Poet of the Week: Christina Rossetti

Last week I wrote about Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the most famous and widely-respected female poet of her time. Just two months prior to Barrett Browning's death in Italy, an 18-year-old poet named Christina Georgina Rossetti became the subject of high acclaim for a poem published in Athenaeum magazine. That poem, followed by her most well-known collection The Goblin Market and Other Poems, led to Rossetti being dubbed the literary successor to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's fame.

This is really more a result of the marginalization of female thinkers in 19th century England than an indication of any meaningful connection between the work of Barrett Browning and the work of Rossetti. Artistically, the two couldn't be more different. Rossetti's style has more in common with the fevered Romanticism of Samuel Taylor Coleridge than the classical restraint of Barrett Browning. The only meaningful link between these two women is an early political bent.

Christina Rossetti was a very religious person. Her devotion likely stemmed from a deep sense of compassion. She spoke out, at least as much as any woman was permitted in that time, against slavery, animal experimentation and child abuse. She was a dedicated pacifist and she devoted ten years of her life volunteering at The St. Mary Magdalene House of Charity in Highgate. It was a religious organization focused on providing aid to reformed prostitutes. Essentially, it was a 19th century version of a Women's Shelter.

While it would be little more than revisionism to call Christina Rossetti a feminist, her work does center strongly on themes of sisterhood, depicting women as being more than capable of intelligence, strength and power. Most famously in "The Goblin Market", one sister saves the life of the other through an act of tremendous courage.

Christina Rossetti inherited her father Gabriele Rossetti's unease of body and mind. The Rossetti family were exiles from Naples, Italy who lived in deep financial strain after Gabriele's nationalistic fervor put him out of favor with King Ferdinand I. Gabriele was a poetry professor at King's College in England after the family emigrated, though he had trouble maintaining his post due to illness, including a loss of his sight. Christina also inherited Gabriele's love of poetry, surpassing him in fame and quality before her 30th birthday. Still, even if women at that time had been allowed to hold professorships at universities, it is not likely that Christina would have been able. She struggled with depression her entire life and was nearly an invalid as a result of related illnesses.

But what Christian Rossetti lacked in physical and mental well-being she made up in focused passion. The strength of Rossetti as a poet comes in her delightful command of language, specifically in the simultaneous playfulness of her rhymes and the darker connotations beneath them. Among her wild fantasies are brief sparks of satire and eroticism, the kind of hidden communications that make the best Victorian literature relevant into the modern day. Under her sickly frame and easily frayed nerves, Christina Rossetti was possessed of a deep passion and a nimble mind.