery of both the Meal of Christ’s Body and Blood, as well as the feast to be provided by Lizzie to Laura, its symbol, as shall be seen. Lizzie’s enduring silence and persevering firmness when faced with what could rightfully be called a sort of martyrdom (ll. 422-436) has been associated with Christ’s silence and meekness when He was faced with trial, spat upon and mocked (qtd. in Crump, 2005:

885). The depiction of Lizzie’s posture, moreover, as she stands before them (ll. 408-421), has been interpreted as replete with attributes linked to the Holy Virgin’s purity (lily, orange blossom, a royal town), notwithstanding allusions to Christ (rock), as well as beacon, both Christ and the Holy Virgin (D’Amico, 1999: 74-75), as well as, according to Jan Marsh, Marian colours: golden, white, and blue (qtd. in Crump, 2005: 887).

Lizzie’s “honey-sweet blossoms” (l. 416) are overtly contrasted to the deceitful lush of goblins’ juices. A point has been made, furthermore, as to the allegorical meaning behind the names of the two heroines: the original form of Lizzie’s name, Elizabeth, in Hebrew denotes the Covenant of God, also reminiscent of St Elizabeth of Hungary, particularly honoured by Rossetti for renouncing earthly marriage for the one with Christ, whereas Laura bears echoes to Petrarch’s amorous desire constantly oscillating between the sacred and the profane (Jukić, 2002: 284). What is more, along the lines of Goblin Market bearing Miltonic echoes not only of Paradise Lost, but also of Comus, Lizzie is perceived by Kathleen Vejvoda, akin to the Lady in Comus, as embodying Miltonic ideals of chastity (not only virginity but preservation of one’s dignity, cf. Lizzie faced with the attempted rape by goblins) and charity (2000: 556, 559), this charity, manifest in Lizzie as her self-sacrificial love for her sister, being intrinsically linked with the ideal of solidarity between women and sisterhood (Vejvoda, 2000: 562). It is this supreme imperative of charity which motivates Lizzie to endure humiliation so as to win for her sister the “fiery antidote” (l. 559). Moreover, through the image of her skin moist with juices offered to Laura as a feast, Lizzie’s charitable sacrifice emulates Christ’s extreme act of charity when atoning for mankind’s Original Sin of disobedience by offering His own Flesh and Blood (Jukić, 2002: 259): “Never mind my bruises, / Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices / Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,... / Eat me, drink me, love me; / Laura, make much of me:” (ll. 464-471). It is this act of sisterly charity by which Lizzie appears willing to pay a ransom penny, the offer which was, however, rejected by the goblins, which is able to transform the deadly noxiousness of the fruits, in accordance with Rossetti’s conviction that it is our deeds which make an impact upon nature, capable of bringing about a metamorphosis (Arseneau, 1993: 86). What is more, the Christ- like Eucharistic meal offered by Lizzie is perfectly inserted into the Tractarian doctrine of intense incarnationalism and sacramentalism of the created world, as a perpetual reminder of Christ’s Incarnation (Arseneau, 1993: 80-81). Laura’s sucking of juices flowing over her

sister’s body denotes the consummation of the Holy Eucharist, as Marylu Hill argues within the context of the Anglo-Catholic liturgy, with the revived belief in Christ’s Real Presence in the Sacrament, His Flesh and Blood perceived as a literal nourishment of the believers. (2005: 456-457, 462). Just like Christ, Lizzie ventures to assume unto herself all the consequences of Laura’s undoing (Pusey, qtd. in Hill, 2005: 462): “For your sake I have braved the glen / And had to do with goblin merchant men” (ll. 473-474). Moved by Lizzie’s care, Laura clings passionately to her while consuming the meal: “She clung about her sister, / Kissed and kissed and kissed her: / Tears once again / Refreshed her shrunken eyes, / Dropping like rain / After long sultry drouth; / Shaking with anguish, fear, and pain, / She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth.” (ll. 485-492). Unsure how to account for these passionate kisses and embraces, uneasily verging onto what on the surface appears to resemble homoeroticism, D’Amico chose to view it as a mere metaphor (2000: 78). The doctrine of Christ’s Atonement and the Holy Eucharist, however, implies body as indispensable means of Redemption, since it is through Adam’s body and the Tree of Knowledge that Sin came, and, consequently, Christ atoned through His Flesh, on another tree, the wood of the Cross. In imitation of Christ, therefore, it is Lizzie’s body bearing the transfigured goblin fruit which brings about Laura’s rebirth. What is more, in the writings of male Catholic mystics, such as St John Chrysostom, the union with Christ in the Holy Communion is perceived as essentially physical, the intimate assimilation of the believer’s body into His Body, meant to bring about the spiritual intimacy as well, with Christ as the mystical Bridegroom of the Song of Songs (cf. The Heart Knoweth Its Own Bitterness: “There God shall join and no man shall part / I full of Christ and Christ of me”, ll. 55-56) (Hill, 2005: 465-468). Moreover, the episode of the reunion of the two sisters contains, in l. 506, an allusion to the Song of Songs, 6:4 and 6: 10 (Jukić, 2002: 373), as if identifying Laura’s consummation of Lizzie’s moistured body with the analogous consummation of the Body and Blood of Christ the Bridegroom by the communicant as His mystical Bride: “You are beautiful as Tirzah, my love / lovely as Jerusalem, / awesome as an army with banners.” (Song of Songs, 6: 4); “Who is this who looks down like the dawn, / beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun, / awesome as an army with banners?” (Song of Songs, 6: 10). This particular occurrence of the biblical epithalamium serves as the climax of the two preceding ones, both dealing with the fatal encounter of the goblins with each sister. What is more, the former encounter (ll.77-80), featuring the naive Laura beguiled by the goblins, appears to openly ridicule the motif of dove’s chant in spring (Song of Songs 2: 12)

by likening it to the deceitful voicing of the monsters. The latter episode, previously quoted, the one of the heroic Lizzie resisting the goblins, appears, in l. 409., to feature the lily, used to depict the maiden, as emblematic not only of the Holy Virgin, but of the Bride of the Song of Songs (Jukić, 2002: 361, 371), understood by the Catholic tradition as prefiguring the Holy Virgin (cf. New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913: n.p.).

Just as it is Christ’s bitter Passion which brings about the healing, akin to a bitter medicine (Crump, 2005: 887-888), by her eager sucking, Laura seems to be required to partake, in order to be spiritually reborn, apart from the sweetness of the Eucharist-like nuptials, also of the bitterness of Lizzie’s sacrifice: “Her lips began to scorch, / That juice was wormwood to her tongue, / She loathed the feast:” (ll. 493-495). It is this Eucharistic feast offered by Lizzie as a type of female Christ, which “corrects the fallen feast” (Rosenblum, 1986: 105), granting, like Christ, “life out of death” (l. 524). Laura has to fall into slumber (“she fell at last”, l. 521), as if dying to sin and being revived in God (Romans, 6: 11). Following her spiritual rebirth, Laura seems to regain, at first sight, her primordial, prelapsarian innocence, laughing in the “innocent old way” (l. 538). I would argue, however, that the poem is clearly situated in the postlapsarian world from the start, and that the two sisters assume the roles of wifehood and motherhood which they duly perform in the midst of the fallen world, their “mother-hearts” being “beset with fears” (l. 546), transmitting onto their children the moral sense of their experience, as well as Laura retelling of “Those pleasant days long gone / of not-returning time:” (ll. 549-550). Indeed, as Scholl rightfully warns, the poem seems to accept no extremes of classification rigidly separating virgins and virtuous women from fallen women or whores – both Laura and Lizzie become exemplary wives and mothers (2003: n.p.). It is by narrating to their children the story of the deceitful goblins’ gifts, “fruits like honey to the throat / But poison in the blood:” (ll. 554-555), that Laura ventures the praise of Lizzie’s triumphant self- sacrificial love: “...how her sister stood / In deadly peril to do her good, / And win the fiery antidote:” (ll. 557-559), concluding with the hymn of sisterly love: “For there is no friend like a sister / In calm or stormy weather; / To cheer one on the tedious way, / To fetch one if one goes astray, / To lift one if one totters down / To strengthen whilst one stands.”(ll. 562-567; emphasis mine)

The ideal of womanhood, as perceived by Rossetti, is not reduced to the typically Victorian notion of the woman as “the angel in the house”, i.e. the passive mother and wife – Rossetti encouraged women instead to boldly assume the roles of Christ-like saviours (the notion of ‘a female Christ’ being considered revolutionary, even blasphemous), courageous women who would be prepared to imitate Christ’s supreme act of charity by sacrificing themselves with almost virile valour (D’Amico, 2000: 82-83).

Furthermore, Rossetti’s experience of charitable work at St Mary Magdalene’s Highgate Penitentiary, aimed at reforming fallen women, prompted her to unmask, in her “fallen woman ballads”, the hypocrisy underlying the dismissive Victorian attitude towards strayed women, as well as the conviction that they were so hopelessly soiled as to be beyond redemption, perceived by the poetess as contrary to the demands of Christian charity. As D’Amico continues to argue, while Rossetti, the devout Christian she was, has no intention to question the sinfulness of illicit sexual relationship as an act against purity, she is eager to model herself after Christ’s example in John 8: 11, where He saved the “woman taken in adultery” from being stoned, urging her simply to “go and sin no more”, offering her spiritual rebirth, a clear demonstration of God’s boundless love and mercy, which motivated the poetess to refuse “to cast the first stone” (2000: 102-104).

The ballad to be analysed hereby, entitled “The Iniquity of the Fathers upon the Children” addressing the lot of fallen women, pertaining to the ‘post-Highgate period’, unlike the earlier ballads, ponders about the far-reaching consequences of sexual promiscuity, including life-long shame and illegitimacy (D’Amico, 2000: 109). The Iniquity monologue, previously titled Under the Rose (Lat. sub rosa-secretly) is a dramatically tense confession of Margaret, the grown up illegitimate daughter of a fallen woman, who, being born in secret, by an unknown father, is denied her identity in a society which, rejecting any possibility of matriarchy, burdens her mother with “A lifelong lie for truth”, forcing her to deny her daughter publicly, as if confining unwed motherhood to the private sphere (l. 529) (Rosenblum, 1986: 166) . It is this secrecy motif of the rose which is, from the very onset of the poem, being sarcastically played with, since, after being brought to the world by her mother “in secret bitter throes” (l. 15), this secret rose which marked her mother’s labour adorned the protagonist’s life only with “keenest thorn” (l. 1). What is more, as D’Amico

stresses, the poem was written at the time when the increasing number of illegitimate children was a crucial issue. While in Light Love and in Cousin Kate the illegitimate child is used only as a device for the sake of the plot, to testify to its mother’s shame, in this monologue the illegitimate offspring is given a voice of her own to give a personal moving account of her mother’s fall, brought about by her father’s “setting snare / To catch at unaware / Her Mother’s foolish youth” (cf. ll. 524-526). Margaret bears a bitter grudge against her father, “almost cursing him” (cf. l. 519) for having burdened her with her mother’s shame by making a constant lie out of her life (cf. ll. 527-529). Struggling to atone for her shameful past, her mother is portrayed as “humble to the poor” despite her noble birth, performing deeds of charity by comforting “many sick and sad” (l.70), this penance covering for her concealment of motherhood. From the daughter’s perspective, this public pretence is forced upon her mother as a result of, as her daughter sees it, forgivable weakness of not daring to claim her publicly, lest the seemingly “decent” world should “thrust its finger out at her” (cf. ll. 407- 408). Even though Margaret considers herself a burden for her mother, she desires her liberation of all woes in the next world, where she would be “safe at last” (2000: 110). It is along these lines of Margaret’s compassion for her disgraced mother that Rosenblum’s claim about Margaret treating with contempt and sarcasm the truth of her parentage, as if in an angry rebuke cast in her mother’s face appears somewhat far-fetched (1986: 166). Rather than condemning her mother, she acknowledges herself being her “friend, almost child” (cf. l. 421), in the hope that, once in Paradise, facing God, or, even, on the verge of death, her mother will be allowed to claim her as her own, thus “dropping the mask” (cf. l. 430) This image of her mother in Heaven formed in Margaret’s mind seems to implicitly exclude her father, for she, even though not as yet assigning him to Hell, is on the verge of cursing him (cf. l. 519) (D’Amico, 2000: 110-111).

Painfully aware of the fate assigned to her by society, Margaret rejects all proposals of marriage, in her firm decision to bear her lot on her own, lest she should “blot out her shame / With any man’s good name” (cf. ll. 536-537) by “drugging the cup” (cf. l. 533) of a possible suitor. Rather than letting anyone be contaminated by her stain, she prefers to embrace the fate of the “nameless” (l. 548), returning as such to “the dark land” of the grave (l. 541) (D’Amico, 2000: 111). The poem seems to bring up the presumed truth in Victorian mentality that the rejection and stigmatisation of the illegitimate children because of their parents’

shame is a reflection of God’s ordeal, seemingly echoed by the Old Testament biblical quotation in the title, as if approving of the burdening of the children with their parentage. If viewed in the light of two other Bible passages, where the notion of the innocent as punished for others’ sin is repudiated (Ezek. 18:1147, as well as John 9:2, with Christ’s exculpatory message regarding the blind child), the title passage, Exod. 20:5, according to Rossetti’s reasoning in Letter and Spirit, has more to do with the far-reaching consequences of the crime, affecting even the fourth generation, rather than the imputation of the actual guilt. This impact of the misdeeds of others upon the innocent is thus viewed not as an act of God’s vindictive punishment, but as a contamination of the flawed society in the postlapsarian world (qtd. in D’Amico, 2000: 113), this concern with the burden of others’ guilt resonating in the final rather prayerful remark uttered by Margaret: “ ‘All equal in the grave’ ” - / I bide my time till then: / ‘All equal before God’ - / Today I feel His rod, / Tomorrow He may save: / Amen.” (ll. 542-547). Moreover, in pondering upon the poem’s dominant dichotomy between the earthly inequality and the equality before God: “ ‘All equal before God’ - ...All are not equal here,” (ll. 501, 505), I deem it appropriate to evoke an observation made by Stanley Cavell, where he, treating the notion of the ‘unknown woman’ taken from Zweig’s novella, indicates a heart-rending remark made by the courtesan Violetta Valéry in Verdi’s Traviata, where she juxtaposes God’s attitude towards sinners with that of people, i.e. God’s merciful judgment as opposed to the cruel condemnation of the world: even though God forgave her sin, people will remain pitiless (1996: 19). Regarding the dignity of womanhood upheld both in the Iniquity monologue and other ballads of the series, it should be noted that Rossetti proved her nonconformity to Victorian conventions by revaluing women, however, not in the modern feminist sense of political suffrage, since Rossetti overtly questioned the necessity of political emancipation of women (D’Amico, 2000: 118), focusing instead on their spiritual equality with men before God, as if evoking both the passionate proclamation uttered by Jane Eyre to Mr Rochester in Charlotte Brontë’s eponymous novel, insofar as alluded to in Love from the North, and the image of the Bride of Song of Songs, as early as in the Old Testament gaining proper voice, and eagerly seeking her betrothed, as observed by Dinah Roe regarding the Monna Innominata sonnet sequence, which emulates itself upon the bold female voice resonating through this epitome of epithalamiums (2007: 82).

3.3. Bible as Victorian Codex echoed by the verses: between transience and afterlife

Rossetti’s metaphysical preoccupations range from the early poems imbued with a bitter awareness of transience and mourning, e.g. When I am dead, my dearest, Remember – reflecting Rossetti’s adherence to the soul-sleep doctrine upheld by the Tractarians (D’Amico, 2000: 35), as well as permeated by the Ecclesiastes theme of vanity of vanities, unmasking the futility of worldly matters, only to mature, in her later phase in the devotional poems in the real sense of the word, featuring either an intimate dialogue of the soul with Christ as a faithful ally in her suffering, to reach its climax in the explicitly nuptial imagery of the Revelation visions, featuring Christ as Bridegroom personifying the Love that is God (cf. the First Epistle of St. John) (D’Amico, 2000: 90-91, 149). Among the sonnets professing the ephemeral nature of all worldly matters, modulated upon the Ecclesiastes motif, I have chosen to analyse the one entitled One Certainty, permeated with Rossetti’s bold assumption of the male voice of the Preacher in Book of Ecclesiastes, solemnly and sternly proclaiming all worldly pleasures to be a vain futility, reducible to vanity of vanities, the opening line of the sonnet: “Vanity of vanities, the Preacher saith / All things are vanity” (ll. 1-2) being a direct quotation of Ecclesiastes 1:2 (Crump, 2005: 904). It is this frighteningly plaintive, even disillusioned lamentation upon the monotony of life and inevitable transience of Time perceived as a tyrant, coupled with the universal decay and the caprice of destiny, “tossing man to and fro by hope and fear” (cf. l. 6), which must have contributed to the unfavourable, utterly uninviting image of Christianity as a religion of sternness, dejection, and sepulchral darkness, instead of what it really is, a praise of God who is Love (cf. the First Epistle of St John), to be poured into verses in the latter phase of Rossetti’s poetic creation. Indeed, this awareness of the misrepresentation of Christianity, as well as of God whose Love the verses fail to extol, has been enacted by the poetess in her diary entitled Time Flies, where she insightfully observes that, even though we all tend to be oppressed by fears and anxieties, a true Christian should spend his life in “continual thanksgiving”, for a gloomy Christian is “like a cloud before the rainbow was vouchsafed” (qtd. in D’Amico, 2000: 155-156). Rossetti’s journey towards recognising God’s Love, Mercy, and compassion seems to have led her first to a series of poems featuring an intimate dialogue of the soul with the suffering Christ in whom she discerns a faithful ally in her own woe, as well as a capacity to view suffering as an opportunity to become tightly united with Christ, even sacramentally (cf. After

Communion). In the poem entitled A Better Resurrection, with her heart oppressed by a suffering which turns it into a stone, “numbed too much for hopes or fears” (cf. ll. 2-3), Christina, even though failing to discern the promised land with “everlasting hills” (l. 6), turns to Jesus, confident that He, as God Incarnate, can fully share her suffering, stooping towards her lowliness, as if compensating for her inability to reach Heaven. Each of the three stanzas closes with an invocation to Jesus to heal her life compared to a “faded leaf” (l. 9), “frozen thing” (l. 13), and “broken bowl” (l. 17), by “quickening her” (cf. l. 8), “rising in her” (l. 16), and, finally “drinking of her” (l. 24). The final stanza contains the supplication addressed to Jesus to heal her broken life so that she might present Him with an offering worthy of His kingly majesty, as if offering herself to Him as a gift, in exchange for the nourishment of His Body and Blood He vouchsafes to her. The unshakeable security Rossetti’s poetic self finds even in the midst of trials, by clinging to Christ’s Passion as sustenance, is enacted in the final two stanzas of the poem entitled From House to Home, where the plant personifying her life, even though pierced by thorns worn by Christ, is being nourished by His Blood (ll. 221-228). While the penultimate stanza seems to re-enact the bitterness of the Redemption, akin to that experienced by Laura when consuming the Eucharistic meal offered by Lizzie, the final stanza echoes the language of Psalm 23:4, with the rod and staff of the Lord as her shepherd, offering her salutary comfort (Rosenblum, 1986: 87, 190). In order to be satiated by divine Love, as she confirms in The Face of the Deep, Rossetti made a frequent recourse to the Holy Communion (qtd. in D’Amico, 2000: 78), an experience poured into verses in the sonnet entitled After Communion, also enabling her to partake of the foretaste of the future celestial marriage with Christ (D’Amico, 2000: 78). The sonnet prefigures both the upcoming recognition of God as Love, in accordance with the First Epistle of St John, as well as the nuptial imagery in the Revelation visions with Christ as the Bridegroom wooing the Church triumphant. As many biblical commentators, including Judith M. Lieu, have pointed out, in the aforementioned Epistle, 1 John 4, the theme of love, viewed primarily as agape, i.e. caritas (charity), rather than eros, tightly interweaves God’s selfless, self-effacing, unconditional love for humanity shown in Christ’s atoning sacrifice with the charitable love human beings, emulating Him, are to demonstrate to one another (qtd. in D’Amico, 2000: 150). It is this sublime example of divine love as a perfect, desired model for every human love which prompts Rossetti to readdress the rather narrow notion of love as dealt with in Monna Innominata, with a kind of sequel, a sonnet sequence entitled Later Life, a double

sonnet of sonnets, where she expands, as observed by Linda Schofield, the notion of love to the universal love principle, emanating the source of Love which is God, to embrace entire humanity (qtd. in D’Amico, 2000: 154). Indeed, while Sonnet 1 of the sequence focuses more on God’s sovereignty and His impeccable justice, in Sonnet 5 the poetess proclaims God as the source of all Love, imploring Him to grant her to be able to love Him, infusing His divine Love into her: “Lord, Thou Thyself are Love and only Thou; / Yet I who am not love would fain love Thee; / But Thou alone being Love canst furnish me / With that same love my heart is craving now.” (ll. 1-4). In continuance, Sonnet 7 is a hymn to human love as the greatest virtue, so that “To lapse from love to hatred; that is hell” (l. 3), for those who love are blessed even if in the midst of sorrow (ll. 5-6), since Christ as the perfect example and ultimate source of Love, “Beginning not begun, End without end” (l. 12) can alone fully satisfy every heart (cf. l. 14). Sonnets 14 and 15, in continuance, deal with love in fallen humanity, with Adam and Eve as its initiators, assuring the reader, however, that their conjugal love was purified and elevated even in their postlapsarian state, by salutary repentance, a claim very probably bearing Miltonic echoes of Paradise Lost. Indeed, “Love pardons the unpardonable past” (15: 12). As if to crown the all-pardoning power of love (Sonnets 14-15), Sonnet 28, the conclusive one, is a triumph of undying hope in the final reunion of those departed in afterlife, since, moreover, our dead remain with us in spirit, “Brimful of love for you and love for me.” (ll. 10, 14), even before the final encounter in Heaven (2000: 154). In spite of the consequences of the Original Sin in this valley of tears, this sequence clings to the confidence in the eternity of Love and Life since its source is in God.

As has been noted by D’Amico, in the context of Maiden-Song, the fairy-tale akin to Cinderella (2000: 89-93), featuring another Christ-like heroine, Margaret’s “maiden majesty”, in which she receives the wooing of her King, function as a sort of overture to the nuptial visions of the Revelation, enacted in “She shall be brought unto the King”, a direct quotation of Ps 45: 13-14, itself featuring a richly adorned bride, primarily by inner virtue, led to her King and Bridegroom. This quotation serves as a title of the series of three short poems, portraying the bride as receiving by her Spouse the undying solace for her woes, “with tears wiped away” (1:6), in her chastity and virtue compared to the dove, an emblem used to depict the chastity of the Bride in Song of Songs, decorated as a reward by “lily for pureness, rose for charities” (1:9). This identification with the Bride of the biblical epithalamium is further

enhanced by the question “Who is this that cometh” (2:1), both this rhetorical question and the dove simile echoing Song of Songs 6. According to Matthew Henry’s commentary, the bride of Psalm 45 is emblematic of Church as prefigured by the Bride of Song of Songs (np), this double symbolism of the bride being, at first sight paradoxically, transferred to the figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a series of two poems, entitled the Feast of the Annunciation, with the image of Her, as “Christ’s mirror of grace and love” (2:16), “Transfigured to His likeness” (2:19), as hailed by Her Son as His “Dove, / Spouse, / Sister, / Mother” (2: 19-20). This recognition of Mary by Christ as His Spouse and Sister, however, is to be viewed primarily symbolically, as evoking the Bride of the Song of Songs, addressed as sister by her Bridegroom (4:9), undoubtedly in a spiritual sense, the epithalamium traditionally interpreted as the mystical nuptials between Christ and His Church, with the Bride also emblematic of the Holy Virgin, which leads this series of metaphors to the purely mystic espousal between Christ as New Adam and the Holy Virgin as New Eve, as a fulfilment of the earthly marriage of the first human pair in Eden (cf. New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913: n.p.). It is interesting to observe, however, that, while Rossetti honoured the Virgin Mary as “a lily of intact purity”, she was hesitant, even though demonstrating a genuine admiration for the Catholic Church (including its Eucharist teachings), to adopt the Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception (D’Amico, 2000: 124, 141).

This spiritual development traceable in Rossetti’s Christian fairy-tales and devotional poetry, replete with echoes of the most celebrated epithalamium of the Song of Songs, as well as the mystical nuptials in the Book of Revelation, with Christ as the loving Bridegroom, embodied, as has already been remarked, in Goblin Market, by a series of bridal motifs, only testify to her conviction of the sacredness of human love insofar as mirroring divine love.

3.4. Emily Dickinson: poetic Self and paradoxes of marketing

As has been already stressed in the second chapter, dealing with the historical and cultural framework of Emily Dickinson’s oeuvre, her very position within the 19th century American poetry was inseparably linked and inevitably determined by her celebrated male contemporaries, primarily with Walt Whitman as the epitomised American Puritan poet having exercised a major impact upon her identity. What is more, it is precisely Whitman’s

self-confident claim of his both masculine and artistic integrity, expressed in the poem by the opening line “I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul”, as observed by Wendy Martin (2003: 6), to have summoned a deeply anguished reply from Dickinson, according to Shira Wolosky, conditioned by the incongruity of her womanhood with her artistic aspirations, “I am afraid to own a Body - / I am afraid to own a Soul” (1090, 1-2)2, her insecurity and shaken confidence in her spiritual integrity enclosed in her female body being a source of her deep and persisting distress, moreover, a crisis of selfhood, irrevocably shaped by her national (American) and religious identity (Puritan Calvinist) (2003: 119-120). The poem, as Wolosky argues, inhabits a series of conceptual mismatches: starting from the metaphysical, with the accentuated sense of her body and soul as being bestowed upon her beyond her own choice, with the possibility of endangering it: “Profound – precarious Property - / Possession, not optional –“ (ll. 3-4). It is as if she were aware of the responsibility she inherits along with the gift, a concept, furthermore, expressed in economic terms, “Double Estate – entailed at pleasure / Upon an unsuspecting Heir – / Duke in a moment of Deathlessness / And God, for a Frontier“ (ll. 5-8). In ll. 6 and 7 this concept of economy intermingles with significantly gendered notions of entailment, duke, and heir, all markedly masculinised terms having to do with aristocracy and genealogy, only to be re-incorporated, in the two closing lines, into metaphysics and religion, with the notion of immortality (“deathlessness”), entailment, additionally identified with philosophy as well, and God as a sort of boundary as if attributing spatial delimitation to the unlimited Deity, enhancing the ambivalent image of the limitless God circumscribing everything, perceived by the poetic I as a contradictory synthesis of a source of protective freedom (in American context a frontier offering a possibility of expansiveness) and an agent of delimitation and inescapability (2003: 120).

In her programmatic poem to be analysed next, “Publication – is the Auction / Of the Mind of Man –“ (709), she intermingles her strictly maintained, even somewhat moralistic principle of the non-contamination of her art, by refusing to market her priceless creation, with her secluded lifestyle of a solitary woman dressed in white, as the colour of stainless purity. In Dickinson’s mind, the act of exposing her work to the public, especially for payment, like in

2 All quotations from Emily Dickinson's poetry have been retrieved from the following edition: Emily Dickinson. The Complete Poems. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. London: Faber and Faber, 1975.

an auction, is equalled, in the vivid images of seclusion and whiteness (Wolosky, 2003: 136- 137) “– but We – would rather / From our Garret go / White – Unto the White Creator - / Than invest – Our Snow –“, which might be interpreted as her preferring to die and go to her Creator than make profit of her purity. The last stanza, again imbued with economic terms, plays with the conventional manner of the Puritan Fathers to explain spiritual matters in economic terms, with the risk of subordination of sacred matters of faith to base market values. It is this dubious strategy which is being unmasked here, with the poetess indignantly refusing to debase her art, identified with “the Merchant / Of the Heavenly Grace”, by reducing it to “Disgrace of Price –“ (ll. 13-14, 16) (Wolosky, 2003: 137).

3.5. Puritan Dickinson: between tradition and rebellion, transience and Transcedentalism

Even though tackling the same themes which preoccupied Rossetti’s poetics as well, i.e. metaphysics, love, death, suffering, God, afterlife, and transcendence, Dickinson’s attitude assumed towards these topics differs markedly from Rossetti’s rather harmonised acceptance of these, notwithstanding the striking absence of the dichotomy juxtaposing sin and grace in Dickinson, otherwise permeating Rossetti’s professed acceptance of their opposition as stemming from the Bible. Furthermore, since Dickinson’s oeuvre notably lacks the gradation and maturation of religious thought characterising the former’s spirituality, as well as a transformation in attitude from the initial dejectedness and resignation to the joyful and confident acceptance of God as Love, discernible in the passage between the two phases of Rossetti’s poetic creation, it appears impossible for me to assume the same line of development of themes, leaving me with the option of grouping Dickinson’s poems according to the themes they explore, with sporadic references to their thematic counterparts in Rossetti, wherever convenient.

As far as the death theme is concerned, furthermore, its treatment in Dickinson’s verses diverges even from the earlier phase of Rossetti’s poetry, where she seems to be, at first sight at least, at her most pessimistic, dejected attitude. It is along this line of reasoning that I would like to juxtapose Poem 592, “What care the Dead?”, with the two Rossetti’s sepulchral poems,

When I am dead, my dearest, and Remember. While Dickinson’s poem unmasks, seemingly like Rossetti’s, the departed as unconcerned with the nature surrounding their grave, it exposes completely different reasons for their indifference. While Dickinson’s dead cannot care for winter in this world, since they “Themselves as easy freeze” (l. 18), overwhelmed by coldness and oblivion, Rossetti’s departed are immersed into bliss as a serene, consoling foretaste of the final Resurrection. As opposed to the sepulchral darkness dominating Poem 592, Poem 976, “Death is a Dialogue between / The Spirit and the Dust”, (ll. 1.-2) conversely, seems to offer a glimpse of afterlife by an antithetical dialogue between the spirit and the dust, standing for the separation of body and soul after death and soul’s departure into transcendence, with the Dust trying in vain to detain the Spirit: “ ‘Dissolve’ says Death – The Spirit ‘Sir / I have another Trust’ –“ (ll. 3-4). Poem 1033, “Said Death to Passion”, featuring a dialogue, even a futile discussion between the two irreconcilable entities, finishes by their irrevocable separation, with Death, according to traditional symbolism, residing in the West, while Passion moved eastwards, as if confirming the irrevocability of the eros vs. thanatos principle, i.e., life and death drive. This irrevocable contrast culminates in her acknowledging the failure in finding a purpose of her earthly existence, expressed in mythological terms by Jason’s quest of the golden fleece (poem 870), whose failure, according to Gelpi, serves as an unsatisfying closure of the human drama, discovery and loss (1971: 54).

A somewhat more placated account of death emerges from the so-called ‘chariot’ poem (712), with Death who comes to collect her personified by a civil, kind stranger, whose true identity is subject to debate: “Because I could not stop for Death - / He kindly stopped for me - / The Carriage held but just Ourselves - / And Immortality.” (ll. 1-4), with Gelpi recognising in the male figure the “lover-redeemer” as he puts it, this identification with Christ corroborated by his evoking yet another poem (1123), with lines: “A closing of the simple lid / That opened to the sun / Until the tender Carpenter / Perpetual nail it down – “ (ll. 14-17), with a variant substituting the attribute of Carpenter with sovereign, even more reminiscent of Christ (1971: 113). Moreover, the reference to the coffin opening to sun seems to allow for a glimpse of hope. Along the lines of this possibility of hope, I would like to mention an intriguing observation made by Christopher Benfey, in the context of Dickinson’s alleged adherence to Southern conventions in the ‘chariot’ poem, where he links her chariot allegory with the

traditional Negro spiritual song, “Swing low, sweet chariot”, where chariot is envisaged as “carrying” the departed souls “home”, to the Kingdom of Heaven (2003: 39).

This reference to Christ as a comforter and the trust it seems to suggest appears, nevertheless, of scarce stability, since even sporadic prayers to Christ diverge significantly from those uttered by Rossetti, insofar as they markedly lack Rossetti’s surrendering thrust, imbued instead with a sort of shrinking fear of His will for her. In Poem 217, “Savior! I’ve no one else to tell - / And so I trouble thee” (ll. 1-2; emphasis of the author), seemingly a cry for Jesus’s help in her distress, seems to develop, especially if contrasted with the intimate dialogues of Rossetti’s self with Him, cf. A Better Resurrection, When my Heart is vexed I will complain, in a renewed doubt in His aid, since, upon bringing her heart to Him, it feels heavier still, leaving her to suspect that it might be too heavy for Him (cf. ll. 5-12). Her fear of Christ neglecting her seems to be further enhanced by her awareness of having herself forgotten Him: “I am the one forgot thee so - / Dost thou remember me?” (ll. 3-4). Furthermore, while Dickinson’s self seems to obtain no reply from Christ, Rossetti is eagerly involved, in When my heart is vexed, I will complain” in a confident dialogue with Him; even if at first dejected and complaining about her lot, doubting Christ’s love, He assures her of His love and of having shared all her suffering and taken it to His Cross, promising her to welcome her in Paradise (ll. 19-36), this promise of Resurrection with Him evoking the already analysed poem, A Better Resurrection.

The most accessible way for Dickinson to comprehend Christ is through His suffering humanity, rather than His divinity, so that in two representative poems, 571 and 573, she ponders upon His Cross, reaching so far as to proclaim that “The Test of Love – is Death” (573, 1) (Gelpi, 1971: 113), acknowledging that for “Common Bliss” “Our lord – thought no / Extravagance / To pay – a Cross –“ (571, 9, 13-15). It is this appreciation of Christ’s woe and suffering, which prompts her to hail Him, according to Isaiah 53:3, as the Man of Sorrows (Gelpi, 1971: 48), which, to my discernment, retains her at a distanced adoration and worship, unable to seek and find comfort in His suffering, unlike Rossetti in her already analysed poems, where she clings to Christ as an ally in her female lot, eager to follow Him. It is hereby that I would like to shed more light upon an argument exposed by Sr. Mary Humiliata where she discusses and questions the alleged mysticism of Dickinson’s poetry, and

juxtaposes it with Rossetti’s surrendering attitude towards suffering. According to Humiliata, the term ‘mystical’ is too often misapplied to any pondering upon the matters of religion, death, and afterlife, failing to take into account the definition of the term within the context of Christian mysticism, often practised by saints, “purgative, illuminative, and unitive”, marked by an ardent desire of the soul to emulate the “Person of Jesus Christ”, be it in His Passion, in order to reach a perpetual union with Him. It is this surrender filled with longing and self- mortification which appears to be, according to Sr. Humiliata, absent from Dickinson’s poetry, although undoubtedly marked by preoccupations with God, orthodoxly perceived as Creator and Ruler, as formed within her, primarily Puritan Calvinist, Christianity (1950: 145, 146), even though, I would add, the doctrines inherited by Dickinson, subject to question and shaken by doubts and fears, notwithstanding the absence of the purgative element, to be derived from the awareness of personal sinfulness. Taking these characteristics of the mystics into account, I would venture to add that Rossetti’s spiritual attitude seems to greatly correspond to these exigencies of obedient surrender to God’s will, despite sporadic expressions of weariness, duly accompanied by the sense of sin and unworthiness, followed by repentance, and, finally, sublimation in the hope of celestial marriage with Christ, already discussed. Dickinson’s inability to embrace the opportunity of suffering with Christ is manifest in Poem 193, “I shall know why - when Time is over - ” quoted also by Sr. Humiliata, where her inability to seek comfort from Christ is conditioned by her desperate attempt to understand the reason of each sorrow, which will be explained to her by Christ only in “the fair schoolroom of the sky - ” (l. 4). (1950: 148).

As has already been noted, Dickinson’s perception of Love, even though envisaged as a personified entity, has apparently little to do with Rossetti’s Love as stemming from and equalled to God, proclaimed in Later Life. In order to reveal the connotational differences, I find it appropriate to set apart Poem 453, “Love – thou art high – / I cannot climb thee” (ll. 1- 2), apparently affirming the superiority of Love, as well as its depth and ineffability: “Love – thou art deep - / I cannot cross thee - / ...Love – thou art Veiled – “ (ll. 7-8, 13). Even though, in final lines at first sight the divine character of Love is proclaimed: “Bliss – were and Oddity – without thee - / Nicknamed by God - / Eternity – “ (ll. 16-18), I would argue that Love here seems to be established as an entity separate from God, as if God admired it at a distance, giving it an appellative of eternity, diverging from St John’s Epistle, emulated in

Rossetti’s poetics, where God is not only compared to Love, but identified with it: He is Love, and as such the ultimate source of all human love.

The crucial difference, in fact, between Dickinson’s and Rossetti’s perception of Christ’s Sacrifice, is the former’s failure to view it in terms of sin vs. grace, otherwise profusely elaborated in Rossetti’s oeuvre, i. e. to embrace it as a Sacrifice of Atonement for the Fall of Man and the source of Grace, the concepts upheld by the orthodox (Puritan) Christianity of thinkers such as Jonathan Edwards, but substituted in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Unitarian Transcedentalist creed by mere Reason which is to annul any need of divine Grace, since the concept of the Original Sin is denied as well (qtd. in Gelpi, 1971: 58). This failure on the part of Dickinsonian self, unlike Rossetti’s, to achieve a cognition of her sins and repent for them becomes manifest in Poem 1601, where she invokes God’s forgiveness, while left in the dark as to what exactly has offended Him: “Of God we ask one favor, / That we may be forgiven - / For what, he is presumed to know - / The Crime, from us, is hidden – “ (ll. 1-4). In Poem 251 she plays with the Genesis account of the transgression of plucking the forbidden fruit (the emblematic apple replaced by strawberries), alluded to, however, with a completely different attitude by Rossetti in Goblin Market, apparently childishly inquiring as to why it is prohibited: “Over the fence - / Strawberries – grow - / Over the fence - / I could climb – ... / But – if I stained my Apron - / God would certainly scold!” (ll. 1-4, 5-8), notwithstanding the subordinate dread of God perceived as a stern law-giver.

Even though identified by Gelpi, given her dark moods of rebellion, to the dark Romantic spirit, akin to Byronic, of Captain Ahab in Melville’s Moby Dick (1971: 38-42), Dickinson’s self sporadically manifests a glimpse of idealist Romanticism of Keats and the likes of him, emerging from Poem 449 “I died for Beauty”, where she professes to have been buried together with a man who died for Truth, finding in him her kinsman, with their noble endeavours united evoking the closing lines of Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn: “ ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ – that is all / Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.’ “ (ll. 49-50). Another claim on truth more adherent to Christian orthodoxy of truth as co-eternal with God is affirmed in Poem 836, “Truth - is as old as God - / His Twin identity / And will endure as long as He / A Co-Eternity – “ (ll. 1-4), with the second stanza envisaging a logically impossible situation of the death of Truth, which would imply the death of God, “a lifeless

Deity” (l. 8), even more so given the fact that, in the entire Christian theology, regardless of denominational differences, God is Truth.

As far as Dickinsonian attitude towards Christian promise of future heavenly award is concerned, she seems to have created a series of poems featuring Revelation visions, with different connotations than Rossetti’s. Poem 322 “There came a Day at Summer’s full”, is, in its continuation, replete with images from the Revelation, bearing, however, more secular connotations. As Mother Mary Anthony asserts, while human love is, in Song of Songs and Revelation, “bride of the Lamb”, sublimated to stand for the love of God for His Church, in this poem divine love is being returned to its purely human terms, albeit aspiring to an everlasting union (1961: 558). Indeed, Stanza 4 equals the “unconsummated marriage of virginal souls”, as Mother Mary puts it, with the biblical echo of “Sealed Church” (l. 13; cf. “fountain sealed” of Song of Songs 4:12), testifying to the inviolability of the sacrosanct bond of the lovers, further enhanced by their aspiration to be made worthy to commune at the “Supper of the Lamb” (l. 16), referring both to the Last Supper and the marriage feast of agape of the Lamb in the Kingdom of Heaven (1961: 560). The lovers seem to be prepared to undergo, in the two closing stanzas, bound by the Crucifix, (cf. ll. 23-24), their personal “Calvaries of love”, which would “justify” them for the “new Marriage” in Heaven (ll. 27-28) (1961: 561), the distinction from Rossetti’s view of the celestial marriage with Christ being, to my discernment, the fact that Dickinson seems to subordinate the union with Christ to the union of the lovers, whereas Rossetti sees the celestial wedding with Christ as a coronation and triumph of both human love emulating the divine love and virtuous suffering endured in the alliance with Christ’s Passion. The Revelation vision of the saints adorned with white robes, as envisaged in Poem 325 “Of Tribulation, these are They” seemed to present, as Mother Mary puts it, a particular appeal to Dickinson, given the biographical fact of her wearing, in her life of seclusion, a white gown (1961: 561), an image, I would add, resembling that of Miss Havisham in Dickens’s Great Expectations, having imprisoned herself in a sort of vowed virginity, in defiance of her cruel bridegroom.

In her preoccupation with the notion of the loving union as sublimated in eternity, Dickinson seems to find appeal in pondering about her being wooed, through Baptism, by the Holy Trinity, as envisaged in Poem 817 “Given in marriage unto Thee”, aware that she can

“Conquer Mortality” (l. 8) only if she faithfully keeps the betrothal ring (cf. l. 7), which, however, necessarily entails the need to accept the earthly toils, which she failed to endure with patience, unable to completely accept the narrow path to this celestial wedding.

Yet another diverging element from Rossetti’s essentially Anglo-Catholic spirituality is the allusion to the Last Supper in Poems 1430 and 1651, bearing in mind the theological differences between the Puritan Sunday commemoration of the event with the Catholic belief, adopted also by Tractarians, of Transubstantiation and the Real Presence of Body and Blood of Christ under the appearances of bread and wine. Poem 1430 “Who never wanted – maddest Joy” celebrates abstinence and self-seclusion from life in the oxymoronic syntagm bearing references to the Last Supper, “Banquet of Abstemiousness” (l. 3), explicitly contrasted to the Eucharist-like feast partook by Laura upon Lizzie’s body covered with juices in Goblin Market. Poem 1651 “A Word made Flesh is seldom / And tremblingly partook” (ll. 1-2), according to Siobhan Phillips, not only abounds in imagery of Christ’s Incarnation and the Last Supper, but also of explicit reminiscences to the Christian Trinitarian doctrine, certainly more in line with Edwards’s Christian orthodoxy (2005: 251-252) than Emerson’s Unitarianism verging on pantheism (Gelpi, 1971: 58). In order to expose her logocentric creed, Dickinson departs from the typically Puritan commemoration of the Lord’s Supper, to be assisted to with due reverence (“tremblingly partook”, l. 2), a feast from which she was, not deemed an exemplary believer, eventually excluded. In Stanza 2, however, she begins to introduce what is for her a substitute from the rite she was denied access to, her own poetic word, “loved Philology” (l. 16) (2005: 254-255). Stanza 2, moreover, contains explicit allusions to the Triune Godhead, the imagery transposed into purely human and artistic terms: “A Word that breathes distinctly / Has not the power to die / Cohesive as the Spirit” (ll. 9-11; emphasis mine), this reference to the Holy Spirit as the Giver of life and an agent in the Incarnation being translated into poetic inspiration (Latin root: spirit / inspiration) vivified once poured out into verses. Just as in the Christian dogma of Christ’s Incarnation, as Phillips elaborates, the divine Logos is the ultimate source of everything, according to symbolist and deconstructive readings of this poem, the poetic Word encompasses within itself the outside world, as if it were its source, otherwise interpreted, in Structuralism, as arbitrarily linked to the signified (2005: 252), with the equalling of man’s word with the divine Logos perceived, according to Cristanne Miller, as downright sacrilegious in the Puritan theological thought,

according to which the human language had to strive to be as plain as possible, so as not to raise to rival the supreme Word of God (1987: 144-145).

As far as Dickinson’s manner of referring to God and attributes she applied to Him, it truly stems, as Humiliata observes, from her traditional religious upbringing, which prompted her to think of Him as Father, Ruler and Creator (1950: 145), utterly convinced of the necessity of His existence: “God cannot discontinue himself.” (qtd. in Gelpi, 1971: 36). Her relationship, due to His immeasurable majesty she was inclined to accept, appeared impaired and imbued with fears. The first term she adopted from Edwardsian theology, regarding God’s essence, was circumference, defined as “a system of wheels” rotated by God’s ineffable Providence (qtd. in Gelpi, 1971: 120), which must have filled Dickinson’s mind with awe mixed, however, in her case, with a frightening sense of inadequacy. It is this curiosity which prompts her, in Poem 378 “I saw no Way – the Heavens were stitched” to undergo a futile quest of deciphering the mystery of God and Heavens. Stanza 2 only brings the realisation of her being a mere “Speck upon a Ball –“ against the inconceivable “Circumference” (ll. 6-7) of the divine order of the universe, this failed quest, epic in nature, according to Fred D. White, constituting a purpose of her life (2003: 95). I would venture to argue, nevertheless, that her entire oeuvre is potently marked by a lingering sense of inadequacy and fear of reprobation. Not even the paternity of God, as confirmed in the Bible she knew so well, could provide her with security and a sense of protection as God’s child. In Poem 61 “Papa above!”, she can only discern her littleness of “a Mouse / O’erpowered by the Cat!” (ll. 2-3) which paralyses her with fear, which prompts her to utter an ironic, embittered plea to God to “reserve within His kingdom / A ‘Mansion’ for the Rat” (cf. ll. 4-5), reminiscent of Christ’s promise of a room in His Father’s House in John 14: 1-3. Moreover, her conviction of the logical necessity of God’s existence only enlarged her fears when confronted with His silence at her prayers: “I know that He exists. / Somewhere – in Silence – / He has hid his rare life / From our gross eyes.” (338, 1-4), her terror at His mute infinity compared by Gelpi to Captain Ahab’s confrontation with the “featureless whale”, as well as his proud daring “to ponder at God’s guilt” (1971: 38-39). I would venture to add, moreover, that the Calvinist Puritan doctrine of predestination played a major role in her pessimistic moods, the doctrine crucial even for Melville’s poetics exposed in Moby Dick. In Poem 1021, therefore, Dickinson ponders upon God visiting His elect with tribulations, leading them through earthly parts devoid of comfort:

“Far from Love the Heavenly Father / Leads the Chosen Child” (ll. 1-2). Even though her anguishes, if understood as God’s trials, might be a proof of her being among the elect, I would point, however, to her anguished conviction of being claimed by the Devil and predestined to reprobation instead, as expressed in her letters (qtd. in Gelpi, 1971: 42). This dark, turbulent condition of her mind, as already stressed before, links her, together with Captain Ahab, to the dark, Byronic type of Romanticism (Gelpi, 1971: 40-41). It is within this dark mood, akin to Melville’s gloomy Romantic hero, that her references to predestination could be said to bear an echo of pessimistic presentiment of damnation.

IV. Conclusion

In my graduation thesis I have attempted to expose the respective poetics of the two poetesses in question, taking into account the influence of diverging, even though contemporary, historical, cultural, geographic, and religious circumstances, having contributed to the formation of their poetic personae, each of them developing, despite the shared literary period, independently to create a distinctive poetic thought, marked by an indelible personal touch.

In spite of the historical and economic situation of the Victorian England, hardly in favour of the public affirmation of women, as well as generating the industrial revolution of far- reaching consequences, followed by a decline and dissipation of faith and the emergence of rationalism, the poetic genius of Christina Rossetti appeared on the literary scene, to root her poetics in the timeless values of the Bible (Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Gospels, Epistles, Revelation) combined with the catholicised doctrines of the High Anglican Oxford Movement, utilised, however, paradoxically enough, to unmask the underlying injustices permeating the Victorian mentality, upheld in the name of tradition, but contrary to the essential demands of Christian charity. It was upon the literary influences of the religious thought enacted in Dante’s Divine Comedy, as well as the Keatsian tenets of Romantic idealism and overt sentimentality, albeit moderated by the exigencies of Christian sobriety, that Rossetti succeeded in constructing a deep, inherently personal poetics, marked by her feminine dignity as she believed it to be corroborated by her authentically lived Christianity, which she used to proclaim the dignity of the human spirit and equality of all people before God, as well as the triumph of His Grace and Love over the sinfulness of the strayed humanity.

The similarly turbulent changes in the American society, with the mentality lacerated between the established tradition of the Puritan Calvinist Christianity and an increasing rationalism and scepticism appeared, however, to shape Emily Dickinson’s poetic persona in an almost entirely different direction, impairing her sense of security in the faith she was brought up into and causing her inner self to sink into irreconcilable paradoxes of the inherited doctrines of her faith, which, while endowing her with the awareness of God’s undeniable existence,

impaired and deeply disturbed her by the rationalist, Unitarian thought of the likes of Emerson, as well as the dark, rebellious Byronic spirit, akin to the dejected attitude of a fatal mistrust in God and Providence, as manifest by the existential anguish combined with a kind of devilish spite of the dark, pessimistic Romanticism of Captain Ahab, with his deeply distressed wanderings through the turbulent seas reminiscent of the wanderings of Dickinson’s imprisoned mind, involved in the futile quest for the Golden Fleece. Paradoxically enough, it seems that Dickinson was somehow unable to connect Christ’s sacrifice with His Father’s salvific plan for humanity.

While the fading faith in the Victorian society, particularly the agnosticism professed in the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (especially in his later sonnet sequence, The House of Life, marked by a gradual loss of the divine sphere), prompted his sister Christina to cling even more to God’s Mercy and glorify, in her poetry, the Love that is God, as reflected in human love, the inherent contradictions in Puritan New England pushed Dickinson’s poetic self into the abyss of constant questioning of God’s providential plan, the deep rootedness in the tradition of her faith preventing her from escaping the urge she nevertheless felt to seek the answers to the inscrutable riddle of existence, which would determine her relationship with God she was, notwithstanding all, unable to deny.

As opposed to the easily traceable development and maturation of Rossetti’s poetic creation, from the gloomy preoccupations with transience to the joyful recognition of the promise of heavenly reward, I have confronted the often ambiguous implications of Dickinson’s verses by juxtaposing them to the analogous themes dealt with by Rossetti of death, transience, afterlife, God, metaphysics, with a notable and deeply significant absence, as I have already remarked, in the latter’s verses, of the dichotomy of sin vs. grace, as well as a failure to ponder over the ultimate and supreme power of Christ’s atoning Sacrifice over the Fall of Man.

Namely, having been raised a Puritan and rejecting doctrinal faith due to what she perceived as rigidity, Emily Dickinson became increasingly inclined towards introspection, subjectivism, and intuitive individuality, mainly based upon Emersonian philosophy (Martin, 2007: 32). In my opinion, this intuitive introspection seems to have increased Dickinson’s

scepticism, lack of confidence, and unwillingness to accept the incomprehensible miracle of God’s Love, His unconditional forgiving, and His infinite Grace, which, paradoxically, abounds where sin is at its worst (cf. Romans 5:20). It was, conclusively, Dickinson’s escape from the doctrinal faith and her immersion in the abyss of selfhood which seems to have contributed towards annihilating the distinction between sin and grace in her verse. It is precisely these considerations, stemming from the catholicised Anglican theology, that permeate Rossetti’s worldview, as well as her poetics.

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