WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.200 When we look back at the Victorian era, we have 00:00:02.200 --> 00:00:06.519 this very rigid mental map. Oh, absolutely. We 00:00:06.519 --> 00:00:11.119 see the stiff collars, the London fog, the repressed 00:00:11.119 --> 00:00:14.119 emotions. And if I ask you to picture a Victorian 00:00:14.119 --> 00:00:16.820 poetess, you probably conjure up a very specific 00:00:16.820 --> 00:00:20.160 image. Right. Someone safe, maybe a bit fragile, 00:00:20.460 --> 00:00:23.440 writing quiet verses in a parlor. Exactly. Someone 00:00:23.440 --> 00:00:26.800 devout, writing about flowers and Jesus and not 00:00:26.800 --> 00:00:29.480 much else. The angel in the house, as the saying 00:00:29.480 --> 00:00:32.380 goes. It's an incredibly sticky archetype. It 00:00:32.380 --> 00:00:35.240 frames women of that era as purely domestic, 00:00:35.500 --> 00:00:38.840 passive creatures who existed solely to, you 00:00:38.840 --> 00:00:40.600 know, soothe the brows of their husbands and 00:00:40.600 --> 00:00:42.880 manage the household. Right. And then if I say 00:00:42.880 --> 00:00:45.280 the name Rosetti, most people immediately pivot. 00:00:45.689 --> 00:00:47.549 They go straight to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Of 00:00:47.549 --> 00:00:50.109 course. The wild hair, the wombats in the garden, 00:00:50.189 --> 00:00:54.149 the opium, the bohemian king of the pre -Raphaelite 00:00:54.149 --> 00:00:56.049 brotherhood. He was a massive personality. He 00:00:56.049 --> 00:00:57.770 sucked up a lot of the oxygen in the room, in 00:00:57.770 --> 00:01:00.729 any room he was in, really. But today, we are 00:01:00.729 --> 00:01:03.030 pushing him to the side. We are focusing on the 00:01:03.030 --> 00:01:05.950 other Rossetti, Christina Rossetti. And the reason 00:01:05.950 --> 00:01:08.390 we're doing this deep dive is that the pious 00:01:08.390 --> 00:01:12.569 spinster image, it's not just incomplete, it's 00:01:12.569 --> 00:01:15.959 actively misleading. It's a total misreading 00:01:15.959 --> 00:01:18.019 of her character and her work. Because if you 00:01:18.019 --> 00:01:20.920 dig into the letters, the biographies, and critically 00:01:20.920 --> 00:01:23.939 the reception of her work at the time, you don't 00:01:23.939 --> 00:01:26.200 find a passive observer. You find a woman who 00:01:26.200 --> 00:01:30.219 was arguably, well, one of the darkest, most 00:01:30.219 --> 00:01:32.400 complex, and most technically brilliant poets 00:01:32.400 --> 00:01:34.540 of the entire 19th century. I'm really glad you 00:01:34.540 --> 00:01:36.480 used the word darkest, because even though she's 00:01:36.480 --> 00:01:38.120 the one who wrote some of the Christmas carols 00:01:38.120 --> 00:01:41.700 we all sing. Her mind was dwelling in some very 00:01:41.700 --> 00:01:44.840 shadowy, very intense places. It's a huge contradiction. 00:01:45.099 --> 00:01:47.200 A huge one. And, you know, after Elizabeth Barrett 00:01:47.200 --> 00:01:49.900 Browning died in 1861, the critics didn't really 00:01:49.900 --> 00:01:52.079 look for a man to replace her as the great poet 00:01:52.079 --> 00:01:54.659 of the age. They looked directly at Christina 00:01:54.659 --> 00:01:57.099 Rossetti and essentially said, she is the one. 00:01:57.140 --> 00:02:00.140 She is the foremost female poet of her day. That's 00:02:00.140 --> 00:02:02.200 a heavy crown to wear, especially in that era. 00:02:02.400 --> 00:02:05.430 It is. But she wore it differently. She's such 00:02:05.430 --> 00:02:08.270 an enigma because she lived at the absolute epicenter 00:02:08.270 --> 00:02:11.409 of the coolest, loudest, most revolutionary art 00:02:11.409 --> 00:02:14.050 movement in London. The Pre -Raphaelites. Exactly. 00:02:14.430 --> 00:02:18.169 Yet she cultivated this persona of silence and 00:02:18.169 --> 00:02:21.090 refusal. A quiet rebel is a great way to put 00:02:21.090 --> 00:02:24.590 it. She navigated severe nervous breakdowns, 00:02:24.590 --> 00:02:27.710 this intense religious extremism, and a really, 00:02:27.750 --> 00:02:30.009 really complicated relationship with the concept 00:02:30.009 --> 00:02:32.750 of love and marriage. So that is our mission 00:02:32.750 --> 00:02:35.520 today. We're going to strip away that saintly 00:02:35.520 --> 00:02:39.240 lady veneer. We need to understand how she operated 00:02:39.240 --> 00:02:41.979 within the pre -Raphaelite brotherhood, not just 00:02:41.979 --> 00:02:44.780 as a pretty face on a canvas, but as a sharp, 00:02:44.819 --> 00:02:47.439 insightful critic. A participant, not just a 00:02:47.439 --> 00:02:49.960 muse. Exactly. And we're going to deconstruct 00:02:49.960 --> 00:02:52.500 the absolute fever dream that is Goblin Market. 00:02:52.680 --> 00:02:54.460 I mean, we have to. We could spend the whole 00:02:54.460 --> 00:02:56.539 time on just that poem. We really could. And 00:02:56.539 --> 00:02:58.699 I really want to understand why she chose loneliness. 00:02:59.120 --> 00:03:00.979 Because looking at the source material, it wasn't 00:03:00.979 --> 00:03:02.539 an accident. It wasn't because she didn't have 00:03:02.539 --> 00:03:05.580 options. It feels like it was a strategy. A strategy 00:03:05.580 --> 00:03:07.539 of self -preservation. That's a great way to 00:03:07.539 --> 00:03:09.699 frame it. She was protecting something. We have 00:03:09.699 --> 00:03:12.240 a lot of ground to cover. Biographies, letters, 00:03:12.599 --> 00:03:15.659 publication history, the poetry itself. Let's 00:03:15.659 --> 00:03:18.039 start at the very beginning. The Rossetti Hothouse. 00:03:18.650 --> 00:03:20.590 because she wasn't just born into a standard 00:03:20.590 --> 00:03:22.710 British middle -class family, was she? Oh, not 00:03:22.710 --> 00:03:25.669 even close. If you walked into 38 Charlotte Street 00:03:25.669 --> 00:03:29.389 in London around, say, 1835, you wouldn't feel 00:03:29.389 --> 00:03:30.969 like you were in England. You'd feel like you 00:03:30.969 --> 00:03:33.689 walked into a political salon in Naples. Really? 00:03:33.909 --> 00:03:36.530 That's specific? Absolutely. Christina was born 00:03:36.530 --> 00:03:39.530 there in 1830, the youngest of four. Her father, 00:03:39.669 --> 00:03:41.949 Gabriello Rossetti, wasn't just a dad. He was 00:03:41.949 --> 00:03:45.009 a political exile, a revolutionary. Okay, so 00:03:45.009 --> 00:03:47.729 the sources describe him as a poet and a carbonero. 00:03:48.240 --> 00:03:50.479 A revolutionary. Yes. He was from the Abruzzo 00:03:50.479 --> 00:03:53.879 region of Italy. He had to flee in 1824 because 00:03:53.879 --> 00:03:56.039 his poetry was a little too supportive of the 00:03:56.039 --> 00:03:57.900 revolutionary cause against the Bourbon monarchy. 00:03:58.360 --> 00:04:00.900 So he lands in London, manages to become a professor 00:04:00.900 --> 00:04:03.379 of Italian at King's College, and turns his home 00:04:03.379 --> 00:04:07.060 into this magnet for every Italian exile scholar, 00:04:07.319 --> 00:04:09.400 artist, and revolutionary passing through the 00:04:09.400 --> 00:04:11.879 city. So the house is just buzzing with politics 00:04:11.879 --> 00:04:15.789 and poetry and Italian accents. Constantly. Christina 00:04:15.789 --> 00:04:17.930 is growing up with Dante Alighieri effectively 00:04:17.930 --> 00:04:20.389 being the fifth child in the family. She was 00:04:20.389 --> 00:04:22.850 steeped in it from birth. Essentially. And Petrarch. 00:04:23.089 --> 00:04:25.889 The house was loud, intellectual, and bilingual. 00:04:26.350 --> 00:04:29.449 And then you have her mother, Frances Polidori. 00:04:29.550 --> 00:04:31.470 And this is where the literary pedigree gets 00:04:31.470 --> 00:04:35.399 really gothic. Okay, I'm ready. Francis was the 00:04:35.399 --> 00:04:38.139 sister of John William Polidori. Wait, Polidori. 00:04:38.300 --> 00:04:40.480 That's Lord Byron's physician, right? That Polidori? 00:04:40.639 --> 00:04:43.139 The very same. The man who was there at the Villa 00:04:43.139 --> 00:04:46.639 Diodati in 1816 during the year without a summer, 00:04:46.800 --> 00:04:50.100 the night Mary Shelley started writing Frankenstein. 00:04:50.139 --> 00:04:53.899 No way. Yes. Polidori actually wrote The Vampire 00:04:53.899 --> 00:04:56.300 during that same trip, which basically invented 00:04:56.300 --> 00:04:59.540 the modern aristocratic vampire genre. So on 00:04:59.540 --> 00:05:01.019 her father's side, you have Italian political 00:05:01.019 --> 00:05:03.079 revolutionaries. Right. And on her mother's side, 00:05:03.139 --> 00:05:05.519 you have... The guy who literally invented the 00:05:05.519 --> 00:05:07.839 vampire. That explains a lot about the tone of 00:05:07.839 --> 00:05:09.920 Christina's work, doesn't it? It explains everything. 00:05:10.079 --> 00:05:12.680 The passion, the darkness, the morbidity. It 00:05:12.680 --> 00:05:16.079 wasn't a normal childhood. Far from it. And the 00:05:16.079 --> 00:05:18.620 siblings, Dante Gabriel, William Michael, and 00:05:18.620 --> 00:05:21.199 Maria, they were a powerhouse quartet, as one 00:05:21.199 --> 00:05:23.500 biographer puts it. Incredibly bright, competitive, 00:05:23.800 --> 00:05:26.439 creative, and very, very close. They even had 00:05:26.439 --> 00:05:28.100 nicknames for each other. They called themselves 00:05:28.100 --> 00:05:30.600 the Two Storms, which were Dante and Christina. 00:05:30.839 --> 00:05:33.439 The passionate ones. Right. And the Two Palms, 00:05:33.439 --> 00:05:36.300 which were William and Maria. And the young Christina. 00:05:36.519 --> 00:05:39.019 The sources say she wasn't the gloomy recluse 00:05:39.019 --> 00:05:41.459 yet. She was the lively one, the stormy one. 00:05:41.600 --> 00:05:44.600 Very lively. There's a fantastic anecdote where, 00:05:44.720 --> 00:05:47.459 before she could even write, she dictated her 00:05:47.459 --> 00:05:50.540 first story to her mother. It was about a dervish 00:05:50.540 --> 00:05:52.980 named Hassan. I mean, that just shows the confidence. 00:05:53.019 --> 00:05:55.379 She was surrounded by words and stories, so she 00:05:55.379 --> 00:05:57.660 just joined in. And she was educated entirely 00:05:57.660 --> 00:06:00.620 at home. Entirely. Absorbing everything. Religious 00:06:00.620 --> 00:06:03.060 tracks, fairy tales, classics like Keats and 00:06:03.060 --> 00:06:05.660 Scott, and a lot of gothic horror novels like 00:06:05.660 --> 00:06:08.680 Anne Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. So 00:06:08.680 --> 00:06:11.379 she had a rich inner world. But she wasn't a 00:06:11.379 --> 00:06:14.399 shut -in. She liked London. Oh, she loved London. 00:06:14.639 --> 00:06:16.759 Unlike her parents, who always felt the pain 00:06:16.759 --> 00:06:19.899 of exile, Christina felt completely at home. 00:06:20.079 --> 00:06:23.779 She visited the zoo, Madame Tussauds. The sources 00:06:23.779 --> 00:06:25.819 show she was engaging with the world, curious. 00:06:26.360 --> 00:06:29.740 But then we see this massive shift in the 1840s. 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:32.779 A crisis hits the family, and it seems to be 00:06:32.779 --> 00:06:34.720 the trauma that defines the rest of her life. 00:06:34.899 --> 00:06:38.000 What happened? The whole world fell apart. The 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:41.040 economy of the family completely collapsed. Her 00:06:41.040 --> 00:06:43.720 father's health failed catastrophically. He developed 00:06:43.720 --> 00:06:46.199 chronic bronchitis. He was losing his sight, 00:06:46.279 --> 00:06:49.000 and he was likely suffering from a severe debilitating 00:06:49.000 --> 00:06:51.259 depression. He had to give up his teaching post 00:06:51.259 --> 00:06:53.790 at King's College. Which means the money stopped 00:06:53.790 --> 00:06:55.930 coming in. The main source of income was gone. 00:06:56.230 --> 00:06:58.889 Exactly. And in Victorian London, that is a precipice 00:06:58.889 --> 00:07:01.329 you do not want to fall over. The slide from 00:07:01.329 --> 00:07:04.230 middle class respectability to poverty was terrifyingly 00:07:04.230 --> 00:07:06.269 quick. And the family dynamics just inverted. 00:07:06.610 --> 00:07:08.949 Completely. The mother, Frances, who had been 00:07:08.949 --> 00:07:11.310 managing this intellectual household, had to 00:07:11.310 --> 00:07:13.970 go out and start teaching Italian. Her sister, 00:07:14.050 --> 00:07:16.410 Maria, who was brilliant in her own right, had 00:07:16.410 --> 00:07:19.050 to go out and work as a live -in governess. and 00:07:19.050 --> 00:07:21.089 from what i read christina viewed the prospect 00:07:21.089 --> 00:07:24.129 of being a governess with absolute horror she 00:07:24.129 --> 00:07:27.060 dreaded it It was the standard fate for a refined, 00:07:27.360 --> 00:07:29.959 educated woman with no money, but to her it meant 00:07:29.959 --> 00:07:33.000 servitude. It meant a total loss of your autonomy, 00:07:33.199 --> 00:07:35.519 your time, your intellectual freedom. But she 00:07:35.519 --> 00:07:38.000 didn't have to do it. No, and here is the tragedy. 00:07:38.500 --> 00:07:40.959 Because she was the youngest and always seen 00:07:40.959 --> 00:07:43.560 as the delicate one, she was the one left at 00:07:43.560 --> 00:07:46.519 home, left to care for her sick, depressed, and 00:07:46.519 --> 00:07:49.019 probably very difficult father while everyone 00:07:49.019 --> 00:07:51.399 else was out working to keep the family afloat. 00:07:51.680 --> 00:07:54.100 That is an absolute pressure cooker. Yeah. You're 00:07:54.100 --> 00:07:56.319 a teenager, you're creative, you're full of this 00:07:56.319 --> 00:07:59.180 stormy energy, and you're trapped in a dark house 00:07:59.180 --> 00:08:01.720 with a dying parent watching your family slide 00:08:01.720 --> 00:08:04.040 into poverty. And the result was, unfortunately, 00:08:04.360 --> 00:08:08.120 predictable. At age 14 in 1845, she suffered 00:08:08.120 --> 00:08:10.160 a severe nervous breakdown. She had to leave 00:08:10.160 --> 00:08:12.439 what little formal schooling she had, and the 00:08:12.439 --> 00:08:14.899 lively child just vanished. She became withdrawn, 00:08:15.240 --> 00:08:17.740 melancholic, and suffered from a range of physical 00:08:17.740 --> 00:08:20.129 ailments for the rest of her life. And this is 00:08:20.129 --> 00:08:21.709 where the religion takes hold isn't it? It's 00:08:21.709 --> 00:08:24.050 not just a comfort. It becomes an entire operating 00:08:24.050 --> 00:08:26.800 system for her life. An operating system is the 00:08:26.800 --> 00:08:29.360 perfect analogy. It wasn't just going to church. 00:08:29.420 --> 00:08:32.379 This was a specific, intense flavor of Christianity. 00:08:33.080 --> 00:08:35.960 She, her mother, and her sister Maria became 00:08:35.960 --> 00:08:38.460 deeply involved in the Anglo -Catholic movement. 00:08:38.720 --> 00:08:41.259 Sometimes called the Oxford movement or Tractarianism. 00:08:41.320 --> 00:08:43.460 Exactly. Can you break that down for us? How 00:08:43.460 --> 00:08:45.120 was that different from regular Church of England 00:08:45.120 --> 00:08:47.659 services at the time? Think of it as the Church 00:08:47.659 --> 00:08:50.360 of England trying to reclaim its Catholic heritage 00:08:50.360 --> 00:08:53.519 before the Reformation. It was all about high 00:08:53.519 --> 00:08:55.850 ritual, heavy on... symbolism, the importance 00:08:55.850 --> 00:08:58.769 of confession, and a very, very intense focus 00:08:58.769 --> 00:09:01.970 on personal sin, self -examination, and the path 00:09:01.970 --> 00:09:04.330 to redemption. So it's not a casual Sunday faith? 00:09:04.490 --> 00:09:07.230 Not at all. It was a rigorous, demanding spiritual 00:09:07.230 --> 00:09:10.549 lifestyle. And for Christina, this became the 00:09:10.549 --> 00:09:13.340 lens through which she saw everything. Every 00:09:13.340 --> 00:09:15.519 earthly pleasure had to be weighed against the 00:09:15.519 --> 00:09:18.139 eternal soul. It provided a structure for her 00:09:18.139 --> 00:09:20.379 suffering, giving meaning to her pain, but it 00:09:20.379 --> 00:09:23.279 also imposed incredible restrictions on her. 00:09:23.399 --> 00:09:26.519 So she creates this rigid, ascetic framework 00:09:26.519 --> 00:09:29.100 for herself, right as her brother, Dante Gabriel, 00:09:29.399 --> 00:09:32.179 is about to launch the most rebellious, colorful, 00:09:32.379 --> 00:09:34.840 and sensual art movement in Britain. The Pre 00:09:34.840 --> 00:09:37.490 -Raphaelite Brotherhood. established in 1848. 00:09:37.610 --> 00:09:39.730 The timing is just incredible. Talk about a clash 00:09:39.730 --> 00:09:42.409 of worlds. It's a fundamental split in the Rossetti 00:09:42.409 --> 00:09:45.850 siblings. You have Dante and his friends, the 00:09:45.850 --> 00:09:48.789 PRB, who are all about nature, bright colors, 00:09:48.929 --> 00:09:52.309 truth to life, challenging the stuffy royal academy, 00:09:52.529 --> 00:09:55.529 and living this very bohemian, sometimes scandalous 00:09:55.529 --> 00:09:58.190 lifestyle. And right in the middle of it is Christina, 00:09:58.450 --> 00:10:01.190 the Anglo -Catholic ascetic. It seems like she 00:10:01.190 --> 00:10:03.220 would have run a mile away. But she couldn't. 00:10:03.220 --> 00:10:05.120 It was her family. And she wasn't just in the 00:10:05.120 --> 00:10:07.179 room. She was the face of it. That's the deepest 00:10:07.179 --> 00:10:10.519 irony. If you look at the very first PRB paintings, 00:10:10.779 --> 00:10:12.940 you are looking at Christina Rossetti. She was 00:10:12.940 --> 00:10:15.259 the model for the Virgin Mary, wasn't she? Yes, 00:10:15.320 --> 00:10:18.059 in two of Dante Gabriel's earliest and most important 00:10:18.059 --> 00:10:20.539 paintings. She's Mary in The Girlhood of Mary 00:10:20.539 --> 00:10:24.100 Virgin from 1848. And she's Mary again in Ecce 00:10:24.100 --> 00:10:26.720 and Silla Domini, which means Behold the Handmaiden 00:10:26.720 --> 00:10:30.139 of the Lord in 1850. So she is literally the 00:10:30.139 --> 00:10:33.480 icon of the movement's debut. Literally, when 00:10:33.480 --> 00:10:35.580 people thought of the pre -Raphaelite woman in 00:10:35.580 --> 00:10:37.419 those first couple years, they were thinking 00:10:37.419 --> 00:10:40.720 of her face, those heavy eyelids, the long neck, 00:10:40.860 --> 00:10:43.799 that contemplative, serious expression. It's 00:10:43.799 --> 00:10:46.340 so strange to think of her as the visual symbol 00:10:46.340 --> 00:10:51.029 of revolution. She was... At best, sort of ambivalent 00:10:51.029 --> 00:10:53.809 about. Ambivalent is the perfect word. She supported 00:10:53.809 --> 00:10:56.649 her brothers fiercely, but she was never seduced 00:10:56.649 --> 00:10:59.210 by the lifestyle. She saw the vanity in it. But 00:10:59.210 --> 00:11:01.230 this is where the popular narrative usually stops. 00:11:01.649 --> 00:11:04.169 She was the sister who sat for the paintings. 00:11:04.370 --> 00:11:07.190 It's a footnote. But she was writing for them, 00:11:07.190 --> 00:11:10.049 too. She absolutely was. The PRB had a literary 00:11:10.049 --> 00:11:13.159 journal called The Germ. Which is a terrible 00:11:13.159 --> 00:11:15.799 name, by the way. A truly awful name. It sounds 00:11:15.799 --> 00:11:17.500 infectious, like you need to wash your hands 00:11:17.500 --> 00:11:19.080 after reading it. And it didn't last long, did 00:11:19.080 --> 00:11:21.120 it? No, only four issues. It was a commercial 00:11:21.120 --> 00:11:23.720 disaster. But Christina published seven poems 00:11:23.720 --> 00:11:27.299 in it. She used a pseudonym, Ellen Allen. But 00:11:27.299 --> 00:11:29.080 anyone in their circle would have known it was 00:11:29.080 --> 00:11:31.820 her. So at 20 years old, she's in print, right 00:11:31.820 --> 00:11:34.340 alongside her famous brother and his friends. 00:11:34.799 --> 00:11:37.620 Right. So she wasn't just a muse. She was a creator. 00:11:37.899 --> 00:11:40.519 And frankly, if you read the journal now, modern 00:11:40.519 --> 00:11:42.759 critics often argue her contributions were the 00:11:42.759 --> 00:11:44.840 strongest and most mature pieces in the whole 00:11:44.840 --> 00:11:47.080 publication. And she wasn't just a creator. She 00:11:47.080 --> 00:11:49.779 was a critic, a very sharp one. I want to dive 00:11:49.779 --> 00:11:52.159 into that poem in the artist's studio because 00:11:52.159 --> 00:11:54.379 when I read this, I felt like I was witnessing 00:11:54.379 --> 00:11:59.240 a very polite, very poetic murder. It is a devastatingly 00:11:59.240 --> 00:12:01.659 sharp piece of analysis. It was written in 1856. 00:12:02.019 --> 00:12:04.460 So by this time, her brother Dante Gabriel is 00:12:04.460 --> 00:12:06.500 completely obsessed with Elizabeth Siddle, who 00:12:06.500 --> 00:12:09.720 was his primary muse and future wife. And he 00:12:09.720 --> 00:12:12.360 is painting her over and over and over again 00:12:12.360 --> 00:12:15.779 as a saint, as a tragic heroine, as a lover. 00:12:15.980 --> 00:12:17.620 And Christina's watching this happen. She's in 00:12:17.620 --> 00:12:19.539 the studio. She walks into the studio, sees all 00:12:19.539 --> 00:12:21.679 these canvases, and she writes, One face looks 00:12:21.679 --> 00:12:24.179 out from all his canvases. One self -same figure 00:12:24.179 --> 00:12:27.120 sits or walks or leans. She describes how how 00:12:27.120 --> 00:12:29.919 he paints the woman as a queen, a nameless girl, 00:12:30.139 --> 00:12:32.759 a saint, an angel. But then the poem pivots. 00:12:32.980 --> 00:12:35.399 It pivots hard. She says the artist feeds upon 00:12:35.399 --> 00:12:38.440 her face by day and night. Feeds upon her face. 00:12:38.500 --> 00:12:40.480 That's not romantic language. That is predatory. 00:12:40.580 --> 00:12:43.460 It's almost vampire language going back to her 00:12:43.460 --> 00:12:46.299 uncle. It is. It's about consumption, not adoration. 00:12:46.720 --> 00:12:49.399 And then she delivers the killing blow, the lines 00:12:49.399 --> 00:12:51.820 that just stop you in your tracks. She says he 00:12:51.820 --> 00:12:55.120 paints her not as she is, but as she fills his 00:12:55.120 --> 00:12:58.759 dream. Wow. Not as she is, but as she fills his 00:12:58.759 --> 00:13:01.019 dream. One of the most profound critiques of 00:13:01.019 --> 00:13:03.700 the male gaze ever written. She is saying that 00:13:03.700 --> 00:13:06.879 this so -called pre -Raphaelite worship of women 00:13:06.879 --> 00:13:09.320 isn't actually about the women at all. It's about 00:13:09.320 --> 00:13:12.799 male artistic ego. It's narcissism. The artist 00:13:12.799 --> 00:13:15.519 is just projecting his own fantasy onto a silent 00:13:15.519 --> 00:13:18.220 object. Precisely. He doesn't love the woman. 00:13:18.320 --> 00:13:20.399 He loves his own artistic vision of the woman. 00:13:20.460 --> 00:13:23.059 He's feeding his own dream, not seeing her reality. 00:13:23.340 --> 00:13:26.120 And she's calling out her own brother. For erasing 00:13:26.120 --> 00:13:28.500 the humanity of the woman he claims to love. 00:13:28.639 --> 00:13:31.500 That must have been incredibly tense. Incredibly. 00:13:31.720 --> 00:13:33.879 And she could only write that because she was 00:13:33.879 --> 00:13:36.039 on the inside. She knew what it felt like to 00:13:36.039 --> 00:13:38.779 be the face on the canvas, to be told to sit 00:13:38.779 --> 00:13:41.100 still and look holy while the men discussed art 00:13:41.100 --> 00:13:43.840 with a capital A. She's asserting that the muse 00:13:43.840 --> 00:13:47.139 has eyes and a mind and she's judging the artist. 00:13:47.340 --> 00:13:50.080 It completely upends the power dynamic. That 00:13:50.080 --> 00:13:52.440 creates such a tension in her life. She's part 00:13:52.440 --> 00:13:54.720 of this revolutionary group, but she's also the 00:13:54.720 --> 00:13:56.460 moral conscience sitting in the corner taking 00:13:56.460 --> 00:13:59.179 notes. And that tension, that internal pressure, 00:13:59.279 --> 00:14:02.710 it just... explodes in 1862 when she publishes 00:14:02.710 --> 00:14:05.309 her own collection goblin market and other poems 00:14:05.309 --> 00:14:07.870 this is the big one this is the moment she steps 00:14:07.870 --> 00:14:11.269 out of everyone's shadow and weirdly her brother 00:14:11.269 --> 00:14:14.110 dante gabriel illustrated it Which is fascinating, 00:14:14.210 --> 00:14:16.549 isn't it? Because his illustrations are incredibly 00:14:16.549 --> 00:14:18.690 sensual. The frontispiece shows the two sisters 00:14:18.690 --> 00:14:21.090 in bed together, and the title page shows the 00:14:21.090 --> 00:14:23.970 goblins swarming Lizzie. He really leaned into 00:14:23.970 --> 00:14:26.370 the strange, seductive, and slightly sinister 00:14:26.370 --> 00:14:28.750 vibe of the title poem. Okay, we have to talk 00:14:28.750 --> 00:14:30.750 about Goblin Market. If you are listening to 00:14:30.750 --> 00:14:32.389 this and you haven't read it, you need to stop 00:14:32.389 --> 00:14:36.149 and find it online. It is, it's wild. It's unlike 00:14:36.149 --> 00:14:38.450 anything else. It's a narrative poem, it's quite 00:14:38.450 --> 00:14:41.110 long, and it's about two sisters, Laura and Lizzie, 00:14:41.190 --> 00:14:44.210 who live together in a cottage. And every evening, 00:14:44.289 --> 00:14:46.610 they hear these goblin merchants selling fruit 00:14:46.610 --> 00:14:48.889 down by the river. Come by our orchard fruits. 00:14:49.149 --> 00:14:51.529 Come by, come by. It's one of the most famous 00:14:51.529 --> 00:14:54.269 and hypnotic opening sequences in Victorian poetry. 00:14:54.870 --> 00:14:57.210 The goblins themselves are described as these 00:14:57.210 --> 00:14:59.750 animalistic creatures. One has a cat's face, 00:14:59.870 --> 00:15:02.090 one's like a rat. And the fruit they're selling. 00:15:02.840 --> 00:15:05.220 It's not just apples and pears. No, it's this 00:15:05.220 --> 00:15:08.559 lush, exotic, overwhelming list. Plump, unpecked 00:15:08.559 --> 00:15:11.460 cherries, wild, freeborn cranberries, pineapples, 00:15:11.460 --> 00:15:14.259 blackberries, apricots, strawberries. The description 00:15:14.259 --> 00:15:17.919 is pure sensory overload. It's meant to be intoxicating. 00:15:18.080 --> 00:15:20.639 And Laura, the curious sister, is entranced. 00:15:20.799 --> 00:15:23.850 But they have no money. So she pays with the 00:15:23.850 --> 00:15:26.009 lock of her golden hair and a tear. Which is 00:15:26.009 --> 00:15:28.629 already a massive red flag in any fairy tale 00:15:28.629 --> 00:15:31.809 logic. You never, ever give a goblin a piece 00:15:31.809 --> 00:15:33.889 of yourself. Your hair, your name, anything. 00:15:34.440 --> 00:15:36.860 It's a huge mistake. Yeah. And she eats the fruit. 00:15:36.940 --> 00:15:39.720 And the poem describes it as this ecstatic, almost 00:15:39.720 --> 00:15:43.220 transcendent experience. She sucked and sucked 00:15:43.220 --> 00:15:45.759 and sucked the more fruits which that unknown 00:15:45.759 --> 00:15:48.320 orchard bore. But then she goes home, and the 00:15:48.320 --> 00:15:50.820 next day she begins to waste away. She's suffering 00:15:50.820 --> 00:15:53.100 from a terrible withdrawal. She longs for more 00:15:53.100 --> 00:15:55.000 fruit, but she can no longer hear the goblins 00:15:55.000 --> 00:15:57.940 cry. He's aging rapidly, her hair turns gray, 00:15:58.039 --> 00:16:01.080 and she's clearly dying. The fruit has acted 00:16:01.080 --> 00:16:03.399 like a poison or a powerful addiction. So the 00:16:03.399 --> 00:16:06.090 other... Sister Lizzie, the good, cautious sister, 00:16:06.230 --> 00:16:08.909 decides she has to save Laura. She goes to the 00:16:08.909 --> 00:16:11.490 goblins to get fruit for her. Right. but she's 00:16:11.490 --> 00:16:13.429 smart she takes a silver penny she's going to 00:16:13.429 --> 00:16:15.549 conduct a proper transaction she wants to buy 00:16:15.549 --> 00:16:18.350 the fruit and take it home but the goblins aren't 00:16:18.350 --> 00:16:20.690 interested in commerce they turn violent they 00:16:20.690 --> 00:16:22.490 don't want her money they want her to eat exactly 00:16:22.490 --> 00:16:25.049 and they attack her they try to force feed her 00:16:25.049 --> 00:16:27.850 the fruit they pull her hair tear her dress they 00:16:27.850 --> 00:16:30.250 squeezed out the juice that served all her face 00:16:30.250 --> 00:16:33.590 and lodged in every dimple they basically assault 00:16:33.590 --> 00:16:36.610 her with this fruit and this scene Reading it, 00:16:36.629 --> 00:16:39.370 it's incredibly intense. It feels like a symbolic 00:16:39.370 --> 00:16:42.870 sexual assault. It is vividly assaultive. But 00:16:42.870 --> 00:16:45.169 Lizzie stands there like a rock, refusing to 00:16:45.169 --> 00:16:48.450 open her mouth. Like a lily in a flood, the poem 00:16:48.450 --> 00:16:51.289 says. She endures the abuse without partaking. 00:16:51.309 --> 00:16:53.529 She just lets them cover her in juice. And then 00:16:53.529 --> 00:16:56.269 she runs home. She runs home, covered in this 00:16:56.269 --> 00:16:58.730 sticky juice and pulp, and she tells Laura to 00:16:58.730 --> 00:17:01.789 kiss it off her face. Her exact words are, hug 00:17:01.789 --> 00:17:04.490 me, kiss me, suck my juices, eat me, drink me, 00:17:04.569 --> 00:17:07.289 love me. Which is, I mean, that is some astonishingly 00:17:07.289 --> 00:17:10.029 charged language. It is, and Laura kisses the 00:17:10.029 --> 00:17:12.450 juice off Lizzie's face, and it acts as a painful 00:17:12.450 --> 00:17:15.089 antidote. It burns her looks like poison, but 00:17:15.089 --> 00:17:17.609 then it breaks the fever. It cures her. She is 00:17:17.609 --> 00:17:21.309 saved. Okay, so. What on earth is this poem about? 00:17:21.509 --> 00:17:23.329 Because I've seen interpretations that range 00:17:23.329 --> 00:17:25.250 from, you know, it's a charming story for children, 00:17:25.349 --> 00:17:27.509 all the way to it's about heroin addiction and 00:17:27.509 --> 00:17:30.349 it's a coded exploration of lesbian desire. And 00:17:30.349 --> 00:17:34.029 the incredible answer is yes. It is all of those 00:17:34.029 --> 00:17:36.970 things and more. That's the genius of Rossetti. 00:17:37.190 --> 00:17:40.170 The poem acts as a mirror for whatever the critic 00:17:40.170 --> 00:17:43.750 wants to find. It supports multiple, even contradictory 00:17:43.750 --> 00:17:46.250 interpretations at the same time. Let's break 00:17:46.250 --> 00:17:48.059 some of those down. The religious angle seems 00:17:48.059 --> 00:17:49.940 like the most obvious starting point since we 00:17:49.940 --> 00:17:52.400 know she was so devout. It's a crystal clear 00:17:52.400 --> 00:17:55.359 allegory of sin and redemption from an Anglo 00:17:55.359 --> 00:17:58.779 -Catholic perspective. Laura is Eve falling into 00:17:58.779 --> 00:18:01.359 temptation by eating the forbidden fruit. She 00:18:01.359 --> 00:18:04.269 represents fallen humanity. And Lizzie. Lizzie 00:18:04.269 --> 00:18:06.910 acts as a Christ figure. She goes into the wilderness, 00:18:07.150 --> 00:18:10.029 into the darkness, she willingly suffers violence 00:18:10.029 --> 00:18:12.910 and humiliation, and she offers her own body, 00:18:13.049 --> 00:18:15.990 eat me, drink me, as a Eucharistic sacrifice 00:18:15.990 --> 00:18:19.650 to save her sister. It fits the theology perfectly. 00:18:20.160 --> 00:18:22.819 The saving grace is mediated through a pure figure. 00:18:23.059 --> 00:18:24.920 That tracks completely. But then you have the 00:18:24.920 --> 00:18:26.980 social angle, which is maybe even more radical 00:18:26.980 --> 00:18:29.299 for its time. This is where her real world experience 00:18:29.299 --> 00:18:31.819 comes in. This isn't just theory for her. Right. 00:18:31.839 --> 00:18:33.839 Tell us more about her work at the Highgate Penitentiary, 00:18:33.839 --> 00:18:36.099 because this grounds the poem in a very real, 00:18:36.299 --> 00:18:41.210 very grim reality. Yes. From 1859 to 1870, so 00:18:41.210 --> 00:18:43.269 right when she was writing Goblin Market, Rossetti 00:18:43.269 --> 00:18:45.549 volunteered at the St. Mary Magdalene Penitentiary 00:18:45.549 --> 00:18:48.130 in Highgate. This was a house of refuge for so 00:18:48.130 --> 00:18:51.549 -called fallen women prostitutes, unmarried mothers, 00:18:51.809 --> 00:18:53.910 women who had been cast out of polite society. 00:18:54.289 --> 00:18:56.369 So she is spending her days listening to the 00:18:56.369 --> 00:18:59.170 stories of women who have been ruined by sexual 00:18:59.170 --> 00:19:01.690 temptation, ruined by the market. Precisely. 00:19:01.690 --> 00:19:04.470 She saw the real world consequences. In Victorian 00:19:04.470 --> 00:19:07.269 society, a respectable woman has one primary 00:19:07.269 --> 00:19:10.720 commodity. her virtue. Once it's spent or sold, 00:19:10.920 --> 00:19:13.859 she's worthless. She's cast out. In Goblin Market, 00:19:14.140 --> 00:19:16.000 Rossetti is writing a radically different ending. 00:19:16.200 --> 00:19:18.980 How so? Usually in Victorian novels and poems, 00:19:19.140 --> 00:19:21.380 the fallen woman dies. That's the only way to 00:19:21.380 --> 00:19:23.799 restore social order. Think of Little Emily and 00:19:23.799 --> 00:19:26.000 David Copperfield. But in this poem, the fallen 00:19:26.000 --> 00:19:28.240 woman, Laura, is saved. And crucially, she's 00:19:28.240 --> 00:19:30.500 not saved by a man or a priest or by marriage. 00:19:30.680 --> 00:19:33.240 She's saved by another woman, by her sister. 00:19:33.440 --> 00:19:35.960 That is a massive subversion of the trope. It's 00:19:35.960 --> 00:19:40.720 female solidarity is the... of redemption. And 00:19:40.720 --> 00:19:55.859 then... There's the erotic interpretation because 00:19:55.859 --> 00:19:58.700 you cannot read those lines without blushing 00:19:58.700 --> 00:20:00.859 a little. The language is so physical. You really 00:20:00.859 --> 00:20:04.019 can't. The poem is drenched in sensuality, the 00:20:04.019 --> 00:20:06.779 sucking of the fruit, the juices, the final scene 00:20:06.779 --> 00:20:10.259 between the sisters. It's incredibly oral, incredibly 00:20:10.259 --> 00:20:13.240 lush. Many modern critics have argued that the 00:20:13.240 --> 00:20:15.720 goblins represent male sexual aggression and 00:20:15.720 --> 00:20:18.740 the fruit is forbidden sexual knowledge. The 00:20:18.740 --> 00:20:20.619 attack on Lizzie, where they smear their fluids 00:20:20.619 --> 00:20:23.359 on her face, is vividly violent and can be read 00:20:23.359 --> 00:20:25.839 as a symbolic rape. And the final scene is this 00:20:25.839 --> 00:20:28.480 incredibly intimate physical moment between two 00:20:28.480 --> 00:20:31.400 women that is both healing and intensely erotic. 00:20:31.500 --> 00:20:33.279 It's a work of immense and immensely controlled 00:20:33.279 --> 00:20:35.900 desire. It feels like she's channeling all this 00:20:35.900 --> 00:20:38.380 repressed energy. We know she lived a very contained, 00:20:38.599 --> 00:20:41.279 chaste life, but the poem is an explosion of 00:20:41.279 --> 00:20:43.859 sensory detail and barely suppressed passion. 00:20:44.160 --> 00:20:46.240 It's like the repression is a powerful fuel. 00:20:46.440 --> 00:20:48.480 I think that's exactly it. By locking everything 00:20:48.480 --> 00:20:51.339 down in her daily life, she built up this incredible... 00:20:51.589 --> 00:20:53.569 pressure that could only be vented into the poetry 00:20:53.569 --> 00:20:56.789 if she had lived a loose bohemian life like her 00:20:56.789 --> 00:20:58.529 brother she might never have written something 00:20:58.529 --> 00:21:00.990 this strange and this intense the constraint 00:21:00.990 --> 00:21:04.130 forced the creativity into this bizarre brilliant 00:21:04.130 --> 00:21:07.230 unforgettable shape speaking of her locking everything 00:21:07.230 --> 00:21:11.349 down we have to talk about her love life or um 00:21:11.869 --> 00:21:14.769 Her lack of one. Because looking at the biography, 00:21:14.970 --> 00:21:17.230 she had options. This wasn't a case of her sitting 00:21:17.230 --> 00:21:19.670 alone because she was unwanted or unlovable. 00:21:19.809 --> 00:21:21.990 She was sitting alone because she said no. She 00:21:21.990 --> 00:21:24.789 was a master of renunciation. She had three major 00:21:24.789 --> 00:21:26.970 suitors that we know of, and she rejected all 00:21:26.970 --> 00:21:29.509 of them, each for a very specific principled 00:21:29.509 --> 00:21:31.190 reason. Let's run through the roster. Suitor 00:21:31.190 --> 00:21:34.339 number one, James Collinson. Collinson was a 00:21:34.339 --> 00:21:36.460 painter and one of the seven founding members 00:21:36.460 --> 00:21:38.980 of the Pre -Raphaelite Brotherhood. He painted 00:21:38.980 --> 00:21:41.579 a very lovely, very sensitive portrait of Christina. 00:21:41.960 --> 00:21:45.000 They were engaged in 1848. It was a done deal. 00:21:45.160 --> 00:21:47.559 So what happened? Collinson had a crisis of faith. 00:21:47.740 --> 00:21:50.579 He was tormented by religious doubt. He'd been 00:21:50.579 --> 00:21:52.599 a Roman Catholic, converted to the Church of 00:21:52.599 --> 00:21:55.140 England to join the PRB, and then, while engaged 00:21:55.140 --> 00:21:57.759 to Christina, he decided he had to revert to 00:21:57.759 --> 00:22:00.640 Roman Catholicism. And for Christina, the devout 00:22:00.640 --> 00:22:03.240 Anglo -Catholic? That was the deal breaker. A 00:22:03.240 --> 00:22:06.960 total deal breaker. The gap between Anglo -Catholicism 00:22:06.960 --> 00:22:09.259 and Roman Catholicism might seem small to us 00:22:09.259 --> 00:22:12.420 today, but in mid -19th century England, it was 00:22:12.420 --> 00:22:15.480 a chasm. The Oxford movement defined itself in 00:22:15.480 --> 00:22:17.980 opposition to Rome. For her, it was a matter 00:22:17.980 --> 00:22:20.980 of eternal truth. She broke the engagement in 00:22:20.980 --> 00:22:24.559 1850. And it devastated her. Absolutely. The 00:22:24.559 --> 00:22:26.539 sources say she collapsed in the hallway when 00:22:26.539 --> 00:22:28.579 she saw him by chance afterwards. It broke her 00:22:28.579 --> 00:22:30.480 heart, but she would not compromise on her theology. 00:22:31.150 --> 00:22:33.849 Faith came first. Okay, suitor number two. This 00:22:33.849 --> 00:22:35.509 one seems to have been the big love of her life. 00:22:36.250 --> 00:22:38.910 Charles Bagot Cayley. The absent -minded scholar. 00:22:39.190 --> 00:22:41.970 He was a linguist, a translator of Dante. By 00:22:41.970 --> 00:22:43.990 all accounts, they were soulmates. They had a 00:22:43.990 --> 00:22:46.650 deep intellectual and emotional bond. Her brother 00:22:46.650 --> 00:22:48.750 William wrote that she loved him deeply, more 00:22:48.750 --> 00:22:50.750 than anyone else. So what was the problem this 00:22:50.750 --> 00:22:53.289 time? He wasn't agnostic, or at least he had 00:22:53.289 --> 00:22:55.089 what she considered to be religious scruples. 00:22:55.250 --> 00:22:57.369 He just wasn't religious enough. But she loved 00:22:57.369 --> 00:22:59.859 him. She connected with him intellectually. but 00:22:59.859 --> 00:23:01.700 she wouldn't marry him because he didn't share 00:23:01.700 --> 00:23:04.680 her specific faith. She turned him down in 1866. 00:23:05.319 --> 00:23:07.740 She remained incredibly close friends with him 00:23:07.740 --> 00:23:09.880 until he died. She even acted as the executor 00:23:09.880 --> 00:23:12.859 of his will, but she wouldn't marry him. In her 00:23:12.859 --> 00:23:15.539 view, marriage was a sacrament, a spiritual union 00:23:15.539 --> 00:23:18.579 ordained by God. If they weren't aligned on the 00:23:18.579 --> 00:23:21.359 eternal stuff, she couldn't do it. That is a 00:23:21.359 --> 00:23:24.079 level of integrity, or you could say stubbornness, 00:23:24.119 --> 00:23:26.460 that is hard to wrap your head around today, 00:23:26.599 --> 00:23:30.220 to give up what seems to be... true love for 00:23:30.220 --> 00:23:32.480 a theological principle. It's the concept of 00:23:32.480 --> 00:23:35.559 renunciation made real. She genuinely believed 00:23:35.559 --> 00:23:37.740 that by giving up earthly happiness, she was 00:23:37.740 --> 00:23:40.380 keeping herself pure for something greater. But 00:23:40.380 --> 00:23:42.680 you feel the cost of that choice in her poetry. 00:23:42.900 --> 00:23:45.440 There is so much longing, so much grief for what 00:23:45.440 --> 00:23:47.380 might have been. It's not the poetry of someone 00:23:47.380 --> 00:23:49.440 who doesn't care. It's the poetry of someone 00:23:49.440 --> 00:23:51.779 who wants it desperately, but holds herself back. 00:23:52.019 --> 00:23:54.200 There's that famous painting by the symbolist 00:23:54.200 --> 00:23:57.119 Fernand Knopf, I Lock My Door Upon Myself. Yes, 00:23:57.200 --> 00:24:00.400 inspired by a line from her poem, Who Shall Deliver 00:24:00.400 --> 00:24:03.819 Me? That line, I lock my door upon myself, is 00:24:03.819 --> 00:24:06.140 essentially her motto. She controlled her world 00:24:06.140 --> 00:24:08.299 by shutting it out. And there was a third suitor, 00:24:08.319 --> 00:24:10.319 wasn't there? John Brett. Yes, another painter. 00:24:10.420 --> 00:24:12.480 He was very persistent, but she just shut him 00:24:12.480 --> 00:24:14.900 down completely. And her poem, No Thank You, 00:24:14.960 --> 00:24:17.460 John, is thought to be about him. It's hilariously, 00:24:17.519 --> 00:24:20.440 brutally blunt. I never said I loved you, John. 00:24:20.599 --> 00:24:22.900 Why will you tease me day by day? She doesn't 00:24:22.900 --> 00:24:25.279 pull any punches. None at all. I have no heart. 00:24:25.839 --> 00:24:27.579 Perhaps I have not, but then you're mad to take 00:24:27.579 --> 00:24:29.500 offense that I don't give you what I have not 00:24:29.500 --> 00:24:32.839 got. It's almost a modern breakup text. She wasn't 00:24:32.839 --> 00:24:35.240 afraid to be direct and final. Let's move to 00:24:35.240 --> 00:24:37.740 her later years. Because while she's writing 00:24:37.740 --> 00:24:40.839 these beautiful, melancholy poems and navigating 00:24:40.839 --> 00:24:44.160 these complex emotional decisions, her body is 00:24:44.160 --> 00:24:46.160 effectively attacking her. Her health was always 00:24:46.160 --> 00:24:48.859 fragile ever since that breakdown at 14. But 00:24:48.859 --> 00:24:51.720 in 1872, she was diagnosed with Graves' disease. 00:24:52.329 --> 00:24:54.509 It's a serious autoimmune disorder affecting 00:24:54.509 --> 00:24:57.049 the thyroid. And in the 19th century, the treatment 00:24:57.049 --> 00:25:00.250 for that was? Basically nothing effective. It 00:25:00.250 --> 00:25:02.890 was a terrible ordeal. It caused her eyes to 00:25:02.890 --> 00:25:05.329 protrude, it darkened her skin, it made her hair 00:25:05.329 --> 00:25:07.690 fall out, and it caused heart palpitations and 00:25:07.690 --> 00:25:10.930 extreme fatigue. It was disfiguring and exhausting, 00:25:11.210 --> 00:25:13.490 and she had a near -fatal crisis with it that 00:25:13.490 --> 00:25:15.990 left her an invalid for years. And that wasn't 00:25:15.990 --> 00:25:19.289 the end of it. No. Later, in 1893, she developed 00:25:19.289 --> 00:25:21.470 breast cancer. She really went through the wringer 00:25:21.470 --> 00:25:23.890 physically. She underwent a mastectomy, which 00:25:23.890 --> 00:25:27.269 was a brutal, agonizing surgery in 1893 without 00:25:27.269 --> 00:25:30.549 modern anesthetic or aftercare. The cancer returned, 00:25:30.750 --> 00:25:33.690 and she eventually died in December 1894. But 00:25:33.690 --> 00:25:35.509 before she died, she wrote quite a bit about 00:25:35.509 --> 00:25:38.369 death. And her attitude wasn't one of fear. It 00:25:38.369 --> 00:25:41.430 was almost a kind of coolness. Indifference is 00:25:41.430 --> 00:25:43.529 a good word for it. Look at her most famous poem 00:25:43.529 --> 00:25:46.769 on the subject, Song. It starts, When I am dead, 00:25:46.789 --> 00:25:49.769 my dearest, sing no sad songs for me. Plant thou 00:25:49.769 --> 00:25:52.829 no roses at my head, nor shady cypress tree. 00:25:53.009 --> 00:25:55.869 She tells her lover not to mourn. She says, Just 00:25:55.869 --> 00:25:58.990 let me be. And if thou wilt, remember, and if 00:25:58.990 --> 00:26:02.220 thou wilt, forget. It's so strikingly modern. 00:26:02.420 --> 00:26:05.200 She's rejecting the entire Victorian obsession 00:26:05.200 --> 00:26:08.720 with elaborate mourning rituals, the black crepe, 00:26:08.740 --> 00:26:11.380 the weeping, the monumental funerals. What do 00:26:11.380 --> 00:26:12.880 you think she's saying there? She's saying, I'll 00:26:12.880 --> 00:26:14.859 be in the twilight. I'll be dreaming. I won't 00:26:14.859 --> 00:26:16.500 know if you're crying or not. Your grief is for 00:26:16.500 --> 00:26:18.920 you, not for me. It doesn't matter. It's a very 00:26:18.920 --> 00:26:21.400 stoic, almost comforting view of the afterlife 00:26:21.400 --> 00:26:25.500 as a place of quiet rest, not fire and brimstone 00:26:25.500 --> 00:26:28.630 judgment. Speaking of funerals and graves, we 00:26:28.630 --> 00:26:30.650 cannot end this deep dive without talking about 00:26:30.650 --> 00:26:33.390 the Highgate Cemetery incident. Because this 00:26:33.390 --> 00:26:36.650 story is. It's like something Edgar Allan Poe 00:26:36.650 --> 00:26:38.329 would have written, but it actually happened 00:26:38.329 --> 00:26:40.809 to her family. It is the ultimate gothic horror 00:26:40.809 --> 00:26:43.890 story of the London literary scene. So Christina 00:26:43.890 --> 00:26:46.609 is buried in the Rossetti family grave in Highgate 00:26:46.609 --> 00:26:49.250 Cemetery, but that grave was already infamous 00:26:49.250 --> 00:26:52.009 long before she was laid to rest there. Because 00:26:52.009 --> 00:26:54.910 of Elizabeth Siddle, Dante Gabriel's wife? Exactly. 00:26:55.460 --> 00:26:58.119 When Elizabeth died of a laudanum overdose in 00:26:58.119 --> 00:27:00.700 1862, the same year Goblin Market was published, 00:27:01.259 --> 00:27:04.640 Dante was overcome with grief and guilt. He felt 00:27:04.640 --> 00:27:06.519 he had neglected her for his art and his other 00:27:06.519 --> 00:27:09.019 affairs. So he makes this grand dramatic gesture. 00:27:09.299 --> 00:27:12.279 The grandest. At the funeral, just before the 00:27:12.279 --> 00:27:14.440 coffin was sealed, he took the only manuscript 00:27:14.440 --> 00:27:16.839 of his unpublished poems, his life's work up 00:27:16.839 --> 00:27:19.200 to that point, and he slid the book into her 00:27:19.200 --> 00:27:21.400 coffin, tucking it into her famous red hair. 00:27:21.920 --> 00:27:24.160 He buried his art with his muse. I have given 00:27:24.160 --> 00:27:26.140 everything to the grave. It's very dramatic. 00:27:26.359 --> 00:27:28.980 Very. It was the ultimate romantic gesture. But 00:27:28.980 --> 00:27:32.700 fast forward seven years to 1869. Dante is now 00:27:32.700 --> 00:27:34.859 more famous, but his eyesight is failing. He 00:27:34.859 --> 00:27:36.920 can't paint as much. And his friends are urging 00:27:36.920 --> 00:27:39.779 him to publish a new book of poetry. And he realizes 00:27:39.779 --> 00:27:42.559 the only copies of his best early poems are decomposing 00:27:42.559 --> 00:27:44.880 six feet under in Highgate Cemetery. Oh, no. 00:27:45.319 --> 00:27:48.079 I know what's coming. I still hate it every time 00:27:48.079 --> 00:27:50.640 I hear it. He authorizes the exhumation. He gets 00:27:50.640 --> 00:27:52.960 permission from the. home secretary. In the dead 00:27:52.960 --> 00:27:55.259 of night, with a fire lit beside the grave to 00:27:55.259 --> 00:27:58.240 ward off noxious fumes, a group of men dig up 00:27:58.240 --> 00:28:00.740 his wife to retrieve a book of poems. That is 00:28:00.740 --> 00:28:04.599 just monstrous. It is profoundly macabre. Dante 00:28:04.599 --> 00:28:06.640 couldn't bring himself to go. He sat in a friend's 00:28:06.640 --> 00:28:09.940 house waiting. But the manuscript was retrieved. 00:28:10.299 --> 00:28:12.940 According to eyewitnesses, Seidel's body was 00:28:12.940 --> 00:28:15.440 remarkably preserved and her red hair had continued 00:28:15.440 --> 00:28:18.240 to grow, filling the coffin. The book was taken 00:28:18.240 --> 00:28:21.150 out. disinfected and published and christina 00:28:21.150 --> 00:28:23.130 knew about this the whole family knew the whole 00:28:23.130 --> 00:28:26.490 family knew it was a dark cloud over them christina 00:28:26.490 --> 00:28:29.089 with her profound sense of the sacred and the 00:28:29.089 --> 00:28:32.470 profane must have been horrified she knew her 00:28:32.470 --> 00:28:34.910 brother had desecrated his wife's grave for the 00:28:34.910 --> 00:28:37.250 sake of his career and then she had to be buried 00:28:37.250 --> 00:28:40.509 in that same plot eventually yes it really highlights 00:28:40.509 --> 00:28:42.690 the fundamental difference between them dante 00:28:42.690 --> 00:28:45.450 sacrificed other people even the dead for his 00:28:45.450 --> 00:28:48.859 art christina sacrificed herself her for her 00:28:48.859 --> 00:28:51.619 faith. She is buried in that same grave, but 00:28:51.619 --> 00:28:54.480 her legacy is completely untainted by that kind 00:28:54.480 --> 00:28:57.539 of monstrous selfishness. They had a very powerful 00:28:57.539 --> 00:29:00.019 distinction to make. But despite all this darkness, 00:29:00.160 --> 00:29:03.019 the exhumation, the illness, the constant renunciation, 00:29:03.460 --> 00:29:06.680 her public legacy is surprisingly bright. I mean 00:29:06.680 --> 00:29:08.380 that literally. We're talking about Christmas. 00:29:08.460 --> 00:29:10.700 We are. If you go to a church service or even 00:29:10.700 --> 00:29:13.039 just a shopping mall in December, you will hear 00:29:13.039 --> 00:29:15.420 Christina Rossetti. She wrote the poem In the 00:29:15.420 --> 00:29:17.819 Bleak Midwinter. I had no idea that was her. 00:29:17.920 --> 00:29:20.440 I've seen that every year. It was published posthumously. 00:29:20.579 --> 00:29:23.039 The composer Gustav Holst set it to music in 00:29:23.039 --> 00:29:25.740 1906. And later, another composer, Harold Dark, 00:29:25.880 --> 00:29:28.900 did a version. It's consistently voted the best 00:29:28.900 --> 00:29:31.019 Christmas carol of all time by choir masters 00:29:31.019 --> 00:29:32.779 and experts. And there's another one too, right? 00:29:32.940 --> 00:29:35.519 Love came down at Christmas. Another staple. 00:29:35.759 --> 00:29:38.339 So the woman who wrote about goblin fruit and 00:29:38.339 --> 00:29:41.339 spiritual self -flagellation also scripted the 00:29:41.339 --> 00:29:43.839 coziest, most beloved moments of the holiday 00:29:43.839 --> 00:29:46.400 season. Contradictions just keep piling up. It 00:29:46.400 --> 00:29:48.519 shows her incredible range. She could do this. 00:29:48.559 --> 00:29:51.539 Simple, pure, perfect, devotional lyric just 00:29:51.539 --> 00:29:53.700 as well as the complex, knotted psychological 00:29:53.700 --> 00:29:57.480 drama. And In the Bleak Midwinter is actually 00:29:57.480 --> 00:30:00.819 a profound piece of theology. It contrasts the 00:30:00.819 --> 00:30:03.440 majesty of God with the humble, freezing reality 00:30:03.440 --> 00:30:06.940 of the stable. Earth stood hard as iron, water 00:30:06.940 --> 00:30:09.819 like a stone. It's beautiful and real. And her 00:30:09.819 --> 00:30:12.319 influence didn't stop in the church. The modernists 00:30:12.319 --> 00:30:15.039 who came after, they respected her. They did, 00:30:15.220 --> 00:30:17.859 which is rare. Usually the modernist people like 00:30:17.859 --> 00:30:21.099 T .S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf despised the Victorians. 00:30:21.140 --> 00:30:22.599 They thought they were stuffy and sentimental. 00:30:22.920 --> 00:30:25.079 But Virginia Woolf wrote about Rossetti with 00:30:25.079 --> 00:30:27.720 real respect. She saw that Rossetti wasn't just 00:30:27.720 --> 00:30:30.240 spilling her emotions on the page. She was a 00:30:30.240 --> 00:30:32.819 master craftsman. She cut away everything unnecessary, 00:30:33.099 --> 00:30:36.960 creating these hard gem -like poems. The poet 00:30:36.960 --> 00:30:39.420 Philip Larkin was a huge admirer, too. And we 00:30:39.420 --> 00:30:41.319 found some bizarrely contentious... Temporary 00:30:41.319 --> 00:30:43.099 pop culture connections when we were researching 00:30:43.099 --> 00:30:46.240 this. Very weird ones. J .K. Rowling. The title 00:30:46.240 --> 00:30:48.259 of her first crime novel, The Cuckoo's Calling, 00:30:48.460 --> 00:30:51.200 is a direct quote from Rossetti's poem, A Dirge. 00:30:51.279 --> 00:30:53.900 And the Beatles? Is there a Beatles connection? 00:30:54.579 --> 00:30:57.619 Indirectly via Yoko Ono, her song Who Has Seen 00:30:57.619 --> 00:31:00.380 the Wind from her 1970 album Plastic Ono Band. 00:31:00.519 --> 00:31:03.259 The lyrics are almost verbatim from Rossetti's 00:31:03.259 --> 00:31:05.579 children's poem of the same name. That's amazing. 00:31:05.779 --> 00:31:08.039 And Bear McCreary, the composer who does the 00:31:08.039 --> 00:31:10.440 music for huge shows like The Walking Dead and 00:31:10.440 --> 00:31:13.240 video games like God of War. He composed a beautiful 00:31:13.240 --> 00:31:16.339 choral piece based on her poem song When I Am 00:31:16.339 --> 00:31:19.710 Dead, My Dearest. Her work is just, it's everywhere. 00:31:19.809 --> 00:31:21.470 It's in the hymnals. It's in the universities. 00:31:21.509 --> 00:31:23.549 It's in the pop charts. It's in detective novels. 00:31:23.789 --> 00:31:26.390 One last fun fact to humanize her completely. 00:31:26.970 --> 00:31:29.410 We think of her as this ethereal spirit, this 00:31:29.410 --> 00:31:32.369 saintly, otherworldly figure. But she was also, 00:31:32.549 --> 00:31:35.549 well, a nerd. She was a stamp collector. Get 00:31:35.549 --> 00:31:38.470 out. Seriously. A serious philatelist. She started 00:31:38.470 --> 00:31:41.809 collecting stamps in 1847. The first adhesive 00:31:41.809 --> 00:31:44.450 postage stamp, the Penny Black, was only issued 00:31:44.450 --> 00:31:47.769 in 1840. So she was a very early adopter of this 00:31:47.769 --> 00:31:50.470 new hobby. That is fantastic. I love that detail. 00:31:50.670 --> 00:31:54.069 It's such a mundane, earthly, orderly hobby for 00:31:54.069 --> 00:31:56.740 someone with such a tumultuous inner world. The 00:31:56.740 --> 00:31:58.400 sources say she wrote letters to her brothers, 00:31:58.559 --> 00:32:00.480 asking them to save stamps for her from their 00:32:00.480 --> 00:32:03.180 travels. It makes her so real. It reminds you 00:32:03.180 --> 00:32:05.180 she was a person sitting in a room, maybe a little 00:32:05.180 --> 00:32:07.599 bored, carefully sticking stamps in a book while 00:32:07.599 --> 00:32:09.359 also thinking about the vastness of eternity. 00:32:09.680 --> 00:32:12.000 It grounds her. So if we have to summarize the 00:32:12.000 --> 00:32:14.240 Rossetti paradox, what is it? She's a contradiction 00:32:14.240 --> 00:32:17.700 in every possible way. She is. She's the model 00:32:17.700 --> 00:32:20.359 who critiqued the artist's gaze. The passionate 00:32:20.359 --> 00:32:22.579 romantic who rejected marriage for religion. 00:32:23.000 --> 00:32:26.059 The quiet recluse who engaged directly with the 00:32:26.059 --> 00:32:28.839 grimmest social problems of her city. It feels 00:32:28.839 --> 00:32:31.480 like her power, her entire creative engine, came 00:32:31.480 --> 00:32:33.920 from that one word we used earlier, refusal. 00:32:34.200 --> 00:32:37.799 I think so. In a world that was shouting, her 00:32:37.799 --> 00:32:40.440 brother, the critics, the industrial revolution, 00:32:40.720 --> 00:32:44.220 she found her power in silence, in saying no. 00:32:44.589 --> 00:32:47.309 She built a fortress around her soul. And by 00:32:47.309 --> 00:32:50.190 locking the door upon herself, she actually preserved 00:32:50.190 --> 00:32:52.630 her genius. She didn't burn out in a blaze of 00:32:52.630 --> 00:32:55.470 glory like her brother. She burned inward, like 00:32:55.470 --> 00:32:57.670 a star collapsing into itself. And the result 00:32:57.670 --> 00:32:59.789 of that collapse, the light it gives off, is 00:32:59.789 --> 00:33:02.930 Goblin Market. The result is Goblin Market. So 00:33:02.930 --> 00:33:05.109 that is our challenge to you, the listener. Go 00:33:05.109 --> 00:33:07.430 read it, but don't read it as a sweet nursery 00:33:07.430 --> 00:33:10.009 rhyme. Read it as the controlled explosion of 00:33:10.009 --> 00:33:12.470 a repressed genius who saw everything and said 00:33:12.470 --> 00:33:14.650 almost nothing. Until she picked up her pen. 00:33:15.029 --> 00:33:17.369 It's a wild, unforgettable ride. Thanks for diving 00:33:17.369 --> 00:33:18.869 deep with us. We'll see you on the next one. 00:33:18.950 --> 00:33:19.390 Goodbye everyone.