Norming the female body: discourses of sexuality in Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne

Abstract

This article explores the contradictions resulting from sexual discourse constructed in the nineteenth century from a hegemonic model that determines sexual rigid sex roles of Victorian English society. Some literary works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti and Charles Swinburne related with these issues are discussed.

Keywords

• Pre-Raphaelites
• ideology of literary creation
• Victorian sexual politics
• representations of women
• fallen woman
• Lily/Rose dichotomy