DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Found, 1881

“There is a budding morrow in midnight” –
So sang our Keats, our English nightingale.
And here, as lamps across the bridge turn pale
In London’s smokeless resurrection-light,
Dark breaks to dawn. But o’er the deadly blight 5
Of love deflowered and sorrow of none avail
Which makes this man gasp and this woman quail,
Can day from darkness ever again take flight?
Ah! gave not these two hearts their mutual pledge,
Under one mantle sheltered ’neath the hedge
In gloaming courtship? And O God! today 11
He only knows he holds her – but what part
Can life now take? She cries in her locked hear,
“Leave me – I do not know you – go away!

Source: http://www.rossettiarchive.org

DO “FALLEN WOMEN” EXIST NOWADAYS?

During the Victorian Age, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded (1848). The “founder” of this movement and one of the best representatives was Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882, London). As many of the artists of that movement, Rossetti was a painter and a poet (Pre- Raphaelites).

It was very common that paintings had their own-related poem or vice versa. The aim of this paper is to analyze the painting “Found” by D. G. Rossetti and its related poem also named “Found”.

These works were based on another’s poet poem “Rosabell”, renamed “Maryanne” written by William Bell Scott. The topic is about the “fallen woman” in the Victorian Age. (Found- for a picture)

“Found” began being painted in 1853-54 but remained unfinished after Rossetti’s death (1882). Burne-Jones and Dunn were those artists who finished it adding elements like the wall, the bridge, the riverbank. It is painted with oil on canvas, its proportion is 36 x 31 1/2 inches (91.4 x 80cm) and it is displayed in the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington (Found- for a picture)

The poem belongs to “Ballads and Sonnets”, which were published in 1881, at the end of Rossetti’s life. The rhyme is abba abba cc deed; it has a iambic pentameter and is a sonnet. Since the beginning of the painting until the writing of the poem 28 years passed (Found- for a picture).

The picture represents the moment in which a countryman founds his sweetheart in a dishonest and immoral situation. At first glance, I thought that the man wanted to rape her but after reading through the Internet and basically because of how he focused it in the poem; I think that they are lovers. The man looks disappointed and the woman ashamed. She is one of the “fallen women” at the time. They were women living in the countryside who went to the cities (London) in order to look for a better life and because of not finding it became prostitutes. That was the situation in society; an agrarian culture was dramatically turned out to be an industrial one and this violent change influenced the life of many women. (Fallen women)

D. G. Rossetti admired Keats’ work and so the poem begins with a Keats’ verse of “To Homer” that introduces a positive thinking of facing life and problems. Rossetti questions it. In the poem as well as in the painting the bridge, the lamps and London’s sky are grey, in the background, as a way of introducing the mood of the characters.

The bridge is a passage, a connection between the city and the countryside, a path from the agrarian world, colourful, to the big city, in grey shade. This opposition to what Keats says points out the atmosphere in which the poem is going to be developed. This colour can be compared to the image of dawn, when the sun is still not shining.

In the second quatrain of the poem, a man and a woman are presented. Their feelings are opposed, none of them positive because the man is “gasp” and the woman “quail”. The last verse is a rhetorical question which answer is obviously no. It is like a reply to verse 1 where Keats has a positive mood. Rossetti shows a negative attitude through the question. In the painting the woman is ashamed, she turns her face away, and she is on the ground feeling inferior to her partner. The man looks desperate, holding his hands as a union to her, even offering his help. In the painting they stay in the foreground as they are the main figures.

On the right and in the middle distance is a half-buried canyon which I interpret as a symbol for peace. He wants to help her, look for a solution. As the poem explains, he is the only one who knows her shameful deeds; he is the one who has found her by chance. But the lover has doubts about their future; therefore he seems not to be sure. The canyon is not mentioned in the poem as well as the calf that kicks and fights all the time and remains tied up with a net at the cart. I see a symbol there, too. The lamb is here to symbolise the woman’s situation. It cannot escape, it is defenceless, and maybe his ending is to be slaughtered, there is no return for both of them anyway. In both cases, lambs and women are equally levelled and seen as weak beings, dominated by men. Maybe both of them can be seen as haunted beings, subjugated to humans in the case of the calf and to society in the case of the woman.

The woman in the painting is hidden behind a wall (poem: a hedge); she feels totally lost and is aware of her unmoral deeds. She also doesn’t look very innocent: her red hair, the red roses, her pale face…Although the man tries to help her she replies that she doesn’t know him (poem) and cries for her indignity, her culpability. That is a reaction of shame, despair and maybe regret.

The poem reinforces this “no possibility” of regaining her dignity by the rhetorical questions and also by Keats quote emphasizing that negativism of the woman with the positivism of Keats.

In my opinion, the painting is as clear as the poem. There are differences, but I think that they are necessary to understand the painting or the poem. I first chose the painting because there were many elements, but after reading the poem I realized that they were consciously elaborated and logically similar as the poem was based on the painting. The social problem in the cities was because of the rapid industrialization and thus, the seeking of one’s better fortune led poor women to become prostitutes. As I wrote in the title, I believe that those “fallen women” still exist, in Spain mostly of them are foreign and deceived. By this it is evident that such a problem remains in force at present.

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