Context (OCR A-Level English Literature): Revision Notes
Context
Christina Rossetti's poetry emerged from a fascinating intersection of Victorian religious devotion, artistic innovation, social pressure, and personal choices. Understanding these contexts is crucial for strong AO3 analysis in your OCR Section B essays, helping you make meaningful connections between Rossetti's work and pre-1900 drama.
Rossetti's poetry reflects real, lived experience rather than abstract theory. Her work explores the tensions between being an unmarried daughter with family duties, an artist with religious convictions, and a woman who chose celibacy over marriage. These contexts shaped her distinctive poetic voice and the themes she explored.
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and artistic influence (1848-1860s)
Rossetti was at the heart of the Pre-Raphaelite movement through her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti (DGR). She served as a model for paintings like Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850) and contributed poems to The Germ (1850), the Brotherhood's artistic journal. This immersion in Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics profoundly influenced her poetic style.
The Pre-Raphaelite emphasis on rich, sensory detail is evident throughout Rossetti's work. In Goblin Market, descriptions like "plump unpecked cherries" and "bloom-down-cheeked peaches" echo the lush, opulent imagery of her brother's paintings. However, Rossetti tempered this sensuality through her religious faith, transforming potentially erotic imagery into moral allegory.
Pre-Raphaelite lushness refers to the movement's celebration of intense visual beauty, vivid colours, and sensory richness. The Pre-Raphaelites rejected conventional academic art, preferring instead medieval-inspired naturalism and emotional intensity.
The Pre-Raphaelite rejection of conventional artistic rules parallels similar rebellions in drama. Like Oscar Wilde's aesthetic dandyism in An Ideal Husband, both movements valued visual beauty and questioned Victorian moral certainty. However, Rossetti channelled sensuality through spiritual discipline, unlike Wilde's more libertine approach.
Anglo-Catholic Tractarianism and spiritual devotion
Rossetti's conversion to Anglo-Catholicism deeply shaped her poetry's spiritual intensity. Tractarianism was a movement within the Church of England emphasising Catholic traditions, sacramental worship, and rigorous religious discipline. This faith informed Rossetti's daily practices of prayer and confession, which appear throughout her work.
Her Tractarian beliefs gave her poetry a sense of eschatological urgency - concern with death, judgment, and salvation. The question-and-answer structure of poems like Up-hill ("Does the road wind up-hill all the way?") and Good Friday ("Am I a stone, and not a man?") reflects the dialogic nature of confession and spiritual examination.
Sacramental reality transformed how Rossetti viewed ordinary objects. In Tractarian belief, everyday items could carry spiritual significance. This explains why goblin fruit, macaroons, and Christmas trees become moral battlegrounds in her poetry - they're not just physical objects but symbols of temptation, virtue, or spiritual choice.
This sacramental vision connects with John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, where Bosola's Catholic scrutiny mirrors Rossetti's confessional precision. Both writers explore how sin leaves permanent traces, though Rossetti offers redemption through sisterly love whilst Webster depicts mutual destruction.
Victorian marriage expectations and choosing spinsterhood
Rossetti rejected three marriage proposals during her lifetime, embracing a celibate vocation - a deliberate choice to remain unmarried for religious reasons. This choice appears in No, thank you, John: "Better to me the meanest garb of woe / Than aught of pride or pleasure." The poem firmly but politely declines a suitor, asserting her preference for independence over romantic attachment.
In the 1860s, Rossetti volunteered at the Highgate Refuge, working with so-called "fallen women" - those society deemed morally compromised, often through sexual transgression or poverty. This experience inspired monologues like From the Antique and Maude Clare, where Rossetti adopted the voices of marginalised women to challenge sentimental Victorian ideas about femininity.
Spinster vocation describes the deliberate choice of unmarried life as a calling, not a failure. For Rossetti, remaining single preserved her artistic freedom and spiritual focus.
This strategic rejection of marriage anticipates Henrik Ibsen's Nora in A Doll's House. Both characters refuse conventional marital duty - Rossetti through spiritual discipline, Nora through existential awakening. However, Rossetti transforms her renounced desire into poetry, whilst Nora seeks self-realisation beyond artistic expression.
Industrial poverty and social awareness (1850s-70s)
Rossetti's volunteer work at St Pancras workhouse exposed her to urban poverty, informing the social critique in poems like Goblin Market and In the Round Tower at Jhansi. The exploited girlhood in Goblin Market reflects real observations of vulnerable young women.
The 1860s cotton famine (caused by the American Civil War) and Irish potato famine provided backdrop to Rossetti's economic realism. The goblin fruit merchants become a metaphor for addictive commerce that preys on vulnerability - a critique of Victorian capitalism's exploitation.
Christopher Marlowe's Edward II offers parallel critique of aristocratic parasitism. Gaveston's social climbing mirrors the goblin merchants' exploitation of aspiration for profit. Both works expose how power and commerce manipulate social desire.
Indian Mutiny and imperial concerns (1857)
In the Round Tower at Jhansi confronts imperial violence through the figure of Englishwoman Amy Horne, who died during the 1857 Indian Rebellion: "Till the end she stood... A merry English child." Written during a period of jingoistic patriotism in Britain, Rossetti's poem humanises colonial victims whilst questioning Britain's assumed moral superiority.
This nuanced response to empire - patriotic yet questioning - shows Rossetti's capacity for moral complexity, similar to Wilde's detached cosmopolitan perspective in his plays.
Publication timeline and developing voice
Understanding when Rossetti published helps trace her artistic development:
- 1848: Goblin Market and Other Poems - Her debut established her lyric voice with poems like Remember and Song
- 1862: Goblin Market and Prince Prigio - Her narrative masterpiece appeared at the height of Pre-Raphaelite influence
- 1866: The Prince's Progress and Other Poems - Mature dramatic monologues emerged
- 1875: A Pageant and Other Poems - Political engagement increased, including In the Round Tower at Jhansi
- 1881: A Pageant expanded edition - Represents her spiritual culmination
- 1893: Verses (posthumous) - Final devotional lyrics published after her death
This trajectory reveals deepening spiritual conviction alongside growing technical mastery and confidence in addressing political themes.
Family dynamics and personal pressures
The Rossetti household shaped Christina's life and work significantly. When her father Gabriele died in 1847, financial responsibility fell on her brother Dante Gabriel. Christina's refusal to marry preserved her artistic independence but exposed her to social stigma as a spinster.
Personal health also influenced her later work. A nervous breakdown in the 1850s and Graves' disease diagnosis in 1871 intensified the devotional focus of her later poetry, adding urgency to her spiritual themes.
Applying context in OCR Section B essays
For strong AO3 marks, integrate context naturally with textual analysis and drama comparisons:
Example: Goblin Market + The Duchess of Malfi
Rossetti's Pre-Raphaelite richness channels Webster's Jacobean sensuality, yet the Tractarian emphasis on sisterhood offers redemption absent from the mutual destruction in Malfi.
Example: Remember + A Doll's House
Rossetti's 1862 stoic renunciation prefigures Nora's 1879 existential departure - both dismantle sentimental domesticity through female agency and refusal.
Example: Maude Clare + An Ideal Husband
Highgate Refuge experience informs Rossetti's monologues about fallen women, paralleling Wilde's 1895 exposure of compromised Victorian respectability.
Example: Up-hill + Edward II
Tractarian question-answer spirituality anticipates Marlowe's debates about deposition - both explore the fragility of moral authority.
Key contextual vocabulary
Essential Terms to Master:
- Tractarianism: Anglo-Catholic movement emphasising sacramental worship and religious discipline
- Pre-Raphaelite lushness: Vivid sensory imagery influenced by Dante Gabriel Rossetti's aesthetic movement
- Highgate Refuge: Institution where Rossetti volunteered with "fallen women"
- Eschatological pragmatism: Practical spirituality focused on death, judgment, and salvation
- Spinster vocation: Deliberate choice of unmarried celibate life as religious calling
- Sacramental reality: Belief that ordinary objects carry spiritual significance
Remember!
Key Points to Remember:
- Rossetti's poetry reflects lived compromise between artistic ambition, religious devotion, and social expectations
- Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics gave her rich sensory imagery, but Tractarian faith shaped it into moral allegory
- Rejecting three marriage proposals wasn't failure but deliberate celibate vocation preserving artistic freedom
- Highgate Refuge work with "fallen women" informed her sympathetic portrayal of marginalised female voices
- Context enables sophisticated drama comparisons illuminating Victorian femininity's complexity and contradictions