Research Information System
Representations of Violence in Literature, Culture and Arts: International Interdisciplinary Conference, Osmaniye, Turkey, 20 - 21 October 2021, pp.128, (Summary Text)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) is one of the most significant figures of the Victorian England. As a prominent member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he sets out with the intention to go beyond the rigid artistic standards of the Royal Academy, and he embraces an original outlook in his paintings. His poetic career also takes shape in accordance with the anti-traditional stance that he has mostly exemplified in his artistic works. Still, a closer look into his poetry reveals the fact that Rossetti is not able to redeem himself from the hypocritical gaze directed at women in Victorian England. Also termed as an age of contradictions, Victorian period is notorious for setting the double standards concerning the position of women in the society. Despite putting women on the highest pedestal possible and praising their purity and innocence, the Victorian patriarchy never refrains from creating the possible conditions for the rise of prostitution. Within this perspective, this paper aims to scrutinize the ambiguous and problematic relationship between men and women in Rossetti’s poems, and to show the extent of the patriarchal violence which operates through an ideological system of objectification of the woman body and psyche. “The Blessed Damozel” is about the seclusion of a young woman in heaven who is not happy with all the prescribed titles ascribed to her since she prefers to be united with her lover on Earth. “Jenny,” on the other hand, is about a prostitute who spends the night sleeping on the knee of a male speaker, and the poem describes his attraction as well as the feeling of repulsion due to Jenny’s presence. When these two poems are analysed together, it is seen that Victorian patriarchy over-idealizes and degrades women in order to highlight its dominance and control over them – which is a form of systematic violence and psychological pressure that denies the women the right to be themselves.