Gender Issues: Day 1

"Nothing but passion wrings a tear."
Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "Jenny" (1848, 1858-69; 1870)

Points of Reflection

"Eveline's Visitant"

1. does this obviously fantastic and magical tale suggest anything about real relations between the sexes?

2. does this story exhibit a particular moral code, and is it gendered or equally applicable to both male and female characters? Can we determine what constitutes "right" and "wrong" action within the confines of the tale?

3. why might some of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's contemporaries have considered such stories immoral?

"Jenny"

1. this poem was first written in 1848, modified in the late 50s and 60s, and finally published in 1870. What might have been the reaction to the poem had it been made public in the late 40s, and how might this response have differed from 1870? (Consider your notes on the Victorian "Woman Question" from the first couple weeks of class.)

2. look at the Norton Anthology's entry on Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and do a quick Google search about him. What do the details of his life add to your understanding of this poem?

3. how do the meter and rhyme (pairs couplets of iambic tetrameter) contribute to the tone of this poem and the narrator's voice?

4. what do the various adjectives and metaphors used to describe Jenny in the first stanza alone tell us about the narrator's attitude towards this woman of the night?

5. early on, the narrator looks at Jenny and thinks, "You know now what a book you seem, / Half-read by lightning in a dream!" Does the narrator appear to correctly "read" his companion?

6. in the middle of the poem, the narrator considers the possible results of actually articulating aloud his thoughts about Jenny in her presence. What does he conclude about the capacity of Jenny's mind?

7. locate the following passages and wrestle with their meaning:

Passage A

It was a careless life I led
When rooms like this were scarce so strange
Not long ago. What breeds the change, --
The many aims or the few years?
Because to-night it all appears
Something I do not know again.

Passage B

And do not let me think of you,
Lest shame of yours suffice for two.

Passage C

Of the same lump (as it is said)
For honour and dishonour made
Two sister vessels. Here is one.

It makes a goblin of the sun."

Passage D

If but a woman's heart might see
Such erring heart unerringly
For once! But that can never be.

Passage E

Yet, Jenny, looking long at you,
The woman almost fades from view.
A cipher of man's changeless sum
Of lust, past, present, and to come,
Is left. A riddle that one shrinks
To challenge from the scornful sphinx.
Like a toad within a stone
Seated while Time crumbles on

"Mirror of Venus" (1870)
Edward Burne Jones

Paul Marchbanks
marchban@email.unc.edu