{"id":1314,"date":"2016-11-06T19:05:23","date_gmt":"2016-11-06T19:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=1314"},"modified":"2016-11-06T19:05:23","modified_gmt":"2016-11-06T19:05:23","slug":"is-elizabeth-siddal-the-femme-fatale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2016\/11\/06\/is-elizabeth-siddal-the-femme-fatale\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Elizabeth Siddal the Femme Fatale?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps the last thing that comes to mind when reading Christina Rossetti’s poem The Goblin Market<\/em>\u00a0is the\u00a0concept of the femme fatale. However,\u00a0there are a few instances in the poem where Lizzie, the older sister, seems to possess some femme fatale-like qualities. In this post, I’ll examine\u00a0how Rossetti’s definition of the femme fatale in her poem In an Artist’s Studio<\/em>\u00a0can be applied to\u00a0Lizzie in\u00a0The Goblin Market<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The term “femme fatale” was shaped\u00a0by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the mid 19th century. Members of the group included artists like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who depicted a self-absorbed and beautiful femme fatale in his painting Lady Lilith<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>among others. <\/em>And although Christina, Dante’s sister, was never officially a member of the Brotherhood, she played a crucial role within the group. Her poem\u00a0In an Artist’s Studio<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>was\u00a0<\/em>written in 1856. The poem references\u00a0Dante’s art stuido and the many portraits of Elizabeth Siddal, the model for most of Dante’s work at the time.<\/p>\n

In the poem, Rossetti notes how\u00a0“one face looks out from all [Dante’s]\u00a0canvases,” referring to the many portraits of Elizabeth Siddal. Through Dante’s paintings, Rossetti explains, Elizabeth can be depicted as anything, from “a queen in opal or ruby dress” to “a saint [or] an angel.” Now, the femme fatale, as defined on Merriam-Webster, is an attractive woman who causes trouble for the men who become involved with her. Dante spends all of his time and energy painting this one woman with “all her loveliness,” so Elizabeth must be at least somewhat attractive. Another\u00a0line from Rossetti’s poem also hints that Dante\u00a0is obsessed with Elizabeth: “he feeds upon her face by day and night.” The word ‘feed’ suggests\u00a0that Elizabeth is Dante’s sustenance, in which case he\u00a0physically cannot live without her and her beauty. At the end of the poem, Rossetti adds: “Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim; \/ Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright; \/ Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.” Rossetti explicitly states that “she”\u00a0never waits for the man sorrowfully, but she did when he had hope, when she was\u00a0in the man’s dream.\u00a0This description precisely defines\u00a0a female fatale, a beautiful woman who appears\u00a0in a man’s dream but not in reality–at least, not for long periods of time.<\/p>\n

Now, what if I\u00a0told you\u00a0Elizabeth Siddal’s nickname was Lizzie? Because it was. In fact, many articles refer to her as Lizzie, not Elizabeth.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0The Goblin Market<\/em>, Lizzie isn’t the traditional femme fatale. The poem states that her sister has golden curls, so presumably Lizzie does too, an attractive feature for a young woman. Similar to\u00a0the face in the paintings, though, she doesn’t seek to cause trouble. However, when the goblins attack Lizzie, tearing her gown, soiling her stockings, stomping on her feet and trying to make her eat the fruit, she resists, ultimately annoying the goblins and causing them to give up instead of submitting to them like another more submissive woman might.<\/p>\n

Are both of Rossetti’s characters modeled after\u00a0Elizabeth Siddal? Perhaps, but more importantly, her definition of the femme fatale in her poem In an Artist’s Studio<\/em>\u00a0can also be applied to\u00a0Lizzie in\u00a0The Goblin Market<\/em>, connecting the two poems.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps the last thing that comes to mind when reading Christina Rossetti’s poem The Goblin Market\u00a0is the\u00a0concept of the femme fatale. However,\u00a0there are a few instances in the poem where Lizzie, the older sister, seems to possess some femme fatale-like qualities. In this post, I’ll examine\u00a0how Rossetti’s definition of the femme fatale in her poem … Continue reading Is Elizabeth Siddal the Femme Fatale?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3295,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111423],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}