Words Eloise Hallo
With the Tate Britain’s ‘The Rossetti’s’ exhibition ending its term this month it seems no better a time than now to extend the Pre-Raphaelites’ time in the sun. The famously bohemian group of poets and painters is best remembered for how its art mobilized modern notions of social reform, particularly women’s rights. The movement’s depictions of men and women together (A) and early preoccupations with women in workwear (B) appealed as protest to the chaste of Victorian reality; thanked now for its beginning then, the discussion surrounding freedom of choice.
(A) Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ‘Caricature sketch of Pre-Raphaelites’, (1851) 
B) Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ‘Man with a Woman Wearing Trousers’ (1844)
Cultural regime of the era would have women not least separated from male society but academic and artistic circles altogether, and was a system with which the group avidly disposed. With their prophecies of cultural progression finding commonplace in our society, from modern feminism to the humble trouser, the influence of the group begs necessary exploration. Though the Tate showcases ample evidence of male artistry throughout the period, it is the works of Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal, championed in the exhibition amongst other female renegades, with which this article is most interested.
Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, later adopting the spelling Siddal, shared an unfortunate fate with myriad before her. Her muse-dom – honoured as perhaps the most crucial to Pre-Raphaelite art and preserved in many of the movement’s notable works (see Ophelia © and Regina Cordium (D)) – bolstered itself as an eclipsing force over her creative ability and achievement. Depictions of Siddal range in virtue, however, much like the Romantic poetry upon which the group’s art was to be largely inspired, the feminine position is seen as one of either object or abject; something to possess or something unpossessable, and thus, to fear. Counter-cultural, as the group is famed, fashion in many of the period’s works is used to characterise its elected figure as distinctly un-Victorian and, at times, non-human. The apparel characterising Pre-Raphaelite art, however, acts as a kind of double-edged sword, stripping and prescribing its real muse’s identity.
C) John Everett Millais, ‘Ophelia’ (1851–1852) 
D) Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ‘Regina Cordium’ (1860)
Siddal’s Self-portrait (E) and one may not altogether foolishly infer – self-image – appears drastically different. Posed harsher and without ornate dress, Siddal seems to suggest this portrayal of ornament was something from which she wished to escape. This notion is furthered by her paintings’ preoccupation with the complexity of female figures and relationships, as in the mother and daughter of Lady Clare. (F)
E) Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, ‘Self-portrait’ (1853–1854) 
F) Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, ‘Lady Clare’ (1854–1857)
As chronicled in the exhibition, however, her escape was not to be. Siddal’s premature death embalmed her position as muse, particularly in the works of her husband Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti’s posthumous offering Beata Beatrix (G)became as much an artwork as it was a final act in the theft of her autonomy, now not only a face but a mouthpiece to her lover’s tragedy, rather than her own.
G) Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ‘Beata Beatrix’ (1864–1870)
Contempt of the feminine posit was, of course, not something Siddal sat in alone. The habitual quashing of female artistry, as in other places in history, bred companionship, and it was this intimacy she shared with Christina Rossetti, younger sister to Dante Gabriel. Rosetti too sat for the Pre-Raphaelites, prompting her 1856 work In an Artist’s Studio, an evocative account of the relationship between muse, artist, and the female identity.
‘One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel — every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more or less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.’
Christina Rossetti
Individually candescent as their stories may be, Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal echo questions long asked by their predececettes; Is the female role one of function or decoration? The opposition pervades history, beauty and skill remain to women alone, dichotomous. Just as the female muse is made languid and, for want of a better term, two-dimensional, a different two dimensions haunt the female artist; de-feminised from her peers by her talent, see Christina Rossetti, because genius and femininity couldn’t possibly co-exist!
Yet, this emphasis on appearance, when we look at fashion history, as art history alike, has borne some of the great examples of female defiance and re-empowerment. Rossetti’s choice to appear “unkempt”, as the above depiction (H) is described by the Tate, contends with a long-antiquated idea of femininity as ornamental. It is, indeed, not unlike those conducted by the Suffragettes’ endorsement of bloomers as a marriage of fashion and utility, asking that women – and the female dress-code – be afforded more than simply aesthetic value: this lovechild was to be the first example of female trousers. What they teach us, respectively, is that dress-codes altogether limit and categorise our potential. This too is mirrored by war-time women, exchanging heeled Oxfords for inseams, up-dos and entrance into the workforce. The en masse-masculinisation of female fashion during cultural unrest was, and remains, a testament to – and declaration of – independence and strength. Historically then, relieving oneself of the expectations of gendered fashion, particularly as a woman, invites the truth that your ability extends appearance. Siddal’s choice to reclaim her self-portrait reverbs this sentiment, ridding herself of the imagined fashions to scenes where she sat as muse. Throughout it all, women have used fashion, or perhaps it is more apt to say un-fashion, to construct and propel their own narrative of self-perception and ability.
H) Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ‘Christina Rossetti’ (1848)
These days, the legacy of the Pre-Raphaelites remains mostly concerned with their contribution to social reform and the arts. Yet, their occupation – and in some senses creation – of Victorian counterculture helped to build early sentimentalities around a woman’s right to choose, traversing education to wardrobe. As the exhibition illuminates, both Rossetti and Siddal would never truly escape the confines of the feminine cell. Their bold attempts, however, to reclaim self-hood in an era where a woman’s principal role was to be seen, helped construct a pathway of defiance for others to follow. Both women’s rejection of the appearances fashioned by culture on their behalf amplify the notion that we decide our limitations, and the narrative they footnote reminds us to be grateful that wearing trousers is no longer political.
Bloomer Girls (1910), Off the leash 
Working WW2 Women (1943), National Archives 86-WWT-85–35, National Archives Identifier 522890