Visual, vital, and vibrant: Artistic / aesthetic New Woman figures and Pre-Raphaelitism in late-nineteenth-century novels by women authors
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Abstract
This research paper examines the New Woman figure by paying attention to her beauty which stands out through its reminiscence of Pre-Raphaelitism. A focus on Mary Ward’s Rose Leyburn, the girl violinist in Robert Elsmere (1888) and Lucas Malet’s Mary Crookenden, the talented art student in The Wages of Sin (1890), allows a fruitful comparison with six paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The analysis leads to a conclusion that Rose fits the appearance of these Pre-Raphaelite women particularly when considering her beauty that is not only visual but also vital and vibrant as they mobilise her and boost her confidence finally to gain her entrance into the public sphere. Mary, in contrast, may be matched with those Pre-Raphaelite women through her visual and vibrant beauty only since her association with the Virgin Mary, indeed part of her vital beauty, puts her at some distance from the other earthly counterparts.
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