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Tennyson's "Angels"

5/11/2020

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So, my discussion of Tennyson here is mostly based on my personal (rather than scholarly) reading of the poems I’ve selected from his extensive body of work. I’m generally not a fan of Tennyson, but I’ve always enjoyed these specific poems and they work really well in the context of the other readings from the first unit. Placing “The woman’s cause is man’s” alongside “Mariana” and “Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal” (as well as “Tears, Idle Tears”) allows for a more complex understanding of Tennyson and his representation of women’s “proper” roles in tandem with Victorian views concerning female sexuality and the burgeoning suffrage movement. Moving from “Mariana” to “Crimson Petal” to “The woman’s cause” seems to follow an increasingly complicated and ambiguous trajectory with regards to the poet’s own developing opinions concerning male-female relationships; yet, all three poems seem to articulate the same thing: a woman’s identity, value, place, and desire can only be defined in her relation to men. This, of course, was a predominant Victorian view, but I think we do see Tennyson trying to work through this and come up with something more progressive, at least considering the time in which he wrote
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                John Everett Millais, Mariana (1851)
​In “Mariana,” the woman is an empty shell without the man who has abandoned her, her life left without meaning, and with no hope of regeneration or rebirth. Whether she was abandoned by her husband or lover is incidental, since at this time, an abandoned woman was a “fallen” or lost woman. According to the Victorian rationale (which often continues to influence contemporary views of women, especially in cases of sexual assault), surely it was something she did and not the fault of the man—or, to be an abandoned woman was to be an incredibly vulnerable woman, prey to the “naturally” baser or corrupt qualities of men. 
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Strangely, according to this logic, a woman without the protection of a man also gained a kind of “freedom” to fall—either into despair/melancholy, like Mariana, or an unseemly voluptuousness of desire without anything to keep that desire or her emotions in check. The poem is definitely concerned with female desire, but a kind of “rotten” or decaying desire, as indicated by the poem’s imagery. Her expression of deep despair is overwhelming and potentially threatening to the stability of society since her lover will not return (“He cometh not”) to circumscribe her within his own desire. Even if Mariana is confined within her proper sphere—the home—that space is abandoned and corrupt with excessive longing and grief without the male’s presence to counterbalance this; without him, her only desire is to die. Though, in spite of this, perhaps Tennyson was trying to advocate for the vulnerability of such women?? Merely a suggestion….
 
In any case, this reading of “Mariana” allows for a contrasting yet complementary reading of the other two poems. I would argue that the speakers of “Crimson Petal” and “The woman’s cause” are unquestionably male; however, the attempt to read either speaker as female, as some of my students have done in the past, certainly allows for some interesting interpretations. The woman in “Crimson Petal” is enveloped by the male to the point of being entirely subsumed (a desirable result for the speaker). However, there's this tricky imagery of the female penetrating the male, which seems to reverse what we might expect (in a heterosexual framework, at least). In some ways, though, this inter-penetrative imagery falls in line with the impetus of “The woman’s cause” in its argument that male and female must complement each other.
 
“The woman’s cause,” as placed within the larger poem sequence of The Princess, does not provide so much an argument for women’s equal rights as it does a reminder to women of their proscribed social, domestic, and intellectual limitations. Princess Ida has attempted to create a female utopia in which women might pursue their education without the interruption (and interfering distraction) of men. Tennyson appears quite prescient in outlining what would become one of the major demands of the women’s movements of the 19th and 20th centuries (though Wollstonecraft had already identified these in the 18th C.): a woman’s right to an education as the only avenue toward true equality. Yet, by the end of The Princess
, and specifically in “The woman’s cause,” Ida is firmly put in her place, shown to be a somewhat “monstrous” woman for demanding an education—at least an education not determined by her father or husband. The prince has clearly “corrected” and educated her as to the complementary rather than separate identity that she should fashion in relation to her prospective husband. Ida is safely and soundly contained by the end of the poem via the prince’s lecture; she is enlightened as to the errors of her ways and the poem confirms (albeit unintentionally) women’s necessary complicity with the very system and ideology that oppresses them.

Overall, then, Tennyson seems to progress in his thinking but actually in all three poems he adheres to the predominant views of his day: that men and women have inherent traits that determine their places in relation to each other, an essentialist view that positions women in a desirably submissive role, and without room or space to define herself apart from male desires (or voices) interjecting. Indeed, these poems taken as a whole articulate the qualities that Victorian males might desire in their female counterparts but not necessarily what women might desire for themselves. And in that sense, the poems are very much about male domination—even if expressed as “benevolent domination” (an oxymoron if there ever was one)—at the expense of genuine gender equality, and female desire is if anything a “glimmering ghost.”

That said, I would point out a couple things in Tennyson’s defense, or, at least a couple things that might further complicate our understanding of his work. First, in his willingness to grant women some expression of desire or sexuality, he emphasizes the dangers of repressing sexuality as equivalent to suppressing full human expression, and for that matter, full understanding of sexual relations between men and women. The erotic energy of “Crimson Petal,” even if positioning women in a submissive role, still allows women some kind of role whereas many Victorian texts entirely negate the presence of sexuality or the act of sex. For example, in many Victorian short stories/novels, such as Gaskell’s “The Nurse’s Story,” women suddenly seem to produce babies without any warning or indication that they’ve had the prerequisite sex to make that biological phenomenon possible (another apt example is Cathy in Wuthering Heights). So, let’s at least give Tennyson some credit in his attempts to make visible that women do have desires, even if those desires are not exactly on par with our contemporary notions of “liberated” sexuality. Although there is something about these poems that is incredibly seductive in their appeal to romantic fantasies, we should not forget that those sentiments expressed toward the desire of finding one’s romantic or domestic “soul mate” are nevertheless constructed on unequal terms.
 
Lastly, and just as an aside, we might also explore a different, possibly “queer” reading of these poems. Many critics have interpreted Tennyson’s identification with abandoned, desperately yearning women as an expression of his own “feminine” desires. Much of his work can be read as testaments to his lifelong mourning for the loss of his closest friend, Arthur Hallam, who died quite young. Subsequently, through this interpretive approach, Tennyson’s own homoerotic desires are given voice through female characters such as Mariana or the speakers of “Tears, Idle Tears” and the “Crimson Petal.”
 
For anyone interested, The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber is a rich “neo-Victorian” novel that takes Tennyson’s poem as inspiration for a complex tale that examines from a contemporary perspective the dichotomy of the “Angel in the Home” (white petal) and the “Fallen Woman” (crimson petal), while brilliantly disrupting our notions of these along the way. Definitely a great novel, but like many Victorian novels, a monstrously long read. There’s also a very good and “faithful” four-episode adaptation of the book made for the BBC (and now available streaming) in case anyone wants to supplement their understanding of the many themes and issues we are discussing in this class; though of course I highly recommend you read the book at some point, even if you watch the film version prior to this. 
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Christina Rossetti's "Fallen Women"

5/11/2020

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​Of the two Rossetti poems that we are reading, “In an Artist’s Studio” is far more straightforward, at least in its attitude toward how women were viewed, or, turned into “art objects,” especially during the Victorian period and within the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. One way of approaching this sonnet is through its biographical contexts, which might afford a deeper understanding of how Rossetti uses the poem to contest Victorian notions of gender as well as the tone or theme of female sympathy that runs throughout much of her work. The artist in the sonnet is most likely Rossetti’s brother, Dante Gabriel, and the model, the “one face,” is probably Elizabeth Siddal (1829-1862), D.G.’s muse at the time his sister composed her poem (1856). The painting to the right, Regina Cordium, is by D.G. Rossetti, commemorating his marriage to Siddal in 1860, which ended in 1862 when Siddal died quite young from a laudanum overdose.

​Although the message of Rossetti’s poem is generally clear-cut in its critique of the way in which Siddal is turned into a “nameless thing” in all the artist’s paintings, what Rossetti does here, however, is quite powerful: she uses a kind of double female gaze to turn the male gaze back upon itself, exposing not only how the female gaze of the model is no more than a reflection of the male’s desires but also the power of the female gaze (or, Rossetti’s gaze) to deconstruct those male desires. Incidentally, Siddal was also an artist yet she is mostly known for appearing in many famous paintings by Pre-Raphaelite artists, such as the image below, cropped from John Everett Millais' Ophelia (1852).
 

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Although the real-life model has become diminished, Rossetti's poem makes clear that the multiple reproductions of the muse's face take on a power that reveals (at least to the reader and the speaker of the poem) how the “artist” is a vampire-figure who “feeds upon her face day and night” and that his obsessive love is the very thing that is perhaps killing her. Also, the speaker’s gaze (if we assume it to be Christina Rossetti’s own gaze) acts as a powerful (feminist) art critic, diminishing the painter’s work through her dispassionate critique of his inability to bring the “real” woman to life, only silencing her or making her, ironically enough, invisible. In other words, the painter cannot “see” the very person his own gaze obsessively devours. In this sense as well, the presumably female speaker aligns herself with the female model in an act of “sisterhood” so that through the poet’s voice she perhaps returns to the silenced woman a voice that condemns the man who has objectified his muse. So, even though the woman in the painting is a “saint” and “angel” she is nevertheless “fallen” from her former self, her face no longer “lovely” and young but “wan with waiting” and her eyes “with sorrow dim.” It’s as if Rossetti seems to be saying that the moment women (during the Victorian era) enter into any kind of public space and/or contact with the male gaze, they are vulnerable and at risk of losing themselves. This could be interpreted as supporting Victorian gender roles, situating men and women in a binary relationship where men are ravenous beasts who destroy or sully a woman’s purity while women are “morally superior” to men and yet all the more open to a “fall.” Rossetti’s work is “tricky” in this sense because the views of gender roles in most of her texts are quite ambiguous.  
 
Goblin Market is no exception, since critics have interpreted this poem in many different ways: as a story about temptation and redemption; a critique of Victorian materialism; rejection of patriarchal amatory values; a celebration of women's power; a sexual fantasy of incestuous lesbian love; or a literary representation of the eating disorder anorexia nervosa (Siddal is also thought to have suffered from anorexia). The poem most obviously plays with the notion of the “fallen” woman in the context of the Christian story of The Fall, which had a significant influence on how Victorians regarded the potent interconnections of knowledge, sex, and power. Goblin Market can be interpreted as a re-telling of or commentary on this story when we examine its conceptions of purity and corruption. Instead of providing my own lengthy interpretation of the poem in the context of the biblical narrative, I’ll pose some further questions you might consider when re-reading the poem: What is its attitude, ultimately, towards sin, pleasure, and sexuality? Are spirituality and sexuality necessarily opposed terms within the text? Who is at fault in this poem for the fall: Laura or the goblin men? If both are to blame, what flaw/weakness/vice do each incarnate? What do you make of the end and the sisters' re-inscription into typical female domestic structures? How does this relate to typical nineteenth-century narratives of “fallenness”? Could the gender of the author have anything to do with the differences from the traditional ending for a fallen woman (i.e. Eve’s punishment in Genesis)?
 
What I find especially interesting about this poem, beyond its retelling of the Christian narrative of The Fall, is its depiction of women on the “marketplace.” Rossetti sets up a significant tension between the marketplace and the domestic sphere, as well as the relation between economic exchange and the expression of desire. Goblin Market, like “In an Artist’s Studio,” positions the female characters, and by extension female experience, in a dramatic relationship to these things, exploring the ways in which women must negotiate their bodies and desires with regards to (religious) renunciation, consumer power, aesthetic pleasure, and even their own identities as beautiful objects. I think on one level Rossetti is essentially examining, especially in Goblin Market, how any foray into the marketplace is compromising for women. All the women in the poem are made to suffer for their contact with the goblins. On another level, the poem itself is perhaps trying to explore whether there are proper and improper ways to engage in relations of exchange—both on the marketplace and with other people. I mean, clearly it would be a mistake to believe that all Victorian women—especially the upper-middle to upper classes—were literally shut up in their homes without any contact with the outside world. They were very much part of the social scene, some might have even been businesswomen, and most if not all certainly did business with merchants and others who sold various domestic items and sundries (especially at this time when Britain was at its height of Imperialism, making available all kinds of imported and “exotic” goods). So, with this in mind, obviously women of a certain class or social standing would need to know how to maneuver in the public sphere without “falling” under the suspicion of being a “fallen” woman. Thus, we might read this poem as narrating an effort to survive—and even triumph over—the perils of the marketplace (or public sphere).
 
Though, of course, by the end, Lizzie and Laura are safely contained within the home, as if to indicate women should be happy to remain there because the outside world is too threatening and dangerous; or, that women’s desires are dangerous and must be tamed by, say, becoming mothers? The “moral” at the end of the poem is really quite odd, especially in the context of the somewhat celebratory and erotic depiction of Sapphic/sisterly love—though it always seems to me that whenever any historical female authors write about close and supportive female relations, critics are often quick to point out how this proves the author was a lesbian or had an incestuous relationship with one of her sisters (see Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, C. Rossetti, and I’m sure many others I can’t think of off the top of my head). For me, it's important that Laura is the one who has the last word, and though I’m not sure her didactic message is very reassuring (at least for a contemporary feminist reader), it aligns with the fairy-tale motifs present in the poem.
 
In other words, if we read Goblin Market as a children’s poem, then the moral serves as a fitting conclusion, keeping in mind that fairy tales were “old wives’ tales” and often told to female children as lessons for how they should behave in a “man’s world” and how to survive all the big bad wolves (or goblins) out there once they grew up. Also, allowing the redeemed “fallen” woman to speak at the end is very much in line with common Victorian sentiments. For instance, there were Rescue Societies for Fallen Women in which “reputable” women went out into the streets to “save” their fallen “sisters” (prostitutes) and convince them to go back into respectable work (like factories or domestic help, which did not pay very well and often had working conditions worse than the streets). Lastly, and maybe more positively, the final message of the poem is reassuring in its reminder or reinforcement of the lesson learned throughout the poem’s narrative: the strength that women can take from close relationships and bonds; that a sister will (or should) always be there for another sister; that a sister will always forgive and/or save you; that the best relationships or friendships women can form are with other women (which are all very 2nd-wavey feminist sentiments, and I think, actually, very good ones for promoting female bonds rather than female rivalry).

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Brit Lit Blog Introduction

5/4/2020

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This space is where students can find my own responses to many of the texts that we are reading in ENG 3230---not all of them but those that I think are perhaps the most difficult or challenging. Posts appearing before May 2020 were written the previous summer semester and I will be updating them weekly as we proceed through this semester. My posts are similar to informal lectures that I would provide in a face-to-face classroom discussion. You are encouraged to post questions or comments you might have in response to my reading or any other assigned texts for that thematic unit. It is not required, however, that you read or respond to my posts; I simply offer these as an opportunity to interact with me directly by exploring the readings further with insights that might not be immediately available in the Prezi topic overviews. Think of this as our virtual classroom discussion space. If you have a question about something you would like to discuss with me individually (not pertaining to the assigned readings), then it is recommended that you do so by email or through the Contact page on my website.
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    Hope Jennings

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    ENG 3230: British Texts,
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