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Ann Arbor, MI 48106 RECASTING THE FLÂNEUR: THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTINA ROSSETTI DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Arlene Tannehill, B.A., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1994 Dissertation Committee: Approved by David G. Riede Jeredith Merrin Adviser Department of English Marlene Longenecker Dedication To the memory of my father, Paul M. Trueger 11 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I express sincere appreciation to Dr. David G. Riede for introducing me to the Pre-Raphaelites, and for his insight and encouragement throughout my graduate career. Thanks go to other members of my advisory committee, Drs. Jeredith Merrin and Marlene Longenecker, for their suggestions and comments. The editorial and technical assistance of Dr. Grace A. Epstein and Natalie Clark is gratefully acknowledged. To my children, Clare, Soren, and Tess, I thank you for your patience and fortitude. Ill VITA September 6, 1954 ............... Born - Newark, New Jersey 1986 ...................... B.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1985-1992 ................................. Teaching Assistant The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio 1988 ......................M.A. , The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio 1989 ..................................... Research Assistant The Ohio State University Mansfield, Ohio 1992-1993 ................... Lecturer, Department of English The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio PUBLICATIONS "'No saint or hero.../ Brings dangerous tokens to the new era': Derek Mahon and Tess Gallagher's Revisions of Yeats's 'The Magi.'" Learning the Trade: Essavs on W. B. Yeats and Contemporary Poetrv. Ed. Deborah Fleming. West Cornwall: Locust Hill P, 1993. 47-69. "Vagrant." Slow Dancer 29 (Spring 1993): 67-68. "White Gloves." Slow Dancer 29 (Spring 1993): 67-68. "Touch." Tin Wreath 22 (Winter 1992): 14. "Obsessions." Slow Dancer 26 (Spring 1991): 59. "Ballet Mums." Slow Dancer 26 (Spring 1991): 59. "That Land." Tin Wreath 19 (Winter 1990): 8. "Hair Shirt." Clockwatch Review 6.2 (1990): 74. "One-Child Policy." Poetrv in the Park (Summer 1990): 18. IV "Upwardly Mobile." Four I^s 1 (1990): 58. "Oppositions." Yak (Spring 1989): 10. "Metamorphoses." Yak (Spring 1989): 15. "Recertification." Feminisms 1.4 (Autumn 1988): 20. "Princess of the Realm." Feminisms 1.4 (Autumn 1988): 20-21. "At Bernie's." Feminism 1.4 (Autumn 1988): 21. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English Studies in 19th Century British Literature. TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ................................................. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ......................................... iii VITA ........................................................ iv INTRODUCTION ............................................. 1 CHAPTER I. BEGINNINGS: THE QUESTION OF VOCATION . 25 II. DECIPHERING THE GAZE: THE TROPE OF INFLUENCE................................ 52 III. ENABLING THE FEMALE GAZE: THE CONSTRUCTION OF A FLÂNEUSIAN PROTOTYPE ................................. 108 IV. RULES ADMIT OF AND ARE PROVED BY EXCEPTIONS: CHOICE IN THE MARKETPLACE ............................... 149 CONCLUSION ................................................ 187 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................... 191 VI INTRODUCTION RECASTING THE FLÂNEUR; THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTINA ROSSETTI The difficulties of a nineteenth-century female poet, writing from within a culture and literary tradition that, as Margaret Homans notes, was "'uneguivocally defined as masculine,'" are well-known.^ Girls were seen as "fulfilling their function only as they existed in relationship to others," particularly the male members of their families.= The experience of educator Frances Buss, cited by her biographer in Deborah Gorham's The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal. was paradigmatic for girls born during the early Victorian period: "Like so many other sisters, this girl would watch her brothers going off to school or college for the studies in which she— being a girl— could have no share'. But, like many a good sister before, and since, she would contentedly put aside her own dreams or desires, doing her best to help her brothers. Any hopes an early-Victorian girl might have had for a career were superseded by family economic circumstances and, more importantly, by middle-class notions of "femininity," elaborately developed by men like John Ruskin as embracing such qualities as "self-sacrifice, wifely subjection, and submission. 2 Christina Rossetti's early unpublished novella, Maude. is a tale of a struggling, Anglo-Catholic, middle-class Victorian girl attempting to pursue, at least part-time, the occupation of poet. In The Madwoman in the Attic. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar describe a scene which illustrates the anger an aspiring female poet might feel at the limitations imposed upon her by a trivial female audience, itself confined by roles predetermined for it by men like Ruskin and Coventry Patmore, author of the popular nineteenth-century poem. The Anael of the House.^ Maude willingly agrees to sing at this gathering (thereby conforming to the demands of propriety) and "felt condoled for all the contrarieties [too much cake] of the day" by the melodiousness of Caroline's song.® But the entrance of a female fan disturbs her comfort. She is saved from the Misses Mowbray and Savage's gushing requests for a recitation only by the upcoming "supper," and goes home "dissatisfied with her circumstances, her friends and herself" (M 49). What disturbs her is not so much the necessary limitations of drawing-room accomplishments, but that her poetry should be classified as such an accomplishment. Within the world of Victorian domesticity, Maude has no serious audience or context in which to write. Most critics briefly summarize the relationship between Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti's work in a few sentences: Joan Rees states that they possess "a strong. 3 common sense of irredeemable moments"; Jerome McGann describes both of their "imaginations of desire" as having "no social or worlded equivalents."’ But although there have been several fine book-length studies published recently that focus on Dante and Christina Rossetti as individuals, none has closely examined the relationship between their early poetry and prose.® I would argue that a more detailed comparison of their early work yields a clearer sense of what Janet Wolff labels "the early experience of modernity" because, as brother and sister, they reflect this experience from the opposite poles of the public and private spheres.® Christina's role as her brother's first model also provided her with an ideal opportunity symbolically to look into the public sphere, a role closed to most nineteenth-century women.Indeed, I believe that the power of Christina Rossetti's poetry rests on her capacity to invert the flâneurian, artist's perspective which dominates her brother's early work. The flâneur, in Dante Gabriel and Charles Baudelaire's work, often uncomfortably straddles a boundary between the artist as genius and the artist as an isolated observer looking for buyers, although both Dante Gabriel and Baudelaire are careful to differentiate between artists and "mere" flâneurs.The authority of the flâneur; i.e., of both the artist as genius and the artist as salesman, however, focuses around his detached gaze and his ability 4 imaginatively to improvise upon what he sees. Christina's narrators, on the contrary, generally empathize with rather than distantly regard their objects of vision, as well as engaging such objects in dialogue rather than solipsistically manipulating them as sources of inspiration. In this study, I attempt to answer the question of what one can learn about the struggles that a gifted, nineteenth-century female poet would have faced by comparing them with those of a talented male sibling in a society