Class Year
2018
Document Type
Student Research Paper
Date of Creation
Fall 2017
Department 1
English
Abstract
Siblings Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Rossetti both lived during the Victorian era and wrote poetry which epitomizes the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Although they were related, these two poets were drastically different, and their differences are evident in their poetry. Dante Gabriel was infatuated with beautiful women and many of his poems express sexual desire, while Christina was intensely devoted to God and many of her poems provide moral instruction. However, these poets both make femme fatales the subjects of their poems “Body’s Beauty,” “The Card-Dealer,” “The World,” and “Babylon the Great.” This paper analyzes the different ways in which Dante Gabriel Rossetti uses the image of a dangerous, eroticized woman to symbolize the threat that the power of female beauty poses to a man's life, while Christina Rossetti uses this image to symbolize the threat that worldly desires pose to a person's eternal life.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Kirsch, Carolyn A., "The Poetry of Christina Rossetti and Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Same Femme, Different Fate" (2017). Student Publications. 591.
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/student_scholarship/591
Comments
Written for ENG 333: Victorian Aesthetics.