In Christina Rossetti\u2019s poems \u201cIn an Artist\u2019s Studio\u201d and \u201cGoblin Market,\u201d men are depicted as thieves or consumers of women\u2019s physical beauty. Drained of this beauty, the women in these poems face two different, but similarly undesirable, fates: The model ceases to exist outside the artist\u2019s \u201cdream\u201d and Jeanie dies a single woman\u2014a fate Laura narrowly manages to escape as well (\u201cArtist\u201d 14).<\/p>\n
The speaker of \u201cIn an Artist\u2019s Studio\u201d explicitly charges the male artist with \u201cfeed[ing] upon her face by day and night\u201d (9). The phrase \u201cfeeds upon\u201d suggests that the model\u2019s beauty is something he can consume in order to sustain himself. Indeed, as an artist he makes his living off of the aesthetic objects he creates through his art. Therefore, by capturing or \u201cfeed[ing]\u201d off the model\u2019s beauty and using it for his art, the artist metaphorically consumes her body for his own gain. The speaker argues that the artist\u2019s repeated use of this particular model for multiple works reduces the model to an abstract ideal, an intangible \u201cdream\u201d (14). In the artist\u2019s paintings, the model appears \u201cfair\u201d and \u201cjoyful\u201d (11). Yet, the speaker informs us of the model\u2019s beauty in the paintings through negation: \u201cNot wan with wanting, not with sorrow dim;\/ Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright ;\/ Not as she is, but as she fills his dream\u201d (12-4). Though the artist\u2019s paintings continuously depict the model as an \u201cangel[ic]\u201d beauty, the speaker suggests that his image of the model is merely a fantasy or memory. He sees her \u201cnot as she is<\/em>, but was <\/em>when hope shone bright\u201d (13)[1]<\/a>. The tense shift in this line indicates an important temporal distance between the time the painting was created and the speaker\u2019s present viewing of the piece. Rather than concluding the poem with the artist\u2019s romanticized image of the model, the speaker leaves her reader with an image of a \u201cwan\u201d and depleted woman (12).<\/p>\n In \u201cGoblin Market,\u201d Jeanie and Laura\u2019s respective encounters with the goblin men result in a more literal loss or consumption of beauty. We learn from Lizzie\u2019s anxious memory that Jeanie\u2019s meeting with the goblin men led to her untimely death: \u201cShe thought of Jeanie in her grave,\/ Who should have been a bride;\/ But who for joys brides hope to have\/ Fell sick and died\/ In her gay prime\u201d (312-16). As we have seen in our study of Victorian art, the idealized image of a woman depicted her as a young, healthy, sensuous woman in her \u201cprime\u201d (316). Illness would mean a loss of this standard of beauty. Laura\u2019s loss of beauty is more overt. First, the goblin men take a \u201cprecious golden lock\u201d of her hair (126). Then, in the aftermath of her encounter, Laura\u2019s youthful beauty begins to fade: \u201cHer hair grew thin and grey;\/ She dwindled\u2026 To swift decay and burn\/ Her fire away\u201d (277-280). Just as the artist robbed the model of her beauty through his painting, so too do the goblin men (literally and figuratively) steal Lizzie and Laura\u2019s beauty.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Emphasis added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Christina Rossetti\u2019s poems \u201cIn an Artist\u2019s Studio\u201d and \u201cGoblin Market,\u201d men are depicted as thieves or consumers of women\u2019s physical beauty. Drained of this beauty, the women in these poems face two different, but similarly undesirable, fates: The model ceases to exist outside the artist\u2019s \u201cdream\u201d and Jeanie dies a single woman\u2014a fate Laura … Continue reading “He feeds upon her face by day and night”: Male Consumption of Feminine Beauty in Christina Rossetti’s Poems<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":510,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111380,108029],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-360-victorian-sexualities","category-spring-2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368","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\/510"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}