Degree Department

The Bifurcated Personalities of Christina Rossetti and Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Reflected in Their "Sister Poems" (open access)

The Bifurcated Personalities of Christina Rossetti and Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Reflected in Their "Sister Poems"

Christina Rossetti and Dante Gabriel Rossetti both suffered from ambivalent feelings concerning the role female sexuality plays in the salvation of the soul. These ambivalent feelings ranged from seeing female sexuality as leading men to salvation, to seeing it as a trap for the destruction of women's souls as well as men's. The contradictory feelings of the Rossettis' typifies the Victorian people's experience and was caused by the nature of the times. Using the analysis of the period by Walter E. Houghton in The Victorian Frame of Mind: 1830-1870, this paper describes the affect the Victorians' religious zeal, their "moral earnestness," and their "woman-worship" had on the two Rossetti poets.
Date: December 1988
Creator: Becherer, Nadine L. (Nadine Lee)
System: The UNT Digital Library