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Gavin Budge
University of Central England in Birmingham

Socialism and Sensualism in D G Rossetti: problems of 'the aesthetic' in the Victorian period

Robert Buchanan's attack on D G Rossetti in The Fleshly School of Poetry has typically been dismissed by modern literary critics as merely symptomatic of High Victorian moralism. Yet if The Fleshly School is read attentively this interpretation simply does not stand up: far from being a Victorian fuddy-duddy, Buchanan writes appreciatively of Whitman and Clough, and even has a good word to say about some of Swinburne. Although Buchanan's merits as a poet are slight, as a critic his attempt in his essays to sketch a theory of modern poetry foreshadows the work of poets such as Newbolt in the 1890s.

This paper will attempt to investigate the complexity of Buchanan's allegiances as a means of throwing light on the cultural and ideological significance of D G Rossetti's poetry in the Victorian period. One prominent feature of Buchanan's poetic theory is its implicit socialism: Buchanan's aspiration for modern poetry is that it should become a 'poetry of humanity', to which end he seeks to create a neo-Wordsworthian poetic mode, although he also cites Elizabeth Barrett Browning as a role model. Rossetti, by implication, represents the opposite of this new socialist poetry: a prominent feature of Buchanan's attack in The Fleshly School is the emphasis on Rossetti's narcissistic self-absorption and morbid self-consciousness, which in Buchanan's view prevent any spontaneous identification of himself with others.

Buchanan's criticisms of Rossetti's aestheticism for being incompatible with socialist aims are interesting, because from other Victorian points of views it is precisely this aestheticism that might make Rossetti's work compatible with socialism. Charles Kingsley, for instance, in 'The Poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art' (first published in 1849), praises the interest in 'ante-Raphaellic art' as a tendency which might restore humanity to religion: Kingsley suggests that the current crisis in Protestantism is simply due to its neglect of the natural human need for an aesthetic dimension to religion, which Popery, though intrinsically false, currently fulfils. This emphasis on the aesthetic humanization of religion is an aspect of Kingsley's Christian Socialism reminiscent of Rossetti's early description of his work as an 'Art Catholic' which can nevertheless be cleared by Ruskin as free from 'Romanizing' tendencies.

The relationship between conceptions of the aesthetic and appeals to socialism in the reception of Rossetti's work thus represents a point of tension and contradiction in Victorian thought, most evident, of course, in the work of Ruskin. To explore this ambivalence about the aesthetic and its relationship to 'humanity', I should like to focus on Rossetti's poem 'Jenny'. At one level, this is a poem obviously related to Victorian debates about society's treatment of 'fallen women', and would certainly seem to be recommending a more humane outlook. Yet this is one of the poems that comes in for Buchanan's sharpest censure on account of its 'fleshliness', despite its closeness to the modern 'poem of humanity' that he advocates. My intention in this reading would be to explore the conflicting definitions of 'humanity' and socialism that are at issue in this controversy.