Christina Rossetti Part I

Christina Rossetti was born in London in 1830 and died in 1894.
Her family were of Italian origin.   Her father was a political exile from Italy and the family was artistic. Her brother was the poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti who was a member of the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood. The family was not well off, but at first they lived in modest middle class comfort. Her father was a teacher at Kings College and Christina was given a good education at home. Then her father became ill and had to resign his job, and suffered from poor health and depression.
Her mother and sister had to teach, to provide for the family. Maria, the sister became a live in Governess, and her mother set up a school.
Christina became more isolated at home. She feared that she would have to become a governess, too. Like the Bronte sisters, she was shy and devoted to her family. She began to suffer health problems and depression, but she was very interested in her brother’s artistic work and she herself wanted to be a writer. She wrote poems and stories from childhood. She began to have her poems published form the age of 18.
She found consolation for the difficulties of her life, in religion. She was a devout Anglo Catholic, although she did suffer from religious crises during her life. She led a sheltered life, mixing with some of her brother’s friends but also maintaining friendships by letter. Her work is often considered to be as good as Elizabeth Barrett Browning... and she is felt to be one of the most gifted women poets of the Victorian era.
In the 20th century, critics have reevaluated it, looking for feminist and Freudian themes in her poems. She was a lively child, with passionate emotions, but grew more guarded and somewhat repressed. She had a breakdown in 1845, and some writers have believed that it might have been triggered by family problems- some have even theorised about a possible incestuous advance from her father. Other biographers have noted that by giving her a “health problem”,  she was now excused from having to work outside the home.
However she did in later life have several health issues that were clearly of physical origin and not the vague "illness and delicacy" that afflicted some Victorian women.  She had Graves Disease, suffered from lung weakness  that was feared to be TB, and in the end died of cancer.

 It is clear that she suffered from a strong sense of sinfulness. Her depression and ill health meant she had a narrow life. Her faith was important to her, but all the same, she felt a conflict between the restrictions of a generally conservative religious belief, the “propriety” expected of a middle class young lady, with her own artistic ambitions and desire for success in her work and her taking pride in her poetry. These problems of her over scrupulous nature and her inner conflicts shows in a novella called “Maude” which she wrote at the age of 20 but which was not published till after her death.