The Pre-Raphaelite artists sought to create beauty in all things and have it present in every man\u2019s life. Ruskin saw art as the Divine or godly expressing itself through artists, so beauty was \u201cvital to man\u2019s private existence\u201d (Altick, 282). The Victorian artists even believed that the presence of beauty in society would help heal the moral decay of their society. The Pre-Raphaelite artists sought to make art that was \u201cfreshly observed nature transferred to canvas\u201d (Altick, 288) primarily by painting ethereal women. This idea seems to echo William Rathbone Greg\u2019s idea that women\u2019s occupation should be \u201ccompleting, sweetening, and embellishing the existence of others\u201d (Greg, 158). The art seen during this period certainly seeks to use the female form for its beauty.<\/p>\n
Christina Rossetti\u2019s poem encapsulates this idea from the perspective of a woman and a model, but also an artist in her own right. She describes a \u201cnameless girl\u201d (Rossetti) who is valued for her beauty, not for her personhood, distinctly \u201cNot as she is, but as she fills his dreams\u201d (Rossetti). Christina Rossetti writes on how the unknown girl is in every painting \u201ca saint, an angel\u201d (Rossetti) truly anything other than herself. This creates an interesting dichotomy in how women are viewed in the Victorian mindset as both subhuman and superhuman. On one hand, women are effectively lesser, considered incapable of intelligent decision-making and good for childrearing. The upholders of the heterosexual family and not much else. However, they are simultaneously the ethereal muses and the symbols of precious Victorian beauty. Yet in neither of these analyses are women allowed to exist outside of male need and male ideology. At every turn, non-working-class women were meant to be the perfect mother and wife, yet innocent and virginal, beautiful and accomplished but not powerful. Madonna and Aphrodite in a single person who is not allowed agency or independence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Pre-Raphaelite artists sought to create beauty in all things and have it present in every man\u2019s life. Ruskin saw art as the Divine or godly expressing itself through artists, so beauty was \u201cvital to man\u2019s private existence\u201d (Altick, 282). The Victorian artists even believed that the presence of beauty in society would help heal … Continue reading Angels, Saints, Madonnas, and Women<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4457,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135983],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2021"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758","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\/4457"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}