The Matrilineal Heritage of

Louisa May Alcott and Christina

Rossetti

In an unprecedented comparison of two of the most important female authors of the

nineteenth century, Azelina Flint foregrounds the influence of the religious
communities that shaped Louisa May Alcott’s and Christina Rossetti’s visions of
female creativity. In the early stages of the authors’ careers, their artistic developments
were associated with their patrilineal connections to two artistic movements that
shaped the course of American and British history: the Transcendentalists and Pre-
Raphaelites. Flint uncovers the authors’ rejections of the individualistic outlooks of
these movements, demonstrating that Alcott and Rossetti affiliated themselves with
their mothers and sisters’ religious faith. Applying the methodological framework of
women’s mysticism, Flint reveals that Alcott’s and Rossetti’s religious beliefs were
shaped by the devotional practices and life-writing texts of their matrilineal
communities. Here, the authors’ iconic portrayals of female artists are examined in
light of the examples of their mothers and sisters for the first time. Flint recovers a
number of unpublished life-writings, including commonplace albums and juvenile
newspapers, introducing readers to early versions of the authors’ iconic works. These
recovered texts indicate that Alcott and Rossetti portrayed the female artist as a
mouthpiece for a wider community of women committed to social justice and divine
communion. By drawing attention to the parallels in the authors’ familial affiliations
and religious beliefs, Flint recuperates a tradition of nineteenth-century women’s
mysticism that departs from the individualistic models of male literary traditions to
locate female empowerment in gynocentric relationships dedicated to achieving a
shared revelation of God.

Azelina Flint is a Teaching Fellow of American Literature and Creative Writing

at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is a graduate of the University of
East Anglia’s American Studies PhD program where she was awarded an AHRC
“CHASE” fellowship to support her research on Alcott and Rossetti. Azelina’s
research on the Alcott family has been supported by the Fulbright Commission,
and she holds MA degrees in Victorian Studies and English Literature from
Royal Holloway and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, respectively. Flint has
published articles on Alcott and Rossetti in Comparative American Studies and
the Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies, while further research in American and
Victorian Studies has appeared in a range of peer-reviewed publications.
Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature

Titles include:
The Bohemian Republic
Transnational Literary Networks in the Nineteenth Century
James Gatheral
The Nineteenth Century Revis(it)ed
The New Historical Fiction
Ina Bergmann
Jane Austen and Literary Theory
Shawn Normandin
Robert Seymour and Nineteenth Century Print Culture
Sketches by Seymour and Comic Illustration
Brian Maidment
Victorian Pets and Poetry
Kevin A. Morrison
The Nineteenth Century Periodical Press and the Development of Detective
Fiction
Samuel Saunders
Doctrine and Difference
Readings in Classic American Literature
Michael J. Colacurcio
The Matrilineal Heritage of Louisa May Alcott and Christina Rossetti
Azelina Flint
Touch, Sexuality, and Hands in British Literature, 1740–1901
Kimberly Cox

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.

com/Routledge-Studies-in-Nineteenth-Century-Literature/book-series/RSNCL
The Matrilineal Heritage
of Louisa May Alcott and
Christina Rossetti

Azelina Flint
First published 2022
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Dedicated to the memories of my late father, Bertram
William Flint, and Great Uncle, Frederick Keen.

Men who embodied ‘theologies of renunciation.’

Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi

Introduction 1

1 “I am Even I”: Rossetti and Alcott Resisting Male

Authority 28

PART I
“Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing 57

2 “Renunciation Is the Law, Devotion to God’s Will

the Gospel”: The Empowerment of Others in the
Alcott Women’s Life-Writing 61
3 “For Every Human Creature May Claim to
Strength”: The Rossetti Women’s Elevation of the
Left Hand 92

PART II
“A Loving League of Sisters”: Alcott and Rossetti’s
Promotion of Christian Values through the Ties of
Sisterhood 125

4 We Are All Relative Creatures: The Transformative

Power of Sisterhood in Rossetti’s Maude 129
5 “Happy Women”: Alcott’s Sisterly Utopia 150
viii Contents
Conclusion 174
CODA
Nineteenth-Century Women’s Matrilineal
Theologies of Renunciation 179
Works Cited 197
Appendices 211
Appendix 1 “Rolf Walden Emmerboy”
Transcription 211
Appendix 2 “Two Scenes in a Family”
Transcription 211
Appendix 3 “Wealth” Transcription 213
Appendix 4 “Our Madonna” Transcription 215
Appendix 5 “Story of An Apple” Transcription 217
Appendix 6 “Extracts From Bradley’s Sermons”
Transcription 217
Appendix 7 “The Maid of Sorrow”
Transcription 219

Index 221
Acknowledgments

This study is indebted to the guidance of many generous mentors, friends,

spiritual guides, and relatives. It may seem strange that a work of scholarship
devoted to recovering the matrilineal heritage of two women is dedicated to
the memory of my late father, Bertram William Flint. In his parenting, my
Dad was the embodiment of a ‘theology of renunciation’: a brilliant mentor,
exhaustive scholar, insightful writer, and self-giving religious leader. Likewise,
my late Great Uncle, Frederick Keen, made many sacrifices to support my
family over the years, and this book could not have completed without him.
My mother, Debra Flint, has been an unwavering emotional support and
remains my biggest ally.
My ideas have been strengthened, enriched, and supported by the collegial
environment of the Department of American Studies, University of East
Anglia. Hilary Emmett, Thomas Ruys Smith, and Malcolm McLaughlin
have been generous with their time, wise with their guidance, patient with
their advice, and unwavering in their enthusiasm when my own has been at
a low ebb. Thanks are also due to the AHRC ‘CHASE’ consortium and the
Fulbright Commission, especially to Steve Colburn, Rob Witts, Clare Hunt,
Daphne Rayment, and Brittany Lehr, all of whom helped to make my
archival research possible.
Beyond the UEA, there are many academics who have enhanced my
ideas with their scholarship and learning. Dinah Roe of Oxford Brookes
is a formidable authority on the Rossetti family who has gone above and
beyond in her criticism. Wendy Parkins, Kent University guided my early
research on Rossetti, while my study at Harvard was informed by the
enlightening conversation of John Stauffer. Foundational Alcott scholar,
John Matteson, has been kind enough to review my work.
The trajectory of this study has also been shaped by a number of
independent scholars. The conversation of Parish Catechist, Michael
King, of Sacred Heart and St Margaret Mary R.C. Church, Dereham,
informed my thinking on the Trinity and the imitatio Christi. Equally,
the enthusiastic correspondence of Eddie Simpson enlightened my ideas
on Christian communities. Family friend, Luca Loreto, allowed me to
discover more about his vocation as an iconographer. The assistance of
x Acknowledgments
teacher, David Glenn of the Brilliant Club, has been instrumental in
motivating me to promote my research to a wider audience. Lauren
Hehmeyer’s criticism and collaboration has assisted in the development
of both this book and the next: I look forward to a future dedicated to
the recovery of May Alcott Nieriker!
As a woman of faith, I have been touched by the spiritual care of many
religious communities while completing this study. The support of my Parish
Priest, Fr Brendan Moffatt, and my brothers and sisters at the Parish of
Sacred Heart, Dereham has been invaluable. My research at the Delaware
Art Museum was enabled by the kind hospitality of the sisters of the Caterina
Benincasa Dominican Monastery, Wilmington. The spiritual havens of
Blackfriars, Oxford and Ampleforth Abbey have provided sanctuaries for
my work, and I am grateful to Fr Matthew Jarvis OP and Alan Jones for
opening their doors. My former parish priest, Fr Nicodemus Lobu Ratu SVD,
and the parish of St Mary-on-the-Quay, Bristol remain formative influences
in my life. Likewise, I cannot forget the slightly wacky spiritual guidance
proffered by the Reverend Dr Alexander Lucie-Smith, a character straight out
of an Evelyn Waugh novel! The former Chaplain of the Fisher House
Cambridge Catholic Chaplaincy, Fr Alban McCoy OFM, should also not be
forgotten.
Last, but not least, I cannot overlook the support of many longstanding
friends who infuse my life with joy, providing me with the motivation to
continue in my research. Outstanding among these are my elected sisters:
Clarissa Chenovick and Rosary Abot; childhood friends, Becky O’Hara and
Emma Scott; fellow Dante and Rossetti enthusiast, Francesco Amatulli; my
“college brother” and director extraordinaire, Josh Seymour; musical
prodigy, Aeron Glyn Preston; expat traveller-poets and associate Christmas
convalescents, David and LeAnna Porter; man of steel, Alex Ronaldson;
fellow Catholic and feminist academic, Raphael Cadenhead; choir director,
autodidact and proof-reader, the late great Helen Jacobs; my sister in Christ
and sometime art restorer, Kathleen Malkin; my adopted brother and sister,
Andrew and Pippa Simpson, and their son, Peter (my Godson). Finally, my
students of the Brilliant Club, the UEA, and Royal Holloway have challenged
and inspired me to look for ways to make my research more relevant to
everyday life. The list is too long to name in full, but to all my friends, thank
you for confirming the words of Hilaire Belloc, first taught to me by my
father:

From quiet home and first beginning,

Out to the undiscovered ends,
There’s nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends. (85–88)
Abbreviations

AFAP Alcott Family Additional Papers

LMAAP Louisa May Alcott Additional Papers
Introduction

This book recovers the matrilineal heritage of Louisa May Alcott

(1832–1888) and Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) through considering the
ways these authors experienced and expressed their Christian faith in rela-
tion to their mothers and sisters.1 Alcott’s and Rossetti’s artistic development
embodies a striking parallel: each writer grew up in a culturally prominent
artistic movement that, after the Romantics, sought to attain transcendent
experience through expressing the individual’s sublime engagement with
nature. Each of these movements (Transcendentalism and Pre-Raphaelitism)
attempted to invest art with a spiritual significance that superseded religious
faith during a period when American Protestantism grappled with the de-
structive implications of the Calvinist Doctrine of the Total Depravity of
Man and British art promoted the medieval ‘age of faith’ in the face of the
growing prominence of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Neither Alcott, nor
Rossetti embraced the elevation of art as a secular form of religious practice
and, as such, their artistic identities departed from the models of their male
relatives. Instead, they followed the examples of their mothers, who located
women’s empowerment in sisterly relationships dedicated to achieving a
shared revelation of God, encouraging their daughters to identify with one
another and thereby create a model of authorship based on service to one’s
sisters that could be extended to the wider world.
That said, discussions of Alcott’s and Rossetti’s contributions to
nineteenth-century women’s writing and its wider feminist contexts
have disproportionately focused on the authors’ Transcendentalist and
Pre-Raphaelite connections. The theological discourses and life-writings
of their mothers and sisters have only recently been accorded serious
attention, and feminist criticism remains resistant to the communities’
theologies of renunciation. Renunciation, the act of forgoing material
pleasures to achieve spiritual enlightenment, remains a controversial
concept for feminists because it eschews seizing the individualistic as-
piration towards self-fulfillment and self-expression historically assigned
to the male author. Approaching this subject as a woman of faith, my
intention is to evaluate the capacity of renunciation to empower and
unite female communities through the framework of mystical experience.
2 Introduction
Mysticism is the term given to the myriad ways the supplicant attempts
to achieve union with God and the wider Christian community: through
prayer, sacramental and/or liturgical practice, ritual, community life, study,
and the contemplation of creation. It strives to achieve an intense con-
sciousness of the divine that, in its most refined form, will manifest itself in
such supernatural phenomena as dreams and visions, but more commonly
refers to everyday experiences that express the individual’s relationship
with God. In essence, mysticism refers to the way the supplicant sub-
jectively experiences their faith outside the institutional framework of their
peculiar denomination. Specifically, in this context, it has relevance because
the Alcott and Rossetti women partook in shared mystical experiences.
Their renunciatory acts and practices were dedicated to ensuring every
member of the community could express their revelatory encounters with
the divine. More particularly, and significantly, in describing their experi-
ences and writings, they held the weakest and smallest members of their
mystical community in most esteem, inverting the assumed hierarchy of
wider society. Producing collaborative devotional life-writing and engaging
in shared religious practices allowed each community to conceive itself as a
single body, with priority and most respect accorded to the otherwise most
lowly members.
The Alcott women envisaged their community, this body, as the
foundation of a universal Christian sisterhood extending into the out-
side world to dedicate itself to wider feminist social reform, while the
Rossetti women visualized their mystical body as ascending upwards
to unification with the communion of saints through prayerful con-
templation. Alcott’s and Rossetti’s mystical experiences of renunciation
in their matrilineal communities shaped the portrayal of motherhood,
sisterhood, and female kinship across their canonical, lesser-known,
and unpublished works. In two distinct cultural locations and from two
diverging religious denominations, each author wrote out of their ex-
perience of mystical unification with their mothers and sisters. Through
examining the parallels in their experiences, I hope to demonstrate that
mystical experience is at the heart of nineteenth-century women’s de-
votional writing and supplants the vestige of male authority implicit
in the patriarchal hierarchies of institutionalized Christianity. By doing
so, I endeavor to uncover the value of women’s mysticism for feminist
studies of nineteenth-century women of faith, prioritizing women’s
religious experience above their commitment to Church tradition,
dogma, and doctrine.
For Alcott and Rossetti, the spiritual authority of maternal love super-
seded all forms of Church authority and underpinned the authors’ devo-
tional visions of female creativity. In an 1878 letter to British poet, Augusta
Webster (1837–1894), on the topic of women’s suffrage, Christina Rossetti
argued that maternal love expressed the divine and thereby possessed the
power to overcome gender inequality:
 Introduction 3
if anything ever does sweep away the barrier of sex, and make the
female not a giantess or a heroine but at once a hero and a giant, it is
that mighty maternal love which makes little birds and little beasts as
well as little women matches for very big adversaries.
(Letters 2 158)

There are two interesting things about this passage. Firstly, when the
female reaches epic proportions, she transcends her gender: she is not a
giantess or a heroine but a hero and a giant. Not only that, she is “at once”
both a hero and giant; the transcendent female does not simply become the
male—she encapsulates all of the dominant qualities language would
assign to the male (ibid.). Secondly, this epic might and power does not
generate more heroes and giants, but rather begets “little” things: “little
birds,” “little beasts,” and, most importantly, “little women” (ibid.).
Where the Romantic tradition affiliates divine creation with the sup-
posedly more active role of the male in heterosexual sexual relations,
Rossetti claims it is maternal love that comes closest to emulating the
deity. Why? The very fact that the female creates ‘little’ things renders
her an emulation of God because creation, for the omnipotent, is an act
of humility. Even the universe, in its totality, must pale in the face of an
all-encompassing being—nothing can be created as its equal. And yet, as
the reflection of this prime mover, the universe, in a curious way, also
mirrors the Creator. In this way, the most diminutive things are “mat-
ches for very big adversaries,” for no adversary is capable of obliterating
the primeval origin of every created being (ibid.). Of course, Rossetti is
not alone in upholding littleness as the supreme reflection of God’s
“mighty maternal love,” for she did not coin the term “little women”
(ibid.). It was made famous by her American contemporary, Louisa May
Alcott, who created an iconic fictional community of sisters who, fol-
lowing the model of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), strive
to attain redemption by orienting their daily lives towards the teachings
of Christ. Alcott’s text departs from Bunyan’s, however, in its portrayal
of maternal love as the guiding force on the sisters’ journey to salvation.
I foreground this passage because it provides an uncanny resonance
between these contemporaries who never met or corresponded. One
cannot imagine that when Rossetti staked her claim ten years after
the publication of Little Women (1869), she did not have Alcott’s phe-
nomenally successful novel in mind.2 Yet, Rossetti’s decision to evoke
the term is significant for reasons that transcend the vestige of a material
connection between these women. The authors’ independent expressions
of faith reveal they engaged in a shared set of preoccupations, and even
personal experiences, across time and space—despite their immediate
cultural and denominational differences, as well as the vastly different
genres in which they worked. In the proceeding scholarship, I will show
that both women elevated the mother as the proper intermediary
4 Introduction
between earth and heaven because mothering emulates the self-emptying
of the incarnate God, who dispensed with his divinity to share in the
littleness of humanity. As Christ conforms himself to the will of the
Father, so does the mother encourage her daughters to treat the cir-
cumstances of their lives as reflections of divine providence, embracing
the obstacles they confront as gateways to salvation.
Both the Alcott and Rossetti matriarchs encouraged their daughters to
observe the force of God’s will in their lives through mutually interpreting
their shared daily events and experiences. These acts of interpretation were
forged in collective life-writing projects: collaborative journals, common-
place books, and juvenile newspapers. Fostering a shared consciousness
through creating a mutual record of their lives within their respective
matrilineal communities allowed the Alcott and Rossetti sisters to conceive
themselves as a single body of distinct persons that resembled the com-
munion of the Trinity. The Trinity expresses the unique personhood of
each of its members through identifying and integrating each member with
and into the personhood of the others. Following the example of their
mothers, each member of Alcott’s and Rossetti’s sisterhoods identify
themselves with the weakest members of the group, championing littleness
as the foundation of a reformed society based on the matrilineal model, as
well as the heavenly communion of saints. In their public works, both
Alcott and Rossetti upheld littleness as an expression of the renunciatory
practices that bind the female community together. Serving the littlest
members of the community allows each sister to expand the matrilineal
model and imitate Christ, who served the weak and disenfranchised. By
imitating Christ’s humility, the women of Alcott’s and Rossetti’s fictional
communities take on spiritually empowered roles that place women at the
center of both family and public life. The “little women” of Alcott’s and
Rossetti’s work are the replication of “that mighty maternal love” as it
multiplies itself through sympathetic identification with others (ibid.).
When I first encountered Alcott and Rossetti in adolescence, I saw myself
as part of the extended community of Christian women they sought to
establish through their writing. I understood these communities were not
merely fictional; they were patterns of sisterhood the authors hoped would
be taken up by their readers in either private devotional communities of the
family and/or religious life, or in public feminist advocacy groups that
sought to reform the outside world through philanthropic projects based
on Christian principles. I hoped that uncovering the historical roots of
Alcott’s and Rossetti’s visions of female community would foreground the
mystical experiences that underpinned their devotional writing. Through
encountering these mystical experiences, I strive to reconnect with my own
matrilineal, mystical heritage. For Alcott and Rossetti, motherhood and
sisterhood transcend the immediate familial circle to be embraced by
women who share in the authors’ Christian worldviews. In this respect,
their mystical experiences are comparable with one another, and with my
 Introduction 5
own. It is on these grounds I undertake a comparative study of these
women: contemporaneous Christian sisters who never met. Since both
Alcott and Rossetti believed that motherhood and sisterhood transcended
time and space and extended into eternal life, it does not seem in-
appropriate to regard them as spiritual mothers and sisters who continue to
speak to Christian women through the expressions of faith embodied in
their work. As a Christian writer and researcher whose personal experi-
ences of faith shape my interpretations of devotional writing, I regard
Alcott and Rossetti as part of a wider spiritual matrilineal heritage into
which I incorporate myself, as the sections of this introduction that follow
will show.

Devotion and Mysticism: Subject and Method

This book is in part an act of devotion, and through that act of devotion,
I endeavor to reach a deeper understanding of the wider matrilineal
heritage of mystical spirituality of the authors and myself. In ap-
proaching the work in this way, I place emphasis on the authors’ at-
tempts to encounter the divine and create a vision of universal Christian
sisterhood. Mystical theologies of renunciation are my subject-matter
and provide a way into a method of scholarship: I interpret the ma-
trilineal communities’ mystical experiences through the practice of
mysticism. I believe there are distinct advantages to interpreting the
mystical and renunciatory practices of Alcott’s and Rossetti’s matrilineal
communities in this way, from the perspective of my own religious faith.
To illustrate, I will draw an analogy with iconography, between the
way a Christian critic interprets a devotional literary work and the way a
pilgrim interacts with an icon. Iconography can be understood as a type
of pilgrimage, achieved through artistic practice, to a holy person.
According to Luca Loreto, the iconographer attempts to “make a place
where the saint will be ‘present’ in an image,” striving to be “inhabited
by the subject” (1). Depicting the revealed image of the saint allows the
iconographer to achieve communion with the wider communion of
saints. Thereafter, the pilgrim who contemplates the icon is also in-
corporated into the communion of saints by virtue of the iconographer’s
prior communion. In this sense, for the pilgrim, the iconographer re-
mains present in the icon. Both are united in devotion across time and
place because the process in which they have engaged is timeless: shared
by all iconographers across history (purportedly stretching back to St
Luke) and crossing the boundaries of material and divine by means of
timeless contemplation.
Like the iconographer, I suggest the devotional writer endeavors to
achieve a revelation of the divine through the act of composition. In the
case of Alcott’s and Rossetti’s matrilineal communities, the practices
of literary collaboration, shared reading and annotation establish a
6 Introduction
spiritual communion among the communities’ members. When the
Christian critic reads the writing of these women, they witness and
partake in this spiritual communion and, in doing so, encounter the
living (not simply enduring) presences of these authors. By these means,
this book offers a way into the lived experiences of Alcott’s and
Rossetti’s faith. In taking this approach, I seek to decipher the spiritual
languages these communities shared, which might not be apparent to
secular readers. After all, when a pilgrim stands before a devotional
work of art they are empowered to “read” its devotional, sacramental,
and scriptural symbols in a manner accessible only to a person of faith;
secular eyes strive to observe aesthetic beauty only (Loreto 7 5).
Let me provide a personal example of this: at the Basilica della
Santissima Annunziata in Florence, there is a painting of the Annunciation
allegedly completed by an angel. According to legend, the fourteenth-
century painter, Fra Bartolommeo, labored over the painting for weeks but
was unable to capture the beauty of the Virgin’s face. One night, he fell
asleep in despair and awoke to discover the painting had been completed
by an angelic hand. Since then, a cult surrounding Santissima Annunziata
has emerged and pilgrims travel across the world to see it. It is preserved
behind a screen, which is raised every day at 6 pm. This became very real to
me one evening in Florence at dinner with a friend. Talking art over gelato,
my friend remarked she was unfamiliar with the painting and I proposed
on a whim we sprint across the city to look. I vividly remember the mo-
ment we entered the church: we barely made it through the door in time
and stood panting in the shadows as the screen was lifted. As the painting
emerged before our eyes, a bevy of elderly women dropped to their knees.
We stood in silent contemplation before this sacred image, uncovered for
only an hour a day. After a short period of silence, my friend said to me,
“The painting is a testament to the power of inspiration.” “No,” I replied,
“it’s a testament to the presence of angels.” For her, the painting was a
metaphor; for me it was a living truth.
Our differing responses to the painting at Santissima Annunziata were
emblematic of the differing ways religious and secular thinkers engage
with devotional works of art across all media. The secular thinker dwells
in the world of ideas: spiritual experiences are symbols of concepts and
emotions not easy to express. Conversely, Léonide Ouspensky explains
that the iconographer—or indeed any devotional artist or writer—
“transmits not their own ‘idea’, but ‘a description of what is con-
templated’, that is a factual knowledge, something seen if not by himself,
by a trustworthy witness” (42). As such, individualistic expressions of
originality are not highly prized by devotional artists. It is crucial we
understand Alcott’s and Rossetti’s work as “a record of what has been
contemplated rather than an idea” (41). If we look at the authors’ work
in this way, their respective decisions to reject the Transcendentalists’
and Pre-Raphaelites’ emphasis on creating (as opposed to ‘describing’)
 Introduction 7
transcendent and sublime experience through art (which is transformed
into a divine object, rather than a vehicle for the divine) can be read
as a decision to conceive themselves as devotional artists. To judge
the aesthetic value of their work by the standard of individualistic
self-expression is to ignore the authors’ intentions. Their intentions
were formed within the matrilineal community, which is recovered here
for the purpose of appreciating both Alcott’s and Rossetti’s work as
expressions of their Christian faith.
In the rest of this introduction, I outline how I set about recovering the
matrilineal heritages of Alcott and Rossetti through the framework of
mystical practice. To illustrate how my interpretations of the authors’
works are shaped by the devotional act of pilgrimage, I will connect
each aspect of this scholarship to a stage in the icon-painting process.
Thus, like the pilgrim’s meditation before the icon, my study is the de-
votional witness of these matrilineal communities, my own matrilineal
inheritance. I endeavour to uncover what Vladimir Lossky describes
as the “revealed reality” the authors “describe” in their work (22).
As I survey the authors’ rejections of the Transcendentalists’ and Pre-
Raphaelites’ individualism in favor of the renunciatory theologies of
their mothers and sisters, I will show that—like the icon—“the degree
to which the gift of expression is subordinated to the revelation it has to
express, determine[s] the spiritual level and the purity” of the devotional
literary work (Ouspensky 44).
Departing from the more familiar, established methods of literary criti-
cism in this way inevitably brings risks, but I argue here there is very much
to be gained. Instead of striving to unearth the myriad possibilities for
interpretation within a text, I instead attempt to foreground the authors’
mystical experiences through the lens of my own. This approach is, in part,
a response to the skepticism concerning the aesthetic, social and intellectual
value of Christian women’s experience prevalent in feminist criticism.
This work advocates approaching the writing of Christian women with
an attitude of metaphysical openness similar to that of ontological an-
thropologists, who, in Eduardo Kohn’s words, take seriously “styles or
forms of thought that change our ideas about the nature of reality” (312).
Ontological anthropologists respond to the common criticism, described
by Paolo Heywood, that “insisting on the ‘reality’ of multiple worlds
commits [one] to a meta-ontology where such worlds exist” (146) by re-
minding their detractors that all scholars possess, to use Morten Axel
Pedersen’s term, a “meta-ontology”—but those who aspire to objectivity
merely obscure their own meta-ontological position (para. 10). I seek to
recover, participate in, and write from the ontological reality of my subjects
to enrich my interpretive insights. As Lorencova et al have argued, sharing
in the ontological framework of one’s subjects may enable the scholar
to “actualize” the “transcendent reality” to which their subjects defer (3).
My attempt to recover Alcott’s and Rossetti’s theologies of renunciation
8 Introduction
seeks to transform my perception of their faith, so I may actualize the
mystical experiences their work “describes” (Lossky 22).
In developing this argument, the introduction will now outline the
four aspects of this scholarly work: my recovery of the matrilineal
communities’ mystical theologies of renunciation, the development of
my methodology, the ideological basis for this transatlantic compar-
ison, and the ontological framework through which these authors are
viewed. It will be impossible for me to attain a complete vision of Alcott
and Rossetti through this pilgrimage, but I hope to encounter their
living presences and reflect the voices of their mothers and sisters on
this journey.

Preparing the Wood: Matrilineal Theologies of

Renunciation and Women’s Mysticism
In the first stage of the icon-painting process, the iconographer chooses
the wood. The wood represents the suffering the pilgrim encounters on
their journey to salvation; it is emblematic of the tree of life and the
cross. As the iconographer prepares and sands the wood, they partake in
purifying practices that allow them to receive the presence of the saint.
The saint is invoked continually in prayer, while the iconographer
fasts for a sustained period so they can transform themselves into a
place where the saint can “be present” (Loreto 1). As they become a pure
receptacle, ready to receive the divine presence, they begin to “live” the
icon and are “inhabited by the subject” (ibid.).
Renunciation is essential to this process. By attempting to cleanse
themselves of the vestige of their sinfulness, the iconographer seeks to
return to their prelapsarian state as one who reflects the image of God.
The word “icon” in fact derives from the ancient Greek word, ‘εικwν,’
which means ‘image’—referring to the description of mankind as created
in God’s image in Genesis 1:27. Orthodox believers regard the icon as a
sacramental object that contains God’s presence. By reflecting the image
of Christ, the iconographer is remade in God’s image, as is the pilgrim
who contemplates the record of their transfiguration. This transfigura-
tion can only take place if the iconographer recognizes they are an
“unworthy instrument” who has undertaken a “responsibility” that is
“frightening” (Loreto 2 6).
Renunciation is also essential to the mystical practice of Alcott and
Rossetti, and their female relatives. The theologies of renunciation
espoused and practiced by the authors’ matrilineal communities mirror
the ascetic practices of the iconographer, for they allow each member of
the community to live through and inhabit one other. All members
of the community sacrifice their needs for the needs of their ‘littler’
sistren and purify themselves in the process. Seeking to rid themselves
of all vestiges of inward-facing solipsism, the Alcott and Rossetti
 Introduction 9
women transform themselves into pure receptacles of Christian sanc-
tification, ready to receive their mothers’ and sisters’ presences. Thus,
the expression of selfhood becomes an expression of love for the ma-
trilineal community; each member of the community reflects the other
in a transfigurative process that transforms all members into a single,
mystical body. Just as the iconographer is “inhabited by the subject”
(Loreto 1), the Alcott and Rossetti women are inhabited by each other.
Their mystical union is expressed in their collaborative life-writing, a
record of the presence of their mothers and sisters as it lives within
them, (just as the icon is a record of the presence of the saint as it lives
within the iconographer).
More typically disparaged by feminists as a form of repression im-
posed from above within a patriarchal hierarchy, renunciation can be
better understood as a form of spirituality that attempts to unite the
individual with the divine through contemplative, communal practices.
As a practice of mysticism, it seeks, in Beverly J. Lanzetta’s words, to
foster “the awareness of the oneness that underlies duality and differ-
ence” (29) through “the experience of consciously striving to integrate
one’s life in terms not of isolation and self-absorption but of self-
transcendence towards the ultimate value one perceives” (Schnediers
qtd in Lanzetta ibid.). The final aspiration of the mystic is to access
what Ewert H. Cousins terms as the “ultimate reality” of the divine
(xiii) in “a moment of ‘pure,’ ‘content-less,’ or ‘empty’ consciousness”
(Lanzetta 29–30). Such experience relies on “the central absence of ego-
identity in living a spiritually focused life” (Lanzetta 29). When the self
is emptied of its ego, it is able to achieve communion with others and
the divine.
Because mysticism has thrived in communal structures that exist
outside the hierarchies of the church, it has been peculiarly open to
women throughout Christian history.3 Yet, Amy Hollywood argues
that despite the fact female mystics frequently “struggled to maintain
interpretive control over [their] experience against the encroachment
of male ecclesiastical elites,” feminist scholars have consistently failed
to take mysticism seriously (6). Jantzen locates the origin for such
pejorative attitudes in the fact that “the preoccupations of most
modern philosophical interpreters of mysticism were not the pre-
occupations of mystics themselves”; namely, philosophical studies of
mysticism often founder when seeking to examine experiences of di-
vine revelation within secular intellectual frameworks (10). They fail
to recognize that “the mystics of the Western Christian tradition lived
in a thought world where the existence of God was taken for granted”
(9). My examination of Alcott’s and Rossetti’s theologies of re-
nunciation traces the formation of these theologies to authentic
spiritual experiences and worldviews shared within their matrilineal
communities and recorded in their life-writing. I regard the provability
10 Introduction
of such outlooks and experiences, as assessed against a standard of
‘objective truth,’ to be fundamentally irrelevant.
The Alcott and Rossetti women interpreted their daily experiences and
familial relationships through the lens of their Christian beliefs. As such, the
most ordinary events and occurrences acquired a mystical significance that
would not be observed by individuals who defer to secular frameworks
of thought. For example, Maria Rossetti (1827–1876) “shrank from entering
the Mummy Room at the British Museum under a vivid realization of how
the general resurrection might occur even as one stood among those solemn
corpses turned into a sight for sightseers” (C. Rossetti, Time Flies 316).
I am primarily interested in how the ordinary experiences and ideas
recorded in life-writing become mystical when viewed through the fra-
mework of women’s theologies of renunciation. That said, both ma-
trilineal communities also experienced moments of immanent revelation.
Louisa May Alcott described one such a moment in her journal after the
death of her sister, Elizabeth (1835–1858):

A few minutes after the last breath came … I saw a light mist rise
from the body, and float up and vanish in the air. Mother’s eyes
followed mine, and when I said ‘What did you see?’ she described
the same light mist. Dr G. said it was the life departing visibly.
(89)

Christina Rossetti combines the mystical with the ordinary when, in

Later Life: A Double Sonnet of Sonnets (1881), she describes how her
lived experience is underpinned by her faith,4 which leads her to inter-
pret the song of the Nightingale as a part of the celestial music of the
spheres: “all things, then, waxed musical; each star/ Sang on its course,
each breeze sang on its car” (355 Sonnet 21 6–7).
Of course, the authors’ diverging denominational frameworks of
Tractarianism and Unitarianism lead them to interpret their mystical
experiences differently. Rossetti writes from an Anglo-Catholic tradition
that views mystical experience as primarily accessed through scripture
and the sacraments, the reception of which leads the individual to
achieve divine unification with God alongside her matrilineal commu-
nity; Alcott writes from a nonconformist Protestant background that
views the individual as guided by the Holy Spirit to an immanent
awareness of God shared in common with the matrilineal community
and propagated to the wider world to support a vision for social justice.
Nonetheless, both women view mystical experience as supporting a
shared outlook across the community enabled by renunciatory identifi-
cation with others. This shared outlook empowers the community’s
members to promote marginalized voices and resist the ideological dom-
ination of the male individualist. It is significant that mystical theologies
of renunciation elevate the divine vision of the matrilineal community
 Introduction 11
because feminist discourse frequently assumes that women writers aspire
to individualistic models of authorship and fall back on renunciation
when these models prove unattainable. For example, Simone de Beauvoir
(1908–1986) reads mysticism as a form of narcissism that enables women
to transfer their desire to achieve omnipotence onto an illusory (male)
other.5 The following work therefore recovers the mystical theologies of
Alcott and Rossetti as expressive of the authors’ desire to achieve uni-
fication with God in opposition to an (androcentric) vision of authorial
individualism.
This is important because Alcott’s and Rossetti’s portrayals of female
communities have received extensive scholarly attention, but critics are yet
to consider the feminist implications of the authors’ theologies of re-
nunciation, as well as the relevance of women’s mysticism to their work.
Currently, there is a dearth of scholarship on Alcott’s religious faith de-
riving from her private religious practice as a Unitarian woman who did
not participate in public worship. Unitarianism in mid-nineteenth-century
New England promoted charismatic forms of devotion and its congrega-
tions were ecumenical and diverse, open to Christians of all denomina-
tions. In this particular historical and cultural context, Unitarian practice
centered on the rejection of the Doctrines of the Total Depravity of Man,
Original Sin, and Predestination, emphasizing the integrity of the in-
dividual’s relationship with God. As such, it did not demand regular public
worship. The Alcott women therefore rarely attended church, although
they enjoyed a close relationship with Unitarian reformer and minister,
Theodore Parker (1810–1860), while Alcott’s maternal uncle, Samuel May
(1797–1871), was a prominent Unitarian pastor, educationalist, women’s
rights activist, and abolitionist.
My perusal of the collaborative diary of Alcott’s mother, Abigail
(1800–1877), has revealed that the Alcott matriarch developed a theology
of renunciation (quite opposed to her husband’s Transcendentalist ideo-
logy of individualism) that informed both the devotional vision of her
daughters, and Louisa’s iconic work, Little Women. Nevertheless, the
only available selected edition of Abigail’s life-writing, My Heart is
Boundless (LaPlante 2012), expunges her religious faith from the record.6
As a denomination that prioritizes the everyday conduct of the Christian
in their relationships with others above devotional discourse, public
worship, and private prayer, Unitarianism is not overly ‘pious.’ Its literary
expressions are prone be misinterpreted, by those unfamiliar with its
tenets, as lacking in zeal.
The nonconformist nature of Unitarianism and its emphasis on practical
devotion, unique among Christian denominations, may account for the lack
of attention accorded to Alcott’s religious faith. Susan Bailey’s 2013 edited
collection of Alcott’s devotional writing, Louisa May Alcott Illuminated
By The Message, proves that the author’s theology of renunciation can
be observed across the canon of her private and public work but, to my
12 Introduction
knowledge, the only work of academic scholarship available on Alcott’s
devotional vision is Robin Cadwallader’s 2018 book chapter on the
Christian concept of caritas in Alcott’s portrayals of Christian women’s
social reform. In that context, the present study is the first extended work to
examine the devotional influence of Alcott’s matrilineal heritage at length.
As yet, there are no full-length studies of Alcott’s sisters and my cursory
examination of their life-writing touches the tip of the iceberg. There is
more work of recovery to be done in this area, some of which is already
in progress.7
Contrastingly, studies of Rossetti’s devotional output as a theologian
and religious poet have proliferated over the last 20 years. Nevertheless,
this prior scholarship does not examine Rossetti’s theology of renuncia-
tion in depth. This is true of Diane D’Amico’s germinal work, Christina
Rossetti: Faith, Gender and Time (1999), for example, which adopts a
straightforward historicist approach and calls for Rossetti scholars to
“accept … that Rossetti’s faith [is] central to both her life and poetry” but
to “incorporate that view into the current interest in gender” (16). Mary
Arseneau took up D’Amico’s baton in her foundational Recovering
Christina Rossetti (2004), the first work to centralize the influence of the
“familial, literary, intellectual and religious community” of the Rossetti
women on Rossetti’s legacy (1).8 I diverge from Arseneau’s emphasis on
Rossetti’s Tractarian “incarnational poetics” by foregrounding Rossetti’s
concern with the feminist potential of the Trinity: a theological model
for the renunciatory identification with others championed by all three
Rossetti women.
More recently, Dinah Roe (2006), Elizabeth Ludlow (2016) and
Emma Mason (2018) have produced sensitive theological studies of,
variously, Rosetti’s faith and scriptural scholarship, poetic imagination,
and environmental awareness. Yet, while these works have greatly en-
riched critical appreciation of Rossetti’s devotional verse and theological
writing, scant attention has been paid to her theology of renunciation.
And while renunciatory practice is examined in the work of Lynda
Palazzo (2002), the only thinker to address the feminist connotations of
Rossetti’s theological vision, she dismissively argues that: “A stumbling
block in the appreciation of Rossetti’s devotional texts has long been the
critical preference … for the negative values of renunciation, of mental
anguish, and of frustrated women” (140). Palazzo regards renunciation
as inhibitive to artistic expression, resulting in “mental anguish” and
(presumably sexual) “frustration” (ibid.).
In contrast, I argue that, for the Alcott and Rossetti women, the re-
cognition of unworthiness implicit in their theologies of renunciation
underpins their capacity to reflect both their communion with one an-
other and the image of the divine. Like the iconographer, the Rossetti
women renounce individualistic selfhood in their devotional practice, to
attain an immanent revelation of the communion of the saints. They seek
 Introduction 13
to reflect one another as images of God and, in doing so, ascend upwards
to the kingdom of heaven.
Christina Rossetti’s devotional writing champions the imitatio Christi:
a practice whereby the supplicant imitates Christ to achieve unification
with him and be restored to their prelapsarian state as one who is created
in God’s image. Similarly, the Alcott women endeavour to identify with
and serve the weakest members of the community in recognition of the
fact that all are equally unworthy before God. Therefore, the ‘littlest’ and
most marginalized members of the community are placed at the top of
the hierarchy because they reflect Christ’s humility. In complementarity
with Christina Rossetti, Louisa May Alcott also advocates imitating
Christ but in a practical and altruistic manner: by serving the ‘little’ and
weak. Simply put, the matrilineal communities’ theologies of renuncia-
tion allow Alcott and Rossetti to be remade in God’s image, just as the
iconographer’s recognition of their unworthiness allows them to become
an icon of Christ. Contrary to Palazzo’s claim, renunciation does not
inhibit artistic expression; it allows nineteenth-century women of faith to
fulfil their devotional purpose of reflecting God’s image in their work.

Preparing the Gesso: Archival Relics, Negotiation with the

Dead, and the Methodology of Pilgrimage
During the second stage of the icon-painting process, the iconographer
prepares the gesso. Consisting of whiting of plaster of Paris and rabbit
skin glue, gesso takes many days to create, for each coat must be allowed
to dry before a new one is laid down. Out of these messy and rudi-
mentary materials, the iconographer creates a pure and smooth white
surface, a “home” for the saint (Loreto 1). Throughout this process, they
contemplate the enormity of their vocation, described by one practi-
tioner as “playing with holy fire” (6). At this moment, the iconographer
becomes conscious of their intention to embed the presence of divine
onto the most elementary materials of their craft. The gesso, for me,
consists of the ground I have prepared for this study, by reconstructing
the context of the lives of Alcott and Rosetti from the material of the
extant archive, the relics as it were.
It is crucial that I examine an expanded range of texts from those
typically discussed. Analyzing the authors’ conceptual debates with their
male relatives and their rejections of the individualistic models of artistry
championed by the Transcendentalists and Pre-Raphaelites requires me
to recover Alcott’s and Rossetti’s commentaries on these movements
in journals and correspondence, as well as the lesser-known auto-
biographical works in which Alcott and Rossetti satirized the art and
writing of their male peers. These texts are available in print but are
infrequently referenced in scholarship on Alcott’s and Rossetti’s en-
gagement with Transcendentalism and Pre-Raphaelitism. By centralizing
14 Introduction
lesser-known autobiographical texts in my preliminary discussion of
the authors’ patrilineal heritages, I demonstrate that Alcott and Rossetti
participated in fully formed debates with their male peers concerning the
nature and function of artistic identity, and thereafter made conscious
choices to affiliate themselves with the Alcott and Rossetti women.
Alcott’s and Rossetti’s matrilineal affiliations are mapped in early
juvenilia forged collaboratively with their mothers and sisters. It will be
shown that much of this unpublished juvenilia provides the basis for
the mystical theologies of renunciation promoted in the authors’ mature
works and informs their most iconic portrayals of matrilineal commu-
nities and sisterhoods. The theological and literary influence of the wider
matrilineal community is made visible in my extended analyses of their
life-writing. Life-writing is integral to the recovery of female literary
traditions because, as Linda H. Peterson argues, many women “com-
posed their lives without a sense that they were appropreriating a mas-
culine tradition or that their experiences were radically different from
men’s” (6). Life-writing allows scholars to depart from the androcentric
preoccupation with male canons to consider the “self-representational
modes available to, acknowledged, or created by women writers” (3).
The life-writing of these matrilineal communities is largely un-
published and remains underdiscussed because, unlike their male peers
in the Transcendentalist and Pre-Raphaelite movements, the authors’
mothers and sisters were not acclaimed professional writers. It should be
noted, however, that both the Alcott and Rossetti matriarchs harbored
serious literary ambitions that were curtailed by personal and familial
circumstance,9 but they nonetheless encouraged their daughters to reflect
on their sisterly relationships and religious faith in collaborative literary
projects. These early literary productions exerted a far greater influence
on the authors than the public outputs of the Transcendentalists and
Pre-Raphaelites.
My reclamation of Alcott’s matrilineal heritage traces the influence of
matriarch, Abigail Alcott’s, collaborative journal on the Alcott sisters’
newspapers, The Portfolio and The Pickwick, as well as their mature
letters, diaries, and poetry. These papers are housed at the most sig-
nificant archive of the Alcott family at the Houghton Library, Harvard.
Likewise, I foreground the devotional literary influence of Rossetti’s
mother, Frances (1800–1886), on the theological work of the Rossetti
sisters by examining the visibility of Frances’s Commonplace Book and
newspaper, Hodge-Podge, in Christina Rossetti’s posthumously pub-
lished Valentine’s Day Verses (dedicated to her mother) and Maria
Rossetti’s early theological work, The Rivulets. Both the Commonplace
Book and Hodge-Podge are housed in the Angeli-Dennis Collection of
the University of British Columbia, while a copy of The Rivulets can be
found at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. With the exception of
Hodge-Podge, which has been transcribed for Jerome McGann’s online
 Introduction 15
Rossetti Archive, none of these works have been previously published. A
selection of important passages from Frances Rossetti’s Commonplace
Book are included here for the first time, alongside a range of submis-
sions to the Alcott sisters’ newspapers, including an early sketch for
Little Women, in the appendices.
My method of interpretation largely focuses on shared devotional
themes, including the practice of lived religion, the experience of sym-
pathy, the supplicant’s conformity to divine providence and the practice
of imitating Christ, which are established in the matrilineal communities’
life-writing and elaborated in Alcott’s and Rossetti’s public works.
Generic innovation is also paramount since life-writing and juvenilia—by
virtue of its form—challenges established literary conventions of the
(male-dominated) canon. Both communities create unique principles of
composition and collaboration, which reflect their modes of commu-
nication and discourse, as well as the patterns of devotion that shape their
daily lives. Of central importance is the study of intertextual referencing,
which allows us to track the influence of the matrilineal communities
across Alcott’s and Rossetti’s careers, and consider the authors’ personal
engagement with their religious beliefs recorded in scriptural allusions
that elucidate their mystical experiences.
My intertextual practice further strives to expand the authors’ cor-
puses by foregrounding the matrilineal influence in lesser-known, as well
as more well-established, public works. By presenting these lesser-known
texts as integral to the authors’ artistic developments, I do not, as Jane
Tompkins suggests, regard them as valuable only as records of “religious
beliefs, social practices, and economic and political circumstances”
(xii–xiii). Instead, I shift the emphasis away from iconic works, which
narrows down critical discussion to a limited set of preoccupations that
do not reflect the multifaceted and interdisciplinary outputs of these
women. It is important to remember that no landmark text comes to us
fully realized; texts that dominate the critical discussion reflect the moral,
political and sociological contexts of a particular moment in history,
while texts that consistently dominate the scholarly debate reflect the
history of authorial reception, which comes down fraught with as-
sumptions and value judgements that stretch back to the public images
constructed for authors by editors, publishers and literary executors,
as well as critics. Examining the widest range of texts allows us to
recover the authors’ visions of female creativity through collating the
experiences, causes, themes and preoccupations that interested them
throughout their lives.
The gesso of my research, then, is the widest possible range of texts
I can access and discuss within the limited scope of this work, all of
which embody the authors’ spiritual lives and mystical experiences. At
the heart of my devotional pilgrimage is an attempt to converse with the
dead to discover how their lived religious practices shaped their visions
16 Introduction
as writers. This is not as eccentric an objective as it might initially ap-
pear. In her 2002 memoir on writing, Negotiating with the Dead,
Margaret Atwood claims that “all writing, is motivated, deep down …
by a desire to make the risky trip to the Underworld, and to bring
something, or someone back from the dead” (140). As the only art form
that survives as voice, writing uniquely captures the author’s presence
on the material substance of the page (much as the gesso captures the
presence of the saint). According to Atwood, writing “survives its
own performance” and leaves a trace of the author behind as “fossilised
footprints” on the manuscript, which is subsequently transformed into a
kind of score for the reader to ventriloquize the writer’s voice (141–142).
Atwood brings a wide range of ancient and classical texts to bear on this
thesis, from the legends of Demeter and Persephone, Orpheus and
Eurydice, to Virgil’s Aenied, Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Divine Comedy
and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. She convincingly argues that the desire to
communicate with the dead transcends all cultures and can be observed
in the ancestor worship practiced among indigenous cultures of Africa
and Eastern Asia, the Day of the Dead celebrated in Central and South
America, and the Western secular feast of Halloween that finds its roots
in Paganism and Christianity.
If my recovery of Alcott’s and Rossetti’s religious experience is defined
as a pilgrimage to the communion of saints, then my engagement with
archival material can equally be understood as a veneration of relics.
Following Derrida’s premise that the act of archiving imbues an object
with the trace of the event or person it seeks to commemorate, I contend
that the matrilineal communities’ collaborative record of their devotional
practices is composed with the view of allowing Christian readers to
re-enact their mystical experiences. It is worth noting that both com-
munities burnt of and disposed manuscripts they did not wish to preserve
and that their life-writing was targeted to an exclusive audience that
excluded the Alcott and Rossetti men. The archival papers discussed here
are imbued with the presence (or Derridean ‘trace’) of the matrilineal
communities’ experiences of their faith. These presences can only be
activated by those who share in this faith and who are able to decipher
the experiences and events recorded. My archival transcriptions there-
fore serve as devotional aids for reactivating the presences of the Alcott
and Rossetti women in archival objects, understood here as relics.
The introductory chapter, “I am even I,” considers how Alcott and
Rossetti resisted their male relatives’ models of artistic individualism
in familial correspondence, autobiographical fiction, and collaborative
literary projects. Part I, “Left-handed Societies,” examines how the
matrilineal communities’ theologies of renunciation, as recorded in their
life-writing, are incorporated into the authors’ iconic works, Little
Women and “Goblin Market.” Part II, “A Loving League of Sisters,”
uncovers the influence of the matrilineal communities’ theologies of
 Introduction 17
renunciation on Rossetti’s and Alcott’s portrayals of utopian sisterhood
in their lesser-known public works, Maude (1850) and Work (1873).
The conclusion compares Alcott’s and Rossetti’s rejections of in-
dividualistic models of creativity and their promotion of matrilineal
theologies of renunciation in fictional sisterhoods. A final Coda applies
four strands of my interpretive lens: resistance to individualism, the
elevation of maternal authority, the transfigurative power of Christian
sisterhood, and the metaphysical propagation of transatlantic theologies
of renunciation to five nineteenth-century women: Emily Dickinson,
Sojourner Truth, Michael Field (Katharine Harris Bradley and Edith
Emma Cooper), and Frances Hodgson Burnett, to consider how this
research might be fruitfully applied to future scholarship across the field
of nineteenth-century women’s writing.

Painting the Matrilineal Image of God: The Theological

Statements of the Alcott and Rossetti Women
The third stage of iconography is dedicated to the act of painting. As
the iconographer attempts to “channel” the presence of the saint onto
the wooden panel, they make a “theological statement” (Loreto 1).
Icons are written, as much as they are painted, incorporating sacred
texts from holy scripture (ibid.). Because icons are based on biblical
truths, they possess the capacity to transcend denominations, for they
pay witness to the “concrete events of Sacred History” (Ouspensky 49).
The painting of an icon draws the iconographer out of their mystical
contemplation of the saint into the life of the church community as they
begin to deploy symbols, patterns and texts that can be deciphered by
pilgrims across history. By interpreting Alcott’s and Rossetti’s theolo-
gical statements, I seek to recover the matrilineal heritage through
which they are connected, and so incorporate this present work into
that same lineage.
In their devotional writings, Alcott and Rossetti express the theologies
of renunciation of their matrilineal communities. I characterize Rossetti’s
and Alcott’s spiritual outlooks as ‘theologies of renunciation’ in oppo-
sition to the term “doctrine of renunciation” used by Judith Fetterley
(“Civil War” 38). In line with Fetterley’s own views on renunciation,
“doctrine” bears connotations of an imposed hierarchical framework
enforced from above in a patriarchal superstructure. By contrast,
‘theology’ suggests a fully conceptualized belief-system developed in a
mutually supportive community actively engaged with Christian tradi-
tions, mores, and discourses. Alcott’s and Rossetti’s theologies of re-
nunciation enable them to express the beliefs of the matrilineal
community, just as the act of painting allows the iconographer to ar-
ticulate the biblical foundations of Christian belief. Once the matrilineal
communities’ theologies of renunciation are recorded in life-writing
18 Introduction
texts, they are passed down to subsequent generations in much the same
manner the icon is passed down to future pilgrims.
Alcott’s and Rossetti’s theological statements are formulated against the
individualistic discourses of their male relatives in the Pre-Raphaelite and
Transcendentalist movements. Scholarship concerning Alcott and Rossetti
often defines their theologies of renunciation as expressions of deference
to the dominant individualism of the male artists of their families. Yet,
if the paradigm of artistic identity offered by the male artist is one of
individualistic genius, then to embrace a theology of renunciation is an act
of resistance. I deploy the term ‘ideology of individualism,’ when dis-
cussing the Transcendentalist and Pre-Raphaelite movements in reference
to Mary Poovey’s definition of “ideology” as a system that “governs not
just political and economic relations but social relations and even psy-
chological stresses as well” (xiv). The ideology of individualism adopted
by the Rossetti and Alcott men went far beyond the realm of art, shaping
the economic destinies, gender dynamics and psychological pressures ex-
perienced by the two families. Nor were these ideologies mere constructs
or speculative philosophies: they were established systems of principles
that governed the relations between the gendered communities of the
two families, for “simply by living together, men and women establish
priorities among their needs and desires” (ibid.).
Christian women on both sides of the Atlantic (and, indeed, across the
world) regard their attempts to embody and express the self-emptying
love of God as radically opposed to individualistic modes of self-
expression. The Christian artist acts as both witness and medium to the
creative power of the divine. In the Orthodox tradition, the iconographer
is instructed to resist individualistic expression and is threatened with
“divine retribution” if they “adopt Western and humanistic elements”
(Loreto 7). This resistance to artistic individualism is grounded in the
understanding that the devotional artist is an “instrument” of the
Creator (2), rather than, in Christine Battersby’s words, an “individual
and arrogant ego, so swollen with pride as to suppose that its own
self encompasses the whole universe” (45).
This has particular relevance because much of the early criticism of
Alcott and Rossetti aligned their rejection of artistic genius, commonly
associated with their male relatives in the Transcendentalist and Pre-
Raphaelite movements, with their inhibited agency as nineteenth-century
women. For instance, a 1930 review in the Times Literary Supplement by
Basil de Sélincourt characterizes Rossetti’s poetry as expressing “an
imprisoned genius” because artistic originality is fostered by a “latitude
and amplitude of circumstance” that is “harder for a woman” to attain
(1022). De Sélincourt associates Rossetti’s qualities of “introversion and
self-effacement” with her status as a “satellite” of the Pre-Raphaelites
(ibid.). For de Sélincourt, Rossetti’s existence in a society where “the
centre of gravity was incorrigibly male” imbues her renunciation with “a
 Introduction 19
certain hollowness” because “she [is] renouncing what she had never
had” (ibid.).10
The presence of the Romantic concept of male genius as an ultimate
point of authorial aspiration has left its trace in twentieth-century feminist
criticism. Gilbert and Gubar’s 1979 The Madwoman in the Attic,11 adapts
Harold Bloom’s 1973 theory of an “anxiety of influence” by arguing that
female writers experience an “anxiety of authorship” that is the product
of the male author’s refusal to recognize the legitimacy of a feminine voice
(Gilbert & Gubar 49). Yet, as Nina Auerbach succinctly puts it, the the-
orists’ work “grants patriarchal structures … a power they do not seem
to have earned” (Madwoman 506). And where Angela Leighton (1992)
offers a more nuanced account of the nineteenth-century female author’s
struggle to distinguish herself against the social mores that surrounded
her, she still situates this tradition within a conflict between the pre-
scriptive values of “sincerity and purity” and “the individualistic model
of artistic identity … inherited from the Romantics” (3 5).12
Repression is one of the central preoccupations of scholarship con-
cerning nineteenth-century women’s writing. A notable exception to this
trend is Marianne Hirsch’s The Mother/Daughter Plot (1989), which
upholds the importance of recovering the figure of the mother as a pi-
votal precursor to the female author. And yet, this important work of
psychoanalytic recovery is still invested in a vision of autonomy that
finds its model in the Romantic conception of a male literary genius who
seeks to distinguish himself against the tradition that precedes him.13
Hirsch does not stop to consider that a female literary tradition might
follow a fantasy of integration, rather than individuation, especially if
the female community is perceived as existing on a continuum that stems
from the divinely ordained love of the mother.
In the work that follows, I demonstrate that Louisa May Alcott upholds
a model of renunciatory cooperation within the matrilineal community as
an alternative to the ideology of individualism promoted in her father’s
1843 utopian commune, Fruitlands. The Transcendentalist conception of
genius is centered on the marginalization of the nuclear family, typified by
Emerson (1803–1882) or Thoreau (1817–1862), for example.14 The rar-
efied status of the male artist in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood15 is also
contingent upon the diminishment of the female other. According to
Elisabeth Bronfen, the female muse in Pre-Raphaelite painting represents
the threat of true feminine otherness and its potential to obliterate the
hidden individualism of the male artistic creator (11). It will be seen that
Christina Rossetti’s contributions to the Pre-Raphaelite magazine, The
Germ, portray the idealized Pre-Raphaelite model as a female corpse,
thereby exposing the Pre-Raphaelite artist’s desire for communion with a
lifeless female object recreated in his own image.
The parallels between the Pre-Raphaelite and Transcendentalist
movements go beyond the subordination of the female muse to the
20 Introduction
transcendent vision of the male individualist.16 Yet, there remains no
comparative study of these two seminal movements of nineteenth-
century British and American cultural life. The scholarly obliviousness to
resonances in Transcendentalist and Pre-Raphaelite styles of thought at
least in part derives from the inclination in transatlantic scholarship to
focus on models of authorial influence or epistolary exchange within
literary or intellectual networks. In light of these methodological models,
there are few transatlantic studies concerning either Alcott or Rossetti, or
the two prominent artistic movements with whom they are associated.17
This study can, then, at the same time help to complicate our under-
standing of the relationship between British and American literary tradi-
tions. It answers a resistance to examining the comparative development
of British and American literature, evident from Bloom (1973) down
to Gilbert and Gubar (1979), and traced in Robert Weisbuch’s Atlantic
Double Cross (1989). In essence, the development of a rarefied national
literature in the US is an outgrowth of Emerson’s ideology of in-
dividualism, which insists on the exceptionalism of the American literary
tradition as an outpouring of remarkable individuals who distinguish
themselves against their predecessors and eschew models of literary colla-
boration.18 Typically, when the connection between the two traditions
is acknowledged, it is through a framework of cause and effect that pre-
sents American literature as the child of the British tradition.19 Yet, in
tandem with their American counterparts, mid- to late- nineteenth-century
British cultural movements, including the Pre-Raphaelites, also attempted
to reconcile the Romantic aspiration to reconceive the imagination as the
source of all transcendent experience with the rise of empirical frameworks
of thought as the accepted modes for comprehending reality. It is, as Susan
Manning (2013) has observed, difficult to unravel the entwined networks
of influence that join the literary North Atlantic, somewhat confounding
Paul Giles’s (2010) characterization of these as “parallel” (i.e. neatly se-
parate) traditions. I agree with Richard Gravil (2000) that the emergence,
institutionally, of English and American Studies was a “bizarrely separate
development,” obscuring the presence of inextricably linked styles of
thought on both sides of the Atlantic (17–18).
Alcott and Rossetti based their styles of thought on the spiritual au-
thority of their mothers, in much the same way the iconographer forms
their vocation in relation to the example of the Virgin Mary. To return to
iconography, then, to illustrate this point. Iconographers believe that Christ
is only able to take on the form of the first icon because he is incarnate in
the flesh and womb of a woman—Mary. Mary is therefore regarded as the
patron of iconographers: she is venerated as “the indisputable condition of
the Incarnation, the cause of the fact that God became representable”
(Ouspensky 31). The role of the iconographer, and all devotional artists, is
paradoxical: they assume a position of humility to take on the ultimate
privilege of transmitting the image of God to the world. The prototype for
 Introduction 21
the vocation of transmitting God’s image and adopting an attitude of
humility is the Mother of God who acts as mediatrix and intermediary
between human and divine. Alcott and Rossetti may not have venerated
the Virgin Mary, but they regarded their mothers as intercessors between
earth and heaven who embodied exemplary theologies of renunciation for
their daughters to imitate. Reverence for the mother therefore underpins
the theological statements of Alcott’s and Rossetti’s devotional works of
art; the mother provides a model for rejecting individualistic ideologies in
favor of projecting the image of God.

Gilding the “Doors of Perception”: Mystical Communion

across Time and Space
In the final stage of the icon-painting process, the iconographer gilds
the icon. The gold leaf represents the presence of heaven: it invests
saints and holy figures with halos and crowns to symbolize their
sanctity. The overlaying of gold leaf “lifts the icon out of the world
into the realm of Heaven” (Loreto 2). It is at this moment that the icon
becomes a divine object: it has been embellished with the most refined
material substances available that indicate its sacredness. The appli-
cation of gold leaf enables the pilgrim to “read” the icon because it
denotes the holiness of its figures (7). Embedding the icon with pre-
cious substances that transport it into the divine allows subject, ico-
nographer, and pilgrim to, as John Baggley puts it, transcend the
“precise historical moment of time and space” and enter the “world of
the spirit … a world of human consciousness that is richer and more
mysterious than the ordinary everyday world of rational decisions and
logical actions” (82).
At the beginning of this introduction, I presented my reclamation of
Alcott’s and Rossetti’s matrilineal heritages as a pilgrimage to my own
matrilineal, mystical heritage as a Christian feminist scholar. The object
of pilgrimage is to affect a revolution in the pilgrim’s consciousness
comparable to the transfiguration of perception that takes place when
icon is gilded. Turner and Turner claim that during the course of a pil-
grimage, the structures of thought that dictate the pilgrim’s experience in
the secular world are replaced by “symbolic structures: religious build-
ings, pictorial images [including icons], statuary, and sacralised features
of the topography” (10). These sacramental objects enable the pilgrim to
vividly sympathise with “the culturally defined experiences of the
founder and those persons depicted as standing in some close relation-
ship to him” (11). The pilgrim’s immersion in the symbolic language of
their religion restores “the innocence of the eye” and facilitates the
“cleansing of the doors of perception” (ibid.); they are purified of the
sinfulness that marks their existence in a fallen world and mystically
cross the boundaries between earth and heaven.
22 Introduction
My encounter with Alcott’s and Rossetti’s matrilineal heritage
(through archival relics) is designed to immerse me in the structures of
thought of a Christian community of women that stretches across geo-
graphical, metaphysical, and temporal boundaries into the communion
of saints. An icon is often figured as a door that allows the pilgrim to
cross between earthly and divine spheres to petition (or converse) with
the figures they venerate. The distorted perspective “represent[s] the
dematerialized, spiritual form of the [icon’s] subject transfigured by di-
vine grace” (Baggley 83). To read the icon as a sacred text, the pilgrim
must refine their understanding of perspective and radically alter the way
they see the world. The wider symbolic significance of an icon must be
worked out in

the soul of those who behold [it]; what the icon represents may
have been manifested at a precise point in time and space, but its
fuller significance is found in the inner world where the true work
of purification, illumination, and union have to be accomplished.
(Baggley 82)

Likewise, the critic also attempts to achieve a transformed understanding

of the literary text through engaging in the act of close reading. Criticism
can be understood as a dialogue between scholar and writer that enables
the scholar to understand the significance of the author’s experience of
their belief-system, their vision of artistry, and their understanding of the
social function and purpose of literary art. Through rigorously analyzing
the text, the critic attempts to communicate with the author across time
and space. Similarly, the last act a pilgrim makes when they arrive at the
object of their veneration is that of petition. This may take the form of a
prayer before an icon where they ask the religious figure to advocate for
their requests and protect them in their daily lives. At the Shrine of Our
Lady of Walsingham, a stone’s throw away from where this book was
composed, you write your petition on a scrap of paper and drop it in a
box to be burnt before the altar. The trace of your living presence, im-
pressed upon the manuscript, is consumed by fire, the smoke of which
rises up to meet with the figures you have invoked. The final act of this
pilgrimage, then, is a petition to the Alcott and Rossetti women: may
their voices come alive in the relics of their manuscripts and convey the
lived experiences of their faith as expressions of their mystical commu-
nion with one other.
To illustrate the type of communion I endeavour to achieve, I will
close with an anecdote concerning a literary pilgrimage I made to Louisa
May Alcott in 2016. While surveying the Alcott archive at the Houghton
Library, Harvard, I was made aware of a temporary exhibit, “Louisa
May Alcott’s Walpole,” in the Historical Society of a charming New
Hampshire town. Louisa resided in Walpole for just two years and is
 Introduction 23
better known for her residence in Concord but, as a true Alcott en-
thusiast, I hired a car and set off on a hair-raising journey that saw
me attempting to enter the highway from the wrong side of the road
and narrowly avoid hitting a lamppost when I observed an effigy of the
Democratic nominee for president hanging from a noose outside a New
Hampshire mansion.
On reaching Walpole, I was feeling slightly worse for wear and was
determined to exit the vehicle as quickly as possible. I abruptly turned from
Main Street onto a quiet suburban road, vaguely processing a quaint
clapboard duplex on my left, and stopped in front of a steep path that
curved up a woodside hill. Leaving the monstrously huge car in the middle
of the road, I got out and ran up the path. As I reached its peak, I was struck
anew by the beauty of the New England autumn and the fine mellowness of
the light as it trickles through the leaves. At the moment the light burst
through an aperture in the branches above, I was compelled to contemplate
my blessings, one of which is the privilege of studying literature.
The exhibit was everything I expected it be: a charming celebration of
local history that contained only one object belonging to Louisa May
Alcott—a petticoat, the provenance of which was uncertain. I was briefly
torn between the British tendency to disparage objects of unknown
provenance and the Catholic tendency to venerate objects precisely be-
cause their provenance is unknown. Of course, I settled on the latter. Just
as I was leaving, the local historian accosted me, “Before you go, make
sure you turn off Main Street and take a look at the duplex where Louisa
lived. You’ll find the path she used to run up every day at the end of the
road—you know, the one that looks out on her ‘splendid ravine’”. Then,
I remembered that the woods held a special significance for Louisa May
Alcott, for a journal entry of 1845 memorializes a spiritual revelation she
received while running in the woods:

I had an early run in the woods before the dew was off the grass … It
seemed like going through a dark life or grave into heaven beyond.
A very strange and solemn feeling came over me as I stood there,
with no sound but the rustle of the pines, no one near me, and the
sun so glorious, as for me alone. It seemed as if I felt God as I never
did before, and I prayed in my heart that I might keep that happy
sense of nearness all my life.
(57)

40 years later, Louisa annotated this passage: “I have, for I most sin-
cerely think the little girl ‘got religion’ that day in the wood when dear
mother Nature led her to God” (ibid.).
One might read Louisa’s entire output in the context of this passage: here
she describes her remaining lived experience as transformed by the mystical
moment of revelation she received in the woods. During the moment of
24 Introduction
revelation Louisa’s work becomes an act of witness to the “happy sense
of nearness” that thereafter pervaded her life: she was made aware of the
immanent presence of the divine (ibid.). The very last thing an icono-
grapher does before they donate their work to the devotional community
(giving over a piece of themselves in the process) is to “sign” the image
(Loreto 2 5). The image is not signed with their name, however, for they
have become a divine “instrument” (2). Instead, the icon is signed with the
name of the mystical event or holy figure it commemorates. At this moment
in the woods, where Louisa and I meet across time and space, she signs her
future work with the record of the moment of her conversion. Louisa’s
entire canon is imbued with the trace of this moment, just as Christina
Rossetti’s verse is imprinted with her aphorism: “All things we see lie far
within our scope / And still we peer beyond with craving face” (Later Life
356 Sonnet 23 14).

Notes
1 I will refer to Alcott and Rossetti by their surnames, unless I am discussing
them in the wider context of their families, in which case I will refer to all
family members by forename, or forename and middle name, depending on
how the figure in question is best known.
2 Little Women was well received in Britain. The British Quarterly Review
claimed that, “We are not so sure that our American cousins do not, in this
department of literature, far excel any writer that we can boast,” 53.[1] Jan.
1871: 157 (Clark 84). Likewise, The Westminster and Foreign Quarterly
Review, raved: “We consider Miss Alcott’s stories to be far better in every
way than the generality of English tales,” 103.203 1st January, 1875: 271
(87). Due to unprecedented demand, Little Women precipitated a blockade
at the warehouse of Alcott’s publisher, Roberts Brothers, upon its initial
printing in 1868 (Matteson 344). Roberts Brothers were also Christina
Rossetti’s American publishers (Kooistra 96).
3 As Grace M. Jantzen argues, “It was crucial to the ecclesiastical establish-
ment that those who claimed knowledge of the mysteries of God should be
contained within the structures of the church, since the power of the church
would be threatened if it should be acknowledged that access to divine au-
thority was possible outside its confines” (2). Therefore, the “delimiting of
mysticism through the centuries was crucial to maintaining hierarchical
control in church and society” (3).
4 “A host of things I take on trust: I take/The nightingales on trust” (R.W.
Crump, The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti, 2001 355 Sonnet 21
1–2). Crump’s edition of Christina Rossetti’s poems is cited throughout,
with the exception of poems appearing in Rossetti’s 1896 novella,
Maude.
5 Hollywood argues that Beauvoir’s The Second Sex regards female mystics as
projecting their “desire to be everything” onto love of “self, man or God” (22).
6 Eve LaPlante’s, extensive recovery of Abigail, which also includes her
landmark double biography, Marmee and Louisa (2013), is nevertheless an
invaluable resource for showcasing Abigail’s literary gifts; her close bond
with her daughters and the stylistic influence of her work on Louisa’s
output.
 Introduction 25
7 An academic monograph on Alcott’s youngest sister, May, The Forgotten
Alcott: Essays on the Artistic Legacy and Literary Life of May Alcott
Nieriker (Flint & Hehmeyer) is forthcoming with Routledge’s The
Nineteenth Century Series (2022). I know of four biographies concerning the
Alcott sisters that are currently in progress.
8 Arseneau’s work draws attention to the intertextual presence of Rossetti’s
mother, Frances, in Christina’s writing, but does not offer an extended
analysis of Frances’s Commonplace Book, which is discussed here at length
alongside the theological writings of Rossetti’s sister, Maria, formerly
recovered by Arseneau.
9 According to LaPlante, Abigail Alcott “longed for the experience of her
brother Sam… She wished to read history and literature, to learn Latin and
Greek, and to use her mind to improve the world, as he was encouraged to
do. Her society did not value these goals in a girl, but her brother and mother
honored her ambition and encouraged her to educate herself” (Marmee 19).
Abigail married philosopher, Bronson Alcott (1799–1888), with the view of
expanding her intellectual horizons. Her private writings and journals con-
tain a fluency that surpasses that of Louisa May Alcott’s life-writing. Frances
Rossetti née Polidori (a prolific life-writer and governess) was likewise at-
tracted to the older Professor of Italian at King’s College, London, Gabriele
Rossetti (1783–1854), on account of his learning. She hoped they might
produce a family of accomplished scholars and writers. Like Abigail Alcott,
Frances had a literary brother: the writer J.W. Polidori (1795–1821), who
composed the first British work of vampire fiction.
10 De Sélincourt’s portrayal of renunciation as the by-product of female sub-
missiveness is also embraced, albeit positively, by Alcott’s contemporaries.
Alcott’s funeral eulogy describes her death, two days after her father’s, as
evidence of her identification with him: “As the young mother in the classic
story gave her breast to her famished sire in prison, so this daughter, such a
support to her father on earth, was needed by him even in heaven” (“Louisa
May Alcott.” AFAP 1707–1904. MS 1130.16. Folder 7. Houghton Lib.,
Harvard). Early assessments of Alcott’s work underscore the fact that her
writing financially supported her father in his literary and artistic endeavors,
thereby presenting her authorial vocation as a response to his needs.
11 The important cultural work attained by Gilbert and Gubar should not be
underestimated. As Janet Gezari argues, “Gilbert and Gubar’s account of
how nineteenth-century women’s writing had been shaped by ‘gender
strife’ brought the emergence of gender as a category of analysis to full
consciousness” (266).
12 Isobel Armstrong (2002) makes a similar contention, arguing that Victorian
women’s poetry reveals the lack of an expressive outlet for the spontaneous
“overflow of feeling” Coleridge claimed was integral to poetic expression
(340–341). As a consequence of the inability to “bring forth an excess of feeling,”
repression becomes an integral aspect of the female poet’s condition (341).
13 Hirsch argues that “in conventional nineteenth-century plots of the European
and American tradition the fantasy that controls the female family romance is
the desire for the heroine’s singularity based on a disidentification from the
fate of other women, especially the mother” (10).
14 Joyce W. Warren argues that, for Emerson, “Other people have no existence,
no substance, except as they are absorbed into or made use of by the self”
(29). Likewise, Kathryn Schultz writes of Thoreau: “The real Thoreau was,
in the fullest sense of the word, self-obsessed: narcissistic, fanatical about
26 Introduction
self-control, adamant that he required nothing beyond himself to survive and
thrive in the world” (para. 6).
15 Wendy Graham contends that the Pre-Raphaelites capitalized on the public’s
initial “neglect, incomprehension and censure” to cultivate an avant-garde
mystique as misunderstood geniuses whose only compensation for their in-
adequate recognition was their very “status as geniuses” (57).
16 Both movements positioned themselves against what they deemed to be the
stagnant and restrictive models of creativity upheld in the canon and
academy, championing instead a return to nature as expressive of an artistic
authenticity that could paradoxically enable both the creation of a new mode
of realism and the simulation of a pantheistic transcendence; both reacted
against the organized religions of their cultural milieux by presenting alter-
native visions for social reform in their stead; each predominantly male group
was founded on historical prototypes of cooperative fraternity that drew
inspiration from the European Romantics and Coleridge in particular, and
each circle, in its own idiosyncratic way, experimented with philosophies of
free love derived from either the work of prominent thinkers, such as Charles
Fourier and Ezra Heywood, or the immediate desire to gratify their own
sexual appetites—usually with disastrous results.
17 There are only two extended works of transatlantic scholarship that ex-
amine the work of Louisa May Alcott, both of which center on her literary
influences. Christine Doyle’s Transatlantic Transactions (2000) considers
the interchange between Alcott and Charlotte Bronte’s ideas concerning
women’s work, while Barton and Huston’s Transatlantic Sensations (2016)
examines the transatlantic exchange of ideas in sensation writing, paying
careful attention to the influence of British writers like Elizabeth Braddon
on Alcott’s horror writing. Nina Auerbach’s Communities of Women
contains a fascinating comparison of the matriarchal structure of the Bennet
and March families in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Little Women,
respectively, but Auerbach does not link her observations concerning fic-
tional female communities to the authors’ matrilineal heritages. The only
monograph to touch on Christina Rossetti’s transatlantic connections is
Lorraine Jantzen Kooistra’s Christina Rossetti and Illustration: A
Publishing History (2002). Yet, the Rossetti household paid considerable
attention to American literary culture. Dinah Roe’s 2015 Pre-Raphaelite
Society Founders’ Day Lecture, “A Special Relationship: The Rossetti
Family and the United States of America,” has highlighted the need for
more research in this area.
18 It is no coincidence that authorial identity replaces the selection of individual
works as the expression of wider aesthetic and formalistic trends in the
nineteenth-century. Leon Chai (2019) has made the prescient point that
the privileging of individual figures “sacrifices the canon’s essential purpose,
since, if there is nothing transcending the authors … neither can there
be any principle of selection or exclusion to express the idea behind the
canon—exemplariness” (4). In short, exemplariness—whether British or
American—is a mythic point of aspiration that functions merely to distin-
guish one tradition against the other, using identical modes of formulation.
19 In his study of the literary influence of Romanticism in both traditions,
Richard Gravil (2000) writes: “the situation of idealistic Americans in
1823–1862 … involved preoccupations and expectations strangely par-
allel to those of England in the period 1790–1819” (14). Patrick J. Keane’s
Emerson, Romanticism and Intuitive Reason (2002) recovers Emerson’s
development of the concept of “intuitive reason” with reference to work
 Introduction 27
of Kant and his wider milieu, as well as British Romantic thinkers in-
cluding Coleridge, Wordsworth and Carlyle. Samantha C. Harvey’s
Transatlantic Transcendentalism: Coleridge, Emerson and Nature (2013)
presents Coleridge as the catalyst for the transformation in Emerson’s
thinking and the subsequent birth of American Transcendentalism be-
tween the years 1826–36. In her “Transcendentalism, Romanticism,
Transatlanticism” (Handbook of Transatlantic North American Studies
2016), Diane Piccitto offers a more nuanced account of the Romantic
influence on Transcendentalism by arguing that the Transcendentalist
appraisal of British Romanticism reflects the tensions in the American
understanding of the Old World as both its forebear and antagonist.
1 “I am Even I”: Rossetti and
Alcott Resisting Male Authority

In his 1904 memoir of Christina Rossetti, Some Reminiscences, William

Michael Rossetti (1829–1919) described his sister’s transition from
childhood to adolescence as a period in which she increasingly forced
herself to subdue her passionate emotions: “Her temperament and
character, naturally warm and free, became ‘a fountain sealed’” (lxviii).
This interpretation of Christina’s early life was echoed by her other
brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882), in his 1877 chalk portrait
of Christina and their mother, Frances: Christina Georgina Rossetti;
Frances Mary Lavinia Rossetti (nee Polidori). The portrait shows both
women in side-profile and emphasizes their austerity and inscrutability.
Each gaze inclines away from the viewer in a frown, while the lips of
both women are set severely and appear to eschew the expression of
emotion—something that is also emphasized by the muted blue and grey
palette. When discussing this portrait in his memoir, William Michael
again linked it to his sister’s enforced self-repression: “Whenever I set my
eyes upon it, the lines from her poem, ‘From House to Home’ come into
my mind—‘Therefore in patience I possess my soul; / Yea, therefore as a
flint I set my face’” (lxv).
William Michael’s interpretation of Dante Gabriel’s portrait as a
straightforward representation of their sister’s inner life encapsulates
the ways in which Christina’s theology of renunciation has been inter-
preted by succeeding generations of critics. Christina’s religious faith
has historically been read as stifling and repressive, a symptom of the
period in which she lived. Likewise, Louisa May Alcott is remembered
as ‘Duty’s Faithful Child,’ a nickname given to her by her father com-
memorating the sacrifice of her ambitions for his own. The authors’
theologies of renunciation have historically been read as coercive out-
looks that deny their agency and ability to engage in informed dis-
courses with their male relatives. Yet as this chapter shows, by exploring
the authors’ engagements with their male relatives and the wider Pre-
Raphaelite and Transcendentalist movements, both women champion
the importance of spiritual accountability: each person must strive to
attain eternal salvation through acknowledging their responsibility to
 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority 29
others. In correspondence and life-writing, collaborative literary pro-
jects and autobiographical fiction, Christina and Louisa reject ideologies
of individualism contingent upon the female subject’s subservience to
the male artist.
William Michael’s biographical reading of his sister’s verse has influ-
enced subsequent interpretations of her poetry,1 while Dante Gabriel’s
portrait, as a surviving visual representation, is often circulated as a reli-
able depiction of her character.2 Barbara Garlick interprets Christina’s
identification with the image of “the frozen fountain” as a reference to her
virginity and “the loss of selfhood involved in repressed sensuality” (105),
while Dolores Rosenblum conflates Christina’s impenetrable demeanor
with her role as a Pre-Raphaelite model, claiming her severe facial ex-
pression “becomes a … mode of aggression, as this seemingly stoical
declaration reveals: ‘Yea, therefore, as a flint I set my face’” (85).
Twentieth-century critical readings of Christina’s verse often portray
her as suppressing her sensual nature, fostered by the Pre-Raphaelites, to
meet the requirements of the religious beliefs she shared with her mother
and sister. Donald Sturge uses William Michael’s description of
Christina as a “fountain sealed” to support his claim that she experi-
enced an “inner conflict” reflecting diverging familial influences, which
can be “divided into two categories, ‘religious’ and ‘intellectual’ corre-
sponding to the predominate interests of mother and father respectively”
(193). R.A. Bellas likewise argues Christina withdrew into herself be-
cause of her religious belief-system, which he describes as an “imposition
of a code of life—a way of thinking, feeling, and acting—that did not
satisfy the needs of Christina’s personality or adequately explain her
experiences” (43).3 Yet, Christina’s stoical demeanor, perceptible in the
flint-like facial expression of Dante Gabriel’s portrait, belies a hidden
depth—as can be observed in her poem “Flint” (251): “An opal holds a
fiery spark; / But a flint holds fire” (7–8).
Louisa May Alcott’s early reception was likewise overshadowed by
her father’s published evaluation of her character. Specifically, in his
1882 Sonnets and Canzonets, Bronson Alcott (1799–1888) included a
tribute to his daughter, which described her as “Duty’s faithful child”
who had “vexed a sprightly brain” to “cherish kindred dear” (qtd. in
Matteson 404 9–14). As William Michael’s assessment of his sister’s
character has influenced subsequent readings of her poetry, so has
Bronson’s description of his daughter shaped successive critical re-
sponses to her life and writing. Early reviewers praised Louisa’s sub-
mission to her father’s will with an 1888 obituary claiming she would be
remembered as “the devoted daughter, on whose arm leaned for support
that white-haired sage from whom her separation in life has been so
pathetically brief.”4 This tradition of interpretation continued into the
1970s with Carol Gay claiming that Louisa was unable to mature as a
thinker because her relationship with her father infantilized her.5
30 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority
Leona Rostenberg’s 1943 discovery of Alcott’s pseudonymous horror
fiction and Madeline B. Stern’s subsequent 1975 landmark edition of
Alcott’s forgotten thrillers, Behind a Mask, strengthened the conflation
of Alcott’s literary output with her dutiful relationship with her father.
Much has been made of Alcott’s jesting admission in an 1886 interview
that she obscured her “lurid style” for fear that her subversive characters
might go “cavorting at their own sweet will” in front of “dear Mr.
Emerson” and her “own good father” (qtd. in Paola Giordano 146).6
Angela M. Estes and Kathleen Margaret Lant argue that Louisa’s
pseudonymous work embraces the Transcendentalist ideals of “self-
expression, self-reliance and self-exploration” (99) and is veiled under a
pseudonym because Alcott anticipated her father and Emerson dis-
approving of a woman embracing these principles (100).7 As recently as
2012, Meg Jensen has similarly contended that Alcott’s work implicitly
expresses her sense of repression under her father’s “intrusive surveil-
lance” (10). While Jensen acknowledges that Alcott “critiqued”
Bronson’s philosophy in her writing, she claims Alcott nonetheless
“avoided … explicit public critiques” of her father, which is “in a
Bloomian reading” evidence of “weakness” (5 10).
And yet, something of vital imporance is missed in these readings
because they defer to prominent biographical fallacies about the authors
inherited from their early critical receptions, shaped by their male re-
latives. For example, they place considerable emphasis on the change in
temperament both women experienced during adolescence when they
relinquished the passionate demeanors that characterized their early
lives.8 In childhood, Christina was allied with Dante Gabriel as one of
the ‘two storms’ of the family, as opposed to the ‘two calms’ of her other
siblings: Maria and William Michael. Christina’s preoccupation with
religious obedience and devotional practice followed her adolescent
breakdown in 1845 when she was 15 years old. There has been much
speculation about the possible medical causes of Christina’s reported
breakdown, but now as in her own lifetime, these tend merely to deny
her agency by viewing her religious faith as a symptom of her mental
illness.9 As a consequence, it is suggested here, we have come to know
her through, essentially, misreadings of her life experiences.
Alcott’s childhood was subject to comparable fits of anger and frus-
tration. Like Rossetti, who admitted to mutilating her arm with a pair of
scissors in childhood after being reprimanded by her mother, Alcott’s
journal expresses resentment of parental authority and surveillance.10 In
adult life, Alcott relinquished this resentment to take on the role of fa-
mily breadwinner, often assuming literary projects that were distasteful
to her, such as the Little Women trilogy. Alcott’s sense of familial ob-
ligation is sometimes connected to her father’s disapproval of her fiery
temperament; her theology of renunciation has been read as an attempt
to win his approval.11 In reality Alcott’s decision to become the family
 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority 31
breadwinner reflects her lifelong dedication to and affiliation with her
mother and the wider matrilineal community: Alcott provided the eco-
nomic support her father was unable to offer in his career as a philo-
sopher.12 It will be seen that Alcott and Rossetti rejected the
individualistic outlooks modelled by their male relatives to assert their
conceptual independence as artists; they believed the individual should
prioritize eternal salvation and service to others above public acclaim.
Their correspondence with their male relatives partakes in lively debates
concerning the role of the artist, demonstrating their wit, satirical skill
and, at times, playfully independent thinking.
Currently, there are no studies comparing the influence of the male
and female communities of the Rossetti and Alcott families, with the
exception of Madelon Bedell’s The Alcotts: Biography of a Family
(1980) and Dinah Roe’s The Rossettis in Wonderland (2011), exhaustive
biographical studies that, by virtue of their genre, do not extensively
examine familial debates concerning artistic identity. My recovery of the
authors’ affiliation with their matrilineal communities demonstrates that
Alcott and Rossetti advanced alternative models of female creativity to
the figure of the poet as prophet championed by the Romantics and later
taken up enthusiastically by second wave feminist critics. By placing
Rossetti’s and Alcott’s theologies of renunciation alongside their male
relatives’ ideologies of individualism, the work that follows illustrates
that renunciation is practiced with the view of empowering women to
safeguard and promote one another’s human dignity in the face of the
male individualist’s solipsistic self-interest.
Alcott and Rossetti imagine a world where artists and philosophers
collaborate with providence through adapting their visions to the
changing circumstances of their lives. They interrogate the real-world
implications of Transcendentalist and Pre-Raphaelite values, and predict
the future lives of their male relatives. Ironically, the authors’ summa-
tions of the fruits of an individualistic outlook prove to be more accurate
than the male artists’ inspired visions: both women demonstrate that the
incorporation of the female subject into the male artist’s ego is detri-
mental to both parties, as well as the wider community. As Alcott and
Rossetti turn away from the artistic examples of their male relatives, we
see them championing women’s spiritual authority, religious faith and
renunciatory practice—qualities at the forefront of their collaborative
writing within the matrilineal community, which I explore in later
chapters of this book.
I begin here, however, by surveying the authors’ correspondence with
their male relatives: drawing attention to their declarations of conceptual
independence and the promotion of idiosyncratic literary styles that fore-
ground the merits of women’s renunciatory theologies. In autobiographical
fiction and literary collaboration, Alcott, and Rossetti skillfully mimic
and ventriloquize the style, voice and tenets of Transcendentalism and
32 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority
Pre-Raphaelitism to expose the movements’ ideological dependence on the
subjugation of women and the subordination of the wider community to
the aspirations of the individualistic self. In work that explicitly evaluates
the movements’ spirituality, Alcott and Rossetti stress the importance of
abiding by an ethical code of conduct that tempers the moral excesses
accompanying the pursuit of sublime experience. Ultimately, both women
reorient our attention to the practice of renunciation espoused by female
figures of spiritual authority. In concert with their wider matrilineal com-
munities, both Alcott and Rossetti argue that artists should prioritize the
redemption that is the fruit of service to others above personal fulfilment
centered on the all-consuming gratification of self.

“I am Even I”: Christina Rossetti’s Assertion of the Female

Poet’s Independence in Her Correspondence with Dante
Gabriel Rossetti
Christina Rossetti’s correspondence with Dante Gabriel Rossetti reveals
her intellectual engagement with the values of the Brotherhood and her
development of a unique poetic voice that contests the individualistic
vision of the Pre-Raphaelites. She resists her brother’s criticism of her
work and reasserts her poetic identity, while endorsing the achievements
of other female poets, who were subject to her brother’s disapproval.
This can be observed in her critical commentary of the poetry of
Elizabeth Siddal (1829–1862), Dante Gabriel’s late wife. Christina
considered a selection of Siddal’s poems, furnished by her brother, for
inclusion in her upcoming 1865 volume of verse (C. Rossetti Letters 1
224) and favored the works that were most critical of her brother.
Christina regarded Siddal’s poems as autobiographical,13 and claimed
that her favorite was “Number III,” “Dead Love” (Letters 1 225 fn. 3), a
poem that condemns the inconstancy of the narrator’s beloved:

Oh never weep for love that’s dead

Since love is seldom true
But changes his fashion from blue to red,
From brightest red to blue,
And love was born to an early death
And is so seldom true. (1–6)

In speaking of her especial admiration for “Dead Love,” Christina im-

plicitly affiliates herself with Siddal’s critique of her brother. Dante
Gabriel’s poetry and painting commonly features dead women who re-
deem their unworthy beloveds through prayerful intercession in the
afterlife. Here, Siddal presents love, rather than the beloved, as dead and
transforms the masterful personified figure of “Love,” conceived by
 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority 33
Dante, and developed by her husband, into a foppish character who
changes his color with the fashion of the moment.
When evaluating “Dead Love,” Christina daringly informs Dante
Gabriel that she admires the poem because it is “piquant … with cool
bitter sarcasm.” This is an audacious admission, given the fact she as-
sociates Siddal’s poetry with “Lizzie herself” (225). Unsurprisingly,
Christina’s next letter indicates her brother does not agree with her
positive evaluation of the poem.14 Christina implies that Dante Gabriel’s
reaction belies his desire to control Siddal’s image after her death.15
Emily J. Orlando argues that Siddal’s poetry has been continually
associated with that of Dante Gabriel as “products of the great artist’s
influence” that are “decidedly secondary to his canon” (628). Orlando
claims that this was because Dante Gabriel “continually put his stamp on
how history would remember [Siddal],” suppressing the publication of
her poetry, and even destroying her photographs, so she would be re-
membered solely through his paintings (628–629). Christina Rossetti’s
letter simultaneously acknowledges her brother’s desire to control
Siddal’s reputation, while implicitly supporting Siddal’s criticisms of his
inconstancy.
Christina’s responses to her brother’s criticisms of her own poetry
assert her independence and stress the uniqueness of her poetic identity.
Anthony H. Harrison has argued that Christina refutes her brother’s
criticisms through an illicit “strategy of depreciation” where she refers to
alleged technical weaknesses to justify her rejection of her brother’s
advice (95). However, a careful examination of Christina’s correspon-
dence reveals that what may appear to be an affirmation of poetic
weakness is a statement of poetic independence.
When responding to her brother’s request that she allow him to pro-
vide a list of recommended revisions for her upcoming volume of verse,
Christina replies: “Please make your emendations, and I can call them
over the coals in proofs:— only don’t make vast changes as ‘I am I’”
(Letters 1 232). While at first glance this may appear to be an ac-
knowledgement of her artistic limitations, Christina is, in fact, quoting
her triptych of poems, “The Thread of Life” (330–331). In these poems,
the narrator initially expresses a desire to join in the activities of those
surrounding her,16 only to repudiate the desire by asserting the im-
manence of her personal identity: “But soon I put the foolish fancy by: / I
am not what I have nor what I do; / But what I was I am, I am even I”
(II 12–14). Masked in deference, Christina’s statement to her brother is
an implicit assertion of her right to a separate voice from his own, as well
as a rejection of any collaborative or shared literary style.
When outlining Christina’s “strategy of depreciation,” Harrison
cites a letter where Christina responds to Dante Gabriel’s request for
new material (96). She refuses, claiming she is unable to produce po-
etry on demand because she is “a person of one idea” who sings from a
34 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority
“one-stringed lyre” and is unable to “turn to politics or philanthropy
with Mrs. Browning” (Letters 1 348). Harrison observes a denigrating
tone in her statement that “Women are not Men” and Dante Gabriel
“must not expect [her] to possess a tithe of [his] capacities” (ibid.).
Although this statement is outwardly depreciative, it contains an un-
derlying criticism of Dante Gabriel, of which he would have been
aware. In claiming that the only way to increase her output would be
to broaden her subject-range to the breadth of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning’s (1806–1861), Christina references a poet whom she knew
her brother disliked. He later criticized Christina’s poem, “The Lowest
Room,” as “echoish of the Barrett-Browning style,” which he defined
as a type of “falsetto masculinity” (Letters 1 323).
By claiming she cannot be Elizabeth Barrett Browning or Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, Christina implicitly draws attention to the double
standard of her brother’s demands. On the one hand, he demands a
greater volume and variety of material, but on the other he excludes
women from writing on certain topics. In response, Christina asserts her
independence and distinctive character as a female poet by claiming she
is only able to write within a certain style and, if her brother does want
her to follow Barrett Browning’s example, neither should he expect her
to follow his own.
In other letters, Christina asserts her special suitability to write on
certain topics as a woman. Responding to her brother’s claim that the
subject of her poem, “Under the Rose,” is inappropriate for a woman
poet because it is about an illegitimate child, Christina writes: “whilst I
endorse your opinion of the unavoidable and indeed much-to-be-desired
unreality of women’s work on many social matters, I yet incline to in-
clude within the female range such an (work) attempt as this” (234).
Christina’s letters also implicitly challenge her brother’s moral ap-
proach to certain poetic topics. For instance, when criticizing his sonnet
on Chatterton, she writes:

You are right as to my thoro’ ignorance not being able to say

anything about Chatterton’s literary position: but the dreadful
poverty which goaded him to so dreadful a deed I do know
something of; & hard must be the heart which feels not for him,
however far from feeling with him. You bring the poor boy & his
gifts & his career vividly before one: I, if I could write thus upon
him, I should say something more & something less (238)

In this passage, Christina states that, while she does not share her
brother’s knowledge of Chatterton’s work, she is able to understand the
situation that drove him to suicide. She sympathizes with Chatterton, but
cannot empathize with him, and it is implied that the “something more”
she would say would be a condemnation of his suicide, while the
 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority 35
“something less” would be a limiting of her brother’s unfettered praise
(ibid,). Christina implies there are moral obligations to the poet’s role,
which her brother has failed to fulfil, and which she would be better
qualified to achieve. Consequently, there are occasions where she in-
dicates Dante Gabriel’s limited approach reveals an inherent moral
weakness, where her “female range” (234) can render her more suited to
the topic in question.
Christina’s correspondence with Dante Gabriel asserts the value of the
female poet’s vision. She promotes Elizabeth Siddal’s verse concerning
Dante Gabriel’s inconstancy, thereby undercutting the latter’s attempts
to control his wife’s image after her death. When discussing her own
poetry, Christina emphasizes the uniqueness of her voice and the peculiar
aptitude of women to write about moral issues like the plight of illegi-
timate children and the despair that accompanies poverty and suicide.
Christina develops the assertion of her poetic identity implicit in her
correspondence in her poetic contributions to the Pre-Raphaelite ma-
gazine, The Germ. Christina’s entries to The Germ, examined in the
following section of this chapter, subtly satirize Pre-Raphaelite por-
trayals of dead women. In place of the dead beloved, Christina presents
an isolated female figure who separates herself from the material world
to strive towards a divine union with Christ in the afterlife, rather than a
heavenly reunion with the male lover.

“The Death of a Beautiful Woman Is Unquestionably the

Most Poetical Topic in the World”? Christina Rossetti’s
Portrayal of the Pre-Raphaelite Corpse in Her
Contributions to The Germ
Christina Rossetti’s poetic entries to The Germ reflect her unique status
as a cultural outsider, who was simultaneously granted ‘inside access’ to
the Pre-Raphaelite movement. As such, she develops a feminist re-
presentation of the Pre-Raphaelite dead woman, who is objectified and
idealized in Pre-Raphaelite art, functioning as a receptacle for the male
artist’s desires. The Germ was established by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in
1849 as an artistic manifesto for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, as well
as an attempt to contribute to the sphere of literature, as well as art. All
members of the Brotherhood were invited to contribute, but the maga-
zine only went through four issues before it went out of print in 1850
due to poor sales.
Scholars and biographers have disagreed over the nature of Christina’s
involvement in the publication. Garlick argues Christina was margin-
alized because she was denied membership to the Brotherhood but was
nevertheless exploited as an “acolyte and central icon of virginity” (105),
while the Belseys draw attention to an 1848 letter from Dante Gabriel to
William Holman Hunt (1827–1910), which states it was “impossible” to
36 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority
persuade Christina to attend the Brotherhood’s meetings because she
was “under the impression that it would seem like display… a sort of
thing she abhors” (qtd. in Doughty 45). Christina’s poems were largely
used as a ‘filler’ when the magazine was short of material and were
privately selected by herself and her brothers from her notebooks. Alexis
Easley asserts that Christina’s poetic contributions are “meditation[s] on
her choice to suppress her name and desire for artistic fame” (7 emphasis
added). These poems reflect Christina’s rejection of the vanity of The
Germ as a project. Her submissions to the magazine are concerned with
virginal female figures who are icons of self-containment. I will examine
these poems in light of their intertextual references to the works of the
Brotherhood, drawing attention to Christina’s critical commentaries on
the portrayal of dead and dying women prominent in Pre-Raphaelite
painting and poetry.
Pre-Raphaelite art and literature is excessively preoccupied with the
image of the dead female beloved. Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s “The Blessed
Damozel” (1850) was inspired by Poe’s “The Raven,” a poem doubt-
lessly motivated by the latter’s assertion that “the death … of a beautiful
woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world” (1621).
Bronfen argues that for artists like Poe and Rossetti, the dead female
body: “appears as a perfect, immaculate aesthetic form … solidified into
an object of art” (5) and that the male artist ultimately aspires towards a
necrophiliac union with this statuesque dead body (70).
The desire for an erotic union with the beloved’s corpse can be ob-
served throughout the Brotherhood’s contributions to The Germ. For
example, Thomas Woolner’s (1825–1892) double-set of poems for the
first issue, “Of my Lady in Life” (The Germ 1–5) and “Of my Lady in
Death” (5–10) portrays the narrator as excessively preoccupied with his
lady’s corpse.17 The beloved’s death is presented as the consequence of
her sexual relationship with the narrator.18 Woolner writes from a
Victorian tradition that fetishizes the erotic promise of female virginity
and dictates that if a woman experiences sexual relations outside of
marriage she is permanently ‘fallen.’ The lady’s death is the inevitable
consequence of her probable sexual act, functioning as a means of pre-
serving her purity, while simultaneously allowing the narrator to violate
the virginity he finds so alluring outside the confines of marriage.
Christina’s poem, “Dreamland” (The Germ 20), included in the first
issue of The Germ, subverts the image of the dead woman by implying
that the female subject aspires towards death because death allows her to
achieve a type of fulfilment that does not defer to romantic or erotic
unions with men. Instead, the poem’s subject redirects her attention
towards the fulfilment found in eternal life as she awaits her redemption.
The title may refer to the Tractarian Doctrine of ‘Soul Sleep,’ which
contends that humanity will remain asleep until the Last Judgment. The
poem’s subject inhabits a liminal space between mortal and eternal life;
 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority 37
she experiences “a charmed sleep” (3), “a perfect rest” (17) and a
“perfect peace” (32). Death seems to be an integral aspect of her per-
sonal development, for she leaves “the fields of corn, / For twilight cold
and lorn” (10–11) as a completion of her journey towards “the west /
The purple land” (20) where she can experience a “Sleep that no pain
shall wake” (29) until “joy shall overtake / Her perfect peace” (31–32).
Elaine Shefer has observed that many of Christina’s poems refer to
Mariana from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: a figure who, in
Alfred Lord Tennyson’s (1809–1892) poem, “Mariana” (1830), laments
the desertion of her lover. As opposed to the Mariana of Tennyson or
John Everett Millais (1829–1896),19 who endures painful self-
imprisonment derived from her abandonment and possible shame,
Christina’s figure has escaped the restrictions of the outside world to
exist in an enclosed state of being no one can disturb. Her heroine’s
isolation is not a response to male rejection20 but is rather borne of a
desire to achieve self-fulfillment independently.
In her contribution to the third issue of The Germ, “Repining” (The
Germ 111–117), Christina invests the inanimate beloved with a voice
and indicates the only way she can find fulfilment is through union with
Christ, since the role assigned to her by the male artist is reductive and
unrewarding. The poem opens with a description of how Christina’s
heroine sits “always thro’ the long day / Spinning the weary thread
away” (1–2), a reference to Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” (1832)—a
poem that also featured as the subject of many Pre-Raphaelite paint-
ings.21 As with the sudden appearance of Lancelot in Tennyson’s poem,
Christina’s heroine is suddenly joined by a mysterious stranger. The
stranger is revealed to be Christ, who in direct reference to Matthew 4:19
commands the narrator to, “Rise, and follow me” (49). The narrator is
then led into the world to witness a number of horrific sites: an ava-
lanche, a storm at sea, and a fire, all of which cause mass destruction and
death. At the close of the poem the narrator kneels “in her agony” (247)
before Christ, exclaiming: “O Lord, it is enough…. / My heart’s prayer
putteth me to shame / Let me return to whence I came” (258-249).
The Belseys have argued that the message of “Repining” reinforces
Tennyson’s earlier work where the female subject is condemned for
stepping outside the confines of her allotted task, but in opposition to the
figure portrayed by Tennyson and Holman Hunt,22 Christina’s narrator
achieves understanding and acceptance of her situation at the poem’s
close; she learns to rely on the love of God.23 Christina indicates that the
female subject should reject her role as silent beloved and find fulfilment
in her religious faith. She condemns the fate of the Pre-Raphaelite muse
and presents an alternative path for her readers.
Christina’s contributions to The Germ subvert the Pre-Raphaelite
preoccupation with dead women to expose the Brotherhood’s objectifi-
cation of the female muse, who is depicted as a receptacle of the male
38 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority
artist’s desires. Christina transforms the image of the dead muse by
rendering her unobtainable and creating a space where she is self-
contained and free of men’s interference. Although Christina emphasizes
the frustration experienced by the muse, she also indicates that women
can find fulfilment in their relationships with God. In the world of
Christina’s poems, her theology of renunciation protects women from
exploitative and one-sided relationships with male artists. Christina de-
velops this resistance to the male artist’s ideological domination in her
private, posthumously published writing, which is completed alongside
her entries to The Germ.

“Cannot You Fancy She May Be Leaning Down to Me

from Her Rest”? Christina Rossetti’s Subversion of the
Female Intercessor in Her Prophetic Poem, “A Year
Afterwards”
In 1850, while Christina was still contributing to The Germ, she further
developed her critique of the Pre-Raphaelite portrayal of dead women in
a dramatic monologue, “A Year Afterwards,” posthumously published
by Rebecca Crump (2001 713–715). This poem refutes the Pre-
Raphaelite artist’s belief that he can create the female muse in his own
image while relying on her to intercede for his redemption in the afterlife.
The individualism of Pre-Raphaelitism, which functions under the as-
sumption that the male artist can compel the female subject to conform
to his ideal of beauty, is undercut by the muse’s insistence that the artist
cannot wield any control over her spiritual life, and he is responsible for
his own salvation. “A Year Afterwards” stresses the importance of
providence in the exercise of free will. While the male artist is free
to pursue his individualistic aspirations, he must be mindful of the
implications of his conduct for his spiritual welfare.
The monologue describes the speaker’s pilgrimage to his beloved’s
tomb and explores his fantasies surrounding an imagined reunion in the
afterlife. It unwittingly prefigures Dante Gabriel’s 1869 exhumation of
Elizabeth Siddal to retrieve a set of manuscripts he had buried with her in
a fit of grief. The exhumation took on a life of its own, inspiring an
apocryphal myth that Siddal’s hair had grown until it filled the coffin.
Much of Dante Gabriel’s poetry imagines a heavenly reunion with the
beloved that depends on her unconflicted identification with the poet-
painter. Indeed, Dante Gabriel wrote of his wife’s exhumation: “The
truth is, no one so much as herself would have approved of my doing
this” (qtd. in Marsh Dante Gabriel Rossetti 376).
By prefiguring Siddal’s exhumation, “A Year Afterwards” unwit-
tingly complements Dante Gabriel’s belief that poetry could foretell the
future. Jerome McGann argues that, following the model of Dante’s
Vita Nuova, Dante Gabriel believed poetry could prophesy impending
 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority 39
events and that he viewed some of the verses composed before meeting
his wife as “prophetic poems about [her]” following her death (64).
The prophetic power of the poem becomes dangerous when placed in
the hands of a female poet: Christina’s engagement with her brother’s
verse enacts Dante Gabriel’s conception of the prophetic power of
poetry to his detriment. In “A Year Afterwards,” Christina chillingly
prefigures Siddal’s death and her brother’s subsequent obsession with
his wife’s corpse—all the while making intertextual references to Dante
Gabriel’s poetry.
“A Year Afterwards” implies that the female artist is better equipped
to forecast future events than her male counterpart, perhaps because she
understands the individual must work in concert with the divine to
achieve salvation, instead of expecting the outside world to conform to
their individualistic will. William Michael’s posthumously published
edition of Christina’s work, New Poems by Christina Rossetti (1896),
did not include this poem—perhaps because William Michael was un-
comfortable with the accurateness of Christina’s prophecy and its im-
plications for their brother’s subsequent conduct.
“A Year Afterwards” extensively references “The Blessed Damozel,” a
poem that describes the predicament of a deceased beloved who pines for
her earthly lover. “The Blessed Damozel” is narrated by a male lover,
who imagines he can hear his beloved yearning for him while he dreams
of her in a forest. “A Year Afterwards” portrays an almost identical
scenario, but, in this case, it is presented as a fantasy created by the
narrator:

The dusk branches meet

Above, making green fretted work,
The screen between my saint and me.
There, where the softest sunbeams lurk,
Cannot you fancy she may be
Leaning down to me from her rest;
And shaking her long golden hair
Thro the thick branches to my face,
That I may feel she still is mine? —
(18–26)

The narrator invites the reader to join in his fantasy, so we may become
complicit in his desires. His motivations are unambiguous: he wants to
imagine the beloved is leaning down to him from heaven, so he can
maintain the delusion “she still is [his]” (26). The visionary, ecstatic
experience of “The Blessed Damozel’s” narrator is expunged, so the
protagonist’s intentions are made clear; he constructs an alternative
reality where the beloved eternally belongs to him. By consciously de-
fining the dead beloved as a ‘saint,’ rather than a “Blessed Damozel,”
40 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority
Christina’s narrator acknowledges that his relationship with the dead
beloved has superseded his religious devotion.
Christina expands on her critique of Dante Gabriel’s vision of a hea-
venly reunion by questioning whether the unworthy male lover can ever
attain redemption. In two unpublished stanzas of “A Year Afterwards,”
struck out of the manuscript of the Weston Library, Oxford University,24
the narrator recalls how the beloved commanded him to pluck no more
flowers for her until she was able to wear “Such flowers as Dorothea
wore/When first her footsteps trod the sky” (Crump 1999 429 fn.37
48–49). This is a reference to stanza 17 of “The Blessed Damozel” where
the Damozel describes how she will introduce her beloved to “the five
handmaidens” (105) of the Virgin Mary when they are reunited in heaven.
However, Christina’s beloved questions the narrator as to whether they
will ever be reunited in the afterlife, expressing doubts as to whether she
shares in St Dorothea’s power to redeem souls.25
When Christina endows the female beloved with a voice in the first draft of
the poem, she stresses the narrator’s moral culpability and lack of worthiness
for heavenly redemption. The beloved’s insistence that the narrator is fully
responsible for his questionable moral conduct refutes the faith of Dante
Gabriel’s beloved in “The Blessed Damozel,” who is certain that her prayers
will provide sufficient grace to reunite her with her lover in the afterlife. It is
notable that the two stanzas containing the most critical intertextual refer-
ences to “The Blessed Damozel” are struck out of the original manuscript of
“A Year Afterwards.” In the footnotes of his posthumously published edition
of Christina’s verse. William Michael acknowledged that his brother some-
times destroyed uncomplimentary descriptions of himself in their sister’s
manuscripts.26 It is therefore possible that the strike-out was not made by
Christina, although this would be impossible to ascertain conclusively.
It is unsurprising that William Michael, the gatekeeper of the Rossetti
legacy, expunged “A Year Afterwards” from his posthumous edition of
Christina’s works.27 It is likely the poem was simply too close to the
bone in its eerie foreshadowing of Siddal’s disinterment. Imagining her
brother’s response to his beloved’s death, Christina creates a scenario
where the unnamed narrator visits his beloved’s grave, fantasizes about
the near-perfect state of her corpse and imagines her hair falling about
his face—almost 20 years before Siddal’s exhumation. Underpinning this
imagined scenario is Christina’s critique of a male lover who depends
upon his beloved’s prayers for salvation. This dependency is portrayed as
a type of spiritual apathy, which allows the male lover to deflect re-
sponsibility for his redemption onto the female beloved who, as an un-
responsive corpse, can be conveniently molded into the perfect ‘saint’
who ensures his entry into heaven. The narrator’s dehumanization of his
beloved preserves his individualism, allowing him to maintain his so-
lipsistic attitude towards the outside world, while exploiting the beloved
as a gateway to spiritual salvation.
 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority 41
Christina’s literary interactions with her brother and his work, allow
the inanimate female muse, often conflated with the dead woman, to
speak back to the individualistic male artist, who endeavors to transform
her into the silent receptacle of his erotic desires. In speaking back, the
deceased beloved of “A Year Afterwards” forces the autobiographical
poet-painter to accept his personal responsibility for his salvation. This
emphasis on spiritual autonomy complements the stance of the female
figures in Christina’s Germ entries, who strive to attain fulfilment
through heavenly redemption, rather than romantic or erotic unions
with the male artist.
Christina’s portrayals of dead women champion spiritual submission.
Her protagonists achieve fulfilment through accepting that their destinies
are tied to the authority of a higher power. This elevation of female
spirituality prefigures Christina’s explicit references to the matrilineal
community’s religious authority in her later private devotional verse,
discussed in Chapter 3. The deceased female muse, who is given the
authority to speak back to the individualistic male artist, is modeled on
sisterly intercessor, Maria Rossetti, and maternal spiritual leader,
Frances Rossetti: this muse advocates submission to divine authority and
the renunciation of sexual desire, in favor of achieving eternal life.

“Leave All to God—and Me”: Louisa May Alcott’s

Rejection of Bronson Alcott’s Ideology of Individualism
Louisa May Alcott’s artistic identity was formulated in opposition to the
individualistic ideology of her father, Bronson, in much the same way
Christina Rossetti affiliated herself with the religious vision of the de-
ceased female muse against her brother, Dante Gabriel’s, objectification
of that muse in their correspondence. Alcott’s letters challenge her fa-
ther’s ideology of individualism through subtly satirizing his philoso-
phical beliefs. Her autobiographical fiction, based on her father’s life,
critiques his philosophical practices more openly than Rossetti’s subtle
commentary on Pre-Raphaelitism. Raised to follow her father’s philo-
sophical tenets, where Rossetti was free to decline membership to the
Brotherhood, Alcott’s critique is far more reactionary. Alcott stresses
that Transcendentalist individualism depends on women’s domestic
labor, just as Rossetti presents the Pre-Raphaelite artist’s ideal of beauty
as based on the dead woman’s silence and immobility. Alcott’s rejection
of Transcendentalism runs parallel with her affiliation with her mother’s
theology of renunciation, presented as an alternative to her father’s
individualistic outlook.
Alcott’s letters to her father interrogate his negative assessments of her
character and appearance, grounded in his philosophical beliefs. She
challenges his faith in complexion theory, an unpleasant pseudoscience
that claimed that the moral natures of human beings could be deduced
42 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority
by their physical coloring. Bronson was blue-eyed with a fair com-
plexion, while Louisa and her mother, Abigail, had olive complexions
and dark hair and eyes. Bronson allied the volatile temperaments of his
wife and daughter with their coloring, claiming the two women ex-
hibited demonic tendencies.28
Bronson wasn’t temperamental by nature and believed his behavior
was an exemplar for the rest of his family. Matteson claims Bronson’s
narrowness “long prevented him from setting [Louisa’s] talents at their
proper value. For him, genius was to see the world as a seamless and
transcendent unity” (192). Bronson’s early letters to Louisa reprove her
for her fiery temperament and encourage her to follow his example. In a
letter on their shared birthday of November 29th in 1842 when Louisa
was ten, Bronson begs his daughter to allow him to influence her be-
havior for the better. He claims the human person is controlled by
“good” and “bad” spirits (B. Alcott Letters 93). In his description of the
bad spirit, Bronson provides a catalogue of faults, which he doubtlessly
wishes to curb. These include “anger, discontent, impatience, evil ap-
petites, greedy wants, complainings, ill-speakings, idleness, heedlessness,
rude behavior” (ibid.). It is unsurprising the ten-year-old Louisa resisted
her father’s influence, especially when one considers the letter was con-
veyed as a birthday gift.
Years later, Louisa recalled such letters ironically in her own birthday
correspondence with her father. In a letter of 1855, written on her 23rd
birthday, Louisa satirizes Bronson’s complexion theory, claiming her
faults were present from the moment of her birth because she has dark
skin, while her father was born pale-skinned and morally irreproachable:

I know you were a serene & placid baby when you began your wide
meditations in the quiet little Spindle hill farmhouse (I believe that’s
where you descended from on high) looking philosophically out of
your cradle at the big world about you.…

I was a crass crying brown baby, bawling at the disagreeable old

world. (L. Alcott Letters 13–14)

Louisa parodies her father’s belief in complexion theory, as well as his

judgements of herself to reveal their ludicrousness. If temperament is
determined by complexion, which is inherently good or bad, then people
are predestined to be good or evil, born fair, “serene and placid” or
“crass brown” and temperamental (ibid.). Louisa questioned her father’s
philosophical views from an early age. As with Christina’s correspon-
dence concerning her brother’s criticisms of her verse, Louisa was also
able to adopt her father’s style of discourse to expose its flaws, whilst
nevertheless appearing to support his theories. Indeed, she ironically
signs off one letter, “Ever your loving demon” (32).
 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority 43
Bronson frequently policed Louisa’s language, often condemning her
for expressing herself passionately. An 1845 entry in Louisa’s journal
recounts how her father forced her to look up the word “mean” in her
dictionary following an argument with her sister, Anna. Louisa writes:
“it means ‘base’, ‘contemptible’. I was so ashamed to have called my dear
sister that, and I cried over my bad tongue and temper” (Journals54).
Bronson ostensibly encouraged self-reflection in his children’s life-
writing, but this was purely on his own terms: anyone who wished to
question him had to do so from the realm of his own philosophical
theories. Over the years, Louisa developed an ability to do this skillfully.
A journal entry of 1845 includes an ironic account of the lessons of her
father’s associate, Charles Lane (1800–1870). Lane requested that his
young pupils list their faults in class. Louisa’s did so religiously, but
ended the list with “love of cats”—probably referring to her father and
Lane’s objection to any display of passionate feeling (Journals 55).
In her private letters with her mother, Louisa was more explicit in her
assessment of her father’s Transcendentalist views. Writing of her at-
tendance at a meeting of the Transcendental club in 1872, she describes
the event as a “funny mixture of rabbis and weedy old ladies, the
‘oversoul’ and oysters” where Bronson and his colleague “flew clean out
of sight like a pair of Platonic balloons” (Letters 165). She concludes the
account by describing how a member of the audience ended the meeting
by admitting it all seemed “very fine,” but he could not “understand a
word of it,” signing off her letter with the declamation: “We are a foolish
set!” (ibid.).
Louisa’s autobiographical fiction publicly dissects her father’s philo-
sophical beliefs, stressing the negative implications of the male philoso-
pher’s ideology of individualism for women. Louisa examines her
childhood in the Transcendentalist movement to uncover the wider
socio-cultural implications of her father’s ideology of individualism.
Her autobiographical fiction assesses the negative consequences of her
Transcendentalist upbringing and exposes the double standard of the
Transcendentalists’ attitudes towards women. The movement’s emphasis
on freedom of expression is revealed to be dependent on women’s
domestic labor, shouldered at the expense of personal fulfilment and
intellectual ambition.
Louisa’s most famous autobiographical work, “Transcendental Wild
Oats,” is an 1873 short story based on her time at the Fruitlands com-
mune established by her father in 1843 when she was 11 years old. The
Fruitlands community was founded on vegan and fruitarian principles.
Bronson and his associate, Charles Lane, believed humanity could return
to its original state of innocence if it ceased exploiting the environment
and using animal labor. Bronson and Lane claimed that the individual’s
diet reflected their moral condition and should be restricted and mon-
itored to purify body and spirit. Endeavoring to respect the communion
44 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority
between human beings and the natural world, Bronson excluded all
meat, salt, cane sugar, spices, coffee, and tea from daily meals. He also
forbade the use of oxen for ploughing, as well as oil-lamps because they
depended on the exploitation of whales. All members of the community
were banned from wearing wool because it was considered theft from
sheep, as well as cotton because of its association with slavery. Many
members wore linen and went barefoot in the harsh winter months,
while living in a house that had open windows, thereby increasing the
stifling heat in the summer months. Bronson even went so far as to at-
tempt to prevent his wife, Abigail, from feeding milk to their youngest
daughter, May, while she was still a baby to prevent the exploitation
of cows.
The Fruitlanders strove to return to a prelapsarian state of innocence
and thereby attracted some questionable characters. These included a
resident nudist and compulsive swearer who believed language “was of
little consequence if the spirit was only right” (“Transcendental Wild
Oats” 371). The increasingly strict demands of the Fruitlanders’ lifestyle,
coupled with the fact that its leaders expected the women to oversee all
domestic labor, eventually brought Bronson into conflict with his wife
who was concerned for the health and well-being of their four daughters,
all of whom were under 13 at the time. The experiment collapsed after
six months when Lane announced his intention to reconceive the com-
munity as a segregated-gender organization. Lane envisioned a commune
where people would put aside their ‘selfish devotion’ to their families and
form, instead, a single, ‘consociate family,’ even going so far as to pro-
pose dissolving the marital union, in favor of practicing sexual ab-
stinence. Abigail Alcott suspected Lane’s obsession with marital celibacy
stemmed from his attraction to her husband,29 and subsequently con-
vinced her brother, Samuel May, to withdraw his financial support for
Fruitlands, thereby ensuring the community’s eviction from the free-
holding. She then issued her husband an ultimatum: he would have to
choose between his family and the reestablishment of the community.
“Transcendentalist Wild Oats” exposes Bronson’s values of living
“simply and spiritually” as a “pretense” that allows the male Fruitlanders
“to escape from all responsibility, both domestic and otherwise” (Sandra
Harbart Petrulionis 3). The story promotes the theology of family ma-
triarch, Hope Lamb, based on Abigail Alcott. Hope’s emphasis on the
practical fulfilment of duty allows the commune to survive for a short
period and she later becomes the head of the household, supporting her
husband and family.
Hope’s practical theology of renunciation is contrasted with the so-
lipsism of her male contemporaries. Louisa portrays the men of the
commune as so preoccupied with their conceptual worlds that their
engagement with reality becomes warped. Their lack of empathy with
the female community causes them to transgress their philosophical
 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority 45
principles. When asked by a visitor if there are any “beasts of burden”
on the commune, Hope ironically replies: “Only one woman!” (373).
Whilst the female members of the commune are confined to a “domestic
drudgery” (ibid.), the men respond to “some call of the Oversoul” (375)
during harvest season, leaving Hope and her infant daughters to reap the
harvest by hand during a thunderstorm, an incident that happened to the
Alcott women while at Fruitlands. Following their so-called “inner light”
(370), the Fruitlands’ men cultivate their ideologies of individualism
through forcing their female counterparts to shoulder all practical re-
sponsibilities. Their aspiration to achieve transcendental divinity is de-
pendent on female subjugation.
Louisa’s condemnation of the individualism of the Fruitlands’ men has
much in common with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s (1804–1864) negative
portrayal of the individualistic behavior of the leader of the fictional
commune, Blithedale, in The Blithedale Romance (1852), which is based
on his experiences in the Transcendentalist commune of Brook Farm.
Hawthorne portrays the philanthropy of the commune’s leader,
Hollingsworth, as essentially selfish and tyrannical. He is motivated by a
need to affirm his ego at the expense of the wider community. It is in a
similar vein to Louisa’s portrayal of Charles Lane, renamed “Timon
Lion” in her story. Referring to him as “Dictator Lion,” Louisa con-
demns Timon as a hypocrite who justifies delegating his manual work to
the women of the commune with the claim that “each member is to
perform the work for which experience, strength and taste best fit
him” (368).
Hawthorne came to despise such attitudes after his disastrous ex-
perience at Brook Farm, and he dissolved his friendship with Bronson
Alcott following the Fruitlands episode. He went on to satirize Bronson
in his short story “The Celestial Railroad,” a parodic retelling of John
Bunyan’s, The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), Bronson’s favorite book, to
which he often referred in lectures and personal writings.
Yet, Louisa did not see the women in Transcendentalist communes as
sharing the male leader’s tragic fate, as is the case in The Blithedale
Romance. Thus, she recast the appropriately named Hope Lamb as her
heroine in “Transcendental Wild Oats.” When the Fruitlands community
collapses, Hope takes on a spiritually symbolic function in the story. When
the other members of the commune abandon the Lambs, Alcott describes
how “Hope” became “the watchword” for the family—implying she is
transformed into the personification of the values she represents, indicated
by her name (378). And in contrast to Hawthorne, Alcott subverts the
emphasis on the male individual as the Godlike center of the familial com-
munity. When Abel Lamb suffers a physical and mental breakdown, Hope
responds by reassuring her husband: “Leave all to God—and me. He has
done his part; now I will do mine” (ibid.). Hope replaces Abel as the center
of the family and identifies her maternal values with an external, omnipotent
46 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority
God, rather than with a self-centered ‘oversoul.’ Abel’s individualistic vision
is replaced by a mutually supportive familial community.
“Transcendental Wild Oats” presents Hope Lamb’s theology of re-
nunciation as an alternative framework to the ideology of individualism
espoused by Abel Lamb, Bronson Alcott’s counterpart. Hope secures the
family’s survival through shouldering its burdens and sacrificing her
interests for the greater good of others. Hope’s renunciatory theology
allows her to reclaim her agency, in much the same way the renunciation
of Christina Rossetti’s muse enables her to resist male control and forge a
divine union with God. Hope reasserts the value of the familial com-
munity and the importance of working alongside God’s providence to
determine the outcome of the individual’s life, rather than forcibly
subjecting the wider community to their sublime vision.
The weight “Transcendental Wild Oats” accords to individual ac-
countability is in harmony with Rossetti’s emphasis on the individual’s
responsibility for their salvation, but Alcott provides an intersubjective
model for the attainment of redemption by affiliating herself with her
mother. Alcott’s artistic vision is formulated in opposition to her father’s
attempts to coerce her to conform to his ideal of ‘true womanhood,’ just
as Rossetti resists Dante Gabriel’s recommendations concerning the
proper style and scope of women’s writing. But, where Alcott openly
mocks and satirizes her father’s beliefs, Rossetti implicitly undermines her
brother’s objectification of women. Both women decline to affiliate
themselves with the individualistic visions of their male peers because they
understand these visions are forged at the expense of women’s autonomy.
Instead, they submit themselves to a higher power and underscore the
importance of working in concert with the divine.

“Love and Duty Go Hand in Hand”: Louisa May Alcott’s

Reformation of Her Transcendentalist Heroes
Alcott’s foremost criticism of Transcendentalism is that it subsumes the
familial and wider community into the male philosopher, while claiming
to offer a pathway to empowerment for all members of society. Her public
and private writing explores the ramifications of a Transcendentalist
ideology of individualism for the immediate community and offers a
model of reform for the self-involved individualist. Alcott’s early work
satirizes the writing and lifestyle of leading Transcendentalist figures,
Emerson, and Thoreau, and imagines the possible outcomes of their
lives if they were to faithfully apply their philosophical tenets to their
relationships with women.
Like Christina Rossetti, Alcott forecasts the future of her male peers
and advocates collaborating with providence and the wider community,
rather than blindly pursuing one’s destiny, to safeguard the innate dig-
nity of the community’s members. An unpublished fragment, “Rolf
 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority 47
Walden Emmerboy,” foregrounds the implicit elitism of the
Transcendentalist position, which claims to empower others while
holding up the male individualist as a blameless example for others to
emulate. Alcott’s early novel, Moods (1864), turns to the matrilineal
community in its imagined resolution to the strained relationship be-
tween the male philosopher and the nuclear family.
Alcott satirized the writing and lifestyle of her Transcendentalist peers,
both in her private life and public writing. A fragment, “Rolf Walden
Emmerboy” (Appendix 1), housed at the Houghton Library, Harvard,
records a spontaneous theatrical performance where, according to
Edward W. Emerson (1844–1930), Louisa performed “travesties on her
father’s writing,” as well as the writing of his own father (325–236). The
fragmented monologue is voiced by a “snowy and meditative crow,”
Rolf Walden Emmerboy, who labors under the delusion he is a Phoenix
(Appendix 1). Emmerboy believes he can offer a model of sublime
transfiguration for his audience, but he belittles them by addressing them
as “fellow worms” (ibid.). His self-image is at odds with his achieve-
ment: he is described as sweeping “the blue fundament like the fowl of
Job watching the stars” (ibid.). Alcott subverts the Romantic aspiration
towards the sublime, commonly denoted by the word “firmament,” by
portraying Emmerboy as unwittingly aspiring towards the “fundament,”
referring to “a person’s buttocks or anus.”30
Alcott’s deliberate semantic error underscores the pretension of her
protagonist. Although he is described as the “flower of American litera-
ture” (ibid.), the monologue is a paragraph-long stream-of-conscious sen-
tence finishing mid-ellipsis, mimicking Emerson’s discursive style. Phrases
like “mind and matter glide swift into the vortex of immensity” (ibid.)
are subject to myriad interpretations and eschew fixed meaning—literally
becoming lost in linguistic slippage, inadvertently creating the very vortex
Emmerboy describes. Emmerboy may offer himself as an intellectual and
spiritual model for his audience, but his philosophy is obscure, and he
makes no attempt to render it intelligible. Alcott mocks the ‘democratic’
position of Transcendentalism: it may claim to render sublime experience
accessible to all, but, in reality, it does little to ensure its audience can
participate in the sublime.
The implicit solipsism of Transcendentalism is a central concern of
Alcott’s first published novel, Moods, which examines the disastrous
implications of becoming romantically entangled with not only one but
two Transcendentalists. The novel is concerned with the early life of
Sylvia Yule, a 17-year-old heroine who is mentally unstable and subject
to a ‘moody’ nature. Sylvia strives to mature through forging friendships
with two older, Transcendentalists, contemporaries of her brother,
Mark. Geoffrey Moor is a 30-year-old poet, based on Emerson, while
Adam Warwick is a nomadic Thoreauvian figure, who leaves college
after a year to pursue various undefined social reform projects. Both men
48 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority
fall in love with Sylvia on a boating trip, but Warwick does not declare
his feelings. Sylvia is compelled to marry Moor after he threatens to end
their friendship but later discovers Warwick reciprocates her romantic
feelings and thereafter returns home to the Yule family. In the first edi-
tion of the novel, Sylvia’s psychological strain leads to her death of an
unspecified illness, while the revised 1882 edition sees Sylvia reconcile
with Moor after Alcott discovered “love and duty [could] go hand in
hand”—a statement made in the 1882 “Preface” (Moods 225).
Sylvia’s mental instability exposes the pitfalls of adopting a
Transcendentalist ideology of individualism. Alcott claimed the novel
was intended to “show the mistakes of a moody nature, guided by im-
pulse, not principle” (ibid.). This self-gratifying ‘moody’ nature is af-
filiated with an Emersonian aphorism, the epigraph of Moods, taken
from Emerson’s 1884 essay, “Experience”: “Life is a train of moods like
a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many
colored lenses, which paint the world in their own hue, and each shows
us only what lies in its own focus” (Moods xlix). “Experience” argues
that that the individual encounters the world through the lens of their
subjectivity: all are subject to a “system of illusions” and shut in a
“prison glass” of self, which they “cannot see” (Emerson “Experience”
219). Alcott does not endorse Emerson’s self-involved vision. Sylvia’s
unstable temperament rather reflects the “two natures that had given her
life,” who war “against each other, making … her life a train of moods”
(Moods 84).
The ill-fated partnership between Sylvia’s parents is the result of their
‘marriage of alliance’: Sylvia’s father, John, married her mother for her
fortune and is punished for his “self-inflicted wrong” by the various
instabilities of his children (83). John follows the Emersonian dictum,
also set out in “Experience,” that: “Marriage … is impossible, because of
the inequality between every subject and every object” (230).31 Moods
presents the dangerous implications of such a philosophy: in seeking to
create his wife in his own image, John Yule unwittingly precipitates her
death and their daughter’s mental instability. The novel demonstrates
that prioritizing subjective experience at the expense of human re-
lationships is disastrous for women: the only possible solution to Sylvia’s
instability is “mother-love,” which is circumvented by Mrs. Yule’s pre-
mature death (84). In opposition to the conventional trajectory of the
nineteenth-century novel, the heroine’s experience of romantic love only
exacerbates her psychological problems: Alcott makes it clear that wo-
men’s alliances with Transcendentalist men do not provide a salve for the
loss of the matrilineal community.
Indeed, Sylvia regards herself as ill-equipped for romance at the no-
vel’s opening and instead pursues friendship with the two heroes to
counter the loss of her mother. The novel’s elevation of friendship
strikingly echoes Thoreau’s meditation on friendship in the
 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority 49
“Wednesday” chapter of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
(1849). Where Thoreau claims “Friendship is first, friendship is last”
(269), Alcott similarly describes friendship as “cooler than passion,
warmer than respect, more just and generous than either” (Moods 85).
Unfortunately, Sylvia is barred from the benefits of friendship by her
gender. Her interactions with other women are characterized by the
restrictive gender roles assigned to them and she questions whether there
can be “real and simple friendships between men and women without
falling into this everlasting sea of love” (24–26). Certainly, Thoreau
would have answered in the negative. A Week endorses friendship be-
tween the genders only on the grounds that “it is [easy] for man to secure
the attention of a woman to what interests himself” and he even goes so
far as to disparage the proffered friendship of a woman whose ac-
quaintance does not inspire that “confidence and sentiment which
women, which all, in fact, covet” (273–281). In other words, the only
viable relationships between men and women are romantic ones.
Such an attitude proves detrimental to Sylvia: she pursues a friendship
with Moor in response to his claim that “Friendship is the best college
character can graduate from,” but when she declines his proposal, he
ends their relationship (92). She later reneges and marries him, ex-
plaining her feelings haven’t changed, but she will accept “anything, if
[he] will only stay” (106). The ill-fated union ends with Moor’s con-
cession that “it was too soon for [Sylvia] to play the perilous game
of hearts” and he should have left her to “the safe and simple joys of
girlhood” (170). Alcott endorses the Transcendentalist elevation of
friendship but underscores the importance of making such intellectually
enriching relationships available to women. Moor’s attitude to his
friendship with Sylvia coincides with Thoreau’s admission that he can
“find [himself] turning [his] back on [his] actual Friends, that [he] may
go and meet their ideal” (270). Sylvia’s relationship with Moor is
dictated by the former’s ideal of ‘true womanhood’: he overlooks her
need for self-development.
Sylvia’s preferred suitor, Warwick, presents an alternative drawback
to falling in love with a Transcendentalist: he sets out to subsume Sylvia’s
identity into his own. Described as “a masterful soul, bent on living out
his beliefs and aspirations at any cost” (37), Warwick is aptly char-
acterized by Henry James in his 1865 review as a “dissolute adventurer”
whose attitude can be summarized by the following dictum: “I may be a
sneak, a coward, a brute; but at all events, I am untamed by law, etc.”
(Moods 221). Warwick’s effect on Sylvia is most aptly distilled in the
“Sermons” chapter of the 1882 edition of Moods. During a boating
excursion closely modelled on A Week, Warwick furnishes his compa-
nions with a Sunday sermon that performs an “audacious onslaught
upon established customs, creeds, and constitutions” (255) in a thinly
veiled allusion to Thoreau’s tirade against organized religion in his
50 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority
“Sunday” chapter. Leaving Sylvia feeling as though “the foundations of
the earth were giving way” (ibid.), the sermon perversely strengthens her
desire to find a “simple sustaining faith” (257). In essence, Warwick’s
philosophy is “too large” for her (256); he is described as “unconsciously
absorb[ing] into himself the personality of others” (180).
Whereas Moor’s attitude to courtship is one of coercion, Warwick’s is
one of tyranny. Forming the conceited hypothesis that Sylvia loves him,
but “[has] not learned to know it” (125), Warwick concedes the field to
Moor: in the 1860 edition because he is engaged to another woman, and
in the 1882 edition because he arrogantly assumes “[Moor] was fitter
than I to have you” (125). If such self-involved behavior were not ex-
asperating enough, he then attempts to bully Sylvia into leaving her
husband against her wishes. Warwick’s attitude seems to be a parody of
the Thoreau brothers’ courtship of the 17-year-old Ellen Sewall
(1822–1892),32 who joined them for a number of boating and woodland
excursions during her 1839 summer holiday in Concord. Thoreau
stepped aside under the mistaken belief Ellen preferred his brother, John,
but when John’s proposal was rejected Thoreau immediately wrote Ellen
and proposed himself. Ellen rejected both brothers with little hesitation.
One wonders if Sylvia would have been best advised to do the same with
Moor and Warwick. At any rate, each lover, in his own way, attempts to
force Sylvia to submit herself to his will.
Alcott indicates Sylvia’s involvement with both men, and her inability
to recognize their faults, derives from the absence of a mother-figure to
guide and advise her. In fact, Sylvia only identifies the shortcomings of
her suitors when she finds a surrogate mother in Moor’s older cousin,
Faith Dane. Closely modelled on Alcott, Faith is subject to an “unhappy
girlhood” and her “early cares and losses” lead her reflect on the causes
of ill-fated marriages (181). Faith reveals Moor’s and Warwick’s faults
to Sylvia: the possessive Moor “clings to persons” (180), while Warwick
regards persons as “but animated facts or ideas” (180). Faith advises
Sylvia she should have married “neither,” allowing herself the time to
mature and become “a law unto herself” (178 182). Alcott offers a
model of maternal love in place of Transcendentalism: when Sylvia
questions what she should do next, she is “gathered close” against the
“proper resting-place” of Faith’s heart (183). It seems Sylvia would have
found happiness and fulfilment had she been able to ground herself in a
matrilineal community and avoid romance altogether.
Despite Alcott’s implied elevation of the matrilineal community, Sylvia
is unable to resurrect this community after her unsuccessful marriage.
When she returns to the Yule family, she is subject to gossip and treated
like Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne (190). Unlike the heroine of Louisa’s
later novel, Work (1872), discussed in Chapter 5, Sylvia isn’t given the
opportunity to conceive a life for herself independently of her husband.
Alcott was doubtless aware of the scandal a novel championing divorce
 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority 51
would inspire; she was no George Sand but rather a bestselling novelist
who wrote for the marketplace. In both versions of the text, Sylvia is
informed by Faith that “for every affliction there are two helpers … Time
and Death” (184), and each version of Moods explores one of these
outcomes.
In the 1860 edition, Sylvia is transformed into the image of the idea-
lized dead beloved, inspiring “genius” from her husband through the
“grief” precipitated by her death (215). Yet, there is some indication that
Sylvia’s passing will usher in a more promising future: her brother,
Mark, is instructed to keep his daughter, “little Sylvia,” from “making
mistakes like [hers]” and the heroine is cared for by her surrogate mo-
ther, Faith (215). If the first edition disappoints in its capitulation to the
dead woman motif, it is to be credited for providing a visceral portrayal
of women’s contact with male Transcendentalists: a nervous breakdown
is the only outcome the young author can imagine for her heroine. Alcott
makes it clear the idealized dead woman exists because she is killed off
by the individualistic male genius.
The 1882 edition shifts the emphasis away from the suffering of its
heroine to the reform of its heroes. Alcott’s later work shares Rossetti’s
emphasis on the male artist’s spiritual submission: he must accept the
shifting circumstances of his life and his responsibility to others, instead
of attempting to make the outside world conform to his desires. Moor
acknowledges he “see[s] [his] mistakes, will amend such as [he] can …
and make no new ones” (184), while Warwick enacts the highest form of
renunciation: sacrificing his life for his friends’ happiness.
Where the first edition implies Warwick’s untimely death in a ship-
wreck will enable his heavenly reunion with Sylvia, the second edition
makes it clear that Warwick saves Moor’s life to facilitate Sylvia and
Moor’s reconciliation. Sylvia experiences a visionary dream where she
almost meets her death while standing on the seashore. As letter after
letter of “the great word Amen” is spelt out in the sky, her husband
prevents her from being assumed into a tidal wave (278). Above them,
Warwick’s “beautiful, benignant face, regard[s] [them] with something
brighter than a smile” (ibid.). All three protagonists learn to collaborate
with providence, accepting the unexpected events of their lives, and re-
linquishing personal fulfilment to facilitate one another’s happiness.
Warwick learns to respect Sylvia’s marriage, Moor acknowledges
Sylvia’s autonomy, and Sylvia learns that “Love and God’s help can
work … miracles” (280). She reembarks on her marriage as a mature
woman destined to live “a long and happy life, unmarred by the moods
that nearly wrecked her youth” (ibid.). Alcott provides a fitting moral
tale for her Transcendentalist readers: the novel’s happy ending depends
on learning “to live by principle, not impulse,” and making “love and
duty … go hand in hand” (280).
Alcott’s Transcendentalist fiction shares Christina Rossetti’s aim of
52 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority
imagining the eventual outcome of the male artist’s ideology of in-
dividualism. Moods coincides with Rossetti’s emphasis on assuming re-
sponsibility for one’s moral conduct and prioritizing eternal salvation
above self-gratification. Alcott’s message to her Transcendentalist peers
is that it is impossible to relentlessly pursue one’s genius in a familial
or romantic context: at its worst, such behavior destroys the women
who affiliate themselves with Transcendentalist communities. Initially,
Alcott’s heroine shares the fate of the dead female muse who, in
Rossetti’s verse, escapes the male artist’s ideological control to find ful-
filment in the afterlife. The later edition of Moods imagines an alter-
native destiny for the self-involved male genius, who accepts his duty and
endeavors to rebuild the family.
Like Rossetti, Alcott forecasts the future lives of her male peers in her
writing: “Transcendental Wild Oats” sees Abel Lamb rededicate himself
to the family,33 while a later short story, “Eli’s Education” (1888), ima-
gines a fictionalized Bronson Alcott becoming a minister to support his
impoverished mother and sister. Alcott’s Transcendentalist fiction presents
the matrilineal community as an alternative to the failed Transcendentalist
utopia: in all these autobiographical texts a mother-figure facilitates self-
development and eventual salvation for the author’s female protagonists.
This mother-figure counteracts the male Transcendentalist’s attempts to
subsume others into his ego, as is observed in such texts as “Rolf Walden
Emmerboy.” The matrilineal community is not accorded the status it is in
Alcott’s iconic works, but it nevertheless lays the foundation for her
theology of renunciation. Just as Rossetti’s portrayal of the female muse’s
spiritual authority prefigures the promotion of matrilineal religious prac-
tice and devotion in her later work, so does Alcott’s elevation of ‘love and
duty’ anticipate her creation of an intersubjective female community in her
mature fiction. Rossetti and Alcott not only provide more accurate pre-
dictions of their male peers’ destinies than the men in question; they
prefigure the emphasis on religious faith, renunciatory practice, and wo-
men’s spiritual authority that characterizes their later work, written out of
the matrilineal community.

Notes
1 William Michael’s legacy as an editor has also left its mark on the organi-
zation of Christina’s verse until the present day. David A Kent has compel-
lingly argued that William Michael’s decision to organize Christina’s poetry
into the “arbitrary” categories of “devotional” and “general” verse has ob-
scured the fact that she saw her secular and religious poetry as deeply in-
tertwined (19). The false separation that has been made between Rossetti’s
secular and religious verse has enabled critics to interpret her work through a
‘double life’ myth that sees the secular verse as an expression of the repressed
desires that are expunged from the religious poetry. For example, Germain
Greer divides Rossetti’s secular poems of “rebellion and self-assertion” from
 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority 53
her devotional verse of “resignation and self-denial” (Slip-Shod Sibyls 359),
while Kathleen Jones claims that Rossetti turned to religious poetry following
the break-up of her engagement with James Collinson as a means of en-
couraging herself to embrace a renunciatory outlook (55).
2 See, for example, the dust cover and frontispiece of The Letters of Christina
Rossetti, Vol. 2 1874–1881, ed. Anthony H. Harrison. At the close of Some
Reminiscences, William Michael provides a list of portraits of his sister
“which can be appealed to settle the question of her good looks” (lx). The
vast majority of the portraits referred to are by Dante Gabriel. Both Some
Reminiscences and the 1895 New Poems of Christina Rossetti (edited by
William Michael), use reproductions of Dante Gabriel’s portraits as fron-
tispieces. Andrew and Catherine Belsey have noted that many modern bio-
graphies have followed William Michael’s tradition of using Dante Gabriel
Rossetti’s portraits for the frontispiece or front cover (31).
3 See also C.M. Bowra’s The Romantic Imagination (245–270) and Donald
Gray’s Victorian Literature, the latter of which claims that Christina’s poems
“are often personal in the sense that they express her feelings about herself
and her connections with others, with the possibilities of life outside her
narrow bound, and with God” (543).
4 “Louisa May Alcott.” (Obituary.) 1888. MS 800.23. LMAP, 1849–1931.
Houghton Lib., Harvard.
5 “Driven by a blind desire to please him and by her own intellectual and
psychological limitations, [Louisa] succeeded only in giving [Bronson] what
he neither desired nor needed… ‘Duty’s Faithful Child’, as her father called
her, never grew up” (Gay 189).
6 Both Stern (Behind a Mask xxvi) and Octavia Davis (vi) interpret the inter-
view as an indication that Alcott’s domestic fiction was written out of eco-
nomic necessity, whereas the experimentations with horror writing were in
some sense liberating. Veronica Bassil (191), Christine Doyle (51) and Judith
Fetterley (“Impersonating” 369) believe that Alcott affiliated her literary
identity with the horror writing but was forced to hide it from her reading
public because it was deemed unacceptable for a sentimental authoress to
write within this genre.
7 The assumption that Alcott’s pseudonymous fiction expresses a repressed
‘true’ self has been transferred to Little Women’s Jo March, an auto-
biographical heroine who relinquishes her pseudonymous horror writing to
become a sentimental novelist. Elizabeth Lennox Keyser claims that Jo’s
adoption of a sentimental style “throws a damper on [her] creative powers”
(72), while Fetterley regards Jo’s sentimental writing as promoting the ele-
vation of “a more submissive spirit,” which upholds “the wisdom of the
doctrines of renunciation and adaptation” (“Civil War” 38).
8 Elaine Showalter claims that Bronson’s attempts to “tame stubborn Louisa
‘down to docility,’” determined the proceeding trajectory of her life
(Alternative xi-xiii), while Rosenblum argues that Rossetti’s transformation
from a “beautiful and wrathful little girl” to a “reserved middle-aged
woman” was a symptom of her deference to Dante Gabriel who, as the
head of the family, was regarded as the superior artist (85).
9 Frances Thomas links Rossetti’s symptoms to her religious beliefs: “She was
now firmly locked into a system that taught her that human beings were
miserable tainted creatures doomed to perdition. With her vivid imagination,
the Horrors of hell were tangible and present” (50). Lona Mosk Packer
claims that Rossetti’s illness was self-induced and functioned as a means of
avoiding the restrictions that were imposed upon her as a Victorian woman:
54 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority
“She early found semi-invalidism, with its freedom from economic and social
responsibilities congenial to a life in which the production of poetry was
paramount” (123). Jan Marsh has speculated that Christina’s behavior is
consistent with that of a sex-abuse victim, hazarding that the abuser in
question was her father, Gabriele: something for which there is no direct
evidence in Christina’s private writings; the accounts of her doctors; or the
memoirs of any member of the Rossetti family (Christina 48). After sug-
gesting that Rossetti’s “invalidism” was a conscious choice, Greer hypothe-
sizes that it stemmed from her “religious mania” (Slip-Shod Sibyls 364). For
a complete summary of the psychoanalytic interpretations of Rossetti’s
breakdown see Petra Bianchi (18).
10 An 1845 entry in Louisa’s journal, written when she was thirteen, reads: “I
am so cross I wish I had never been born” (Journals 55). Louisa’s early
journals also express a sense of guilt concerning her temperamental out-
bursts: “I’ve made so many resolutions, and written sad notes, and cried over
my sins, and it doesn’t seem to do any good!” (59); “I try to keep down
vanity… My quick tongue is always getting me into trouble, and my moo-
diness makes it hard to be cheerful” (61).
11 This view is espoused by Matteson (191-95) and Elizabeth Lennox Keyser.
Keyser argues that Louisa continued to “express her angry feelings
while supplying herself with the moral commentary that would regulate
them” (xvii).
12 Louisa’s journals claim her greatest priority is her mother’s care. A July 1850
entry, written at the age of 18, reads: “[Mother] always encourages me, and I
wish some one [sic] would write as helpfully to her … I think she is a very
brave, good woman, and my dream is to have a lovely, quiet home for her,
with no debts or troubles to burden her” (63). Louisa’s journal celebrates
the fulfilment of this “dream” in an entry on her mother’s death, written in
November 1877: “My only comfort is that I could make her last years
comfortable” (206).
13 “How they bring poor Lizzie herself before one, with her voice, face and
manner” (C. Rossetti Letters 1 225).
14 “How odd it seems to me that just III my admiration is rejected by you as
ineligible” (C. Rossetti Letters 1 226).
15 “I think with you that, between your volume and mine, their due post of
honour is in yours. But do you not think that (at any rate in your volume)
(that) beautiful as they are they are almost too hopelessly sad for publica-
tion en masse?” (C. Rossetti Letters 1 225). Here, Christina indicates it
would be more appropriate for Siddal’s poems to be included in one of
Dante Gabriel’s anthologies. She implies it is unlikely Dante Gabriel will
take her advice, given the poems’ potentially negative impact on his re-
putation. The concerns Christina expresses are at odds with her former
praise for Siddal’s poetry; she seems to be insinuating the publication of
these verses will damage the posthumous image Dante Gabriel created for
his late wife.
16 “Then gaze I at the merrymaking crew, / And smile a moment and a moment
sigh / Thinking: Why can I not rejoice with you?” (C. Rossetti Poems “The
Thread of Life” 330–331 II 9–11).
17 The narrator describes how his “day-dreams hover … round her brow / Now
o’er its perfect forms / Go real worms” (31–33) and visualizes his lady’s
corpse directly: “Her eyelids by the earth are pressed; / Damp earth weighs on
her eyes” (17–18).
18 “Of my Lady in Life” closes with a description of how “Each breast swelled
 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority 55
with its pleasures” (141) and “new sensations dimmed her eyes, / Half
closing them in ecstasies” (143–144). At the opening of the following poem
the narrator’s lady is already dead in what is probably the indirect con-
sequence of her sexual experience.
19 In Millais’s 1851 oil painting, Mariana, the heroine is portrayed at the close
of the day, stretching her arms in apparent fatigue by the desk where she has
been embroidering. Her posture is tense, and her head is thrown back in
exhaustion. This uncomfortable position may be indicative of an illicit
pregnancy. The painting’s backdrop is covered with scattered fallen leaves,
which represent the loss of Mariana’s youth during her time of self-enforced
imprisonment.
20 Shefer argues that Christina’s references to Mariana stress “renunciation,
frustration and sexual repression;” experiences that Christina herself alleg-
edly experienced (18).
21 See, for example, Elizabeth Siddal, The Lady of Shalott At Her Loom
1853; Arthur Hughes, The Lady of Shalott 1873; John William
Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott 1888 and The Lady of Shalott [looking
at Lancelot] 1894.
22 Tennyson’s implicit condemnation of the Lady of Shalott for her act of
leaving the tower is dramatically conveyed in Holman Hunt’s 1886 oil-
painting of the same name. Hunt portrays the Lady of Shalott at the moment
the loom is torn. The scene is apocalyptic: the stray threads of the loom wrap
around the Lady of Shalott to entrap her as she attempts to leave the tower,
and her long hair flies loosened into the air, a common symbol of sexual
promiscuity. Hunt’s interpretation of the poem is clear: it represents the
protagonist’s rejection of the confines of respectable womanhood, and the
erotic appeal of her subsequent abjection.
23 “Thou who for love’s sake didst reprove, / Forgive me for the sake of love”
(250–251).
24 Notebooks of Christina Rossetti Poems. 1845-56. Cat. 504. Item 1305.
Weston Library, Bodleian Collections, University of Oxford; Crump (1990
181–184 429–430).
25 “Her courage won a soul from earth; / Is love sufficient for such things? / Can
simple love profess such worth?” (Crump 1999 430 fn. 37 51–53).
26 In his note on the poem, “Portraits,” collected in New Poems of Christina
Rossetti, William Michael writes: “This warm-hearted though light effusion
is meant for myself … and for Dante Gabriel … There used to be an inter-
mediate stanza, characterising him; it is torn out (by his arbitrary hand,
beyond a doubt)” (380).
27 Roger Peattie argues that a “fierce family loyalty … characterised the
Rossettis” (72) and that William Michael was just as selective when pre-
paring and editing his brother’s work for publication (86). Peattie contends
that those who judge William Michael harshly should bear in mind that, as
an editor “he was not much better but certainly no worse than the general
run of Victorian … editors” (ibid.), and that the collation and publication of
works by the Rossetti family is, in large measure, indebted to his work as a
memorialist (86). It is inevitable that William Michael’s attempts to protect
both of his siblings has, in some measure, obscured Christina’s more radical
written responses to Dante Gabriel’s life and writings.
28 Bronson’s journal describes Louisa and her mother as “Two devils … I am
not quite divine enough to vanquish—the mother fiend and her daughter”
(qtd. in Matteson 189).
56 “I am Even I”: Resisting Male Authority
29 Harriet Reisen writes, “In talks Abby was not permitted to join (but which
were held in her presence), [Lane] pounded away at Bronson to impose
sexual abstinence on Fruitlands” (98). Upon announcing her decision to leave
the commune, Abigail told Bronson he could go “with the rest of the family
or stay with Lane” (101). Richard Francis more explicitly claims: “It seems
likely that the intense and in many ways destructive relationship between the
two men had some degree of homoerotic underpinning. That would explain
Abigail’s anguish and resentment at being overlooked. Certainly Lane himself
was fully aware that he was involved in a triangle” (266).
30 According to the OED, the figurative use of the word “fundament” came into
being in the sixteenth-century, and was in common usage until the 1950s.
Fundament, n2. Oxford English Dictionary Online, September 2017. Web.
23rd October, 2018.
31 Predictably, Emerson assigns the role of subject to the male: “The subject is
the receiver of the Godhead, and at every comparison must feel his being
enhanced by that cryptic might” (ibid., emphasis added).
32 Alcott acknowledged the autobiographical basis for Moods in her journal:
“I seem to have been playing with edge tools without knowing it. The rela-
tions between Warwick Moor & Sylvia are pronounced impossible, yet a case
of that sort exists in Concord” (147). Keyser speculates that the novel may
be inspired by the attraction between Thoreau and Emerson’s second wife,
Lidian Jackson Emerson (1802–1892).
33 Louisa transforms Abel Lamb’s breakdown into a religious conversion and
thereby radically edits the collapse of the Fruitlands episode. Bronson did
suffer a nervous breakdown and exhibited symptoms of persecution mania:
claiming that his refusal to eat or participate in communal activities was a
response to the lack of support he received for the community from both
family and friends. This breakdown occurred midway through the experi-
ment, not at its close. In fact, Bronson did not undergo any dramatic
transformation.
Part I

“Left-Handed Societies”:
Women’s Life-Writing

In Christina Rossetti’s 1892 devotional commentary on the apocalypse,

The Face of the Deep, she wrote:

Society may be personified as a human figure whose right hand is

man, whose left hand is woman; in one sense equal, in another sense
unequal. The right hand is the labourer, achiever: the left hand helps,
but has little independence, and is more apt at carrying than at
executing. The right hand runs the risks, fights the battles: the left
hand abides in comparative quiet and safety; except (a material
exception) that in the mutual relations of the twain it is in some ways
far more liable to undergo than to inflict hurt, to be cut (for instance)
than to cut.

Rules admit of and are proved by exceptions. There are left-handed

people, and there may arise a left-handed society! (410)

Readers of Rossetti’s theological work may wonder where this conception of

a ‘left-handed society’ originates. Scholars of nineteenth-century American
and British culture would doubtless situate it in the ‘doctrine of separate
spheres.’ As Ellen Jordan has argued, where “linked distinctions such as
mind/body, public/private, reason/desire had long been part of western
thinking,” the nineteenth-century Western world created the doctrine of se-
parate spheres to gender these distinctions: conceiving the public sphere as the
realm of men and the private sphere as the sanctuary of women (43).
Confined to the domestic household, women were regarded as “relative
creatures” whose role was to “guide and uplift their more worldly and in-
tellectual mates” (Houghton 349 352). Rossetti’s conception of a left-handed
society can be interpreted as a theological justification for women’s role in the
domestic sphere, largely embodied in the cultural figure of the ‘angel in the
house.’ The angel in the house was known for her qualities of charm, un-
selfishness, self-sacrifice, and purity (Woolf 2), and was mirrored by her
American counterpart, the ‘true woman’, who possessed qualities of piety,
purity, submissiveness, and domesticity (Welter 152).
58 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing
It would be easy to interpret Rossetti’s ‘left-handed society’ as a mere
collection of domestic angels who “help [men], but [have] little in-
dependence” (C. Rossetti Face of the Deep 410). However, Rossetti’s
left-handed society does not describe the nineteenth-century domestic
sphere that privileged the public above the private. Instead, it provides
a vision of a world where the left hand is invested with authority.
Carole Pateman argues that the public and private spheres are inter-
twined because men’s assumption of authority in public life derives
from the patriarchal authority they exert in the home (3-4). Brigid
Lowe expands this discourse to argue that the Victorian British novel
exposes the fact that “men are produced … by female labour, continue
helpless and beholden to others for life” and the formation of their
identities is shaped by women (143). A left-handed society is built on
the premise that the matrilineal community is at the heart of both
private and public life.
Sharon Marcus’s pivotal work, Between Women (2007), has high-
lighted the fact that the preoccupation with women’s status as relative
creatures limits our understanding of women’s “kinship and equality”
with one another (1). Marcus uncovers the multiplicity of kinship net-
works between Victorian women, foregrounding the ways friendship
licenses “forms of agency women were discouraged from exercising with
men” (2). Marcus’s methodological focus on life-writing places women
at the “centre of histories of the nineteenth-century family,” thereby
resisting the critical tendency to focus on how women “accepted and
contested belief systems that defined [them] in terms of male standards,
desires and power” (9).
In the life-writing of both the Rossetti and Alcott women, the central
quality of the matrilineal left-handed society is sympathy. Like Kristin
Boudreau, I define sympathy as the ability to identify with marginalized
others achieved through “imaginary leaps across spaces of difference”
(x). Glenn Hendler has contended that the feminine model of sympathy
is focused on a voyeuristic dynamic where the subject is expected to
“submerge his or her experience in the emotions of the [object] in order
to transform partial sameness into identity” (Public Sentiments 5).
However, in the framework of women’s mysticism, sympathy for
others is the product of divine union. Female mystics become inter-
mediaries between heaven and earth through recognizing and fulfilling
their sisters’ needs. Women mystics conceive female empowerment as
achieved through attaining a shared “enlightened consciousness” that
overthrows everything that “stands in the way of the original freedom
between God and the person” (Lanzetta 82). By sympathizing with one
another, women’s devotional communities create an alternative mys-
tical reality based on “a sustained and infused feeling of divinity” that
brings “dignity and empowerment” to each of the communities’
members (82–3).
 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing 59
The female communities of the Alcott and Rossetti families develop
what I refer to as a ‘shared consciousness’ that allows each member of
the community to conceive her selfhood as formed through identifying
with others, prioritizing the little and weak. This model of shared con-
sciousness is modeled by the Alcott and Rossetti matriarchs whose vision
of the divine is the foundation of their theologies of renunciation and
service to others. The matrilineal communities’ attitude of sympathetic
submission towards one another and the divine embodies what Jordan
defines as the “religious heterodoxy” of the women’s movement: a po-
sition that enabled women of faith to outwardly accept their subordinate
status through theologies of renunciation, while nevertheless exploiting
their moral and devotional authority to critique the workings of male
privilege that underpin the doctrine of separate spheres (90).
Abigail Alcott’s female literary community, consisting of herself and
her four daughters, opposed the ideals of individualism and self-reliance
championed by her husband, Bronson. The left-handed society of the
Alcott women was centered on the values of sympathy, religious devo-
tion, and renunciation. Equally, the Rossetti women’s participation in
the daily devotional practices of the Tractarian Movement contributed
to the fostering of a shared set of ethical and artistic principles from
which the Rossetti men were side-lined. These devotional practices led to
the development of a lesser-known body of theological work that fo-
cused on the value of matrilineal relationships, spiritual submission, and
the renunciation of earthly desires. These concepts were inspired by the
theology of family matriarch, Frances, and were deployed in the religious
writings of her two daughters, Maria and Christina.
Where Chapter 1, “I am Even I,” focused on how Louisa May Alcott
and Christina Rossetti resisted the ideologies of individualism dis-
seminated by their male peers, Part I, “Left-handed Societies” will analyze
the understudied life-writing of the matrilineal communities of the Alcott
and Rossetti families, as well as its wider influence on the canonical works
of Alcott and Rossetti. A notable exception made by Hendler in his dis-
course on sympathy is the function of epistolary writing as a “primary site
for affective exchange” that facilitates an “emotional transaction” be-
tween individuals (Public Sentiments 23). The network of life-writing
generated between the Alcott women, and the collaborative theological
discourse of the Rossetti women, develops an intersubjective account of
female experience that privileges submission to one’s sisters. These acts of
submission create a community that champions the co-existence of mul-
tiple perspectives and identities through a shared emphasis on “real,
personal human engagement—intellectual give and take” (Lowe 11).
Beverly J. Lanzetta, whose germinal work on feminist mystical theology
is foundational to my methodology, argues that self-negation allows fe-
male mystics to experience reality in relation to others (91). The Alcott
and Rossetti women resemble the medieval mystics in their discovery that
60 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing
spiritual empowerment is not rooted in an “independent, autonomous,
individualistic self,’” but rather “a particular kind of spiritual nothing-
ness” that enables the erosion of boundaries integral to mystical com-
munion (Lanzetta 96).
My examination of the life-writing and literary discourse of the Alcott
and Rossetti women reveals they understand the relationship between
sisterly communion and divine union as symbiotic in nature: divine
union makes sympathetic identification possible, while sisterly commu-
nion deepens and enriches the individual’s capacity to perceive the
divine. I will now turn to the network of life-writing and domestic dis-
course generated by the Alcott and Rossetti women to outline the models
of sympathetic identification developed by Abigail Alcott and Frances
Rossetti, tracing the propagation of these sympathetic frameworks in the
Alcott and Rossetti sisters’ visions of left-handed societies.
2 “Renunciation Is the Law,
Devotion to God’s Will the
Gospel”: The Empowerment of
Others in the Alcott Women’s
Life-Writing

In his double biography of Louisa May and Bronson Alcott, Eden’s

Outcasts, John Matteson claims the grief-stricken Louisa, unable to
write a memoir of her mother, burnt the majority of Abigail Alcott’s
writings—a decision “that has cost historians priceless insights into the
mind of an extraordinary woman” (388-9). Matteson’s account is con-
firmed by Louisa’s journal entry for April of 1882, which claims that she
followed her mother’s wishes and burnt the majority of Abigail’s writ-
ings following her death (Journals 233). However, in her 2012 double
biography of Abigail and Louisa, in some measure a response to
Matteson’s prior work, Eve LaPlante contested his claim that the loss of
the majority of Abigail’s life-writings has cost scholars the opportunity
to assess her significance as a figure within the Alcott family:

The biographer John Matteson concluded that “instead of weaving

her mother’s writings into published work, [Louisa] chose to commit
the great majority of them to the flames” … [This] conventional
wisdom turned out to be wrong. Louisa did weave her mother’s
writings into published works … [The] archives also contain
hundreds of pages of Abigail’s diaries … Unknown papers of the
Alcotts continue to be discovered. (Marmee 5)

La Plante’s selected collection of Abigail’s private writings, My Heart is

Boundless, revealed that while the volume of Abigail’s surviving life-
writing pales in comparison to the thousands of pages bequeathed by
Bronson, they nevertheless constitute a considerable body of work.
LaPlante transformed the scholarly narrative by revealing that, while
Louisa could not bring herself to burn all of her mother’s writings, the
editorial hand of Bronson, who rewrote, edited, excised, and burnt much
of his late wife’s work, has shaped our vision of Abigail since her death
(Boundless xi–xii). LaPlante claims that the destroyed material was cri-
tical of Bronson’s conduct as a husband and father, and that this is
something that both Abigail and the wider family wished to obscure.
62 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing
Antoinette Burton’s 2005 collection of essays, Archive Stories, argues
that archival research is often structured around a “liberal, triumphalist
narrative” that emphasizes “fact-retrieval” (6–7) (5).1 However, Burton
claims that the archive itself is also an artefact, subject to “specific
historical and cultural contexts” and the embodied experience of the
researcher at work (9). It is imperative that archival scholars scrutinize
the narrative contained within the archive—considering such questions
as how it has been compiled, selected, and edited, and what this can tell
us about the material we access. It was implicitly accepted in the Alcott
family that the writings and scholastic reputation of Bronson, the public
philosopher, would be protected at the expense of the private writings
of Abigail, and this decision has shaped the archival approach of suc-
ceeding generations of scholars, who have, by and large, focused on the
prolific writings left by Bronson, at the expense of Abigail’s scattered
fragments.
LaPlante’s anthology marked the beginning of a rehabilitation of
Abigail’s archival material, but her selected collection of Abigail’s work
is by no means exhaustive. Focusing on Abigail’s talent as an un-
published writer, as well as her forgotten significance as a historical
figure, LaPlante’s work does not include the collaborative writings of
Abigail’s daughters, which intersected directly with Abigail’s journals.
William Merrill Decker has argued that the publication of epistolary
writing transforms the original form of the genre, which was conceived
as addressing a “multiple interface” or “community of utterance” by re-
schematizing it into a linear progression of life-writing, authored by a
single individual (33). The same can be said for the nineteenth-century
diary, and this is certainly the case for the Alcott family, who followed
the practice of reading and annotating each other’s journals and private
writings.
Collaborative journaling was not uncommon in nineteenth-century
New England for, as Ronald J. and Mary Saracino Zboray have argued,
the “broad distribution of literacy in a … rural society undergoing rapid
urbanization” (101), coupled with the explosion of a market for
“special-purpose blank books” (104) led to “a widespread writing im-
pulse propelled by the dual need to keep track of one’s life in a time of
social upheaval and to maintain ties to distant loved ones” (102). The
collaborative contents of Abigail’s journals are significant in that they
offer an insight into what the Zborays have termed “the structural re-
lationship between writing as a practice and lived experience” (103).
These moments of literary interaction are inextricably linked to moments
of historical interaction within the Alcott family, exposing the authorial
identity of the diarist as not simply an “isolated self standing out in high
relief from its social environment but the self embedded within its en-
vironment,” utilizing the diary as the record of a type of “socioliterary
experience” (ibid.).
 The Alcott Women’s Life-Writing 63
“Socioliterary experience” comes hand in hand with generic hybridity,
for the forms adopted within a collaborative work must reflect the de-
veloping events and experiences of its co-authors. Thus, “long, com-
monplace book-like passages of poetry … routinely interrupt the flow of
a diary usually enhanc[ing] the account of daily experience” (105);
“clippings sometimes document … the events recorded by hand” (107),
the diary can become a friendship album containing messages of sym-
pathy during times of bereavement (109). Within this nexus, the use of
poetry is particularly significant because the authorial identity adopted
by the poet is at once personal and impersonal. Adapting the events
experienced over the course of the day into a prescribed literary form, the
diarist-as-poet invites readers and collaborators to examine their reflec-
tions, not only as types of narrative record but as works of literature.
This enables the journal’s co-authors to develop an analytical discourse
surrounding their inter-personal relationships with the view of achieving
a greater mutual understanding.
In opposition to her husband, Abigail views the diary, not as a site for
parental discipline but a space for developing sympathy between family
members. Lisa M. Stepanski claims that while Bronson used personal
writing to enquire about his “daughters’ faults,” Abigail used her jour-
nals and those of her children to provide the “safe psychic space her
daughters needed to pursue their individual talents” (103–108).
Stepanski emphasizes that Abigail’s use of literature was “communal,
dialogic, uplifting,” drawing attention to Abigail’s interest in educating
her “daughters’ moral sensibilities,” thereby connecting them “to the
greater community—in this case the immediate family” (100–101).
Poetry, in this context, provides a space where the Alcott women ex-
change ideas and feelings concerning their artistic accomplishments, the
inter-workings of family relationships and the formation of a shared set
of religious beliefs.
The Alcott sisters expanded on the collaborative practice instigated by
their mother in their juvenile newspapers, which paid tribute to Abigail
as the inspiration for their mutual literary endeavors. These collaborative
projects form what Elizabeth Hewitt has termed as a “networked com-
munity” of writers and readers (15). Focusing on epistolary practice,
Hewitt contends that literary collaboration is orientated “not merely
toward the writing subject, but also toward the myriad networks and
communities” forged through literary exchange (6). Citing the work of
Mary Favret, Celeste-Marie Bernier et al. expand upon this vision of
literary exchange to argue that female communities “pulled the letter out
of its fiction of individualism” and transformed epistolary practice into
“a site for social negotiation and political empowerment” (14). It is my
contention that this vision of a ‘networked community’ is not only
limited to epistolary practice but was utilized by the Alcott women as a
means of negotiating personal empowerment within the family, as they
64 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing
formulated a set of literary, relational, and devotional discourses that
consciously opposed the philosophical outlook of family patriarch,
Bronson.

“Let Us Perpetuate in the Remembrances of Our Children

[…] What of Love and Good-Will We Have Lived for
Them”: Abigail Alcott’s Model of Relational Sympathy
Abigail Alcott’s literary influence over her daughters is rooted in the
mode of sympathetic discourse she champions in her life-writing, which
resists the framework of sympathy espoused by her husband. Bronson
Alcott embraced a vision of sympathy, but his vision embodied what
Gordon Hutner defines as the Hawthornian model of the infallible au-
thor who depends upon the sympathy of his readers, stipulating “how
others must come into his sphere… through sympathetic penetration …
For others to know him, they must extend their own capacities, and not
rely on any guidance from the author” (8). In other words, the sympathy
of the reader must be directed towards the author without any ex-
pectation of emotional return.
This framework of authorial privilege relies upon what Janet Todd has
termed “the communication of common feeling from sufferer or watcher
to reader or audience” (4), developing a “politics of sympathy [that] is
fatally flawed by its drive to turn all differences into equivalences, all
analogies into coincidences” (Hendler Public Sentiments 8). Ironically,
Hendler affiliates this particular politics of sympathy with a “proto-
feminist subject position” that attempts to forge “emotional solidarity
between … predominantly white women” as a means of advocating for
the rights of “their racial, class and national others” within the senti-
mental novel (7). Elizabeth Barnes imposes this interpretation of a female
politics of sympathy onto the fiction of Louisa May Alcott, claiming that:
“Sadistic impulses are ultimately converted into masochistic ones in
Alcott’s novels, a transformation that affords its own form of pleasure by
the children’s understanding that the one who is ‘beaten’ is the one who
is loved” (21).
Abigail Alcott’s life-writings, which provided much of the inspiration
for Little Women, oppose this masochistic approach to child-rearing.
Abigail did not share in her husband’s disciplinary practices but instead
perceived parental discourse to be a dialogue that privileged the ex-
periences of others and fostered mutual understanding and growth.
Abigail’s conception of sympathy encourages the development of what I
term as ‘shared consciousness’ where the needs and behaviors of the
individual are shaped by the experiences of others, as much as they are
the experiences of the self. This shared consciousness mirrors the “en-
lightened consciousness” attained by female mystics like Julian of
Norwich and Teresa of Avila who argued that the contemplative and
 The Alcott Women’s Life-Writing 65
prayerful Christian transformed the self into an “inner monastery”
capable of shutting out the distractions of the outside world to achieve
union with the divine and one’s sisters (Lanzetta 82 91).
Abigail’s journals are the site of her development of shared conscious-
ness, for they form a reciprocal discourse with her children by means of
self-analysis and reflexivity. She defines the purpose of the diary as al-
lowing the moral good of the individual to live on and nourish the growth
of their children: “let us perpetuate in the remembrances of our children at
least, what of love and good-will we have lived for them” (LaPlante
Boundless 200). It is also through the exchange of personal record,
something that Abigail encouraged her daughters to actively partake in,
that family ties and relationships are cemented. For instance, in a private
letter, sent to 14-year-old Louisa through the “domestic post office,” es-
tablished by Abigail to heal “all differences and discontents” within the
family,2 Abigail describes the diaries of herself and her daughter as in-
tertextual works that evidence the intertwined nature of their lives: “My
Diary! Your Diary! only to think that we neither of us snatch a moment to
notch our days! Can they be profitably spent if not a moment can be
spared to record the fact that we lived?” (LaPlante Boundless 155–156).
Abigail used her journal as a site for maintaining her relationships
with her girls, fostering affectionate communication between them. She
would sometimes record notes sent through the domestic post office for
posterity. For instance, she transcribed a note sent to Louisa on her 11th
birthday into her journal, which encouraged her daughter to use her
diary as a tool for reflection that would aid her personal growth:
“Remember, dear girl, that a diary should be an epitome of your life.
May it be a record of pure thought and good actions, then you will
indeed be the precious child of your loving mother” (128). Abigail un-
derstood the purpose of life-writing as a tool for self-composition: re-
cording one’s life enabled the individual to analyze and reconstruct their
behavior, so refining and strengthening their conscience in the process.
Abigail’s journals frequently express frustration at her husband’s in-
ability to relate to her need for empathetic relationships and sympathy
from others. After observing Abigail’s happiness at receiving a sympa-
thetic note from her brother Charles, which addressed their difficulties
during the Fruitlands experiment, Bronson apparently criticized her for
showing signs of weakness, something that provoked the following entry
in her journal:

Cousin Sam leaves us this morning a truly kind and fraternal note
from our dear friend … This is what I much need, what my husband
seems to regard as puerile and false sympathy. I do not … It may be
weakness- well! I am weak and I do not find that he that is wise is
“always strong.” I am but human, and with many infirmities lurking
about me. (A. Alcott Diary 6th February, 1844)
66 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing
Noting that Bronson’s aspiration to fashion an independent identity
overrode the human desire for mutual understanding, Abigail observed
that his denigration of emotional experience ignored a fundamental as-
pect of the human condition: the desire for sympathy from others. In
failing to aspire after the same level of self-sufficiency, Abigail concedes
that she might appear weak, but that in acknowledging and accepting the
reality of her supposed weakness, she is wiser than her husband, for her
desires are rooted in the inevitable human need for companionship.
At the heart of the divergence between husband and wife are opposing
visions of fate and providence. Where Bronson sees his Transcendentalist
vision as forming part of a manifest destiny, where all becomes unified in
the oversoul, Abigail emphasizes the importance of working with the
uncertain and shifting circumstances of the individual’s environment,
trusting that, through cooperation with the divine, they will be directed
towards the best possible outcome for their lives. A quotation by
Bronson, written in Abigail’s hand in her journal, suggests he believed
human will could dictate the course of the individual’s future—to the
extent of achieving a vision at odds with that of the external world: “that
which such souls desire, shall assuredly come to pass. His desire is the
promise of its accomplishments, and his Faith prophetic. Time shall
unfold his Ideal into its full and fair image in the actual” (ibid. 22nd
August, 1842). For Bronson, the mere existence of human faith was
evidence of its inevitable fulfilment—it was only a matter of time before
such faith came to fruition.
In contrast to her husband, Abigail’s vision of transcendent experience
is achieved through total submission to divine will and complete for-
getfulness of self. An entry on 1st April, 1843, claims that a soul attached
to earthly desires, or “creaturely entanglements,” paradoxically has
greater difficulty in achieving true freedom (A. Alcott Diary). Stating that
“conversion to God is aversion from sin,” Abigail argues that “turning
away from the latter is going into the former, a continuous sinking into
the Deity” (ibid.). While a relinquishment of self-interested desire might,
on the surface, appear to necessitate a renunciation of individual iden-
tity, within Abigail’s theology, such an act of spiritual renunciation re-
directs the individual away from the perversions and distortions
conditional to the fallen world. Instead, the individual achieves their
preordained purpose, unification with God, through a letting go of
an individualized selfhood aligned to the desires and conditions of the
external world.
Abigail’s vision of submission to divine will closely resembles the at-
titude of mystical surrender championed by the medieval female mystics.
Surrender of will enables the female mystic to immerse herself in the
deity and access a transformed plane of experience especially attuned to
the divine. By aligning her identity with that of the Creator, the female
mystic attains an increased sensitivity to both suffering and ecstasy:
 The Alcott Women’s Life-Writing 67
unification with the divine exceeds any pleasure attainable in the mate-
rial world, but also heightens the disparity between the material world
and the world to come. Thus, Abigail writes: “Love is the weight which
sinks us as into an infinite sea, wherein they descend with inconceivable
rapidity from one profound depth to another” (ibid.).
Immersion into such transcendent experience requires a learnt accep-
tance of suffering; the submission of the individual necessitates a rejec-
tion of the outside world. In Abigail’s conception, the ability to embrace
suffering is achieved through detaching the self from the immanence of
conscious experience, so that it is diminished by the presence of the deity:
“A sensibility of suffering constitutes a principle [sic] part of the suf-
ferings themselves. They often bear the Cross in weakness, at other times
Strength. All should be equal to us in the will of God” (A. Alcott Diary
22nd August, 1842). In another diary entry, dated 2nd July, 1848,
Abigail even goes so far as to claim that, as a vehicle to unification with
God, human suffering can be transformed into an uplifting experience:
“Renunciation is the law, devotion to God’s will the Gospel, the latter
makes the former easy—sometimes delightful” (ibid.).
It is possible to interpret such a theology as, on some level, ma-
sochistic. Marianne Nobel has compellingly argued that: “The maso-
chism in sentimentality—neither subversive nor purely reactive—makes
available the ‘bliss’ of reveling in fantasized submission to power” (5).
Likewise, Claire Jarvis stakes the claim that the repression of female
sexuality can function as a means of activating that sexuality:
“Withholding sex, in the Victorian novel, is a perverse way of having it”
(viii). However, Abigail’s theology of renunciation is a framework for
transcending pain, not ‘reveling’ in it: “A sensibility of suffering con-
stitutes a principle [sic] part of the sufferings themselves” (A. Alcott
Diary 22nd August, 1842). Through identifying herself with the will of
God, Abigail enters an alternative plane of existence that reconfigures the
human emphasis on individual fulfilment. Female mystics experience
renunciation not as pain but as a type of ecstatic bliss where the subject
lets go of the limitations of the self to share in the pleasure given over to
others. This mystical theology alters sense perception, so that the sen-
sations one experiences in the world, which are conditional to the so-
lipsistic outlook of that world, are turned upside-down. Pain, in this
context, would be to turn inwards into the self because such self-
interestedness would facilitate the victimization of the other, with whom
the individual identifies.
Kenyon Gradert raises the interesting possibility that Abigail Alcott’s
theology of renunciation might be viewed as part of a wider female re-
sponse against the “individualistic spiritual antinomianism” of mid-
nineteenth-century New England (1). Gradert contends that Harriet
Beecher Stowe (1811–1896), in particular, sought to counter “a Puritan
legacy of excessive iconoclasm, individualism and antinomianism”
68 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing
through “reclaiming [Puritanism’s] communal facets in … a folk
theology grounded in the lived reality and communal relations of Puritan
New England” (2). This folk theology is mystical in nature: it focuses on
the lived experience of the church community as it interprets everyday
life through the framework of its faith. The life of the community is built
out of what Gradert refers to as a “hermeneutic of empathy in which
readers imaginatively cast themselves back into the world of sacred
history,” in order to come to a realization that “God spoke not only
through individuals, but to communal peoples that developed and ma-
tured through the arc of sacred history” (4). In the conception of these
emerging Puritan communities, inspired by the Halfway Covenant,3 the
teleology of sacred history is based on mystical experience, as opposed to
institutionalized doctrine. The events of sacred history are embedded
“within a texture of vernacular speech and quotidian folk life” that
formulates a vision of Christian theology as growing out of “communal
lived [and mystical] experience” (6–7).
Abigail might reasonably be seen as falling into this tradition, for she
counters her husband’s belief in divine revelation with an understanding of
individual destiny as generated through an outward-facing predisposition
towards the growing needs of the surrounding community. While the
Transcendentalist emphasis on a return to prelapsarian innocence opposes
the Calvinist Doctrine of the Total Depravity of Man, the movement’s faith
in individual revelation and the divinely ordained vocation of the in-
dividual, is nevertheless indebted to the concept of predestination. If all is
united within the oversoul, then the oversoul, as a precondition of one’s
existence, facilitates the individual’s personal fulfilment.
The difficulty with this self-affirming philosophy is that it interprets
the conditions of life as supporting the individual’s chosen identity and
does not allow for the possibility that an individual’s circumstances may
affect his or her desires. Contrastingly, mystical theology is centered on
the understanding that the individual must adapt to the unexpected
events of daily life—reading these events as signs of an evolving re-
lationship with God shaped by both the individual’s identity and their
affiliation with the wider Christian community.
Of course, what we might term as Abigail’s ‘matrilineal mystical
theology’ differs from Stowe’s ‘folk theology’ in that it is contained within
the unit of the nuclear family and does not consciously situate itself within
a Puritan discourse, but Abigail’s development of a sympathetic shared
consciousness is fascinatingly close to Stowe’s “hermeneutic of empathy”
(Gradert 4). Both frameworks are centered on lived religion, communal
relationships, and mystical experience. Indeed, it is no coincidence that
Stowe viewed Louisa May Alcott as her sentimental heir, writing to her in
a letter that “in these days where so much seductive and dangerous lit-
erature is put forward, the success of your domestic works has been to me
most comforting” (qtd. in Saxton 305–306).
 The Alcott Women’s Life-Writing 69
In Louisa’s public works we see her ground her mother’s matrilineal
theology in “the vernacular speech and quotidian folklife” of New
England (Gradert 7), developing a sentimental backdrop that is indebted
to Stowe’s earlier work. It is my contention that Alcott’s portrayal of
female relationships as “a key means of grace” that facilitates the in-
tegration of the self-reliant individual into a “social body” (ibid.) is in-
debted to the prototype of the matrilineal community of the Alcott
women. Like the medieval female mystics, the Alcott women “turn[ed]
their attention to the spiritual life, often co-opted by [male] authority
and submerged in academic [discourse], and to the daily trials by which a
soul ascends in grace” (Lanzetta 82). In the work of the Alcott sisters, we
witness an application of Abigail Alcott’s vision of shared consciousness
where the needs of the community are prioritized above those of the
individual, as well as a mutual championing of her theology of
renunciation and practice of lived religion, which conceives mystical
experience as the foundation of the community’s vision of the divine.

“Piety of the Right Kind”: Abigail Alcott’s Lived Religion

in Anna Alcott’s Literary Criticism and Louisa May
Alcott’s Little Women
The Alcott sisters conceive religious practice as a practical way of life
that eschews the hierarchical and ritualistic frameworks of organized
religion, instead focusing on the power of communal bonds to redeem
the individual and bring them closer to God. The emphasis on the re-
demptive power of matrilineal relationships fosters a providential out-
look because the individual’s salvation is facilitated through the female-
centered relationships of the family. This matrilineal vision of redemp-
tion can be observed throughout the life-writing of the Alcott sisters and
is the foundation for the portrayal of the March women in Louisa May
Alcott’s Little Women. Anna Alcott’s journal records the sympathetic
vision of the Alcott women and its influence on their public writing. Her
critique of Susan Warner’s (1819–1885) The Wide, Wide World is ger-
mane to our understanding of Little Women because it illuminates
Louisa May Alcott’s innovations within the sentimental genre, and in-
dicates how these innovations embody the providential outlook cham-
pioned by Abigail Alcott.
Kristina West has sensitively documented the pitfalls of approaching
Little Women and Alcott’s wider canon through an autobiographical
framework as I do here. West reminds scholars that any claim to “the
real” is “only based on texts themselves” and archival papers have no
access to “something prior or extra to” textual production (p. 27 and
45). My introduction has outlined my conception of archival ephemera
as devotional relics, but I agree with Rosemarie Bodenheimer that an
intertextual approach allows scholars to “discover plausible ways of
70 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing
negotiating between ‘the life’ and ‘the work,’” thereby countering critical
myths that emerge through various schools of interpretation, be they
theoretical, psychoanalytic, or autobiographical (16). I foreground the
empowering aspects of the Alcott women’s theologies of renunciation to
trouble the assumption that they share the repressive ramifications of
renunciatory theologies in contemporaneous works like Warner’s.
Viewing the theological vision of Little Women through the lens of the
Alcott women’s archive allows us to understand why the novel, in Anne
Boyd Rioux’s words, “points backward to a simpler time of family co-
hesion and looks forward to a complicated time when women would find
work away from home and family” (136): the Alcott women’s theologies
of renunciation lay the foundation for sororal cooperation and partici-
pation in the public sphere.
Anna’s journal contains short pithy reviews of works of fiction and
religious tracts, a practice she inherited from her mother. Her observations
on The Wide, Wide World reflect her wider sentiments concerning lived
religion and spiritual submission. The entry for Tuesday 9th February,
1861 argues that Warner’s novel would be a “real good story if it were not
quite so pious.”4 Clarifying she does not “dislike piety of the right kind,
that which shows itself in loving words and unselfish deed” (Anna Alcott
Diary 9th February, 1861), Anna explains that she finds the formal
religious practice of the novel’s heroine, Ellen Montgomery, affected:

….when a child of 10 yrs. talks constantly of being “washed in the

blood of the Lamb,” ‘having a new heart’ and seeking Grace, it
seems rather unnatural. Then to pray on every occasion, read the
Bible in preference to all other books, and weep bitterly if anyone
asks her if she is a “Christian“ or “expects to be saved” seems to me
hardly childlike and simple enough. (ibid.)

Anna’s objection to Ellen Montgomery’s particularly self-conscious

brand of “piety” can be linked to what Jane Tompkins has termed as
the “ethic of submission” that pervades the sentimental genre (167).
Within this framework, female heroines “could not assume a stance of
open rebellion against the conditions of their lives” and instead appro-
priated the “culture’s value system” of female submission to gain a po-
sition of authority (168). Tompkins interprets The Wide, Wide World as
“paradoxically an assertion of autonomy” because submission, as the
highest act of Christian faith, enables “the dutiful woman [to] merge her
own authority with God’s” (169). Thus, every single act of submission
within the text is consciously linked back to the heroine’s piety and is
developed within a religious discourse that is, as Anna points out,
somewhat affected for a child of ten years old.
One might ask how Warner’s “ethic of submission” (Tomkins 167)
differs from Abigail’s theology of renunciation. The answer lies in
 The Alcott Women’s Life-Writing 71
Warner’s theology of predestination, which views the subordinate status
of women as part of God’s preordained salvific plan. Warner’s ethic of
submission defines the sufferings of women at the hands of patriarchal
authority as divinely willed, thereby championing an eschatological vi-
sion of female destiny that perceives salvation as facilitated through
gynocentric suffering. This can be seen as a devotional version of
Bronson Alcott’s vision of “Fate” and radically opposes women mystics’
emphasis on the attainment of selfhood through ecstatic immersion in
the divine.
Ellen Montgomery’s submission does not lead to the other-orientated
shared consciousness upheld in the devotional writings of the Alcott
women because it is dependent upon the heroine’s sacrifice of her mo-
ther, and, with her, the possibility of a redemptive matrilineal commu-
nity. In Warner’s narrative, Ellen Montgomery’s mother must die, so
that Ellen can form a closer relationship with God. No logical reason is
given for Ellen’s separation from her mother (other than the weak pre-
ferences of a perpetually absent father whose intermittent appearances in
the novel seem only to coincide with the circumvention of his daughter’s
happiness), but Ellen’s fallibility is explicitly associated with her mother-
love: “Ellen had plenty of faults, but amidst them all, love to her mother
was the strongest feeling her heart knew” (11).
Warner’s theology embodies what Ira L. Mandelker defines as
“Puritan mysticism” (39). The Puritan mystic strenuously subordinates
themselves to “Divine Law” at the cost of great suffering, focusing on the
doctrines of “resist no evil” and “turn the other cheek” to form a
“positive ascetic ideology” (ibid.). This mode of mysticism opposes
mysticism practiced exclusively within the female community. Female
revelation is placed above the interpretation of divine law promulgated
by church authorities in the work of the medieval mystics, for example.
Anne Douglas has astutely observed that sentimental texts like The
Wide, Wide World invariably disappoint feminist scholars because such
“sentimentalism provides a way to protest a power to which one has
already capitulated” (12) by becoming complicit within a power struc-
ture that “forces its objects to be oppressive in turn, to do the dirty work
of their society in several senses” (11). Douglas disregards the value of
the sentimental genre in its entirety, arguing that “America lost its male-
dominated theological tradition without gaining a comprehensive fem-
inism or adequately modernized religious sensibility” (13).
Yet, Anna’s critical response to the brand of piety presented in The
Wide, Wide World suggests otherwise. Anna objects to the rigidly formal
elements of organized religion because they are a replacement for the
mother as mediatrix to the divine. While Nina Baym asserts that “an
expression of existential doubt and absurdity” is preferable to Warner’s
beneficent portrayal of an autocratic deity (145), Louisa May Alcott’s
Little Women stands out for representing a family matriarch, based on
72 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing
Abigail Alcott, who acts as a spiritual guide for the novel’s four heroines.
Abigail was influenced by the emphasis on free will and spiritual as-
piration promoted by the Arminian revival but nevertheless remained
true to the Unitarian precept of wresting “religion from the clergy,
congregation, and ritual, and substitut[ing] an intense personal re-
lationship with God” (Mandelker 44). This aspect of Unitarian religious
practice is surprisingly close to women’s mysticism, which prioritizes
“the subversive value of experiential knowledge” above the authority of
the Church (Lanzetta 145). Abigail’s emphasis on her personal re-
lationship with God is forged in concert with the left-handed matrilineal
society of the family and we observe her vision of mystical shared con-
sciousness in Little Women.
Consider, for instance, the difference between the function of The
Pilgrim’s Progress in Little Women and The Wide, Wide World. Where
Ellen Montgomery is encouraged to apply Bunyan’s text to her own life as
a means of accepting the peculiarly misogynistic brand of injustice she is
continually forced to confront, Marmee encourages her four daughters to
use the text as an aspirational vehicle towards self-fulfillment: “Do you
remember how you used to play Pilgrim’s Progress when you were little
things? … Now, my little pilgrims, suppose you begin again, not in play,
but in earnest, and see how far on you can get” (17–18).
Bunyan’s text allows the March sisters to look upon the trials and
tribulations of their lives as obstacles to be overcome, rather than the
inevitable workings of blind destiny. The sisters are encouraged to read
the text through the unfolding events of their lives, instead of inter-
preting their lives through the framework of the text. Their engagement
with Bunyan’s narrative is active and evolving because it is a guide for
conquering “their bosom enemies” and achieving salvation through
supporting all members of the matrilineal community in its mutual quest
towards spiritual fulfilment (14). By contrast, Ellen Montgomery applies
the text to her life in hindsight when its events cannot be altered: she
does not create her own unique interpretive language but rather submits
herself to the instruction of her male superiors.
Marmee’s conflation of her daughters’ struggles with what is presented
as a favorite childhood story also associates self-improvement with
‘play’: “We are never too old for this, my dear, because it is a play we are
playing all the time in one way or another” (18). The use of literature
and theatricality, as well as the emphasis on heavenly reward, allows the
girls’ attempts to conquer their faults to bring joy and laughter, as well as
suffering. This association of self-improvement with ‘play’ counteracts
Richard Brodhead’s claim that sentimental works like Little Women
foster a practice of “disciplinary intimacy” (70) where the protagonist is
punished through the voyeuristic experience of the victim’s suffering
(68). The very notion of ‘play’ suggests that one’s moral development is
formed through a process of trial and error and rejects any suggestion
 The Alcott Women’s Life-Writing 73
that the parent should encourage the development of excessive guilt for
what are essentially childish misdemeanors. ‘Play’ is not a form of
emotional manipulation; it is rather an act of creative collaboration and
self-discovery.
Louisa’s emphasis on self-reflection through ‘play’ also encourages the
reader to reject the notion that the experiences of her heroines are pre-
determined. The narrative structure of the novel, which examines the
struggles of each sister in the context of Bunyan’s narrative, opens up
the text to myriad interpretive possibilities. The sisters’ understanding of
the text is transformed by each circumstance they meet and their failure
to overcome their bosom enemies is neither lamented as an indicator of
their eternal damnation, nor is it celebrated as an inevitable obstacle in
the divine trajectory of their lives. Instead, it is presented as an integral
aspect of the individual’s self-development, and each sister is encouraged
to regard her shortcomings as the foundation for psychological and
spiritual growth.
Alcott’s portrayal of lived religion is in some respects radical for the
period and was even scorned by contemporary reviewers. For example,
an anonymous reviewer in the Zion’s Herald condemned Alcott’s secular
appropriation of The Pilgrim’s Progress and her refusal to link Bunyan’s
narrative to the affected display of pious sentiment that can be observed
in The Wide, Wide World:

We dislike the spiritualizing in it of Bunyan’s great Allegory … The

fight with Apollyon is reduced to a conflict with an evil temper, and
the Palace Beautiful and Vanity Fair are made to be only ordinary
virtues or temptations. We cannot recommend the book as its
quality merits. It is without Christ, and hence perilous in proportion
to its assimilation to Christian forms. Don’t put it in the Sunday
School library.5

When read alongside this review, Anna’s critique of The Wide, Wide
World takes on another dimension, for she is pushing against the re-
strictive models of religious formation assigned to women in the senti-
mental literature of the period, and thereby prefiguring her sister’s
intervention in the canon.
One might wonder what the reviewer finds to be so dangerous in
Louisa’s text. (S)he is apparently affronted that a novel that affirms
Christian values, makes extended reference to the popular theological
writing of the period, and features a paterfamilias who is an Army
Chaplain, never references Christ directly. His or her outrage perhaps
makes more sense when we consider the possibility that the deeper
source of offence lies in Louisa’s alleged trivialization of Bunyan’s text,
for the reviewer regards Louisa’s association of a theological tract with
“ordinary virtues and temptations” as sacrilegious (ibid.). This is
74 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing
astounding, given Bunyan’s narrative was an allegorical rendering of his
own life and conversion experience. In short, his was a mystical text.
However, the reviewer’s attitude becomes comprehensible when we
consider the possibility they are offended Louisa has the audacity to
locate Bunyan’s spiritual insights in the left-handed society of the do-
mestic sphere. The anonymous reviewer implies Louisa should relinquish
her authority over Bunyan’s text, here utilized as an aid for women’s
spiritual development. Susan Cheever has argued that the most rebellious
feature of Little Women is that it allows the “domestic details” of daily
life to become the “subject of art,” thereby implying that the “small
things in a woman’s life—cooking, the trimming of a dress or hat, quiet
talk—can be just as important a subject as a great whale or a scarlet
letter” (192). The same claim can and has been made for The Wide,
Wide World6—but the fact remains that the struggles of Ellen
Montgomery are rooted in her continual expulsion from the domestic
sphere and her forcible immersion into the wide, wide world. She is cast
out of the prelapsarian space of the matrilineal community and forced to
make her way in a shockingly misogynistic society without any sign of
protest, or rebellion. When Anna objects to Ellen Montgomery’s in-
ability to appear “hardly childlike or simple enough,” advocating “piety
of the right kind” (Anna Alcott Diary 9th February, 1861), she is really
championing the practice of lived religion modeled by her mother and
promoted in Little Women.

“We Enjoyed Our Little Pleasures with Gratitude When

We Had Care and Sorrow”: Bronson Alcott’s Vision of
Predestination in Two Early Sketches for Little Women
The incorporation of Abigail Alcott’s practice of ‘lived religion’ into the
providential framework of Little Women is rendered even more explicit
when it is examined in the context of a double set of early sketches for
the novel, “Two Scenes in a Family” (Appendices 2–3), which were
written for the Alcott sisters’ juvenile newspaper, The Portfolio. Like the
opening of Little Women, these sketches portray four sisters in front of a
fireside complaining about their poverty. However, this earlier version of
the scene also features the figure of a father, an “old philosopher” seated
by a “well-stocked bookcase,” clearly based on Bronson Alcott
(Appendix 2).
Rather than opening with the dialogue between the sisters that com-
mences Little Women, “Two Scenes in a Family” allows the paterfa-
milias to commence the discussion on poverty. He is anxious to justify
the family’s straightened circumstances in light of his philosophy of
predestination, which interprets earthly sufferings as preordained tri-
bulations that establish the individual’s purity of character. The four
daughters remain unconvinced by the patriarch’s arguments, claiming
 The Alcott Women’s Life-Writing 75
they would be more able to help those less fortunate than themselves if
they were financially comfortable and more able to engage in provi-
dential acts of goodness.
The opening debate subtly places the sisters’ theology of free will and
good works in opposition to their father’s emphasis on human weakness
and the necessity of hardship. The girls defer the question of the abstract
value of poverty to their mother who argues that the struggles of the
poor are the product of a self-serving capitalist society that does not
encourage values of renunciation and generosity. She echoes Abigail
Alcott’s sentiments, arguing that the foundation of any successful society
lies in its capacity for sympathy and love for others.
Emulating Abigail’s example, the nameless mother disregards the
philosopher’s claim that punishment alone can refine a person’s char-
acter, instead advocating the universal development of a sympathetic
shared consciousness fostered within the matrilineal community. The
girls’ father, however, dismisses his wife’s dreams of a future society
where “wealth may be a source of true happiness to high and low” with
the abrupt assertion that such a time “will never come” (Appendix 2).
His wife’s insights are disregarded without cause, and he restates his
prior belief that poverty is in the best interests of the family.
In light of this earlier blueprint for the opening scene of the novel, it is
fascinating Louisa chose to erase the figure of the father from the first
part of Little Women. The absence of this self-righteous philosopher,
who undercuts the insights of his wife, allows the March sisters to follow
the advice and instruction of their mother without opposition. Indeed,
the second sketch of “Two Scenes in a Family,” “Wealth” (Appendix 3),
suggests the father’s mere presence undermines the promotion of sym-
pathetic values, for his philosophy of predestination is upheld, while his
wife’s faith in the development of universal sympathy is presented as
untenable. Although the family has attained wealth, its good fortune has
corrupted each of its members with the exception of the old philosopher
and Lizzie, an early version of Beth March. Annie, the counterpart for
Anna Alcott and Meg March in Little Women, appears lazy, listless, and
bored; the “brown girl,” an early model of Jo March and the fictional
counterpart of Louisa May Alcott, is pictured “filling a costly album
with nonsensical poetry,” while the youngest sister, an unnamed version
of Amy March based on her real-life counterpart, May Alcott, sits “idle”
in a recess (ibid.).
Most damning of all, however, is the portrayal of the unnamed mother
who throws off her “rich furs,” exclaiming in a “discontented voice”:

The beggars are a public nuisance. I cannot stir out, I am surrounded

with vagabonds and poor wretches who torment one’s life out for
this thing and that. Ah me, what a trouble it is to be rich if they
would but let me alone, I should be satisfied. (sic ibid.)
76 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing
The mother’s failure to realize the altruistic attitude she has previously
championed confirms the ‘old philosopher’s’ avocation of the necessity
of cathartic suffering. The aspiration towards a mutually supportive
left-handed society is exposed as fallacy and this early version of
Marmee is portrayed as the worst of hypocrites because she is unable to
practice her philosophy of altruism when she becomes the recipient of
good fortune.
Consequently, a belief in the providential power of good works is
rejected in favor of upholding a vision of predestination where one
submits to the righteous vengeance of a wrathful God to achieve eternal
salvation. The family’s moral peril is explicitly underlined by the “brown
girl” who claims that “we were happier in our old home at C.” because
“we enjoyed our little pleasures with gratitude when we had care and
sorrow … of our own. We felt for those who suffered like us and in that
pity found comfort for our own griefs” (ibid.). The sketch abruptly ends
on this note of discord, implying that the family’s unexpected windfall is
to have disastrous ramifications for the spiritual welfare of its female
members for the foreseeable future.
“Two Scenes in a Family” presents a depressing alternative to Little
Women because, like The Wide, Wide World, it insists that women must
be subjected to perpetual suffering if they are to obtain salvation. Within
these texts, the matrilineal community is shown to be entirely incapable
of self-control and unable to achieve virtue through the cultivation of
sympathy, the entire premise of Little Women. Louisa’s iconic work
embodies a conscious rejection of Bronson’s theology of predestination
in favor of Abigail’s vision of a left-handed society centered on the
cultivation of sympathy and good works. Louisa expunges the figure of
her father from the text because his mere presence traps the matrilineal
community in a sense of guilt and unworthiness, as they perpetually
enact what Brodhead terms as the pedagogical practice of “disciplinary
intimacy” (70).
Furthermore, LaPlante has argued that the minor character of Mr.
March, who does share in Mrs. March’s moral authority following his
return from the Civil War in Part II of the novel, is actually based on
Abigail’s father, Colonel Joseph May (Marmee 228). Unlike Bronson,
whose poverty followed his failed philosophical, educational, and social
experiments, Colonel May, like Mr. March, lost his fortune after
clearing the debts of a business partner who participated in a fraudulent
Ponzi Scheme without his prior knowledge or consent (ibid.). By repla-
cing the figure of her father with her maternal grandfather, Louisa en-
ables her mother’s moral wisdom to be reaffirmed and supported by the
patriarchal figurehead of the novel. The moral message of Little Women
also becomes affiliated with the maternal line of the Mays (tellingly, the
surname “March” is also a month of the year), rather than the patri-
archal line of the Alcotts (227).
 The Alcott Women’s Life-Writing 77
When read in this context, Little Women can be seen as a depiction of
Abigail’s sympathetic vision of a matrilineal community that facilitates
female redemption through championing mutually supportive and re-
ciprocal relationships between women. The providential structure of the
novel, which examines the unfolding events of the sisters’ lives in the
context of their evolving interpretations of The Pilgrim’s Progress,
mirrors the shared code of conduct modeled by Abigail through her
collaborative journaling, the installation of a family post-office and her
fostering of juvenile literary projects like the Alcott sisters’ newspapers.
This exchange of life-writing encouraged the development of a sympa-
thetic shared consciousness within the matrilineal community. The net-
work of the Alcott sisters’ life-writing demonstrates how each sister
applied Abigail’s vision of a sympathetic shared consciousness and her
theology of renunciation to their daily lives and mystical experiences.

“We Must Live for Each Other”: The Maternal Bond as

Origin and Apotheosis of the Alcott Sisters’ Artistry
Abigail Alcott is presented as the inspiration for her daughters’ colla-
borative life-writings throughout their lives, and her presence continues to
linger after her death. The Alcott sisters’ journals are commonly dedicated
to Abigail and assign her the role of intended reader. The sisters place the
maternal bond at the center of their life-writing and artistic projects, in-
terpreting the circumstances of their lives through the framework of their
relationships with their mother. Examining Louisa May Alcott’s partici-
pation in this literary community helps us to understand how her identity
as an author was shaped by her sympathetic relationships with her mother
and sisters, so that her published works became a public expression of the
devotional values of the matrilineal community.
As with the preeminent role of Marmee in Little Women, Abigail is
presented as the central influence on Anna’s life in her journal. On her
first wedding anniversary on 22nd May, 1861, Anna inserted a note
from Abigail into the text, instead of including something from her
husband. Anna links the event of her marriage back to her mother,
implying the maternal relationship remains the central influence of her
life and that all other relationships are built out of this preeminent bond.
Abigail’s note informs Anna that she has been preparing her diary for
Anna’s perusal, and it is to be passed on through Louisa. It is clear
Abigail still understands her life as intertwined with those of her
daughters, even after their marriages, and that she looks upon life-
writing as a means of continuing her relationships with them. She
re-establishes herself as a constant presence in her daughter’s life, ac-
knowledging the continuation of their bond, despite Anna’s marriage:
“Oh my darling it is hard to believe that you belong to anyone else than
78 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing
God or me—all happy you are happy—all try to be” (Anna Alcott Diary
22nd May, 1861).
Abigail’s description of the relationship between mother and daughter
as a continuing state of “belonging” presents the maternal bond as
symbiotic in nature, for the identity of each individual is formed through
identification with others (ibid.). Indeed, Abigail’s journals define the
maternal bond as centered on an outward-facing disposition towards the
other: “I wish [my daughters] to feel that we must live for each other. My
life thus far has been devoted to them and I know they will find hap-
piness hereafter in living for their Mother” (LaPlante Boundless 106).
While Abigail acknowledges the importance of Anna’s marriage, she
nevertheless champions the maternal bond as transcending all other re-
lationships. The role of the mother is associated with that of the Creator,
while the bond between mother and child is portrayed as emulating the
human relationship with the divine parent. Throughout her life, Abigail
interpreted the maternal role as a sacred duty, claiming the mother was
“the most interesting, as well as important member in the community.”7
Anna’s act of pasting her mother’s note into her journal suggests she
shared this view and regarded her maternal bond with Abigail as pre-
ceding her conjugal union.
Anna also shared her mother’s aspiration to achieve a sympathetic
shared consciousness between family members. She describes her union
with her husband as based on mutual identification, inadvertently mir-
roring Abigail’s description of the mother–daughter relationship: “We
are most blessed together, our habits, tastes and inclinations being much
alike … Each has grown to be a need to the other” (Anna Alcott Diary
1st January, 1861). The maturation of the conjugal bond is defined as a
process whereby each person reconciles themselves to the personal and
temperamental dispositions of the other, so that they become, in effect,
indispensable to the other person. This description of the marital re-
lationship is accompanied by an excerpt of devotional verse that stresses
the importance of the individual’s responsibilities to others in daily life.
This excerpt is taken from Isaac Watts’ poem, “Self-Inquiry”: a versified
examination of conscience that instructs the individual to reflect on the
impact of their actions upon others at the close of each day. Unlike the
Transcendentalist model, Watts’s definition of self-knowledge is rela-
tional, seeking to understand the self through others, rather than through
contemplating an internal divine calling. The ultimate end of Watts’
analysis is to place the actions and behaviors of the self in relation to the
individual’s relationship with God and their hope for eternal salvation:
“These self inquiries are the road / That leads to virtue and to God”
(ibid. 12–13).
Watts perceives the self as part of a wider familial community that
directs its shared experiences towards the divine will of its Creator. This
theological outlook necessitates a relinquishment of the individual’s ego,
 The Alcott Women’s Life-Writing 79
so that they are able to identify the workings of God in the external
world. Anna shares her mother’s belief that human relationships should
be tied to a vision of divine providence where the individual consciously
relates the events of their daily lives towards the image of the Creator
through a self-sacrificing dedication to others. Her reference to “Self-
Inquiry” also evidences her continuing allegiance to the literary com-
munity of the Alcott sisters, for this poem is transcribed in an 1852
journal entry of Anna’s youngest sister, May Alcott Nieriker
(1840–1879).8 The fact that the sisters cited the same literary excerpt
when composing reflections on the importance of family relationships
indicates that they collaborated in the creation of a canon of influential
aphorisms that informed their private life-writings throughout their
lives.
The life-writing of the youngest of the Alcott sisters, May, shares in the
providential vision of human relationships promoted in the diary of
Anna, while likewise figuring the mother–daughter bond as an instru-
ment that shapes the divine trajectory of the lives of both individuals.
May was a painter who, from 1870, undertook a number of European
excursions to cities like Paris, London, and Rome, to study art. Her
letters home, largely addressed to her mother, portray Abigail as the
inspiration for her artistic career. May’s art classes are narrated in
minute detail and inform her mother of the continuing development of
her artistic accomplishments, including the praise received from a
drawing master for her “strikingly strong” work, in contrast to his
distaste for the poorly executed drawings of a colleague.9 May’s letters
also included small pen and ink drawings of her paintings, so that her
mother might be able to better visualize her progress.10 The use of il-
lustration in May’s correspondence is a vehicle for enabling her mother
to enter into her everyday experiences. For instance, she proposed
creating an album of places she had visited abroad, so that her mother
could feel she was traveling with her.11
For her part, Abigail dedicated her final journal to May, and the vast
majority of its entries concern her youngest daughter. Abigail was a
remarkable mother for the period, in that she was determined all of her
daughters pursue careers.12 She supported May’s studies abroad and her
final journal expresses a “hope” May will “mature and develop the best
traits of her character … and confirm still further her conviction that her
talent for painting needs these farther instructions to establish her claim
as an artist of no mean degree.”13
Following Abigail’s death, May continued to situate her mother’s in-
fluence at the center of her life, interpreting her lived experiences in light
of her mother’s example and the providential framework of her beliefs.
Shortly after her mother’s passing, May informed her family she ex-
perienced a psychic intuition of the event: “On the 25th I was sitting in
the dressing room writing my home letter beginning ‘Dear Marmee’ I
80 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing
think and at night had a good cry in my room” (M. Alcott Letters). This
experience can be interpreted as a mystical premonition of Abigail’s
death, a manifestation of the matrilineal community’s union across the
barriers of time and space that divide the transatlantic world.
After this mystical revelation, May modeled her life on Abigail’s values
and example. When she married Swiss businessman, Ernest Nieriker, the
following year, she justified her happiness during her period of grief on
the grounds that Abigail’s “example” would “always be [her] guide,”
arguing that her own unconventional double vocation as artist and wife
was inspired by her mother’s decision to embark on an unconventional
marriage with a philosopher “for love.”14 May also made it clear that
Ernest would never supersede Abigail as the most important person in
her life: “No matter how dear the husband he can never be so precious as
Marmee” (Paris Letters Meudon September 1878). Like Anna, she in-
terpreted the mother–daughter relationship as a bond that supplanted all
other unions, including the covenant of marriage. She even went so far as
to create a shrine to her mother in her home in Paris, writing: “It is so
beautiful, and Marmee seem[s] to have come … in spirit so that even
amid my happiness I … weep a little weep” (ibid.). May’s devotion to her
maternal shrine resembles the pilgrim’s mystical interaction with an icon:
she aspires to achieve divine communion with her mother who remains
present in the devotional image after the latter’s death.
Louisa shared her sisters’ celebration of the maternal relationship as
the preeminent bond in a woman’s life, combining Anna’s championing
of the mother as the divine source of love with the connections May
makes between the identity of the woman artist and the mother-
daughter relationship. In an elegy, “Our Madonna” (Appendix 4)
dedicated to May after her premature death in 1879 at the age of 39,
Louisa describes her sister’s transformation from an artistic Madonna
associated with “the goddesses she traced/Upon her chamber wall”
(11–12) to “A mother, folding in her arms/The sweet supreme success”
(29–30). May’s transformation embodies a shift in female spirituality
from the goddess figure who represents the “feminine divine,” a pro-
creative force observed throughout creation, to the figure of the divine
mother who is “generative and sacrificial in her generation through
giving physical birth; and … is nurturing, feeding the child with her own
bodily fluid” (Lanzetta 46 51). The feminine divine represents the power
of women throughout the world, where the divine mother symbolizes
women’s self-sacrificial renunciation for their children—an act that is
seen as procreative in itself.
Louisa’s preoccupation with the devotional image of the Madonna not
only references her sister’s profession as a painter but also alludes to the
shrine May created for Abigail after Abigail’s death. Indeed, this shrine
inspired a later scene in Jo’s Boys (1886), the final text of the Little Women
trilogy, where the March sisters commission a portrait of their mother:
 The Alcott Women’s Life-Writing 81
In the place of honor, with the sunshine warm upon it, and a green
garland always round it, was Marmee’s beloved face, painted with
grateful skill by a great artist whom she had befriended when poor
and unknown. So beautifully lifelike was it that it seemed to smile
down upon her daughters, saying cheerfully:
“Be happy; I am with you still” (825)

Louisa shares her sister’s belief that the devotional image is “inhabited
by the subject” (Loreto 1) and generates a continuing mystical union
after that subject’s death. The sisters’ faith in the enduring presence of
the subject resembles the pilgrim’s faith in the living presence of both the
subject of the icon and the iconographer within the image for as long as
its earthly duration. Louisa’s depiction of May as a transfigured
Madonna implies that May has both emulated the example set by their
mother and achieved her vocation as an artist. May’s “picture of a baby
face” is described as “her loveliest and last” work of art (Appendix 4 39-
30). Motherhood is presented as the fulfilment of the female artist’s
creative vocation; Louisa depicts May as “sainted” (53) by her self-
sacrificial death for her daughter (35). Just as May based her identity as
an artist on the example of her mother, so does Louisa present May as
fulfilling their mother’s example in her death—bequeathing her child to
the family as her final, and greatest, work of art.
While Louisa’s elegy to her sister may seem to place undue emphasis
on the procreative capacity of the female body at the expense of women’s
professional achievements, it nevertheless commemorates the enduring
power of the matrilineal community as the source and apotheosis of
women’s inspiration, spirituality, and art. Although Louisa never had
children, she regarded her subsequent adoption of May’s daughter, Lulu,
as a sacred obligation that fulfilled her artistic vocation. On learning of
her sister’s death, Louisa wrote: “I see now why I lived. To care for
May’s child & not leave Annie all alone” (Journals 219).
Louisa’s affirmation that her purpose as an artist was to provide
support for her adopted child echoes her earlier claim that her pursuit of
artistic success centered on her desire to care for her mother. Throughout
her life, Louisa envisaged the purpose of her artistry as sustaining the
matrilineal community. She interpreted May’s self-sacrificing death for
Lulu as an expression of her sister’s shared devotion to that community
and the fulfilment of May’s vocation as an artist whose practice upheld
the mother–daughter bond. Louisa regards May’s artistic vision as em-
bodied in the birth of Lulu, who is the culmination of her mother’s art.
Indeed, Louisa’s description of May’s final bequest associates May’s
motherhood with her achievements as a painter: “She wished me to have
her baby & her pictures. A very precious legacy!” (Journals 219).
Among the pictures bequeathed to Louisa was Rosa Peckham’s por-
trait of May, which remains in the Alcotts’ Orchard House to this day.
82 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing
Imitating May’s earlier shrine to Abigail, Louisa displayed this portrait
in Orchard House for the use of Lulu and the wider family. On Lulu’s
first birthday on 8th November, 1880, Louisa recorded her adopted
daughter’s spontaneous interaction with this portrait:

She sat smiling at her treasures under her mother’s picture. Suddenly
attracted by the sunshine on the face of the portrait which she knows
is “Marmar” she held up a white rose to it calling “Mum! Mum!” &
smiling at it in a way that made us all cry. (Journals 228)

Here, Lulu incorporates herself into the matrilineal community’s tradi-

tion of mystical spirituality and follows the examples of both her natural
and adoptive mothers by viewing the work of art as embodying its
subject after the latter’s death. Her unaffected reaction to her mother’s
portrait can be interpreted as a mystical epiphany where Lulu reads the
sunshine’s illumination of her mother’s image as an outward sign of
May’s continuing spiritual presence.
May’s earlier premonition of Abigail’s death and subsequent creation
of a shrine seems to have inspired a wider matrilineal faith in the ability
of the community to achieve mystical communion through art, as well as
a form of transcendent communication that penetrated the barriers of
time and space. In response to May’s continuing devotion to their late
mother’s memory, Louisa initially connected Lulu’s birth with May’s
spiritual relationship with Abigail: “How [Marmee] would have enjoyed
the little grand-daughter and May’s romance. Perhaps she does?”
(Journals 217). Louisa seems to have based her interpretation of the
events concerning the matrilineal community on her sister’s earlier
mystical experiences. On being informed of May’s terminal illness,
Louisa confided in her journal that she had been forewarned of May’s
passing in much the same way May prophesied their mother’s death:
“The weight on my heart is not all imagination” (218). Clearly, the
matrilineal community regarded its mystical communion as transcending
the spatial borders of the transatlantic world.
The Alcott sisters regarded their mother as the source of their mystical
communion with one another and the inspiration for their art and life-
writing. Both Anna and May present the maternal bond as the source of
all human relationships, including that of husband and wife. Their
preeminent relationship with their mother shapes their future relation-
ships with their husbands and directs the course of their daily lives fol-
lowing their marriages. May also regarded her artistic vocation as the
expression and record of her mother’s continuing presence as her muse.
Abigail’s death precipitated a transformation in May’s approach to art:
painting became not only a medium for self-expression but also a means
of communicating with the matrilineal community after its members had
passed into the world to come.
 The Alcott Women’s Life-Writing 83
In the aftermath of her sister’s death, Louisa took up May’s identifi-
cation with their mother to present May as the embodiment of Abigail’s
prior example. Just as Abigail’s theology of renunciation served as the
foundation for her daughters’ artistry and sympathetic communication
with one another, so did May’s death enable her daughter, Lulu, to
become incorporated into the matrilineal community’s tradition of
mystical experience. In “Our Madonna,” May is presented as an inter-
mediary between earth and heaven who bridges the human and divine.
May’s role as intermediary allows her to create the ultimate work of art:
the continuation of the matrilineal community, and its mystical practice,
for generations to come. In the final stanza of this moving elegy, Lulu is
described as May’s “truest art” (Appendix 4 64), while May is trans-
formed into the embodiment of the image of the feminine divine she
pursued throughout her life.

“A Little Kingdom I Possess”: Abigail Alcott’s Theology

of Renunciation in the Life-Writing of the Alcott Sisters
The Alcott sisters’ juvenile newspapers, The Portfolio and The Pickwick,
are collaborative attempts to form a manifesto centered on their mo-
ther’s theology of renunciation. The dedicatory poem of the first edition
of The Pickwick, “To Mother,”15 written by Louisa, presents the project
as an embodiment of the sisters’ determination to sacrifice their needs for
the continuing preservation of their mother and the survival of their
family. Within this poem, the constraints of poverty are superseded by an
“economy of love”16 that situates the fulfilment of the individual in the
context of her relationship with others. Poverty of self and feelings of
unworthiness are transformed through the elevation of the weakest
member of the family-unit: the fragile and aging mother who invests her
children with the self-sacrificial purpose that motivates their writing:
To Mother
Accept our little offerings,
Few and simple though they be.
For we are poor, dear mother,
In all save love to thee.
Yet the poverty is all unfelt.
For the wealth our hearts can hold
Of fadeless love is better far
Than costly gifts of gold.
Like wayside flowers that humbly bloom
And ask no fairer home
May we be to thee, dear mother,
Through the years that yet may come.
84 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing
Thus may we cheer and brighten
The path that thou must tread,
And gently bend in sorrow’s storm
To shelter thy dear head.

Abigail’s understanding of composition as a tool for strengthening ma-

trilineal bonds is presented as the source of the newspaper’s creation and
circulation. Aesthetic quality is dismissed from the outset: these “little
offerings” are “few and simple” (1–2), but their purpose is to function as
mutually supportive models for family relationships. An analogy is
drawn between the matrilineal community and the order of the natural
world: as the girls “bloom” into adulthood, so will their mother grow in
fragility (9). The purpose of collaborative composition is to foster a
symbiotic model of interchange where the natural development of the
mother towards death and decay is counteracted by the growth of her
daughters into adult strength. Thus, the Alcott sisters are presented as a
single tree with shared roots (16), collectively sheltering Abigail from the
impending storm (one might even read Abigail herself as the roots of this
tree, protected by the interconnected framework of its branches).
As a literary project, the newspaper is transformative, uniting the sisters
in a shared moral purpose, and setting out the providential framework for
their future relationships with one another and their mother. By publicly
articulating the sisters’ continuing dedication to the mother–daughter
bond, the paper acts as a guarantee for the fulfilment of their promise to
maintain this bond and can be seen as a type of contract. The Pickwick
does not aspire towards originality of execution or virtuosity of crafts-
manship; it is rather a collaborative expression of the matrilineal values
fostered by Abigail, as well as an attempt to propagate these values within
the family at large. As such, it prefigures Louisa’s later attempt to transmit
her mother’s sympathetic vision to the public sphere through extending
the network of sisterly relationships in Little Women.
The newspapers’ preoccupation with the renunciation of individualistic
desires for the benefit and preservation of the wider world is especially
apparent in the juvenile work of Elizabeth Alcott. Elizabeth’s composi-
tions, written under the Dickensian pseudonym of “Tracey Tupman,” are
allegorical fables that champion Abigail Alcott’s code of conduct, usually
within the context of a redemptive female figure. One such composition is
the undated “Story of an Apple” (Appendix 5), an allegorical narrative
that emphasizes the transformative potential of a theology of renunciation
when it is dispersed throughout society at large. In this story, a young girl,
happening upon a “fine, rosy apple” in a “beautiful garden,” longs to take
the “fair and beautiful” fruit home as a gift for her mother (ibid.). Once
she has picked the apple she meets “a little ragged boy” who asks per-
mission to take the apple home to his “poor sick mother” dying in a
“miserable hut” (ibid.). The little girl unthinkingly gives the apple to the
 The Alcott Women’s Life-Writing 85
boy and runs “laughing away (to think how generous she had been)”
(ibid.). The apple becomes the boy’s last gift to his mother, “refresh[ing]”
her, before she dies (ibid.). Following his mother’s death, the boy plants
the seeds of the apple by the door of the hut and returns with his family
years later to see what becomes a “beautiful tree full of ripe and rosy fruit”
(ibid.). The story closes with the nameless protagonist gathering apples
with his children, while telling them the story of “the little sunny haired
child who had given him the apple for his sick mother years ago” (ibid.).
Elizabeth’s story can be read as a revision of the Eden myth, for here a
blameless female protagonist saves a dependent male victim by deferring
to a matrilineal code of conduct. In Elizabeth’s revised version of the fall,
a female child, who is protected from temptation by her virtue of her
innocence, unthinkingly plucks the apple because it is a sign of the
abundance and beauty of the natural world. However, as soon as she
realizes her male counterpart has a greater need of the fruit, she im-
mediately relinquishes it in an unthinking act of self-sacrifice. The apple
no longer symbolizes a selfish desire for knowledge and disobedience
towards God but instead comes to embody the procreative power of
nature, freely shared by women for the benefit of others. Strikingly, the
apple’s symbolic capacity to regenerate the individual is conflated with
the mother who witnesses the little girl’s generous act from an upper
window and is subtly conflated with the providential God who influences
the actions of humanity for the greater good. Likewise, the apple is also
associated with the boy’s mother whose family is regenerated by the fruit
that has been consumed by their deceased matriarch. No longer con-
flated with the fall, the tree of knowledge is re-presented as a symbol of
reciprocal self-giving that brings new life to future generations.
Crucially, the male protagonist passes the story on to his descendants, so
they also will associate the apple with new life and the preservation of
humankind through the self-sacrificial acts of women, rather than female
disobedience and the fall.
The Eden myth was significant in the Alcott household. In an attempt
to check selfish desires and bodily appetites, Bronson would re-enact the
fall of mankind with his infant daughters. When Louisa was three and
Anna was four years old, he placed an apple on top of the girls’
wardrobe—informing them it belonged to him, and they were forbidden
to eat it. Upon his return, he discovered the girls’ actions had mirrored
those of Adam and Eve, for Louisa had initially eaten the fruit against
Anna’s instruction but later convinced her sister to share the apple with
her. As a form of punishment, Bronson left Louisa alone with a second
forbidden apple the following day. To her credit, the sorely tried toddler
tried to resist temptation, picking up the object of her desire several
times, and returning it, saying “No. No, father’s. Me not take father’s
apple. Naughty! Naughty!” (Matteson 72). However, Louisa eventually
86 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing
lost her internal struggle, helplessly explaining to her father that, “Me
could not help it! Me must have it!” (ibid.).
Casting himself as the judgmental and patriarchal God, Bronson more
closely resembled the serpent in his persistent temptation of his baby
daughter. The experiment was designed to fail when directed at an infant
who was of an insufficient age to understand the abstract benefit of
experiencing deliberate temptation to learn the value of renunciation. By
contrast, Abigail encouraged her daughters to practice renunciation in
everyday situations, so they might observe how it could positively impact
the lives of others. On Louisa’s fourth birthday party at the Temple
School, the flower-strewn child, who was distributing her cake, dis-
covered she was a piece too short for all the guests. Letting her daughter
make the decision for herself, Abigail nevertheless informed Louisa that,
“It is always better to give away rather than to keep nice things. I know
my Louy will not let the little friend go without” (Matteson 73). Louisa
received a kiss from her mother as a consolation for her generous act.
While both events probably appear extreme to a modern sensibility,
Abigail’s mode of teaching was nevertheless relational, focusing on how
one’s actions could affect the lives of others. The young Louisa was
able to understand the practical value of bringing pleasure to a friend
where she could not grasp why her father would make her stare at an
object she was forbidden to take. Bronson’s mode of instruction focused
on female temptation, disobedience, and weakness, where Abigail’s
emphasized loving relationships and generosity. Elizabeth’s story follows
the tradition of her mother, for the narrative is centered on a generous
feminine desire to help and serve others. Elizabeth affiliates herself with
her mother’s vision of a redemptive and regenerative matriarchal com-
munity, rejecting her father’s patriarchal authority, which casts women
as weak beings who need to be protected from their own selfish desires.
“Story of an Apple” is noteworthy for portraying the practice of re-
nunciation as a key facet of female identity. However, there is a re-
markable absence of any sense of deprivation, loss, or punishment,
because the child, by virtue of her innocence, conceives her personal
desire as bound up with the needs of the wider community. The legacy of
Abigail Alcott’s theology of renunciation, which can be identified here, is
the foundation of the Alcott sisters’ identities as writers. The Alcott
sisters’ literary identities are formed through their collaborative literary
practice, which, in turn, shapes Louisa’s public portrayal of sisterly
communities that embody a sympathetic shared consciousness between
women.
Abigail’s transformative theology of renunciation, founded on a return
to a state of prelapsarian innocence and the pursuit of eternal salvation,
remains a constant presence in Louisa’s life-writing. Following Abigail’s
death in 1877, Louisa composed an elegy, “Transfiguration” (LaPlante
Boundless 223–225), which presents her mother’s suffering and
 The Alcott Women’s Life-Writing 87
renunciatory acts as the source of her eventual union with the divine, in
much the same manner that Louisa portrayed Abigail’s self-sacrificial
example as the source of her sister, May’s, divine transfiguration two
years later:
Bending beneath the weight of eighty years,
Spent with the noble strife
Of a victorious life,
We watched her fading heavenward, through our tears. (223 5–8)

The evocative image of Abigail as “Bending beneath the weight of eighty

years” (5) uncannily resonates with the earlier symbol of the Alcott
sisters as a bent tree, shielding their mother’s aged roots from the on-
coming storm, in the dedicatory poem, “To Mother.” Here again, the
weight of age, decay, and fragility is the foundation of the aspiration of
the matrilineal community towards salvation because Abigail quite lit-
erally dissolves into celestial purification through her aged weakness,
“fading heavenward” (8). This divine transfiguration is brought about
through human suffering, for Abigail enters heaven “through our tears”
(ibid.), a phrase that references the Christian concept of the “vale of
tears,” taken from Psalm 84:6, which describes earthly life as a continual
state of trial and tribulation. Viewing the world as a ‘vale of tears’ allows
the Christian to understand earthly life as a temporary state, redirecting
their suffering and affliction towards an eternal union with the divine.
Thus, Abigail ascends through the overwhelming weight of 80 years’
mortality, thereby facilitating the grief and tears that will also pave the
way for her daughters’ eventual salvation.
Abigail’s theology of renunciation is also portrayed as the foundation
of her salvific destiny in “Transfiguration.” Her “great deep heart” is
metaphorically described as a “home for all” (224, 29), subtly affiliating
her charitable achievements as one of the first poverty workers in Boston
(an early form of social work) within the domestic sphere. Louisa pre-
sents the ethical foundations Abigail lays within the home as possessing a
transformative power to reshape the outside world. Abigail’s vision of a
just society, built out of the values of the domestic sphere, allows her
own heart to become the spiritual “home” that the poor and afflicted
seek (ibid.). This outward-facing position of caritas facilitates her return
to a prelapsarian state of innocence, so that she is able to overcome her
fallen nature through a self-sacrificial orientation towards others: “Wide
charity, that knew no sin, no fall” (224, 32). This vision of a perfected
state of being achieved through relinquishing the individual’s solipsistic
desires subtly opposes Bronson Alcott’s faith in ‘fate’ as guaranteeing the
individual’s fulfilment through assimilating the conditions of the world
into the divine destiny of the self. Contrastingly, Louisa describes Abigail
as “wresting happiness from Fate’s hard hand” (224 36).
88 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing
Unlike the Fruitlands experiment, which aspired towards a return to
innocence through rejecting the injustices of the outside world, Abigail
achieves purification through engaging with social injustice “in protest
against wrong” (224 31), rendering herself the vessel of divine inter-
vention. Indeed, the term “transfiguration” refers to Jesus’s revelation of
his perfected body, as a means of evidencing his divinity to the Apostles
on Mount Sinai, shortly before his sacrificial death. This transformed
body prefigures Jesus’s appearance following the resurrection and,
within Christian theology, is understood as a revelation of the appear-
ance that all redeemed bodies will take following the Judgement Day. By
describing Abigail’s acts of charity as facilitating her own transfiguration
on earth, Louisa implies Abigail achieved a communion with God
through uniting herself with the self-sacrificing Christ as a vehicle for
salvation. As such, Abigail is redeemer of both the family-unit and the
wider community of the public sphere, “Mating poor daily needs/With
high, heroic deeds” (224 34).
Louisa’s elegy can also be read as a commemoration of the colla-
borative literary network of the Alcott women initiated by her mother,
for it refers to previous exchanges between herself and Abigail that
occurred within the domestic sphere. Her description of Abigail’s re-
nunciation “Of Scepter and of crown/To win a greater kingdom, yet
unseen” (43–44) is a reference to an earlier juvenile poem, “A Little
Kingdom I possess,” also known as “The Kingdom of God is Within
You.” This poem was one of the literary works that Abigail prized most
highly in Louisa’s canon. Abigail submitted it to the Transcendentalist
educator, F.B. Sanborn, for publication in a Sunday School chapbook
(LaPlante Boundless 217), and later transcribed it, alongside excerpts of
Keble’s Christian Year, as an aid for prayer, writing “I have copied these
lines, for … I find them superior in judgment and beauty—encouraging
as well as inspiring.”17
Like “Transfiguration,” the final stanza of “A Little Kingdom I pos-
sess” describes the individual’s relinquishment of an earthly crown to
obtain salvation:
I do not ask for any crown
But that which all may win;
Nor try to conquer any world
Except the one within. (My Kingdom 25–28)

When read in the light of her later elegy to her mother, Louisa’s juvenile
poem can be interpreted as an attempt to emulate Abigail’s self-sacrificing
orientation towards the heavenly kingdom facilitated through a theology
of renunciation. However, the earlier poem focuses on conquering the
kingdom of the postlapsarian self, where the later work describes the
kingdom attained when this self is conquered. As such, Abigail’s life can
 The Alcott Women’s Life-Writing 89
be properly viewed as the exemplar for Louisa’s earthly pilgrimage.
Indeed, the devotional framework of self-control presented in “A Little
Kingdom I Possess” also prefigures the March sisters’ attempts to conquer
their ‘bosom enemies’ at their mother’s behest in Little Women.
“Transfiguration” is a microcosm of the values upheld across the
network of life-writing authored by the Alcott women. It celebrates
Abigail Alcott’s self-effacing dedication to others, affirming her vision of
providence as shaped through the individual’s commitment to serving
the wider community. Bronson Alcott’s understanding of fate as com-
pelling the circumstances of the individual’s daily life to conform to their
personal desires is rejected in favor of a vision of redemption achieved
through cultivating shared consciousness with the weakest members of
society. The literary network of the matrilineal community is also al-
luded to through referencing previous exchanges between Louisa and her
mother, thereby figuring Abigail as the exemplary model for her
daughters’ literary and spiritual identities, while presenting the mo-
ther–daughter bond as at the heart of the individual’s conception of self.
Written after Abigail’s death, “Transfiguration” evidences her con-
tinuing influence on Louisa’s writing, something that was eventually
articulated in her iconic public work, Little Women. This novel not only
pays tribute to Abigail but also celebrates the shared vision of the ma-
trilineal community Abigail initiated. The voices of Meg, Beth, and Amy
March can be identified in the private works of Anna and Elizabeth
Alcott, and May Alcott Nieriker, respectively. The Alcott sisters shared
in Louisa May Alcott’s conception of the mother–daughter bond as
preceding all other familial relationships, as well as laying the foundation
for their interactions with the outside world and the development of their
identities as artists.
Louisa May Alcott’s identity as an author is inextricably linked to the
mystical theology of renunciation espoused by her mother, and shared
between her sisters, and her canonical works should be reassessed in light
of the life-writing produced by the matrilineal community her mother
instigated. The final stanza of “Transfiguration” sums up the spiritual
aims of this literary community, which are closely aligned with the vision
of the March women in Little Women:
Teach us how to seek the highest goal,
To earn the true success,
To live, to love, to bless,
And make death proud to take a royal soul. (225 45–48)

Notes
1 An abbreviated version of this overview of the Alcott archive can be found in
my article, “‘Her lovely presence ever near me lives’: A Brief Encounter from
90 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life-Writing
the Archives with May Alcott Nieriker.” Brief Encounters 2.1 (January
2018): 53–68. Web 1st May, 2019.
2 Diary for the years 1841–1844; at Concord, Fruitlands, Still River, and again
at Concord. Monday 23rd January, 1843. AFAP, 1707–1904. MS Am
1130.14 (1), Houghton Lib., Harvard. Subsequent citations to this work will
be made in parenthesis, using the format: “A. Alcott Diary,” accompanied by
the date of entry.
3 The Halfway Covenant, written by Richard Mather in 1662, allowed second-
generation Puritans to be baptized without first undergoing a conversion
experience. See Campbell, “The Halfway Covenant” in “Puritanism in New
England.” American Authors: Literary Movements. Web. 9th October, 2018.
4 1860–1861 Diary of Anna Alcott Pratt. Tuesday 9th February, 1861. AFAP,
1707–1904. MS AM 1130.14 (6), Houghton Lib., Harvard. Subsequent ci-
tations to this work will be made in parenthesis, using the format: “Anna
Alcott Diary,” accompanied by the date of entry.
5 Zion’s Herald 45.43. 22nd October, 1868. 509:3 (Clark 63–64).
6 Catharine O’Connell has argued that The Wide, Wide World “privileges
female subjectivity” within the domestic sphere because the portrayal of
“female suffering” in the seemingly trivial events of daily life subtly under-
mines the authority figures of the public sphere, to whom Ellen Montgomery
submits (22). Tompkins contends that Warner’s largely female readership
would have identified with “the psychological dynamics of living in a con-
dition of servitude” and that the novel demonstrates how women cope with
this servitude “hour by hour and minute by minute” (178). By contrast,
Noble’s reading of The Wide, Wide World endorses my own in its emphasis
on how the loss of the mother is presented as a facet of God’s providence: “If
Ellen can learn to interpret suffering as a sign of God’s love, then her suffering
will not only be meaningful, but rewarding” (94).
7 Extracts from the journals of Abigail Alcott in the hand of Louisa May
Alcott, 1828–1829. 9th June. AFAP, 1707–1904. MS AM 1130.14 (5).
Houghton Lib., Harvard.
8 1840–1879. AM.S. Diary 1 Sep 1852-25 Jul 1863. Thursday 1st December,
1852. LMAAP, 1845–1944, AM 1817 (56). Houghton Lib., Harvard.
Mirador. Web. 4th September, 2018.
9 May Alcott Letters Sent From Abroad. Undated. AFAP, 1724–1927. AM
2745, Series II, Houghton Lib., Harvard. Subsequent citations to this work
will be made in parenthesis, using the format: “M. Alcott Letters,” followed
by the date or number.
10 “Here dear Marmee is the still life group, which I have been busy on the last
week, and which everyone praises so much and in which I feel I have im-
proved so greatly” (M. Alcott Letters Undated No. 69).
11 “I send this letter to you because it is a pictorial one, I know you like to see
first where your big baby is and enjoy all the fine old things with her as far as
possible” (ibid., 20th September, 1876 No. 39).
12 “My girls shall have trades, and their Mother with the sweat of her brow
shall earn an honest subsistence for herself and them” (LaPlante Boundless
88). Abigail’s use of the term ‘trade,’ commonly associated with the working
classes, displays her belief in the importance of engaging with divine provi-
dence through industrious activity. Instead of desiring her daughters to cul-
tivate the benign ‘accomplishments’ deemed to be the proper pastimes of
young ladies, Abigail instead encourages them to shape the course of their
lives through the “sweat of the brow” (ibid.). This work ethic is formulated in
opposition to Bronson’s aristocratic approach to work: “[I] should like to see
 The Alcott Women’s Life-Writing 91
my husband a little more interested in this matter of support. I love his faith
and quiet reliance on Divine Providence, but a little more activity and in-
dustry would place us beyond most of these disagreeable dependencies on
friends” (A. Alcott Diary 18th January, 1844). While Bronson’s refusal to
engage in industrious activity is couched as a “quiet reliance on Divine
Providence” (ibid.), Abigail portrays him, as once more, expecting the out-
come of his life to conform to his will, rather than working with the cir-
cumstances he encounters. His interpretation of providence diverges from her
vision of a sympathetic shared consciousness and is more closely affiliated
with a framework of fate or predestination.
13 Diary September 1876 - 8th October, 1877. 14th April, 1877. AFAP,
1820–1886, AM 1817.2 (15). Houghton Lib., Harvard.
14 “She struggled with poverty and all possible difficulties and came out glor-
iously at last.” Extracts from May’s letters in Paris, 1878–1879. London,
15th March, 1878. AFAP, 1724–1927. AM 1130.17. Subsequent citations to
this work will be made in parenthesis, using the format: “M. Alcott Paris
Letters,” followed by the date or number.
15 A reproduction of the first edition of The Pickwick containing this poem can
be found in the inside pocket of the back cover of Lilliputian Newspapers
(Henderson 1936). I am indebted to independent researcher, Susan Bailey,
who has provided me with photographic images of this poem, as it appears in
Henderson’s work.
16 This phrase, coined by Tara Fitzpatrick, refers to Alcott’s desire “to imagine a
public world in which women’s private virtues might be employed to re-
construct social and public exchange” (30). In Fitzpatrick’s words, “Alcott
refigured self-sacrifice as work for love—a reward as tangible as money in this
fictive order” (31).
17 An MS copy of “My Kingdom” with a commentary upon it with “Extracts
from Keble”: an MS commentary of a poem, AFAP, 1820–1886. MS AM
1817.2 (17). Houghton lib., Harvard. Subsequent citations to this work will
be made in parenthesis, using the format “My Kingdom.”
3 “For Every Human Creature
May Lay Claim to Strength”:
The Rossetti Women’s Elevation
of the Left Hand

Christina Rossetti’s devotional reading diary, Time Flies (1885), estab-

lishes the left-handed society as mirroring the right. In fact, she presents
the left and right hands as two sides of the same coin, acknowledging the
right hand commonly predominates, but the left at times usurps this
dominant role. In Emma Mason’s estimation, Rossetti’s elevation of
weakness promotes “an openness to a plurality of subjectivities and
kinships” that reorients the human tendency to assume a deferential
attitude towards power and authority (19). In Rossetti’s lexicon, ‘left
hand’ is part of a wider vocabulary for alternative and other. She does
not refute that to be other is, in some sense, to be marginalized, but to be
marginalized in the material world is to assume a spiritually elevated
status in the world to come. Christians should aspire to be left handed,
other, little, and weak. In short, the Christian supplicant should strive for
the diminutive position commonly assigned to the female:

In common parlance Strong and Weak are merely relative terms:

thus the “strong” of one sentence will be the “weak” of another.

We behold the strong appointed to help the weak: Angels who

“excel in strength,” men. And equally the weak the strong: woman
“the weaker vessel,” man.

This, though it should not inflate any, may fairly buoy us all up. For
every human creature may lay claim to strength, or else to weakness:
in either case to helpfulness. “We that are strong,” writes St. Paul,
proceeding to state a duty of the strong. We who are weak may
study the resources of the weak. (57)

The radical connotations of this left-handed theology are noted by

Lynda Palazzo, who claims that Rossetti rejects the androcentric con-
ception of God as all-powerful, prefiguring a “post-Christian” feminist
position as promulgated by such contemporary theologians as Mary
Daly (xi). Daly proposes rejecting the patriarchal hierarchy of the
 The Rossetti Women’s Life‐Writing 93
Christian Church in favor of an inward-facing sisterly community that
positions male domination over women as “original sin” (ibid.).
Palazzo aptly foregrounds Rossetti’s rejection of female inferiority but
ignores the reality that, as Dinah Roe has claimed, “Christina’s theories
about women, however forward-thinking they may seem, are always
subordinate to and answerable to God’s higher authority” (Faithful
Imagination 107).
As Mason has pointed out, Rossetti strives to emulate Christ’s kenosis
(19), a theological term for his self-emptying described in Philippians 2:
5–8: “Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus,
who, though his was in the form of God, did not count equality with
God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form
of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” According to Sarah
Coakley, kenosis is a useful paradigm for women of faith because
it conceives “true divine ‘empowerment’” in the context of “a special
form of human ‘vulnerability’” equally applicable to men (32). Such
vulnerability, achieved in devotional practices like contemplation and
prayer, and upheld in Rossetti’s poetry, exposes her readers to “un-
expected and perplexing mysteries” (Mason 186). In other words, a
kenostic attitude of submission facilitates mystical union with the divine.
Rossetti’s conception of the privileged position of the weak allows her
to reverse the hierarchy of values within an individualistic culture that
conceives the weak as inferior to the strong. As such, she adopts a po-
sition favored by female mystics, who refer to themselves as weak “to
highlight their special status before God” (Lanzetta 52). Nevertheless,
Rossetti accepted that the weak were denied positions of institutional
authority; she rejected women’s suffrage on the grounds that “the
Priesthood being exclusively man’s leaves me in no doubt that the highest
functions in this world are not open to both sexes” (Letters 2 158).
That said, she saw women as possessing an innate spiritual authority that
transcended their inferior temporal roles. On the suffrage question, she
made an important exception for mothers on the grounds that their
nurturing role was sacred.1 In her 1879 theological work, Seek and Find,
Rossetti presents motherhood as the apex of all human relationships:
“And well may [woman] glory, in as much as one of the tenderest of
divine promises takes … the feminine form: ‘As one whom the mother
comforteth, so will I comfort you’” (31).
While Palazzo claims that such assertions are only viable from a post-
Christian perspective, the discourse of the Trinitarian God as motherlike
in its relation to humankind is longstanding. Elizabeth Ludlow claims
that Christina’s concept of “divine maternity” is indebted to a “patristic
conception of personhood” that likened the relationship between God
and humankind to that of a “nursing mother” and her offspring (174). In
the tradition of women’s mysticism, Julian of Norwich, claimed that:
“Jhesu Crist, that doth good against evil, is oure very moder: we have
94 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life Writing
oure being of him, where the ground of moderhed beginneth … As verily
as God is oure fader, as verily is God oure moder” (309). Julian’s lo-
cation of ‘divine maternity’ in the childlike status of the human person
bears a striking affinity to Abigail Alcott’s contention that the child
primarily belongs to God and its mother.
Within the Rossetti household, Christina perceived her own mother,
Frances, as possessing a preeminent role as spiritual instructor and vehicle
for her children’s salvation. Frances’s influence is imperative to any study
of Christina’s devotional writing. Mary Arseneau’s germinal monograph,
Recovering Christina Rossetti, is foundational to my own work because it
provides an account of the critical “tendency to consign to the margins the
very conceptual framework and lived perspective most intimate to Rossetti
herself”: that of the “familial, literary, intellectual, and religious com-
munity” of the Rossetti women (1). Her work is the first to discuss the
influence of Frances’s Commonplace Book on Christina’s poetry, de-
monstrating that Frances’s immersion in the dramatic monologues of such
nineteenth-century female poets as Felicia Hemans (1793–1835) and
Laetitia Landon (1802–1838) shaped Christina’s future style and subject
matter—providing her with a female literary tradition from which to write
(50). Arseneau likewise refers to Hodge-Podge, the newspaper Frances
authored for the Rossetti siblings, as an example of Frances’s early in-
fluence on her children’s literary projects (ibid.). Indeed, Dante Gabriel
Rossetti later erroneously claimed “The Blessed Damozel” was written for
Hodge-Podge.
I enhance Arseneau’s recovery by surveying the presence of Frances’s
theological precepts in Christina’s devotional writing. Frances’s
Commonplace Book contains a selection of excerpts from a range of
theological tracts, while Hodge-Podge includes a small number of original
hymns. The theological tenets embedded in both these texts are upheld and
referenced in Christina’s sequence of poems for her mother, the Valentine’s
Day verses. Frances’s life-writing establishes her role as spiritual guide for
her children and encourages the Rossetti siblings to defer to her spiritual
authority. Frances counsels her children to imitate the relations between the
saints in the Kingdom of Heaven and to prioritize their eventual redemp-
tion as the ultimate point of aspiration. Christina extends Frances’s in-
structive role in the Valentine’s Day verses by presenting her mother as
mediatrix between earthly and divine. Frances is portrayed as the vessel for
divine revelation who enables her children to imitate the relations between
both the communion of saints and the three persons of the Trinity.
The educative role that Frances adopts in her Commonplace Book is
typical of the genre. David Allan’s foundational history of commonplacing
in the Georgian England of Frances’s generation has demonstrated that
the commonplace book was established to allow the domestic reader to
take on the position of critic, cultivating their aesthetic tastes through
exchange with other family members, deference to acclaimed scholars, and
 The Rossetti Women’s Life‐Writing 95
structured note-taking (102). The selection, editing, excerpting, insertion,
and ordering of texts in commonplace books possessed both interpretive
and creative functions (129). Commonplace books recorded readers’ re-
sponses to texts and provided them with the means to “challenge …
prevailing modes of authorship” (Price qtd in Allan 129). Frances’s album
contains a catalogue of religious reading and provides a model of
Christian authorship taken up by Christina in her Valentine’s Day verses,
which position her mother as the central voice of religious authority
within the household. Frances’s album creates a comparable mode of
‘socioliterary experience’ to that of Abigail Alcott’s collaborative journal:
it encourages the Rossetti siblings to construct their identities through
collective reading and writing practices that contribute to the formation of
a shared religious worldview.
Frances’s Commonplace Book stands out among women’s common-
place albums for retaining a high proportion of theological excerpts.
Deborah Lynn Pfunter has catalogued the differences between men’s and
women’s albums in the eighteenth century and nineteenth century in
both Britain and the US. Men’s albums usually consisted of a series of
exclusively religious short passages, while women’s albums incorporated
literary, economic, and socio-political content (6). Commenced in 1818
before her marriage, Frances’s album was originally composed for her
pupils and was later expanded to include her children. It is clear that
religious devotion was at the center of Frances’s moral instruction. My
analysis of her commonplace book focuses on the theological precepts
taken up in Christina’s later work. The vast majority of entries in the
album are undated, although entries from all of Frances’s children
are visible in its final third. Regardless of whether the excerpts analyzed
were inserted after the birth of the Rossetti siblings, it is clear they had
access to the book in its entirety.
It is likely Frances expanded the album to include her children, in
order to acquaint them with the religious beliefs and practices she de-
veloped over her life. Christina’s continuing deferral to her mother’s
Commonplace Book (it was found among her personal effects after her
death), as well as her emulation of its exclusivity (the Valentine’s Day
verses were authored for familial circulation only) indicate she identified
with the inter-generational network of the domestic household, of which
Frances was positioned as spiritual head. Just as Christina prioritizes the
maternal bond, so do networks of commonplace albums cement the
bonds between family members in the wake of loss, communicating
“a sense of familial identity and history” (Amanda Watson 122) through
a shared frame of literary reference. The Valentine’s Day verses are an
extension of the earlier familial, literary projects commenced by Frances.
In these verses, Christina realizes the aspiration towards mystical
communion established in Frances’s earlier life-writing. The Valentine’s
Day verses portray the mystical communion of the matrilineal community
96 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life Writing
as imitating the relations between the three persons of the Trinity. Coakley
conceives the Trinity as founded on the feminine principle of reciprocity
(111) because the “communion” among the three persons is contingent
upon the “fluidity in their boundaries” (121). Each Trinitarian person
defines its personhood in relation to its two counterparts, as well as their
shifting communion with one another and humanity as a whole. The
persons of the Trinity are constantly “reconfigured and reconstructed as
the soul advances to more dizzying intimacy with the divine” (129). The
Valentine’s Day verses portray the identities of the Rossetti sisters as de-
fined through their relationships with one another and their mother, while
Frances is conflated with the person of the Father—the procreative source
from whom the other two persons proceed. As divine mother, Frances
enables her daughters to ascend upwards into heavenly communion. The
Trinitarian poetics of communion, upheld in the Valentine’s Day verses,
mirrors the shared consciousness of the Alcott women’s life-writing.
Where Frances is presented as the divine source of her daughters’
spiritual communion with one another, Maria Rossetti is portrayed as
the living example who puts their mother’s theological tenets into
practice in her daily life. My analysis of Maria’s influence centers on her
theological work, The Rivulets: A Dream not all a Dream (1846). I am
indebted to Arseneau for alerting me to the presence of this text, but
where Arseneau tracks its influence on Christina’s references to Dante
and Bunyan, I examine its presence in her theological writing, especially
her avocation of a practice of lived religion. As Palazzo has claimed,
Christina’s theology offers the possibility “for spiritual development
outside the Church and a revaluation of women’s daily activities” (107).
I identify these activities with her shared life with Frances and Maria,
scrutinizing her discourse of ‘lived religion’ through the lens of her in-
tertextual references to the theological writing and wisdom of Maria.
Exposing Maria’s influence on Christina’s work allows us to connect
Christina’s references to what Roe refers to as “a matrilineal religious
history” of scripture (Faithful Imagination 127) with the immediate
matrilineal community of the Rossetti women. Christina’s devotional
work bridges the link between what Gradert defines as “folk theology”
(2), which embeds the individual within an overarching teleology of
sacred history, and the private ‘matrilineal theology’ practiced within the
enclosed community of the Rossetti women. Let us turn, then, to the
influence of Frances on Christina’s Valentine’s Day verses.

“Companion, Friend, & Mother mine”: Rossetti’s

Trinitarian Poetics as Accessed through Her Mother
In 1876, Christina started composing yearly Valentine’s Day verses for her
mother, which lasted until Frances’s death ten years later. The project was
inspired by the then 75-year-old Frances’s casual comment she had never
 The Rossetti Women’s Life‐Writing 97
received a Valentine. Boldly taking on the role of her mother’s Valentine
following her father’s death, Christina composed a set of poems that
emphasized the priority of the mother-daughter relationship as exceeding
all others in its capacity for love. The private collection of poems, post-
humously published by Crump, mirrored an earlier project established by
Frances: the creation of a newspaper for her children, Hodge-Podge, in
1843. The newspaper was launched as a means of maintaining contact
with the Rossetti siblings while Frances took her husband, Gabriele
(1783–1854), to convalesce in Paris. It was a short-lived experiment, going
through just seven issues during Frances and Gabriele’s absence. These
issues consist of travel correspondence, a selection of original hymns, one
narrative poem and a spiritually instructive letter to Christina.
Christina’s later poems share the exclusive nature of Frances’s earlier
project: both literary collections were written for familial circulation only.
However, Christina’s poems expand on the incarnational and Christological
emphasis of her mother’s earlier hymns to champion the mother–daughter
relationship as imitative of the relations between the three persons of the
Trinity. Christina portrays Frances as modeling the spiritual transfiguration
she champions for her children in her life-writing. In the Valentine’s Day
verses, Frances facilitates immediate contact with the Godhead and pre-
figures Christina’s absorption into that Godhead in the world to come.
Frances is presented as mediatrix between heaven and earth who enables
Christina’s eventual integration into the communion of saints.
Frances assumes a morally instructive role in Hodge-Podge, but she
does not centralize this role in her devotional compositions, instead
encouraging her children to focus on the incarnate person of Christ. Her
“Hymn for Ascension Day”2 combines the historical concreteness of
Christ’s life on earth as the “humble son of Joseph” with the immanence
of his innate divinity as the Messiah who “From [?] abodes of Paradise
came down;/Laying aside His bright eternal crown” (ibid. 4–6). The
hymn encourages the Rossetti children to conceive the liturgical calendar
as a reflection of eschatological history.
Frances emphasizes the veracity of scripture and portrays every event
in the narrative of Christ’s life as typologically connected: foreshadowing
and resonating with other fixed historical moments in past and future.
Redemption is only attained through accepting the historical authenticity
of Christ’s life, death and resurrection: “They who in life with joy em-
brac’d his cross; / Shall triumph then; the rest shall suffer loss” (25–26).
This final couplet closes off the possibility of justification through any-
thing but direct acknowledgment of what is presented as historical truth.
Frances’s role as theologian and spiritual guide is not acknowledged in
the text; instead, the hymn’s reference to the liturgical year and its role as
a devotional aid encourages Frances’s children to interpret her words as
one particular manifestation of the total outpouring of the Christian
Church, which constitutes the physical Body of Christ on earth.
98 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life Writing
Christina’s Valentine’s Day verses affirm Frances’s religious tenets, but
Frances is instead placed at the center of the collection as the point of
revelation from which her daughter’s relationship with the Trinitarian
God derives. Rather than referring to theological discourse, Christina
privileges her mother’s spiritual insights. The verses foreground Frances
and Christina’s shared interpretation of reality derived from common
devotional practices. In the Valentine for 1878 (847), Christina presents
her relationship with her mother as a vehicle to heaven that will continue
into the afterlife: “Companion, Friend, & Mother mine / … / With
whom I hope to stand & sing / Where angels form the outer ring” (2–5).
Christina’s portrayal of her shared transfiguration with her mother de-
parts from Frances’s characterization of the elect in “Hymn for
Ascension Day.” In this poem, the elect are variously described in generic
and multitudinous imagery as: “mankind,” an “unborn race,” “the
dead” and “all the human race” (16 17 20 24). In Frances’s verse, the
individualized identities of the elect, and the particular relationship be-
tween poet and child, is subsumed into the Christian body.
Contrastingly, the Valentine for 1878 upholds the maternal relation-
ship as uniting poet and recipient with the Trinity, thereby facilitating the
poet’s redemption in the afterlife. The image of the ring, or circle, is a
common symbol of the Trinity in Christian typology—denoting both the
immortality of God, and the united nature of the three distinct persons.
Significantly, the Trinity is defined primarily by means of the relationships
between the three persons, rather than through gender identification. In
the words of St Augustine, “He is not called Father with reference to
himself but only in relation to the Son; seen by himself he is simply God”
(qtd in Joseph Ratzinger 182). The fifteenth-century mystic, Christine de
Pizan, extended Augustine’s theory of relationality to argue the Trinity
could reveal itself in a feminine form (Lanzetta 56).
In the Valentine for 1878 Frances emulates the role of the Father by
directing her daughter towards spiritual redemption and heavenly re-
union: “Bid me to that tryst above, / Bless your valentine” (C. Rossetti
Poems 847 11–12). Christina also implies that her mother’s association
with the Trinity extends beyond the Father to all three persons by casting
Frances in three roles, “Companion, Friend & Mother” (2). These roles
correspond to the three persons of the Trinity. The Father is often
characterized as spiritual parent, the incarnate Son as ‘friend or
‘brother,’ while the Holy Spirit is presented as the ‘companion’ or
‘comforter’ of humankind. Christina’s theological emphasis moves away
from the incarnation, as upheld Frances’s earlier poem, to Trinitarian
relations, accessed through the maternal bond.
The form of the poem also positions Frances as the center-point of
Christina’s religious faith to whom she must return in the afterlife. The
poem is structured in groups of three lines connected by the poet’s use of
enjambment. The poem’s shape resembles a returning circle made up of
 The Rossetti Women’s Life‐Writing 99
interconnecting parts. Christina makes use of the indented line to give a
sense of a whole within a whole, subtly portraying the relationship with
the mother as a microcosm of the heavenly communion:

Blessed Dear & heart’s Delight,

Companion, Friend, & Mother mine
Round whom my fears & love entwine,—
With whom I hope to stand & sing
Where angels form the outer ring
Round singing Saints, who clad in white
Know no more of day or night.… (1–7)

The poem is structured around a train of reflections and images associated

with the mother’s role as mediatrix. Each group of three lines is centered on
a particular theme, but these themes converge into a continuously-evolving
whole. The first three lines address the figure of Frances, while the pro-
ceeding three look towards the celestial realm. However, Frances has al-
ready been projected into the celestial realm within the poet’s imagination,
so the two groups run into one another. The second group is indented
because the vision of heaven is initially contained within Frances, but this
contraction abruptly expands into a generalized vision of the afterlife. The
afterlife is not merely a realm where Christina and Frances “hope to stand
& sing” (4): it is also the residence of the heavenly communion. From here
the scansion of the poem accelerates, as the number of syllables is con-
tracted and the description of heaven becomes more rapid and insistent.
Thus, the seventh line that begins the second half of the poem is a con-
tinuation of the heavenly vision instigated by the sixth.
This model of poetic form is unique and emulates the tripartite nature
of the Trinitarian God whose identity is in perpetual transition as each
person reconfigures itself towards the other two, as well as humanity at
large. The three-line divisions mutate into one another in an act of
continuous transformation. The length, scansion, and placement of each
line in the poem are determined by their relation to the previous lines,
thereby emulating the perpetually transformative relationships between
both mother and daughter and the three Trinitarian persons. Joseph
Ratzinger claims that Trinitarian ‘Personhood’: “is the pure relation of
being related, nothing else. Relationship is not something extra added to
the person, as it is with us, it only exists at all as relatedness” (182).
Christina’s innovations in form depart from the precedent set out by
Frances. “Hymn for Ascension Day” is conventional in design as a series of
rhyming couplets in iambic tetrameter. Frances only deploys formalistic
license when referring to divine authority: the iambic foot is briefly dis-
rupted by continuous spondee when Frances affirms “God the Father’s
grace” (12). Where Frances looks to liturgical precedents in her deployment
100 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life Writing
of poetic form, Christina positions her relationship with her mother as both
the source of her faith and center-point of her creative expression. This
unconventional approach to form is prevented from becoming blasphemous
by its reference to the fluidity of being, inherent in the Trinity. Since the
Trinity possesses a form humanity can neither conceive, nor define, it is
necessary to equate it to its nearest approximation in the maternal bond.
Unlike Frances, Christina does not defer to divine authority but grounds her
poetic practice in her relationship with her mother as the starting-point for
her contemplation of theologically impenetrable doctrinal mysteries.
The Valentine for 1878 portrays the maternal relationship as en-
gendering a transformation of experience and sense perception. The
transfiguration that both mother and daughter hope to achieve is por-
trayed in absolute terms; Christina disrupts the iambic foot of at the
moment of mother and daughter’s imagined transformation. She de-
scribes the saints, with whom she and her mother will join in commu-
nion, as those who “Know no more of day or night” (C. Rossetti Poems
847 6). The monosyllabism of this line disrupts the consistent iambic
scansion with continuous spondee—providing the aural effect of a re-
lentless continuing stress that accumulates towards a dramatic climax.
The abrupt disturbance of the metrical foot underlines the tangible
nature of the described transformation as a reality that both poet and
recipient witness and aspire toward. The poem constructs a shared lex-
icon between mother and daughter that encourages a mutual inter-
pretation centered on their shared hope for future redemption, and a
common set of religious beliefs.
Christina’s revelation of the world to come allows her to enter a space
where the conditions of human consciousness are radically altered, and
external stimuli is experienced only as an embodiment of divine im-
mortality. The saints are described as dwelling in a place where they
“know no more” of “death or any changeful thing, / Or anything that is
not love / Human love & love divine” (7; 10–12). The very conditions of
the person’s existence are turned upside down, so that the experience of
death, upon which the human condition is predicated, is eradicated.
Human and divine love are fused into a single entity, so divine love is no
longer reached by means of the imagination or the conscious outpouring
of prayer. The maternal bond enables Christina to infuse the transcen-
dent with the immanent: she reconfigures her experience of reality, so her
aspiration towards heavenly redemption does not pose an existential
challenge. It is through shared mystical experience with her mother that
Christina realizes her spiritual vision. Like the Alcott women, Christina
perceives the maternal bond as altering the way the individual experi-
ences the world, facilitating their eventual salvation.
The transformation of existential experience facilitated by the mo-
ther–daughter bond does not subvert the divine authority deferred to in
Hodge-Podge but rather allows Christina to conceptualize the heavenly
 The Rossetti Women’s Life‐Writing 101
realm more clearly as an immanent and tangible place. Christina’s vi-
sualization of the communion of saints as an extension of the relational
and reciprocal bond she shares with her mother extends a description of
heaven transcribed into Frances’s Commonplace Book.3 An undated
excerpt from a sermon by the Revnd. Charles Bradley, included in The
Methodist Episcopal Pulpit (1856), reminds devotees that although
Christians are taught “to consider heaven as a state, rather than as a
place,” scripture makes it clear that “there is some portion of the uni-
verse set apart to be the special residence of the King Immortal” from
where he will “eventually, assemble all the happy intelligences of the
whole universe” (Appendix 6). Christina integrates the two perspectives
put forward in the sermon by depicting the physical space of heaven as
accessed through the state of grace facilitated by the maternal bond.
Where Frances uses scriptural typology to provide empirical evidence for
the physical reality of Christ’s judgement, Christina presents a shift in
perspective enabled by the emerging perception of an underlying reality
of which the poet had been previously unaware. The physical space of
heaven is achieved through the spiritual revelations contained within the
mother as vessel of divine grace.
The Valentine’s Day verses confirm the theological precepts Frances
establishes in Hodge-Podge, but present these precepts as revealed only
through Frances’s spiritual example and the grace she exudes through her
relationship with her daughter. Frances is the intermediary between the
corporeal and spiritual realms, a point of revelation that allows Christina
to witness the reality of the heavenly sphere. As a precedent for Christina’s
subsequent collection of poems, Hodge-Podge places the immanent
manifestation of God in the incarnation at the center of the individual’s
devotion, deferring to both scriptural and liturgical authority as the
foundation for the individual’s faith. Christina does not deny the pre-
eminence of these ecclesiastical foundations but reminds her mother that
Frances herself functions as point of access within the matrilineal com-
munity. Consequently, it is fitting that Frances’s poetry requests the
Trinity to reveal itself to her directly. Her “Morning Hymn for the tune of
‘Glory to Thee my God this night’” contains this supplication:
Shine in my soul throughout this day,
And keep me in the narrow way,
Oh Thou of Righteousness the Sun
With Father, Spirit, God in One!4

Frances’s intercession requires the Trinitarian God to imbue its essence

into her soul. Christina takes such invocations literally, for her verses
portray the relations between the three persons of the Trinity as revealed
through her relationship with her mother. Frances is the catalyst for the
spiritual metamorphosis that transforms the heavenly sphere from a state
102 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life Writing
of being into a physical place manifested through the mother’s divine
grace. The Valentine’s Day verses present the maternal relationship as
transforming both poet’s and recipient’s perceptions of reality. Thus, it
can be argued that a distinct idiom of expression is borne out of the
shared faith between mother and daughter. I will now explore how
Christina deploys this distinct idiom to uphold the private world she
shares with her mother, accessed only by those who participate in their
religious faith, as well the redemption that is facilitated by the maternal
bond and revealed through analogical language.

“Love Is Love”: Transforming Conscious Experience

through Matrilineal Religious Faith
On the surface, the Valentine’s Day verses appear highly literal, de-
ploying a narrow vocabulary and uncomplicated syntax embedded in
largely derivative and didactic statements. However, these statements are
imbued with scriptural and doctrinal allusions visible only to readers
initiated into the ontological world of faith. Faith shapes immanent
experience and creates its own language for describing the external
world. The female mystics who preceded Frances and Christina “drew
new metaphors and symbols for the divine life” that counteracted the
patriarchal “symbolic order” upheld in “language, text, scripture and
imagination” (Lanzetta 57). Deciphering the analogical content of
Christina’s verse reveals that Christina and Frances’s mystical faith
modified their experience of the environment in which they lived and
separated them from the diverging experiences of those who rejected
their religious framework.
In the Valentine for 1881 (848), Christina makes a conscious link
between the external world and her vision of the heavenly sphere. The
awareness of the difference between the material and spiritual realms
transforms poet’s and recipient’s interpretations of reality, so they no
longer experience the material world as something immanent, instead
viewing it as a shadow of the world to come, thereby reversing the
trajectory of conscious experience privileged in a secular culture, which
conceives religious faith as an analogical manifestation of physically
immanent experience. For female mystics, physically immanent experi-
ence is valuable only insofar as it can be infused by the divine.
The poem begins with a straightforward description of the natural
world before the Spring: “Too cold almost for hope of Spring/Or first-
fruits from the realm of flowers” (1–2). Although this seasonal backdrop
may appear to be universally relatable to all readers, these opening lines
already contain Christian references that illuminate the rest of the
poem. The compound noun “firstfruits” is an idiosyncratic Pauline term,
taken from Corinthians 15:20: “But now is Christ risen from the dead,
and become the firstfruits of them that slept.” The winter landscape
 The Rossetti Women’s Life‐Writing 103
symbolizes the soul before death, which is to be redeemed by Christ in
the resurrection. This theological precept is explicated in the second and
final stanza of the poem, which makes an explicit connection between
the wintry nature of the unredeemed world and the ecstatic experience of
the soul in paradise:
If even in this wintry world love is love
(This wintry world which felt the fall),
What must it be in Heaven above
Where love to great and small
Is all in all? (6–10)

This second stanza provides a hermeneutic key for the symbolism of the
first where the wintry experience of poet and recipient is revealed to be
symptomatic of their exile from heaven. The wordplay on “fall,” re-
ferring to falling leaves, the autumn season, and the fall of mankind
indicates that the world is overshadowed by the postlapsarian condi-
tion of humanity. Christina creates a typological language that can only
be deciphered by readers who share her Christian faith. While a secular
reader might initially feel included in the scene described in the first
stanza, this is actively disrupted in the second, which abruptly exposes
the descriptive imagery of the first as symbolic foreshadowing of the
transformation of the Christian soul in paradise. The juxtaposition
between the two stanzas reveals poet and recipient’s experience as
shaped by their mystical interpretations of reality. This rhetorical
strategy reveals Christina’s adherence to the Tractarian Doctrine of
Analogy, which contends that God reveals his presence analogically
through type and symbol because humanity is unable to cope with
encountering him directly.
The religious tenets upheld in Christina’s analogical discourse find
their instructive origins in her mother’s Commonplace Book. Frances’s
selection of excerpts from the sermons of Charles Bradley also include a
claim that the supplicant’s initiation into the elect is dependent on their
cultivation of a shared outlook with their Christian brethren. Bradley
postulates that his congregation’s “hope to join the peaceful company
in heaven” is dependent on being of “one mind here on earth”
(Appendix 6). If the congregation were to achieve a unified totality of
being, they would attain a mystical revelation that would transform the
Church into an extension of the heavenly congregation. At the heart of
mystical theology is a desire to “bring souls to God” through “spiritual
discipleship” (Lanzetta 149).
Christina transfers the championing of parochial community re-
corded in her mother’s Commonplace Book into a celebration of ma-
trilineal community rendered exclusive by the deployment of analogical
language. The use of analogical language requires the reader to have
104 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life Writing
already attained a specialized level of theological knowledge and
mystical experience before they can be admitted into the internal world
of the poem. Accordingly, the act of reading becomes an act of faith in
the spiritual efficacy of the maternal bond and the Christian redemp-
tion it enables. Christina eschews the instructive role taken on in texts
such as Bradley’s, which reflect Frances’s early denominational affilia-
tion with Evangelicalism before she converted to Tractarianism in
1843. Tractarianism placed less emphasis on individual conversion and
the preaching of the Word, instead championing sacramental grace.
Sacramental faith is mystical in nature: it hinges on the individual’s
ability to decipher the hidden grace that infuses physical objects and
thereby access a transcendent reality shared across the church com-
munity. Christina’s 1881 Valentine expresses the shared interpretation
of reality championed in Bradley’s work but requires the reader to
access this interpretative framework through a recognition of the
sacramental grace conveyed through the maternal bond.
Where Bradley conceives the continuity between earthly and hea-
venly experience as achievable only through the creation of a Christian
community, Christina presents the transcendent love projected
through the maternal bond as a bridge between heaven and earth. In
the first stanza, the poet uses her love for her mother as a way of
combatting the wintry nature of the fallen world that surrounds them:
“Your dauntless Valentine I bring / One sprig of love, and sing / Love
has no winter hours” (Poems 848 3–5). When “Love“ is capitalized in
verse, it refers either to a personified figure who controls the romantic
lover, as can be observed in the poetry of the Italian stilnovisti, emu-
lated in the verse of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, or the figure of the in-
carnate Christ, who is portrayed as the realization of human love on
earth. The identity of the transcendent figure of Love in the 1881
Valentine is ambivalent in the first stanza but is explicated in the
second, where Christina rejects both poetic precedents to claim that
maternal love is the only human experience that will remain unaffected
by the fall: “even in this world love is love / (This wintry world that felt
the fall)” (6–7). Christina implies that the maternal bond is un-
corrupted by the fall because it is divinely ordained. As such, Christina
invests Frances with a comparable status to that of a Christian priest.
The priest is the vessel that acts as intermediary between the con-
gregation and Christ, facilitating the sacramental transformation of
the physical object or human subject.
By placing her mother in a spiritually elevated position as medium to
the divine, Christina expands on the aspiration to achieve heavenly re-
demption presented in Frances’s Commonplace Book. Frances’s excerpts
from Bradley’s sermons include the latter’s proclamation of the indis-
soluble nature of sin but do not incorporate asubsequent excerpt that
makes an exception for the Christian priest (Bradley 10). Christina
 The Rossetti Women’s Life‐Writing 105
upholds her mother’s Christian precepts but positions Frances as the
origin of those precepts within the matrilineal community. Written after
Frances and Christina’s mutual conversion to Tractarianism, the
Valentine for 1881 transforms the mother into a divine key who deci-
phers the analogical Word of God in the world. Christina not only by-
passes the male literary tradition but creates a female-centered version of
the Church located in the divine revelation that grows out of the mo-
ther–daughter bond and is contained within the matrilineal household.

“A World of Change & Loss, a World of Death”:

Rossetti’s Theology of Renunciation and the Deferral
of Redemption
The mother–daughter bond facilitates a direct revelation of the divine,
but this revelation is a type of prophecy that prefigures the world to
come. Frances’s role as mediatrix is limited: she cannot recreate the
Kingdom of Heaven on earth, even as she directs her daughter towards a
vision of it. The limitations of Frances’s transfigurative role confirm
Bradley’s claim, as recorded in Frances’s Commonplace Book, that the
internal divisions of the Christian community prevent the purification of
the world at large (Appendix 6). Bradley makes it clear that human di-
visions obstruct the propagation of the divine in the material world: the
individual may achieve an internal peace that enables them to bear
witness to the presence of God, but they cannot counteract the discord
imbued in the world around them (ibid.).
Christina upholds the maternal bond as containing the power to
achieve the spiritualized union upheld in Bradley’s theological dis-
course, but she does not attempt to diffuse this union into the world
beyond the home. In fact, the irreparably fallen nature of the outside
world is the source of the Rossetti women’s spiritual renunciation.
The Valentine’s Day verses invest Frances with the power to transform
the domestic sphere into a reflection of the heavenly sphere in a manner
that resembles a religious community, but it is beyond Frances’s
capacity to transform the world beyond the household. As such, both
poet and recipient must suffer in a fallen world where heavenly
redemption is deferred indefinitely.
Like Abigail Alcott, both Frances and Christina refuse to regard
human suffering as all-encompassing, but they diverge from the
Alcott women in their deferral of human fulfilment to the afterlife.
Frances and Christina do not share the Alcott women’s faith in the
matrilineal community’s ability to extend its outward-facing ded-
ication to others to the world beyond the home. Nevertheless, the
Valentine’s Day verses do promote the mother–daughter bond as
partially alleviating earthly suffering, for it enables both women to
develop the necessary stoicism for attaining the Kingdom of Heaven.
106 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life Writing
Christina makes this explicitly clear in the short, stanza-long
Valentine for 1883 (C. Rossetti Poems 849):
A world of change & loss, a world of death,
Of heart & eyes that fail, of labouring breath,
Of pains to bear & painful deeds to do:—
Nevertheless a world of life to come
And love; where you’re at home, while in our home
Your Valentine rejoices having you. (1–6)

In this poem, earthly experience is defined through human mortality and

the gradual disintegration of the physical body. The image of Christina’s
mother is constituted solely by her ailments: the failing heart, eyes, and
shortness of breath. Christina acknowledges human decline as the ful-
filment and embodiment of all earthly experience, for human life is a
progression towards death. This is heightened by her elision of the mid-
line caesura in the third line, which gives a sense of the relentless accu-
mulation of pain: “Of pains to bear & painful deeds to do” (3). The
casual, almost flippant tone of solace in the following line, “Nevertheless
a world of life to come” (4), dismisses the recipient’s experience of pain,
while acknowledging that it is more immediate than the projected eter-
nity (more descriptive space is accorded to the recipient’s suffering
within the poem than the Kingdom of Heaven).
Christina implies that, while the world to come is a certainty she and
her mother share in, this does not alleviate the immanent reality of
earthly suffering and division Bradley laments in his earlier sermon. This
reality of suffering can only be borne through consciously redirecting
human experience towards hope for future redemption. Christina con-
curs with Abigail Alcott’s assertion that redemption is only achieved
through an acceptance of the conditions of the surrounding world, but
this acceptance is contingent upon privileging divine revelation.
Christina’s emphasis on salvific deferral diverges from the Alcott
women’s theology of renunciation, which regards the Kingdom of
Heaven as built out of sacrifices experienced on earth. If we think
back to Elizabeth Alcott’s “Story of an Apple” (Appendix 5), we
recall that renunciation is not painful because the prelapsarian in-
dividual does not struggle to sacrifice their needs for others. Likewise,
in Louisa May Alcott’s “Transfiguration,” her mother’s decline and
old-age are described as the means by which she attains salvation. For
the Alcotts, the fallen world is in some sense mediated by the re-
ciprocal bonds of the matrilineal community. By contrast, Christina
and Frances share in the same divine vision, but they must defer this
vision to the afterlife. The self-contained world between mother and
daughter is one of mystical revelation and insight; it is not an
outward-oriented community of charity.
 The Rossetti Women’s Life‐Writing 107
The poet’s and recipient’s relationship is once more defined as a point
of continuity between earthly and heavenly experience, for it is the
“love” (C. Rossetti Poems 849 5) shared between them that makes the
world bearable. The poet portrays the loving relationship between her-
self and her mother as an exclusive one, superseding all others within the
earthly sphere. While Frances dwells “at home … in our home” (5), it is
only “[her] Valentine” who “rejoices” (6). The transition from the plural
space of the household (“our home”), which at this time was also shared
with William Michael Rossetti, to the singular pronoun of “your
Valentine” defines the loving relationship that protects Frances from her
experience of pain as existing solely between mother and daughter. The
reciprocal nature of these verses focused on the shared goal of eternal
salvation, as well as the private lexicon shared between mother and
daughter, upholds the precedence of matrilineal relations within the
Rossetti family.
The religious beliefs of the Rossetti family were divided along lines of
gender, forming two distinct communities. Frances’s conversion to
Tractarianism was followed by that of her two daughters, Maria, and
Christina. William Michael adhered to his father’s nonconformist ex-
ample by rejecting Christianity and all forms of organized religion at
age 14. Dante Gabriel also abstained from joining his mother and sisters
in their conversion, although his beliefs were more agnostic in nature. As
the Rossetti men all rejected the symbolic Christian framework on which
these verses are predicated, the poems create a conceptual linguistic
world accessed only by the Rossetti women. As occasional poems not
intended for publication, but rather for exchange within the household,
the verses uphold the religious faith that underpins the matrilineal
community.
The exclusivity of perspective fostered in these verses is comparable to
the shared consciousness cultivated within the network of life-writing
authored by the Alcott women, which also focuses on their shared
Christian and family values. The shared consciousness of the Rossetti
women is likewise proliferated across the matrilineal community, for the
divine maternal bond is accessed by Maria Rossetti, as well as Christina
and Frances. Maria died the year Christina commenced the sequence and
it is likely that Christina conceived the project as an affirmation of the
continuing union between the Rossetti women following her sister’s
death. Despite Maria’s physical absence, Christina acknowledges her
spiritual presence in the second poem of the sequence, written from
Maria’s perspective. I will now examine Maria’s inclusion in the
Valentine’s Day verses as an expression of the matrilineal community’s
desire for the conversion of the Rossetti brothers. The matrilineal com-
munity perceived justification as occurring through the faith modeled by
Frances for her children.
108 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life Writing
“Transfigured by Love’s Flame”: The Redemptive Power
of Frances’s Spiritual Authority
According to Arseneau, the Valentine for 1877 is signed: “C.G. for
M.F.R” (Christina Georgina for Maria Francesca Rossetti) and is an
attempt to “ventriloquize the recently deceased Maria’s voice,” thereby
expressing the poet’s “longing for a reunion” between her mother and
sister (Recovering 50). However, the poem does not focus exclusively on
a reunion between Frances and Maria but incorporates all the Rossetti
siblings—thereby embodying the female Rossettis’ collective desire to
bring about the conversion of the Rossetti men. Maria admitted on her
deathbed she had become an Anglican nun in the hope of converting
both her brothers through prayer, while Christina expressed fear for
Dante Gabriel’s soul following his death. Nonetheless, the poem ex-
presses a continuity between the domestic and heavenly spheres that
incorporates all members of the Rossetti household. Articulating a motif
that will appear throughout the Valentine’s Day verses, the voice of
Maria indicates Frances can redeem all her children in her role as in-
termediary between earthly and divine. Within the world of the poem,
each of the Rossetti siblings desires a familial reunion that transcends
death, in spite of their diverging religious views. The voice of Maria
indicates that the source of the siblings’ eventual transfigurations will be
their mutual recognition of the precedence of Frances’s love, which emits
the divine:
Own Mother dear,
We all rejoicing here
Wait for each other,
Daughter for Mother,
Sister for Brother,
Till each dear face appear
Transfigured by love’s flame
Yet still the same,—
The same yet new,—
My face to you,
Your face to me,
Made lovelier by Love’s flame
But still the same;
Most dear to see
In halo of Love’s flame
Because the same. (C. Rossetti Poems 846–847)

The structure of the poem resembles a liturgical ‘sequence’: a hymn or

chant that celebrates the transfigurative power of the light of Christ that
proceeds from the resurrection. The sequence is sung before the pro-
clamation of the gospel on Easter Sunday. Early medieval sequences
 The Rossetti Women’s Life‐Writing 109
consisted of short sections of chant, resembling verses, that overlapped
with one another through use of a recurring refrain that could be placed
anywhere in the chant as a transitional bridge. In the 1877 Valentine, the
two sequential refrains are “Love’s flame” and “the same.” As the per-
sonified “Love’s flame,” Frances herself is the refrain that bridges the
sections of the sequence. The variations of this refrain trace the stages of
her children’s spiritual transfigurations: the Rossetti siblings are
“transfigured” (7), “made lovelier” (12) and finally revealed “In halo”
(15). Frances’s “flame” therefore takes the place of Christ in the li-
turgical sequence, for she is recast as the point of access to heavenly
redemption. Her flame provides continuity between heaven and earth.
Although she precipitates the spiritual transfiguration of her children,
she simultaneously enables them to retain their “sameness” or innate
identity. In this poem, Frances’s role is incarnational, but she renders the
incarnation accessible on a personal, familial level. This theological in-
novation is unconventional because the incarnation is deemed sufficient
as a source of unification between humanity and God. In the Rossetti
family, it is Frances who conveys the presence of the incarnate Son to her
earthly children.
Nevertheless, the Rossetti children must receive Frances’s incarnate
flame to complete the process of their transfigurations. Each of the
“faces” in the poem resembles one another as it is illuminated by
Frances’s all-encompassing flame of love. The shifting sequence of these
faces, “Daughter for Mother, / Sister for Brother” (4–5), heightens the
reciprocity in the familial community. In the same manner as the three
persons of the Trinity, the faces are constituted by their relationships to
one another. The shifting placement of the phrase “the same” in the
syntax of each refrain belies the evanescent transformation of each face
as it reflects that of its counterparts. The presence of Frances’s flame
allows her children to ascend upwards in much the same manner as
the persons of the Trinity reconfigure themselves in relation to one an-
other and mankind as the course of salvation history unfolds. Thus, the
transfiguration of the Rossetti children occurs because Frances remains
“the same”: she is the source of the siblings’ Trinitarian relations with
one another. Unlike that of the Alcotts, the shared consciousness of
the Rossetti family is contingent upon a conscious affirmation of the
religious faith espoused by the mother.
The Valentine for 1877 stands out in the sequence for its articulation
of the matrilineal community’s desire for the Rossetti men to be re-
conciled to its divine vision. The sequence of faces who“Wait for each
other” (3) include “Daughter for Mother” (4) and “Sister for Brother”
(5) but significantly do not include “Brother for Sister.” Christina implies
that the Rossetti women (including the deceased Maria) continue to hope
for the incorporation of their brothers into their spiritual community,
but this desire has not yet been reciprocated. In divergence to the
110 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life Writing
Valentine for 1881, the 1877 Valentine displays a persistent hope that
Dante Gabriel and William Michael will eventually radiate the divine
flame of their mother’s spiritual love. Christina extends solace to Frances
in the wake of Maria’s death by attempting to realize Frances’s spiritual
aspirations for her children. Frances’s Commonplace Book makes it clear
she viewed the redemption of her children as her primary maternal re-
sponsibility and it expresses a particular concern for the spiritual welfare
of her sons.
The Commonplace Book contains a selection of excerpts from devo-
tional texts directed at young boys in need of spiritual instruction from
their elders, indicating that Frances felt that her sons, who regularly
reviewed the album, were in need of especial spiritual guidance. A poem
titled, “Address to the moon by Mrs. Dorset,” champions the primacy of
the bond between mother and son and is headed with the inscription:

The following lines were suggested by the story of a lady, who

having had her son removed from her protection, at a [sic] early age,
adopted the same expedient of carrying on an imaginary interaction
with him as was desired by the two lovers mentioned in one of the
old French romances, viz that of looking at the moon at stated
periods, agreed on between them. (F. Rossetti Commonplace
Book 37–38)

The inscription places the mother in an equivalent role to that of lover,

but the subsequent poem makes it clear the mother conflates herself with
the moon to encourage her son to refer to her as a point of spiritual
aspiration throughout his life. Separated from her son by death, the
unnamed mother pleads with “aerial forms” to convey her prayers for
his redemption to him in the world below (ibid. 39 35). From her place
in the moon, she “pleads for [her] absent son” before the “heav’nly
throne” and expresses trepidation that “no tender mother’s anxious
care/Shall teach him to raise his little hands in prayer” (ibid. 39 39–42).
The poet conceives the mother’s spiritually instructive role as extending
into the afterlife where she acts as intermediary for her son’s redemption.
The excerpt anticipates Christina’s later portrayal of her mother as a
transcendent flame of love whom her children must figuratively pass
through to ascend upwards into the heavenly sphere.
The intercessory role of Maria, whose hope for a heavenly reunion is
voiced in the 1877 Valentine, also resembles that of the mother in
“Address to the moon,” who dwells within the moon purely “To watch
the object of [her] earthly love” and “guard [her] infant” (ibid. 40
64–66). The Christian symbolism of the moon is significant here: in the
Divine Comedy the moon is first of the heavenly spheres and residence of
redeemed souls who are unable to witness a direct revelation of God in
the upper spheres because they did not prioritize their religious faith
 The Rossetti Women’s Life‐Writing 111
above familial ties while on earth. The mother therefore deliberately
chooses the lowest abode in heaven so she can continue to watch over
her son, “Sure [that] pitying Heav’n will grant the boon [she] ask[s]”
(40 65). Her function also resonates with that of Frances in the
Valentine’s verses whose flame of love enables divine transfiguration and
unification between her children.
Frances seems to have anticipated her sons’ burgeoning non-
conformism in her Commonplace Book, for it also contains a prayer
authored by William Michael Rossetti at her direction and an accom-
panying excerpt from a devotional tract instructing young men on how to
retain their faith in the face of doubt. The prayer is a highly unusual text
in the Rossetti family corpus, which contains no other affirmation of faith
from William Michael who later became vocal concerning his atheism.
The prayer, composed when William Michael was nine, is a formal in-
vocation for God’s protection upon King’s College where he was a stu-
dent and expresses a conventional vision of scholarly obedience to one’s
elders as reflecting the divine hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being:

Grant that the young who are now assembled within these walls may
remember thee their Creator, in the days of their youth, may be
diligent in their studies, obedient to their parents and superiors, and
kindly affectioned one to another. More particularly we pray that
the seeds of learning, virtue and religion may bring forth fruit
abundantly to thy glory and the benefit of our fellow creatures. (F.
Rossetti Commonplace Book 1st April, 1838 244)

It seems unlikely a child of nine would independently compose a prayer

requesting unswerving obedience to his elders across the entire school
community conveyed in diction reminiscent of the King James Bible,
especially when the child in question subsequently rejected the principle
of unquestioning obedience to ecclesiastical authority. The prayer is re-
corded with flawless cursive penmanship that is not visible in William
Michael’s subsequent manuscripts and is most likely the product of an
instructive exercise set by Frances. Indeed, the subsequent excerpt in
Frances’s hand indicates that she had likely already detected schismatic
tendencies in her son and was doing her best to counteract them.
Frances’s accompanying excerpt similarly encourages a young male
pupil to refer to scripture, religious education and church tradition when
confronting doubt. It is taken from Jacob Phillips’ 1818 A Letter from a
Grandfather to his Grandson, pointing out the right course of his studies
and conduct during his clerkship, etc, and refers to the passage of the
text regarding Phillips’ grandson’s ongoing spiritual life during the
course of his studies. The young man is commanded to “Devote Sundays
to the consideration of religion” and is provided with a list of re-
commended theological texts to assist him in his private devotions
112 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life Writing
(F. Rossetti Commonplace Book 245). As well as encouraging his
grandson to make structured notes on scripture using a method resem-
bling transcription into a commonplace album, Philips counsels him
to attribute any religious “doubt” to personal “weakness,” rather than
“to any defect in the proof or evidence of religion” (ibid.). The excerpt is
notable for championing sacred tradition over independent reasoning.
Contrary to the principles of the Enlightenment, apostolic Christianity
defines tradition as the gradual revelation of divine truth through
scripture, liturgy, and sacrament as they unfold over the course of sal-
vation history. As with the Doctrine of Analogy, tradition is seen to
provide an accessible medium for the gradual comprehension of the
Creator. Religious faith dictates there is no equivalent being to the
prime mover in the material world. It is therefore tenable that human
doubt stems from a tendency “to argue on false premises, or reconcile
inconsistencies” (ibid.).
Frances’s scholarly instruction to her youngest son is designed to cir-
cumvent the emphasis on intellectual deduction he was to embrace in
later life. William Michael’s prayer and Frances’s accompanying devo-
tional aid promotes the importance of received wisdom and deference to
one’s elders. In other words, Frances instructs William Michael to accept
the religious beliefs passed on through the mother as an affirmation of
her inter-generational authority. In this context, it is telling that
Christina positions Frances as the source of divine revelation to whom all
the Rossetti children must defer in the Valentine’s Day verses. In the
Valentine for 1877, Christina adopts her sister’s voice to advocate for
the conversion of her brothers based on the acceptance of their mother’s
spiritual authority. The verses are designed to fulfil a project commenced
in Frances’s Commonplace Book, namely, the total acceptance of ec-
clesiastical authority among the Rossetti siblings through the medium of
the mother’s flame of love. Tellingly, Frances’s husband, Gabriele, is
excluded from the Valentine’s Day verses: his influence led to the non-
conformism of the Rossetti brothers and Frances ordered that all re-
maining copies of his most heretical work, the Amor Platonico (1840),
be burned immediately upon his death. It would seem that a heavenly
reunion is impossible for the already deceased Gabriele, source of the
family’s religious divisions. Christina guides her still living brothers to-
ward the example of their deceased sister, Maria, to encourage them to
embrace the spiritual authority of their mother upheld throughout the
matrilineal community.
Maria features minimally in the Valentine’s Day verses because she
predeceased their composition, but Christina’s acknowledgement of her
sister in the 1877 Valentine suggests Maria shared in the theological
vision instigated by Frances. Maria’s influence pervades Christina’s work
as a theologian, and in this work we see Maria upheld as the exemplar of
Frances’s love. Maria is championed as embodying a type of lived
 The Rossetti Women’s Life‐Writing 113
religion because she takes the precepts set out by Frances and applies
them to her daily life. Even if another person’s redemption cannot be
effected by one’s good works, these good works have the power to
transform the bleakness of a fallen world.

“In Harmony with Her Holy Hope and Joy”: Maria’s

Influence on Christina’s Discourse of Lived Religion
Maria figures as a spiritual role-model and literary precursor in
Christina’s 1885 theological work, Time Flies: A Reading Diary, which
defers to Maria’s authority as an exemplar for Christina’s Christian
practice. Time Flies makes reference to Maria’s early theological writ-
ings, written before her entry into religious life in 1872 and her pre-
mature death from ovarian cancer in 1876 at the age of 49. The text is
structured as a devotional diary, containing spiritual meditations for
each day of the year. Christina’s personal experiences are related back to
her religious beliefs and presented in short reflective pieces that consider
how she might refine her devotional practice and deepen her relationship
with God. These reflections uphold Maria’s spiritual example as pro-
viding the basis for Christina’s devotional aim of becoming a better
Christian through her writing practice.
Todd O. Williams has compellingly expanded on Roe’s claim that “In
Time Flies, Christianity is as much about the writing of the self as it is the
writing of God” (Faithful Imagination 148), by arguing the text creates
an “extended consciousness” through constructing the self “in relation to
the environment, which, for Rossetti, is experienced through her
Christian beliefs” (322). Christina transforms her daily experiences by
placing them within a Christian framework, allowing her “sense of self as
physical and spiritual being” to be developed “in relation to God” (ibid.).
Time Flies is a mystical text: it conceives everyday events as expressing
God’s presence in the world, placing the author’s life in a redemptive
Christian narrative that references scripture and the lives of saints.
Christina’s application of a religious framework to her daily life bears
a striking affinity to Louisa May Alcott’s use of The Pilgrim’s Progress as
a narrative template for Little Women. Alcott follows her mother’s ex-
ample of placing her daily struggles in the context of the tribulations
experienced by Bunyan’s Christian, while Christina also uses theological
writing as a means of reinterpreting her life within a Christian frame-
work. However, where Alcott refers to the spiritual authority of her
mother, Christina draws on the theological wisdom of Maria. Christina
transforms her sister’s use of Christian allegory into an autobiographical
narrative.
Christina’s diary is a devotional aid for the practice of lived religion,
encouraging the reader to reflect on their own salvific journey through
tracking the progress of the author’s spiritual life. The text encourages
114 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life Writing
the reader to develop a type of devotional self-awareness. Unlike the
Alcott sisters, Christina cannot instigate a matrilineal community in the
outside world, but she can encourage her readers to emulate the com-
munity she shares with her sister through embracing lived religion. The
opaqueness of the typological symbolism in Maria’s theological writing
is transformed into an anecdotal autobiographical narrative. Where
Maria’s theological writing provides the tenets that are the foundation of
Christina’s devotional practice, Christina’s ‘reading diary’ demonstrates
how these tenets should be applied to one’s daily life. As such, Christina
opens up the matrilineal community to the wider world, but the reader’s
participation in this community is contingent upon an act of free will.
Christina cannot build the theological discourse of the matrilineal
community into the public sphere in the same manner as the Alcott
sisters; she must ask the reader to propagate this discourse alongside her
as they meet within the space of the text.
Maria’s theological work, The Rivulets, was written when she was 19
and privately published by her maternal grandfather, Gaetano Polidori
(1764–1853). It provides the analogical framework that is applied to
Christina’s daily experiences and salvific journey in Time Flies. The Rivulets
describes a vision experienced by the author, which is thereafter analogi-
cally elucidated through an imagined dialogue between author and reader.
At the beginning of the narrative, the author finds herself in “a wide-
extended plain” scattered over with “a number of little cottages,” all of
which contain a rivulet (5). Each cottage is placed in the care of one of four
children, all of whom bear symbolic German names: Liebe, meaning love;
Selbsucht, who is associated with selfishness; Eigendunkel, who stands
for presumption; and Faule, who represents sloth. The four children are
directed by a mysterious man, who is an Ambassador for “the King,”
to purify their rivulets, which are being polluted by venomous serpents
(6–8). The Ambassador sprinkles each rivulet with pure water and gives
the children a crystal mirror that reflects words of instruction and advice,
alongside bunches of myrrh and hyssop and a vase of sweet perfumes.
Liebe persists in cleansing her rivulet, although she is consistently
thwarted by the serpent and often falls into fits of despair. Nevertheless,
she eventually succeeds in her task and her crystal mirror instructs her to:
“Let us consider one another to … promote love and good works” (24).
She interprets this message as a command to assist Faule, who has fallen
asleep by her rivulet in exhaustion. At first, Liebe does most of Faule’s
work, but she is eventually assumed into heaven and leaves Faule’s
mirror behind with the command to “put not your trust in any child
of man” (34). Faule’s grief rouses her from her lethargic state and she
subsequently completes her task, although her finished stream does not
possess as “clear and unbroken a surface” as Liebe’s (38). Nevertheless,
it is sufficient to win her redemption and she also is assumed into heaven
by an angel.
 The Rossetti Women’s Life‐Writing 115
In contrast, Selbsucht takes pleasure in further polluting his rivulet,
and makes no effort to cleanse it. While his behavior leads to his eventual
degradation, he exhibits only a self-interested sorrow, rather than “the
sorrow that works repentance unto salvation” (31). The roof of his
cottage subsequently collapses and he is consumed by a “darkness
visible” (ibid.). Selbsucht’s damnation leads the prideful Eigendunkel,
who has previously expressed a belief he is “already perfect” (19), to
reject his inclination to “triumph over others” and redress the incipient
pollution in his own rivulet (33). Eigendunkel is also assumed into
heaven, shortly after which the narrator awakes.
In the concluding dialogue of the text, the author explicates the
symbolism of her analogical narrative. The rivulets are revealed to be the
hearts of each individual, while the serpents represent the devil and his
attempts to corrupt them (41). The King’s Ambassador is a Christian
priest, whose sprinkling of holy water represents the sacrament of bap-
tism and the gift of grace that enables each individual to reject the
temptations of the devil (41–42). The priest’s gifts of the mirror, spices,
and perfumes symbolize Holy Scripture and “repentance, and the self-
denying duties of religion” (42).
It is notable that religious devotion alone is insufficient to secure the
redemption of Maria’s protagonists. All four figures must combine
religious practice with acts of faith. Maria’s representation of the
priesthood and sacraments as gaining efficacy through free will com-
plements the theology of one of the excerpts of Bradley’s sermons,
copied into Frances’s Commonplace Book (Appendix 6). Bradley con-
tends that there is “no inseparable connection between the outward
visible sign of and the inwards spiritual grace in any sacrament” be-
cause a sacrament can become “polluted” by human sin (ibid.). In other
words, a sacrament must be received in a state of grace for it to prove
efficacious. The individual’s redemption, while assisted by the sacra-
ments, is ultimately secured through faith. Religious observance can
strengthen faith, but “no outward ordinances can cleanse the soul from
its pollution” (ibid.). Bradley’s metaphorical imagery of pollution and
his later description of faith as a “fountain which has the power to
wash away sin and uncleanness” (ibid.) resembles Maria’s representa-
tion of the hearts of Christians as rivulets who are vulnerable to the
pollution of sin. Maria’s portrayal of sacramental grace as reliant on
free will displays the influence of Frances’s theological reading and
instruction, as well as the matrilineal community’s vision of redemption
as justified by faith alone. Bradley reminds readers that the “heavenly
priests” who retained spiritual purity were “washed,” “sanctified,” and
“justified” in “the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of
our God” (Bradley 10).
The resonances between Bradley’s and Maria’s work indicate that
while the Rossetti women’s faith was sacramental in practice, it was still
116 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life Writing
built on an Augustinian framework that positions faith as the only means
of attaining redemption. The Tractarianism of the Rossetti women
combined the fundamentalist vision of Frances’s early Evangelicalism,
which stressed the importance of the individual’s conversion and affir-
mation of faith, with the Anglo-Catholic movement’s emphasis on a
return to apostolic authority and ecclesiastical tradition. In the concep-
tion of the Rossetti women, salvation is open to a narrow group of
people who are able to affirm their faith through deference to apostolic
authority. Unlike the Alcotts, who propagated their model of sympa-
thetic shared consciousness to the outside world through outward-facing
acts of charity, the matrilineal community of the Rossetti family is only
able to share its divine grace through assisting in the conversion and
repentance of others. The Rivulets functions as a type of analogical in-
struction manual on how to achieve salvation.
Christina’s ‘reading diary,’ Time Flies, follows the earlier model of The
Rivulets by providing an account of how the choices, behaviors, and
temptations of the author’s daily life affect her journey towards salva-
tion, but where Maria provides a generalized analogical narrative de-
signed to relate to a variety of experiences, Christina individualizes her
theological work by presenting it in diary format. Structuring her work
as a diary allows Christina to reduce the impression she is preaching to
or judging the reader. Christina associates her behaviors and choices
with each of the deadly sins Maria condemns in The Rivulets and shares
her struggles in addressing these faults with her readers, allowing them to
identify with her. By applying Maria’s analogical key to her lived ex-
periences, Christina advocates for Maria’s authority as a woman of faith
and encourages her readers to join her by following Maria’s example.
Christina’s entry on Maria’s death provides an account of how
Maria’s practical theology transformed Christina’s experience of grief.
Christina applies her sister’s beliefs concerning earthly separation to her
own grieving process, thereby allowing the reader to witness the trans-
formative effects of Maria’s theology. Christina’s observations regarding
her grief are also closely aligned with the experiences of Faule in The
Rivulets. In her entry for 22nd April, 1885, Christina describes how
Maria, “one of the most genuine Christians I ever knew,” never regarded
earthly separation as an obstacle to human relationships because she
believed that “such congenial intercourse on earth” was destined to
reach full “development” in heaven (77). This anecdote is supplemented
by a poetic reflection by Christina, who contemplates how submission to
God’s will promotes the greater good:
Lord, I had chosen another lot,
But then I had not chosen well;
Thy choice and only Thine is good:
No different lot, search heaven and hell,
 The Rossetti Women’s Life‐Writing 117
Had blessed me, fully understood;
None other, which Thou orderest not. (ibid.)

Christina’s disruption of the AB rhyme scheme, so the first and last lines
of the poem rhyme unexpectedly, jars the reader aurally, providing a
sense of vocal disturbance that mirrors the sudden shift of direction at
the poem’s close. This complements the poem’s internal trajectory,
where the author’s wishes are initially at odds with God’s will but un-
dergo radical transition once she realizes the pursuit of her own desires
cannot bring her fulfilment because her human identity derives from
God. Christina’s use of macro imagery, spanning the spiritual cosmos
from heaven to hell, underlines that the full spectrum of human desire
across a variety of spiritual planes fails to supersede God’s will.
As an accompanying piece to Maria’s reflections on earthly separation,
Christina’s poem portrays her sister’s theology as a type of Christian
submission. Separation is figured as part of God’s providential plan,
which brings about the individual’s redemption. Christina’s assertion
that she might have “chosen another lot” (ibid. 1) perhaps alludes to a
former desire not to be separated from her sister by death. However, her
life-experiences allow her to realize that God’s “choice” is “good” when
it is “fully understood” against the possible outcomes of the poet’s de-
sires (ibid. 3 5). Maria’s prior reflections on the afterlife prefigure the
complete understanding of God’s will achieved by Christina at the de-
nouement of this poem. Consequently, Maria’s death allows Christina to
fully appreciate the truth in her sister’s theological meditations. While
Maria has predeceased her, their spiritual partnership is nevertheless
maintained, for the insights that are facilitated by Maria’s death allow
Christina to continue on her spiritual pathway towards redemption.
Christina’s portrayal of the impact of her sister’s death on her spiritual
development is comparable to the insights achieved by the character of
Faule following Liebe’s death in The Rivulets. Like Faule, Christina was
characterized as “indolent.”5 Faule’s grief for Liebe arouses her from her
spiritual torpor, encouraging her to follow Liebe’s example in redirecting
her efforts towards the purification of her rivulet. Time Flies uses the
precedent of Maria’s theological writing to argue the experiences of daily
life can be transformed through applying a Christian framework of in-
terpretation that focuses on the individual’s preparation for the afterlife.
This framework of interpretation is more relatable: the reader is more
likely to sympathize with the author’s acknowledgement of fallibility
than with Maria’s proselytizing tract. Christina’s portrayal of her sister’s
wisdom as directly applicable to her own life therefore provides greater
credence to her sister’s theological authority.
Time Flies is also peppered with references to Maria’s spiritual
wisdom, which show how her theological beliefs transformed the lives of
others. For example, the entry for 7th November, 1885, contains a
118 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life Writing
reflection on Maria’s funeral, which is portrayed as emblematic of her
blameless life and assurance of Christian redemption. Maria’s faith in
her salvation inspires others to reorient themselves towards the solace
provided by their own faith. Maria is described as “one of the dearest
and most saintly persons I ever knew,” whose positive example leads
mourners to act “in harmony with her holy hope and joy,” instead of
allowing themselves to be overcome by grief (213). Christina fondly
describes how her sister requested not to have the stereotypical “hood
and hatband” style of Victorian funeral, towards which the author
“evinced some old-fashioned leaning” (ibid.). She recalls Maria’s claim
that funerals should not appear “hopeless” because they are symbolic of
the individual’s union with God (ibid.).
Christina’s recollections of Maria’s funeral are shaped by her belief that
her sister’s presence transformed the day’s events; she creates a mystical
interpretation of her experiences as a mourner in hindsight. The text de-
scribes how the sun made “a miniature rainbow in [Christina’s] eyelashes”
during the first hymn (ibid.). It would appear Maria is able to intervene in
God’s divine language of analogy from above, for Christina interprets the
presence of the rainbow as corroborating her sister’s belief that funerals
should be joyful celebrations of the individual’s union with God. In
Genesis 9: 13–17 the rainbow is presented as a sign of God’s salvific
covenant with his people following his protection of Noah from the flood.
The rainbow is an emblem of Maria’s salvation, but it also symbolizes her
assimilation into the divine language of analogy. Maria’s death is not only
perceived through an analogical framework; she is incorporated into that
framework by virtue of her unification with God. The rainbow is a private
medium of symbolic communication between the sisters, who share in the
same eschatological interpretation of the world. Christina shares the sis-
ters’ typological communication between heaven and earth with her
readers, so they will be encouraged to discern the same divine symbolism
in the events of their own lives: “May all who love enjoy cheerful little
rainbows at the funerals of their beloved ones” (ibid.).
While the bond between the sisters is exclusive, it is utilized as a means
of inspiring others to reorient their lives towards a perception of the
divine. Christina reveals how Maria’s model of lived religion can be
applied to the daily experiences of the reader, sustaining them on their
pathway towards redemption. Applying a mystical framework of belief
to everyday events and experiences allows the divine language of analogy
to become a living reality between sisters. Mutual religious practice
creates a shared worldview that shapes the sisters’ respective experi-
ences. Christina’s devotional diary is a bridge between her faith and her
readers, enabling them to bear witness to the power of the religious
beliefs and practices she shares with Maria. Maria is upheld as the living
model who achieved the standard of lived religion to which Christina
aspires and to which her readers should also aspire.
 The Rossetti Women’s Life‐Writing 119
“Her Sister Stood in Deadly Peril to Do Her Good”:
The Priestly Role of the Sister in “Goblin Market”
Among the references to Maria as a spiritual partner in Christina’s
journey towards redemption in Time Flies is an account of an event that
perhaps inspired Christina’s iconic poem, “Goblin Market” (1862). In
the meditation for 17th July, 1885, Christina describes a childhood ex-
perience where “a little girl and … my yet younger self” agreed to halve
“a certain wild strawberry growing on a hedgerow bank” (C. Rossetti
Time Flies 136). The elder of the two girls instructs the author “not to
pluck [the strawberry] prematurely,” so as to allow it to ripen, but “one
fatal day” they find it “half-eaten, and good for nothing” (136–137). In
hindsight, Christina interprets the event as teaching both herself and
Maria the importance of prudence and self-restraint, while enabling both
of them to learn how to bear with disappointment as an inevitable part
of life. Renunciation is again associated with deferring one’s happiness to
the afterlife, for Christina claims that their “counsel of prudence” left
them disappointed in regard to the strawberry, but the “baulked watches
of the afterlife” will not “prove in vain” (137). The minor trials and
tribulations of daily life cannot be overcome in this world, but they
nevertheless allow the individual to achieve spiritual fulfilment in the
world to come. By referring to such shared life experiences, Christina
demonstrates that both she and her sister have endeavored to apply the
same religious framework to their lives and that they both experience
disappointment as a temporary obstacle on the path to redemption.
“Goblin Market” (C. Rossetti Poems 5–20) expands on the anecdote
of the wild strawberry by portraying the responsible sister’s example of
renunciation and prudence as redeeming her fallen counterpart, en-
abling the latter to be reintegrated into the sisters’ shared religious
framework, from which she has been temporarily separated. In his
notes to the 1904 edition of the poem, William Michael claimed
Christina dedicated “Goblin Market” to Maria because “C. considered
herself charged with some sort of spiritual backsliding, against which
Maria’s influence had been exercised beneficially” (qtd. in Thomas
176). The sisters’ encounter with a potentially dangerous fruit in
childhood is re-appropriated into an analogical narrative that pays
tribute to Maria’s spiritual guidance. In this poem the responsible
sister, Lizzie, resembles Maria, for she advises her sister, Laura, not to
partake of the Goblin men’s fruit:

We must not look at goblin men,

We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots. (42–45)
120 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life Writing
When Laura refuses to heed her advice and begins to waste away after
sampling the fruits, Lizzie saves her sister by usurping the role of the
Christian priest. She obtains the fruit in a violent encounter with the
Goblins who attempt to assault her with their wares, unwittingly smearing
her with the fruits’ juices in the process. These juices enable her to provide
the antidote for her sister, who is instructed to: “Hug me, kiss me, suck my
juices” (17 468) and “Eat me, drink me, love me” (17 470). Critics are
divided over whether Laura’s sacrificial offering to her sister is indicative
of a lesbian encounter6 or an experience of the Eucharistic body.7
However, the most remarkable aspect of Lizzie’s encounter with Laura
is that she the medium of access to the Eucharistic body. Lizzie’s po-
tential as a female Christ has been well documented,8 but it should be
noted that it is not Lizzie’s body that cures Laura, but rather the fruit-as-
antidote upon her body. Rather than standing in for Christ, Lizzie re-
places the Christian priest who takes on the personae Christi (or person
of Christ) to effect the transubstantiation of the Eucharist at the moment
of consecration. Christina situates the grace of the Eucharistic sacrament
in the female community, relocating it from the patriarchal hierarchy of
the apostolic Church.
Maria’s role in Time Flies is closely aligned with that of “Goblin
Market’s” Lizzie because her council of “prudence and self-restraint” (C.
Rossetti Time Flies 137) allows her sister to redirect her attention to-
wards her future salvation, just as Lizzie’s example of self-denial allows
Laura to be transfigured and redeemed. Likewise, Liebe’s renunciation in
The Rivulets inspires Faule to rededicate herself to her heavenly salva-
tion, and it is possible that this text also served as a precursor to “Goblin
Market.” In all of these texts, the individual’s primary point of access to
the divine is the female community. The redemptive power of the ma-
trilineal community is stressed at the close of “Goblin Market” when
Laura brings the children of the two sisters together to “tell them how
her sister stood / In deadly peril to do her good” (C. Rossetti Poems 20
557–558). Although Christina claims “the highest functions of the world
are not open to both sexes” (Letters 2 158), she portrays the figures of
both mother and sister as equivalent to the apostolic priest.
Christina’s portrayal of the matrilineal community as a type of female
priesthood that transmits grace between women within the household is
her most significant intervention in the devotional writing of her mother
and sister. A precursor to “Goblin Market,” “The Maid of Sorrow,” is in
Frances’s Commonplace Book (34). This story diverges from Christina’s
later work by portraying the loss of female virtue as irreparable, even in
the face of sisterly intervention. The excerpt is designed to discourage
women from engaging in extra-marital sexual relations. Frances explains
her inclusion of the story in the album: “The following simple narration
speaks much instruction, and may be of use to parents and youth”
(Appendix 7). It seems likely that the excerpt was transcribed for the
 The Rossetti Women’s Life‐Writing 121
benefit of Frances’s female pupils and provided a moral lesson on the
imperative of female sexual propriety.
The story is told from the perspective of a “Gentleman in the medical
line” who is called to visit a female patient (ibid.). Upon arriving, he finds
“two young females,” one of whom is in “the agonies of death” (ibid.).
The healthy young woman attempts to convince her dying counterpart to
“take a bit of bread dipped in spirits,” an allusion to the Passover meal,
which symbolizes the redemption of the Jewish people and prefigures the
Eucharist (ibid.). The “maid of sorrow” declines, explaining that such
sustenance “could but contribute to prolong her misery” and abruptly
“expires” (ibid.). The story upholds the notion that the supplicant who
receives the Eucharist in a state of sin commits a grave act of sacrilege that
further damns their soul. It offers no redemption for the penitent ‘fallen
woman,’ denying her the ability to be justified either by her faith or her
reception of the sacraments. The inactivity of her female companion in-
dicates that sexual sins cause irreversible spiritual damage that cannot be
remediated by any member of the female community.
Christina stakes a significant intervention in writing concerning ‘fallen
women’ by portraying Lizzie as a female priest whose transmission of
sacramental grace reverses the damaging effects of the goblins’ assault
upon her sister. Prostitution, known as ‘the great social evil,’ reached its
crisis point in the 1850s when the Contagious Diseases Acts were en-
forced. During this period, sexologists like William Lecky maintained
that “pure” women did not experience sexual desire, while ‘fallen
women,’ as “eternal priestess[es] of humanity” exorcised “the degrada-
tion and sinfulness of man” from the domestic sphere (J.B. Bullen
56–57). In “Goblin Market,” Christina brings the pure and fallen
woman together as sisters who possess the ability to convey sacramental
grace to one another. The portrayal of the matrilineal community as
a receptacle of sacramental grace transcends the theological model
provided by Frances in “The Maid of Sorrow.”
Frances takes on the role of spiritual guide for her students and chil-
dren by including morally instructive writing in her Commonplace Book,
but such entries indicate that salvation cannot be accessed through the
female community. Its members must follow the example of their mo-
thers and sisters by maintaining blameless lives. Although Christina
upholds the precept of justification by faith alone, she indicates there is
no sin beyond the redemptive power of penitence. “Goblin Market”
portrays the sister as a type of female priest who enables her penitent
counterpart to become the recipient of sacramental grace. If we recall
that Maria upholds sacramental faith as the vehicle for purifying the
heart in The Rivulets, her appearance as a Christian priest in “Goblin
Market” underlines her importance as Christina’s spiritual role model.
Christina’s portrayal of the matrilineal community as a gateway to
salvation mirrors Louisa May Alcott’s depiction of the female community
122 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life Writing
as facilitating the spiritual and moral growth of each of its members in
Little Women. However, the March women attempt to expand their
sympathetic community into the outside world, while Christina upholds
the exclusivity of the matrilineal community in “Goblin Market.” Helena
Michie argues: “the temptation of the fruit is ... the temptation of dif-
ference” between sisters (34). I agree with Michie’s contention but do not
concur with her negative evaluation of Christina’s portrayal of sororal
identification in this poem, especially her claim that Christina’s “discourse
of sameness” undermines individuation between women (33–34). What
Michie defines as the “temptation of difference” is not the threat of
possessing a separate identity, it is the threat of cutting oneself off from the
sacramental communion facilitated by the matrilineal community (ibid.).
Lizzie and Laura are not the same person: their diverging responses to the
Goblins make this clear, but they are united in the sacramental redemption
facilitated by Lizzie’s act of self-sacrifice. Just as the three persons of the
Trinity remain distinct but are yet united as one divine entity, so the two
sisters possess separate identities that nevertheless come together as one
body when they partake in sacramental union. Time and again, Christina
portrays the sacramental vessel as female in nature, whatever her claims
about the higher function of an apostolic male priesthood.
Yet, the matrilineal community can only come into communion with
God through unification with the Christian ‘Body of Christ.’ Rossetti’s
Trinitarian poetics upholds a model of matrilineal identification that is
very close to the Alcott women’s model of a shared consciousness but
diverges in one crucial respect: the community’s assimilation with the
divine must be accessed through a priest-like medium. Frances Rossetti,
like the Creative Father, embodies a continuum of love that extends from
this world to the next, allowing her daughter to access a vision of hea-
venly salvation, while Maria Rossetti becomes the analogical vehicle that
enables her sister to witness the presence of the divine on earth. To access
the divine, one must willingly acknowledge the precedence of the ma-
trilineal community and enter into communion with it. Salvation is en-
abled by recognizing the sacredness of the maternal bond as the primary
means by which each individual accesses the love of God. The maternal
bond can be expanded outwards into a matrilineal network, but this is
an elected network: it cannot be built into the public sphere in the same
manner as the Alcott women’s shared consciousness.
Where the Alcott women believe an outward-facing disposition towards
the other can transform the structures of human relationships in society,
the Rossetti women insist upon the individual’s direct assimilation into the
left-handed community before they can enter the Kingdom of Heaven. At
the heart of these diverging conceptions of matrilineal communion is the
communities’ differing perceptions of divine grace. The Rossetti women
follow the Augustinian model of grace as the free and unmerited favor of
God evidenced by religious faith alone. Thus, if the mother is the primary
 The Rossetti Women’s Life‐Writing 123
medium of grace, she must be acknowledged as such: there is no room for
entering into a communion with the divine without first recognizing her
sacramental authority. In contrast, the Alcott women defer to a provi-
dential model of grace that relies on the implementation of good works; a
self-sacrificing disposition towards the other has the power to transform
the wider community’s experience of the divine. Unlike the Alcott sisters,
the Rossetti women cannot promote a maternal theology of lived religion
to the world at large; their redemptive community serves as a model that
others can choose to accept or reject. If society chooses to reject this model,
a theology of renunciation is merely accepting the material world as a
shadow of the world to come; it is not a means of restructuring society on
the values of the matrilineal community.
However, the theology of the Alcott and Rossetti women overlaps in
one crucial respect: the relations of the left-handed society are upheld
as a vehicle for accessing the divine. Within the left-handed societies of
both of these families, the identity of the individual is formulated through
unification with the other and it is through becoming one body that the
community as a whole is able to access a vision of the Kingdom of
Heaven. In the case of the Alcott women this Kingdom is first im-
plemented on earth; for the Rossetti women it is deferred to the
afterlife—but in both communities it finds its origins in the figure of the
mother. This divine mother is not restricted to the ‘private’ world of
the domestic sphere, for her authority can be identified in the private
writing of the Alcott and Rossetti sisters, and the public writing of Louisa
May Alcott and Christina Rossetti. Both Little Women and “Goblin
Market” are manifestos of the values of the matrilineal community and its
power to redeem each of its daughters, but Alcott’s and Rossetti’s
championing of the sympathetic and Trinitarian theologies of their mo-
thers is not limited to these texts. It can be identified throughout their
canonical works, which promote the left-handed society of the domestic
sphere as the foundation for female empowerment and social reform in the
public realm and the elevation of women in the world to come.

Notes
1 “I take exceptions at the exclusion of married women from the suffrage, for
who so apt as mothers … to protect the interests of themselves and their
offspring?” (Letters 2 158).
2 Frances Mary Lavinia Rossetti. Hodge-Podge; or Weekly Efforts. No. 2 RF
May 27th, 1843. “Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription”. The Rossetti
Archive. Web. 30 Dec 2020.
3 Rossetti, Frances Mary Lavinia. The Literary Diary; or, Complete Common-
Place Book. Box 12–18. Angeli-Dennis Collection, University of British
Columbia, Rare Books and Special Collections, Vancouver. Scanned copy
received from archivist. Email. 25th March, 2020. Subsequent citations to
this work will be made in parenthesis, using the format: “F. Rossetti
Commonplace Book,” accompanied by the date of entry and page number.
124 “Left-Handed Societies”: Women’s Life Writing
4 Frances Mary Lavinia Rossetti. Hodge-Podge; or Weekly Efforts. “Morning
Hymn for the tune of ‘Glory to Thee my God this night.’” ll.5-8. July 23rd,
1843 RF Paris. “Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription”. The Rossetti
Archive. Web. 30 Dec 2020.
5 See Marsh (Christina), “As William [Michael] wrote, despite a strong sense of
duty, she was naturally indolent, ‘often better pleased to be doing nothing than
anything’” (173).
6 See for instance, Greer’s “Introduction,” which claims that Christina“used the
aspirations of piety as a metaphor for her own frustrated sexuality” (x).
Likewise, Cora Kaplan reads the poem as “an exploration … of women’s
sexual fantasy that includes suggestions of masochism, homoeroticism, rape or
incest” (69), while Mary Wilson Carpenter argues that sisterhood is presented
as “a saving female homoerotic bond” (419).
7 In reference to Rossetti’s Eucharistic imagery, Dorothy Mermin writes: “we
find it hard to allow a nineteenth-century religious poet the conflation of
spiritual and erotic intensity that we accept without question in Crashaw or
Donne” (113). Marylu Hill contends that “the poem directly invokes the
Eucharist as both sacrifice and as regenerative antidote to the poison of mis-
placed desire” (462).
8 瀬名波栄潤 refers to Lizzie as a “female Christ figure” (16). Janet Galligani
Casey coincides with this characterization: “Rossetti feels that it is suffering
for the sake of others (and not sex) that makes one Christ-like” (74). Linda E.
Marshall sees both of the sisters as “together imitating mother Eve and
motherly Christ” (446).
Part II

“A Loving League of
Sisters”: Alcott and
Rossetti’s Promotion of
Christian Values through
the Ties of Sisterhood

In her 1883 biblical commentary, Letter and Spirit, Christina Rossetti

claimed the wife was incapable of experiencing a direct revelation of God
and implied she was spiritually inferior to the single woman:

She sees not face to face, but as it were in a glass darkly. Every thing,
and more than all every person, and most of all the one best beloved
person becomes her mirror wherein she beholds Christ and her
shrine wherein she serves Him … Her earthly love and obedience
express to her a mystery; she takes heed to reverence her husband, as
seeing Him Who is invisible; her children are the children whom
God has given her, the children whom she nurses for God. She sits
down in the lowest place, and is thankful there. (92–93)

Rossetti’s implicit challenge to the elevation of women as ‘relative

creatures’ has been well documented, but it is interesting to note the
paradox inherent in her demotion of the wife and her absolute eleva-
tion of the mother, especially when we consider the wife is discussed in
relation to “the children whom she nurses for God” (ibid.). As has been
previously observed, the mother attains her spiritual status through her
relationship with her children, who must first acknowledge the ma-
ternal bond as the primary source of human love, thereby creating a
familial Christian community that mirrors the Trinity’s reciprocal re-
lations. The husband, or father, is removed from Rossetti’s portrayal of
the mother, with the exception of the heavenly Father whom the mo-
ther emulates in her Trinitarian relations with her children. More im-
portantly, the mother’s most sacred maternal relationships are with her
daughters.
126 “A Loving League of Sisters”
If the husband’s removal facilitates the mother’s heavenly union with
Christ, then it stands to reason that the relations between sisters
transcend those of spouses, for they are the derivation of the life-giving
relationship between mother and child that simultaneously mirror the
complementarity of spousal relationships, while nonetheless allowing
the individual’s relationship with God to take precedence. Leila Silvana
May’s integral scholarship on sibling relations in nineteenth-century
British literature has traced “the relatively uncharted territory of the
horizontal rather than the vertical plane of the family axis, and on the
sister as the primary pole of the sibling relationship” to argue the sister
is “key to understanding much about the complicated and contra-
dictory conception of the nineteenth-century middle-class family” (13).
May claims the sister assumes an elevated role as the “sanctum sanc-
torum of moral virtue” who draws the brother back into the home (18).
I do not contest May’s thesis insofar as it appertains to the heterosexual
nuclear family, but in my estimation, she overlooks the presence of
exclusively female sisterly communities that separate themselves from
heterosexual ties.
Such a community can be identified in Christina Rossetti’s 1850
autobiographical novella, Maude, which portrays the psychological,
spiritual, and artistic development of its heroine as facilitated by a
community of elected sisters inspired by the emergence of the Tractarian
sisterhoods in the mid-nineteenth-century. Maude extends religious sis-
terhood to incorporate secular, as well as religious, women—all of
whom inspire an aesthetic and spiritual transformation in the literary
heroine. In this text, the sister is no longer a bridge between the public
and private spheres. Instead, she identifies with her sisterhood, and the
littleness it embodies, to achieve a revelation of Christ. As with the re-
lations of the Rossetti women, whose shared devotional practices fa-
cilitated a mystical communion with one another, Maude’s sharing of
the sacraments with her sisters enables her to unite herself with Christ
through experiencing the imitatio Christi. The imitatio Christi, or imi-
tation of Christ, centers on the belief that the individual who is fully
oriented towards Christ engages in a mystical union that reconfigures
their perception of the outside world and their relation to others.
Rossetti solves the problem of the sister’s enclosure in the domestic
sphere by immersing her in a self-contained sisterhood that facilitates
integration into the Godhead through the sisters’ mutual identification
with one another.
Louisa May Alcott shares Rossetti’s vision of attaining communion
with the divine through cultivating sisterly bonds but portrays these
bonds as outward-facing. Where Rossetti circumvents the sister’s role as
redemptive mediatrix by containing her in an exclusive religious com-
munity, Alcott creates a philanthropic sisterhood that is the foundation
of a utopian matrilineal society. Her 1873 bildungsroman, Work,
 “A Loving League of Sisters” 127
explores the psychological struggles of its heroine, Christie Devon, who
enters the public sphere in search of a meaningful vocation and is torn
between the desire to achieve artistic acclaim and the need to create an
intersubjective family. Christie overcomes her internal conflict by in-
stigating a universal sisterhood united in the pursuit of social reform,
engaging in a variety of charitable causes that reflect its intersectionality.
Through participating in the world of work, Christie’s sisterhood
transforms the public sphere: her sisters practice a theology of caritas
that alleviates social inequality through prioritizing the needs of the
impoverished and marginalized.
Christie’s redemptive theology is inspired by the person of Christ, as is
indicated by her name, but her imitation is of a practical, rather than a
spiritual, kind. Unlike Maude Foster, Christie remains focused on mi-
micking Christ’s evangelical mission and his self-sacrificial theology of
renunciation. Her outward-facing altruism allows her to reconceive her art
as the collaborative outpouring of a female community focused on using
artistic expression as a tool for combating social injustice. By contributing
to the fields of philanthropy, reform and work, Christie’s female commu-
nity is liberated to re-interpret male literary traditions, re-reading seminal
works of the male canon through the framework of its Christian beliefs.
Alcott’s vision of a reformed society founded on the bonds of sister-
hood is not unique among nineteenth-century American women. In her
work on female benevolence in nineteenth-century America, Lori D.
Ginzberg claims that charitable associations expanded Protestant wo-
men’s social responsibilities “beyond recognition” because women were
able to claim “a higher standard of virtue than that … exhibited by men”
(17). Ginzberg criticizes Evangelical sisterhoods for attempting to
transcend class and racial differences by claiming to act exclusively on
“shared sexual status” (21). This criticism can be leveled at Work, but
Alcott does not use sisterhood as a smokescreen to obscure difference;
difference is rather the foundation for sororal kinship and the pursuit
of social justice.
Robin Cadwallader’s scholarship on Christian caritas in Harding
Davis, Alcott, and Phelps’ work has alerted me to the affinities in Alcott
and Rossetti’s vision of sisterhood. Cadwallader explains caritas stems
from the Greek verbs for “love” and “charity”; it suggests that human
kinship derives from “common relationship[s] [with] God” (114).
Caritas is the proper outcome of the imitatio Christi because union with
Christ enables Christians to serve one another. The reciprocal relations
modelled in Alcott’s Work closely mirror the Trinitarian relationships
promoted in Rossetti’s Maude: within each of these fictional commu-
nities the individual gains a sense of self through dedicating themselves
to the needs of others.
Both Alcott’s and Rossetti’s fictional sisterhoods distance themselves
from male kinship and influence. Alcott excludes men from her final
128 “A Loving League of Sisters”
vision of active sisterhood, portraying the female community’s creation
of a collaborative work of art, and its formation of a shared school of
interpretation, as stemming from its engagement with women in the
public sphere. Rossetti takes this depiction of female kinship a step
further by creating a self-contained sisterly community that rejects the
ideology of individualism promoted by male artists. In both cases,
sisterhood achieves transcendence through dedicating itself to others,
promoting a theology of renunciation that is the heritage of the ma-
trilineal line. In the canonical works of Alcott and Rossetti, we witness
the implementation of the religious beliefs of the authors’ matrilineal
communities in their public works. Both Maude and Work present
the female artist as the collaborative creation of an outward-facing
sisterhood that proceeds from the divine figurehead of the mother.
4 We Are All Relative Creatures:
The Transformative Power of
Sisterhood in Rossetti’s Maude

When William Michael Rossetti published his sister’s autobiographical

novella, Maude, in 1896, two years after her death, he dismissed the
work as a “juvenile performance” on the first page of his Preface, as-
suring the reader he was “not under any misapprehension regarding the
degree of merit which it possess[ed]” (C. Rossetti Maude 18). The editor
associated the heroine’s spiritual conflict with her affiliation with the
Tractarian sisterhoods, which he regarded with suspicion as evidencing
her religious extremism:

Maude is made the subject of many unfavourable comments, from

herself and from her strict-minded authoress. The worst harm she
appears to have done is, that when she had written a good poem, she
felt it to be good.

[…]

If some readers opine that all this shows Christina Rossetti’s mind to
have been at that date overburdened with conscientious scruples of
the extreme … I share their opinion. One can trace in this tale that she
was already an adherent of the advanced High Church party in the
Anglican communion, including conventual sisterhoods. (ibid. 19)

Maude is an exploration of the heroine’s internal conflict and her at-

tempts to reconcile her artistic identity with her religious faith. Like
Christina Rossetti herself, the teenage protagonist experiences a psy-
chological breakdown that stems from her failure to live up to the high
standard of her religious beliefs. She eventually recovers by developing
a new mystical style of writing inspired by her friend’s, Magdalen Ellis,
decision to become a nun. The text has been the subject of increased
critical attention over the last 50 years but has never achieved public
acclaim: something that is undoubtedly linked to William Michael’s
discouraging Preface, as well as the text’s references to the religious
sisterhoods and their continuing association with religious extremism.
130 “A Loving League of Sisters”
It is easy for contemporary scholars to overlook the radical implica-
tions of the Anglican sisterhoods in the mid-nineteenth century.
Associated with the long-standing British suspicion of Catholicism,
dating back to the Reformation, and fueled, in part, by the furore sur-
rounding the 1829 Roman Catholic Relief Act providing Catholics with
the civil rights to vote and hold office, the sisterhoods were often held
in contempt due to the widely perceived “unnaturalness” of sexual ab-
stinence (D’Amico 47). At a time when marriage was perceived to be the
only vocation for women because of their status as ‘relative creatures,’
the religious sisterhoods offered a viable solution to the ‘surplus woman
problem’ that nevertheless undermined the very fabric of British society,
founded on the doctrine of separate spheres. They were met with sus-
picion because “there was an unsettling lack of male influence over
these religious female communities, which had a woman at their helm,
provokingly called a ‘Mother Superior’” (Roe Wonderland 258).
The radical status of religious sisterhoods in Victorian Britain bears
startling parallels with the political impact of religious sisterhoods
founded by medieval mystics, such as Teresa of Avila’s Discalced
Carmelites. The Tractarian sisterhoods freed Victorian women from
their status as ‘relative creatures.’ Medieval sisterhoods likewise offered
an alternative to marriage and motherhood: women were granted access
to an education ordinarily reserved for men, thereby elevating their so-
cial status, and investing them with spiritual authority. Lanzetta writes:
“Through church-sanctioned obedience, the transmission of their re-
ligious writings, formation of monastic houses … the development of
new spiritual lineages were fostered, giving voice to women’s religious,
social, and political concerns” (139).
Religious sisterhoods have always been radical in their feminist vision and
remain so today when the discourse surrounding relations between men and
women remains overwhelmingly sexual in nature. As Foucault argues, the
conflation of sexual freedom with personal liberation obscures the workings
of political power. In this particular case, the perversion associated with
celibacy merely reflects the values of a secular culture that conflates human
fulfillment exclusively with the body in the absence of a vision of a higher
power. Ironically, the thinly veiled disgust with which celibacy is now re-
garded resembles the discourse of perversity concerning alternative sex-
ualities in Victorian Britain. This discourse “made possible the formation
of a ‘reverse’ discourse” where “homosexuality began to speak in its own
behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or ‘naturality’ be acknowledged”
(Foucault 101). Similarly, the longstanding British suspicion of religious
life has historically compelled women to create their own vision of spiritual
power through creating self-contained, celibate sisterhoods.
As a unique literary curio, Maude enables us to understand Victorian
religious sisterhoods as part of a wider feminist project that endeavors to
reject women’s inferior sexual, social, and political status through
 We Are All Relative Creatures 131
affirming their spiritual authority. It offers important insights for the
study of celibate women’s vocations and religious sisterhoods today:
their feminist potential remains underestimated. The prevailing contempt
for women’s religious life is visible in Maude’s critical history. Gilbert
and Gubar claim: “the moral of this story is that the Maude in Christina
Rossetti—the ambitious, competitive, self-absorbed and self-assertive-
poet—must die, and be replaced by either the wife, the nun, or the kind
and useful spinster” (552). Palazzo goes so far as to argue that Maude
subtly undermines Tractarianism because it “expos[es] the extremism of
a religious position that denies the beauty of the natural world or of
human efforts to reproduce it” (11), while Showalter interprets
Christina’s allegiance with religious sisterhoods as a consequence of her
exclusion from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the lack of a defined
female literary tradition from which to write (Maude xii). D’Amico re-
sists all of these readings, making the important point that they “present
[Christina’s] faith more as a device for coping with reality than the
reality it was for her” and that focusing on the negative connotations
of sexual renunciation ignores the fact that: “for [Christina], controlling
bodily and worldly appetites was an important stage in the quest for
holiness” (62).
The renunciation of bodily and worldly appetites is also an important
stage in the mystical practice of the imitatio Christi.1 The imitatio Christi
is not centered on a literal emulation of Christ but rather on the
restoration of human identity as created in God’s image. Self-interest is
relinquished to enable the supplicant to attain a Christlike nature:

Christ, as the teacher of perfect humility, shows us that it is in the

humbling of self that the height of imitation lies—not as passive
recognition or acceptance of oppression—but that self-humbling
that leads to truth and the experiential knowledge of one’s own
reality. (Ilia Delio Simply Bonaventure 118)

The incarnate person of Christ is a radical exemplar in that, even though

he is entitled to seek power and authority over humankind, he “enter[s]
into suffering humanity … and has loved [humanity] precisely in and
through this suffering” (121). In short, the pain of renunciation is the
pain one experiences when reorienting oneself towards others to obtain a
truly intersubjective outlook.
True poverty of spirit radically requires all humanity, both men and
women, to recognize their status as “relative creatures’—relative to both
one another and to God who has created humankind ex nihilo (out of
nothing) (118–119). Consequently, it is only through relinquishing her
individualistic conception of the poet’s role, a role that Maude initially
places above her religious faith, that she is able to paradoxically access
the divine through her verse. By recognizing she is subject to God’s will,
132 “A Loving League of Sisters”
rather than the will of a husband or brother, Maude achieves the artistic
precedence she seeks throughout the text.
This chapter is called “We are all relative creatures” because it de-
monstrates how Maude attains empowerment through embracing a
theology of renunciation that places all individuals on an equal footing.
Her religious faith enables her to envision a future where artists receive
inspiration through dedicating themselves to receiving visions of God.
Contrary to predominant critical readings of this text, religious faith is
presented as the means by which the female artist achieves preeminence
over her male contemporaries, as well as the source of the sisterly
community’s elevation over the male-dominated public sphere. Maude’s
elected sisterhood is notable for embodying a variety of female voca-
tions, consisting of the religious life personified by Sr Magdalen, the
married life represented by Maude’s cousin, Mary Clifton, and the ar-
tistic vocation embodied by Maude and her doppelganger, Agnes
Clifton, Mary’s sister. Maude is a radical text in that it presents not only
one but two alternatives to married life for women, while upholding
universal sisterhood as the means by which women are able to form
independent identities and discern their callings. Maude’s elected sis-
terhood is championed as the foundational community for the devel-
opment of both the heroine and her friends, while their shared religious
faith is presented as underpinning sororal bonds.
This chapter will examine Maude’s spiritual conflict and her subsequent
decision to reject an ideology of individualism. Maude learns to redirect
her verses towards the glorification of God, thereby conflating her poetic
vocation with her Christian beliefs. The examples provided by her elected
sisters, who use their creative gifts to serve the Church, allow Maude to
rededicate her poetry to her religious faith. Maude relinquishes her so-
lipsistic preoccupation with self-expression by identifying herself with
Christ through experiencing the imitatio Christi. Maude’s conformity with
the person of Christ is made manifest through the stigmatic wound in her
side. What might initially appear as a symbol of suffering enhances
Maude’s transfiguration as a heroine who becomes the image of God
through prayerful contemplation. Mirroring the medieval female mystics,
Maude becomes united with the crucified Christ through a painful rebirth
that is the product of her reorientation towards God. Although the text
ends with her death, she is resurrected in the figure of her spiritual sister,
Agnes, a truly Christic person who preserves Maude’s devotional verses
for succeeding generations of sisters.

“I am Sick of Display and Poetry and Acting”:

The Temptation of Originality
The conflict Maude experiences between her religious faith and poetic
vocation is rooted in her anxiety regarding her lack of humility as an
 We Are All Relative Creatures 133
artist. Although William Michael claims “the worst harm Maude ap-
pears to have done is that when she had written a good poem, she knew
it to be good” (C. Rossetti Maude 19), her error can be more accurately
located in the fact that she allows her belief in the quality of her verse to
set herself apart from others. As such, she is obstructed from entering
into a true union with Christ because she lacks spiritual humility. Indeed,
while she feigns modesty by refusing to read her verse aloud because she
cannot “think of monopolising everyone’s attention” (33), she never-
theless deliberately suggests a Bouts rimes competition when requested
to propose a party-game, despite the fact that her companions are clearly
unenthusiastic about her proposal (24). The Bouts rimes competition
references a pastime enjoyed by the Rossetti siblings where competitors
were given a pre-prepared set of rhymes, which were then used to
compose an original sonnet. Maude claims she “has nothing else to
propose” for the entertainment but subsequently suggests “game after
game” when she has successfully won the competition (24–25).
Maude’s anxieties concerning the public recitation of her verses recalls
Rossetti’s reservations regarding her brothers’ suggestion she read her
poetry aloud during the meetings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,
which she looked upon as “display … the sort of thing she abhor[red]”
(qtd. in Doughty 45). Maude accedes to the temptation to ‘display’
herself under the cover of providing entertainment, but her hypocrisy
implies that Rossetti regarded the artistic culture of the Pre-Raphaelites
as centered on a competitiveness and self-assertion that was at odds with
her religious beliefs. In reference to her love of adulation, Maude
later observes: “It is horrible to feel such a hypocrite as I do” (35). Her
conflict comes to a head when she decides to abstain from receiving
communion on Christmas Day because she knows she is “not trying” to
“avoid putting [herself] forward and displaying [her] verses” (35). Using
the identical language of ‘display’ that Christina herself used to avoid
associating with the Pre-Raphaelites, Maude makes it clear that such
self-interestedness compromises her spiritual welfare. Her cousin, Agnes,
observes that Maude is torn between the conflicting demands of her
religious faith and her desire to indulge in the individualistic aspirations
of a celebrated artist: “You cannot mean that for the present you
will indulge vanity and display; that you will court admiration and ap-
plause, that you will take your fill of pleasure until … death strips you of
temptation and sin altogether” (36).
Maude’s poetry suggests it is her identity as an artist that obstructs her
relationship with God, for it is an expression of her psychomachia—a
state of being that traps the subject between two modes of conceiving the
world and interpreting reality. Surrounded by an “old chaos of sta-
tionary,” Agnes finds Maude looking “pale, languid, almost in pain”
(34). One of the poems Maude shares with Agnes articulates her sense
of dissociation with religious worship (34–35), for while she listens to
134 “A Loving League of Sisters”
“the holy antheming” (1) of “white-robed men and boys” (4), she asks
herself “with a sad questioning: / What lov’st thou here?” (5–6).
It is notable that Maude finds herself unable to relate to the artistic
elements of the church service: she does not describe a sense of frustration
in prayer, or an inability to achieve a revelation of God. Rather, she
cannot access or participate in the beauty of the liturgy. This is significant
because liturgy, as a form of ritual directed towards divine communion,
requires the suppliant to relinquish individuality, in order to partake in
a preordained expression of worship shared in common with the church
community. As a crucible of theatrical performance, visual art, and mu-
sical expression, liturgy is a type of total art experienced as a reflection
of God’s image, not as a vehicle for self-expression. Maude identifies her
inability to share in the liturgy with her individualism: “Vanity enters
with thee, and thy love/Soars not to heaven, but grovelleth below”
(10–11). Maude’s art cannot participate in the divine outpouring of the
Church because she uses it to distinguish herself against others.
The rejection of originality was central to Tractarian poetics; John
Keble (1792–1866) defined the purpose of poetry as “awakening …
some moral or religious feeling, not by direct instruction … but by way
of association” (qtd. in G.B. Tennyson 25). Eschewing the celebration of
individualism, Keble claimed that poetry should forego originality, in
order to tap into the wider universality of human experience—
redirecting that experience towards the divine (ibid.). Rossetti herself
adhered to this sentiment, for in her 1881 theological work, Called to be
Saints, she claimed that, “No graver slur could attach to my book than
would be a reputation for prevalent originality” (xvii). Maude’s dis-
association with church liturgy reflects her resistance to integrating
herself into the artistic expression of the church community.
At this moment, Maude is torn between the model of “moral and
religious feeling” defined by Tractarianism as the object of communal
worship, and the paradigm of artistic individualism upheld by the
Romantic tradition (G.B. Tennyson 25). She is unable to reject the
promise of artistic adulation, but her conscience nevertheless insists that
the pursuit of idiosyncrasy is futile. Indeed, the first poem she shares
with Agnes makes the radical claim “there is nothing new under the sun”
(C. Rossetti Maude 11), but Maude cannot overcome the fallacious
belief that she might prove the exception to the rule. When she comes
across her cousins embroidering a lectern cover for their church, she is
immediately able to read the typological symbolism of the piece: “There
is the Cross and the Crown of Thorns; and those must be the keys of
S. Peter, with, of course, the sword of S. Paul” but is nevertheless un-
willing to participate in the sisters’ collaborative artistic practice:
“I should not do it well enough, and have no time to learn” (27).
However, the real reason for Maude’s reluctance to participate is that
she would receive no recognition for her contribution. The lectern cover
 We Are All Relative Creatures 135
fits a utilitarian purpose in serving the church community: no one will
enquire as to its creator and no single person will take credit for its
invention. Yet, Maude is drawn to the project despite her refusal to help,
for she subsequently soliloquizes: “How I envy you … who live in the
country, and are exactly what you appear, and never wish for what
you do not possess. I am sick of display and poetry and acting” (ibid.).
Maude’s inauthenticity and covetousness is aligned with her identity as a
poet. Agnes, whose relationship with Maude is founded on their shared
religious faith, claims: “You do not act … I never knew a more sincere
person” (ibid.). Agnes does not realize Maude is referring to her artistic
vanity: the real reason behind her refusal to participate in her cousins’
devotional practice.
Ironically, Maude’s pursuit of individualism and originality does not
produce verse of aesthetic worth, for her early work is both affected and
self-interested. In the opening scene of the novella, the 19-year-old Rossetti
presents Maude as something of a teenage poseuse who makes a deliberate
show of “slipping out of sight some scrawled paper” when her mother,
whom she intentionally ignores, enters the room (20). Mrs. Foster, “ac-
customed to inattention,” asks her daughter a series of “vain questions”
regarding her health and state of mind, only to receive a series of evasive
answers from “one who without telling lies was determined not to tell
the truth” (ibid.). Regarding her mother as an “interruption” to her
weighty poetic occupation, Maude proceeds to compose a poem that be-
gins “Yes, I too could face death and never shrink: / But it is harder to bear
hated life,” only to “yawn,” “lean back in her chair,” and “wonder how
she should fill up the time until dinner” (ibid.). The attention that Maude
draws to herself by ensuring that the secrecy surrounding her compositions
is universally known (she makes a performance of hiding them from her
mother and refuses to provide her friends with copies of the Bouts rimes
verses she previously forced upon them) suggests she enjoys the mystique
surrounding her poetic identity in a decidedly immature manner.
Maude can only attain maturity as a poet through realizing that her
vocation, as a Christian writer, is to reflect God’s image. Therefore, any
attempt at self-aggrandizement must appear ludicrous when placed
against the collective expression of the Church. Maude is not required to
let go of her identity but rather to recognize it as rooted in her creaturely
nature as image of God. It is for this reason that the process of the
imitatio Christi is integral to her poetic transformation. Christ, as in-
carnate Son of God, is defined as the “Word of God.” Franciscan
theology identifies the “Word of God” as “the sum total of the infinite
divine ideas” (Delio Simply Bonaventure 84), referring back to the
theory of a proto-Indo-European language that preceded the division
of matris lingua along the lines of national boundary. Within this
Christian theorization of linguistics, the story of the Tower of Babel in
Genesis 11:1-9 represents the degeneration of verbal communication
136 “A Loving League of Sisters”
following the fall. Significantly, this occurs after humanity strives for
equality with God through attempting to build a city and tower tall
enough to reach heaven.
The hubris of humanity in attempting to create an architectural work of
art that equals the creative outpouring of God is rectified by Christ as
the incarnate “Word” who receives “the self-gift of God into [his] inner
depth” as the “exemplary image” of God (64). Thus, the human person
who is truly united with Christ is the ultimate realization of the expression
of the Word in the world, fulfilling their divine creative potential and
thereby enabling “all of material and spiritual reality (which are summed
up in the human person) to attain a personal relationship with God”
(ibid.). Significantly, unification with the incarnate Christ permanently
alters one’s experience of reality, for reality is realigned when one becomes
a creative instrument. If Maude is to overcome her sense of artistic su-
periority, she must first become united with Christ as the Word of
God who encapsulates “the congruity between the Word and the world,”
revealing all created phenomena as “a little word of God” (ibid.).
Consequently, Maude is excluded from liturgical participation until she
realigns her verse to become an expression of both the presence of
the Word as it lives within her and a link to the intersubjective Christian
community that surrounds her. She is only able to achieve this transfor-
mation through her participation in Christian sisterhood.

“Let Us Wait the End in Peace”: The Spiritual

Transformation of Maude’s Poetry
It is the self-denying decision of one of Maude’s friends, Magdalen Ellis,
to enter the Sisterhood of Mercy that inspires the transformation of
Maude’s poetry. Magdalen’s decision to renounce the expression of her
selfhood, in order to aspire to a revelation of God inspires Maude
to write out of the religious community in which she finds herself.
Following the news of Magdalen’s consecration, Maude chastises her
cousin Mary for referring to Magdalen under the disparaging epithet of
“poor Magdalen,” sparking a re-enactment of the debate surrounding
the religious sisterhoods raging at the time. Mary retorts:

Surely you would not want such a life … They have not proper
clothes on their beds, and never go without a thick veil, which must
half blind them. All day long they are at prayers, or teaching
children, or attending the sick, or making poor things, or something.
Is that to your taste? (C. Rossetti Maude 29)

Mary’s contempt for the religious sisterhoods is rooted in their uni-

formity and lack of individuation. In her eyes, the outward-facing nature
of the community, which requires each individual to reorient their
 We Are All Relative Creatures 137
attention toward prayer, teaching, or charitable works, belittles their
human dignity by depriving them of an identity. One detects the echo of
William Michael’s disparagement of the ‘extremity’ of Anglican religious
practice and the underlying assumption that grounding one’s identity in
the female community leads to a loss of selfhood. Maude rejects this
secular outlook for its rigid partiality and lack of objectivity: “You
cannot imagine me either fit or inclined for such a life; still, I can perceive
that those are very happy who are” (ibid.).
Maude’s critique of Mary is founded on the latter’s tendency to regard
the world exclusively through her subjective experience, thereby dis-
regarding the validity of alternate modes of self-creation, especially those
generated through participation in shared religious frameworks.
Contrastingly, Maude’s psychological struggle is rooted in her need to
reconcile two seemingly dichotomous aspects of her character: the re-
ligious and community-oriented, and the artistic and self-expressive. She
notifies her cousins of her feelings of guilt concerning her rejection of her
pastor’s suggestion she engage in charitable work on account of her
health. Her appreciation of the value of this ministry leads her to doubt
the moral rightness of turning down such work, even though she is not
suited to it: “I have regretted it since though: yet I don’t fancy I ever
could have talked to the poor people or done the slightest good” (ibid.).
Maude’s ministry, however, lies in her verse, which acts as a point of
intersection between religious and secular ways of life, uniting the
women around her in a common aspiration towards a revelation of God.
Magdalen’s decision to enter the convent inspires Maude to not only lift
her ban on copying her verses into her friends’ commonplace albums but
to attempt a new poetic style through seeking to compose something that
is “admissible even within Convent walls” (ibid.). Like Maude’s first
composition, the poem for Magdalen’s album (30–31) is centered on a
desire for death: a preoccupation that runs throughout the text. Yet, on
this occasion Maude does not portray the desire for death as the product
of melodramatic and affected world-weariness but instead presents death
as the culmination of the natural processes of creation, which gradually
evolve towards unification with the risen Christ. She reorients the poet’s
affiliation with nature towards a vision of paradise through consciously
resisting the generic conventions of her forebears and reconfiguring her
textual references towards scripture.
Maude disrupts the pastoral genre’s positioning of serenity and
tranquility in the natural world by affiliating its tropes with stagnation
and cliché, thereby creating a sense of cognitive dissonance in the minds
of readers whose generic expectations are undermined. The poem
opens: “Sweet sweet sound of distant waters falling / On a parched and
thirsty plain” (1–2), a picturesque description whose literal allusions of
satiation and abundance are destabilized by the disruptive verbal sibi-
lance and opening spondaic foot, which pushes against the regular
138 “A Loving League of Sisters”
iambic pentameter of the proceeding line. As the poem unfolds, the
poet distances herself from the associations of such imagery with
human fulfillment by forming an alternative set of images that resist the
pastoral scene she has created. Each stanza is divided into two parts:
the first sestet, in iambic pentameter, conforms to the pastoral tradi-
tion, while the subsequent sestet deploys iambic tetrameter and re-
iterates an opposing interpretation of the surrounding world: “Of a
much more priceless worth/Is the old, brown, common earth” (11–12).
Maude deliberately contrasts the worldly outlook of her previous
writing with the Christian framework of interpretation embraced by Sr
Magdalen.
Maude’s emphasis on the afterlife is made explicit in the second half of
the poem when she turns from didactic description to instructive diction,
encouraging the reader to share her typological interpretation of nature.
The reader is directed to “See the ancient pine that stands the firmer/For
the storm-shock that it bore” and “the moon her silver chalice filling/
With light from the great sun’s store” (27–30). Maude’s readership is
encouraged to look through the image to the object of its symbolic
foreshadowing. Of particular significance is the rendering of the moon as
a “chalice” for the sun (ibid.). The chalice is the crucible for the
Eucharistic blood of Christ and points the readers towards a figurative
reading of the image of the sun as homophonic wordplay (Christ as ‘Son
of God’). Just as the moon sources her light from the sun, so is the
created world dependent on the incarnate Son for its life. The stereo-
typical images of the pastoral genre are gradually replaced with Christian
symbolism, guiding the reader towards a transition between pastoral and
Christian modes of perception, a transition the heroine herself is also
currently undergoing.
This journey towards Christological centrality is foregrounded in the
final stanza when the poet departs from natural imagery to command the
reader to “Let us wait the end in peace” and “see our lamps are lighted”
because “the judge is at the door” (37–39 43). Maude replaces natural
imagery with scriptural references, alluding to the “Parable of Ten
Virgins” from Matthew 24, which describes the journey of ten virgins to
meet their bridegroom in the middle of night. The five wise virgins bring
all the necessary supplies for their lamps, while five foolish virgins forget
their oil. The bridegroom arrives at midnight, but the five foolish virgins
are unable to go out to meet him and are later barred from the wedding
feast. Christ relates the parable to the Kingdom of Heaven, emphasizing
the need of his followers to prioritize their relationships with God above
the material concerns of daily life. By drawing an analogy between the
individual’s redemption and the relationship between the bridegroom
and his brides, Christ implies the individual’s relationship with God
takes the place of the romantic union as the preeminent relationship in
the life of a Christian. Maude’s decision to relate the poem’s denouement
 We Are All Relative Creatures 139
to this parable heightens her earlier rejection of the pleasures and beauty
of the natural world, in favor of unification with Christ. Through ad-
dressing the female audience of a commonplace album, Maude implies
that communion with Christ should remain at the heart of her elected
sisterhood.
The “Parable of Ten Virgins” possesses a special significance in
Christina’s understanding of sisterhood because it is referenced in a
poem, “Evening Hymn,” by John Samuel Bewley Monsell, which ap-
pears in the commonplace album of Christina’s cousin, Isabella
Pietrocola-Rossetti.2 This album was shared with all the women of the
extended Rossetti family and Monsell’s poem is referenced in Christina’s
devotional poem, “Behold the Bridegroom Cometh” (C. Rossetti Poems
419). It is significant that Maude’s first poetic entry into one of her
friend’s commonplace albums, an act that has previously been re-
nounced, references the wider literary community of the Rossetti
women, and its emphasis on devotional life-writing. If Maude’s change
of poetic style is precipitated by her affiliation with the conventual sis-
terhoods, it is also reinforced by Christina’s reference to her allegiance
with the literary community of the extended Rossetti sisterhood, as well
as her sister, Maria’s, religious vocation as a nun. The original parable’s
allegorical machinery is significant in its implication that the ‘wise vir-
gins’ who receive the bridegroom are, in fact, ‘brides of Christ’—a term
colloquially used to refer to female religious. By identifying Maude with
Sr Magdalen, and herself with the Rossetti sisterhood, Christina implies
the elected sisterhoods of both the text and its autobiographical ex-
emplar share a common quest for redemption that is affiliated with the
religious sisterhoods of the period.
The gradual transition of Maude’s poetic style that begins with
Magdalen’s commonplace album outlines her reorientation towards a
Christocentric manner of viewing the world. Maude must recognize that
creation only achieves its union with the divine through the figure of
Christ. The Bonaventurian approach to the imitatio Christi contends
that the incarnation “completes creation” because “Christ and the world
are not accidentally connected but intrinsically connected” and that the
“order of creation” reaches its “highpoint” in the perfection of Christ
(Delio Simply Bonaventure 90–91). As the “fulfilment of the potential
that lies at the heart of creation,” Christ must be the “goal to which
creation is directed” (91). Maude’s emphasis on the futility of a pan-
theistic approach to nature therefore belies her Christological outlook.
This being so, the reader might reasonably ask why Maude’s depiction of
nature is bereft of transcendence. Ilio Delio, a leading specialist on the
Franciscan spirituality of the imitatio, argues that despite his rarefied
view of the incarnation, Bonaventure understood that “the fulfilment of
the created world remains incomplete” because “the problem of an
incomplete universe lies not in Christ but in the human person” (94).
140 “A Loving League of Sisters”
If the universe is to be redeemed by the incarnation, it is necessary
that the human person becomes united with Christ: “Christ is not only
the point of perfection but he is the model and image to which the
human person, who is called to spiritual perfection, is to be formed”
(ibid.). Paradoxically, it is only through embracing the sacrifice of
Christ’s death that humanity can effect a transfiguration of the world
around them. Delio argues that “To be the body of Christ is … a flesh
and blood reality” (Franciscan Prayer 154), for it is in Christ’s will-
ingness to sacrifice himself for the world that the world is redeemed.
The Christian who embraces the imitatio must therefore be willing to
sacrifice themselves in imitation of Christ. This does not mean literally
dying for others but instead requires the individual to place their needs
below those of the surrounding world. St Francis was not a martyr, but
he received the stigmata as a sign of his spiritual martyrdom, both for
others and for the natural world. Maude’s portrayal of a fallen world
that is transfigured by death is a precursor for the transfiguration she
herself will later experience through her mystical participation in the
imitatio Christi.

“She Had Been Overturned”: Maude’s Experience of the

imitatio Christi and Its Impact on Her Verse
Maude’s mystical participation in Christ’s passion is the final resolution
of her struggle to reform her verse and find a Christian vocation in the
elected sisterhood surrounding her. Significantly, the fatal cab accident
that precipitates her stigmatic wound is the consequence of the news of
her cousin, Mary’s, wedding. Mary’s wedding and Sr Magdalen’s con-
secration occasion a crisis in Maude’s identity that is only resolved
through her mystical unification with Christ. Maude is an unconven-
tional woman who does not fit into any prescribed social role: she is both
devoutly religious and a stridently independent artist. It is only through
total integration in Christ that Maude reconciles the differing aspects of
her identity.
Maude departs from home to attend Mary’s wedding immediately
after receiving Agnes’s invitation and is instantaneously precipitated
into her mystical passion in what feels like a moment of divine
intervention:

At length … the tardy preparations were completed, and Maude …

stepped into a cab….

Half an hour had not elapsed when another cab drove up to the
door; and out of it Maude was lifted perfectly insensible. She had
been overturned; and, though no limb was broken, had neither
stirred nor spoken since the accident. (C. Rossetti Maude 40)
 We Are All Relative Creatures 141
Maude’s injuries mirror those of the crucified Christ, for although “no
limb [is] broken” she subsequently confides in Agnes: “My side is
dreadfully hurt; I looked at it this morning for the first time, but hope
never again to see so shocking a sight” (ibid.). The crucified Christ is
similarly wounded in the side: a fact that is interpreted in John 19:36 as a
fulfillment of the words of Psalm 34:20, “He keepeth all his bones: not
one of them is broken.” Maude’s passion forces her to reorient her
identity towards a Christic understanding of the self, for she had pre-
viously refused to receive the Eucharist, the sacrament that would enable
her to achieve physical union with Christ on earth (35). At the opening
of the text, Maude is unable to relinquish the individualistic poetic
identity she has crafted for herself and refuses to enter into the mystery of
the incarnation “on the eve of the feast celebrating the incarnation
of God in human form” (Roden 70), but her mystical passion allows
her to receive communion on Easter Sunday. Maude’s final reconcilia-
tion with the Eucharistic sacrament implies that her mystical participa-
tion in Christ’s death allows her to become a recipient of the redemption
effected by his resurrection.
Maude’s experience of Christ’s passion inspires a further transfor-
mation in her verse, which rejects female vanity in favor of practicing the
imitatio Christi. Following her cab accident, Maude sends a triptych of
poems, “Three Nuns,” to Agnes, presumably in the hope they will be
circulated among the elected sisterhood. In an accompanying letter she
explains that the poems’ protagonists are based on herself, Mary, and
Sr Magdalen. The triptych consists of three monologues revealing the
interior lives of each protagonist. Like Maude, the first nun expresses a
world-weariness and inability to find a meaningful purpose in life. Her
decision to seclude herself from the world is an attempt to avoid the
aimlessness of her existence. Subverting the words of the wicked step-
mother from “Snow White,” the first nun endeavors to blot out her
vanity by using the monastic cell as an escape from the world: “Shadow,
shadow on the wall / Spread thy shelter over me” (ll.1–2 41). However,
her request is undercut by her reference to her shadow: a type of re-
flection that is here deployed for the purpose of self-effacement. The nun
shares Maude’s inability to attain the humility to which she aspires. She
also partakes in a desire for death, instructing the shadow to: “Be my
stainless winding sheet,/Buried before I am dead” (ll.10–11 41). Her
entry into the convent signifies spiritual dormancy: she attempts to as-
sume an attitude of death because she is unable to reconcile her spiritual
desires to the world.
The second nun is a thinly veiled representation of Maude’s cousin,
Mary, who disparages the religious sisterhoods and abruptly vanishes
from the text shortly after her marriage. She resembles Mary in her ob-
sessive preoccupation with her love for a man. The poem opens with the
confrontational address: “I loved him, yes, where was the sin?” (l.1 43).
142 “A Loving League of Sisters”
Both provocative and defensive, this opening makes it clear that the nun is
determined to define herself in opposition to the expectations of the
monastic community. She echoes Mary’s cynicism regarding the purpose
of religious sisterhoods, fanatically reiterating the centrality of romantic
love as the most important facet of a woman’s existence.
Susan Casteras has noted that “the theme of religious vows taken as a
deliberate and repentant denial of earthly affections” was a common
preoccupation of literary and artistic depictions of nuns throughout the
nineteenth century (173). Indeed, Rossetti herself frequently deployed this
trope in such poems as “A Convent Threshhold” (55), “The Novice”
(671) and “Soeur Louise De La Misericorde” (327). In raising and dis-
regarding this trope as an inadequate expression of the religious life,
Rossetti underlines Maude’s growth as a writer. Maude now rejects the
conventions of popular literature to create a nuanced representation of
the monastic community, thereby signaling her departure from the af-
fected conventionality of her earlier verse. Her depiction of the second nun
exposes the societal obsession with romantic love as obstructing both the
intersubjective relations between women and the suppliant’s vision of
Christ. The individual is only able to imitate Christ through regarding him
as spiritual beloved. Imitation is attained through prayerful contemplation
of the crucified Christ, which enables a “deepening of love in union with
God” (Delio Simply Bonaventure 148).
Rossetti champions the imitatio Christi as the proper means of at-
taining a vision of Christ in her final monologue, which synthesizes the
theology of renunciation expressed by the first nun with the second nun’s
desire to attain personal fulfillment. In contrast to her fellow sisters, the
third nun creates a vision of paradise unimpeded by worldly attach-
ments. She transforms the objects of the material world into platonic
shadows of the world to come:

I will not look upon a rose

Though it is fair to see
The flowers planted in Paradise
Are budding now for me. (43–46 46)

Diverging from her fellow sisters, the third nun fashions an identity
defined by her heavenly aspirations, rejecting the societal roles of
“daughter, sister, wife” (72 46) to take on a new identity of “Spirit
and Bride” of Christ (84 47). She is the personification of the sister-
hood’s ultimate spiritual goal: total integration with the person of
Christ. As such, she embodies a psychic wholeness that evades the
other two protagonists who are caught in a conflict between earthly
and spiritual desire.
Maude’s elevation of the figure of Sr Magdalen, who is associated
with the third nun, should not be viewed as an authorial tool for
 We Are All Relative Creatures 143
promoting the religious life above a poetic vocation. This, in itself,
would be undermined by the fact that the portrayal of Sr Magdalen
occurs within a poem. The three protagonists are all ostensibly ‘nuns,’
but the first two are not fitted for the religious life. The third nun’s
spiritual superiority is located in her total immersion in the person of
Christ. It is possible that the third nun and St Magdalen are fictional
renderings of Maria Rossetti, who became a Tractarian sister in 1873.
The Pre-Raphaelite painter, Charles Allston Collins, used Maria as his
model for the 1851 oil painting, Convent Thoughts, which portrays the
subject’s contemplation of the passion as allowing her to transcend her
immersion in nature and her romantic attachments. The painting de-
picts a postulant contemplating a passion flower in an iridescent walled
garden that is a trope for her virginal chastity. It is notable for its
Pre-Raphaelite realism, which can be identified in its detailed rendering
of flora and fauna.
However, in a departure from the Pre-Raphaelite ‘truth to nature,’
the subject’s spiritual meditation allows her to transcend the scene, and
she is transfixed by the object of her devotion. This is made explicit by
the inscription on the frame, taken from Psalm 113:5: “I meditate on all
thy work; I contemplate on the work of Thy hands.” In line with the
Rossetti women’s mystical Tractarian theology, the postulant views the
objects of the natural world as reflections of the glory of God. This
painting stands out among depictions of religious sisters for portraying
the postulant’s desire to enter into religious life as the fruit of her
prayerful contemplation, and not of thwarted love.
Collins’ unusually respectful portrayal is notable because he romanti-
cally pursued his model but was rejected—perhaps on account of her
discernment of the religious life. Collins’ elevation of his subject’s devo-
tional contemplation indicates that, like the third nun, Maria’s religious
faith was harmoniously integrated into her identity. Indeed, William
Michael commented on this aspect of Maria identity as a woman of faith,
writing that Maria become “serenely or even exuberantly happy” after her
religious conversion, while Christina developed “an awful sense of un-
worthiness, shadowed by an awful uncertainty” that can be likened to
Maude’s spiritual struggles (qtd. in Marsh Christina 14).
Throughout her life, Christina looked upon her sister as a spiritual role
model, and Sr Magdalen’s pivotal role in inspiring the reformation of
Maude’s verse perhaps reflects the real-life role Maria played as
Christina’s spiritual mentor. Maria’s decision to put aside her prospects
as a Dante scholar to pursue a religious vocation would explain Sr
Magdalen’s consternation concerning Maude’s decision to reject the
religious life in favor of a poetic vocation. Maude’s championing of Sr
Magdalen’s religious devotion through the medium of her verse suggests
that her vocation is to promote the intersubjective values of the sister-
hood, and its dedication to Christ, as a female poet.
144 “A Loving League of Sisters”
“Amen for Us All”: The Trinitarian Relationships
of Sisters
Ultimately, it is Maude’s contact with her sisterhood that facilitates her
immersion in the imitatio Christi, as well as the transformation of her
poetry. By representing three varying levels of spiritual insight, “Three
Nuns” implies that the object of the sisterhood is to bring individuals
together with the view of compensating for each other’s deficiencies. The
significance of the number three in the triptych indicates that union
between sisters achieves a spiritual wholeness and unity that can be li-
kened to the Trinity. The triptych passes through varying levels of
spiritual enlightenment, culminating with the figure of Sr Magdalen; it
presents the inter-relational aspects of sisterhood as the prototype for the
individual’s gradual integration into the Trinity, and the person of Christ
in particular.
The imitatio Christi positions Christ as the relational Second Person
who transmits the intersubjective relations of the Trinity into creation.
The Father is self-diffusive goodness who gives himself entirely to the
Son, thereby enabling the Son to radiate the Father’s love throughout
creation. Thus, just as Frances Rossetti as mother is conflated with the
primeval origin of the Father, so is Sr Magdalen also identified with the
Father, for she enables Maude to achieve mystical communion with
the Son. The function of the Son in relation to the Father is, of course,
as ‘Word’ of the Father. Bonaventure deliberately used “the analogy of
language” to help his readers understand the significance of the Son’s
title as “Word” (Delio Simply Bonaventure 46). The Father is asso-
ciated with the “mental word” or originating thought, while the Son is
the “causal Word” who brings the thought into being (ibid.). It is im-
perative that Maude retain her identity as poetess and mouthpiece of
her spiritual Mother and mentor, Sr Magdalen, because she transmits
the inter-relational values of the sisterhood, as the earthly embodiment
of the Trinity, into the outside world. The reformation of Maude’s
verse, as witnessed by the reader, enables her to conflate her poet’s
vision with the Word of God, manifested in the Son, thereby divesting
her poetry of all traces of individualism. Sr Magdalen, proxy of the
Father, ensures Maude’s unification with the Son by means of the
imitatio Christi, so that she is able to achieve a final purification of
her verses.
Nevertheless, the problem remains that, following Maude’s spiritual
transformation, she requests that Agnes destroy her verses, inspiring
Gilbert and Gubar’s claim that “the ambitious, competitive, self-
absorbed and self-assertive-poet must die” (552). Yet, it is important
to note that Maude’s poetry remains accessible to the reader within the
bildungsroman itself. Agnes also copies a small number of poems for
Maude’s mother, once again affiliating the artistic identity of the female
 We Are All Relative Creatures 145
poet with her matrilineal heritage. The poems selected by Agnes are
emblematic of the transformation of style inspired by Maude’s ex-
perience of the imitatio Christi. Indeed, the poem that closes the novella
(51) opens with the lines: “What is it Jesus saith unto the soul?— /
‘Take up the Cross and come, and follow Me’” (1–2). It is true that the
“self-absorbed and self-assertive poet” does die (Gilbert and Gubar
552), but the reformed Christian poet remains, and it is notable that the
selection of poems included in Maude were also published under
Rossetti’s name prior to the completion of the text (C. Rossetti Maude
“Preface” 18). Arseneau has claimed that Maude is Rossetti’s “poetic
manifesto” (Recovering 90), and the novella recounts Rossetti’s own
change in style and her later emphasis on devotional writing.
Rossetti locates this transformation of style in the figure of Agnes
Clifton who, following Maude’s death, becomes the executor of her
verse. Agnes is Maude’s doppelganger: the figure who facilitates her
return to the Eucharistic table, and who embodies the fulfilled Christian
spinsterhood that is Maude’s vocation. Roden has claimed that “As a
saving sister, Agnes willingly volunteers to serve as Maude’s double in
her relationship with Christ. On praying, Agnes tells Maude, ‘if there is
anything you miss and tell me of, I will say it in your stead’” (71). Yet,
when questioned by Maude as to whether she would change places with
Magdalen, Mary or herself, Agnes responds that Maude must “even
put up with me as I am” because she could not “bear [Maude’s] pain”
(C. Rossetti Maude 47). Agnes’s rejection of Maude’s identity is
founded on the fact that it is Maude’s particular type of pain, experi-
enced through the imitatio Christi, that instead allows Maude to be
mystically reincarnated in Agnes. Maude makes Agnes the executor of
her surviving verses, while also requesting she “destroy what [Maude]
never intended to be seen” (49). This request refers to Maude’s desire
to erase any trace of work that embodies the “self-absorbed and
self-assertive” poetic identity that has since been rejected (Gilbert
and Gubar 552). A new, self-giving poet, dedicated to communion with
God, is reborn in Agnes: the figure who is presented to the reader at the
close of text, praying “for the hastening of that eternal morning, which
shall reunite in God those who in Him, or for His Sake, have parted
here” (C. Rossetti Maude 51).
Agnes embodies the resolution of the conflict Maude has experienced
between the spiritual and artistic elements of her identity. She most
closely resembles the mature Rossetti, dedicated to a vision of heavenly
salvation and the promotion of devotional writing. Having provided an
autobiographical account of her teenage nervous breakdown, Rossetti
kills off her younger self, only to have her reborn in a new vision of a
single poetess who has dedicated her life to God. Yet, if Agnes is
Christina Rossetti, she also embodies elements of Maria Rossetti, espe-
cially in her role as the spiritual sister and guide who brings Maude back
146 “A Loving League of Sisters”
to the Eucharistic table. It would seem that the identities of all the sisters,
both within the text and in the real world that inspired it, are conflated.
This is made explicitly clear in Agnes’s final act of cutting “one long tress
from Maude’s head; and on her return home [laying] it in the same paper
with the lock of Magdalen’s hair” (51).
Maude’s union with Christ in death unites her with Magdalen who,
as a religious sister, has dedicated her life to the devotional practice of
imitatio Christi. It would also appear that both sisters are incorporated
into the figure of Agnes: the custodian of their memories, writing, and
personal effects who awaits the heavenly reunion of the sisterhood,
and who integrates the qualities of Maude’s determined independence
with Magdalen’s religious devotion. This interchangeability of the sis-
ters’ relationships and spiritual experiences mirrors the intersubjective
relations of the Trinity who are at once three distinct persons and one
single God. If Magdalen is conflated with the Father, and Maude is
identified with the Son, then Agnes is the Holy Spirit who propagates
the self-gift of both the Father and Son throughout the world. Total
unification with the person of Christ can only be attained through an
imitative participation in his passion. Therefore, the Holy Spirit allows
those who are not called to participate in this mystical experience to
access a communion with God in a different way. Maude’s reformed
poetry can be regarded as the Word of the Son, while Agnes is the Holy
Spirit who transmits the Word to the next generation.
The sisterhood that supports Maude throughout the text is finally
integrated into the image of a transformed heroine who promotes a re-
formed type of devotional verse. It would seem that when spiritual sisters
unite through the imitatio Christi, they literally become incorporated
into one mystical body that mirrors the maternal archetype of wo-
mankind commonly associated with the figure of the mother in Rossetti’s
poetry. In their unification as one body, the sisters also mirror the sa-
cramental body of the Eucharist, which unites all members of the
Christian church. It is notable that before her death Maude asks Agnes
to “come tomorrow and administer the Blessed Sacrament to me” (49)
because Maude’s death predeceases this act, presumably leaving Agnes
to receive the Blessed Sacrament in her stead. Agnes, then, is a type of
female priest. The relationship between Agnes and Maude prefigures that
of Lizzie and Laura in “Goblin Market” because these spiritual sisters
also reconfigure the gendered dynamics of the Eucharistic sacrament,
relocating the physical medium for sacramental redemption in the female
body of the sister, rather than the male body of the priest. Thus, Agnes’s
final desire to bring forward “that eternal morning, which shall reunite
in God those who in Him … have parted here” (51) seeks the divine
unification of sisterhood in the body of Christ, something that has been
prefigured on earth by the sisters’ mutual participation in the Eucharistic
sacrament.
 We Are All Relative Creatures 147
It is telling that Mary, the sister who allows her desire for human love to
override her desire for divine love, is expurgated from the transfigured
sisterhood championed by Agnes. In Rossetti’s text, the exemplar of the
religious sisterhoods inspires a reformation of the relationships between
all women, as well as the transformation of the artistic identity of its
heroine. The religious sisterhoods are models for a reconceived vision of
womankind, founded on an intersubjective framework where each in-
dividual achieves identification with Christ through unification with the
female other. Rossetti does not advocate the religious life as the final
object for all women because the trajectory of her own life as a secular
poetess runs contrary to such an evangelical mission. Rather, Rossetti
promotes the relations between sisters as a medium for divine communion
with Christ because they mirror the inter-subjective relations of the
Trinity. She creates an elected sisterhood inspired by the religious sister-
hoods, but which has the scope to support the divine revelation of all
women, including those beyond the convent walls.
Still, the spiritual journey facilitated by the elected sisterhood remains
finite because the relationships between its members are a temporary
substitute for total unification with Christ in the afterlife. It is for
this reason that Maude’s poetry must pass away with its heroine, for its
consignment to flame represents the spiritual rebirth the heroine has
undertaken through her mystical passion and death. Maude’s final act
of purgation bears surprising resonances with the end of St Thomas
Aquinas’s life, as recorded in Butler’s Lives of the Saints (1756). On the
feast of St Nicholas, Aquinas (1225–1274) received a mystical vision so
powerful that he determined never to write again, leaving his greatest
work, the Summa Theologica (1485), unfinished, as it seemed to pale
in comparison to the vision he had received. When questioned over this
abrupt decision, he responded: “All I have written appears to me like
straw compared with what I have seen and what has been revealed to
me” (Butler 196). Maude’s instructions to burn her writings after her
death mirrors Aquinas’s dismissal of his work as “like straw” (ibid.)
because the transformation of her artistic vision is similarly facilitated
by the divine revelation of her mystical passion.
It is important to understand that Aquinas’s final act was not a re-
jection of his identity as a writer, but rather an expression of faith in
the mystical revelation he had received as the final embodiment of
his authorial vision. Aquinas’s vision was, in some respects, the out-
come of the Summa Theologica. His revelation, then, can be viewed as
the final fruit of his labor, while Maude’s experience of the imitatio
Christi can similarly be interpreted as the ultimate output of her
literary career. The practice of mysticism supersedes the work of art
because the devotional work of art aspires to facilitate mystical ex-
perience. Following the reformation of her verse, which is inspired by
her sister in Christ, Magdalen, Maude is transformed into a truly
148 “A Loving League of Sisters”
Christic individual. For both Aquinas and Maude, their writing has,
quite literally, taken flesh and become imbued into their selfhood,
rendering the literary text obsolete. Sr Magdalen’s practice of
Christian submission may have ensured her final redemption in the
world to come, but the transformation of Maude’s poetic vocation has
brought about her heavenly transfiguration on earth. The consignment
of her verse to flame represents her spiritual rebirth.
Just as the Summa Theologica remains the bedrock of Christian
theology, so is Maude’s surviving verse, preserved by Agnes and printed
in the text, the foundation of the model of universal sisterhood to be
taken up by the next generation. As Maude’s doppelganger, Agnes
passes on the heroine’s spiritual revelation to the sisterhood to come.
Winston Weathers argues that in Christina’s work, sisters often sym-
bolize a crisis of self where two conflicting identities must “struggle
with one another” to achieve a final, harmonious resolution (82). This
resolution is embodied in Agnes, but it is important to note that the
resolution is not only symbolic, as Weathers claims, for the sisters, like
the three persons of the Trinity, possess distinct identities that are
nevertheless united in the same Christic body. Agnes, like the Holy
Spirit, exudes the transfigured identity of Maude, who is proxy for the
Son, while simultaneously retaining her own unique selfhood. Agnes
will transmit Maude’s ‘Word’ to succeeding generations of sisters, so
that the intersubjective relations that have been inspired by the religious
sisterhoods will be promulgated to society at large. Rossetti’s text is
therefore a manifesto of the divinely transformative power of sisterly
relationships and their ability to effect total unification with Christ.
Indeed, Maude closes with the voice of the author who, in an unusual
moment of self-expression, affirms her support of Agnes’s hope that
the sisters will be reunited in heaven. “Amen for us all,” Rossetti writes
(51). She may as well have written: “Amen for us all, sisters.”

Notes
1 I read Maude through the Franciscan interpretation of the imitatio Christi.
Mason has recovered Christina’s understudied Franciscan influences, claiming
that: “As an Anglo-Catholic of Italian descent, Rossetti was familiar with the
cultural and religious presence of Francis in the nineteenth-century, and had
visited several Franciscan churches in her 1865 tour” (116). Franciscan
theology is featured more prominently in this text than the “Tractarian
principles of reserve and analogy” identified by Arseneau (Recovering 67–68).
These doctrines require the individual to distance themselves from the divine
because the human person is only able to access God by means of type and
symbol. By contrast, the ‘spiritual poverty’ of the imitatio Christi enables total
unification with Christ, so that the individual shares in the identity of the
incarnate God. I am indebted to the work of Linda E. Marshall who has
observed the presence of the imitatio Christi in “Goblin Market” and
 We Are All Relative Creatures 149
Frederick S. Roden who explores the resonances between the description of
Maude’s stigmatic wound and the writings of the medieval mystics. Ilia Delio,
a leading specialist in Franciscan spirituality and the works of Bonaventure,
informs my theological approach in this chapter.
2 Commonplace book, 1851–1901, Dora Browning Dick, inscribed: “Dora
Browning Dick, in affect. memory of Aunt Isabella, nee Steele” on inside
cover, Rare Books and Special Collections, Manuscript Collection C0199
no. 290, Firestone Lib., Princeton University.
5 “Happy Women”: Alcott’s
Sisterly Utopia

For Louisa May Alcott, the husband is an obstacle on the female artist’s
quest to achieve self-determination. He is not only a mirror that reflects
the image of God on the wife’s behalf; he is the source of her fulfilment
and self-approval, her financial stability and sense of identity. In short,
the husband determines the woman’s public role as helpmeet and ap-
pendage, and, as such, he must be replaced by a sisterly community
focused on the growth and development of others. In an 1868 essay,
“Happy Women,” Alcott directly confronts the “surplus woman pro-
blem” by sarcastically describing the “fear of being an old maid” as “one
of the trials of woman-kind” (203 sic). She counsels against rushing into
matrimony without first considering “the loss of liberty, happiness, and
self-respect” that is “poorly repaid by the barren honor of being called
‘Mrs.’ instead of ‘Miss’” (ibid.). The author uncannily echoes Rossetti in
her conception of the wife as an inferior member of the female com-
munity. In place of the wife, Alcott promotes “a certain class belonging
to the sisterhood” who “from various causes, remain single, and devote
themselves to some earnest work; espousing philanthropy, art, literature,
music” (ibid.).
Alcott departs from Rossetti’s approach, however, by directly drawing
from the nonfictional sisterhood with whom she surrounds herself—a
community that is put forward in the essay as an exemplar for her single
female readers. Alcott provides sketches of a number of women of her
acquaintance for “those of my young countrywomen who, from choice
or necessity, stand alone, seeking to find the happiness which is the right
of all” (ibid.). Amongst these examples is an autobiographical sketch of
“A.,” the author herself, described as a woman of “strongly individual
type, who in the course of an unusually varied experience has seen so
much of … ‘the tragedy of modern married life’ that she is afraid to try
it” (205). In place of a husband, Alcott’s thinly veiled counterpart pur-
sues an artistic vocation: “Literature is a fond and faithful spouse, and
the little family that has sprung up around her … is a proper source of
satisfaction to her maternal heart” (205). Alcott’s description of the
artistic vocation as a type of spouse bears an interesting resemblance to
 “Happy Women”: Alcott’s Sisterly Utopia 151
Rossetti’s implicit elevation of the heavenly spouse above the human
husband. Yet, unlike Rossetti, Alcott does not explicitly connect the
female writer’s ‘marriage’ to literature with her relationship with God.
Nevertheless, her later realist novel, Work (1872), the subject of this
chapter, portrays the ‘professional’ woman as spiritually ordained be-
cause she conceives her identity as subject to God’s will, rather than the
will of a husband.
Like Rossetti’s Maude, Work charts the heroine’s search for a
meaningful vocation, and her rejection of the values of self-reliance
and individualism, in favor of her participation in an outward-facing
sisterly community. However, where Maude is preoccupied with the
spiritual potential of sisterly relationships, Work is concerned with
social reform, for the relationships between sisters are portrayed as not
only possessing the potential to transform the spiritual and social
contributions of women but the capitalist marketplace as well. Alcott
implies that if professional work is made available to women, the va-
lues of individualism, competition, and self-interestedness will be
expunged from society. Crucially, it is the female capacity to achieve
sympathetic identification with others that is presented as possessing
the transcendent power to alleviate both personal afflictions and social
ills. Alcott advocates a philosophy of reform that champions becoming
“personally involved with others, and … embed[ding] the alleviation of
all poverty, not just physical deprivation, in a Christian doctrine”
(Cadwallader 15). This “Christian doctrine” upholds personal contact
with marginalized individuals as the proper means of identifying their
spiritual and physical needs (ibid.).
In her personification of a theology of caritas, Alcott’s heroine,
Christie Devon, gradually learns to imitate Christ, but her imitation is
not the product of divine revelation. Christie instead practically imitates
Christ in her relationships with her elected sisterhood. This sisterly
community installs a kingdom of heaven on earth; its sympathetic power
transforms the experiences of the ostracized and downtrodden across
society. Like Maude, Christie is an artist, having worked as a profes-
sional actress, but she cannot achieve personal fulfillment through her
artistic vocation. Christie’s ambition to attain greatness isolates her from
the surrounding world and disconnects her from her elected sisterhood.
Her artistic gifts become gateways to social reform in much the same
manner Little Women becomes the mouthpiece for Abigail Alcott’s lived
religion.
Cadwallader claims, for Alcott “writing became benevolence in action,
a way for [her] to minister to those in need by opening the hearts and
minds of readers to poverty of all kinds—physical, psychological, and
spiritual” (114). Thus, Christie’s formerly voyeuristic gifts as an actress
are likewise transformed into a type of mesmeric sympathy that allows
her to psychically enter into the sufferings of others, thereby facilitating a
152 “A Loving League of Sisters”
mystical integration into the trials and tribulations of her sisters.
Christie’s final aim is not to enter into the passion of Christ but instead
to enter into the passion of the world. Where Rossetti looks upon the
material world as a shadow of the world to come, Alcott emphasizes the
divine potential that lies dormant in the incarnation. Crucially, Alcott
portrays the sisterly community as possessing the power to integrate the
person of Christ into the self because its peculiar proclivity for sympathy
shapes the intersubjective values that underpin a truly Christian society.
She therefore relocates the morally elevated role of women from the
domestic sphere into the field of professional work, advocating for the
recognition of the contributions of women within the realms of eco-
nomics, philanthropy, and artistry, as well as morality and ethics.
While Work upholds female philanthropy above female artistry, its
final portrayal of a female community liberated to reinterpret the ca-
nonical work of a male artist looks forward to a future where the social
achievements of sisters can create an inspired school of collaborative art.
This vision is realized in Alcott’s 1869 text, An Old-Fashioned Girl,
which portrays a utopian community of female artists engaging in phi-
lanthropic work, while collaborating in the creation of a unique sculp-
ture, “Woman”: an archetypal female figure freed from her associations
with domesticity and motherhood to become a prophetic herald of a
future where women contribute to all areas of the sister arts without
referring to the established canon of male artistry. Alcott portrays her
community of female artists as reforming the social and moral purpose
of art through championing artistic collaboration above the development
of individualism and prioritizing cooperative altruism above the cele-
bration of genius. If Rossetti’s vision of paradise is centered on the types
of Trinitarian relationships embodied by sisters, Alcott’s vision of a
perfected world is founded on the achievements of a sisterly community
that upholds a theology of caritas expressed through collective artistic
production.

“The Doctrine of Hatred Must Be Preached as the

Counteraction of the Doctrine of Love”: The Destructive
Ramifications of Transcendentalist Self-Culture
Work tracks Christie’s transition from pursuing the Transcendentalist
values of self-reliance and individualism, upheld within the capitalist
marketplace to her acceptance of the intersubjective outlook of the sis-
terly community she creates for herself. Christie discovers the
Transcendentalist emphasis on self-culture, contingent upon one’s alie-
nation from others, is detrimental for women. Her initial search for
genius and self-reliance precipitates a mental breakdown that reaffirms
her dependence on the female community she has left behind. Christie
must learn she is only able to transcend the social, artistic, and moral
 “Happy Women”: Alcott’s Sisterly Utopia 153
obligations placed upon her in the domestic sphere by uniting with other
women in the mutual creation of a new social framework based on
collaboration and service to others, rather than individualistic fulfilment.
At the opening of the novel, Christie announces her intention to leave the
house of her guardian, Uncle Enos, to enter the world of work because
she hates “to be dependent” (L. Alcott Work 5). Driven by the ro-
manticized and unrealistic vision of “get[ting] rich, found[ing] a home
for girls like [herself]; or, better still, be[ing] a Mrs. Fry [or] a Florence
Nightingale” (8), Christie’s dreams of self-aggrandizement are associated
by her uncle with “redic’lus notions about independence and self-
cultur’,” which “won’t come to nothin’ in the long run” (10 sic).
The concept of “Self-Reliance,” as defined by Emerson in his essay of
the same name, advocates prioritizing the individual’s survival in the
world above the fulfilment of their societal obligations and responsi-
bilities: “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true in
your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius” (131). Christie’s
rejection of the dependent role society assigns to women complements
Emerson’s vision of intellectual single-mindedness because she affirms
her determination not to “sit and wait for any man to give me in-
dependence if I can earn it myself” (L. Alcott Work 9). However,
Emerson’s vision of self-reliance not only prioritizes the individual’s
vocation but also discards the value of collaboration. In essence, the
subject must single-mindedly block out all social obligations in favor of
pursuing a chosen vocation—not simply being content to ignore the
criticisms of those who, like Uncle Enos, would deny their capabilities.
While Christie is drawn to the idea of achieving public renown, she
nevertheless expresses her dislike of “dependence where there isn’t any
love to make it bearable” and voices her desire to find work she can “put
her heart into, and feel that it does [her] good, no matter how hard it is”
(11). Christie condemns her uncle’s pursuit of a monotonous “ever-
lasting work” where he “starves” the soul for “the sake of [the] body”
with “no object but money” (10). Christie, then, is searching for a new
type of collaborative and philanthropic work located in the female
community, which rejects both the Emersonian model of individualism
and the capitalistic object of materialism. Indeed, she associates her
pursuit of work with the figure of her mother: “Even if I only do what
my dear mother did, earn my living honestly and happily, and leave a
beautiful example behind me, to help one other woman as hers helps me,
I shall be satisfied” (11).
Hendler has claimed that Work “complicates the conventional op-
position between the masculine public sphere of work and money and
the emotional realm of family ties … by having Christie leave the do-
mestic sphere in search of precisely those values it is supposed to uphold”
(“Louisa May Alcott” 687). Uncle Enos embodies the porousness be-
tween the public and private realms, corrupting the sanctum of the
154 “A Loving League of Sisters”
domestic sphere with his greed and materialism. Yet, while Christie re-
jects the soulless aspiration towards wealth embodied by her uncle, she
remains torn between the Transcendentalist concepts of “self-reliance
and self-culture” and her mother’s example of providing moral guidance
for succeeding generations of women (L. Alcott Work 10).
The novel traces Christie’s transition from pursuing artistic acclaim to
installing a philanthropic sisterhood, thereby providing her with a sense of
fulfilment and self-worth. Following her departure from the family home,
the narrative explores her experience in the majority of professions open
to women in nineteenth-century America in themed chapters titled:
“Servant,” “Actress,” “Governess,” “Companion,” and “Seamstress.”
Alcott herself had experimented with these professions in her early adult-
life in Boston. All these professions prove to be emotionally unfulfilling for
Christie, however, and she resigns from each position disenchanted and
unsure of her professional calling.
Alcott makes it clear that the professions open to women exploit their
sympathetic capacities for voyeuristic and selfish purposes. For instance,
when Christie becomes an actress, she discovers the profession en-
courages her to simulate her sympathetic gifts to inflate her sense of
artistic superiority and titillate her audience, rather than creating a
meaningful connection with them:

Her love of admiration grew by what it fed on, till the sound of
applause became the sweetest music to her ear. She rose with … a
growing appetite for unsatisfactory delights, an ever-increasing
forgetfulness of any higher aspiration than dramatic fame. (41)

Christie’s experience as an actress exposes the exploitation of female

sympathy within the professions to be a means of affirming the self-
aggrandizing values of the marketplace. Ultimately, Christie finds the
pursuit of genius to be emotionally unrewarding because the solipsism it
inspires corrupts her sympathetic tendencies and leaves a contaminated
legacy for succeeding generations of female artists: “Am I what I hoped
I should be? No, and it is my fault. If three years of this life have made
me this, what shall I be then? A fine actress perhaps, but how good a
woman?” (43).
The conflict Christie experiences between her vocation as an artist and
her identity as a woman is rooted in her atomized pursuit of personal
success, which follows the Emersonian model of “shun[ing] father and
mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me” (“Self-Reliance”
134). While she leaves the domestic sphere in search of the values it
lacks, she makes the mistake of neglecting to seek out a wider female
community who would support her in her search for a meaningful vo-
cation. Christie must learn to create her own self-made family within the
public sphere if she is to find the values of intersubjectivity and mutual
 “Happy Women”: Alcott’s Sisterly Utopia 155
support bequeathed to her by her mother. The creation of such a com-
munity is incompatible with her aspiration towards genius, for Emerson
claims, “The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of
the doctrine of love when that pules and whines” (134). In other words,
a consideration for the needs of others suppresses one’s capacity for
greatness.
Alcott exposes the psychologically detrimental effects of such a
philosophy on women through her portrayal of Christie’s breakdown,
which manifests itself in an attempted suicide that is the offshoot of
her psychomachia. Just as the conflict between artistic genius and
Christian obedience drives Maude Foster to a near mental breakdown,
so do Christie’s conflicting desires for artistic genius and sympathetic
companionship lead to a destructive split within the self. Having tried
and tested the full range of professions open to women, and found
them to be emotionally unrewarding, Christie walks to the Boston
lumber wharf to drown herself. Her desire to end her life is identified
with her need to reconcile the two conflicting aspects of her identity,
which have become disassociated from one another. Upon gazing into
the water Christie experiences a hallucination of an alter-ego, which she
longs to reunite with her conscious self through entering the waters below:

Something white swept by below—only a broken oar—but she

began to wonder how a human body would look floating through
the night. It was an awesome fancy, but it took possession of her,
and, as it grew, her eyes dilated, her breath came fast, and her lips
fell apart, for she seemed to see the phantom, and it wore the
likeness of herself.
(L. Alcott Work 124)

Christie’s hallucination is an out-of-body experience that symbolizes

her sense of disconnection with the public identity she has created.
Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851) associates the color white with
nihilism and a loss of selfhood: “Is it by its indefiniteness it shadows
forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and this
stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation?” (186). As an
inanimate white oar, Christie has become a lifeless object devoid of
human personality and the capacity for self-expression. Ironically, her
fostering of individualism has eradicated her identity, for she has di-
vorced herself from the surrounding world and become dislocated
from her own existence, a “phantom” who wears “the likeness of
herself” (L. Alcott Work 124). If Melville’s Ahab personifies a deranged
male individualism that attempts to exterminate any threat to its
absolute authority, Alcott’s Christie represents the fragmentation of
the female subject who attempts to emulate such individualism at the
expense of her sympathetic capacities:
156 “A Loving League of Sisters”
So plainly did she see it, so peaceful was the white face, so full of rest
the folded hands, so strangely like and unlike, herself, that she
seemed to lose her identity, and wondered which was the real and
which the imaginary Christie. (124)

Hendler has argued that Christie’s breakdown represents “the complete

submergence of the female self in an identification with the other—
sympathy in its most extreme form” because it demonstrates the her-
oine’s unhealthy reaction to human loneliness: Christie is unable to
form a coherent sense of self independently (“Louisa May Alcott” 691).
I would contend that Christie’s decision to stay at the lumber wharf
because “She knew it was no place for her, yet no one waited for her, no
one would care if she staid forever” (L. Alcott Work 124) indicates her
crisis of identity is a product of her isolation from the female community.
As Hendler claims, “the coherent boundaries of [Christie’s] ego, are
clearly in crisis in this scene” (“Louisa May Alcott” 692), but there is no
indication her ego has become conflated with that of another subject.
Christie has, instead, submerged herself with the image of the lifeless
corpse: a figure with a “peaceful white face” and “folded hands” who
is both “strangely like, and unlike, herself” (L. Alcott Work 124). This
figure represents the sympathetic self Christie has suppressed while
striving for individualistic acclaim, a self that has become separated from
her public persona. Her suicidal tendencies are an expression of her
need to reconcile her living self with the self that has been figuratively
destroyed. Christie’s fascination with the image in the water reveals her
unconscious desire to integrate the conflicting aspects of her identity:
that which seeks individualistic fulfillment and that which desires a
mutually supportive female community.
In actual fact, Christie’s suicidal episode is a mystical ‘dark night of the
soul.’ A term coined by poet and visionary, St John of the Cross
(1542–1591), the dark night of the soul refers to the experience of isola-
tion, separation, and despair the soul passes through on its journey to God.
It occurs at the moment the Christian supplicant realizes they can no longer
regard themselves as an atomized being whose deepest attachment is to the
self. Experiencing the dark night of the soul allows the supplicant to accept
that a solipsistic preoccupation with one’s ego generates the belief there
is nothing beyond the self, thereby catapulting them into a nihilistic abyss
of despair. Christie confronts the image of the isolated self she has
cultivated in the water and recognizes it is detached from her spiritual
identity. Her dark night of the soul opens the door for her initiation into a
Christian community of sisters who will enable her to conceive her human
dignity as inextricably intertwined with a wider group of women united in
propagating a Christian theology of caritas to the world.
It is significant that Christie is pulled out of her psychotic episode by
her old friend and erstwhile adopted sister, Rachel. A fallen woman who
 “Happy Women”: Alcott’s Sisterly Utopia 157
is fired from the mantua-making factory where she works with Christie
after her sexual history is discovered, Rachel has left Boston to help
other fallen women in a neighboring city—inspired by Christie’s example
of loving her “like a sister” (126). Having redeemed herself, Rachel re-
turns to Boston to continue her philanthropic work and happens across
Christie at the lumber wharf (127). When Christie claims that she was:
“so worn out, and weak, and wicked [… that she] meant to take [her]
life,” Rachel responds “No, dear; it was not you that meant to do it, but
the weakness and the trouble that bewildered you” (125 emphasis
added). Rachel helps Christie to understand her breakdown is the pro-
duct of the atomized society she exists within, for Christie herself admits:
“I have been ill, I worked too hard; I’m not myself to-night” (ibid.
emphasis added).
It is Rachel’s role to restore Christie to her elected sisterhood, so she
is able to regain her sense of self. The remainder of the novel traces
Christie’s rehabilitation and her final discovery of her vocation as a fe-
male philanthropist whose practice of a type of lived religion allows her
to extend her intersubjective sisterhood to the wider world. Christie
learns that the matrilineal community is the foundation of an inter-
subjective society dedicated to empowering the marginalized. Her re-
habilitation is facilitated by Cynthy Wilkins, a working-class housewife
and friend of Rachel’s, who offers Christie a home after the latter’s
suicide attempt. Following her encounter with Cynthy, Christie attempts
to promote the values of the matrilineal community to the wider world
via her idealistic marriage to David Stirling, resulting in their mutual
enlistment in the Union Army. However, Christie discovers that the
growth of the matrilineal community depends on her husband’s sacrifi-
cial death, for she must relinquish her identification with him to dedicate
herself to her elected sisterhood if she is to build a utopian society on the
matrilineal model. David’s death enables Christie to dedicate her life to
the reformist projects of her interracial sisterhood, united in a common
vision of social justice.

“You Will Do My Part Better Than I Could”: Christie’s

Rehabilitation and the Emergence of her Sisterhood
Christie returns to the domestic sphere to reintegrate the self that has
become fragmented in the public sphere, but the matrilineal community
she encounters becomes the foundation for the interracial sisterhood that
ushers in a new social order at the novel’s close. Following Rachel and
Christie’s encounter at the lumber wharf, Rachel provides Christie with
“a home, very humble, but honest and happy” (127). The home in
question belongs to Cynthy Wilkins, a washerwoman who takes in im-
poverished and fallen women at Rachel’s behest. Defying the distinctions
between public and private spheres, Cynthy extends the domestic sphere
158 “A Loving League of Sisters”
into the outside world, refusing to limit her motherly obligations to her
immediate kindred. She informs Christie her peace of mind is the product
of “jest doin’ whatever comes along, and doin’ it hearty, sure that things
is all right, though very often I don’t see that at furst” (144 sic). In other
words, Cynthy embraces a providential theology that advocates “stand
[ing] by the Lord though thick and thin,” trusting that he will “fetch
[you] through somehow” (136).
Cynthy’s belief that the values of the home hold the potential to re-
deem the outside world mirrors Abigail Alcott’s faith in the power of
matrilineal bonds to revolutionize the relations of the public sphere. Like
Abigail, Cynthy attempts to break down the barriers between the nuclear
family and the wider world. Upon Christie’s arrival, she informs her:
“You’re one of them that can’t live alone without starvin’ somehow, so
I’m jest goin’ to turn you in among the children to paster, so to speak”
(135 sic). Cynthy recognizes Christie has been deprived of an outlet for
her sympathetic capacities and farms her children out “to pasture,” as a
means of providing the lonely and isolated young woman with the
companionship she so desperately needs (ibid.). Once more, the maternal
connection is upheld as the primal bond from which all human re-
lationships stem. When Christie tells the story of her hardship, she is
comforted by “the sympathetic face opposite, and the motherly pats so
gently given by the big, rough hand” (135), while her initial “treatment”
is being allowed to hold Cynthy’s youngest child: “Let me hold her! I
love babies dearly, and it seems as if it would do me more good that
quarts of tea to cuddle her, if she’ll let me” (130). The self-giving love of
the mother is portrayed as healing the divided self, for it is only through
experiencing the all-embracing love for another that the individual at-
tains an identity and sense of purpose.
Cynthy’s approach to the family is revolutionary in its embrace of a
type of universal motherhood where the disenfranchised are liberated to
benefit from the fruits of the domestic sphere. In some respects, this
mirrors Bronson Alcott’s utopian vision of a consociate family where the
peculiar affections for one’s family members are blown open to the wider
world, but Cynthy’s understanding of human caritas diverges from
Bronson’s because the nuclear family is presented as the foundation for
the wider human family of the public sphere. Cynthy does not do away
with her primary affiliation with her children; she shares her family with
anyone who happens to need it, and at any given time. In this way, the
public life of the professional sphere takes its sustenance from the private
world of the family and the two are in continual interchange. Cynthy is
in accordance with the medieval mystics’ belief that the divine is at work
in “the most domestic of affairs” (Lanzetta 161). Indeed, Teresa of Avila
reminded her sisters they could encounter Christ in the daily activities of
running a household, “The Lord works among pots and pans,” she
wrote (qtd. in Lanzetta 162).
 “Happy Women”: Alcott’s Sisterly Utopia 159
Tara Fitzpatrick claims that Alcott’s “sentimental narrative and her
political goals were at odds” because Work reinforces the “sentimental
economy” of the marketplace by requiring women to sacrifice their needs
in support of the public sphere (31). In actual fact, the public sphere
must conform itself to the model of the domestic sphere through prior-
itizing human relationships above economic gain. Cynthy enables
Christie to leave her lodgings where she has been accumulating financial
debt and enter into a home where her ‘rent’ is expending the sympathy
she lavishes on the Wilkins children—something that is equally beneficial
to her. The individualism of the marketplace is not transformed by self-
sacrifice; it is rather transformed by a universal recognition of the im-
portance of human connection. No one person sacrifices themselves
wholeheartedly for someone else; all are interconnected in an inter-
subjective and outward-facing familial community that is the extension
of the domestic sphere.
Christie attempts to further perpetuate the domestic sphere into the
outside world by marrying David Stirling, to whom she is introduced by
Cynthy. Alcott presents Christie’s husband as an obstacle to her in-
stigation of a female utopia of ‘happy women.’ As with Rossetti, who
portrays the mother’s relationship with her children as disconnected
from her conjugal bond, Alcott implies marriage must be dispensed with
for women to dedicate themselves to the female community. Christie’s
union with David is portrayed as a passing interlude that obstructs her
benevolent mission. Alcott hints at its limiting potential from the com-
mencement of the couple’s courtship, which is presented as a distraction
from Christie’s religious faith:

Everything did “go beautifully” for a time; so much so, that Christie
began to think she really had “got religion.”
[…]
…. it is unnecessary to explain what was the matter with Christie.
She honestly thought she had got religion; but it was piety’s twin
sister, who produced this wonderful revival in her soul (221–222)

Given the narrative traces Christie’s conversion and her gradual adop-
tion of a practice of lived religion, the fact she mistakes her love for
David for “getting religion” indicates her romantic feelings have blinded
her judgment and impeded the progress of her conversion (ibid.). When
one considers Work was composed at the time of the Second Great
Awakening with its emphasis on total submission to the will of God, the
“wonderful revival” facilitated by Christie’s love for David stands in the
way of her relationship with the divine, just as the husband in Rossetti’s
work is a barrier between the individual and Christ (ibid.). As Alcott
claims, something is ‘the matter’ with Christie: she is diverging from her
160 “A Loving League of Sisters”
path of self-discovery to, as Hendler would contend, submerge herself in
“identification with the other” (Hendler “Louisa May Alcott” 691).
Alcott’s response is to transform Christie and David’s marriage into a
charitable mission, for it conveniently takes place at the outbreak of the
Civil War. The abolitionist cause finally inspires Christie to redirect her
attentions from the insular world of her romantic affections to social
justice, and she insists upon being married in her uniform as a nurse, just
as David is married in his uniform as a soldier. However, it is David who
is martyred to the cause, shot while assisting a group of contraband
women and their children to freedom. The act is symbolic, for David
must sacrifice himself to make way for the interracial community of
sisters promoted at the novel’s denouement. The author implies that if an
intersubjective female community is to replace the solipsistic model of
the capitalist marketplace, it must rise out of the ashes of the patriarchal
hierarchy destroyed by the Civil War. Thus, upon his deathbed, David’s
final words to Christie are: “You will do my part, and do it better than I
could” (315).
In the short term, David’s death liberates Christie to rededicate herself
to the female community. It is the birth of her daughter, Pansy, that
allows Christie to finally redirect her attentions away from her grief and
envision a life without her husband. David’s death initially transforms
Christie into a corpselike figure who resembles her reflection in the water
during her earlier suicide attempt. Initially described as “tranquil, col-
orless, and mute … leaving the shadow of her former self behind” (316),
Christie is brought back to life by witnessing the image of herself in her
daughter: “Don’t let me die: I must live for baby now” (321). Christie
finds “unspeakable delight” in the knowledge she has “a double duty to
perform towards the fatherless little creature given to her care” (321). As
both father and mother, Christie locates the image of the psychically
whole self in the daughter she has seemingly conceived through a type of
virgin birth, for the reader is barely given any insight into the conjugal
relationship of Christie and David following their mutual enlistment (it is
implied Christie conceives Pansy during a brief leave of absence when she
visits her husband on the front lines—hardly the picture of marital bliss).
Alongside Pansy, Christie forms a mutually supportive female family
with David’s mother, Ruth, and Ruth’s estranged daughter, Letty. When
Uncle Enos questions Christie concerning the division of finances in this
“feminine household” (321), Christie explains: “we work for one another
and share everything together” (325). As with the Trinitarian relationships
portrayed in Maude and the Valentine’s Day verses, the women of the
family become interchangeable in their outward-facing orientation to each
other. Alcott defines the community they establish as the embodiment of
the Christian virtues, founded on the “three good angels” of “faith, hope
and charity” (329), which are presented in Corinthians 13:13 as the
foundation of Christian life on earth. Charity, or caritas, is the self-giving
 “Happy Women”: Alcott’s Sisterly Utopia 161
love for the other defined as the greatest of these three principles, and the
Stirling women mirror the female Rossettis in becoming a united body that
nevertheless enables each person to achieve a greater sense of ‘personhood’
through identification with others.
Where Hendler would claim the formation of such sympathetic bonds
equates to a loss of selfhood, Christie reconceives herself as a child of
God through her participation in intersubjective female relationships:
“Searching for religion, she had found love: now seeking to follow love
she found religion” (319). It is the institution of marriage that threatens
to submerge the female capacity for sympathy into the identity of the
other, for the husband is positioned as the primary social subject from
which the female is derived. By extricating her heroine from her mar-
riage, Alcott liberates her to create a female society that counteracts both
the individualistic vision of male genius and the materialistic values of
the marketplace. Uncle Enos responds to Christie’s description of her
intersubjective female community with contempt: “So like women!” he
grumbles, soliloquizing that the equal division of household labor is not
“a fair bargain” when Christie is the sole breadwinner (325).
The diversion of Christie’s sympathetic power away from her husband
towards the matrilineal community allows her to expand her sisterhood
into the wider world. We can read Christie’s conversion experience as
a vocational ‘calling’ moment that fulfils the search for meaningful work
established at the novel’s opening. Following this spiritual awakening,
Christie’s capacity for sympathy takes on a revelatory quality: she be-
comes a medium for a wider interracial sisterhood through facilitating
communication between women from a wide range of ethnic and class
groups. Alcott presents sympathy as an external force that speaks through
her heroine, who is transformed into a type of oracle. Ultimately, the
sisterly community provides an outlet for Christie’s sympathetic gift,
which was formerly distorted by her quest for genius. Alcott suggests that
self-expression must be replaced with sympathetic identification with
one’s sisters. Christie relinquishes her pursuit of acclaim to dedicate her
life to her sisters’ empowerment.

A “Sympathetic Undertone … So Magical in Its Effect”:

Christie’s Transcendent Sympathy and the Extension of
her Sisterhood
Christie’s reassimilation into the matrilineal community enables her to
expand this community into the public sphere. Following David’s death,
Christie propagates the values of her sisterhood into the wider world.
David’s martyrdom allows Christie to give herself wholeheartedly to her
mission of instigating a universal Christian sisterhood through cam-
paigning for women’s suffrage. At the novel’s denouement, Christie is
portrayed attending a women’s rights meeting, likely based on the Seneca
162 “A Loving League of Sisters”
Falls Convention—an act that is inspired by David’s self-sacrificial
martyrdom for abolitionism. Confronted with the site of a diverse
group of women who are unable to relate to one another, Christie uses
her “steadily increasing sympathy for all” to bring delegates into “truer
relations with each other” (331). It is at this moment that Christie uti-
lizes her artistic gifts to bring about widespread social reform, for she
gives her “first public speech since she left the stage” (332). In contrast to
the qualities of “selfishness, frivolity and vanity” (41) inspired by her
acting career, Christie now projects a “subtle magnetism of character”
conveyed by a “sympathetic undertone … so magical in its effect”
(332–333). Her power of sympathy is finally translated into a tangible,
public mode of communication capable of transcending boundaries and
uniting women in universal sisterhood. She shares the medieval female
mystics’ desire to bring women into a deeper communion with one an-
other through “championing the rights of others” and promoting “self-
acceptance” as foundational to Christian women’s “ethical and social
concerns” (Lanzetta 86).
Hendler’s reading of Christie’s speech takes on far more negative
connotations than my own, for he claims Alcott’s failure to literally
transcribe Christie’s words belies a “loss of self” that is the byproduct
of sympathetic identification (“Louisa May Alcott” 17). In particular,
he interprets Christie’s claim that: “[she doesn’t] deserve any credit for
the speech, because it spoke itself” (L. Alcott Work 342) as evidence
that “feminine subjectivity is predicated in self-negation” (Hendler
“Louisa May Alcott” 17). Alcott does not transcribe Christie’s speech
because it is a type of divine revelation presented as the inspired out-
pourings of a heroine who has become a vessel, or medium, for sisterly
communion: “What she said she hardly knew: words came faster than
she could utter them, thoughts pressed upon her, and all the lessons
of her life rose vividly before her” (L. Alcott Work 332). As a type of
oracle, Christie has broken down the barriers of selfhood in her
capacity to identify with others.
This portrayal of a protagonist who leaves her body to achieve mys-
tical communion with her sisterly community extends Margaret Fuller’s
vision of transcendent communication between the genders in Woman in
the Nineteenth Century (1843). Christie’s “subtle magnetism of char-
acter” (L. Alcott Work 333) is allied with mesmerism, a philosophical
theory (often referred to as ‘animal magnetism’) that claims an invisible
life-force connects all phenomena, and human beings are able to use their
emotional connections with one another to facilitate the healing of ail-
ments. Dorri Beam argues that Fuller used mesmerism to redefine the
Emersonian concept of the oversoul. Where in Transcendentalist philo-
sophy the oversoul facilitates the divine vision of the individual, mes-
merism champions utilizing the individual’s mesmeric energy to identify
the self with others (ibid.). Beam contends that Fuller believed access to
 “Happy Women”: Alcott’s Sisterly Utopia 163
“such energies were impeded by social identities, relations, and institu-
tions that women could not peel off as easily as Emerson could ‘shun
father and mother and wife and brother’” (88). As a way of combating
this, Fuller upheld an androgynous vision of the relationship between
male and female:

In Fuller’s view, pure gender is never resurrected in the flesh; instead,

the spheres of Fuller’s great radical dualism are permeable bodies
that pass into and out of each other, mingling in various amounts
and at varying locations. Fuller defeats the compartmentalisation of
gender into separate spheres by releasing gender into the cosmic
spheres, where bodies are permeable, shifting, and transmuting
versions of their former state.
(Beam 96)

On gender, Fuller writes: “Male and female represent the two sides of
the great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into
one another… There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine
woman” (62). Thus, men and women are connected by a mesmeric
force that passes through them, rendering their differences imperme-
able and transferable: “Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid”
(ibid.). One might view Fuller’s mesmeric vision as a way of expanding
sympathy, so that it allows women to overcome their limited social
roles by embracing all identities and gendered experiences as inherently
interconnected. Sympathy, then, does not facilitate the male artist’s
individualism but instead allows multiple experiences to co-exist
through reciprocal self-giving.
Alcott extends Fuller’s vision, so the interconnection of multiple ex-
periences is confined to the female community, thereby allowing women
to redirect their sympathetic capacities towards their sisters’ empower-
ment. Christie’s role as a mesmeric oracle for the sisterhood also mirrors
Abigail Alcott’s description of her role as a Home Missionary. Home
Missionaries acted as intermediaries between the benevolent societies of
the rich and the households of the working classes in an early form
of social work. In one of her 1849 “Reports While Visitor to the Poor of
Boston,” Abigail wrote: “I could serve the poor most effectively [by]
becom[ing] an intelligent and acceptable medium of communication to
the rich” (La Plante Boundless 160). Abigail’s description of herself as a
“medium” alludes to the spiritualist movement, closely allied with
mesmerism, and casts her as sympathetic vessel of communication across
social strata (ibid.). The image of the female missionary as a receptacle of
sympathetic communication between the classes bears strong resonances
with the subtle ‘magnetism’ of Christie’s oratory as a bridge between the
socially diverse groups of the suffrage movement. Indeed, Christie is able
to conjure “a spirit of companionship” among the disparate group
164 “A Loving League of Sisters”
because of her diverse experience as a woman who had “known so many
of the same trials, troubles and temptations” (L. Alcott Work 333).
As a fictional counterpart of Abigail Alcott, Christie seeks to create a
community where social divisions are transcended by the sympathetic
relations between women. Abigail herself wrote: “I feel most near the
divine when in the fullest accomplishment of my human relations”
(LaPlante Boundless 182). Christie achieves her resemblance to Christ by
facilitating the communion between the members of the sisterly com-
munity surrounding her. By spiritually giving herself to others through
sympathy, she enables the community to become united as a single body
and thereby imitates the person of Christ who ensures mystical com-
munion between humanity and the divine through the incarnation. The
final scene of the novel looks forward to the foundation of a feminist
society that takes its life from the self-giving principles of sisterhood
instigated by Christie. With the Civil War behind her, Christie observes
she cannot give anything further to the cause of emancipation, other than
her husband who went before her to “behold the glorious end” (L. Alcott
Work 334). Christie’s final task is to bring women together across a wide
range of class and racial divisions. She surrounds herself with “a loving
league of sisters, old and young, black and white, rich and poor” (343)
who are the prototype of the intersectional society of the future.
At the novel’s close, the sisters Christie has adopted through her in-
volvement in a diverse range of professions miraculously reappear, as if
drawn by the powerful magnetism of her speech: all have heard about it,
and all encourage her to “hold forth again” (342). Where Christie was
estranged from her sisterhood and divided from herself during her epi-
sode of suicidal despondency, her sisters are providentially brought back
to her when she is able to use her sympathetic capacities to “lay the
foundation of a new emancipation” (334). One by one, each sister re-
appears to join her around the family table where “with one accord they
[lay] their hands on hers” (343). Spanning a diverse cross-section of
classes and ethnicities of nineteenth-century America, Christie’s sister-
hood is a truly intersubjective and intersectional community that aspires
to emulate Christ, for each sister gives herself entirely to the other’s well-
being. Let us turn, then, to Christie’s Christ-like sisters and examine their
truly intersubjective relations with one another.

“A Loving League of Sisters”: Christie’s Intersectional

Sisterhood
Christie’s dedication to helping her sisters overcome their social os-
tracization allows her to confront her own complicity in the unequal
hierarchies of the public sphere. Her contact with a multi-racial sister-
hood inspires her to create an alternative intersectional community, as
well as to interrogate how her privileged social position has blinded her
 “Happy Women”: Alcott’s Sisterly Utopia 165
to the inequalities upon which her elite status is predicated. The plight of
Christie’s ostracized sisters galvanizes her to transcend the boundaries of
her selfhood and enter into the suffering of others.
Christie’s friend Rachel, who in a dramatic twist of fate is revealed to
be David Stirling’s estranged sister, Letty, is presented as interchange-
able with the heroine, and the sisters’ sympathetic relations with
each another ensure their unification as one body. Rachel/Letty takes
David’s place following his death and it is implied that David was only
ever a proxy for his sister. When Christie first meets “Rachel” in the
mantua-making factory, she acts like a suitor and “woo[s] this shy, cold
girl as patiently as a lover might” (104), while “Rachel” in turn “watch
[es] [Christie] with covert interest, stealing quick, shy glances at her
as she sat musing over her work” (103). The relationship between
Christie and “Rachel” contains surprising resonances with that of
Lizzie and Laura in Rossetti’s “Goblin Market,” for Christie’s will-
ingness to sacrifice herself for her fallen sister ultimately ensures the
redemption of both women.
When “Rachel” is fired from her position in the mantua-making
factory on account of her disreputable past, she condemns her female
colleagues for their inability to practice a type of lived religion and
imitate Christ:

Your piety isn’t worth much, for though you read in your Bible how
the Lord treated a poor soul like me, yet when I stretch out my hand
to you for help, not one of all you virtuous, Christian women dare
take it and keep me from a life that’s worse than hell. (109)

Both Alcott’s Christie and Rossetti’s Lizzie resist the mythology of the
‘fallen woman’ by bringing about their sisters’ redemption through acts
of sympathy. At the moment “Rachel” claims that not one of her
working sisters will dare to take her hand, flinging out this very hand
“with a half-defiant gesture,” Christie symbolically takes it into her own
(109–110). This act represents Christie’s determination to redeem her
sister by identifying herself with her. She informs the factory-owner,
Miss King, : “Some one must trust her, help her, love her, and so save
her, as nothing else will. Perhaps I can do this better than you,—at least,
I’ll try … even if I risk the loss of my good name” (sic 110). Just as Christ
redeems humanity by taking on human flesh, so does Christie ‘save’ her
sister through conflating her identity with hers.
One wonders if Christie’s act was informed by the actions of Rossetti’s
Lizzie who similarly brings about her sister’s redemption through in-
viting her to unite with her as one body, and thus be purified:

Eat me, drink me, love me;

Laura, make much of me:
166 “A Loving League of Sisters”
For your sake I have braved the glen,
And had to do with goblin merchant men.
(C. Rossetti Poems 5–20 471–474)

If Lizzie’s act mirrors that of the Christian priest through enabling her
sister’s communion with the transfigured Eucharistic body of a feminized
redeemer, Christie likewise becomes one body with “Rachel,” since they
co-raise Christie’s daughter, Pansy, after David’s death. Christie and
“Rachel,” now Letty, are presented as parents in the “feminine house-
hold” the child is reared in:

The purring and clucking that went on; the panics over a pin-prick;
the consultations over a pellet of chamomilla; the raptures at the
dawn of a first smile; the solemn prophecies of future beauty, wit
and wisdom in the bud of a woman.
(L. Alcott Work 321)

As the “bud of woman” (ibid.), Pansy is the apotheosis of a gynocentric

community, born in an overwhelmingly yonic household devoid of any traces
of masculinity. The consultation over chamomilla, historically associated
with female fertility, positions Pansy as the offspring of Christie and Letty.
Pansy’s containment in an exclusively “feminine household” is re-
tribution for David’s earlier rejection of his sister, as he disowned Letty
and left her homeless after he discovered her “shame” (266). Christie
claims David “atoned for that harshness to one woman by years of de-
votion to many,” transforming himself into “‘a brother of girls’ … a man
that has a clean heart to love all women as his sisters” (267). As a form
of restitution for the abandonment of his biological sister, David ded-
icates his life to the preservation of the sisterhood and sacrifices himself
for its continuation into the next generation. Letty takes David’s place as
Pansy’s second parent, uncannily mirroring the close of “Goblin
Market” when Laura passes on the story of her redemption to her and
her sister’s children in a shared household strangely devoid of fathers and
husbands.
The resonances between the relationship of Alcott’s Christie and Letty,
and Rossetti’s Lizzie and Laura, are not merely limited to the redemptive
power of sisterhood. Like Rossetti, Alcott also explodes the dichot-
omization between ‘pure’ and ‘fallen’ women by emphasizing the fact it
is not sexual purity alone that defines a woman’s moral worth. Although
Christie ‘saves’ “Rachel” in the first instance, it is “Rachel” who later
redeems Christie during the latter’s suicidal episode. This encounter is
significant because Christie is presented as the morally weaker of the two
characters, even though she has preserved her chastity. When Rachel
claims she went away to help other fallen women, so that she “might
grow good enough to be [Christie’s] friend,” Christie responds: “See
 “Happy Women”: Alcott’s Sisterly Utopia 167
what I am, Rachel, and never say that the more!” (126). Likewise, when
David confesses he feared Christie would not accept his proposal when
she “knew all” about his sister, she responds by asking him: “Did Letty
tell you what she had done for me?”—placing her moral fault on an
equal footing with Letty’s (272–273).
The redemption between the two sisters in “Goblin Market” is also
not one sided.1 Lizzie does not experience the same symbolic fall as her
sister, but she is not a paragon of domestic virtue. Lizzie maintains her
purity by shutting herself off from the world and denying the existence of
temptation: “cover[ing] up her eyes,” thrusting “a dimpled finger/In each
ear” and running away—thereby abandoning her sister to the tempta-
tions of the Goblin merchant men and the sight of their fruits (C.
Rossetti Poems 5–20 50 67–68). Lizzie merely avoids sin by following
the prescriptions of a social doxa she does not attempt to question, or
ascertain the origins of: “We must not look at goblin men, / We must not
buy their fruits” (6 42–43).
It is Lizzie’s physical and spiritual combat with the goblins that en-
ables her to take on the role of heroine. In her quest to defeat the goblins,
Lizzie is described as beginning to “listen and look” (13 328): observing
the world around her and its trials and temptations, for the first time.
Laura’s fall therefore enables Lizzie to exercise her agency and form an
independent identity, ceasing to define herself through the social mores
that surround her. Equally, Letty’s experience of despondency and her
redemption at the hands of Christie enables her to later facilitate
Christie’s redemption when she succumbs to the temptation of her own
‘bosom sin,’ indulging in a self-involved solipsism that culminates in her
attempted suicide.
The portrayal of sisterly relationships as mutually transformative is
consistent across the range of class and ethnic groups contained in
Christie’s intersectional sisterhood. Christie’s encounter with a fugitive
African-American cook, Hepsey, during her time as a servant, forces her
to confront her privileged social position—something her preoccupation
with her struggles has previously obscured from her attention. Christie’s
sense of the privileges that should be accorded to her as a woman leads
her to refuse some of the work assigned to her. Disgusted at her em-
ployer, Mr. Stuart’s, request that she black his boots, Christie argues:
“there ought to be a boy to do this sort of thing” (L. Alcott Work 21).
Hepsey brings Christie to understand the ability to support one’s self
is a privilege, and she must accept the responsibilities upon which her
position is contingent: “Dere’s more ‘gradin works dan dat, chile …
You’s paid for it … and if you does it willin, it won’t hurt you more dan
washin’ de marster’s dishes” (sic ibid.).
Hepsey unwittingly forces Christie to confront her unknowing in-
vestment in the hierarchy of the marketplace where poor children and
African-Americans are forced to do the most degrading work, while
168 “A Loving League of Sisters”
educated white women like herself are led to believe such tasks are be-
neath them. The pride Hepsey takes in being remunerated for her work
reminds Christie that if she wants to become a truly self-reliant woman
she cannot expect to be placed above others on account of her back-
ground or social status. Hepsey is unashamed of taking on any labor,
providing her humanity and autonomy are recognized, and she therefore
offers to clean the master’s boots on Christie’s behalf: “You jes eave de
boots to me; blackin’ can’t do dese ole hands no hurt, and dis ain’t no
deggygation to me now; I’s a free woman” (sic ibid.).
Christie’s encounter with Hepsey enables her to contemplate the
nature of freedom and the symbolic importance of allowing women to
become self-sufficient. Hepsey locates freedom in being paid for her
work, rather than having both her body and labor seized as another
person’s ‘property.’ Christie is forced to let go of the introspective
fixation on her own needs and place her trials in the wider context of
those of her disadvantaged sisters. Upon learning Hepsey was enslaved,
Christie forgets “her own small injury at this suggestion of the greatest of
all wrongs” and admits that she is “ashamed” of her refusal to black the
master’s boots because she should not “feel degraded by it, though I
should by letting you do it for me” (22–23).
Thereafter, Christie attempts to erase the social distinctions between
herself and Hepsey by sympathetically identifying herself with her en-
slaved sister. Upon learning Hepsey has been cheated out of the money
she saved to secure her mother’s emancipation, Christie both sets aside
a portion of her own wages and teaches Hepsey to read because she
now regards “Hepsey’s cause as hers” (27). This mode of transfor-
mative identification is enabled by her ability to sympathetically im-
merse herself in Hepsey’s experiences, for “Hepsey could give her a
comedy and a tragedy surpassing any thing she found in them, because
truth stamped her tales with a power and pathos that the most gifted
fancy could but poorly imitate” (27). Alcott underscores the im-
portance of giving authentic testimony throughout the novel, since it is
only through recognizing the validity of another person’s experience
that true reform is achieved: Christie is moved to “tears of sympathy”
by Hepsey’s account of her struggles (ibid.).
Hepsey’s experiences as an enslaved woman (transmitted through her
stories), and Christie’s biography (communicated through her speech),
are contained within the narrative as testaments to the wider needs and
experiences of the intersectional sisterhood fragmented across the public
sphere. It is only through engaging sympathetically with her sisters’ ex-
periences that the heroine achieves communion with them. Alcott also
implies the novel itself should be reformed to include a more diverse
range of stories and characters. Up against Hepsey’s stories, “novels
[lose] their charm” because the authentic struggles of Christie’s African-
American sister are more urgent, authentic and compelling (ibid.).
 “Happy Women”: Alcott’s Sisterly Utopia 169
Subtitled “A Story of Experience,” Work exposes the reader to the
reality of the struggles of women across a variety of classes, employ-
ments, and ethnicities, including Quaker women, washerwomen, fallen
women, and fugitive women. Based on Alcott’s own experiences in the
workplace, it endeavors to open the eyes of its female readers to the
plight of their sisters to galvanize them to join forces in promoting
women’s suffrage at the close of the narrative.

“Bigger, Lovelier and More Imposing Than Any Woman I

Ever Saw”: Female Creativity and Sisterly Ministry
At the close of Work, Alcott demonstrates that by cultivating an in-
dependent identity in the workplace and engaging compassionately
with the outside world, Christie’s sisterhood is able to create an al-
ternative artistic community focused on the reform of the androcentric
traditions of art they have inherited, redirecting the elevation of the
individual to the mutual support of a diverse group of others. In
the final scene of the novel, Christie and her ‘loving league of sisters’
come together to interpret a painting gifted to Christie by Mr. Fletcher:
a rejected suitor who has come to accept the platonic sentiments she
feels for him. The painting depicts a scene from The Pilgrim’s Progress:
Part II (1688) where Mr. Greatheart leads Mercy and Christiana out of
the City of Destruction. As each woman gazes on the picture, she sees
her own life reflected in its image. Christie’s mother-in-law, Ruth
Sterling, detects “just a hint of Davy” in the figure of Mr. Greatheart,
while Hepsey observes that the female figures in the painting “oughter
bin black.” Christie and Letty, meanwhile, observe that the child looks
like Pansy (342).
Each woman is liberated to read her own story into the picture,
implying that the sisterly community has been freed to interpret the
literary tradition through the lens of its relationships and experiences.
Moreover, the fact the painting is a gift from Fletcher suggests the
male artist will eventually accept the outward-facing values of the
sisterly community. Fletcher agrees to Christie’s offer of friendship
and gifts her with a scene from a seminal work of the male canon re-
interpreted by both her and her sisters. If Fletcher must be rejected
and David Stirling must die to allow the female community to form an
independent identity and alternative set of values, this gesture of re-
conciliation indicates that after a period of gestation both male and
female artists will come together collaboratively.
Yet, the sisterly community must first be allowed a period of growth
because the apotheosis of a new school of interpretation is contingent on
the sisterhood’s engagement with the outside world. It is only through
participating in philanthropic projects, aimed at aiding, and assisting
the most downtrodden members of society, that the female community is
170 “A Loving League of Sisters”
finally able to instigate a new tradition of female artistry. Just as Maude
Foster must become united with Christ before her poetry is able to
be transformed into a vessel of his incarnate Word, so must each of
Christie’s sisters learn to imitate Christ through focusing their attentions
on the needs of others before they are able to reform the emphasis on
solipsism and individualism contained within the androcentric traditions
of art they have inherited.
If Alcott’s Work only charts the inception of a newly formed school of
female art, her earlier text, An Old-Fashioned Girl (1868), goes one step
further to imagine a female circle that not only addresses the most
pressing social issues of the day but also spearheads an idealized utopian
community of female artists who create a public commentary on feminist
issues in their work. This group consists of sculptress Rebecca Jeffrey,
engraver Lizzie Small, author Kate King, and the heroine, Polly Milton,
who is a musician. This sisterly community is referred to as “a different
race of creatures” who are set apart from the superficial women who
dominate fashionable society (227). Alcott’s creation of a “different
race” of women stands out in her oeuvre for its total exclusion of men.
Whereas Work presents the initial stage in the development of female
artistry when women are freed to reinterpret male traditions of art,
An Old-Fashioned Girl portrays a self-contained school of female art
that does not refer to the seminal works of the male canon. The figure of
the self-sacrificing male patron who gives up his romantic claim to make
way for the ascension of the sisterhood is also notably absent.
Alcott’s distaste for the figure of the husband as an obstacle on the
female artist’s journey towards professionalization is made explicitly
clear in her portrayal of the relationship between artists, Lizzie, and
Rebecca, who “live together, and take care of one another in true Damon
and Pythias style” (223). Lizzie and Rebecca are almost certainly a les-
bian couple, for “they work, eat, sleep and live [together], going halves in
everything” (ibid.). The Greek myth surrounding the idealized friendship
between Damon and Pythias is often read as an early portrayal of a
homosexual relationship, and this interpretation was openly referred to
in contemporary novels of the period, such as Theodore Winthrop’s
Cecil Dreeme (1861): a story of the narrator, Robert Byng’s, love for the
novel’s titular hero. Alcott was almost certainly acquainted with Cecil
Dreeme, for an illustration of the novel’s protagonist is in her sister,
May’s, private papers.2 Roberta Seelinger Trites also claims that the
relationship between Rebecca and Lizzie was based on the historical
relationship between sculptress, Emma Stebbins (a close friend of
Alcott’s), and actress, Charlotte Cushman: a romantic union that was an
open secret in Boston, referred to as one of the many “Boston marriages”
between women (144). Within the realm of her domestic fiction, Alcott
obscures her portrayal of Stebbins and Cushman’s relationship with a
veneer of respectability, for Lizzie “is to be married in the spring” (229).
 “Happy Women”: Alcott’s Sisterly Utopia 171
However, in the most unconventional manner, Rebecca continues living
with Lizzie after her wedding because “nothing will part” these two
“friends” (439).
In one of her seemingly most conventional novels for children, Alcott
manages to portray an exclusive female community of artists that pro-
pagates its values into the wider world without the assistance of a male
mentor or patron. The final output of this artistic community is the
creation of a sculpture, “Woman,” which is fashioned by Rebecca and
reflects the entire community’s conception of what they perceive the ‘true
woman’ to be (225). This sculpture deliberately undercuts the ‘Cult of
True Womanhood’ by referencing many of the images and roles tradi-
tionally associated with the ‘true women,’ in order to overthrow them.
The statue is described as neither a “saint or a muse, a goddess or a fate,
but … a beautiful woman, bigger, lovelier and more imposing than
any woman I ever saw” (224). Significantly, Rebecca’s “true woman” is
also surrounded by emblems of women’s “various talents,” including
a “needle, pen, [and] palette,” as well as “the ballot-box,” which sym-
bolizes the fact that she has “earned the right” to vote (225–226).
In this, her most striking portrayal of a sisterly community, Alcott
presents a female utopia able to produce a new emblematic image of the
‘true woman’: a self-sufficient artist who is able to make a contribution
to society, independent of any contact with men. Alcott does not reject
the family in this final image, since the sisterly family remains at the heart
of this new vision, but in this most unusual sisterhood, the author finally
presents a self-sufficient community that promotes its values to the
outside world through artistic production, as well as philanthropic work.
Like the sisterhood of Christina Rossetti’s Maude, this community is self-
contained, supporting the female artist in the realization of her ecstatic
vision through its outward-facing ethos of care for others.
Alcott’s portrayal of two sisterhoods who create new schools of art
dedicated to alleviating inequality through empowering marginalized
groups of women bears a strong affinity to the vision of social justice
promoted in Liberation Theology. Founded after the Second Vatican
Council of the Catholic Church (1962–1965), which strove to reconceive
the social role of Christianity in the aftermath of both World Wars,
Liberation Theology endeavors to apply the analytical frameworks de-
veloped in the social sciences to the Christian’s pursuit of social justice.
It emerged in the Latin American churches who were confronting un-
precedented levels of poverty, ecclesiastical corruption, and political
exploitation at the time.
According to Curt Cadorette, Liberation Theologians address the lack
of human dignity accorded to the poor and disenfranchised by empha-
sizing “the power of the poor in history” who maintain “self-respect,
solidarity, and hope for the future,” as well as religious faith, in the face
of adversity (8). Their approach to the preservation of human dignity
172 “A Loving League of Sisters”
demands a “change of heart” in the way Christians conceive and practice
their faith. “Praxis,” the Liberation Theologian’s term for lived religion,
is championed as “the principal task of the Christian community”
worldwide (7). As well as seeking liberation from human suffering
through charitable projects, praxis conceives the Christian community
itself as “a type of liberative practice,” an “example of living freedom …
made possible by faith” (8). For Liberation Theologians, Christian
communities exist to preserve the rights of their members who “enjoy
each other, worship God, and achieve spiritual depth” (7–8).
The myriad women’s ministries inspired by Liberation Theology share
the vision of intersubjective sisterly redemption upheld in Alcott’s Work.
Seizing on women’s status as others in societies that continue to regard
them as creatures who are relative to men, these ministries challenge
institutional male authority: addressing the needs of ostracized women in
communal projects that Ivone Gebara claims are “not sanctioned by
church officials” (63). Such ministries defend their autonomous role in
the wider community on the grounds that theology is primarily gener-
ated through “oral transmission and the simple fact of sharing life”
(Gebara 57). Many women who participate in the praxis of Liberation
Theology are, like Work’s Cynthy Wilkins and Hepsey, illiterate—but
they understand “women are gifted with a deep intuition for human life”
and are uniquely equipped to “give counsel” and “provide support”
(ibid). Theology, for such women, is formed in the communal relation-
ships expressed in daily life; they reject abstract thought in favor of lived
experience. At the heart of their mission is a continuing attempt to
embody the person of Christ in their encounters with their impoverished
sisters: their praxis is both mystical and incarnational, striving to attain
divine union through serving others.
The praxis of Liberation Theology in women’s ministries today is
a contemporary version of the theology of caritas upheld in Alcott’s
fictional sisterhoods. Alcott’s sisterly communities and the ministries
inspired by Liberation Theology conceive sisterly relationships as ex-
pressions of God’s love for humanity that exude charity to the wider
world. Women enact social reform through their power of sympathy for
the socially alienated: their ability to identify with their suffering sisters
enables them to become mystical vessels who express the needs of the
wider female community, facilitating communication across classes and
participating in the rehabilitation and recovery of all women, no matter
their background, past, or social status.
In their desire to act as a single body who reflects the divine, women’s
ministries attached to Liberation Theology aspire towards a mystical
communion based on the Trinity. By dedicating themselves to one an-
other, women in these communities, endeavor to form a collective identity
that acknowledges the innate dignity of each of their members. These
ministries combine the communal model of the Rossetti women, who
 “Happy Women”: Alcott’s Sisterly Utopia 173
achieve a vision of the divine through identifying with one another’s
theologies of renunciation, with the Alcott women’s attempts to propagate
the renunciatory vision of the matrilineal community to the wider world,
as realized in the literary manifestos of Little Women, Work and An Old-
Fashioned Girl. The women’s ministries in Latin America today share
Alcott and Rossetti’s view that a meaningful vocation for women is not
located in the pursuit of individual acclaim or genius, but rather in the
mystical revelation of divine love generated through sisterly relationships.
I conclude this chapter by touching on Liberation Theology because it
demonstrates that the practice of women’s mysticism, which generates
union with the divine through the experience of lived religion, continues
to shape the reformist vision of Christian feminists today. It is quite
probable that the women’s ministries associated with Liberation Theology
have never heard of Alcott or Rossetti: they are grounded in a vastly
different cultural context and denominational affiliation. Yet, their vision
of spiritual sisterhood as the fruits of an incarnational theology comple-
ment Alcott’s and Rossetti’s attempts to achieve unification with their
sisters through their practical and mystical imitations of Christ. Across
the boundaries of time and space, these authors and ministries form a
distinct spiritual tradition that practices renunciation with the view of
empowering their littler, diminutive, and weaker sistren.
Alcott’s novels, Work and An Old-Fashioned Girl, and Rossetti’s no-
vella, Maude, are literary manifestos of the application of this spiritual
tradition to women’s writing. For Rossetti, the devotional poet is the
mouthpiece of her community of sisters who strive to gain admittance to
the kingdom of heaven; for Alcott, the female author unites an intersec-
tional sisterly community by creating a new school of art that promotes
the innate dignity of women to the wider world. While the authors differ
in their understanding of the social role of the devotional woman artist,
they nevertheless agree that authorial identity is shaped by religious faith,
mystical experience and renunciatory practice in the matrilineal commu-
nity. If they were alive today, they would doubtless celebrate the con-
tinuing survival and reformist power of women’s ministries across the
world as the fruits of a shared mystical matrilineal heritage.

Notes
1 This reading has a strong precedent. Galligani Casey writes, “This poem un-
dercuts the traditional patriarchal binary concept that the redeemer is
somehow ‘better’ than the redeemed…” (66), while 瀬名波栄潤 observes, “….
a passive maiden learns to take action in order to save other women and es-
tablish her potential outside of the domestic sphere” (16).
2 “Cecil Dreeme.” May Alcott Drawings, Loose Images from Green Album.
AFAP, 1724–1927. MS Am 2745 IB (29a). Houghton Lib., Harvard.
Conclusion

Both Louisa May Alcott and Christina Rossetti portray the female ar-
tist’s affiliation with her intersubjective sisterhood as contingent upon
her rejection of the individualistic ideologies promoted by male literary
traditions. If the authors’ public works articulate their adherence to
their mothers’ theologies of renunciation, they also express Alcott’s and
Rossetti’s definitive repudiation of the models of creativity inherited
from the Pre-Raphaelites and Transcendentalists. Alcott’s allusion to
The Pilgrim’s Progress in Work enacts a subtle commentary on her fa-
ther’s ideology of individualism, for The Pilgrim’s Progress was seminal
in Bronson Alcott’s philosophical writings and was later adapted by
Louisa May Alcott to represent the providential theology of her mother
in Little Women. When Louisa’s intersectional sisterhood interprets The
Pilgrim’s Progress in light of their personal experiences, they reconfigure
the values of the male canon and its emphasis on the hero’s solipsistic
quest towards fulfillment.
Alcott departs from the thematic preoccupations of her father’s in-
terest in Bunyan’s spiritual allegory by focusing on the lesser-known
second part of The Pilgrim’s Progress (1688), which concerns the
spiritual journey of the protagonist’s wife, Christiana. In the more well-
known first part of the narrative (1678), Christiana is presented as an
obstacle on Christian’s journey to eternal life: the hero runs from the
door with his fingers in his ears to prevent his wife and children from
convincing him to stay. Christian’s dogged pursuit of eternal life re-
sembles Bronson Alcott’s fidelity to his philosophical principals, at the
expense of his family’s wellbeing, in the Fruitlands experiment.1
By focusing on Christiana’s bildungsroman, Louisa allows the re-
demption of the female protagonist to take precedence over the male
hero’s isolated journey of self-discovery. Christiana’s initial disregard
for her husband’s distress and her investment in the pleasures of
the City of Destruction are conveniently expunged from the painting
presented at the end of Work. Instead, the image portrays two
female figures holding a baby, protected by a “faithful” male guide
(Work 342). Rather than endorsing a bildungsroman that reflects the
 Conclusion 175
prejudices of a male writer, Fletcher’s painting allows the sisterly
community to re-tell Christiana’s story from its own perspective. The
ability of each sister to interpret the painting analogically in reference
to her own biographical experience suggests that, like Abigail Alcott,
the community embraces a providential theology concerning the trials
and tribulations of daily life where each person is liberated to redirect
their suffering towards the greater good of others through working in
concert with the divine.
The individualistic Romantic currents that permeated Alcott’s and
Rossetti’s artistic milieux both found outlets in the authors’ commen-
taries on The Pilgrim’s Progress. Rossetti’s 1866 poem, “The Prince’s
Progress” (89–104), is an ironic retelling of Bunyan’s narrative that
signals her scepticism about the archetypical Romantic ‘questing’ hero.
A “Sleeping Beauty” fairy-tale, this poem narrates the story of a prince
who fails to overcome each of the obstacles he encounters on his
journey to meet his predestined bride, eventually arriving late at the
nuptial celebrations to discover she has died before he can give her the
kiss of life.
Rossetti portrays the Prince’s spiritual blindness as the source of his
eventual downfall. His journey is centered on his own emotional and
erotic fulfilment, and he is unable to recognize the typological signs that
warn him of the impending spiritual danger.2 For instance, he first delays
his journey upon meeting an overly sexualized “wave-haired milkmaid”
who offers him a draught of milk if he will pay “her fee” (58 72). This
“fee” is a promise to “sit under this apple-tree/Here for one idle day at
[his] side” (81–82). Despite the obvious association of the apple-tree
with the fall, the prince is oblivious to such intertextual allusions, be-
lieving that “for courtesy’s sake he could not lack/To redeem his royal
pledge” (87–88). By portraying the hero’s deference to his chivalric
courtesy as a pretext, Rossetti relocates the culpability for the fallen
woman’s sexual indiscretions to the male protagonist. The milkmaid’s
sexual power is discernible to both reader and prince; she writhes her
hair around the prince like “shining serpent-coils” (94).
Georgina Battiscombe has hypothesized that Rossetti’s creation of
a prince whose procrastination inadvertently kills his bride was a
veiled rebuke to Dante Gabriel Rossetti for his protracted five-year
engagement to Elizabeth Siddal (116). Dante Gabriel seems to have
been aware of the strain of his sister’s critique: his 1866 woodcut
illustration, “You should have wept her yesterday,” depicts a figure,
suspiciously like himself, being thrown out of the Princess’s palace by a
“severe female” whom Christina admitted in a letter “somewhat re-
sembles my Phiz” (qtd. in Battiscombe 124). Significantly, the poem
presents this lone female figure as surrounded by a group of sisters
who condemn the prince for arriving on the scene after the princess
has died:
176 Conclusion
You should have wept her yesterday,
Wasting upon her bed:
But wherefore should you weep today
That she is dead? (531–534)

Once again, Christina emphasizes the futility of the Pre-Raphaelite

preoccupation with a dead beloved, who is presented as the ideal
counterpart for a self-involved male artist. Here, the sisterhood suggests
the prince has subconsciously desired the beloved’s death because he
showed no urgency when she was in danger of losing her life. The at-
tendants’ punishment for the adjournment of the prince’s journey is
extreme: in the illustration he is arrested at the door and forcibly ejected
from the palace by a group of severe looking waiting women whose flint-
like faces belie their sensuous, free-flowing Pre-Raphaelite hair and
medieval attire. The prince is finally forced to face the destructive ra-
mifications of his spiritual blindness, for he covers his eyes in shame. The
tenor of this illustration is significant because it demonstrates that, far
from expecting his sister to blindly affirm his ideology of individualism
as a satellite of the Pre-Raphaelites, Dante Gabriel understood her al-
lusions to his spiritual blindness and acknowledged her religious faith
as an important facet of her artistic identity.
Dante Gabriel’s illustration does not merely acknowledge the cen-
trality of his sister’s religious faith; it also recognizes the presence of a
self-contained female community that drives male individualism from the
enclosed space within which it exists. Where Louisa May Alcott’s re-
interpretation of a seminal text of her father’s library allows some room
to imagine a future where the male protagonist might be brought to a
realization of the value of a female model of interpretation, Christina
Rossetti condemns her protagonist’s rejection of a religious framework
from the outset as insurmountable.3 Just as the Rossetti men’s dismissal
of the spiritual authority of their mother ensures their exclusion from
both the matrilineal community and the elect, so does the prince’s in-
ability to recognize his unconscious desire for the death of his beloved
ensure his banishment from the female space of the palace. There is no
evangelical strain to Rossetti analogical narrative: the prince’s fate has
been predetermined by his own obtuseness. Unlike Alcott, Rossetti has
no faith in the female community’s power to transform the outside world
through a universal application of its sisterly relationships, for the sis-
terhood does not even try to redeem the self-involved male hero. One
senses that to do so would be to waste their time.
Alcott’s and Rossetti’s vision of a self-contained community of female
artists diverges at the point of the authors’ conception of the social
purpose of women’s art and its engagement with the wider world. Social
reform remains at the heart of the idealized female utopia presented in
both Alcott’s Work and An Old Fashioned Girl. It is notable, though,
 Conclusion 177
that Alcott excludes the male artist from her sisterly utopia in the latter
text. While the male artist may be capable of achieving an egalitarian
collaboration with his female counterpart, he must not be allowed to
disrupt the sacred sanctuary of the sisterhood, upon which the eventual
reformation of society is founded. This community’s transformative
theology of caritas is derived from a feminine mode of perception that
privileges the experience of marginalized others; the female artist
achieves communion with this group of disenfranchised sisters by imi-
tating Christ. Integration into Rossetti’s Christian sisterhood likewise
depends upon a mystical union with the person of Christ, but this union
is directed towards the achievement of a perfect communion between
sisters in afterlife.
The authors’ differing conceptions of the christic union between sisters
stem from their mothers’ diverging theologies of renunciation. Louisa
May Alcott embraces Abigail Alcott’s providential understanding of
suffering through presenting the sacrifice of one’s needs to those of the
other as integral to the reformation of society. In contrast, Rossetti re-
mains focused on the relations of the sisterly community as reflections
of the divine relations between the persons of the Holy Trinity. The
sympathetic communion between Rossetti’s sisters is a product of their
union with the divine, which is achieved through accessing the sacra-
ments of the Church and shunning the toxic influences of a postlapsarian
world. For Alcott, the divine union between sisters is attained through
engaging with the material world to create an intersubjective society that
embraces outward-facing orientation towards others.
Nonetheless, Alcott and Rossetti are in concert in their vision of a
sisterly community that achieves spiritual unification through sympa-
thetic identification with others, allowing each of its members to trans-
cend the barriers of selfhood through their practice of mysticism. Both
authors reject the pursuit of genius and exceptionality, in favour of
creating a communal vision of female creativity founded on the pursuit
of the divine, and the promotion of Christian values. These sisterly
communities are embodiments of the theologies of renunciation
espoused by the authors’ mothers and focus on the importance of re-
linquishing the solipsistic pursuit of genius to achieve an ecstatic com-
munion with one’s sisters. The authors’ canonical works promote the
maternal values of the matrilineal community to the world at large,
encouraging the wider female community to take up the sympathetic
relations between women modelled by the Alcott and Rossetti families,
and form their own elected Christian sisterhoods. Alcott’s and Rossetti’s
understanding of the social purpose of these sisterhoods may differ, but
their conceptions of the female predecessor from which they take their
being are remarkably similar. While Alcott envisions a “true woman”
who is “bigger, lovelier and more imposing than any woman I ever saw”
(An Old-Fashioned Girl 224), Rossetti imagines a mother who is at once
178 Conclusion
“a hero and a giant” (Letters 2 158). In the cases of both of these
imaginary sisterhoods, it is that “mighty maternal love” that makes these
“little women” truly matches for “very big adversaries” (ibid.).

Notes
1 The resonances between this passage and the Fruitlands experiment have been
noted by Matteson (157), but he does not make any link to Alcott’s Work.
2 The Prince’s inability to recognize the symbols of Christian typology have
likewise been discussed by Arseneau (“Pilgrimage”) and Dawn Henwood.
3 It is worth noting here that The Pilgrim’s Progress was a highly influential text
in the Rossetti household. Packer claims that it was one of the first texts
Frances Rossetti read to her children before they had learned to read them-
selves (13). Through reinterpreting a seminal text within the family tradition
from a feminist perspective, Christina draws on the canon to openly challenge
her brother’s rejection of the Tractarian religious faith. Christina’s revisions
to Bunyan’s narrative would have been doubly significant to Dante Gabriel
when he came to illustrate her poem, for the text would have contained sig-
nificant childhood and familial resonances relating to the matrilineal tradition
of spiritual instruction. Since The Pilgrim’s Progress was a text that the
Rossetti siblings came into contact with through the matrilineal line, it is also
apt that Christina creates a self-enclosed community of women who condemn
the male protagonist at the poem’s denouement.
CODA Nineteenth-Century
Women’s Matrilineal
Theologies of Renunciation

I embarked on this work to uncover the obscured communities of

nineteenth-century women who underpinned Alcott’s and Rossetti’s re-
spective visions of sympathetic and divine sisterhood. Beyond the im-
mediate purpose of revealing the inspirational power, intellectual rigor,
and spiritual brilliance of the women behind the works, I set out to show
that nineteenth-century women’s authorship is not solely defined by
constructed patrilineal canons, even when the authors in question are
closely connected to the forefathers of these canons through either fa-
milial ties, or wider socio-cultural networks. The case-study of Alcott
and Rossetti reveals that Christian women inherit a legacy of shared
metaphysical experience that finds its origins in women’s mysticism. The
women of these matrilineal communities access the divine and propagate
visions of left-handed societies through sisterly communion that trans-
cends cultural and denominational disparities of experience. It is my
hope that the patterns and resonances I have identified in the visions of
the Alcott and Rossetti women will inspire further research on the me-
taphysical Christian experiences, theologies of renunciation, and ma-
trilineal heritages of nineteenth-century women on both sides of the
Atlantic. This coda to my work on Alcott and Rossetti maps out what it
might look like to recuperate matrilineal heritage in its myriad mani-
festations and thus delineate the engagement with theologies of re-
nunciation of a further group of nineteenth-century Christian women
writers in the United States and Britain.

“Letting Go a Presence for an Expectation”: Emily

Dickinson’s Doubting Theology of Renunciation
The most important female American poet of the nineteenth century,
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886), has been defined by her renunciatory
outlook and lifestyle. Like many medieval mystics, Dickinson responded
to her authorial vocation by confining herself to the home and dedicating
her everyday life to recording the metaphysical struggles, traumas, and
experiences she received privately. Clothing herself in white as a sign of
180 CODA
her devotion to her poetic calling in a manner that resembled the con-
secration of a religious visionary or a sanctified prophetess, Dickinson
further unwittingly emulated her mystical foremothers by producing a
prolific body of life-writing and verse that remained largely unpublished
in her lifetime. As a contemporary of Louisa May Alcott whose New
England milieu intersected with the Transcendentalists, Dickinson’s en-
gagement with the ideologies of individualism that permeate the
Romantic tradition are mediated through the figure of Emerson, who
paid several visits to Dickinson’s brother and neighbor, Austin, and his
wife and her close friend, Susan, from 1857.
Joanne Felt Diehl has characterized Dickinson’s response to Emerson
as expressive of an internal psychomachia or self-division whereby the
Emersonian aspiration to identify with the external world through the
conscious mind falls short and the poet is confronted with the jarring
division between self and other, unable to access the oversoul (174).
Dickinson’s renunciation can therefore be viewed as a reaction to the
unsustainability of the Transcendentalist project for women. Her re-
nunciatory practice can also be read as an expression of her ongoing
rejection of her father’s attempts to sanction her metaphysical experience
within the hierarchical structures of the Congregational Church through
his persistent endeavors to facilitate her conversion.1
It is widely accepted that Dickinson’s renunciation was a conscious
choice; yet, the devotional nature of her renunciatory aesthetics remains
disputed. Diehl associates Dickinson’s attitude with her rejection of the
Romantic tradition and subsequent “awareness of her own isolation”
(11) where Angela Conrad reads Dickinson’s “reclusion” as a sign of her
affiliation with women’s mysticism (xii). Conrad claims Dickinson’s
aspiration towards “immediate contact with the divine” resembles the
“spiritual exceptionalism” adopted by female visionaries (xiv). Shira
Wolosky synthesizes these views by claiming Dickinson experiences a
conflict between individualism and renunciation, but she views both
artistic outlooks as unsatisfactory.
When taken in its entirety, Dickinson’s work lacks the qualities of
resolution and consolation we might find in the devotional verse of a self-
consciously Christian female poet like Rossetti. However, Dickinson’s
preoccupation with the deferral of divine union is integral to her re-
nunciatory aesthetics. Dickinson embodies what I term a ‘doubting
theology of renunciation’: she rejects the internal division precipitated by
individualistic ideologies in favor of striving upwards towards a divine
revelation that can never be verified. She writes from a liminal space
between individualism and divine union, and her verse is preoccupied
with imagining the transcendent possibilities a theology of renunciation
might activate, as well as the nihilistic abyss its failure might precipitate.
Dickinson’s religious doubt is at its height when confronting the
individualistic egotism of a patriarchal God who precedes the figure of
 CODA 181
‘poet as prophet’ upheld in American Romanticism. In number 747
(1863), Dickinson conflates the capriciousness of a tyrannical and all-
powerful God with the arbitrary control an author wields over their fic-
tional creations: “It’s easy to invent a Life – / God does it – every Day –”
(333 1-2). The flippant ease with which the poet characterizes her ability
to create (or, in this case, ‘simulate’ as is conveyed by the self-generating
verb ‘invent’ – one that privileges human genius above the sanctity of
created phenomena) indicates a lack of investment in the fate of her fic-
tional creations or ‘lives,’ one that is mirrored by a self-satisfied God who
creates the world as a sign of his virtuosity: “Creation – but the Gambol /
Of His Authority –” (ibid. 3-4). This imagined individualistic God con-
ceives his Creation as a perverse experiment executed to evidence his di-
vine power:

The Perished Patterns murmur –

But His Perturbless Plan
Proceed – inserting Here – a Sun –
There – leaving out a man – (ibid. 9-12)

The creator’s “Perturbless Plan” is exacted without consideration for its

impact on creation (ibid.). Likewise, the poet also inserts their
“Perturbless Plan” on the world of the page without due regard for the
life of their subject beyond that subject’s display of the poet’s innate
craftsmanship (ibid.). Authorial individualism, for Dickinson, is the
primeval origin of religious doubt.
Dickinson is unable to transcend her vision of an egotistical God be-
cause her religious doubt impedes her ability to envisage a world to come.
Number 725 (1863) painfully affirms: “I’m finite – I cant see” (sic 324 4)
when the poet attempts to visualize “Their hight in Heaven” (sic ibid. 1),
referring to elect. Significantly, the misspelled “hight” remains trapped in
its own literality: it can be nothing more than a measurement, as opposed
to an imagined space that exists beyond the material world (ibid.). The
poet cannot visualize any form of being beyond the limitations of their
own finitude and, as such, “Their hight in Heaven” (which does, indeed,
presuppose the existence of the elect, while it yet remains faceless)
“comforts not”: the existence of such a company remains static and in-
effectual as long as the poet is unable to access or interact with it (ibid.).
The possibility of metaphysical transcendence is continually undermined
by its inability to manifest itself, rendering the heavenly sphere a mere
“House of Supposition” “skirted” by “Acres of Perhaps” where all ideal
forms remain as contingent and gestational as the opaque metonyms that
offer up their own ghosts in a world where every image is equivalent to an
invisible counterpart that cannot be visualized (ibid. 4-5).
Dickinson inhabits a liminal space between doubt and faith, as de-
scribed in Number 743 (1863): “Behind Me – dips Eternity – / Before Me –
182 CODA
Immortality – / Myself – the Term between” (332 1-3). She may ac-
knowledge the objective existence of both “Eternity” and “Immortality,”
but as the “term between” she is destined to access neither—remaining
forever imprisoned in the poet’s world of imagined forms and possibilities
as a type of mediatrix who cannot facilitate her own transfiguration (ibid.).
When authorial individualism is relinquished, Dickinson is caught between
the closed world of self that no longer possesses the capacity to encompass
the whole universe and the infinity beyond self that is unable to encompass
the poet in its own divinity.
Renunciation is an ascetic practice that allows the poet to affirm the
possibility of eternity through her very inability to verify it. Dickinson
renounces the dualistic divide between corporeal and spiritual to affirm
the existence of both, while acknowledging her inability to reconcile the
two. Thus, in Number 782 (1863), Dickinson writes: “Renunciation – is a
piercing Virtue/The letting go/A Presence – for an Expectation” (349 1-3).
Like the ancient prophet who obliterates physical sight to overcome
spiritual blindness, Dickinson defines renunciation as “The putting out of
Eyes”; she must relinquish her limited sight to affirm the existence of an
object beyond the scope of that sight (ibid. 5). Dickinson’s doubting
theology of renunciation allows the static position of doubt to annihilate
itself in the face of the possibility of divine transcendence, so that the
existence of that very transcendence may never be contested. The poem
closes with her reducing herself to an infinitesimal scope, so that she may
finally be obliterated by the vision she cannot attain: “Smaller – that
Covered Vision – Here –” (ibid 16). As the “Covered Vision” emerges, the
poet in her “smallness” vanishes from the page—leaving the reader to
grasp at the illusive transcendence that has continually evaded the
poet (ibid.).
Dickinson’s doubting theology of renunciation resists the ideology of
individualism upheld in American Romanticism. In the absence of a
matrilineal community who would facilitate a mystical revelation of the
divine, Dickinson inhabits a liminal space between the inward-facing
outlook of authorial individualism and a total unification with the
Creator enabled by ecstatic self-giving. Unable to achieve the spiritual
transfiguration to which she aspires, Dickinson instead deploys her
doubting theology of renunciation to obliterate the self and create space
for her readers’ possible spiritual transfigurations. Her internal psycho-
machia, characterized by a conflict between a destructive individualism
and transcendent spiritual communion, mirrors that of Rossetti—but
Dickinson lacks the divine maternal figure who acts as mediatrix be-
tween material and spiritual worlds. Likewise, she shares Alcott’s cri-
tique of Emersonian individualism as an arbitrary exercise of power but
lacks the sisterly community Alcott deploys to counteract this ideological
tyranny with a self-giving theology of caritas. An isolated female mystic
who stands outside the male literary tradition, Dickinson is unable to
 CODA 183
access the female community who would facilitate the divine mystical
union to which she aspires. As such, the vision of her divine union is
bequeathed to her readership who possesses the power to either embrace
her aspirational doubt, or imbue it with faith.

“Where Did Your Christ Come from? From God and a

Woman”: Sojourner Truth’s Spiritual Motherhood
If Dickinson is emblematic of the fate of the nineteenth-century female
poet who cannot identify an alternative matrilineal community with
whom to affiliate herself, Sojourner Truth (1797–1883) demonstrates
how a woman who has known, and yet been deprived of, her matrilineal
heritage might deploy the spiritual legacy of her motherhood to envision
a transformed left-handed society. Born into slavery as Isabella
Baumfree, Truth renamed herself after her 1836 escape to freedom when
she was later “called in spirit” to “travel east and lecture,” thereafter
providing testimony concerning the mystical experience that led to her
conversion, as well as promoting abolition and women’s suffrage
(Truth 73).
Truth is notable for developing a model of African-American spiritual
motherhood centered on the mystical adoption of an interracial society in
a period when the concept of ‘Republican Motherhood,’ largely deployed
to justify women’s reformist work, was open only to middle-class white
women. Republican Motherhood advocated for the political power of
the mother in the American household by arguing that the moral values
of the nation were transferred from mothers to sons and thereafter per-
petuated in the public sphere. This concept was, in Leslie J. Harris’s
words, “deeply entrenched in specific expectations of gender, race and
class” and was “problematic for slave mothers who lost control of the
most basic elements of their lives” (300). Truth rejects Republican
Motherhood and upholds the spiritual authority of the African-American
mother, who has faced spiritual and maternal deprivations and is able to
‘mother’ the body politic and assist in its spiritual regeneration through
working towards an egalitarian interracial sisterhood.
According to Rosetta R. Haynes, the African-American spiritual mo-
ther refigures “the physical degradation of enslaved women” by placing
her faith “in the power of divine authority to overcome human oppo-
sition” (3 156). The spiritual mother extends the role of the ‘outraged
mother’ by viewing her enforced separation from her children as a jus-
tification for mothering the nation. Truth combines the ideal of sym-
pathetic identification championed by Abigail Alcott with Frances
Rossetti’s role as intermediary who enables her children to access divine
transfiguration through spiritual unification with the mother. Truth’s
divine motherhood is enabled by a mode of mystical revelation that
empowers her to view her experience of deprivation through a
184 CODA
providential framework that presents her spiritual survival, and the re-
ligious testimony that emerges from it, as integral to the conversion of
others.
Truth’s mediated memoir, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850),
dictated to her amanuensis and editor, Olive Gilbert (1898–1981), pre-
sents her mother, Mau-Mau Bett, as a spiritual role-model who lays the
foundation for her daughter’s future mystical revelations. Mau-Mau
Bett’s conceptualization of the divine is based on her private spiritual
intuition, which empowers her to develop a vision of a privileged, in-
timate relationship between the enslaved child and God. In conversations
with her children, Mau-Mau Bett describes God as “the only Being that
could effectually protect them” and develops a providential vision of
human cooperation with the divine: “when you are beaten, or cruelly
treated, or fall into any trouble, you must ask help of him, and he will
always hear and help you” (Truth 12). Throughout her mediated
memoir, Truth follows her mother’s example by attributing her survival
and liberation from slavery to her collaboration with God in the ex-
ecution of his providence. Truth offers prayers for her preservation
during the most crucial moments of her life and interprets the serendi-
pitous convergence of circumstances and events as the direct answer to
these prayers. In recounting her autobiographical narrative to Gilbert,
Truth affirms, “And now … though it seems curious, I do not remember
ever asking for any thing but what I got it . And I always received it as an
answer to my prayers” (sic 19).
As a biographical work, Truth’s mediated memoir presents the pro-
vidential trajectory of her life as finding its fulfillment in a mystical re-
velation of God and conversion experience, the impetus for her
subsequent pursuit of spiritual motherhood. Truth is prevented from
being returned to her ‘master’ after he hires out her services to a Quaker
couple by a vision of God, who, “with all the suddenness of a flash of
lightning,” reveals that “he pervade[s] the universe (47). In the tradition
of the medieval mystics, Truth’s revelation inspires an awareness of her
human insignificance in the eyes of God, precipitating “a dire dread of
annihilation” (48).
Truth’s emerging awareness of her spiritual insignificance advances
the divine protection she seeks throughout the text. At the moment she
becomes aware of her spiritual inconsequentiality, she realizes her
‘master’ has abruptly left without explanation—tacitly accepting her
desire to secure her freedom under the 1827 New York Emancipation
Act. Truth provides no explanation for her ‘master’s’ abrupt departure,
but it raises the question of whether he partook in her mystical revelation
in a moment of unsought spiritual communion. Like the Protestant
mystics before her, Truth’s immanent experience of the divine enables
her to resist injustice and undertake an evangelizing mission. Following
her vision, Truth becomes an itinerant preacher whose advocacy for
 CODA 185
abolition and women’s suffrage hinges on the direct testimony she re-
ceives from God.
As a preacher, Truth adopts a new identity as a spiritual mother,
which she puts forward in her famous “Ar’n’t I a woman?” speech at the
1851 Women’s Rights Convention of Akron, Ohio. Responding to de-
mands that she desist from taking the stand on account of her race, as
well as the hypotheses of Methodist preachers who “claimed superior
rights and privileges for man on the ground of superior intellect” and the
“manhood of Christ” (Truth 99), Truth provided a catalogue of all she
had endured as an enslaved woman, punctuated with the refrain ‘Ar’n’t I
a woman?’—a subversion of the abolitionist motto, ‘Am I Not a Man
and a Brother?’ Foregrounding the spiritual superiority evidenced by her
endurance of outraged motherhood as a woman who had borne “thir-
teen chilern and seen ‘em … all sold out into slavery” (sic 100), Truth
strikingly pre-empted Christina Rossetti’s claim to women’s spiritual
equality with men on account of their maternal role by presenting her
audience with the question, “Whar did your Christ come from? From
God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with him” (sic 101). Truth
centralizes what is implicit in Rossetti’s matrilineal theology, namely,
that mothers secure the redemption of their children because Christ’s
salvific role as redeemer was made possible by the spiritual cooperation
of his own mother, a spiritual cooperation that mirrors Truth’s colla-
boration with God’s providence.
Significant to Truth’s assumption of spiritual authority is its grounding
in her power as an orator. She stands out among the subjects of slave
narratives for her continuing illiteracy, which was undercut by the
electrifying auditory power she deployed to affect her audience emo-
tionally, physically, psychologically, and intellectually. Her prophetic
persona curiously resembles the heroine of Alcott’s Work, Christie, who
correspondingly utilizes her sympathetic power as an actress to draw her
audience into an interracial sisterhood united in the common cause of
women’s suffrage. In complementarity with Christie, Truth’s oratorical
power likewise generated a wider interracial, Christian sisterhood. Jean
M. Humez claims that Truth’s career as a preacher integrated her into a
variety of “networks of sympathetic antislavery neighbors” (34), even-
tually resulting in the creation of her mediated memoir with Olive
Gilbert. Truth’s interracial sisterhood included the author and aboli-
tionist activist, Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880), a close friend of Abigail
Alcott.
The resonances between Sojourner Truth’s matrilineal theology and
the historical models of the Alcott and Rossetti women are surprisingly
numerous. Truth’s vision of divine maternity coincides with Christina
Rossetti’s championing of the earthly mother as an intercessory vehicle
who enables her children to ascend upwards into the communion of
saints. In divergence with Rossetti, however, Truth utilizes her
186 CODA
experience of outraged motherhood to stake a broader claim for the
wider spiritual motherhood of African-American women. For Truth,
divine maternity is integrated in a reformist project that mirrors Louisa
May Alcott’s vision of an interracial sisterhood borne out of the im-
mediate matrilineal community. A remarkable testament to the legacy of
African-American motherhood, Truth’s Narrative demonstrates that a
persecuted and dispersed matrilineal community can provide a founda-
tion for the spiritual reformation of society at large by dint of its very
survival.

“O God, No Blasphemy It Is to Feel We Loved in Trinity”:

Mystical Communion in the Matrilineal Community of
“Michael Field”
Sojourner Truth’s formation of a fully developed matrilineal theology in
the face of the dispersion of the nuclear family speaks to the immense
possibilities for shared subjectivity and mystical communion in the ma-
trilineal community itself. These possibilities are realized in the con-
tained matrilineal community of “Michael Field,” a literary pseudonym
for aunt and niece, Katharine Harris Bradley (1846–1914) and Edith
Emma Cooper (1862–1913). Bradley and Cooper produced eight col-
lections of poetry, twenty-seven plays, and thirty manuscript volumes of
collaborative diaries, Works and Days, from 1879–1914, the year of
Bradley’s death, when she brought out an edited collection of Cooper’s
early work, Dedicated, following the latter’s death the previous year.
It is germane to provide a short biographical sketch of Field’s life and
praxis, since their shared life together shaped their compositional process
and critical reception. Their mutual life began in 1864 when Cooper was
two and Bradley eighteen, after the latter assumed responsibility for the
former when the birth of Cooper’s sister, Amy, resulted in the extended
convalescence and ongoing invalidism of her mother, Emma. Four years
later, Bradley left the Cooper household to pursue her literary studies at
the Collège de France; Newnham College, Cambridge and University
College, Bristol where Cooper eventually joined her in 1879 at the age
of 17. The authors’ literary collaborations commenced at this time,
alongside their romantic relationship, explicitly documented in corre-
spondence and journals. Thereafter, they embarked on a collaborative
career as Aesthetic poets and dramatists. Their Pagan spiritual and erotic
beliefs characterized their early work but was superseded by the devo-
tional verse that followed their mutual conversion to Catholicism in
1907. This conversion was precipitated in part by Cooper’s ill-health but
was more closely connected to the poets’ mutual grief for their beloved
dog, Whym Chow: a pet they had simultaneously regarded as a proxy
child and force of pantheistic divinity. Thereafter, Cooper and Bradley
 CODA 187
embarked on a new celibate life together that culminated in their re-
spective deaths of cancer in 1913 and ’14.
Field’s shared life and output are remarkable in that “in many ways [it]
belongs altogether outside the tradition of Victorian women’s verse,”
expressing a startling freedom from the heteronormative values and so-
cietal mores of nineteenth-century Britain (Leighton 203-204). Their
shared authorial identity demonstrates that, in its most extreme embo-
diment, the matrilineal community can contain all aspects of female ex-
perience, which are, in this historically specific case, eventually sublimated
to the spiritual. It should be noted, however, that both women felt their
mystical transformation was the apotheosis of their shared selfhood.
While the early stages of Field’s recovery in the 1990s focused on the
authors’ earlier Bacchic, Pagan work at the expense of the Catholic
poems, a growing body of millennial critics have explored Field’s
Catholic output as “the legacy of the [authors’] earlier euphoric paganism
[transformed] into its newly configured emotional guise” (Marion Thain
and Ana Parejo Vadillo 48). Leire Barrera-Medrano’s scholarship is sig-
nificant for uncovering Field’s devotional roots in the tradition of Spanish
mysticism, a mode of spiritual writing focused on “transcend[ing] the
boundaries of language and liberat[ing] previously untapped resources of
expression” (212). I build on the current trend in Field scholarship by
arguing that the poets’ mystical theology realized their pursuit of ecstatic
experience as Pagans. Bradley and Cooper’s metaphysical union forced
them to locate themselves in a vision of divine immortality. Paganism
proved insufficient because the poets’ matrilineal union was multi-
faceted: motherly, sisterly, and erotic, it required a multi-dimensional
vision located in the fluid relations of the Trinity. The authors presented
themselves as single entities who were both distinct and united, locating
their particularity in the ways they related to one another.
Field’s development of a Trinitarian poetics was inspired by Whym
Chow, whom they regarded as their spiritualized child. Bradley ex-
pounded on the importance of Whym Chow, soon after his purchase, in
Works and Days. In an entry for January, 1898, Whym Chow is de-
scribed as an emblem of Field’s mutual “desire to get into another
kingdom,” a “kingdom of animals” that exists on a continuum with the
“kingdom of the dead” and is able to achieve “companionship” with the
whole of creation (Field 265). Following Whym Chow’s death, Cooper
experienced a revelation of the Christian God that incorporated the
poets’ Bacchic sensibilities into a vision of immortality:

Wednesday 14th [February 1906]

Sun—our South sun! How immediate the sun! That is why Chow is
with us—flash after flash we see him; & all his living zeal is round
our spirits.
188 CODA
Our dearest name for him was & is the little Now-now—He was
[<]—he is [>] always the moment Eternal of the Bacchic God—the
inspirer of Life. Our Sunbeam, our instant torch—our Now-
Now. (281)

In her subsequent entry to Works and Days, Cooper recorded her re-
conciliation “with the only True Church”—making it clear the Bacchic
God with whom Whym Chow was associated was also the Trinitarian
God of the Catholic faith (ibid. 1907). The passage describing Whym
Chow’s transfiguration furnishes a unique record of the process of Field’s
conversion, which laid the foundation of their Christian poetics.
Metaphorically conflated with the Sun, Whym Chow is associated with
both the source of Pagan worship and the incarnate Second Person of the
Trinity. By re-christening the dog “Now-Now,” Cooper expresses an
incarnational faith that presents the union between God and creation as
ever-present in nature (ibid.). Following Whym Chow’s death, the au-
thors turned to Catholic mysticism as a theological framework that
could combine their ecstatic, Bacchic love for one another with a wider
vision of divine immortality.
Whym Chow’s death marked a new phase of Catholic poetics that
culminated in the publication of Whym Chow: Flame of Love (1914), a
poetic requiem that recorded the transformation of the dog from
a Bacchic demi-god to an earthly manifestation of the Holy Spirit. In a
reverse trajectory to the Rossetti women, whose mystical union origi-
nates in the procreative source of the mother, Field regard their divine
union as activated by Whym Chow: the spiritual child who proceeds
from their divine love for one another.
In Number V, “Trinity,” Whym Chow is presented as a divine,
communicative medium between Cooper and Bradley, who transmits the
poets’ love into perpetuity as the “Unconscious Bearer of Love’s inter-
change” (Field 185 18). In a moment of radical challenge that flirts with
blasphemy, Bradley demands that God accept the veracity of the ma-
trilineal community’s Trinitarian configuration: “O God, no blasphemy/
It is to feel we loved in trinity, / To tell Thee that I loved him as Thy
Dove” (185 3-5). Bradley boldly adopts the formation of the Trinity for
her contained matrilineal unit, usurping this formation from God him-
self, and reimagining Whym Chow as the Holy Spirit, transformed from
dove to dog. Implicit in her usurpation of the Trinitarian form is a need
to find an equivalent to the divine in the matrilineal community’s rela-
tions with one another: her love for Whym Chow is equivalent to the
love the Father bears for the Holy Spirit, proceeding from his union with
the Son. Bradley concurs with the Rossetti women’s claim that the
fluidity of relationships between women, derived from mutual identifi-
cation within the matrilineal community, is the human model that most
closely resembles the self-giving relationships of the Trinity.
 CODA 189
Field’s remarkable literary output, defined by their collaborative
poetics, proves that sympathetic identification between women in the
matrilineal community can be all-encompassing, incorporating motherly,
sisterly, erotic, and spiritual relations. Their renegade lifestyle and un-
conventional writing process challenges the Bloomian theory that all
models of authorial identity are characterized by a struggle with one’s
androcentric antecedents. Central to Field’s ability to resist dominant
male paradigms of authorship is their fundamental queerness: the un-
conventional nature of their romantic relationship, which defies even
present-day norms in its incestuous matrilineage, nevertheless allows
Field to create a fully fledged alternative framework for the benefit of the
female community.
It is intriguing that the self-contained matrilineal community en-
compassed by Field echoes the poetics of the Rossetti women by turning
to the Trinity as a vehicle for imagining a matrilineal mystical union
bridging earthly and heavenly spheres. For Field, incorporation into the
Trinitarian God was the ultimate manifestation of their love for one
another. As such, they admired Christina Rossetti as a mystical poet who
straddled material and spiritual states. Concerning Rossetti, Field wrote
in Works and Days: “She has neither out-look or inlook; […] she has
music & fragrance & flight; she passes among us a singing bird & her
song drops spices … Take her anywhere—she is the poet” (sic Field 279).
Field’s matrilineal community may have been self-contained, but they
were aware of a wider community of female poets with whom they were
spiritually affiliated. As the “singing bird” that flies between earth and
heaven, possessing neither “out-look or inlook,” Rossetti was the pre-
cursor of Field’s mystical matrilineal community because she was the
poet whose Trinitarian poetics propelled her own mother and sister into
the world to come (ibid.). Perhaps Bradley and Cooper not only hoped to
meet Whym Chow in the heavenly sphere, but Rossetti herself as the poet
of “music & fragrance & flight” (ibid.) who sought a mystical union
with the matrilineal community for all of eternity.

“But You Have Come!”: Transatlantic Spiritual

Sisterhood and Mystical Communion in Frances Hodgson
Burnett’s The Shuttle
In the composite authorial identity of “Michael Field,” scholars and
students of nineteenth-century women’s writing witness the capacity of
the matrilineal community to contain a diverse range of female experi-
ences and relationships. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Shuttle (1907)
expands the metaphysical transcendence of matrilineage to map nations,
envisaging a transatlantic sisterhood emerging from the phenomenon of
transatlantic marriage that gripped the British and American aristocracy
and moneyed classes from the 1870s until the outbreak of the First
190 CODA
World War. Burnett (1849–1924) was an Anglo-American novelist
whose family immigrated to the United States when she was 16 years old
in 1865. From the 1880s she embarked on regular transatlantic trips to
England where she purchased a second home and authored two of her
most famous children’s novels, A Little Princess (1905) and The Secret
Garden (1911). During this period, she was uniquely well situated to
observe the dynamics of numerous transatlantic unions forged with the
view of repairing dilapidated English estates because her dual nationality
enabled her to permeate both the British and American milieux of the
spouses of her acquaintance, as well as to observe the misunderstandings
and discontents occasioned by the cultural differences with which she
was so intimately familiar.
From 1870–1914, over 450 American heiresses, the daughters of wealthy
industrialists and entrepreneurs, married European aristocrats—over a
quarter of whom were British.2 These ‘title-heiress marriages’ were the
subject of fascination in the American media and popular culture: discussed
in gossip columns, short stories, and both popular and canonical novels.
They were viewed as a microcosm for the growing rapprochement between
Britain and the United States, evidenced by the increase in international
travel, mutual business collaboration and investment, as well as the wider
transatlantic dissemination of American mass culture. However, as these
international marriages proliferated, the American press became progres-
sively disillusioned with their outcomes. Increasingly, it was apparent that
the American unfamiliarity with the British class structure led many pow-
erful businessmen to unwittingly encourage their daughters to enter alli-
ances with “cash-strapped young [men], needing money either for the
upkeep of a crumbling familial estate or to service debts accumulated
during years of fashionable debauchery” (Woolf 162).
Entering the midst of this debate in 1907, Burnett’s text indicates the
most effective antidote for alleviating the breakdown in national and
gendered relations is the transformative power of transatlantic sister-
hood. The Shuttle is set in the 1870s (the height of the international
marriage craze) and examines the destiny of a naïve American heiress,
Rosalie Vanderpoel, who is duped into marrying a brutish Baronet, Sir
Nigel Anstruthers. Anstruthers has mortgaged his estate, Stornham
Court, in his pursuit of a destructive and debauched lifestyle. He is
verbally, physically, sexually, and emotionally abusive to his wife. His
psychological manipulation and control of Rosy are eventually thwarted
by her younger sister, Bettina. Unlike Rosy, described as “an innocent,
sweet-tempered girl with a childlike simpleness of mind,” Betty re-
presents a new type of American woman who possesses “a genius for life,
for living herself, for aiding others to live, for vivifying mere existence”
(Burnett 2007 13 76). She travels to England while Anstruthers is
abroad, setting Stornham in order and assisting in the recovery of her
sister’s health. On Anstruthers’ return, she resists his physical advances,
 CODA 191
which culminate in an attempted sexual assault prevented by her future
husband, Lord Mount Dunston. After Anstruthers is whipped by Mount
Dunstan, he descends into madness and wastes away—leaving Betty to
reunite Rosy with the Vanderpoels and restore a second dilapidated es-
tate in Dunston Park.
In her portrayal of the relationship between Rosy and Betty, Burnett
suggests the mystical communion between sisters transcends national
boundaries, customs, and cultures, as well as the hardships and abuses
nineteenth-century women face. Whatever the pitfalls of the interna-
tional marriage, Burnett regards the union as inextricably intertwining
the fates of Britain and America. As such, it falls to the all-enduring
mystical sisterhood to set the deterioration in the relations between na-
tions, encapsulated in the title-heiress marriage, to rights. This restora-
tion of transatlantic relationships and female fulfilment is, in part,
secured through a theology of renunciation: both Rosy and Betty are
spiritually purified by the sacrifices they make for one another, their love-
interests, and families, and these sacrifices are portrayed as integral to the
eventual restoration of the transatlantic family-unit. The survival of the
sisters’ bond through 12 years’ separation is also portrayed as an act of
providence: both women pray for their reunion and Rosy’s redemption,
and each conceives the power of prayer as integral to the development of
their transatlantic fates. Each sister is subject to moments of mystical
revelation, and it is apparent that their bond extends beyond the im-
manence of physical companionship.
Rosy regards Betty’s arrival at Stornham Court as the prophetic answer
to her prayers. She informs Betty of the spiritual counsel she has received
from the local curate, Mr Ffolliott, who has intuited the nature of her
abusive marriage and consoled her with his faith in the work of God’s
providence: “God will help you. He will. He will” (Burnett 2007 187).
At first, Rosy, who has been beaten into submission, cannot place faith in
the existence of a God “who has not forgotten [her]” (ibid. 187). Yet, on
relaying the story of Ffolliott’s spiritual guidance to Betty, “A strange,
almost unearthly joy … flash[es] across [Rosy’s] face” (ibid. 193). In Betty
herself, Rosy identifies the hand of providence:

‘It must be true,’ she said. ‘It must be true. He has sent you, Betty. It
has been a long time — it has been so long that sometimes I have
forgotten his words. But you have come!’ (ibid.)

The interpretation of Betty’s arrival as the direct response to Rosy’s

prayers suggests that the tensions between the British and American
nations cannot sever the spiritual communion between sisters, which
transcends national borders. Rosy’s reaction to Betty’s presence proves
the sisters’ continuing mystical union has not been ruptured by the
transference of Rosy’s national allegiances.
192 CODA
Rosy’s reunion with Betty and her final redemption are also the product
of her theology of renunciation. The spiritual relationship she cultivates
with Ffolliott, the impetus of her prayers and Betty’s eventual arrival,
generates a romantic love for the curate that can never be reciprocated.
Barred from pursuing a relationship with Ffolliott by her marriage, as well
as the false rumors Anstruthers spreads concerning an adulterous union
between them, Rosy never informs Ffolliott of her feelings in the knowl-
edge that a romantic relationship will destroy his reputation and prevent
the longed-for reunion with her family in New York. Rosy’s sacrifice of
her love for Ffolliott enacts a type of spiritual purgation, the fruits of
which are her rescue from Anstruthers. The cost of her sacrifice is revealed
to her in a mystical dream that culminates with her own “strange loud
cry,” bringing it home “that the years would go on and on, and at last
some day [Ffolliott] would die and go out of the world … And he would
never know” of her love for him (Burnett 2007 410).
Rosy’s dream and her physical reaction suggest that her theology of
renunciation is the product of a divine providential plan that brings
about the reunion between herself and Betty. Crucially, Rosy is able to
channel the sacrifice of her love for Ffolliott towards the spiritual rescue
of Betty during Anstruthers’ attempted assault. When Betty goes missing,
Rosy sends Mount Dunston to search for her, intuiting from personal
experience that Betty loves him. In a literal and figurative dark night of
the soul, Rosy spends the night praying for her sister—offering up her
suffering for Betty’s safety—and unwittingly bringing about Betty and
Mount Dunston’s union through her actions. Upon their return to
Stornham the following morning, Rosy testifies that “a great gulf had
been crossed [between Betty and Mount Dunston] in some inevitable,
though unforeseen leap” (ibid. 460). Unbeknownst to her, that leap has
been precipitated by her sacrificial offering of her romantic love in ex-
change for her sister’s survival. The redemption that is enacted through
the sisters’ relationship is not one way: like Lizzie and Laura in “Goblin
Market,” Betty and Rosy redeem and rescue each other. Rosy may be
compelled to offer the sacrifice of her romantic union with Ffolliott for
the sake of her reunion with her sister, but this is carried out in the
understanding that the sisterly bond is superior to the romantic one.
Although Betty is the sister Burnett describes as possessing “an unfair
endowment” of material and spiritual good fortune, she is also required
to make an act of spiritual purgation before she can attain fulfillment
through her respective (re)unions with Rosy and Mount Dunston
(ibid. 81). It is not enough that Betty leads an upstanding life; she must
also experience a mystical revelation of the divine. When Mount
Dunston is taken ill with typhoid fever, Betty feels compelled to organize
a religious service for the sick, even though she is aware that she is only
“religious” in “times of great pain and terror.”3 Her enforced reliance on
God, expressed through the “clamouring” of her “insistent” prayers,
 CODA 193
finally reaches its climax when she comes into direct union with the
divine:

Without warning, a wave of awe passed over her which strangely

silenced her—and left her bowed and kneeling, but crying out no
more. The darkness had become still, even as it had not been still
before. Suddenly she cowered as she knelt and held her breath.
Something had drawn a little near. No thoughts—no words—no
cries were needed as the stillness grew and spread and folded her
being within it. (Burnett 2006 Chapter 43 “Listening” para. 31)

Betty’s spiritual experience closely emulates what is characterized as the

‘first moment’ in the Christian mystic’s ongoing career of spiritual re-
velation. This is the first ecstatic experience that propels the mystic into
life-long unification with the divine, precipitated by an act of prayer
where the devotional subject becomes aware they are in communication
with something greater than themselves, in much the same way
Sojourner Truth realizes God “pervade[s] the universe—and there [is] no
place where God [is] not’” (Truth 47). Despite the fact she does not ask
for such a revelation, Betty is suddenly propelled into the stillness of
God’s infinity, encompassing the whole universe and enfolding her in its
being to keep the darkness at bay.
The sudden advent of Betty’s religious faith in a moment of crisis is in-
tegral to the eventual fulfilment of her destiny and attainment of her hap-
piness. Firstly, Betty’s suffering strengthens her relationship with Rosy; the
knowledge that Mount Dunston may die unaware of Betty’s love for him
leads Betty to a greater appreciation of the uplifting nature of Rosy’s self-
sacrificing love for Ffolliott. Secondly, Betty’s sacrificial offering ensures
Mount Dunston’s recovery; he becomes “conscious of being drawn back”
to her during the outpouring of her prayers (Burnett 2007 458). Thirdly,
Betty’s suffering divests her of the remnants of a pride that would threaten
to annihilate her spiritual integrity. Visited with the realization that the
experience of unrequited love would destroy her vitality, Betty realizes she is
no different from anyone else in her human dignity and intense experience
of love. Betty may represent a new type of transatlantic heroine who is
capable of both repairing the broken ties that connect the British and
American nations, and rescuing her sister from an abusive marriage, but her
divine power is finally rooted in her spiritual renunciation. The novel’s final
vision of a transatlantic sisterhood that expands outwards to incorporate a
newly envisaged Anglo-American family is dependent on the sisters’ on-
going mystical communion, both with God and one another.
The Shuttle presents the solution to the ongoing antipathy between
Britain and America as a mystical transatlantic sisterhood that trans-
cends national borders and defers to divine providence as the shuttle of
fate that shapes (inter)national destinies, rather than the individualistic
194 CODA
desire to divide and conquer. Significantly, Burnett portrays transatlantic
sisterhood as possessing the power to reimagine (trans)national identity,
which (in the model of Rosy and Betty) is constructed through self-
sacrificial relationships, underpinned by shared theologies of renuncia-
tion, that intertwine the fate of the two nations in a mutual attitude of
self-giving. At the close of the novel, Rosy’s reunion with the
Vanderpoels and Betty’s betrothal to Mount Dunstan produce a new
transatlantic family-unit that rejuvenates the heritage of the British
aristocracy and invests American entrepreneurship with the dignity of an
ancient lineage and higher moral purpose. The Shuttle demonstrates that
Anglo-American sisterhood is able to construct its own transatlantic
mythology, derived from the intersubjective, self-sacrificial, and mystical
relationships between women.

As the preceding pages have established, at least a dozen canonical and

recovered nineteenth-century British and American women created vi-
sions of female authorship that resisted the individualistic model in-
herited from British and American Romanticism by either creating
theologies of renunciation or deferring to mystical matrilineal heritages.
Emily Dickinson is an isolated and historically exceptional figure who
constructs an alternative to authorial individualism in the absence of a
matrilineal community. Confronted with the tyrannical inclinations of
the Romantic individualist who attempts to emulate an arbitrary and
capricious God, Dickinson deploys her religious doubt to entertain the
possibility of a mystical communion she is unable to access. She creates a
doubting theology of renunciation: relinquishing her individualistic
selfhood to allow the reader to envisage an empowered, divine sub-
jectivity that transcends the author’s limited ego. Dickinson’s poetry
testifies to the fact that a nineteenth-century woman can be conscious of
the inadequacy of a patrilineal literary heritage and exploit her very
alienation from this heritage to conceptualize a superior alternative, even
if this alternative is yet to be realized.
Contrastingly, Sojourner Truth demonstrates that the female author is
capable of withstanding the assault upon, and subsequent dispersal of,
the matrilineal heritage from which she is derived. Truth utilizes the
theology of her long-deceased mother to envisage her life as an act of
continuing collaboration with God’s providence. Her persistent en-
deavors to generate a mystical relationship with the divine enable her to
extend the matrilineal community to the wider nation by creating a
model of spiritual motherhood. As a powerful orator, Truth reminds us
that female authorship extends beyond the literary text. Her collabora-
tion with Olive Gilbert reveals that sisterly networks can emerge through
the privileging of marginalized voices, thereby enabling these voices to
become authorial subjects.
 CODA 195
Authorial collaboration is central to the composite identity of “Michael
Field”: the name given to two female poets whose intersubjective
identification with one another allows both women to define themselves as
a single authorial subject. Field’s unique collaborative practice reveals
that, in its most extreme distillation, the matrilineal union is able to
contain all aspects of female experience, from the maternal to the sexual to
the spiritual. Ultimately, though, it is the mystical union that contains all
aspects of the multifaceted matrilineal bond, for the model of the Trinity
facilitates a fluidity of personhood that allows the poets to move between
a variety of metaphysical states as they enter into transcendent commu-
nion with one another and the divine. In the example of Field, we witness
the startling capacity of the self-contained matrilineal unit to exist outside
the mores of the period and develop its own conceptualizations of au-
thorship, motherhood, sexuality, and spirituality.
Frances Hodgson Burnett reminds us that the matrilineal community
is not only able to contain all aspects of female relationships but is also
able to metaphysically cross borders and bridge cultures. Burnett ex-
plores the possibility that the propagation of a spiritual sisterhood across
the transatlantic world might enable women to access a transcendent
matrilineal heritage that possesses the power to redeem nations. Through
their shared providential outlook, sisters retain their mystical commu-
nion in the face of separation, while their theologies of renunciation
enable them to facilitate each other’s redemptions. Burnett’s con-
ceptualization of transatlantic spiritual sisterhood raises the intriguing
possibility that a shared transatlantic matrilineal heritage generates an
ongoing mystical consciousness that invests women with the knowledge
they are in communion with a wider spiritual sisterhood that shares their
intersubjective vision of the world. It is out of such an invisible, yet ever-
present, mystical sisterhood that Alcott and Rossetti write.
In my recovery of Alcott’s and Rossetti’s matrilineal heritage I have
demonstrated that matrilineal relationships are able to counteract the
legacy of authorial individualism passed down through male literary
traditions. This Coda has explored the wider application of the term
‘matrilineal heritage’ in its myriad manifestations: as a spiritual bond
that finds its apotheosis in the wider adoption of the nation, a self-
contained relationship that encompasses all aspects of female experience,
and a form of mystical communion that transcends barriers of separa-
tion. I have even attempted to show that the lack of a matrilineal heritage
can conversely generate an awareness of its existence in the mind of a
female poet who strives to create an alternative to the paradigm of male
genius. There are many other nineteenth-century female authors whose
affiliation with women’s mystical theologies of renunciation warrants
further attention: Laetitia Landon (LEL), the Bronte sisters, Fanny Fern
(1811–1872), and Susan Coolidge (1835–1895), to name but a few.
These women share an awareness that their Christian vision of the world
196 CODA
unites them, even if they remain unaware of one another’s
existence for the duration of their earthly lives. These remarkable
nineteenth-century women, who embody the term ‘matrilineal heritage’
in diverse and manifold ways, perceive themselves as belonging to a
wider mystical community that transcends the finite model of male in-
dividualistic genius: they are left-handed women of a left-handed society.

Notes
1 Jane Donahue Eberwein claims that after Edward Dickinson “renewed his
conversion commitment” in 1873, he organized a meeting between his
daughter and the Rev. Jonathan Jenkins to aid the former’s conversion and
“provide her anxious parent with reassurance as to her soul” (12 1).
2 The proceeding contextual information on international marriages is taken
from the scholarship of Paul Jonathan Woolf (160–164).
3 This scene has been edited out of the most recent 2007 reprint edition of The
Shuttle, published by Persephone Books. It is located in the Project Gutenberg
2006 e-book edition of the text (Chapter 43, “Listening,” para. 26). It is
notable that Burnett’s account of Betty’s mystical experience is expunged from
the most recent edition of The Shuttle, demonstrating that it can be difficult to
trace the tradition of women’s mysticism evident in nineteenth-century wo-
men’s authorship.
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Appendices

Appendix 1 “Rolf Walden Emmerboy” Transcription

The next fragment I offer you is a poem by the flower of American lit-
erature whose towering mind sweeps the blue fundament like the fowl of
Job watching the stars and other mundane bodies with his gossamer
wings, or perched on the dry and withered boughs of modern philosophy
like the snowy and meditative crow pecking at the hollow nuts of human
life and warbling larky melodies with a gushing sweetness rare to hear,
crying to the world, “O fellow worms, Mind and matter glide swift into
the vortex of immensity, Howls the sublime and calmly sleeps the soft
Ideal in the whispering chambers of Imagination.” Oh- sweet it is to hear
it, but then out laughs the stern Repulsive and saith— lo—the grotesque,
“What ho arrest that agency and bring it hither” and so the vision fa-
deth. The marvel of fancy I offer you is entitled…
Phoenix
Louisa May Alcott. “Rolf Walden Emmerboy.” Undated. Series III B
(106) MS 2745. Alcott Family Additional Papers, 1724–1927.
Houghton Lib., Harvard.

Appendix 2 “Two Scenes in a Family” Transcription

The night was dark and windy. The wind whistled mournfully over the
barren hills and leafless trees. In a small house round a bright fire sat a
group of happy faces. The room was simply furnished, though here and
there some small object showed that they had seen better days; a well-
stocked bookcase, a few rare pictures and, more than all the counte-
nances on which the fire fell brightly round the table, sat five persons.
The pale anxious face and busy fingers that plied the needle so swiftly
could be mistaken for none but the mother. Sitting at her feet was a child
who was fondly watching over the pussy that lay purring in her lap.
Beside her sat another, some years older, a book lay on her knee, but she
was looking up at the others, the quiet little form with an air of such
212 Appendices
perfect repose and contentment about it that few would not envy it. The
firelight seemed to linger lovingly on the rosy cheek and bright locks.
Beside the mother sat two more daughters, one in whose gentle face and
quiet eyes shone a good and happy spirit, the perfect neatness of the dress
and the taste with which the sunny brown hair was parted back and lay in
a shining crown above contrasted strangely with the face beside her so thin,
dark and restless, yet not without a certain beauty in the small dark eyes
and finely formed head, betokening will and strength of mind. One hand
was hidden in the disordered hair that fell over it, the other tossing over
some papers that lay before her and listening carelessly to the clear musical
voice near her. The speaker was a face seldom seen in our land, the thin
gray hair fell over a high full forehead. There was a soft holy light in the
eyes and about the whole person, something fine and sacred that brought
to the mind of the faces of the old philosophers so strangely beautiful in
their grace and simplicity. In low earnest tones, he said, “Why should we
be troubled, rich and poor have each these cares and sorrow, but the hearts
of the pure, warmed and purified by their own griefs feel for others and
their few joys are shared freely with those less fortunate. Wealth brings
selfishness and the love and care of the poor and lowly is forgotten. Then
are we not happier than they, and can we not wish for riches if they take
from us the quiet joy and contentment that now are ours.”
“But father, it is so pleasant to be rich and not to be troubled with
debts, to live in ease and comfort and enjoy all the lovely things money
can give us. People must be so happy. I think I should be as kind to the
poor, or perhaps kinder. If I could help them more, is it wrong to wish to
be rich?” asked the child with the book.
“No Lizzie, I think nothing could harden your gentle little heart, but
time alone will show, the darkness of the world can dim even the
brightest spirit, can take from it all it loved or cared for,” said the father
with a sigh.
“I know I should be better, happier and of more use if I had more
money, everybody must be. The world need not hurt us if we have
strength enough not to let it. Money cannot hurt us. I think not me, at
least. The power of doing good always makes people happy. Wouldn’t
you like to be rich Annie” broke out the brown girl, “think how good it
would seem to have all we want and not be doomed to pass our lives
doing what we hate.”
“I don’t know,” said the sister, looking into her wild face, “I should
like it for the many pleasant things I could do with it, yet I am not sure
but the little we can do while poor brings a truer joy than the careless
alms of the rich. What do you think, mother?”
“I cannot decide” answered the mother “the moral and social laws are
entirely false. While the rich waste, the poor will want, while there is no
sympathy and love, there will be sin and misery. When the rich will give
of their abundance wisely and kindly, will the poor live virtuously and
 Appendices 213
happily. It is not only what we give, but how we give it. A gentle word
enriches a generous action, the wounds made by cruelty cannot be healed
by money, but truthful kindness can restore joy and peace to the loneliest
hearts. Wealth may be made a source of true happiness to high and low,
but I feel that time will never come.”
“It never will,” said the Father, “till a greater event has taken place, till
charity is a principle, not a task. Not till men feel deeply and truly that it
is better to give than to receive will poverty cease, and equality appear.
Let us wait till we are tried, for we may be found wanting. Wealth is a
greater trial than poverty, for the golden walls it builds around our
hearts, we love not to break. We are dazzled by the bright bars that shut
out love and Charity and we do not feel that the more we seek and honor
it, higher grows the wall till the sweet virtues are cast away, leaving the
soul they would purify to wear its golden fetters, but the cold dark
stories that in poverty lie before us, keeping from us what we need, we
eagerly seek to pass over them to the rest beyond, and as we suffer and
hope, feel for those like ourselves. Then let us strengthen ourselves in
humility that pride shall not cast us down.”
Louisa May Alcott. The Portfolio. The Pickwick and The Portfolio:
autograph manuscript: Various Issues of the Alcott Children’s
Newspapers. November 18th, No. 7. Alcott Family Additional Papers,
1724–1927. MS 2745 B (104), Houghton Lib., Harvard.

Appendix 3 “Wealth” Transcription

A large room splendidly furnished. The brilliant light of the chandeliers
fell on the loveliest pictures and statues, velvet couches and counters,
ornaments while the glowing fire cast a rosy glow over the marble
chimney piece and soft dark carpet. Four young ladies occupied the room.
The eldest lying on an ottoman was reading the last new novel. There was
not happiness in her handsome face and she laid comfortably back as if
they could expect nothing more of her. At a table sat another who was
engaged in filling a costly album with nonsensical poetry. Her miserable
face and restless movements told she was not as much at ease as her in-
dolent sister. The third, a rosy child no longer, but a tall beautiful girl for
whom fashion and art had done much but nature more. She was looking
over a book of engravings, and now and then, as her eye rested on a lovely
little cottage with a group of happy children beside the door, a sad smile
passed over her face and, with a sigh, she would turn to look on lighted
ballrooms and romantic scenes. The younger daughter sat in a recess idle,
teasing a cross little lapdog and talking to a frightened little bird who
fluttering in its golden prison longed in vain for the free fresh air it could
not reach. In a cold lonely corner of the room was crouched a poor little
pussy whose quiet purr told that there was one contented heart in that
pleasant room, filled with everything heart could desire but happiness.
214 Appendices
“Oh dear,” sighed the eldest, dropping her book, “What a dismal
evening. If this tiresome rain had not come, we might have been enjoying
Jenny Lind’s music. How full of trouble this world is.”
“Well, I wish I was dead,” said the second. “What is the use of living if
one is rich. People have us only for that. However bad we may be, no one
cares whether we are dead or alive, and yet I think I used to be very
happy with my old clothes and freedom. What a dreadful world we live
in.” (and with a sigh she went on writing).
“It’s a very tiresome one,” yawned the little girl in the window,
pushing away the dog. “Nothing worth looking at. I shall ask father to
get me something new. What did I used to like and never get tired of?”
“Your pussy,” answered Lizzie, looking up from her book and
pointing to the neglected favorite who came from her stray corner, and
whose soft purr and gentle eyes seemed to reproach her young mistress.
“I don’t care for her now,” said she carelessly, “though she is a dear
little thing. I used to love her, but I am never satisfied with anything
now—but here are father and mother.”
The same quiet man entered, but the hopeful expression had passed
away from his face. He was pale and thin and a sad, lonely feeling might
be read in the sorrowful eyes and bowed form. A plump old lady resting
upon his arm seemed the personification of peace and plenty, but as she
sank into a luxurious chair before the bright fire, and threw off her rich
furs, she exclaimed in a discontented voice, “The beggars are a public
nuisance. I cannot stir out. I am surrounded with vagabonds and poor
wretches who torment one’s life out for this thing and that. Ah me, what a
trouble it is to be rich if they would but let me alone, I should be satisfied.”
“Why always long for that which is beyond your power to obtain,” said
the father, beaming over Lizzie, who looked up tenderly into his pale face.
“Now husband, that is a very strange speech, for you know I am very
charitable to the poor? Did I not give $60 dollars towards the house for
the aged? Did not I give $50 towards the last festival, besides numberless
unknown charities? Well in this world, one gets no credit for one’s vir-
tues? My girls, how stupid you all are. What is the matter?”
“I have been thinking,” said the brown girl, “How much happier we
were in our cold home at C. than we have ever been here. There we
enjoyed our little pleasures with gratitude when we had care and sorrow
and poverty of our own. We felt for those who suffered like us and in
that pity found comfort for our own griefs. How useless are we now,
wishing for everything and satisfied with nothing. How unlucky for us to
be rich, we have abused it sadly. (and pushing her book and pen from
her, she laid her face on the table and cried with a vengeance).”
“Now, of all the ungrateful girls that ever touched a dollar, you are the
most,” so said the mother with uplifted hands, “you who wished,
longed, prayed for wealth, to be so scornful now you have it. What has
happened to you all? Do you feel so girls?”
 Appendices 215
“I am happy enough,” said the eldest, turning over a new leaf and
sinking back on the soft cushions.
“If father was well and happy, I should be too,” sighed Lizzie with her
tearful eyes.
“As for me, I should be perfectly satisfied if I could only have what I
want always. If I could never get tired of my playthings,” said the younger.
A long silence ensued, which was broken by the mother…

Louisa May Alcott. The Portfolio. The Pickwick and The Portfolio:
autograph manuscript: Various Issues of the Alcott Children’s
Newspapers. November 26th, Number 5. AFAP, 1724–1927. MS 2745
B (104). Houghton Lib., Harvard.

Appendix 4 “Our Madonna” Transcription

A child, her wayward pencil drew

On margins of her book
Garlands of flowers, dancing elves,
Bird, butterfly and brook.
Lessons undone, and play forgot
Seeking with hand and heart
The teacher whom she learned to love
Before she knew’t was Art.

A maiden, full of lofty dreams,

Slender and fair and tall
As were the goddesses she traced
Upon her chamber wall.
Still laboring with brush and tool,
Still seeking everywhere
Ideal beauty, grace and strength
In the “divine despair.”

A woman, sailing forth alone,

Ambitious, brave, elate,
To mould a life with a dauntless will,
To seek and conquer fate.
Rich colors on her palette glowed
Patience bloomed into power;
Endeavor earned its just reward,
Art had its happy hour.

A wife, low sitting at his feet

To paint with tender skill
216 Appendices
The hero of her early dreams,
Artist, but woman still.
Glad now to shut the world away,
Forgetting even Rome;
Content to be the household saint
Shrined in a peaceful home.

A mother, folding in her arms

The sweet supreme success;
Giving a life to win a life,
Dying that she might bless,
Grateful for joy unspeakable,
In that brief, blissful past;
The picture of a baby face
Her loveliest and last.

Death the stern sculptor, with a touch

No earthly power can stay,
Changes to marble in an hour
The beautiful, pale clay.
But Love the mighty master comes
Mixing his tints with tears,
Paints an immortal form to shine
Undimmed by coming years.

A fair Madonna, golden-haired,

Whose soft eyes seem to brood
Upon the child whose little hand
Crowns her with motherhood.
Sainted by death, yet bound on earth
By its most tender ties,
For life has yielded up to her
Its sacred mysteries.

So live, dear soul, serene and safe,

Throned as in Raphael’s skies,
Type of the love, the faith, the grief
Whose pathos never dies.
Divine or human still the same
To touch and lift the heart:
Earth’s sacrifices to Heaven’s fame,
And Nature’s truest Art.

Louisa May Alcott. “Our Madonna”. “A typescript of ‘Our

Madonna’ copied from the Woman’s Journal.” December 30,
 Appendices 217
1879. Box 5, Folder 7, The Guide to Alcott Family Papers
1814–1935. Fruitlands Museum. The Trustees of Reservations,
Archives & Research Center.

Appendix 5 “Story of an Apple” Transcription

In a beautiful garden there stood a tree under which lay a fine, rosy
apple. A little child flying about picked it up, looked at it, and seeing it so
fair and beautiful, ran away to show it to her mother. At the garden gate
[stood] a poor little ragged boy who looked longingly at it, saying, “Ah,
if my poor sick mother could only have that, how happy I should be!”
The child, after thinking a moment, gave it to him and then ran laughing
away (to think how generous she had been) to her mother who had seen
her from the window. The poor boy went away looking at the rosy apple
and feeling very happy. In a miserable hut lay his sick mother. He came
softly to the bed and gave it to her. She had had no fruit during her
sickness and even the sight seemed to refresh her. When it was eaten, he
took one of the seeds and planted it beside the door. His mother died
soon after, and the boy was soon old enough to get his own living. Many
years passed and he was a man and had a family, he took his children to
the old home, and there beside it stood a beautiful tree full of ripe and
rosy fruit. They gathered and ate them and the father thought of the little
sunny haired child who had given him the apple for his sick mother years
ago. The tree grew old, the winter winds broke, the boughs bore no fruit.
A woodman came and cut it down, carried home the branches, and in
the evening made a bright fire of them on the hearth by which his chil-
dren sat and told stories. Tupman.

Elizabeth Alcott. The Portfolio, 9th December, No. 9. The Portfolio.

The Pickwick and The Portfolio: autograph manuscript: Various Issues
of the Alcott Children’s Newspapers. Alcott Family Additional Papers,
1724–1927. MS 2745 B (104), Houghton Lib., Harvard.

Appendix 6 “Extracts from Bradley’s Sermons”

Transcription
We are taught to consider heaven as a state, rather than a place; but we
have reason to conclude from several passages of Scripture, that there is
some portion of the universe set apart to be a palace of its great King;
that there is within the boundaries of the creation some glorious world,
where Jesus in his human form now lives and reigns, and where he will
eventually assemble, with the immeasurable company of angels, all the
sinners of mankind whom his blood hath purchased—Page 3.
Daily experience proves that no outward means can remove the stain
of sin, or do away its filthiness. While we are contending that baptism
218 Appendices
has this power, thousands around us, who have been baptized in the
name of Christ, are giving a death-blow to all our reasonings through
their ungodly lives. This, as well as every other ordinance, is indeed
sometimes made the means of communicating blessings to the soul; but
there is no inseparable connection between the outward visible sign and
the inward spiritual grace of any sacrament. A man may go to the table
of the Lord, and yet not discern the Lord’s body there. He may be wa-
shed in the water of baptism, and yet be as much “in the gall of bitterness
and the bond of iniquity,” as Simon Magus or Judas Iscariot—Page 9.
If we know anything of real religion, we know that our affections are
not always in active exercise, when we are engaged in the work of prayer
or praise. Our hearts are often cold and dead. We strive to raise them up
to something like devotion, but they seem at seasons as though they had
lost all feeling, and we become as insensible as stones. This deadness
must be ascribed partly to the weakness of our nature. The Christian
mourns over it, and prays and strives against it, but his watchfulness and
efforts will not be always successful. After all his exertions, his heart will
sometimes be cold and his devotions languid. It is not so in heaven. They
who sing of salvation there, sing of it “with a loud voice” and an
overflowing heart. No coldness of feeling, no deadness of love, distresses
their souls. All is fervour and zeal, spirit and life—Page 29.
Do we hope to join this peaceful company in heaven? Let us first learn
to be of one mind here on earth. O what a lamentable difference is there,
in this respect, between us and these inhabitants of the heavenly word!
What discordant sentiments and feelings reign among us! What jea-
lousies and bitter strifes interrupt out harmony! As for divisions, some of
us have ceased to regard them as evils, and a spirit of schism and am-
bition begins to be looked on as virtue rather than a sin. Brethren, these
things out so not to be. They are sad spots in our feasts of charity. They
savor not of heaven. They are fruits of a tree, which has never flourished
there. Before we can ever enter yonder world of union and of peace, the
wisdom, which is from above, must have taught us to root out pride and
malice from our hearts, and bitterness and evil speaking must no longer
be suffered to defile our lips! We cannot all perhaps be of the same
opinion, but let us at least be of the same spirit; and let that be a meek
and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price; let it be the
spirit of our Master, who was meek and lowly in heart; who, “when he
was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not, but
committed himself to him that judgeth righteously”—Page 31.

Frances Mary Lavinia Rossetti. The Literary Diary; or, Complete

Common-Place Book. “Sermons by the Revnd. Charles Bradley, Curate of
High Wickham.” 143–145. Box 12–18. Angeli-Dennis Collection,
University of British Columbia, Rare Books and Special Collections,
Vancouver. Scanned copy received from archivist. Email. 25th March, 2020.
 Appendices 219
Appendix 7 “The Maid of Sorrow” Transcription
Edinburgh. Septbr. 15th 1783.
The following simple narration speaks much instruction, and may be
of use to parents and youth.
A Gentleman in the medical line was some time ago asked to visit a
patient and was conducted by an elderly woman up two or three pair of
stairs, to a gloomy, shabby, sky-lighted apartment. When he entered, he
perceived two young females sitting on the side of a dirty bed without
curtains; on approaching he found one of them was nearly in the agonies
of death, supported by the other, who was persuading her to take a bit of
bread dipped in spirits. The pale emaciated figure refused, saying, in a
feeble languid voice, “That it could but contribute to prolong her misery,
which she hoped was drawing to an end.” Looking at the Doctor, she
said, “you have come too late, sir, I want not your assistance:—

Oh! could thou minister to a mind diseased

Or stop the accents and passage to remorse.”

Here she fetched a deep sigh, and dropped upon the bed—every means of
relief was afforded, but in vain; for in less than two hours she expired.
In a small box by the side of the bed were found some papers, by
which it appeared that the young woman had more than ordinary
education—that she had changed her name, and concealed that of her
parents, whom she pitied, and whose greatest fault had been too much
indulgence, and a misplaced confidence in the prudence of their favorite
daughter. With some directions respecting her funeral, the following
pathetic lines were found, and some little money in the corner of the box
was assigned to have them assigned on her tombstone.

Verses for my tombstone if ever I shall have one,

by a Prostitute and a Penitent.
“Here rest the reliques [sic] of a woman undone
Who dying, wish’d her days had ne’er begun.”

The wretched victim of a quick decay,

Reliev’d from life, on humble bed of clay,
The last and only refuge for my woes,
A lost love-ruin’d female I repose.
From the sad hour I listen’d to his charms,
And fell half-forc’d in the deceiver’s arms,
To that whose awful veil hides every fault,
Sheltering my sufferings in this welcome vault;
When pamper’d, starv’d, abandon’d, or in drink,
220 Appendices
My thoughts were rack’d in striving not to think,
Nor could rejected conscience claim the pow’r,
T’improve the respite of one serious hour.
I durst not look to what I was before,
My soul shrunk back, and wish’d to be no more,
Of eye undaunted, and of touch impure,
Old, ere of age, worn out when scarce mature—
Daily debas’d, to stifle my disgust
Of forc’d enjoyment, in affected lust!
Cover’d with guilt, infection, debt and want,
My home, a brothel, and the streets my haunt;
Full seven long years of infamy I’ve pin’d,
And fondled, loath’d, and preyed upon mankind:
Till the full course of sin and vice gone through,
My shattered fabrick fail’d at twenty-two!
Then death, with ev’ry horror in his train,
Here clos’d the scene of naught but guilt and pain!
Ye fair associates of my op’ning bloom,
O, come and weep and profit at my tomb;
Let my short youth and blighted beauty prove,
The fatal poison of unlawful love.
O, think how quick my foul career I ran,
The dupe of passion, vanity, and man;
Then shun the path when soft temptations shine,
Yours be the lesson—sad experience mine.
Edinburgh Fugitive Pieces by W. Creech.

Frances Mary Lavinia Rossetti. The Literary Diary; or, Complete

Common-Place Book. 34–37. Box 12–18. Angeli-Dennis Collection,
University of British Columbia, Rare Books and Special Collections,
Vancouver. Scanned copy received from archivist. Email. 25th
March, 2020.
Index
abolitionism 162
“Address to the moon by Mrs.
Dorset” (poem) 110–11
Aenid (Virgil) 16
African-American motherhood 183–6
Alcott, Abigail 11, 44, 183; on divine
union between sisters 177; faith in
matrilineal bonds 158; as
inspiration for daughter’s
collaborative life-writings 77;
journals 65; life-writing of 61–89;
practice of lived religion 69–74;
relational sympathy model 64–9;
“Reports While Visitor to the Poor
of Boston” 163; role as home
missionary 163
Alcott, Anna 69–74
Alcott, Bronson 29, 30, 65–6, 71, 174;
individualism ideology 41–6; mode
of instruction 86; re-enactment of
Eden myth with daughters 85–6;
utopian vision of a consociate family
158; vision of predestination 74–7
Alcott, Elizabeth 10; “Story of an
Apple” 84–6, 106, 217
Alcott, Louisa May 1, 28, 126, 174,
177, 195; early reception 29;
“Happy Women” 150–74; life-
writing of 61–89; Little Women
69–74, 151, 174–5; An Old-
Fashioned Girl 152, 170, 173,
176–8; “Our Madonna” 80, 83,
215–16; reformation of
Transcendentalist heroes 46–52;
rejection of Bronson’s ideology of
individualism 41–6; resisting male
authority 28–52; “Rolf Walden
Emmerboy” 46–7, 52, 211;
“Transfiguration” 86–9, 106; “Two
Scenes in a Family” 74–6, 211–13;
vision of self-contained community
of female artists 176–7; “Wealth”
75, 213–15; Work 17, 50, 126–7,
128, 151, 152–7, 159, 169, 172,
173, 174, 176–7, 185
Alcott Letters 80
The Alcotts: Biography of a Family
(Bedell) 31
Alighieri, Dante 38
Allan, David 94
American Protestantism 1
American Romanticism 181,
182, 194
Amor Platonico 112
angel in the house 57
animal magnetism 162
anxiety of authorship 19
anxiety of influence 19
Aquinas, Saint Thomas 147–8
archive 14– 15, 22, 61–2, 70
Archive Stories (Burton) 62
Arseneau, Mary 12, 94
Atlantic Double Cross (Weisbuch) 20
Auerbach, Nina 19
Bailey, Susan 11–2
Barnes, Elizabeth 64
Barrera-Medrano, Leire 187
Bartolommeo, Fra 6
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata 6
Battersby, Christine 18
Battiscombe, Georgina 175
Baumfree, Isabella 183
Beam, Dorri 162–3
Bedell, Madelon 31
Behind a Mask (Alcott) 30
“Behold the Bridegroom Cometh”
(poem) 139
222 Index
Bellas, R.A. 29
Bernier, Celeste-Marie 63
Bett, Mau-Mau 184
Between Women (Marcus) 58
“The Blessed Damozel” (poem)
36, 39–40
The Blithdale Romance
(Hawthorne) 45
Bloom, Harold 19, 20
Boudreau, Kristin 58
Bouts rimes competition 133
Bradley, Charles 101, 104, 217–18
Bradley, Katharine Harris 17, 186–9
brides of Christ 135, 139
Brodhead, Richard 75
Bronfen, Elizabeth 19
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett 34
Bunyan, John 3, 45, 72–4
Burnett, Frances Hodgson 17,
189–96, 195
Burton, Antoinette 62
Butler, Alban 147
Cadorette, Curt 171
Cadwallader, Robin 12, 127, 151
Called to be Saints (Rossetti) 134
Calvinist Doctrine of the Total
Depravity of Man 1, 11, 68
canon 15, 24, 69, 71, 79, 88, 127,
152, 169, 170, 174
caritas 12, 127, 151, 156, 158,
172, 182
Casteras, Susan 142
Catholicism 121
Cecil Dreeme (Winthrop) 170
“The Celestial Railroad” (short
story) 45
celibacy 130
Chatterton, Thomas 34–5
Child, Lydia Maria 185
Christ 4, 8; brides of 139; passion
of 140–1
Christian sisterhood 2; structures of
thought 22
Christian values, promotion of 125–8
Christian Year (Keble) 88
Christina Georgina Rossetti; Frances
Mary Lavinia Rossetti (nee Polidori)
(painting) 28
Christina Rossetti: Faith, Gender and
Time (D’Amico) 12
Coakley, Sarah 93, 96
collaborative journaling 62
Collins, Charles Allston 143
Commonplace Book 14–5, 94–5,
101, 103, 105, 110, 112, 115,
120
communion 21–4
communion of saints 2, 4, 5, 16, 22,
94, 97, 101, 185,
complexion theory 42
Congregational Church 180
conjugal bond, maturation of 78
Conrad, Angela 180
Contagious Diseases Acts 121
Convent Thoughts (painting) 143
“A Convent Threshhold” (poem) 142
Coolidge, Susan 195
Cooper, Edith Emma 186–9
Cousins, Ewert H. 9
Crump, Rebecca 38
Cult of True Womanhood 171
Cushman, Charlotte 170
Daly, Mary 92–3
D’Amico, Diane 12
Dante 16, 110
dark night of the soul 156
Darwin, Charles 1
De Beauvoir, Simone 11
De Sélincourt, Basil 18
“Dead Love” (poem) 32–3
Decker, William Merrill 62
Dedicated (Cooper) 186
Demeter 16
Derrida, Jacques 16
devotion 5–8
Dickinson, Emily 17, 179–83, 194
Diehl, Joanne Felt 180
Discalced Carmelites 130
disciplinary intimacy 75
Divine Comedy (Dante) 16, 110
divine grace 22, 101, 102, 116, 122
divine maternity 93–4
divine retribution 18
doctrine of separate spheres 57,
59, 130
Douglas, Anna 71
“Dreamland” (poem) 36–7
economy of love 83
Eden myth 85–6
Eden’s Outasts (Matteson) 61
“Eli’s Education” (short story) 52
 Index 223
Emerson, Edward W. 47 Harrison, Anthony H. 33
Emerson, Ralph Waldo 19, 153 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 45
empowerment of others 61–89 Hawthornian model of the infallible
Estes, Angela M. 30 author 64
Eurydice 16 Haynes, Rosetta R. 183
Evangelicalism 104, 116 Hemans, Felicia 94
“Evening Hymn” (poem) 139 Hendler, Greg 58, 64, 161
evolution 1 Hewitt, Elizabeth 63
“Extracts from Bradley’s Sermons” Heywood, Paolo 7
217–18 Hirsch, Marianne 19
Hodge-Podge (newspaper) 14, 94,
The Face of the Deep (Rossetti) 57 97, 100–1
faith 102–5 Hollywood, Amy 9
fallen women 121 Holy Spirit 10
fate 37, 52, 66, 71, 87, 89, 165, 171, home missionaries 163
176, 181, 191 Homer 16
Favret, Mary 63 homosexuality 130
female mystics 58, 64, 66, 93, 180 Houghton Library 14, 22
female priesthood 120–1, 146, Humez, Jean M. 185
feminine divine 80 Hunt, Holman 37
Fern, Fanny 195 Hunt, William Holman 35
Fetterley, Judith 17 Hutner, Gordon 64
Field, Michael (pseudonym) 17, “Hymn for Ascension Day” 97, 99
186–9, 194–5
Fitzpatrick, Tara 159 icon and iconography 5–6, 8, 17; gold
folk theology 68 leaf 22; Mary as patron of 20–1;
Fruitlands commune 19, 44–5 pilgrimage 20–1; preparing the
Fuller, Margaret 162–3 wood 8–13
ideology, definition of 18
Garlick, Barbara 29, 35 imitatio Christi 13, 126–7, 127, 131,
Gebara, Ivone 172 135, 139, 140–4, 146
gender inequality 2–3 immortality 182
Genesis 8 incarnational theology 173
genius, Transcendentalist conception individualism 7, 11, 16–20, 29, 31, 38,
of 19 41–6, 48, 52, 59, 63, 67, 105, 128,
The Germ (magazine) 19, 35–8 132, 134–5, 144, 152, 153, 155,
gesso 13–7 159, 163, 170, 174, 176,
Gilbert, Olive 184, 185, 194 180–2, 194
Gilbert, Sandra 19, 20, 130, 144
Giles, Paul 20 James, Henry 49
Ginzberg, Lori D. 127 Jantzen, Grace 9
“Goblin Market” (poem) 119–23, Jarvis, Claire 67
146, 165, 167 Jensen, Meg 30
Gradert, Kenyon 67–8 John of the Cross, Saint 156
Gravil, Richard 20 Jo’s Boys (Alcott) 80
Gray, Carol 29 Julian of Norwich 64, 93–4
Great Chain of Being 111
Gubar, Susan 19, 20, 130, 144 Keble 88
Keble, John 88, 134
Halfway Covenant 68 kenosis 93
Hamlet (Shakespeare) 16 “The Kingdom of God is Within
“Happy Women” (Alcott) 150–74 You” 88
Harris, Leslie J. 183 kinship 58
224 Index
Kohn, Eduardo 7
La Plante, Eve 61
“The Lady of Shalott” (poem) 37
Landon, Laetitia 94, 195
Lane, Charles 43, 45
Lant, Kathleen Margaret 30
Lanzetta, Beverly J. 9, 59
LaPlante, Eve 11, 61, 76
Later Life: A Double Sonnet of
Sonnets (Rossetti) 10
left-handed societies 57–60; elevation
of 92–123
Leighton, Angela 19
Letter and Spirit (Rosetti) 125
A Letter from a Grandfather to his
Grandson (Jacob) 111–12
The Letters of A. Bronson Alcott 42
The Letters of Christina Rosseti 3,
32–4, 43, 93, 120, 178
Liberation Theology 171–3
life-writing 14
“A Little Kingdom I possess”
(poem) 88–9
Little Women (Alcott) 3, 11, 15,
69–74, 113, 151, 174; inspiration
for 64; matrilineal communities in
122, 123; two early sketches
for 74–7
Lives of the Saints (Butler) 147
Lorencova, Radmilla 7
Loreto, Luca 5–6
Lossky, Vladimir 7
Louisa May Alcott Illuminated By The
Message (Bailey) 11–2
“Louisa May Alcott’s Walpole”
(exhibit) 22–4
“Love’s flame” 108–9
Lowe, Brigid 58
“The Lowest Room” (poem) 34
Ludlow, Elizabeth 12
The Madwoman in the Attic (Gilbert/
Gubar) 19
“The Maid of Sorrow” 120, 121,
219–20
male authority 28–52
male genius 19
Mandelker, Ira L. 71
Manning, Susan 20
March, Amy 75
March, Beth 75
March, Jo 75
Marcus, Sharon 58
“Mariana” (poem) 37
marital relationship 78
marriage: as only vocation for women
130; sisterhood as alternative
to 130
Mary 20
masochism 67
Mason, Emma 12, 92–3
maternal bond 77–83, 105
maternal love 2–3
matrilineal communities 5–6, 122; life-
writing of 14
matrilineal heritage 1, 5, 7, 12, 14, 17,
21–2, 145, 173, 179, 183, 194–6;
and religious faith 102–5
Matteson, John 42, 61
Maude (Rossetti) 17, 126, 128,
129–48, 132, 151, 171, 173;
imitatio Christi 132, 140–4, 146;
moral of story 131; spiritual
transformation of poetry in
136–40; teenage protagonist in
120; temptation of originality in
132–6; Trinitarian relationships in
144–8; William Michael’s
preface 129
May, Leila, Silvana 125–8
May, Samuel 11
McGann, Jerome 14–5, 38
Measure for Measure (Shakespeare) 37
mediatrix 21, 71, 94, 97, 99, 105,
126, 182
Melville, Herman 155
mesmerism 162
meta-ontology 7
The Methodist Episcopal Pulpit
(Bradley) 101
Michie, Helena 122
Millais, John Everett 37
Moby Dick (Melville) 155
Monsell, John Samuel Bewley 139
Montgomery, Ellen 70–1, 72–4
Moods (Alcott) 47–8, 51–2
Mother of God 20–1
The Mother/Daughter Plot (Hirsch) 19
mother-daughter relationship 78
Mummy Room 10
My Heart is Boundless (LaPlante)
11, 61
mysticism 2, 5–8, 58, 93, 147; as form
of narcissism 11; matrilineal
theologies of 8–13; Puritan 71

The Narrative of Sojourner Truth
(Truth) 184
nation 183, 194, 195
Negotiating with the Dead
(Atwood) 16
New Poems by Christina Rossetti
(Michael) 39
New York Emancipation Act
(1827) 184
Nieriker, Ernest 80
Nieriker, May Alcott 79, 89
Nightingale 10
Nobel, Marianne 67
“The Novice” (poem)’ 142
Odyssey (Homer) 16
“Of my Lady in Death” (poem) 36
“Of my Lady in Life” (poem) 36
An Old-Fashioned Girl (Alcott) 152,
170, 173, 176–8
ontological anthropology 7–8
Orchard House 81–2
original sin 11
Orlando, Emily J. 33
Orpheus 16
“Our Madonna” (elegy) 80, 83,
215–16
Ouspensky, Léonide 6
outraged motherhood 185–6
oversoul 45, 162
paganism 16, 186–8
Palazzo, Lynda 12, 92–3, 131
“Parable of Ten Virgins”
(poem) 138–9
Parker, Theodore 11
Passover 121
Pateman, Carole 58
patriarchal hierarchy 9
Peckham, Rosa 81
Pedersen, Morten Axel 7
Persephone 16
“Perturbless Plan” (poem) 181
Peterson, Linda H. 14
Pfunter, Deborah Lynn 95
Philips, Jacob 111–12
The Pickwick 14, 83–4
Pietrocola-Rossett, Isabella 139
pilgrims and pilgrimage 21
The Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan) 3, 45,
72, 77, 113, 169, 174
Poe, Edgar Allan 36
Index 225
Poovey, Mary 18
The Portfolio 14, 75, 83
praxis 172
predestination 11
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood 32,
35–6, 41
Pre-Raphaelitism 1, 6–7, 13–4, 18,
19–20, 35, 38, 41, 133, 143,
174, 176
priesthood, female 120–1, 146
“The Prince’s Progress” (poem) 175–6
prostitution 121
providence 4, 15, 31, 38, 46, 51, 66,
79, 89, 184, 185, 191, 193, 194
providential theology 158, 174, 175
psychomachia 133, 155, 180, 182
Puritan communities 67–8
Puritan mysticism 71
queer women 189
Ratzinger, Joseph 99
“The Raven” (poem) 36
Recovering Christina Rossetti
(Arseneau) 12, 94
redemption 105–7
Reformation 121
religious heterodoxy 59
renunciation 1–2, 66–7, 105–7, 177,
179–83; doctrine of 17; doubting
theology of 179–83, 194; and
imitatio Christi 131; matrilineal
theologies of 8–13; theologies of 17
“Repining” (poem) 37
“Reports While Visitor to the Poor of
Boston” 163
repression 19
Republican Motherhood 183
retribution 18
revealed reality 7
Rioux, Anne Boyd 70
The Rivulets (Rossetti) 14, 96,
114–16, 120, 121
Roe, Dinah 12, 31
“Rolf Walden Emmerboy” 46–7,
52, 211
Roman Catholic Relief Act (1829)
121, 130
Romanticism 1, 3, 19, 180, 181,
182, 194
Rosenberg, Gabriele 97
Rosenblum, Dolores 29
226 Index
Rossetti, Christina 1, 30, 174, 195;
allegiance with religious sisterhoods
131; assertion of female poet's
independence 32–5; Called to be
Saints 134; deferral of redemption
105–7; early life 28; The Face of the
Deep 57; “Goblin Market” 119–23,
146, 165, 167; imitatio Christi 13;
intersectional sisterhood 164–9; on
left-handed societies 57–60; Letter
and Spirit 125; on maternal love
2–3; Maude 126, 128, 129–48, 151,
171, 173; as oracle for sisterhood
163; poetic entries to The Germ
35–8; portrayal of the Pre-
Raphaelite corpse 35–8;
rehabilitation of 157–61; resisting
male authority 28–52; The Rivulets
14, 96, 114–16, 120, 121; strategy
of depreciation 33–4; subversion of
the female intercessor 38–41;
theology of renunciation 105–7;
Time Flies: A Reading Diary 92,
113–18, 120; Trinitarian poetics
96–102; vision of self-contained
community of female artists 176–7;
“A Year Afterwards” 38–41
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel 28, 30, 38–9,
104, 107, 108, 110, 112, 175–6;
“The Blessed Damozel” 36;
correspondence with Christina
Rossetti 32–5
Rossetti, Frances 14, 28, 94, 105, 122,
144, 183; “Extracts from Bradley’s
Sermons” 217–18; “The Maid of
Sorrow” 120, 121, 219–20; as
source of divine revelation 112;
spiritual authority 107–13
Rossetti, Maria 10, 30, 41, 143;
influence on Christina’s discourse of
lived religion 113–18; intercessory
role of 110; The Rivulets 96
Rossetti, William Michael 28–9, 40,
107, 110, 111, 119, 129, 133, 137
Rossetti Archive 14–5
The Rossettis in Wonderland (Roe) 31
Rostenberg, Leona 30
sacrament 10, 112, 115, 120, 121,
126, 141, 146, 177, 218
Sanborn, F.B. 88
Santissima Annunziata 6
Second Vatican Council 171
Seek and Find (Rossetti) 93
self-culture 152–7
self-exploration 30
self-expression 30
“Self-Inquiry” 78–9
self-reliance 30, 153
Seneca Falls Convention 161
Sewall, Ellen 50
Shakespeare, William 16, 37
shared consciousness 4, 59, 64, 68–9,
71, 72, 75, 77, 78, 86, 89, 96, 107,
109, 116, 122
Shefer, Elaine 37
Showalter 131
Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham 22
The Shuttle (Burnett) 189–96
Siddal, Elizabeth 32–3, 35, 38, 40, 175
Simply Bonaventure (Delio) 131, 135,
139, 142, 144, 149
sisterhood 125–8; as alternative to
marriage 130; emergence of 157–61;
extension of 161–4; interracial 157,
160, 161, 183, 185–6; intersectional
164–9; radical status in Victorian
Britain 130; transformative power
of 129–48
social reform 2, 12, 47, 123, 127, 151,
162, 172
socioliterary experience 63
“Soeur Louise De La Misericorde”
(poem)’ 142
Some Reminescences (W.M.
Rossetti) 28
Sonnets and Canzonets (B. Alcott) 29
soul sleep 36
special-purpose blank books 62
spiritual motherhood 183–6
Stebbins, Emma 170
Stepanski, Lisa M. 63
Stern, Madeline B. 30
stilnovisti 105
“Story of an Apple” 84–6, 106, 217
Stowe, Harriet Beecher 67–8
strategy of depreciation 33–4
Sturge, Donald 29
submission 66–7
Summa Theologica (Aquinas) 147–8
surplus woman problem 150
sympathy 15, 58–9, 63, 64–6, 75–6,
151–2, 154, 156, 159, 161–5, 168,
172, 212
temptation of difference 122
 Index 227
Tennyson, Alfred Lord 37 vale of tears 87
Teresa of Avila 64, 130, 158 Valentine’s Day verses 94–6
Thoreau, Henry David 19, 48–50 Valentine’s Day verses 98–102, 104–5,
Thoreau, John 50 105–6, 107, 108, 112
“The Thread of Life” (poem) 33 Virgil 16
“Three Nuns” (poems) 141 Virgin Mary 20
Time Flies: A Reading Diary (Rossetti) Vita Nuova (Alighieri) 38
92, 113–18, 120
title-heiress marriage 190–1 Walpole 22–3
“To Mother” 83–4 Warner, Susan 69–71
Todd, Janet 64 Watts, Isaac 78
Tompkins, Jane 15, 70 “Wealth” 75, 213–15
total depravity 1, 11, 68 Weathers, Winston 148
Tractarian Doctrine of Analogy 103 Webster, Augusta 2
Tractarianism 10, 12, 36, 59, 104, A Week on the Concord and
105, 116, 131, 134 Merrimack Rivers (Thoreau)
transatlantic scholarship 20 48–9
transatlantic sisterhood Weisbuch, Robert 20
189–90, 193–4 West, Kristina 69
transcendent reality 7 Whym Chow: Flame of Love (Cooper
“Transcendental Wild Oats” (short and Bradley) 188
story) 43–6, 52 Whym Chow (pet dog) 186–8
Transcendentalism 1, 6–7, 13–4, The Wide, Wide World (Warner)
18–20, 41, 43, 46–52, 66, 152–7, 69–70, 72–4
162, 174, 180 Williams, Todd A. 113–18
“Transfiguration” (elegy) 86–9, 106 Winthrop, Theodore 170
trasfiguration 88 Wolosky, Shira 180
Trinitarian God 93, 98–101, Woman in the Nineteenth Century
188–9 (Fuller) 162–3
Trinitarian person 96, 99 women: marriage as only vocation for
Trinitarian poetics 96, 122, 130; as relative creatures 130–2
187–9, 189 Women’s Rights Convention
Trinitarian relationships 109, 123, (1851) 185
125, 127, 144–8, 152, 160 Woolner, Thomas 36
Trinitarian theologies 123 Work (Alcott) 17, 50, 126, 128, 151,
Trinity 4, 96, 125 152–7, 159, 169, 172, 173, 174,
Trites, Roberta Seelinger 170 176–7, 185
Truth, Sojourner 17, 183–6, 194 Works and Days (Bradley and
“Two Scenes in a Family” 74–6, Cooper) 186–9
211–13 “A Year Afterwards” (poem)
typology 98, 101 38–41

ultimate reality 9 Zboray, Mary Saracino 62

“Under the Rose” (poem) 34 Zboray, Ronald J. 62
Unitarianism 10–1, 72 Zion’s Herald 73