Moving from Melancholy: The Creative Poetics of Christina Rossett's Maude

Abstract

This thesis illuminates the role of Tractarian reserve and ritualism in subverting the negative effects of melancholy in Christina Rossettis novella, Maude (1850). Building on previous studies of Tractarian poetics, Rossettis titular main protagonist is shown to use religion and ritualism in order to transcend her socially induced melancholy. The Introduction defines melancholy utilizing David G. Riedes theoretical reading of melancholy in nineteenth-century English poetry as the product of a divided self resulting from social pressures fragmenting an otherwise infinite interiority. The first chapter concerns the nature of melancholy specific to Maude, how it results from the pressures to bend her artistic ambitions to Victorian societys conventions on gender, class, and religious conventions. Maude is read as asserting or signaling her melancholy in order to counter the social pressures that surround her and to protect her identity as a poet from the encroaching pressures of becoming an Angel in the House or an Anglican nun. The second chapter focuses on the significance of the Book of Ecclesiastes in Maudes poetics, discussing how she appropriates both the melancholy and religious contemplation of this text to bring out a creative aesthetic between art and religion. Ecclesiastes is shown to be a melancholic text that, at the same time, justifies artistic productivity. The third chapter discusses Rossettis Tractarian religio-literary influences in more detail by examining the ways in which they shaped and promoted her melancholic and artistic impulses. Utilizing biographical details and previous studies on the Tractarian poetics outlined by John Keble and other poets of the Oxford Movement, Maude is read as an attempt to reconcile the vanity of melancholic poetry and the main characters sense of religious decorum. Thus, Maude is interpreted as rejecting the roles of the Angel in the House and the Anglican nun, and, instead, finding a way of accommodating her art within her religious convictions, as opposed to forcing herself to reject outright either her poetry or her beliefs. Ultimately, Maude is understood as adopting the Tractarian poetics of reserve in order to work against the melancholy in a movement outward, a maneuver described by Isobel Armstrong in her version of the Victorian expressive theory of poetry, effectively using both her religion and her melancholy to realize her art. This movement outward is illustrated through close readings of Maudes poetry, illuminating Rossettis own productive dialectic between melancholy and the Tractarian poetics of reserve.