A Novel About Elizabeth Siddal
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University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2013-09-13 Not as She is: A Novel About Elizabeth Siddal Ursuliak, Emily Ursuliak, E. (2013). Not as She is: A Novel About Elizabeth Siddal (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/27128 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/952 master thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Not as She is: A Novel About Elizabeth Siddal by Emily Ursuliak A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH CALGARY, ALBERTA SEPTEMBER, 2013 © Emily Ursuliak 2013 Abstract This novel follows in the feminist tradition of reclaiming female artists who have been overlooked, or misrepresented. Not as She is centers around Elizabeth Siddal, a Victorian-era artist, known for her connections with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), but also a worthy artist in her own right. Siddal is often viewed by traditional art historians as a hysterical, laudanum-addicted muse, but the fictional representation of her life found in this novel provides a more complex account. By using first person and second person points of view in present tense, the reader is given a more vivid version of Siddal as she struggles with her addiction to laudanum, becomes absorbed in the process of creating art and lives her daily life. ii Acknowledgments There are many people who have supported me throughout the writing of this thesis. Firstly, I would like to thank Suzette Mayr: I couldn’t ask for a better supervisor, she is an excellent mentor who has helped me grow into a stronger writer. The entire writing community of Calgary has been like a supportive family to me since I moved here two years ago: I love you all! I’m lucky to have my parents Linda and Grant Ursuliak who always have my back and have never been concerned that their daughter is a writer, and of course Tim Ursuliak, the best brother one could have. Rod Schumacher was my first creative writing professor and without his encouragement I probably wouldn’t have gone on to pursue my MA in the first place. Lots of gratitude goes out to the friends who have had to listen to me ramble on about the Pre- Raphaelites long before I ever started this thesis. I’m appreciative of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for providing the grant that supported this project. I’m grateful to Linda Carreiro and Stefania Forlini for agreeing to be on my defense committee. I’d like to give one last thank you to Professor James Trevelyan at Red Deer College: it was in his art history class many years ago that I was first introduced to Elizabeth Siddal. iii Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................ iii Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... iv Introductory Essay: Not as She is: Elizabeth Siddal Reclaimed in Fiction ................................... 1 Creative Manuscript: Not as She is .............................................................................................. 23 iv INTRODUCTION Not as She is: Elizabeth Siddal Reclaimed in Fiction Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal has long held a fascination for art lovers, from her fans in 1928 who were known as the “Siddalites” of Sheffield, to the modern-day website run by Stephanie Piña devoted entirely to Siddal at www.lizziesiddal.com (Marsh 73). Siddal was an artist’s model for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (also known as the PRB), a group of Victorian artists who sought to counter the artistic conventions of the time and capture more realistic interpretations of life in their paintings. The standard narrative of Siddal’s life that one encounters on first reading about her is that she was discovered by Walter Deverell, a friend of the PRB, at the millinery shop where she worked. Deverell began using her as a model and told the PRB about her, who began employing her as well. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the founders of the PRB, took a romantic interest in her and insisted that she model only for him. They lived together on and off for several years, but did not marry until nearly ten years after they met. According to correspondence between Rossetti and his family, the marriage occurred because Siddal was close to dying and he felt guilty about his lack of faithfulness to her (Marsh 62-3). During her relationship with Rossetti she developed an illness that was never conclusively diagnosed by doctors; she struggled with eating, sleeping and suffered from bouts of depression and anxiety. It was suggested that Siddal take laudanum for her afflictions, which she became addicted to and which had a very negative effect on her health. A year after their marriage Siddal delivered a stillborn baby and this 1 traumatic event was detrimental to her mental health and thus increased her dependence on laudanum, which eventually led to her death by laudanum overdose. Much of what we know about Siddal historically has been framed by the male artists she spent time with as well as the male biographers who captured her within their books about her husband, Rossetti. Other than her death certificate, the earliest official document that refers to her is the obituary written for Rossetti by Theodore Watts Duncan and F. G. Stephens in 1882 in which we are told that “In the spring of 1860 he married Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, who being very beautiful, was constantly drawn and painted by him. She had one stillborn child in 1861 and died in February 1862” (qtd. in Marsh 17). From this sparse account of her life, published anecdotes of her life with Rossetti slowly began to be fleshed out, sometimes with erroneous information, such as William Sharp’s biography which inserts Siddal into the Rossetti narrative in 1860 when “he brought home his wife Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall . who was very beautiful and showed brilliant promise as a colourist” (qtd. in Marsh 19). Sharp fails to realize that in fact Siddal was known to Rossetti far earlier than 1860, since she began modeling for Walter Deverell in 1849. Siddal is not mentioned as a model until Joseph Knight’s biography of Rossetti which tells us that “She had not been with him long before he recognized in her a strong aptitude for art . [T]he position of model was soon associated with that of student” (qtd. in Marsh 35). The unconventional nature of Siddal and Rossetti’s relationship was finally documented in William Bell Scott’s scandalous memoir Autobiographical Notes of the Life of William Bell Scott, and Notices of his Artistic and Poetic Circle of Friends 1830 to 1882 published in 1892. Scott had early associations with the PRB, but was never an official member, which may have caused some bitterness on his end and fueled his desire to portray Rossetti and 2 Siddal’s out-of-wedlock relationship as unseemly. He tells of an encounter he had with Siddal when he made an unexpected visit at the Hermitage, a house Rossetti was looking after for some friends: “I found myself in the romantic dusk of the apartment face to face with Rossetti and a lady whom I did not recognize and could scarcely see. He did not introduce her; she rose to go . This was Miss Siddal” (qtd. in Marsh 39). With so many eager to write about Rossetti and potentially damage his reputation, his brother William took on the authoritative role as his official biographer. He published three articles on Rossetti in the Art Journal in 1884 and later in 1886 published The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Marsh 34). William Rossetti is often seen as “[t]he chief narrator of Elizabeth Siddal’s story . who in the course of twenty years produced the accounts on which knowledge of her life was based” (34). As a brother to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William did not occupy a very objective viewpoint. While he strove to be accurate, he also needed to protect the dignity of both his family and his brother. Being too honest about Dante’s unconventional lifestyle might have made William come across as harsh and disloyal and so Dante’s relationship with Elizabeth Siddal is treated hesitantly within the biography. William gives no explanation for the unusually long, what he terms “engagement,” between Siddal and Rossetti, and while he strives to capture a description of her he also says, “I hardly think that I ever heard her say a single thing indicative of her own character or her own underlying thought . It was like the speech of a person who wanted to turn off the conversation” (qtd. in Marsh 46). William’s reflection on Siddal shows that he and Siddal were not close and that she largely remained a mystery to him, which is troublesome considering that his account of her is what has largely shaped the way historians and pop culture see her. 3 What fascinates me about the narrative of Siddal is what can be found beneath the surface story of her life presented by William Rossetti and other biographers. It is not often stressed, for instance, that Siddal was an artist in her own right, producing both poetry and visual art. Some of her paintings were exhibited in her lifetime with the work of the PRB in both England and abroad in America.