Ghent University Faculty of Arts and Philosophy 2006 - 2007 „Women and Flowers‟ in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Poetry Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of "Licentiaat in de Supervisor: Taal- en Letterkunde: Germaanse Talen" Prof. Dr. Marysa Demoor by Eva Vanhercke Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Prof. Dr. Demoor, for her recommendations with regard to secondary literature, her understanding and her helpful advice. Secondly, I would like to express my thanks to Mr and Mrs Nuttin for taking time to read through large parts of my text. I also owe a great debt of gratitude to my parents, who have spared neither trouble nor expense to help me realize this dissertation. Furthermore, their unremitting encouragement has been much appreciated. Finally, I would like to thank my friends who have helped me with their moral support. 2 Contents Introduction 5 Chapter 1: The Life and Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1.1. Introduction 7 1.2. Chronological overview 7 1.3. Anecdotes 18 1.4. Conclusion 21 Chapter 2: Flowers and their (symbolic) significance throughout history 2.1. Introduction 22 2.2. Overview 22 2.2.1. The early beginnings 22 2.2.2. Greeks and Romans and the increasing importance of flowers 23 2.2.3. The ambivalent attitude towards plant life at the time of early 24 Christianity 2.2.4. The gradual re-appreciation of flowers in the Middle Ages 25 2.2.5. The Renaissance and the return to nature 26 2.2.6. Nineteenth-century flower-mania in the shape of a „language of 27 flowers‟ 2.2.7. The role of flowers in contemporary Western Europe 31 2.3. Conclusion 32 Chapter 3: Women as flowers in the nineteenth century 3.1. Introduction 33 3.2. The close connection between women and nature 33 3.3. Women as flowers in nineteenth-century literature 35 3.4. Women as flowers in nineteenth-century poetry by women 38 3.4.1. Elizabeth Barrett Browning 41 3.4.2. Christina Rossetti 43 3.4.3. Dora Greenwell 44 3.4.4. Emily Dickinson 46 3 3.5. Conclusion 49 Chapter 4: Women, flowers and Dante Gabriel Rossetti 4.1. Introduction 50 4.2. Rossetti‟s „good ladies‟ 51 4.2.1. The white lily 51 4.2.2. „Mary‟s Girlhood‟ 51 4.2.3. „The Blessed Damozel‟ 53 4.3. Rossetti‟s „bad ladies‟ 57 4.3.1. The rose 57 4.3.2. „Jenny‟ 58 4.3.3. „Rose Mary‟ 65 4.4. „I am the poet of the body, And I am the poet of the soul‟ 73 4.4.1. The rose and the poppy 73 4.4.2. „Body‟s Beauty‟ 74 4.4.3. „Soul‟s Beauty‟ 78 4.4.4. „Body‟s Beauty‟ and „Soul‟s Beauty‟: each other‟s opposites? 80 4.5. Conclusion 82 Conclusion 83 Appendix Poems 84 Paintings 126 Bibliography 130 4 Introduction The Victorian Dante Gabriel Rossetti was drawn to both poetry and painting and therefore he decided to establish a career in both arts. Today, he is best known for his paintings. His poetry remains somewhat neglected by the general audience. Rossetti himself, however, seems to have attached more importance to his poetic than to his pictorial achievements. As he wrote in a letter to an acquaintance in 1870: „My own belief is that I am a poet (within the limits of my powers) primarily.‟1 In this dissertation, I will devote some attention to Rossetti‟s poetry. My interest for his work was awakened when I was taking a course on Victorian Poetry. Out of all the poems we discussed, Rossetti‟s „The Blessed Damozel‟ was my favourite. The majority of critics studied Rossetti‟s poetry with an eye on discovering references to his life in his verses. The aspect of his poetry that I will focus on, however, is the flower imagery. In this way I hope to offer an alternative approach to his work. Rossetti‟s friend William Holman Hunt remarked that Gabriel seemed to have decided that the only things worth painting were women and flowers.2 Although Hunt was of course generalizing, it is true that women and flowers play an important part in both Rossetti‟s pictures and his verses. In this dissertation, I will study a few poems in which „women‟ and „flowers‟ occur together. It is my intention to determine what the flower images contribute to the representation of the female figures in these poems. For, in Rossetti‟s work, flowers are not (only) referred to for aesthetic reasons. First and foremost, they function as a symbol. According to Julian Treuherz, an expert in Victorian art, the symbolism Rossetti uses in his paintings is essential to what he wants to express.3 Also Mégroz writes that in Rossetti‟s 1 See The Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ed. Oswald Doughty and John Robert Wahl. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965-1967), 4 vols. (indicated by number, not page), 992, quoted in Jan Marsh, ed., Collected Writings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. (Chicago: New Amsterdam Books, 2000), p. xxii. 2 See Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His Family-Letters with a Memoir, ed. William Michael Rossetti. (London: Ellis, 1895), vol. 1, p. 202, quoted in Virginia M. Allen, “„One Strangling Golden Hair‟: Dante Gabriel Rossetti‟s Lady Lilith.” Art Bulletin 66:2 (1984), p. 288. 3 See Julian Treuherz, Elizabeth Prettejohn and Edwin Becker, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. (Zwolle: Waanders Uitgevers; Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum; Liverpool: The Walker, 2003), p. 22. 5 poetry, natural imagery is an important element and is always to be interpreted symbolically.4 Therefore, through close reading, I will try to find out which symbolic meaning Rossetti attaches to which type of flower and what exactly the function of these flower images is in the context of the selected poems. I have divided my thesis into four chapters. The first chapter is an introductory chapter on Rossetti‟s life and work. In the second chapter, I will try to give a brief overview of how flowers acquired symbolic meanings throughout the ages. I will devote particular attention to the significance of flowers in the nineteenth century. The third chapter will deal with the Victorian tradition of associating women with flowers, and with how this convention found expression in nineteenth-century literature. I will also look into the way a few of Rossetti‟s contemporary women poets challenged this tradition. Finally, in the last chapter I will explore Rossetti‟s use of flower imagery in a number of poems in which the focus is on a female character. I have included the texts of the poems in an appendix. The edition of Rossetti‟s work that I will be using is the one by Jan Marsh.5 This collection proved useful because it contains all of Rossetti‟s literary works (prose as well as poetry) and because of the notes accompanying each one of his works. 4 See R.L. Mégroz, Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Painter Poet of Heaven in Earth. (Michigan: Scholarly Press, Inc., 1972), p. 206. 5 See Jan Marsh, ed., Collected Writings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. (Chicago: New Amsterdam Books, 2000). All quotations from Dante Gabriel Rossetti‟s poems are taken from this edition. 6 Chapter 1: The Life and Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1.1. Introduction This chapter on Rossetti‟s fascinating life consists of two parts. I will first give a short overview of important dates, events and people in the painter-poet‟s life. In the second part of the chapter, I will select a few anecdotes about Rossetti to add to the factual information. 1.2. Chronological overview The painter-poet Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti‟s roots are to be found in Italy. His ancestors‟ surname had been Della Guardia for ages, until their nickname Rossetti - given to them because of their red hair - replaced their official surname round about the eighteenth century. Gabriel‟s grandparents were simple working people living in Naples. Gabriele Rossetti, Gabriel‟s father, was born as the third son of this couple in 1783. The boy started to write and draw early on in life. Later on, the man became an important poet, who wrote mainly on political subjects. In his thirties, he became a member of a group supporting the revolution against the absolutist king of Naples, Ferdinand II. In 1821, after composing incentive „odes to liberty‟,6 he was expelled from Italy. He travelled with the English fleet to Malta, where he would stay for about four years, after which he eventually got settled in London in 1825. He was not the only Italian there. There was a community of immigrated Italians like himself in the city. He became a teacher of Italian to make a (modest) living. One of the notable members in the Italian circle was Gaetano Polidori. It was his daughter Frances Mary Lavinia that Gabriele Rossetti married in 1826. The Rossettis had four children. Gabriel Charles Dante was born on 12th May 1828 as the first son and the second child of the family.7 His sister Maria Francesca was born a year 6 See Jan Marsh, ed., Collected Writings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, p. xii. 7 Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti was his given name. He was named after Charles Lyell, a friend of the family, and after the Italian thirteenth- and fourteenth-century writer Dante Alighieri, who was one of the family‟s 7 before him. His brother William Michael was born a year after Gabriel. His sister Christina Georgina was the youngest child as she was born in 1830.