Christina Rossetti as an Individualist Woman Poet

Abstract

Christina Rossetti is a prominent English woman poet. She is one of the members of the pre- Raphaelites movement of art and poetry. Her poetry is known to be devotional, subtle and addresses children. However the paper aims at investigating the poet's uniqueness in poetry and how her poetry is different from Victorian and the pre- Raphaelites poetry. The paper also hypothesizes the potentially of the existence of feminist themes in Rossetti's poetry. To attain its objectives the paper analyses six poems and contextualizes these poems to gain an utmost understanding. The poems to be analyzed are: "Goblin Market", which is a long narrative poem and five other poems "Winter My Secret", "An Apple Gathering", "The Prince's Progress", "Repining", and "The Royal Princess". Feminism is the theory used to analyze the chosen texts. Throughout analysing the chosen poem the paper concludes that Christina Rossetti is a feminist. She was highly aware of the critical conditions of women at her time and she manifests that in her poems. Nevertheless she aim at subverting the patriarchal system via: suggesting the possibility of women economic and emotional independence, women's solidarity, and sharing experiences via story telling that create new feminist awareness.