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Jane Morris: The Burden of History

Online ISBN:
9780748684403
Print ISBN:
9780748641277
Publisher:
Edinburgh University Press
Book

Jane Morris: The Burden of History

Wendy Parkins
Wendy Parkins
the University of Otago
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Published:
30 April 2013
Online ISBN:
9780748684403
Print ISBN:
9780748641277
Publisher:
Edinburgh University Press

Abstract

Jane Morris, the wife of William Morris and the muse of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, became the most identifiable face of Pre-Raphaelite art but has received little scholarly attention in her own right. This book argues that the enduring myth of Jane Morris – as a passive invalid, femme fatale and melancholy beauty – has derived from the continued circulation of selective anecdotes and recollections by contemporaries that reduced a complex historical figure to a limited set of traits and failed to acknowledge the significance of class mobility in her life. Examining textual representations – letters, diaries, memoirs and biographies – as well as handiwork and other material objects, this book shows how the myth of Jane Morris has disguised or occluded her agency and capacity for creative collaboration. Drawing on recent understandings of class and gender in subject formation, together with theorisations of myth, narrative and character in life-writing, this book offers a radical re-interpretation of Jane Morris that attends closely to the contradictions of class and gender in Victorian modernity.

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