The Feminine Predicament Exploring the Unique Vitality of Rossetti’s Poetry Vis-à-Vis Mill’s Approach to Feminism

This study re-examines the Victorian Feminine Predicament by formulating a comparison – placing parallelly and contrasting two key texts, namely, Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” and John Stuart Mill’s Subjection of Women. Both works are spiritual adjuncts in terms of their focus and intention: speaking for women, for women's equality, and for establishing women as not merely the equivalents of men but, in some respects, even superior. We explore the very different avenues the authors choose to tread on as we uncover pivotal themes of salvation, spiritual redemption, unabashed ‘same-sex’ erotic desire, the ‘prostitute’ and the promiscuous, insanity, domesticity, and ‘slavery’ disguised as marriage. The tricky roadmap for Rossetti, dotted with milestones inscribed with an unyielding dedication to the ‘fallen’ of the species, races through radically sharp turns and twists often lightly veiled under the pellucid charade of children’s literature, with a rebellious pace. Mill, on the other hand, would not take risks beyond calculated ones. If a colossal open-air bonfire of female sexuality is Rossetti’s challenge, radical ideas garbed in ‘decorous’ and philosophical language are all that Mill offers.