CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
Lesson 9.3 – Women Poets: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Emily
Dickinson
Overview:
In this lesson, we examine three female writers whose biographical
contexts and writing are quite different: Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, devotedly Christian, was raised in a Methodist family;
Christina Rossetti, the daughter of Italian Catholic parents, adhered
to Anglo-Catholicism in England; and Emily Dickinson, an American
poet, lived in the Puritan milieu of Amherst, Massachusetts. While
acknowledging their differences, we will also look for
commonalities among them as women writers who desired to
express and grapple with their Christian faith in the 19th century,
and era of increasing skepticism and secularization. Elizabeth
Barrett Browning elevates her romantic love for Robert Browning
to a level of spiritual, even divine, experience. Christina Rossetti
offers quiet, disciplined (almost monastic) devoutness. Emily
Dickinson, the most ambiguous, expresses both considerable doubt
and reassuring faith.
Emily Dickinson’s bedroom and
writing desk
Emily Dickinson Museum
Objectives:



To acknowledge the more widespread emergence, during the Victorian period, of female
authors who were publishing their work
To examine how female authors incorporate Christianity in their writing:
o Are they distinct from their male contemporaries (less skeptical, perhaps), or do
they share similar views?
o Do they present different subjects and themes (love, for example) in relation to
Christianity?
To consider the art of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which included Christina Rossetti’s
brother, Dante Gabriel. Many of their works depict biblical scenes, with Christina serving
as the model for images of the Virgin Mary.
Readings:
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Christina Rossetti
Emily Dickinson
Sonnets from the Portuguese
selected poems
selected poems
(see website below)
(inserted in the lesson)
(see website below)
Lesson 9.3 – Women Poets: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Dickinson
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
9.3.1. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
Biography: Elizabeth Barrett (later Browning, when she married
poet Robert Browning), lived the early years of her life in relative
seclusion in London. By the age of 14, following an illness that left
her lungs severely damaged, she became an invalid and remained
sheltered within her home, devoting herself to reading and writing
poetry. Elizabeth also experienced considerable grief after the
deaths of her beloved mother and two of her brothers. As well,
Elizabeth’s father would not permit her (or any of her siblings) to
socialize with members of the opposite sex or to marry. As her
biographers remark, during these years, Elizabeth “buried herself in
her bedsitting room at Wimpole Street, waiting to die.”
However, Elizabeth’s life did change. During these reclusive years, she was successfully
publishing her poetry, and her work caught the attention of poet Robert Browning, whose first
letter to her, in 1845, begins exuberantly with his praise: “I love your verses with all my heart, dear
Miss Barrett,—and this is no offhand complimentary letter that I shall write.” What followed was
twenty months of correspondence—574 deeply-felt love letters!—which culminated in their
decision to marry, secretly, in 1846, after which they immediately left for Italy, where they spent
the rest of their married life together. During their unconventional (written) courtship, Elizabeth
also recorded the progress of their love in 44 sonnets, which she presented to Robert as a gift when
they married. At Robert’s encouragement, she published the sequence; however, she disguised the
content, presenting it not as her own deeply personal emotions (still an inappropriate openness of
expression for women authors in the 19th century) but as translations of a Portuguese poet’s
sonnets.
bronze medallion of Robert Browning
Elizabeth and Roberts’ clasped hands (Casa Guidi, Florence)
Lesson 9.3 – Women Poets: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Dickinson
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
Readings:
Sonnets from the Portugese: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31015.
The sequence consists of 44 sonnets, but we will read only the following:
1, 3, 8, 10, 15, 16, 21, 22, 38, and 43.
Literary Analysis and Study Questions
The poems have been studied primarily within the sonnet tradition (which came to England
from Italy in the 16th century), particularly in relation to William Shakespeare’s sonnets, for
Elizabeth was deliberately demonstrating her knowledge of her great predecessor. The difference,
of course, is that Elizabeth inverts that tradition, in which a confident male lover addresses the
woman whom he seeks to attract, praising her abundantly as a means of triumphing over her coy
resistance. In contrast, Elizabeth’s sonnets are the first significant example in literary history of a
woman speaking back, expressing her love to a man, and we can see the distinctiveness of that
female voice: unlike 16th –century male sonneteers, the woman speaker, here, struggles to assert
confidence in her worthiness; different, too, is her desire to foreground her own emotions, rather
than profuse praise of her beloved; in form, too, we see greater fluidity in these sonnets
(enjambment and relaxed end rhymes) in contrast to technical mastery of the rigid sonnet form
that male poets had sought to acquire.
Our task, however, is to situate these sonnets in a religious context. We will read them
noting how they exemplify a spiritual love. As in John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding
Mourning,” Elizabeth’s poems elevate love above earthly, bodily concerns and redefine it as a
matter of the mind and soul. How does she accomplish that, in her diction, imagery, biblical
allusions, symbolism and tone? Why does she seek to elevate love in this manner? We see, initially,
how the speaker learns to replace her expectation of imminent death with acceptance of
unanticipated love. In doing so, she conceives of their love as akin to religious love for and from
God: it is unbidden, pure, constant, deep, unselfish, and requiring no reinforcement beyond itself.
Read the selected sonnets (listed above) in their sequence, observing how Elizabeth’s emotions and
confidence grow with time. In particular, ask yourself how Elizabeth’s religious faith plays a role in
her evolving acceptance of love.
1. Note the many religious words and images that Elizabeth uses: God, angels, chrism, gold,
purple, King, heart, soul, spirit, crown, pure, sanctify, white. What does each image suggest?
Are any symbolic? Can you find any additional religious images in the sonnets? Why are her
poems about secular love infiltrated with religious images?
Lesson 9.3 – Women Poets: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Dickinson
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
2. Identify the sonnets in which Elizabeth conceives of her life as existing behind walls, as if she
were residing as a nun in a convent. What is unusual about her treatment of that cloistered
space? Interestingly, unlike St. Teresa of Avila, in The Interior Castle, she negates the idea
that fullness of life and spirituality arises from a quiet, reclusive setting, stating instead (in
one of her letters) that her narrow space is a lifeless “crypt” (which Robert, in response,
renames as a “chapel”). Why does Elizabeth identify her “cell,” so to speak, in secular,
deathly terms rather than as a sacred place, in the tradition of monastic life, even though she
is a religious woman?
3. What “transfiguration” occurs in Sonnet 10? What biblical event (allusion) underpins the
description of her experience? What is symbolic about her images of bright light, burning,
flaming, and flashes?
4. How do Sonnet 16 and 22 evoke the image of a holy shield? (Remember St. Patrick’s “The
Deer’s Cry.”) What must Elizabeth and Robert shield themselves against?
In Sonnet 43, her most famous, Elizabeth arrives at her fullest, most confident statement of
love. Read the poem carefully, line by line, to identify the many metaphors—pointing both to
ordinary, daily life and extraordinary spiritual life—that she uses to express the amplitude
of her love. Is she really “counting” the ways in which her love manifests itself, or does the
sonnet suggest more forcefully that love—like God—exceeds all categorization? Consider
this passage from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Do you think she deliberately alludes to
it?
Ephesians 3: 18-19
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth
and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so
that you may be filled with the fullness of God.
Lesson 9.3 – Women Poets: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Dickinson
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
9.3.2. Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
Biography: Christina Georgina Rossetti, one of the most
important women poets writing in nineteenth-century
England, was youngest member of a remarkable family of
poets, artists, and intellectual critics. She was a beautiful
woman, as paintings of her, by her brother Dante
Gabrielle, reveal. She, like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, led
a very retiring life plagued by recurring illness. She
deeply religious, she refused to marry the man with whom
she was in love when she discovered that was not a
Christian. She was a devout member of the Anglican
Church, drawn, too, to the strand associated with
Catholicism, known as The Oxford Movement. She
practiced her religious faith with austerity, adhering to
seriousness of character, refusing to play games that
stimulated her love of winning, censoring herself from
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Portrait of Christina
reading antireligious elements of contemporary novels,
Rossetti
and objecting to nudity in painting. While relegating
herself to her home for most of her life, Christina worked for charities that sheltered unwed
mothers, and she was very involved in the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, for whom
she wrote several prose works, including Called to be Saints. Much of her poetry is deeply religious,
expressing, in particular, the tension she felt between desire and renunciation.
Readings:
“Up Hill”
“A Christmas Carol”
The text is inserted below.
The text is inserted below.
Lesson 9.3 – Women Poets: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Dickinson
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
“Up-Hill” (1858)
Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
Literary Analysis and Study Questions
At first glance, this is a simple poem, with a familiar setting and plain, monosyllabic words.
Literally, the poem recounts an arduous journey up hill, which requires some perseverance. The
speaker is anxious, wondering whether she will find an inn, or a resting place, at the end, when she
arrives in darkness. The question-answer format that Rossetti has chosen casts the poem as a
dialogue between the young traveler and, presumably, another more experienced journeyer, who
has travelled that way, knows the destination, and assures her of shelter at its end, where she will
be welcomed.
We could read the poem in these straightforward terms, content with this literal
interpretation, and then set it aside. However, is that enough? Does the poem invite us to look
more deeply, and to consider these simple features as symbolic of something more profound? If
so, what, particular aspects of the poem permit that kind of reading?
Lesson 9.3 – Women Poets: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Dickinson
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
Consider the following:
1. The poem is universalized, not particularized:
o What hill? From where to where? Who is making the journey? Why is it hard?
o The poem doesn’t directly answer these questions. (If it were just literal, surely we
would be told more.)
o Is then journey, then, one that applies to all of humanity? If so, what kind of journey
would that be?
2. Think about the speaker:
o Is she making the journey through life?
o Specifically, is she pursuing a Christian journey through life? If so, what are the
hardships, temptations, and sacrifices? Why is the road uphill? Why is it narrow?
(Think about the life of Christ as the archetypal Christian journey.)
o Does the biblical allusion cited below offer support for this interpretation? Can you
think of other passages from Scripture that refer to the Christian life as a “narrow”
path? (Look at John 10: 1-10, for example.)
3. Think about the destination:
o If this symbolic reading holds, why, then, is the speaker anxious? What is the
darkness? Why is the resting place out of sight? Why will she not have to knock on
the door?
4. Think about the respondent:
o Who is that person? Why does he or she have superior knowledge and confidence?
o Is the speaker, in contrast, someone whose soul, like that of a child, has not fully
matured into deep religious faith? What will ensure that growth?
5. Think about Rossetti’s form:
o Why is the real subject of the poem not presented directly? What is Rossetti’s
purpose in offering it indirectly, through symbol? (Does the reader delight in that
mystery, for example? Does the poem’s appeal broaden when the Christian meaning
is subtle rather than bold and didactic? )
o Why has Rossetti structured the content as a dialogue?
Lesson 9.3 – Women Poets: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Dickinson
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
Matthew 7:13-14
The Narrow and Wide Gates
Matthew 7:13-14
The Narrow and Wide Gates
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to
destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to
life, and only a few find it.
“A Christmas Carol”
In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty winds made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter,
Long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When he comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty
Jesus Christ.
Lesson 9.3 – Women Poets: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Dickinson
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
9.3.3. Christina Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Biography: Partly because of her shyness and partly because she was a woman, Christina Rossetti
was never completely part of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of artists who sought to
revive in 19th –century painting distinctly medieval subjects and stylistic qualities (found in art
prior to the work of Renaissance painter Raphael). However, Christina still had a rich and complex
relation to visual art. She wrote poems about members of the Brotherhood and their art, such as “In
an Artist’s Studio.” Additionally, her own work inspired illustrations by the artists, including the
three examples below. As well, she modeled for her brother Dante Gabriel, who drew and painted
her in both portraits and important religious pictures, such as, most famously The Girlhood of Mary
Virgin and The Annunciation, both shown below.
Illustration for Christina’s poem “A
Birthday”
Illustration for Christina’s poem “At
Home”
Illustration for Christina’s poem
“Goblin Market”
You can see more art here: http://faculty.pittstate.edu/~knichols/chris.html
Lesson 9.3 – Women Poets: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Dickinson
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
9.3.4. Questions for Blackboard Discussion
Look carefully at the two paintings below by Dante Gabrielle Rossetti (in which Christina poses as
Mary for both): The Girlhood of Mary Virgin and The Annunciation.
1. What does each painting tell us about Mary? What kind of person is she?
2. Does Dante Gabrielle successfully convey her purity as a virgin? If so, how?
3. Is he accurately portraying what we know about Mary from Scripture? Is so, what particular
biblical passages does he allude to?
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ecce Ancilla Domini
(The Annunciation) (1849-50)
Lesson 9.3 – Women Poets: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Dickinson
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
9.3.5. Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Biography: This is a photograph of Emily Dickinson’s bedroom, in her
family home in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, where she lived
almost all of her life. She chose to live reclusively, rarely leaving the
house, except to enjoy the garden and her brother’s family living in the
neighbouring house. Her contemplative existence, like Elizabeth
Barrett’s (before marriage) and Christina Rosssetti’s, was confined
primarily to her room, where she wrote poetry voluminously at this
desk. Very few of her poems were published during her lifetime; most
of them remained hidden, rolled up and tied in bunches in her dresser
drawers, just behind this desk. Because the poems were untitled by
Dickinson, her editors, in compiling them after her death, attached a
number to each one; alternatively, the first line of each poem can be
used as its title.
Readings: Part 1
465 (“I heard a Fly buzz—when I died— ”) (1896)
712 (“Because I could not stop for Death”) (1890)
These poems are posted at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12242.
Literary Analysis and Study Questions
Death is a prevalent subject for Emily
Dickinson. We feel her intense desire to know
death intimately, perhaps because to know
something deeply—to grapple with it—is to
diminish its fearfulness (think of John
Donne’s “Death, be not proud”). From her
family home on Pleasant Street, located near
the town cemetery, where she resided in the
early years of her life, Dickinson could not
have ignored the frequent burials that later
provided powerful imagery for her poems.
Dickinson Homestead
Lesson 9.3 – Women Poets: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Dickinson
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
In the first poem, the setting is a death-bed scene. We enter the consciousness of a
person passing from life into death. She does not speak; instead, we witness the random
perceptions and sensations of her slowly dissolving consciousness. The poem presents the
physical, bodily experience of death without any firm conviction (or even intimation) of
faith in a Christian afterlife. In contrast, the second poem, recounts the speaker’s
resistance—in life—to Death’s courtly arrival, but affirms—from the afterlife—the
unanticipated certainty, even glory, of eternity. The two poems, then, are quite different.
How could the same poet both deny and affirm religious faith?
465 (“I heard a Fly buzz—when I died— ”)
Read each stanza carefully and consider the following poetic elements:
1. What narrative “progression” occurs from stanza to stanza? (What stages towards
death unfold?)
2. What images does Dickinson use in each stanza?
3. What is the significance of the fly and its buzz? One thinks of this creature as
mundane, dirty, undignified, and annoying. Why has Dickinson included it at this
solemn, dignified moment?
4. What is odd about the onlookers? Do they grieve? Do they have faith? Whose visit do
they await?
5. Dickinson uses language very suggestively to add richness to the poem:
 What similes can you find?
 Where is metonymy used? Why? (Hint: consider the “eyes”)
 Where is synesthesia used? Is it effective? (Hint: consider “blue buzz”)
 Is the word “will” a pun?
 Does it refer to the written legal document?
 The will of God that she die?
 The speaker’s will to struggle against death?
Lesson 9.3 – Women Poets: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Dickinson
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
Now, step back from these details and consider the poem’s overall meaning:
6. Is this a Christian poem? Why or why not?
 Does the poem offer assurance of a departing soul that will dwell eternally
with God?
 Instead, is its focus solely the physical process of bodily decay, which meets an
implacable end: “I could not see to see.” Is it a poem that lacks spiritual
“vision”?
712 (“Because I could not stop for Death”)
Read the stanzas sequentially and consider the following:
1. Death is personified as a driver of a chariot: a courtly gentleman who is courteously,
kindly, and patiently calling on the female speaker, taking her for a ride in the
country. What details contribute to that humanized portrait of Death as a lover? Why
does Dickinson personify Death in this way? Why does the speaker desire not to
stop and accept his courtship?
2. During the journey, what does the speaker see out the window of the carriage? What
do these scenes mean in relation to her life?
3. Why does the speaker’s body turn cold, and why is she dressed in such delicate
finery?
4. What is the house in the ground, and why does the journey not stop there?
5. Where does the journey end? Why is the speaker content, finally? Notice, too, that
she speaks in the present tense, now: Is she speaking from the afterlife, still alive, so
to speak, —“centuries” after her physical death—as she remembers how she died
with unnecessary anxiousness?
Now, step back from these details and consider the relationship between the two poems:
Are they similar or different? How?



What account of death does each poem offer? Do the two accounts differ? How?
What differing devices are used to convey the two experiences of Death?
What degree of Christian faith does each speaker express? Do they differ? If so, how?
Lesson 9.3 – Women Poets: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Dickinson
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
9.3.6. Questions for Blackboard Discussion
Question #1
Now that you have read these two poems and analyzed their differences, choose TWO of the
following additional poems.
1. Do the two that you have selected clarify Dickinson’s religious convictions, or do they offer
more ambiguities? Post your analysis on Blackboard.
These poems are included in our course pack:
280 (“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”)
389 (“There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House”)
451 (“The Outer—from the Inner”)
561 (“I measure every grief I meet”)
650 (“Pain—has an Element of Blank—“)
690 (“Victory comes late—“)
Question #2
As we can see, Dickinson’s views on religion were complex and somewhat inconsistent, a
dichotomy that we would continue to find if we were to read more of her poems. To try to
understand the context in which her thinking developed, take your own journey to the Emily
Dickinson Homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she lived most of her life, very reclusively.
Take this lovely tour of Dickinson’s home and her community (that is, poke around this website
thoroughly).
2. What do you think were the influences on her religious thinking? The first link takes you to
the homestead, and the second one highlights for you a discussion specifically of religion
(aspects of which you will find at various places throughout the site.
http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/
http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/church
Lesson 9.3 – Women Poets: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Dickinson
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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