The image of women as projected by The Pre-Raphaelites

Abstract

The fascination with the female image was not a novelty to the nineteenth century, yet we can identify a decided 'obsession' with the female. In the case of Victorian art and perhaps slightly less in literature, we have to acknowledge the fact that we are dealing with an output that has been created exclusively by and for men. In the course of this dissertation I will attempt to examine the Victorian fascination with the Andromeda myth, which is dealt with in the first chapter. In most Victorian representations linked to the Andromeda myth one discovers fear, envy, curiosity, unease, as well as a conservative effort to classify women as docile Andromedas and men as tough and vigorous Perseuses. The second chapter deals with women who, in my opinion, contributed towards the images of the ''Virgin" and that of "Magdalen". This chapter demonstrates the different projections of the female, that is from virgin to whore. Various! themes of the period which dealt mostly with women from Tennyson's poetry such as, for example The Lady of Shalott and Mariana, Keats' Madeline and Shakespeare's Isabella are considered in chapter three while chapter four will also be dedicated to one of Morris's poems which is an example of the Pre-Raphaelites' adoption of medieval themes. Morris's Defence of Guenevere tends to portray a different image of the feminine from that which is portrayed by Malory' s Marte D'Arthur. Chapter five examines the image of the "Pale Ladies of Death". Such an idea. as we shall see, was powerfully expressed in both painting and poetry The 'feminine' can also be seen as a renegotiating power in Victorian culture. I This is further affirmed by the popularity of paintings representing women endowed with supernatural powers of the body and mind. These sorceresses depicted in Victorian art stand for the increasing empowerment of women from the 1860s onward. These femmes fatales will be taken into account in chapter six where I shall be analyzing three poems by Algemon C. Swinburne which will ultimately bring out the author's obsession with the female as an evil enchantress. It is this visual and verbal representation, that was a potent force of cultural definition, which I shall attempt to analyse and which will finally lead towards a better understanding of the predominant Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian male consciousness.