Christina Rossetti: the journey of a soul

Abstract

Christina Georgina Rossetti has long suffered from a reputation that tends to see her as the embodiment of conservative Victorian moral values, such as obedience, conformity, and resignation, all of which would befit women’s inferior position in a male-dominated society. Rossetti’s devotional poetry has traditionally been seen as proof that the poet finally internalized the religious tenets derived from a patriarchal religion. This research is intended as a revaluation of some aspects of Rossetti’s reception among both contemporary and modern critics, which includes her devotional prose. Although essentially devotional in nature, Rossetti’s writings open up some room for new insights into the poet’s production, a poet whose works constitute an attempt to carve out a space for herself, distinctly feminine, and that defies the reigning orthodoxy, while at the same laying claim to it, too