A New Way to be Woman: Christina Rossetti’s Retrieval of Pre-Reformation Catholic Models of Virgin Mothers and Female Saints

Abstract

The problem . . . is an enormous and increasing number of single women in the nation, a number quite disproportionate and quite abnormal; a number which, positively and relatively, is indicative of an unwholesome social state, and is both productive and prognostic of much wretchedness and wrong. There are hundreds of thousands of women – not to speak more largely still – scattered through all ranks, but proportionally most numerous in the middle and upper classes – who have to earn their own living, instead of spending and husbanding the earnings of men; who, not having the natural duties and labours of wives and mothers, have to carve out artificial and painfully-sought occupations for themselves; who, in place of completing, sweetening, and embellishing the existence of others, are compelled to lead an independent and incomplete existence of their own.