Femme Fatale” in D

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836 December 2013, Vol. 3, No. 12, 772-786 D DAVID PUBLISHING Muse Turned “Femme Fatale” in D. G. Rossetti’s Painting and Poetry∗ Pritha Kundu Junior Research Fellow, Calcutta, India In many of D. G. Rossetti’s paintings, Elizabeth Siddal appears as a model. In real life, they formed a married couple, and the relatonship was not as idealistic as it might have been, between a muse-figure and an artist. After Elizabeth’s death, Rossetti seemed to have been preoccupied with the “Lilith” theme in his painting and poetry, and somehow he could not free himself from the haunting memory of the “wronged wife”, the muse. This often found manifestation in his portrayal of the “femme fatale” images. Applying psychoanalysis to art-criticism and literary appreciation, this paper is an attempt to explore the relationship between a model and an artist, which both psychologically and aesthetically, seemed to be working beyond the former’s death. Through a detailed analysis of the “Lilith” image in D. G. Rossetti’s art, this paper has shown the coplexities of the artist’s agony and anxiety over the image of a muse, a homely beloved—turned into a threatening “femme fatale”, now distant, unknown, frightening yet fascinating, and mystified by death. Keywords: D. G. Rossetti, “Lady Lilith”, Elizabeth Siddal, femme fatale, pre-Raphaelite art Introduction In pre-Raphaelite art, the portrayal of the female figure combines sensuality with poetic idealism, fantasy with corporeality. The iconography of the female body represented by male art, in general, is broadly of two kinds: it is either idealized or demonized, or, in other words, “muse” on the one hand, and “femme fatale” on the other. In psychological terms of gender and representation, it can be seen as a form of male anxiety with the female “other”, which needs to be pushed into the binary structure of perception. However, binaries are not free from the possibilities of challenge, coming from a different level of reality which tends to collapse the oppositions: one kind of iconography seems to merge into another. With this point in mind, one may proceed to explore an intriguing aspect in D. G. Rossetti1’s art, involving his personal and psychological engagements with his muse, wife, model—Elizabeth Siddal. ∗ Acknowledgements: For informative details, background studies, and general interpretations of the poems and the paintings, the author is largely indebted, besides the letters and biographical texts cited at the “references” section, to the Rossetti Archive at <http://www.rossettiarchive.org> and “Feminism and Womens’ Studies” at <feminism.eserver.org>. However, the speculations and main findings regarding the “presence” of the dead Elizabeth Siddal behind these works, are the author’s own. Pritha Kundu, Junior Research Fellow, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences. 1 All references to “Rossetti” within the text are to be understood as D. G. Rossetti, if not mentioned otherwise (W. M. Rossetti and C. G. Rossetti, for example). MUSE TURNED “FEMME FATALE” IN ROSSETTI’S PAINTING AND POETRY 773 D. G. Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal: The Relationship Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal’s face looks out from some of the most famous paintings of the Victorian Age; she is Millais’ Ophelia and Rossetti’s Beatrice. Siddal has most often been identified as the principle model and muse of the pre-Raphaelite art movement of the mid-nineteenth century. An idealistic approach, though it may be too simplistic, will find it apparent that Rossetti had placed her on a pedestal; she was someone to be loved from afar, idealised and admired as an artistic muse and not merely as a woman of flesh and blood. His sister Christina Rossetti (n.d.) alludes to this artist-muse relationship in her poem “In an Artist’s Studio”: One face looks out from all his canvasses, One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans; We found her hidden just behind those screens, That mirror gave back all her loveliness. A queen in opal or in ruby dress, A nameless girl in freshest summer greens, A saint, an angel—every canvass means The same one meaning, neither more nor less. He feeds upon her face by day and night, And she with true kind eyes looks back on him Fair as the moon and joyful as the light: Not as she is, but as she fills his dream. In reality, however, everything in the relationship between Rossetti and Siddal was not so ideal, pure and beatific. Rossetti’s marriage with Elizabeth was fated to last two years. Even before their marriage and during the courtship, they have endured separations, tensions and misunderstandings several times, and reconciliations as well. Their individual share of responsibility for this problematic relationship has already been a debated issue. Some would blame Rossetti’s whims and involvement with other women, others would criticize Elizabeth for her manipulative nature and self-pitying obsession with illness and opium. Such arguments have a danger of being partial, especially where the question of gender-sympathy comes in. This is evident from the reaction of another artist-couple who visited Elizabeth, distraught, caught in a world of depression, grief and addiction, after the loss of her baby. Lucinda Hawksley (2004) describes this period in Lizzie Siddal: The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel, in deeply emotional details. Elizabeth Siddal, in her grief, became a pathetic figure, sitting in the drawing room for hours without moving her position, just staring silently into the fire. She refused to take any food, and became increasingly emaciated. Once Edward Burne-Jones and his pregnant wife Georgiana came to visit the Rossettis, and found Elizabeth alone, staring at the empty cradle, which she would rock tenderly from side to side as if soothing her child to sleep. As the door was opened by the visitors, she looked up and told them to be quiet so as not to wake the baby. The pregnant Mrs. Burne-Jones found this heart-rending, while her husband thought it over-dramatic and ridiculous. On February 10, 1862, Elizabeth, Rossetti, and their friend, the poet Swinburne dined together. Later that evening, Rossetti had an engagement at Working Men’s College. When he returned, she was in a coma due to an overdose of laudanum. Doctors were summoned, but nothing could be done. Elizabeth passed away in the early hours of February 11, 1862. It remained a mystery whether she took an overdose of the drug with a purpose to commit suicide, or she was totally out of her sense and unaware of the danger of taking a heavy quantity of it. 774 MUSE TURNED “FEMME FATALE” IN ROSSETTI’S PAINTING AND POETRY Without going into the sensational discussion regarding the death or suicide, this paper will now concentrate on the impact of the tragedy, trying to explore how the haunting reminiscences of the dead muse-wife-beloved changed into a personification of fear, agony and mystery, a kind of “Femme Fatale”, in Rossetti’s imagination .There was, of course, an apparently idealized side to his tribute to his dead wife, along with a tough of elegiac irony. He immortalised her in his painting “Beata Beatrix”, where Elizabeth-Beatrice is sitting with closed eyes and a dove puts a poppy flower in her hands. Opium is derived from poppies; the dove delivered to her the very source of the ingredient that killed her. A drowsy Beatrice, however, was not Rossetti’s sole vision of the dead Elizabeth; it was rather in a much more subtle, complex and darker way that Rossetti struggled with his wounded ego, to come to terms with himself and a state of fear, insecurity and depression that he was thrown into both as man and artist. In 1863, Rossetti began painting the first version of “Lady Lilith”, which he expected to be his “best picture hitherto” (W. M. Rossetti, 1895, ii, p. 188). He referred to this painting as the “Toilette picture” in his letters to his mother, highlighting its decorative and embellished quality and the central figure’s location within an intimate boudoir-like setting (W. M. Rossetti, 1895, ii, p. 188). Although Lilith, in the apocryphal version of the Biblical sense, is not a “lady” as we are expected to understand the term in the Victorian context, Rossetti deliberately entitled it “Lady Lilith”, forcing the audience to appreciate her sensuality and womanhood, along with her supposedly marital status and the authority of a mistress. A married woman’s matured sexuality and power of being a woman, through her experienced and non-virginal body have long been a threat to manhood in the West, and thus the threatening figure of the “phallic mother” has gained its powerful position in culture. “Lady Lilith” is one of the many “mirror pictures” completed by Rossetti during this period. Others include “Fazio’s Mistress”, “Woman Combing Her Hair”, and “Morning Music”, paintings that centralise a female figure rapt in contemplation of her own beauty.2 “Lady Lilith” represents a paradox: she can be viewed as both an excessively sexualized object as well as an empowered woman. Rossetti paints her within an ambiguous setting which is neither indoors nor outdoors. At first glance, the lady seems to be reflecting on her appearance as she sits in a relaxed pose in the intimate setting of her toilettte. The reflection of the candles indicates that the mirror in the top left corner is indeed a mirror, though it also serves as a window. Interestingly, the mirror also reflects a woody landscape , denoting the world outside the toillete. The flowers which surround Lady Lilith add to the ambiguity of the setting, for a keen observer is likely to discover poppy flowers among them.

Load more