great resolve comes flashing thro' the gloom: julia ... · 3 abstract parlin, melissa j.,...
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"Great Resolve Comes Flashing Thro' the Gloom": Julia Margaret Cameron's
Writings and Photographic Legacy Illuminate a Resilient Vision of Victorian Women
A dissertation presented to
the faculty of
the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University
In partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Melissa J. Parlin
June 2010
© 2010 Melissa J. Parlin. All Rights Reserved.
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This dissertation titled
"Great Resolve Comes Flashing Thro' the Gloom": Julia Margaret Cameron's
Writings and Photographic Legacy Illuminate a Resilient Vision of Victorian Women
by
MELISSA J. PARLIN
has been approved for
the English Department
and the College of Arts and Sciences by
_________________________________
Carey Snyder
Associate Professor of English
__________________________________
Benjamin M. Ogles
Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
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ABSTRACT PARLIN, MELISSA J., Ph.D., June 2010, English
"Great Resolve Comes Flashing Thro' the Gloom": Julia Margaret Cameron's Writings
and Photographic Legacy Illuminate a Resilient Vision of Victorian Women (199 pp.)
Director of Dissertation: Carey Snyder Cameron scholars have identified Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron
as a poet, but her writings have received surprisingly little attention. I assert that
Cameron's writings are a crucial part of literary and photographic history because they
provide a multi-faceted vision of women as strong autonomous figures who also revere
their roles as daughters, wives and mothers. Using twentieth and twenty-first century art-
historical and feminist theory, I reflect on the ways Cameron's literary and photographic
works resisted the influence of "the Victorian Cult of the Dead," the portrayal of women
as objects for "the male gaze," and the stereotype of "the femme fatale." After placing her
writings and photographs in dialogue with each other, I show that Cameron used her
creative endeavors to dispute a restrictive gender ideology that portrayed women as
idealized objects and codependent victims, and that Cameron instead depicted women as
maintaining their resolution through their hardships, or their "gloom."
In contrast to nineteenth-century social norms that dictated the submission and
domestication of Victorian women, Cameron photographically refashioned women from
male-authored texts into more complex figures of femininity that balanced resilience and
independence with their roles as daughters, wives, and mothers. When Cameron began
her photographic career, she was fully aware of the ongoing debate regarding
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photography's status and strove to make photographs that would be considered art.
Cameron incorporated the painterly style of symbolic narrative allegory to intervene in
the male-dominated traditions of the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood, Arthurian Legend via
Lord Alfred Tennyson, Shakespearean tradition and Biblical tradition photographically
refashioning female characters from male-authored texts into active, self-sufficient
women.
Cameron communicated her perception of women through the real-life
convergence of her identities as mother, wife, and artist as well as through her artistic
contributions. Her correspondence and literary works reflect a life of familial and
religious devotion, daring independence, and fierce self-promotion. Using other notable
nineteenth-century women, including Florence Nightingale and Christina Rossetti for
comparison, I assert that Cameron was part of a distinguished group of women whose
lives called into question the traditional paradigm of the separate male and female
spheres. Cameron pushed against limiting gender boundaries and maintained a
traditionally feminine identity as mother and wife while simultaneously asserting her
autonomy as an artist. My analysis of Cameron's writings provides a more complete
picture of her innovative photographic contributions and her multiple identities as a
Victorian woman and artist.
Approved: _____________________________________________________________
Carey Snyder
Associate Professor of English
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Dedication
To Sophia Parlin who will have to wade through society's definition of womanhood. May
she cross the murky waters with her integrity intact.
To Jorge and Sue Albornoz and Dr. Dora Revollo whose emphasis on the value of
education dared me to pursue the highest degree possible.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I could not have achieved this feat without the help of many people. I offer a
hearty thanks to my dissertation committee for their expertise and encouragement
throughout the draft process. I also extend my gratitude to the faculty mentors who
provided much needed guidance during the thornier parts of my graduate school
experience. The support I received from the Albornoz, Parlin, Revollo, and Schmidt
families was invaluable, and I share this accomplishment with them. Above all, I thank
my husband Steve for his innumerable sacrifices and for the love that sustained me
throughout the entire undertaking.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract ...............................................................................................................................3
Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................6
List of Figures .....................................................................................................................8
Chapter 1: Introduction .....................................................................................................10
Chapter 2: The Elevation of God, Motherhood, and Domesticity in Cameron's
Writings............................................................................................................43
Chapter 3: The Mighty Female in Cameron's Poetry........................................................69
Chapter 4: Rewriting the PreRaphaelites in Cameron's "On a Portrait"............................86
Chapter 5: Reviving Arthurian Women in Cameron's Illustrations for
Tennyson's Idylls of the King..........................................................................111
Chapter 6: Cameron's Refashioning of Shakespeare's Heroines ....................................145
Chapter 7: Conclusion .....................................................................................................173
Works Cited.....................................................................................................................188
Appendix A "Prayer Written When I Quickened"...........................................................195
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Unknown Photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron............................................11 Figure 2. Julia Margaret Cameron, Self-Portrait ..............................................................11 Figure 3. Robert Faulkner, Julia Margaret Cameron........................................................12 Figure 4. Unknown Photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron and Her Sons Henry
and Charles ................................................................12 Figure 5. Henry Peach Robinson, The Lady of Shalott......................................................20 Figure 6. Oscar Gustave Rejlander, Ways of Life..............................................................20 Figure 7. Julia Margaret Cameron, Mariana.....................................................................37 Figure 8. Julia Margaret Cameron, May Prinsep/PreRaphaelite Study.............................37 Figure 9. Holman Hunt, Isabella and the Pot of Basil.......................................................38 Figure 10. Julia Margaret Cameron, May as Isabel...........................................................38 Figure 11. Julia Margaret Cameron, Prayer and Praise....................................................59 Figure 12. Julia Margaret Cameron, Shepherds Keeping Watch By Night........................61 Figure 13. Julia Margaret Cameron, The Vision Of Infant Samuel....................................62 Figure 14. Julia Margaret Cameron, Study of a Magdalen................................................63 Figure 15. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Mary Magdalen..........................................................66 Figure 16. Frederick Augustus Sandys, Mary Magdalene................................................67 Figure 17. John Everett Millais, Ophelia..........................................................................88 Figure 18. John Everett Millais, Ophelia..........................................................................89 Figure 19. Julia Margaret Cameron, Ophelia....................................................................92 Figure 20. Julia Margaret Cameron, Elaine......................................................................93 Figure 21. George Frederic Watts, Portrait Study of a Girl with Red Hair......................94 Figure 22. George Frederic Watts, Hope...........................................................................95 Figure 23. George Frederic Watts, Ophelia......................................................................96 Figure 24. George Frederic Watts, Found Drowned.........................................................97 Figure 25. George Frederic Watts, Julia Margaret Cameron...........................................99 Figure 26. Frederic Leighton, Cymon and Iphigenia......................................................103 Figure 27. Frederic Leighton, Flaming June...................................................................104 Figure 28. Edward Burne-Jones, Laus Veneris................................................................105 Figure 29. John Everett Millais, Ophelia.........................................................................108 Figure 30. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Beata Beatrix............................................................109 Figure 31. Julia Margaret Cameron, Maud......................................................................121 Figure 32. Julia Margaret Cameron, Elaine.....................................................................127 Figure 33. Julia Margaret Cameron, Elaine "The Lily Maid of Astolat".........................128 Figure 34. Julia Margaret Cameron, Elaine.....................................................................131 Figure 35. Julia Margaret Cameron, The Corpse of Elaine in the Palace of King Arthur.....................................................................132 Figure 36. Julia Margaret Cameron, Vivien and Merlin..................................................136 Figure 37. Julia Margaret Cameron, Vivien and Merlin..................................................138 Figure 38. Julia Margaret Cameron, The Parting of Lancelot and Guinevere................140 Figure 39. Julia Margaret Cameron, Cordelia and King Lear.........................................148
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Figure 40. Julia Margaret Cameron, King Lear Allotting His Kingdom to His Three Daughters/"What Shall Cordelia Do / Love and Be Silent"...............................................................151 Figure 41. John William Waterhouse, Ophelia...............................................................156 Figure 42. John Everett Millais, Ophelia.........................................................................156 Figure 43. Julia Margaret Cameron, Ophelia..................................................................160 Figure 44. Julia Margaret Cameron, Ophelia Study No. 2...............................................161 Figure 45. Julia Margaret Cameron, Ophelia..................................................................164 Figure 46. Julia Margaret Cameron, Ophelia..................................................................165 Figure 47. Julia Margaret Cameron, Friar Laurence and Juliet......................................169 Figure 48. Julia Margaret Cameron, Friar Laurence and Juliet......................................170 Figure 49. Emily Mary Osborn, Nameless and Friendless..............................................174 Figure 50. Julia Margaret Cameron, Zenobia..................................................................179
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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Photographers fought vigorously to earn their reputations as artists during the late
nineteenth century. Among the family of photographic pioneers, Julia Margaret Cameron
made an indelible mark. Cameron is renowned for her allegorical photographs and
portraits of significant nineteenth-century writers and artists. In addition to her famous
portraits, Cameron’s illustrations and theatrical tableaux vivants are a testament to her
storytelling ability, but I would like to argue here that Cameron went beyond visual
narration. Her images refashioned women from Arthurian lore, Shakespeare’s plays and
the Bible by transforming moments of tragedy from literature into moments that elevated
female strength and autonomy. Cameron aimed to move beyond portraiture's
verisimilitude and became an avid contributor to the growing movement that classified
photography as a form of art.
Despite Cameron's clearly demonstrated appreciation for literature as well as
frequent mention by Cameron biographers of her being a minor poet, Cameron’s literary
career has received surprisingly little attention. The efforts of Julia Margaret Cameron the
writer go unexplored in part because her writings have been both difficult to find and also
not widely publicized. The artistic contribution her photographs made is clear, but the
same cannot yet be said of her literary career. Of the dozen photographs taken of Julia
Margaret Cameron herself, it is crucial to note that many of them emphasize Cameron’s
literary inclinations.
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Figure 1. Unknown Photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron, 1858-59. From Life: Julia Margaret Cameron and Victorian Photography By Victoria Olsen. London: Aurum, 2003.
Figure 2. Julia Margaret Cameron, Self-Portrait, 1860. Julia Margaret Cameron: Her Life and Photographic Work By Helmut Gernsheim. New York: Aperture, 1975.
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Figure 3. Robert Faulkner, Julia Margaret Cameron, 1860's. National Portrait Gallery, London.
Figure 4. Unknown Photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron and Her Sons Henry and Charles, 1858. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 43.
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There are four images I would like to examine. The first image from 1858-59 (see
fig. 1) shows Cameron reading with her daughter Julia. It depicts Cameron holding hands
with Julia and underscores not only Cameron's fondness for reading but also her tender
devotion as a mother even though Julia has clearly finished her childhood years. This
balance of maternal and literary sensibilities would be a defining part of Cameron's
identity, and I offer Cameron's writings as proof of her dedication to motherhood. In a
second image (fig. 2) dated 1860, Cameron is pictured looking rather grave. In one hand
she holds a book, and in the other hand grasps an indistinguishable object on a chain.
This self-portrait also emphasizes Cameron's literary yearnings. In a third image (fig. 3)
dated 1860's, Cameron portrays herself partaking in what is represented as a casual
moment of leisurely reading. The photograph's seeming ordinariness is likely a deliberate
way to underscore that intellectual labor was so fundamental to Cameron's day to day
activity that it should appear an integral part of Cameron's life.
It must be noted that there are no known photographs of Cameron engaged in
photography. Instead, Cameron repeatedly crafts herself as a reader and, in a fourth
image, as a writer. The fourth image (see fig. 4) dated 1847, is a portrait of Cameron and
her two sons. On her right, there is an inkpot on a table with its top open, and Cameron
holds a pen and writes on a piece of paper while looking ahead at the camera. Given the
narrative style of Cameron’s own photographs and the tradition of the times to convey
sitters at the task of doing an action central to their lives, we can assume that Cameron
purposely desired to be portrayed in this photograph in the persona of a writer. 1 By
emphasizing her literary pursuits photographically, Cameron establishes herself as a
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learned figure, perhaps as a way of publicizing her credentials as someone well-versed in
literature. Also significant is the fact that Cameron's attire in each image is typical of the
middle class. This is important because unlike some male artists who wanted to be
portrayed above their own status as gentlemen, Cameron accurately represents her
economic class through her clothing. 2 Also worth remarking is that this portrait includes
her children, perhaps as a way of emphasizing the way Cameron saw herself, as both
mother and artist. This particular image provides a tangible example of how Cameron
astutely portrayed her family as in support of her artistic endeavors. Collectively, these
four portraits attest that Cameron wanted to be regarded in part as an active literary
figure.
My dissertation analyzes how Cameron's literary works shed light on Cameron's
beliefs with regard to gender identity, art and religion. In Cameron's writings and
photographs, I show she envisions women bearing up against trying circumstances,
calling on women to maintain their resolution "thro' the gloom." Taken from her
published poem "On a Portrait," the line itself references a woman who has endured
suffering but has not become eclipsed by it. In other words, she has found a way to be
stoic, but her suffering is not the only thing that defines her. This conception of women as
stoic is one that Cameron nuanced over many years. Cameron refashioned women into
figures who could be strong and tender, fierce and loving. Whether Cameron's written
and photographic subjects are working through the pain of childbirth, the loss of a
spouse, the opposition of a foe, or the rejection of a lover, I argue that this resolute vision
of women is raised up as an example for Victorian women to strive for.
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Cameron's Literary Works
Of Cameron's literary contributions, the earliest known unpublished work is a
long prayer Cameron wrote while expecting her first child in 1838 titled "Prayer Written
When I Quickened With My First Child." Her translation of Gottfried August Burger's
"Leonora" was published in 1847. There are also two unpublished poems. One undated
poem found among her family papers, housed by the Getty Trust in Los Angeles, is
called "Farewell of the Body to the Soul." The other titled "On Receiving a Copy of
Arthur Clough's Poems at Freshwater Bay," was sent in an 1861 letter to Arthur Clough's
widow following his death. Her writings, "Prayer Written When I Quickened" and "On
Receiving a Copy of Arthur Clough's Poems," refashion ideas about domesticity,
marriage and motherhood by demonstrating ways in which the idea of separate male and
female spheres could be challenged. Cameron's "Farewell of the Body to the Soul,"
"Prayer Written When I Quickened," "On Receiving a Copy of Arthur Clough's Poems,"
and "Leonora" all also inform readers to varying degrees about how religion could be an
integral part of a woman's interior life, especially considering the multiple demands
placed on her. In my dissertation I show how Cameron's ideas about family life, religion
and female strength through suffering dominate these writings. These writings when read
alongside her photographs communicate an image of women that is not easy to classify;
these complex portraits of women reveal ways in which they revered their roles as
daughters, wives and mothers, but simultaneously strove to maintain places outside the
domestic sphere. The perspective it is possible to deduce from Cameron's writings gives
deeper texture to her photographs, many of which convey the same themes. Analysis of
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her writings, in other words, provides a deeper sense of Cameron's objectives as an artist
as well as a more complete portrait of the domestic obligations she felt as a woman of
Victorian times.
Mid-Victorian Photographic History
In order to better understand Cameron's objectives as an artist, I need to reflect on
the photographic period during which Cameron was productive. In the decade before
Cameron would produce her first photograph there was growing debate among
photographers regarding photography's position in the art world. In 1853 at the
Photographic Society of London's first meeting, Sir William Newton presented a paper
titled "Upon Photography in an Artistic View" which raised serious issues about the use
of photography for artistic purposes.3 In his paper Newton, a miniaturist painter,
suggested that artists who took photographs as studies for their paintings should "put their
subject 'a little out of focus, thereby giving a greater breadth of effect, and consequently
more suggestive of the true character of nature.'" 4 Newton further suggested that
alterations of photographs by adding chemicals, adjusting light and shade effects, dulling
detail or masking defects were acceptable in order to suit the painter's artistic purposes. 5
At the same time, Newton advocated sharp and clean images for architectural studies,
clearly distinguishing certain techniques for certain desired outcomes. 6 Although
Newton's paper was intended for painters and not photographers, photographers who
heard his ideas thought that he was advocating that photography be viewed as a separate
art form. 7 The end result of Newton's paper was an "ongoing debate between those who
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believe that photography's heart lies in its ability to provide 'exactitude of delineation
which completely sets at nought the exertions of manual ingenuity,' and those who
believe that artistic effect takes precedence over precision." 8 As the conversation over
artistic effect versus precision continued, photographers found themselves in one of two
camps now referred to as the realists or the expressionists. 9 The realists believed that
photography should provide an exact representation of what was real, while the
expressionists believed that the photographic process could justifiably alter reality in
order to "introduce the imagemaker's subjective concerns and to remove the photograph
from the realm of mechanical reproduction." 10 Moving photography out of the
"mechanical reproduction" realm would prove to be a daunting task.
Just two years prior to Cameron's first photograph, the argument over the identity
of photography as its own independent art form would culminate in a fierce debate at the
International Exhibition of 1862. Much to the consternation of the photographic
community, the Royal Commissioners of the exhibition relegated photography within the
classification of a subsection of machinery.11 With prints, drawings and engravings
classified under fine arts, photographs were to keep company with railroad, industrial,
and agricultural tools and heavy manufacturing machinery.12 Inundated with complaints
by photographers who believed their works to be art, the commissioners changed their
plan and gave photography its own display.13 Still, the crowded and overheated
conditions did little to elevate photography's status, hinting that the debate over
photography's place would be a lengthy one. 14
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Cameron's Photographic Aims
Once Cameron entered the photographic world, she would rally for photography's
classification as its own art form and sympathize with the expressionists. Cameron was
an advocate of artistic effect and even with her portraits of famous Victorians, the images
most meant to represent reality, there is an unmistakable effect that sets them apart from
other portraits. Cameron's "avowed intention was 'recording faithfully the greatness of the
inner as well as the features of the outer man,'" and Cameron achieved this effect with
dramatic close-ups and an attention to light. 15 Photographic expert and Cameron scholar
Helmut Gernsheim asserts, "In common photographic portraiture breadth of light is the
rule." 16 He characterizes Cameron's especially adept use of lighting effects by comparing
her works to painters, Caravaggio, Tintoretto, Giorgione, Velasquez and "others of the
Princes of their Art."17 This dramatic style of lighting, in addition to Cameron's use of
space and perspective, was akin to techniques used by the PreRaphaelites; this painterly
style was something Cameron would incorporate with many of her images. As Cameron
scholars Julian Cox and Colin Ford relate, Cameron found "the slavish verisimilitude of
[commercial] portraits as symptomatic of both industrial progress and bland, bourgeois
values of art, the very antithesis of what she was to strive for in her own work. Cameron
was well attuned to the crisis of identity that accompanied the rapid industrialization of
photography." 18 When Cameron began her photographic career some of her work
methods were deliberate acts of resistance to commercial portraiture and the realists. 19
For instance, she refused to use headstands and restraints with her sitters. She also
delighted in the out of focus technique, which garnered so much criticism of her work.
19
As Cox and Ford describe, "Cameron was determined to pursue a path as contrary as
possible to established commercial norms. From the outset she recognized that the
authority and strength of her work resided in the individuality of her methods." 20 Instead
of utilizing some of the more expedient methods that were available, Cameron insisted
that her sitters pose for very lengthy sittings. These rigorous sitting sessions enabled
Cameron to achieve a stronger emotional content or mood from her sitters thereby giving
her images a unique quality in focus and tone. This fierce departure from the
photographic norm and "individuality of her methods" would remain central to
Cameron's photographic aims.
That Cameron's creative vigor would produce over 3,000 known photographs is
testament to her devotion to her art. 21 As Cameron biographer Joy Melville describes,
"Julia's extraordinary photographs broke the mould with a vengeance: she used
imagination, creating an artistic work. Her different vision of photography from the usual
rigid poses, developed from her conviction that photography was an art, like painting." 22
Consistent with Melville, according to biographer Victoria Olsen, Cameron was
determined from the beginning for others to consider her photographs as works of art.23
Like Cameron, photographers such as Henry Peach Robinson and Oscar Gustave
Rejlander were producing works that would challenge traditional expectations of
photography and not merely reproduce a person's picture.
20
Figure 5. Henry Peach Robinson, The Lady of Shalott, 1861. The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas. Robinson produced the first photographic depiction of Tennyson's "Lady of Shalott" (see
fig. 5). Robinson's image resembles other nineteenth-century paintings of Tennyson's
lamenting heroine and demonstrates the movement in photography that aimed to depart
from static portraits and to instead produce more imaginative constructions.
Figure 6. Oscar Gustave Rejlander, Ways of Life, 1857. Seizing the Light: A History of Photography By Robert Hirsch (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2000) 124.
21
Rejlander's Ways of Life (fig. 6) is another photograph that uses the photographic medium
to tell a story. While Robinson's Lady of Shalott photograph appropriates Tennyson,
Rejlander creates an original image for the sake of communicating a particular message
about two life paths. Cameron also made images that emphasized virtues as with her
Fruits of the Spirit series, but hers avoided making women available for the male gaze.
Cameron's desire to make photographs that would be considered art fit with the agenda of
other such artists as Robinson and Rejlander. What was daring about Cameron, however,
was that she was an artist whose works not only challenged photographic conventions but
also subverted certain established Victorian gender roles. As Melville further attests,
And indeed women were expected-- by most male photographers of the
time-- to regard photography as merely an amusing hobby. But Julia was
fascinated by the whole process. She was ambitious and extremely
confident in an art which itself was at an early stage. She wanted to push
out the boundaries and it annoyed her to realize that any inexperienced
person who chose to put up an easel and sit in front of a landscape was
promptly dubbed 'an artist,' whereas photographers were-- just
photographers. 24
Cameron's efforts to make a name for herself as an artist were rigorous, and she was a
passionate self-promoter likely aware of the resistance she would encounter as a female
artist in a male-dominated profession still in its infancy. Cameron biographer Brian Hill
describes Julia's publicity efforts this way:
22
Julia was always eager to get her work shown to the public in any
photographic exhibition. She never believed in hiding her light under a
bushel. She was really only a beginner when she started to submit prints
for exhibition and she soon arranged with P. and D. Colnaghi, then a firm
of print-sellers, to market her photographs. She claimed to have produced
some 500 negatives between January 1864 and April 1866, and it was
from this large collection that prints were put on sale. 25
Cameron's efforts at self-marketing, as Olsen notes, were because Cameron not only
wished to elevate photography to an art form, she also wished to profit from it. Olsen also
relates that Cameron was aware that her new career might not be deemed appropriate for
a woman and addresses how
it was the fact that she wanted to photograph professionally and earn
money from her work that would have made it suspect to her peers.
........................................................................................................................
In her career she had to walk a fine line between two poles: self-
effacement would satisfy her public persona of self-sacrifice and devotion
to her family but deny her ambition and personal talent; self-promotion
would serve her art and career but potentially threaten her identity within
her family and community. 26
Cameron, according to Olsen, recognized the distinction between the male and female
spheres and was careful to insist publically that her family supported her artistic
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endeavors.27 I would add to Olsen's characterization that Cameron' writings are a
testament to her commitment to familial obligations.
Cameron's photographic pursuits, while revealing much about her views on
women, did not garner her the recognition she had hoped during her lifetime. Recorded
mentions of her sex in either her correspondence, reviews of her work, or accounts from
those who knew her, are few. Although there seems to be little direct evidence of sexist
criticism, it is likely the bias was transported into critiques of her technique. One of the
few mentions of Cameron's gender that takes a jab at her technique occurs in this review
in 1865 from The Photographic Journal. As Helmut Gernsheim summarizes this review
it gave her
"credit for daring originality," but complained that it was "achieved at the
expense of all photographic qualities. A true artist would employ all the
resources at his disposal, in whatever branch of art he might practice. In
these pictures all that is good in photography has been neglected, and the
shortcomings of the art are prominently exhibited," adding with true
Victorian chivalry "we are sorry to have to speak thus severely on the
works of a lady, but we feel compelled to do so in the interests of the
art."28
There is unmistakable condescension in the Journal's remarks. Nevertheless, undaunted
by her criticism, Cameron continued producing her photographic works and even prided
herself in deviating from "all that is good in photography." Today, there are still polarized
views about Cameron's proficiency as a photographer, but few can dispute Cameron's
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diligent efforts to contribute to photography's growing art status. Cameron herself asserts
in her autobiographical fragment "Annals of My Glass House," published posthumously
in 1889,
I believe that what my youngest boy Henry Herschel, who is now himself
a very remarkable photographer, told me is quite true-- that my first
successes in my out-of-focus pictures were a fluke. That is to say, that
when focusing and coming to something which, to my eye, was very
beautiful, I stopped there instead of screwing the lens to the more definite
focus which all other photographers insist upon. 29
Cameron's recognition of the "very beautiful" is precisely what earned her a place in the
growing camp of photographic artists despite disagreement about her proficiency.
Gernsheim blames Cameron's supposedly shoddy technique on Cameron's first set of
equipment, claiming a "chromatic aberration [...] made it virtually impossible for her to
obtain sharp pictures, even if visually they appeared sharp on the ground-glass screen." 30
The anecdote that a year into her career Cameron asked Sir John Herschel "What is
focus-- and who has a right to say what focus is the legitimate focus?" seems to suggest
she was knowingly making choices about focus that differed from other photographers.31
Cameron recognized that her critics failed to see the value of her work, and rather than be
self-deprecating about technique differences, she insisted that her blurry effects and
literary inspired subjects made her stand apart from those who upheld "all that is good in
photography." 32 Despite the criticism she received for her technique during the
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nineteenth century, Cameron was confident her works had merit, and she made a point of
having them copyrighted, a time-consuming task for,
At that time, to secure copyright, every publication, including
photographs, had to be entered separately at Stationer's Hall. Mrs.
Cameron's prints were generally inscribed "From Life. Copyright
Registered Photograph. Julia Margaret Cameron." Sometimes the words,
"untouched" or "not enlarged" were added and on some prints a facsimile
of the sitter's name also appeared. 33
The fact that Cameron took the time to register her photographs supports the idea that
Cameron did not consider photography merely a hobby, that she was a serious artist eager
to make a name for herself.
Infiltration into the Male-centered Art World
Cameron's persistent efforts to establish her place within the photography world
coupled with the company Cameron kept during her lifetime contributed to Cameron's
scope as a photographer. Cameron's awareness of the importance of good connections
and her genuinely affable nature facilitated a strong social network, and by maintaining
friendships with such men as William Makepeace Thackeray, Alfred Lord Tennyson,
George Frederic Watts, John Ruskin, Henry Taylor, Sir John Herschel and Thomas
Carlyle, Cameron had the advantage of conversing with some of the most significant
artists and thinkers of the mid-nineteenth century. Cameron's sister Sara Prinsep created a
salon within what art history scholar Caroline Dakers describes as "a rambling old
26
farmhouse." 34 Located by painter G. F. Watts who would become its artist in residence,
the house called Little Holland House "made bohemia respectable, bringing together
artists, writers and scientists with politicians, landowners and civil servants: in short,
almost anyone who cared, or professed to care, for contemporary culture." 35 A frequent
visitor of Sara's, Cameron became intimate friends with Watts, Tennyson and Carlyle in a
setting that fostered rich discussions about the most current cultural matters. Surrounded
by individuals of contradictory ideas, Cameron's intellect was constantly stimulated by
the debates within her circle of friends. These frequent exchanges about art within the
Little Holland House circle suggest that Cameron's final decisions about technique and
subjects in her photographs and writings had to be made very deliberately. For instance,
while Tennyson thought literature could provide both an escape and a refashioned view
of contemporary issues, Carlyle insisted that literature be socially relevant and not a
break from the trials of nineteenth-century life. 36 Cameron, as we will see in a later
examination of her works, mediated between these views by returning to Shakespearean
or Arthurian tales to invigorate viewers, while updating these texts by challenging rather
than replicating oppressive aspects of Victorian gender ideology.
Cameron was able to capitalize on her close relationships with artists and to seek
their support, advice and expertise. In my project I show that Cameron infiltrated the
realm of male artists by working first on the personal level, establishing strong
friendships, often as a motherly figure. While the evidence suggests that Cameron did
this in a way that was not manipulative, and that her devotion to friends was genuine and
heartfelt, this does not diminish Cameron's awareness, I would argue, that her
27
accomplished friends could reciprocate her generosity by helping her with photographic
publicity. In the chapters that will follow, after viewing Cameron through the same
critical lens that Mary Poovey and Nancy Armstrong use to analyze Florence
Nightingale, I assert that it was only after first being comfortably situated within the
exclusive male art sphere that Cameron took the next step to make a name for herself
within the competitive, male-dominated world of photography. As Gernsheim
characterizes her, Mrs. Cameron was "a lion-hunter making full use of the opportunities
that offered themselves [...]. 37 Indeed, her efforts at self-promotion sometimes exceeded
a comfortable level. For instance after taking a couple of portraits of William Michael
Rossetti, Cameron wrote to him explaining her fervent wish that he endorse her work.
She explained,
I am under pressure to stop Photography till I have recovered my outlay,
that is to say, to take no new pictures and limit myself to printing from the
old and depending on their sale [...]. Have you no means of introducing
any friendly Paragraph into any Paper that has good circulation? I myself
delight in both those Pictures of you-- but if you judge differently I would
not have you otherwise than quite candid with me. 38
It is not known whether Rossetti ever obliged Cameron, but this kind of persuasion was
something that Cameron practiced repeatedly when the opportunity arose. Cameron was
aware that her position in a male-dominated media would be considered unorthodox and
was careful to maintain a level of accepted female behavior from within the male sphere.
For instance, just as Cameron reiterates that she honors her duties as wife and mother
28
while simultaneously pursuing her photography career, so too does Nightingale reinforce
or subvert her role as a female caretaker when needed. In fact, Poovey characterizes
Nightingale as wisely defending her idea of the nurse as being "not too manly, as strong-
minded women were." 39 According to Poovey,
So intent was Nightingale on reinforcing the difference between the sexes
that she ends Notes on Nursing with a long note commanding the nurse to
resist that "jargon ... about the 'rights' of women, which urges women to
do all that men do, including the medical and other professions, merely
because men do it, and without regard whether this is the best that women
can do."40
Nightingale, according to Poovey, was aware that the immersion of women nurses into a
previously male-dominated medical profession would be controversial. I argue that,
similarly, Cameron was aware of her place as a female artist within a male-dominated
field and like Nightingale honored the differences between the sexes by refusing to
minimize or disparage the roles of wife and mother not only because she genuinely
revered them, but also because she recognized the importance of maintaining certain
gender distinctions.
Reconsideration of the Victorian Separate Spheres Ideology
Poovey's use of the separate spheres ideology accords with a long-established
understanding about Victorian social codes for men and women, though current scholars
consider the theory of separate spheres far more nuanced and complex than previously
29
recognized. Some historians go so far as to abandon the concept, given emerging
evidence of the extent of fluctuation that occurred between the two spheres. Nevertheless,
according to Public Lives: Women, Family and Society in Victorian Britain, (2003), the
hypothesis of separate spheres remains a fundamental theory from which to analyze
Victorian culture for,
The separate spheres thesis has [...] become the dominant historical
paradigm for understanding gender relations in the nineteenth century,
particularly among the middle classes. At its simplest and most general
level, the concept that men and women should occupy separate spheres is
seen as explaining the differentiated lives of men and women in the
nineteenth century. 41
Despite the frequent use of this historical paradigm, relegating the lives of men and
women to the private/domestic and public/professional spheres respectively is now
considered an incomplete picture. Further analysis of Victorian history shows
men and women were enmeshed in a matrix of circulating discourses,
some of which competed with separate spheres, cut across it,
supplemented it or even supplanted it. Moreover, discourses could be
resisted, subverted and refused; material factors and individual experience
played an important role in shaping the ways in which representations
were absorbed, interpreted and challenged. 42
For the sake of understanding Cameron's place as a woman within Victorian society, I
still reference the long-established conception of separate spheres mainly because I
30
believe Cameron serves as an example of someone that "cut across," "supplemented," and
"supplanted" them. In that way, Cameron is herself part of the contemporary conversation
that claims Victorian women were either not as restricted to the domestic sphere as once
thought or that they found a kind of power within the domestic sphere that gave them
more autonomy than once believed. For example, one edition of the Edinburgh Review,
(1830), described the home as "not a place about which many reviewers feel at ease. It is
another sphere in which boundaries must be drawn, fortified, and policed. For despite
wish-fulfilling claims that women are 'less ambitious' than men, women's ambition would
appear to be lurking everywhere, not excluding what has been defined as the domestic
sphere." 43 The Review's remarks reflect the reality that not only was the domestic sphere
not as self-contained as once thought, it was also, in some cases, perhaps not as stifling
for women as once thought.
In recent scholarship, domestic ideology has been reconsidered to include
unexpected power conflicts between men and women. In her discussion of Victorian
motherhood, Sally Shuttleworth argues, "Emphasis on female domestic supremacy
seemed to offer potentially dangerous images of female empowerment, while the intense
ideological focus on woman's reproductive role threatened to marginalize male
creativity." 44 Victorian medical texts abounded with stories about women and hysteria, a
condition that was often blamed on women's reproductive systems.45 That the idealized
mother figure of Victorian times is looked back on as something threatening serves as an
example of how nuanced a woman's domestic role could be. While a woman's maternal
purpose encompassed self-less devotion to the husband and children, it could also be
31
perceived as a grave threat to the husband due to perceptions regarding what was
characterized as a woman's uncontrollable and "extreme 'ovarian perversion of the
appetite.'" 46 The notion that women's need to procreate transformed them into vampiric
beings with excessive sexual urges dominated nineteenth-century female anatomy
discourse and spilled over into artistic stereotypes of the femme fatale, a motif that
Cameron refused to promote in her works. 47
In contrast to the perception of women's extreme drive toward maternity was the
more tempered role of motherhood, a role whose complexity, nonetheless, still raises
questions about women's lack of autonomy. As one historian describes,
Motherhood was certainly pivotal to the construction of female identity,
yet how that role was enacted and the meanings given to it varied
considerably across the middle classes. While women may have been
defined by the home, the family and motherhood, not all were confined by
it; some of the wealthy women were able to combine motherhood with
socializing and travelling even while their children were young. Middle-
class mothers were not simply the products of domestic discourses; the
family cycle, their material experiences and their cultural world shaped
their lives, as did their own interpretation of what it meant to be a
mother.48
Cameron certainly fits the above description in the way she was able to maintain a
balance between domestic responsibilities, socializing and even travel to India with her
husband. The class stratification of the private sphere must be acknowledged, and
32
Cameron, I argue, serves as an example of one woman whose ideals regarding family and
whose ambition regarding her art career make her an example of how indistinct the
boundaries of those spheres could be.
Methodology
In addition to examining Cameron's place within the traditional separate spheres
paradigm, my analysis of Cameron's writings and photographs is informed by current
nineteenth-century scholarship across disciplines, particularly in the areas of gender
ideology, art history and Victorian social and religious conventions. Cameron was
primarily influenced by four dominant male traditions, the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood,
Arthurianism via Tennyson, Shakespeareanism and the Biblical tradition. Rather than
uncritically perpetuating the ideologies of these traditions, Cameron used her art to work
through questions about nineteenth-century roles for women. Most scholars of Cameron
have credited her with taking from the four dominant male traditions already mentioned,
but few have recognized the ways she forged her own interpretations of these traditions.
For instance, art critic Debra N. Mancoff limits Cameron's contribution to "general
Victorian interest in role playing and home theatricals;" 49 I offer broad evidence from
Cameron's writings and photography that her interest in Arthurianism went beyond mere
dress-up-- that Cameron saw in figures such as Guinevere and Elaine women whose
ability to persevere despite unfortunate circumstances made them worthy of replicating.
Although many artists including the Pre-Raphaelites paid homage to literature by
drawing on many of the same subjects as Cameron, as Kimberley Rhodes acknowledges
33
in her discussion of Victorian appropriations of Ophelia, Cameron "protected the
feminine privacy" of her subjects in ways that the PreRaphaelites did not. 50 In other
words, Cameron maintained the modesty and dignity of her female subjects while the
PreRaphaelites emphasized their sexuality. Although Rhodes recognizes the ways in
which the modest presentation of women in Cameron's depictions set her apart from
many of her fellow male artists, Rhodes still sees Cameron's women characters as the
victims depicted in male-authored texts. In contrast, I will argue that Cameron situates
women characters in states of resistance against victimization, thereby refashioning them
and writing new visual texts with photography--in essence, writing with light.
Victorian Appropriations of Medievalism and Shakespeare
As already alluded to, many Victorians like Cameron revisited older texts either
as an escape from the nineteenth-century or as a vehicle for critiquing it. One popular
subject that appealed to the culture as a whole was the revival of medievalism. Before
Tennyson's Idylls of the King came Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, Sir Henry Taylor's Philip
van Artveld and Lady Charlotte Guest's translation of the Mabinogian. Alicia Faxon, in
her discussion of the PreRaphaelites and medievalism, describes the rage for Arthur as
a retreat to an imagined old order before a new industrialization which was
changing the structure of society and creating ugly factory cities and urban
slums. It was also a form of Romanticism and religious revival, which had
taken place on the continent several decades earlier. The Gothic Revival in
architecture was creating a Victorian version of the Middle Ages [...]. 51
34
Faxon argues that Victorian culture was under the influence of medievalism in various
ways. In addition to gothic revival in architecture and the return of religious ritual via the
Oxford movement, medievalism also infiltrated the visual arts. The PreRaphaelite
Brotherhood found the brotherhood of the knights of King Arthur appealing for its "ideal
of a medieval community working together, but even more, [because] it was a model of
chivalry, courage, loyalty, and mutual support [...]. " 52 For both aesthetic purposes and to
revive lost codes of conduct, Tennyson and Cameron, like the PreRaphaelites, would be
drawn to the tales of Arthur. Cameron's approach to Arthurian legend, however, would
dispute the gender ideology Tennyson propagated. Cameron revised sexist aspects of
Arthurian folklore -- for instance the emphasis on women needing to be rescued.
Cameron took Tennyson's version of Idylls and was selective in her characterization of
such women as Elaine, Vivien and Guinevere. In these women Cameron would find
female characters whose determination to push against restrictive codes of conduct for
women made them worthy of being reproduced photographically.
Another cultural icon who greatly influenced Victorian art and literature,
including that of Cameron, was an actual historical figure, William Shakespeare. A great
devotee of Shakespeare, Cameron's friend Carlyle believed Shakespearean texts were still
relevant in serving "powerful national and economic interests." 53 In other words,
although Shakespeare's plays were considered escapist due to their settings, Carlyle
found they nonetheless elevated nationalism and imperialism. Like Carlyle, Cameron was
an avid admirer of Shakespeare and refashioned key images from Shakespeare's plays
through multiple photographic depictions. Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells describes
35
the popularity of Shakespeare appropriations by remarking how "When the Pre-
Raphaelite Brotherhood drew up their list of 'immortals' in 1848, Shakespeare and Jesus
Christ alone were awarded three stars. The leading members of the Brotherhood, Holman
Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Everett Millais, all painted scenes from
Shakespeare." 54 Clearly, Shakespeare would be a great source of inspiration for many
artists, and female characters such as Cordelia, Juliet and Ophelia would provide
Cameron with the perfect vehicle for disseminating her vision of women as resilient
despite circumstances of suffering, a theme that appears not only repeatedly in her
photographs, but also in her writings.
The Influence of the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood
Arthurian and Shakespearean appropriations would dominate the literature and art
of the mid-Victorian period. As photography continued to establish its identity in the
1860's, there was a shift away from realistic representation to the painterly style of
symbolic narrative allegory, the "figurative treatment of one subject under the appearance
of another." 55 The PreRaphaelites were a major influence on photographers because of
the way they too relied on representations of "abstract moral and/or spiritual qualities
related as a fable or parable." 56 This type of allegorical representation drew Cameron to
the PreRaphaelites. Nevertheless, as with the masculine domains of Shakespeare and
Tennyson, Cameron was very selective with what she incorporated into her own art.
Although she took from these domains, she also undercut them. For instance, I've already
alluded to how Cameron rewrote the texts of Shakespeare and Tennyson to fashion her
36
own gender ideology. With the PreRaphaelites, although they provided a powerful pull
with their work and likewise depicted Arthurian and Shakespearean scenes, Cameron
usually made a point of distinguishing herself by avoiding their obsession with
languid/dying women or the portrayal of women who invited the male gaze. Though
Cameron scholars repeatedly claim that Cameron's images are PreRaphaelite-like,
because of some aesthetic elements (long-flowing hair, draping gowns, lighting effects)
and allegorical subjects that Cameron clearly borrows, in fact she distinguishes herself
from the Brotherhood in significant ways. Particularly since so many of Cameron's close
friends and acquaintances were part of this fringe group of artists, it is important to
question why her works are so different from the Brotherhood's.
Although various masculine domains influenced Cameron, her vision of women's
place in the nineteenth-century led to her crafting writings and photographs with distinct
social agendas. For instance, Cameron's versions of Ophelia and Juliet clearly refashion
these women into hardier characters than found in Shakespeare's original texts. Three
images, several of them Shakespearean, show Cameron's familiarity with the
PreRaphaelite Brotherhood. Two of those images, her depictions of Measure for
Measure's Mariana and Isabel, (see figs. 7 and 10) are unusual in the way they reproduce
aspects of PreRaphaelitism that Cameron typically avoided.
37
Figure 7. Julia Margaret Cameron, Mariana, 1874-75. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 478.
Figure 8. Julia Margaret Cameron, May Prinsep/PreRaphaelite Study 1870. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 251. These photographs (see fig. 7-8) clearly demonstrate her familiarity with the Brotherhood
and its works and figure 8 most closely resembles Holman Hunt’s Isabella and the Pot of
Basil (see fig. 9).
38
Figure 9. Holman Hunt, Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1867. http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/artonline/search.
Figure 10. Julia Margaret Cameron, May as Isabel, 1870. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 250. With the exceptions of the anomalous images of Isabel and Mariana produced in the
1870's all of Cameron's images move away from the Brotherhood's limiting view of
39
women, and Cameron primarily produced images and literary works that provided
women with greater depth and complexity than the Brotherhood seemed to offer them.
Chapter Delineations
I've asserted that there are parallel themes in Cameron's photographs and literary
works, and in the next chapter (Chapter Two) I analyze Cameron's "Prayer Written When
I Quickened With My First Child," and "Upon Receiving a Copy of Arthur Clough's
Poems." I explore the way these Cameron writings underscore her theme of the
persevering woman. While some Victorian conventions such as motherhood and familial
bonds are elevated, I make a case that Cameron also subverts nineteenth-century gender
ideology by fashioning women who represent stoicism in the face of tribulation. In
"Prayer Written When I Quickened," the speaker expresses hope to withstand the pains of
childbirth and that she may live to care for her husband and child in the unconventional
capacity as religious head of the household. In "Upon Receiving a Copy of Arthur
Clough's Poems," readers get to glimpse at Cameron's personal correspondence, and I
demonstrate ways in which Cameron's poem to Clough's widow serves as a declaration of
women's equality with men and another example of the way Cameron privileges strong
yet nurturing women.
In Chapter Three I analyze how Cameron's unpublished poem "Farewell of the
Body to the Soul" re-genders a female soul into a soul possessing both male and female
traits. Cameron's soul is depicted as a fierce defender against its male body. Likely
drawing from the ancient tradition of "psychomachia" such as Prudentius's, Cameron uses
40
combat imagery to portray the push and pull between body and soul all the while making
a point of underscoring the soul's unusually masculine traits of firmness, combativeness
and cajolery. As a way of further analyzing "Farewell of the Body to the Soul," I put the
poem in dialogue with her translation of Burger's "Leonora" and argue that Cameron
translates his poem in a way that highlights maternity and self-preservation, unlike D. G.
Rossetti's version that places the burden of female happiness on God's mercy.
In Chapter Four I examine Cameron's poem "On a Portrait" which describes the
painting of a woman who has endured an undisclosed experience of suffering. In
Cameron's ekphrastic work, the speaker lauds the painter of a woman's portrait for
conveying both the beauty and the sadness of the sitter. Comparing Cameron's depictions
of women with those done by Millais, Watts, D. G. Rossetti and Burne-Jones, I offer
evidence that unlike these PreRaphaelites who depict their women sleeping, collapsing,
near-dead or dead, Cameron's "On a Portrait," as well as many of her photographs,
illustrate women whose living states make them more complete figures of women.
In Chapter Five I focus on Cameron's photographic illustrations for Tennyson's
Idylls of the King and demonstrate how Cameron and Tennyson differ in their visions of
Elaine, Vivien and Guinevere. As a starting point, I look at Cameron's photographic
depiction of Tennyson's "Maud" and discuss Cameron's unusual insertion of Maud into a
scene from Tennyson's poem where she actually does not appear in Tennyson's text. This
unique interpretation of Tennyson's poem by Cameron serves as an introduction to the
way Cameron's renditions of Tennyson's Arthurian women also undergo certain visual
changes in order to best depict them as women who strive to overcome their prescribed
41
fates. Despite Tennyson’s insistence that his texts be depicted with no variance, Cameron
was able to adhere to Tennyson’s wishes while at the same time emphasizing the
moments of Idylls that she thought were most deserving of reproduction, namely episodes
of Arthurian women demonstrating their powers of self-governance.
In Chapter Six I argue that when Cameron depicts the Shakespearean heroines
Cordelia, Ophelia and Juliet, she embeds a critique of Victorian gender ideology. It had
become customary by Cameron's time for British artists such as G. F. Watts, D. G.
Rossetti and Holman Hunt to depict beautiful dead or near-dead women in their works,
and the trope of the inanimate woman has received much criticism from contemporary
feminist critics, including Elisabeth Bronfen and Bram Dijkstra. Although Cameron
could easily have caved to the cult of the dead motif, and she did choose to do so at
times, she also found ways to emphasize Shakespeare's heroines as self-reliant and depict
them as still living. The living image of Cordelia fashions her as a female figure whose
selfless devotion to her father empowers her as a free-thinking woman of her own
principles. Cameron also produces four images of Ophelia, and while they convey, to a
degree, Ophelia's psychic disarray, Cameron eschews depicting her dead or placing her
near a watery grave like so many other Victorian artists do. Lastly, Cameron's images of
Juliet render her in a moment of action with Juliet obtaining the potion from Friar
Lawrence. These living portraits of Juliet make her a figure of self-assertion rather than a
woman objectified or confined to a role of passivity. With Cordelia, Ophelia and Juliet,
Cameron rewrites Shakespeare's women as women whose resilience makes them figures
of fortitude rather than enervation.
42
In my Concluding Chapter I focus on how Cameron's fellow female artists
Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddall similarly dealt with the issue of occupying a
place within both the male and female sphere. As women who were also part of very
influential circles, C. Rossetti and Siddall had opportunities to benefit from their
relationships with those in the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood. Unlike Cameron, however, C.
Rossetti and Siddall were more passive recipients of what came from knowing such
influential men. Cameron, I re-assert, made an active effort to enter into and maintain
friendships with influential figures out of both genuine generosity but also ambitious
savvy. These final remarks show ways in which all three women were affected by their
significant associations. In the end, I assert that all three female artists made significant
contributions to the nineteenth-century's canon of literature and art in spite of the
challenges they faced as women participating in male-dominated fields.
43
CHAPTER 2: THE ELEVATION OF GOD, MOTHERHOOD AND DOMESTICITY IN
CAMERON'S WRITINGS
Julia Margaret Cameron's earliest known written literary work provides a unique
glimpse into the artist's nascent ideas about Victorian gender roles. On July 8, 1838
Cameron wrote a prayer in anticipation of giving birth to her first child, who would also
be called Julia. It is a long prayer composed on a single sheet and folded into four
sections. 57 Like her correspondence, the prayer lacks punctuation and reads as if
Cameron sat down and wrote within one sitting. There are no distinct paragraphs or any
markings to separate her words into sections. This version, the only one known to exist,
reveals religious concerns, a devotion to wifely and motherly duties, and a candid
anticipation of the pains of childbirth. Although the prayer could be read as depicting a
traditional Victorian woman's devotion to God and family, it reveals much more than
that. Importantly, Cameron's autobiographical prayer illustrates her unconventional role
as religious head of the household. The prayer also introduces ideas about the resilience
of women that would influence Cameron's artistic renditions of women in her later
photographs and poems.
Inspired by the pending birth of her daughter, Cameron's "Prayer Written When I
Quickened With My First Child" provides a unique glimpse into her personal feelings on
the brink of motherhood. The speaker of the prayer discloses a need for God's help to
withstand suffering and her feeling of responsibility for the states of her husband's and
child's souls. The speaker expresses not only a deep desire to acknowledge God's
blessings but also a need for prayer to alleviate her concerns about the birthing process.
44
While she elevates the call of motherhood and looks to the birth of her child with great
enthusiasm, she also expresses great trepidation. Instead of lamenting the inevitable
suffering that childbirth requires, however, the poem's speaker seeks a "firm soul and a
steady heart" and shows that she desires to be strong through her suffering (21-22). She
doesn't beg that her experience be pain-free; she asks to feel strong and accepts that death
may be part of the birth experience. Through the speaker of the poem Cameron reveals
her own concerns about childbirth and illustrates how at twenty-three she began to
formulate her thoughts about the suffering of women.
This early evidence of Cameron's valuing of maintaining strength despite
suffering remains with her all her life and becomes a predominant theme in her creative
endeavors. In addition to expressing concerns about the birth experience, the poem's
speaker takes an unusual stance when she says that the cultivation of her future child's
faith is something for which she feels personally responsible. Perhaps mirroring
Cameron's thoughts about her children and her husband, this speaker expresses
unorthodox ideas about family dynamics. The speaker implies that it is with good reason
that she usurp her husband's duty and take on the burden of her future child's religious
formation. Although she appears to be the conventional doting mother, the speaker is
unusual in the way she makes herself responsible for her family's souls.
Cameron, like her speaker, had serious concerns about the state of her husband's
soul, and Cameron biographers explain that she had taken on the task of his religious
conversion. A testament to Cameron's religious fervor is the fact that it almost prevented
her from being united with her husband Charles Hay Cameron. Cameron scholar Victoria
45
Olsen relates how Charles "was a member of the Church of England, by birth and duty,
but like most utilitarians, he found no rational basis for an emotional investment in more
than the basic forms of religious observance." 58 Cameron was discouraged by her
fiancée’s utilitarian doubt in God but hopeful that she could convert Charles, and on
November 29, 1837, she gave him a book titled Evidence of Christianity. She inscribed in
the book these words: "Julia Margaret to Charles Hay Cameron with her fervent and
heartfelt wishes and most affecte. [sic] and unceasing prayers that their Heavenly Father
in mercy may hear their joint supplication and thus answer the longings of her soul and
make Jesus Christ their common Savior God and Redeemer." 59 This desire to convert
Charles, as expressed in the inscription, lasted a lifetime, and although he never fulfilled
his wife's hopes, she remained diligent in attempting to achieve his conversion. This task
to attempt conversion is an unusual calling for a Victorian wife whose typical duty was to
uphold social mores and codes of conduct rather than see to theological formation. Like
the speaker in her prayer, Cameron would defy expectations of women and occupy places
within both the traditional male and female sphere when it came to domestic matters.
To help guide the running of a household, nineteenth-century conduct books
outlined expectations for wives like Cameron. In her discussion of the Victorian novel,
Nancy Armstrong describes the shift toward the domestic when she lists specific
responsibilities of Victorian women and says,
As if straight from Renaissance handbooks on domestic economy, these
books developed categories that defined the ideal woman in her married
state. Her representation was as practical and detailed as the maiden's was
46
abstract and homiletic in style. Except for unqualified obedience to her
husband, the virtues of the ideal wife appeared to be active. A list of her
duties could have included household management, regulation of servants,
supervision of children, planning of entertainment and concern for the
sick. 60
Cameron would happily fulfill most of the specifications for a nineteenth-century wife as
outlined by Armstrong. Nevertheless, she would also subtly rethink gender ideology and
take on her husband's prescribed responsibility by putting herself in charge of the souls of
her family.
Cameron's role as a kind of spiritual guardian angel seems to exceed common
standards for how women were to operate within their families. Victorian author Isabella
Beeton's 1861 Book of Household Management characterizes the woman at home as "a
formidable leader with a responsibility to teach, nurse, and above all exemplify to her
servants the proper morality, charity, cleanliness, frugality, and self sacrifice." 61
Cameron seems to have fulfilled Beeton's description and then extended her moral duties
even further. In a study of 168 Victorian families, historian Anthony S. Wohl describes
how the letters of Victorian fathers to their children revealed the paternal responsibility of
religious formation. Within these letters fathers sent "moral strictures, prudent maxims
and religious pieties." 62 Many letters "urge[d] an hour of prayer on rising and counsel
never to forget the Sovereign Being who is all-seeing." 63 As Cameron biographers know,
it would be Julia, not Charles who would write to her children and fret about the states of
their souls. Among the 168 families studied, Wohl describes only one instance where a
47
wife held sway over her husband's religious state: "not all fathers were sovereign [...]. Sir
Edward Clarke's father, the London silver merchant, was one of the exceptions. His
evangelical wife ran their household. She forbid [sic] her timid and amiable husband
from attending the theatre he so dearly loved." 64 Like the wife mentioned above,
Cameron took control of her family's religious upbringing and did not hesitate to dispense
religious advice to her immediate family or even to her extended family. While Cameron
sharply departs from Victorian women's roles in this regard she further complicates
familial tradition by simultaneously upholding other aspects of female duty such as the
role of doting mother.
Cameron's occupation of dual roles resembles the duality that has been attributed
to Florence Nightingale. As Mary Poovey describes, "Nightingale most obviously
consolidated two narratives about patriotic service that were culturally available at mid-
century--a domestic narrative of maternal nurturing and self-sacrifice and a military
narrative of individual assertion and will." 65 Although Cameron's contributions are not
patriotic per se, they are similar to Nightingale's in that they demonstrate the convergence
of maternal nurturing and self-assertion-- for Cameron was unafraid to take her husband's
religious faith, or later her artistic career, into her own hands.
As to her husband's failure as a religious anchor, Cameron's prayer reveals her
grief over his state and simultaneously reveals her own devout beliefs when the speaker
asks the Lord to "Open to [her husband] the veil of Thy sanctuary and engrave upon his
soul the blessed truths of Thy gospel so that the Savior may become to him his only hope
& the Savior's blood seal him with the seal of redemption" (59-63). The language fits
48
with Cameron's serious religious yearnings and devout belief as described by Cameron
biographers. Cox describes Cameron’s belief as one of “High-Church (or Anglo-Catholic
tendencies)… favoring an emphasis on the historical character of religion and the role of
tradition, prayer, the sacraments, and the authority of the Church.” 66 This emphasis on
history and ritual would influence many of Cameron's photographs, as apparent in her
Madonna Groups, and would also influence her other writings such as her translation of
"Leonora," and “Farewell of the Body to the Soul.” Olsen characterizes Cameron's
religious upbringing in this way:
Her faith was based in the Anglican Church, the established Protestant
Church of England, to which her father must have belonged. Her French
mother and grandparents may have been Catholic, though at least one of
her maternal forbears was Protestant. It is unclear if any religious divide
affected her upbringing, especially since so much of her education
occurred in France. 67
The possible Catholic influence Olsen recognizes is important in understanding
Cameron's later photographic work. Olsen claims that "The inclination to worship was
strong" in Cameron, and Olsen relates how Cameron described her photographs as "'the
embodiment of a prayer.'" 68 Olsen also speculates that Cameron's faith may have
undergone a deepening in the 1830's as a result of her sister Adeline's religious
awakening. Cameron's prayer, written in 1838, demonstrates fervent piety and could
certainly be viewed as evidence of her awakened religious zeal. Whether composed as a
purely autobiographical prayer or intended to be a creative work, the prayer reinforces
49
Cameron's thoughts on religion and childbirth and serves as a revealing portrayal of a
Victorian mother-to-be.
Cameron's prayer not only reveals the importance of family obligations and
religion, it also reveals significant perceptions about mothers-to be. The poem uses the
language of the time in describing the labor process as a "bed of sickness" (88). That
image reinforces the fears associated with childbirth and characterizes birth as a disease
that needs to be overcome. Like other nineteenth-century literary works that do not dare
to broach the subject of childbirth even in couched terms, Cameron's prayer similarly
avoids any explicit biological descriptions. Still, the speaker's candid expression of fear
regarding "my bed of sickness" and acknowledgement of "the child whom thou hast now
quickened" serves as a rare account of an obviously frequent but little discussed
experience for women (88;12).
Since the subject of childbirth was considered indelicate in the Victorian period,
"many women, including the Queen, disposed of written notes about their confinements
and much information on the subject was never written down but communicated orally
and hence lost." 69 In addition to Victorian prudishness, another reason for the dearth of
childbirth literature is that during the nineteenth century, childbirth was just beginning to
enter the realm of the sciences as male doctors displaced female midwives. Additionally,
according to scientist Michel Pierssens,
In the mid-19th century, science changed and became increasingly
mathematical. The language of science became more technical and poetry
became a difficult vehicle with which to communicate scientific
50
knowledge. By the end of the century, the two disciplines were officially
divorced and poetry was deemed the worst way in which to express
scientific knowledge. 70
Pierssens' view emphasizes an incompatibility between science and poetry in a general
sense. Add the Victorian sense of propriety with regard to childbirth's inappropriateness
as a subject, and it becomes clear that writers had to treat the subject, if they dared to
address it at all, with careful delicacy. Talking about pregnancy meant recognizing that
sexual intercourse had occurred, which was a taboo topic in respectable Victorian society.
Certainly Victorian novels include women who are mothers both within and outside of
wedlock, but the attention to a woman's changing gestational state was usually not
discussed. In fact, most readers only learned of a pregnancy when the author introduced a
new character: the baby. To understand attitudes toward expectant mothers in literature,
read this scathing response to George Eliot's inclusion of pregnancy details for her
character Hetty Sorrel of Adam Bede:
There is also another feature in this part of the story on which we cannot
refrain from making a passing remark. The author of Adam Bede has
given in his adhesion to a very curious practice [...], and it is a practice
that we consider most objectionable. It is that of dating and discussing the
several stages that precede the birth of the child … Hetty’s feelings and
changes are indicated with a punctual sequence that makes the account of
her misfortunes read like the rough notes of a man-midwife’s
conversations with a bride. This is intolerable. Let us copy the old masters
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of the art who, if they gave us a baby, gave it us all at once. A decent
author and a decent public may take the premonitory symptoms for
granted. 71
The intolerability of the topic of pregnancy and childbirth, as captured by the above
critique of Eliot, seems to account for the infrequent literary accounts of childbirth.
If nineteenth-century authors dared to introduce the subject of childbirth, it was
typical to use euphemisms rather than overt details. Rudyard Kipling confirms this when
he writes "We asked no social questions-- we pumped no / hidden shame--/ We never
talked obstetrics when the Little / Stranger came." 72 Charles Dickens is another author
who avoided talking about obstetrics and who couched childbirth details in his novels by
embedding them within metaphors. For instance, in David Copperfield Dickens describes
Dora's miscarriage by saying, "The spirit fluttered for a moment on the threshold of its
little prison, and unconscious of captivity, took wing." 73 There is no mention of the
biological or emotional consequences of miscarriage, only poetic bird imagery. In
Thackeray's Vanity Fair, the door behind which Amelia gives birth is shut discreetly and
the narrator asks readers to "Tread silently around the hapless couch of the poor prostrate
soul. Shut gently the door of the dark chamber, wherein she suffers, as those kind people
did who nursed her through the first months of her pain, and never left her until heaven
sent her consolation." 74 Thackeray's account reinforces the image of the bed of sickness
that must be endured. These veiled descriptions of the labor and birth process reinforce
nineteenth-century sensibilities that perceived the whole ordeal as unseemly and as a
52
form of illness that needed to be overcome. Understanding this perception of childbirth
helps contemporary readers to understand the context of Cameron's prayer.
In contrast to the discretion of Dickens or Kipling, Irish novelist George Moore
signals a slight change in the treatment of childbirth and makes the heroine of his 1894
Esther Waters suffer greatly in labor as a way of punishing her for producing an
illegitimate child. In the novel, Moore provides a harrowing account of childbirth that
purposely exceeds Victorian propriety in order to condemn Esther. As summarized by Jill
Matus in her work on Victorian representations of women,
Walking to her bed, she notices steel instruments on one of the tables and
basins on the floor. A young male student approaches her bedside to 'take
a pain,' as digital examination of the cervix was called. Esther panics. 'Oh,
no, no, not him! He's too young! Don't let him come near me!' All laugh
loudly at Esther, who hides her head in the pillow in shame and fear.
When the student approaches her a second time, she cries, 'Let me go!
Take me away! Oh, you are all beasts!' The nurse takes charge. 'Come,
come, no nonsense! You can't have what you like; they are here to learn.'75
The scene ends with Esther letting out a horrible scream, being given chloroform and
losing consciousness. When she awakes she finds herself surrounded by aloof doctors
who offhandedly inform her that it is a boy. Esther's ordeal demonstrates the shift from
female midwives to male physicians and the real fear and uncertainty women felt about
not only putting their lives in the hands of men but also the fears felt regarding the pains
of labor and the procedures used to facilitate it. Moore's work also reinforces the idea that
53
women were considered deserving of suffering as a price for their fallen states. His
account is unusual and signals a late century change in reproductive attitudes in that it
purposely provides childbirth details as a way to shock readers and condemn the sexual
impropriety of the unwed mother.
Considering treatment and depictions of nineteenth-century childbirth, it makes
sense that Cameron would have been very fearful of the whole process. It is unknown
whether Cameron intended to publish any version of her prayer. Examining her prayer in
context of Victorian childbirth views, nevertheless, reveals that she conformed to
society's sense of caution when it came to writing about her pending birth. Despite the
fears outlined in her prayer, Cameron made it through labor and would become the doting
mother she wished to be. Olsen describes Cameron as "an intensely involved mother:
devoted, anxious, vigilant." 76 Like her prayer, the letters that Cameron wrote in her
lifetime reveal personal thoughts that enable us to better understand her views about
subjects such as motherhood. In her correspondence, Cameron describes her experience
of the fulfillment of motherhood when she writes, "I have always since I have been a
Mother, felt that it is worth living for, only to know what it is to be a Mother; it is worth
going through all precious trials + sufferings of life to drink of that fount of pure joy
which never flows so sweetly as when one's Infant is going to sleep upon one's bosom."77
Cameron's dedication as a mother is clearly evidenced in her correspondence, and,
indeed, Cameron embraces the conventional female role of caretaker with enthusiasm.
Years after the above passage is written, Cameron's firstborn Julia goes to live in England
while Cameron remains with her husband Charles in India. Olsen recounts how
54
Cameron's letters to Julia "betray a deep anxiety about illness and accidents. In the April
missive six-year old Juley is reminded not to run, not to put any berries in her mouth
without permission, not to fall off the donkey, and not to eat any of the imitation almonds
that her mother had sent in case she chokes on them. " 78 Cameron's letters demonstrate
the extent to which she concerned herself with every aspect of her child's life. The extent
of these concerns provides a context for understanding Cameron's need to assume
responsibility not only for her daughter's bodily health but also for her religious
upbringing.
Cameron's correspondence also exposes moments where she takes on the male
role of religious sovereign and catechizes not only her own children but also members of
her extended family. For example, when her nephew Henry Halford lost his son,
Cameron writes to Henry emphasizing her belief in prayer as a healing source. She tells
him,
Every time you think of that child it will be a prayer--every thought is a
prayer-- link prayer to prayer (with him) till prayer becomes yr. Life with
him--til Baby utterances have eternal meaning and he teaches you as you
used to teach him--because he has been the first perfected to that
perfectness you are both born unto--and both will attain for God so loved
you most tenderly to give you that precious Child and still more tenderly
did he love you when he removed it for a season to draw you nearer to
Him and Heaven. 79
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This excerpt shows that Cameron considered prayer to be a fundamental part of day-to-
day life and suggests a reason why prayer would become a theme in Cameron's
photographs. In addition to underscoring her view that suffering is surmountable is the
way in which the letter serves as an example of Cameron's constant role as a guardian of
religious faith.
As the loss of Henry Halford's son might indicate, infant mortality and death in
childbirth was a frequent reality in the nineteenth-century. Although this reality was one
that families faced with great frequency, there are not many works about the
accompanying fears of mothers dying before seeing their children grow up. One of the
few examples we can use as a source of comparison with Cameron's prayer is the work of
Irish born, English bred Katharine Tynan Hinkson. Hinkson was born at Whitehall,
Clondalkin County, Dublin in 1861. She made an early reputation with two poetry
collections in 1885 and 1887 and later published sixteen more verse collections, one
hundred and five novels, twelve collections of short stories, three plays, and five volumes
of reminiscence. A life-long friend of Yeats, her work was marked by an unusual blend
of Catholicism and feminism, and she later wrote many articles on poor children and
women's working conditions. She died in London in 1931.80 Tynan-Hinkson's poem
"The Mother," later re-titled "Any Woman," discusses a mother who, like Cameron, sees
herself as responsible not only for providing her children with daily necessities but also
for their early formations. The following section of Tynan-Hinkson's "The Mother" (the
whole poem in an early draft) is worth quoting in its entirety.
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I am the house from floor to roof.
I deck the walls, the board I spread;
I spin the curtains, warp and woof,
And shake the down to be their bed.
I am their wall against all danger,
Their door against the wind and snow.
Thou Whom a woman laid in manger,
Take me not till the children grow! 81
Tynan-Hinkson's poem emphasizes traditional maternal duties but also raises questions
about who is the head of the household. By the speaker's assessment, the mother is the
foundation, the shelter, the provider, the comforter and the protector. What role is left to
the father? If "The Mother's" speaker is Tynan-Hinkson, does she, like Cameron, take on
the role of head of the household in lieu of a traditional Victorian father/husband? "The
Mother's" speaker, like the speaker in Cameron's prayer, is concerned that she will die
before being able to raise her children until they become self-sufficient. Whether death is
by childbirth or some other cause, this mother views herself as crucial to her children's
upbringing in the same way Cameron's speaker sees herself as crucial to her children's
upbringing.
Cameron's devotion to family comes across clearly in her writings, and in an 1862
letter from Cameron to the widow of poet Arthur Clough, Cameron's includes a poem
that demonstrates the artist's ideas about suffering and familial bonds in the same way her
"Prayer" does. To express her grief at Arthur's death, Cameron's poem praises Arthur's
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widow, Blanche. In this poem, Cameron not only compliments the way Blanche
maintained her household but also paints an unusual picture of husband and wife as
occupying the same hierarchical space. Using bird imagery, Cameron creates a vision of
the Cloughs' domestic life. The poem is provided here in its entirety:
His labour shared, and sweetened by his Wife
She, like an echo, by his side would sit
And as a bird catches mid-air, and flies
With treasure caught to line its nest found fit
So with sweet instinct she, did all the Wise
And fugitive fancies fix-- and now the Nest
To us the mourners--us his friends is given
The tender questionings of a wild unrest
Of noble soul-- soaring towards Home and Heaven--
Cameron fashions a picture of domestic comfort--of a marriage where husband and wife
work together. Cameron also creates Arthur's wife as a character who has instinctively
made her earthly home comfortable for her family. Apart from the religious aspects, this
poem is significant in that it elevates the convivial Clough family while at the same time
stresses that Arthur's wife is "by his side" rather than beneath him (2). Although Cameron
describes the wife "like an echo" which may be seen as a secondary or lesser role, I
would propose that the speaker uses echo to emphasize the doubling or reflecting back of
the husband's contribution (2). This poem, like Cameron's prayer, underscores both a
traditional view about the role of a wife as keeper of the home, and a transgressive view
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by placing the wife at the husband's side rather than below him. This relationship
between husband and wife serves as an example of the way in which Cameron challenged
the traditional idea of totally separate spheres for husband and wife. The picture Cameron
renders of Arthur's wife is one of a wife who maintains a notable level of autonomy while
seeing to domestic duties. As Elizabeth Langland argues in her work on Victorian
domestic ideology, "The image of the passive domestic angel, which complemented that
of the active, public man, was contradicted by the bourgeois wife's pivotal supervisory
role, within the class system." 82 So, although Clough's wife seems to maintain her
function as mistress of the house, the position beside her husband exemplifies the
complexities of power that really existed within the Victorian household. Langland
describes the ways in which
a Victorian wife, the presiding hearth angel of the Victorian social myth,
actually performed a more significant and extensive economic and
political function than is usually perceived. Prevailing ideology held the
house as haven, a private sphere as opposed to the public, commercial
sphere. In fact, the house and its mistress served as a significant adjunct to
man's endeavors. 83
Because Cameron's own role in the home fulfilled a more extensive function, she likely
recognized how Clough's wife also contributed to her family in ways that extended past
the boundaries of the private sphere.
Cameron's writings clearly reveal the many-sided roles women fulfilled in
relation to their husbands and families. The poem to Clough's wife can be analyzed as
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both a sample of Cameron's dynamic vision of women as well as a text that emphasizes
Cameron's traditional religious views. In addition to prayer being part of multiple
Cameron writings, Cameron's photographs are a further outgrowth of that theme. She
frequently represents women at prayer and in nearly every depiction elevates women as
strong figures of faith, sometimes in a maternal capacity, sometimes not. In two of
Cameron's images titled Prayer and Praise (1865) and Study of a Magdalen (1874) she
depicts prayerful female figures. Ever eager to produce religiously themed works,
Cameron's Prayer and Praise depicts the Holy Family.
Figure 11. Julia Margaret Cameron, Prayer and Praise, 1865. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 163.
Prayer and Praise (see fig. 11) includes the baby of one of Cameron's neighbors and
unrelated sitters in a daring arrangement. The positioning of the models in this image is
60
unusual, with the baby centered and in focus and the other figures more blurred in the
background. Mother holds Child, Father remains behind Mother, and Baby seems apart
from all three. Mother takes up the center of the image and Father's face is in shadow.
The Child clinging at Mother's side is fuzzy and yet appears to look directly at the
camera. Cameron's rendering seems to privilege Baby and Mother over the rest of the
family like other nativity depictions that privilege maternity and the Virgin Mary above
paternity. With Joseph being the least dominant in the image, Cameron seems to push
patriarchy to the margins. If so, although Cameron upholds traditional religious
iconography, in this instance, her choice of subject with its centrality and elevation of
motherhood and its near suppression of patriarchy reinforces the idea that women could
have a unique kind of power within the domestic sphere. Cameron underscores an
authoritative image of motherhood, and this image could represent nineteenth-century
mothers, reinforcing the work of scholars who have unearthed evidence that the domestic
sphere offered Victorian women more autonomy than was once believed.
There are different theories about what Cameron attempted to accomplish with
Prayer and Praise. The Getty Museum describes Prayer and Praise this way:
This image recreates the scene of the Nativity, in which Christ's mother,
the Virgin Mary, and her husband Joseph watch over the newborn,
sleeping Christ child. Julia Margaret Cameron may have decided to
include a fourth figure, the young girl at the left, to add pictorial balance to
the composition. The girl may represent an angel, as her outstretched hand
hovering above the infant's head appears to be a gesture of blessing. The
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sleeping child's peaceful repose is emphasized by the contemplative
silence of the surrounding figures. A spiritual calm is conveyed in the
image by the adults' downcast eyes. Cameron powerfully evokes the mood
of the Nativity scene through her careful, sensitive rendering of a sacred
subject.84
The Getty Museum's description, while certainly plausible, does not address the strange
composition of the photograph. Olsen has a different view and sees Prayer and Praise as
"a radical experiment with a fragmented cropped image that anticipates Degas' paintings
and photographs." 85 Perhaps Cameron was experimenting with technique, for there are
several other Cameron images where she modifies the surface of the prints in order to
gain a certain effect, for instance, etching in lines to indicate halos.
Figure 12. Julia Margaret Cameron, Shepherds Keeping Watch By Night, 1865-66. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 164.
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Figure 12 is another version of the Holy Family that does push Joseph out entirely. In this
image, the Mother and Baby are clearest with the Child figure blurred. A third image (see
fig. 13) has the Baby in isolation with the caption Infant Samuel. The area above the
Baby seems to have been manually scratched out, and there appears a faint outline of a
female face leaning over the Baby similar to the Mother in Figure 12.
Figure 13. Julia Margaret Cameron, The Vision of Infant Samuel, 1865. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 163. Prayer and Praise is certainly experimental and reinforces the fact that Cameron strove
to produce works of art rather than photographs that were solely attempts at images of
verisimilitude. Cameron's Prayer and Praise is an unusually manipulated visual
representation and not only raises important questions about whether Cameron privileged
63
matriarchy over patriarchy but also demonstrates the range of Cameron's innovative
work.
Another Cameron example of religious iconography that raises significant
questions about representations of women is the photograph called Study of a Magdalen
(see fig. 14).
Figure 14. Julia Margaret Cameron, Study of a Magdalen, 1874. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 270. This image (see fig. 14) portrays Mary Magdalene as a prayerful woman. Her head tilts
upward and the peaceful expression she wears does not make her appear afflicted. She
seems reserved and in a state that exudes reverence and tranquility. Mary Magdalen is
often depicted in works bearing a vessel of ointment because she is thought to have been
one of the women who brought ointments to the tomb of Jesus. She has been called the
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myrrh-bearer, and Cameron portrays her with her hands folded in prayer around some
kind of vessel. Much confusion surrounds the identity of Mary Magdalen and because so
many people consider Mary of Magdala to be a mixture of a reformed prostitute, a
disciple of Jesus, a preparer of Christ's dead body and a witness to the crucifixion,
depictions of Mary differ significantly. That said, it is important to note how Cameron's
contemporaries choose to emphasize the fallen or femme fatale version of Mary
Magdalen while Cameron instead depicts a redeemed version. Cameron's depiction also
emphasizes the mothering task of anointing and preparing Christ's body after his
crucifixion. These differences in depictions further underscore the way PreRaphaelite
Magdalens are available for viewers to consume while Cameron's Magdalen is not. For
Victorian artists,
the subject of the fallen woman was prominent almost to the point of
obsession. The subject reflected contemporary social concerns, offered an
opportunity for art to serve a moral purpose, and provided one of the few
ways for artists to treat human sexuality in a socially acceptable form. Of
course not all artists were motivated by religious or social concerns, nor
were the results always successful, even when these were the motives.86
One such artist who admits his rationale for art was not constrained by the need for moral
didacticism was Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti is characterized as being drawn to
"whatever was poetic and picturesque in ancient legends and visions, Madonnas,
Magdalens, damozel, angel, they all become lovable and familiar phantoms to him, forms
of feeling." 87 Unlike Cameron who I argue attempted to refashion victimized women
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into stoic, active figures of self-preservation, Rossetti perpetuated images of weak
women for the sake of reinforcing a particular notion of beauty. In Victorian art the
pursuit of beauty intersected with the portrayal of the prostitute for
In the 1850's high-cultural images of the prostitute were caught between a
moral imperative for the depiction of degradation and an aesthetic
investment in the spectacle of women's beauty. These contradictions were
resolved by transforming the fallen woman into an object of explicitly
visual pleasure. Neither a sorrowing victim, tattered outcast, nor tragic
corpse, this image of woman invoked neither compassion nor sympathy
but masculine sexual desire. 88
The PreRaphaelite Magdalens certainly provoke "masculine sexual desire." Compared to
Cameron's Mary Magdalen, Rossetti's lacks the prayerful, tender expression and instead
invites viewers to gaze upon her sexualized state. Contemporary feminist critic Laura
Mulvey's work on the male gaze can be applied to the PreRaphaelite Magdalens. Mulvey
argues that, women "are being turned all the time into objects of display, to be looked at
and gazed at and stared by men. Yet in a real sense, women are not there at all." 89
Although Mulvey speaks of twentieth-century representations of women, she essentially
echoes the nineteenth-century sentiments of Christina Rossetti who in line 14 of her
poem "In an Artist's Studio" claims the model described is "Not as she is, but as she fills
his dream." 90 D. G. Rossetti's Mary Magdalen becomes a passive female available for the
male as an object of display. Mulvey further describes how
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In their traditional exhibitionist role, women are simultaneously looked at
and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic
impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked at-ness. Woman
displayed as sexual object is the leitmotif of erotic spectacle [...] she holds
the look, and plays to and signifies male desire. 91
Unlike Cameron's Magdalen, Rossetti's (see fig 15) possesses the very to-be-looked at-
ness that Mulvey describes.
Figure 15. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Mary Magdalen, 1877. Delaware Art Museum. Rossetti's Magdalen looks at the viewer directly with an expression that is a mixture of
seriousness, disappointment and the suggestion of sexual experience. Rossetti portrays
her as a red headed woman, the color associated with being sexually experienced. She has
long hair, full lips and clutches a round alabaster vessel. Although this Mary Magdalen is
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similar to Cameron's portrayal in its composition with a centered Magdalen holding a
vessel, clearly it is not a redeemed or maternal Mary Magdalen that Rossetti conveys.
Rossetti's Magdalen with her red hair and direct gaze reminds viewers of the sexualized
Mary Magdalen narrative. Her gaze, coloring and lips suggest a sordid history and
reinforce the more predatory stereotype of the femme fatale that Cameron's Mary
Magdalen seems free of.
Compare Rossetti's image to Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys' Mary
Magdalene (see fig. 16).
Figure 16. Augustus Frederick Sandys, Mary Magdalene, 1858-1860 Delaware Art Museum. In Sandys' version Mary Magdalen also carries a cup, and the red hair and parted lips also
seem to stress her sexuality. While Cameron's version focuses more on Mary's humanity
and motherly side, Sandys', like Rossetti's, underscores Mary's fallen woman identity.
Mary's garments are striking hues of red-orange and pink, colors apparently meant to
68
reiterate Mary's brazen reputation and invite the viewer to dwell on her alluring
expression. Although her eyes are half-closed, the rouged cheeks and sultry expression
make this Mary Magdalen self-assured. Cameron's portrayal of Mary Magdalen
emphasizes her personhood rather than her alleged prostitution. Instead of following in
the footsteps of her colleagues and encouraging the visual consumption of Mary
Magdalen in her provocative state, Cameron reassigns Mary Magdalen her salvation and
highlights maternal aspects thereby underscoring her humanity.
Through such photographs as Prayer and Praise and Study of a Magdalen
Cameron depicts prayerful women and creates women's identities that can be both
resilient single women and strong maternal figures. Cameron's writings likewise raise
questions about the availability of roles for women both within and outside the domestic
sphere. In "Prayer Written When I Quickened," like Katherine Tynan-Hinkson's "The
Mother," Cameron's speaker reveals her determination to bring salvation to her husband's
soul, her need to overcome anxieties about childbirth and her deep love of maternity. In
her poem to Clough's widow, Cameron both subverts and reinforces Victorian gender
roles by creating a picture of domestic comfort but altering tradition by equalizing
husband and wife. These literary and photographic works serve as examples of how
Cameron persistently makes it her task to reflect on Victorian social conventions and to
rewrite women into more complete figures of vulnerability, compassion, strength, and
endurance.
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CHAPTER 3: THE MIGHTY FEMALE IN CAMERON'S POETRY
In the same way that Julia Margaret Cameron's "Prayer Written When I
Quickened" advocates for cultivating religious faith, privileging the power of motherhood
and maintaining female fortitude, Cameron's poetry provides substantial evidence that
Cameron believed women could live lives of empowerment. “Farewell of the Body to the
Soul” is one of Julia Margaret Cameron's unpublished poems, and it presents a body on
the verge of death speaking to its soul.92 Cameron genders the body as male and the soul
as female, which deviates from classical gendering of the soul as male and the body as
female. Upon closer examination, however, it becomes clear that this female soul takes
on male characteristics in her vigilant fight for self-preservation. I argue that by taking on
both male and female characteristics, the soul epitomizes Cameron’s desire to portray
women's multifaceted identities, something that Cameron herself felt as an artist, wife
and mother.
With respect to multiple natures in women, I am drawn again to Mary Poovey's
discussion of the myth of Florence Nightingale. Poovey describes Nightingale in the form
of two narratives--a domestic one and a military one. Like Poovey's portrait of
Nightingale, when held up to the dominant historical paradigm of separate spheres,
Cameron's character of the female soul inhabits two seemingly disparate spheres. Poovey
describes Nightingale's life in terms of dual narratives this way:
The heroine of the first narrative was typically self-effacing, gentle and
kind; her contribution was to fit others to serve; her territory was the
home. The hero of the military narrative, by contrast, was
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characteristically resolute, fearless, and strong willed; his service often
entailed excursions into alien territory, the endurance of great physical
hardships, and the accomplishment of hitherto unimaginable deeds.93
Cameron's dually gendered soul, like the two versions of Nightingale, embodies both
feminine aspects of domesticity and nurturing and masculine aspects of willfulness and
determination. Cameron characterizes the soul in this way, I would argue, to draw
attention to her culture's often limiting gender ideology. By using images of warfare,
Cameron has the female soul occupy the male and female spheres as it battles with the
body and remains determined to thrive. Emblematic of Cameron’s depiction of women,
the female soul endures hardship but actively persists until death. The soul does not
languish in silence but takes charge of its fate as best it can. "Farewell of the Body to the
Soul" appears in its entirety below.
Sweet soul of mine! my closest dearest Friend
Forgive me ere we part all injury done
All warfare now between us has an end
Thy frail companion now his race is run
How oft when soaring with a wish divine
I've dragged thee down and laid thee in the dust
Tricked with false promise glorious hopes of thine
Dwarfed all thy stature, made thy brightness rust
And thou didst ne'er resent, but oft and oft
In the night watches would'st invoke me still
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In accent loud and strong-- or sweet and soft
To give thee liberty to have thy will
How oft in playful combat would we strive
If sweet cajolery would win the race
Now thy pure essence free of me shall live,
We part sweet soul! Smile on my pallid face.
Thou wing'st thy flight, art thou of me so tired?
Let us be friends at least-- oh why that start?
Thou find'st thy freedom oft so much desired--
Forgive and love me-- flown--distinct--apart--
"Farewell" begins at the point where the body is on the verge of dying. The
description: "All warfare now between us has an end,” conjures up specifically
militaristic images (3). The use of combat-related scenes serves to emphasize the divisive
relationship between body and soul. When the body announces, “Thy frail companion
now his race is run,” "he" effectively reveals his gender as male (4). As far as the gender
of the soul, the first line of the poem begins with the words “Sweet soul of mine! my
closest dearest Friend,” suggesting that the soul is female. Although this soul is sweet,
she is no passive victim of the body’s misbehavior but a vigilant defender of her own
wellbeing. Couched in descriptions of war, this female soul battles the body as if a soldier
in combat, making her an unusual figure of might. So, while Cameron overturns classical
tradition by making the soul female, she even further refashions preexisting notions about
the gendering of the soul by giving the soul a dual gender identity.
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The body and soul dialogue is an ancient tradition that has undergone various
transformations since antiquity. Dating back to the late fourth century A.D. a poem called
"The Psychomachia" by the Christian Latin poet Prudentius began the tradition of
personification allegory. 94 The text "presents seven battles between personified virtues
and vices, concluding after the final successful struggle with the construction of a temple
to Sapientia, 'Wisdom,' to commemorate this victory 'in,' 'of,' or 'for' the soul as
Prudentius's title, 'Psychomachia' or 'soul battle' has been variously interpreted. " 95 These
battles between virtues and vices have been described as a "graphic combat to the death"
and the experience for readers as "a theatre of punishment produced for the delight and
edification of a Christian audience." 96 Prudentius essentially takes the subject of a
classical battle epic and personifies the virtues and vices making them into female
warriors. As the female vices battle to make the male soul a temple of God, they "are
dressed and comport themselves as males." 97 The "explicit violence" of the battle scenes
has raised many questions about what Prudentius intended with his representation of
women who were "not the traditional male warriors of epic, but neither [...] fully
female."98 Ultimately, Prudentius's rich poetic language and startling emphasis of man's
nature as "not unitary but internally divisive" presents an allegory that fashions the soul
battle into a fierce doctrinal lesson.
The gender duality of Prudentius's female warriors is shown in the following
excerpt from the battle between Avarice and Generosity. Prudentius endows Generosity
with extraordinary physical strength and also paints her capable of a vicious slaughter
akin to male Christian gladiators:
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As [Avarice] stands there trembling the brave virtue seizes her
in a tight grip,
Strangling her neck, squeezing her throat dry and bloodless
And crushing it; her arms are shackles tightened round the
throat.
Beneath the chin and from the narrow windpipe
They squeeze out the life; it is convulsed and snatched away,
Not by a wound but by the obstruction of the air passage:
Life suffers death, shut up within the prison of the veins. 99
The scene is gruesome and an example that represents the "exuberant depiction of
bloodthirsty battles" that dominate the entire text. 100 There have been multiple
conclusions drawn to explain this extreme violence. Among them, include the argument
that "women's destructive instincts are 'ungovernable,' that they lack the masculine rule-
governed concept of the 'fair fight.'" 101 Another interpretation credits "the notorious
Silver Age penchant for blood, gore, and general dismemberment" and places "The
Psychomachia" at the end of that cultural propensity. 102 A third explanation blames the
gender of abstract nouns claiming that since abstract nouns in Latin are feminine, that
"their representation as female characters was unavoidable." 103 Whatever the rationale
behind the Vices' gendering, their complex identities provide fertile ground for discussion
about gender ideology. With "The Psychomachia" Prudentius provides a riveting allegory
and that reaffirms the ancient tradition of gendering the body as female and the soul as
male.
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In her reinterpretation of this tradition, Cameron refashions the body as male and
the soul as female and although not to the gory extreme as Prudentius, provides her soul
with both male and female characteristics. Through “Farewell of the Body to the Soul,”
Cameron characterizes the relationship between body and soul in very physical terms.
Fittingly, the first stanza concludes with the body described as a “frail companion”
suggesting that the body has been weakened as a result of the length and course of his life
(4). This weakening of the body is a notable Victorian gender role reversal, for the female
is usually assigned the adjective of "frail." There are no specific details as to how the
body hindered the soul, but the various examples of the soul and body acting in resistance
to each other demonstrate ongoing conflict. For instance, “I’ve dragged thee down and
laid thee in the dust,” describes the physical combat between body and soul (6). Another
moment describes how the body has “dwarfed all thy stature, made thy brightness rust”
(8). The effects of the body’s misbehavior are external for the soul. The soul loses her
radiance as a result of the fighting, but the loss of the soul's beauty is not presented as
significant. Instead, her determination to survive is privileged.
By expressing the outward effects of the body's actions on the soul, Cameron
shares the belief, expressed in later Victorian literary works, such as Oscar Wilde’s The
Picture of Dorian Gray, that when the body acts against the good of the soul, the
consequences can be observed upon examining the exterior of the soul. In the following
critical moment in Wilde's novel, Dorian Gray and Basil Hallward discuss seeing the
physical evidence of Dorian's behavior on his soul:
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'Your name was implicated in the most terrible confession I ever read. I
told [Lord Gloucester] that it was absurd--that I knew you thoroughly, and
that you were incapable of anything of the kind. Know you? I wonder do I
know you? Before I could answer that, I should have to see your soul.' 'To
see my soul!' muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa and turning
almost white from fear. 'Yes,' answered Hallward, gravely, and with deep-
toned sorrow in his voice--'to see your soul. But only God can do that.' A
bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man. 'You shall
see it yourself, to-night!' he cried, seizing a lamp from the table. 'Come: it
is your own handiwork. Why shouldn't you look at it? You can tell the
whole world all about it afterwards, if you choose. Nobody would believe
you. If they did believe you, they would like me all the better for it. I
know the age better than you do, though you will prate on about it so
tediously. Come, I tell you. You have chattered enough about corruption.
Now you shall look on it face to face.' 104
In the famous scene that follows, Dorian takes Basil up to the room at the top of the
house and shows him the painting that bears all the vice that Dorian has committed.
According to Dorian, the painting is a physical embodiment of his soul. At the end of the
novel when Dorian stabs this painting, he then takes on the appearance of the painting's
"withered, wrinkled, loathsome visage," thus bringing to his body's surface the effects of
his innumerable transgressions.105 In “Farewell of the Body to the Soul,” like Dorian's
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soul via the painting, the soul shows physical effects from the body's transgressions
through its dwarfed and dimmed state.
Although faced with undisclosed conflict, the soul does not go to the extreme and
exhibit brutish behavior. Instead she is composed in her disciplining of the body. For
instance, in the third stanza the soul uses reprimands as her method of self-preservation.
The body reminds the soul how “in the night watches wouldst [thou] invoke me still / In
accent loud and strong – or sweet and soft / To give thee liberty to have Thy will” (10-
12). This is an important stanza in the poem because it demonstrates how this female
soul is both firm and tender. The body further reflects on how the soul “in playful combat
would strive / If sweet cajolery would win the race” revealing that the soul actively
persuades the body using masculine tactics which underscore the soul’s determination to
thrive (13-14). Stereotypically feminine characteristics of playfulness and sweetness
remind readers of the soul's gender, yet by using warfare terms to describe the
interactions between body and soul, I argue that Cameron endows the soul with
masculine traits and refigures her as empowered.
Cameron’s “Farewell of the Body to the Soul” opens up the possibility for greater
analysis of her perception of women's gender roles. By highlighting traditionally
masculine qualities of strength and combativeness, Cameron subverts classical gender
roles of body and soul when she creates an image of a female soul that takes on
traditionally male attributes while simultaneously preserving her female attributes.
Cameron's female soul undercuts the Victorian notion of women as passive objects under
the power of male notions and desires. Like the female soul in the poem that fights to
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flourish, Cameron's women characters in both her photographs and writings raise issues
about distinctive gender identities.
Another literary work that reflects ideas about strong women is Cameron's
translation of Gottfried August Burger's "Leonora." The poem tells the tale of Lenore
who waits for her beloved to return from war. Tormented by his absence, she suspects he
has been unfaithful. Distraught at the thought of his infidelity, Lenore's mother tries to
offer her comfort by insisting her daughter seek solace in God. When the lover returns
from war unexpectedly, Lenore is relieved but soon finds out he is not her beloved but
the incarnation of Death. Thematically, Burger's poem includes Cameron's frequent
subjects of maternity, religious faith and endurance despite heartbreak, and Cameron's
1847 translation underscores these subjects; however, by examining Dante Gabriel
Rossetti's translation, written in 1844 but not published until 1900, readers can note the
ways in which Cameron's version differs from Rossetti's and draw conclusions about how
Cameron's views of women differed from Rossetti's. As Lenore attributes her beloved
William's absence to death or infidelity, her mother tries to assuage Lenore's grief. Look
at the following scene from Rossetti's version:
Her mother clasped her tenderly
With soothing words and mild:
"My child, may God look down on thee, —
God comfort thee, my child." 106
In Rossetti's version the mother seems tender yet subdued. Lenore's mother takes her
gently in her arms and in a calm address tries to offer consolation by asking God to
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comfort Lenore. By comparison, in Cameron's translation of the same section of the
poem, the mother expresses herself more intensely both physically and verbally:
The Mother to her comfort flies:
'Oh! why this grief so wild?'
She clasps her daughter in her arms,
And cries 'God calm my child!' 107
Compared to Rossetti's version, Cameron's mother figure more actively reassures her
daughter. The mother's movement is swift and immediate in the way she "flies" to her
daughter. By clasping her child and crying out to God rather than holding her child
tenderly, Cameron's mother is a more dominant figure than Rossetti's. Cameron's mother
commands God to calm her child whereas in Rossetti's version the mother's plea to God is
indirect and less insistent. The varying degrees to which Cameron's and Rossetti's mother
characters fulfill their maternal roles is emblematic of the varying constructions of
motherhood that prevailed during the nineteenth-century. Cameron's mother character
leans toward a more autonomous model than Rossetti's. This less than reserved but still
tender mother raises questions about representations of the docile figure responsible for
her children's health and spiritual wellbeing. As Sally Shuttleworth argues,
Female emotion, whether hysterical and out of control, or spiritually
elevated and refined, sprang from the seat of maternity; sexuality and
tenderness were deemed equally products of the uterine economy. The two
seemingly opposed models of womanhood constructed in nineteenth-
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century bourgeois ideology-- refined angel, or helpless prey to the
workings of the body-- come together in discourses on maternity [...]. 108
Cameron's mother in "Leonora" seems neither the "refined angel" nor the "helpless"
woman. Instead Cameron's mother resides between the extremes as a confident, active
figure who genuinely cares about the wellbeing of her daughter.
As the poem continues, Rossetti's version reads:
"Help, Heaven, help and favour her !
Child, utter an Ave Marie !
Wise and great are the doings of God;
He loves and pities thee."
Cameron's translation of the same verse also stresses the importance of faith and prayer:
'Oh! God is love, in him put trust,
Thy Paternoster say:
All that God doth is wisely done;
Have faith, my child, and pray.'
Though both versions acknowledge God's wisdom, Cameron's version highlights the
daughter's active practice of maintaining faith, trust and prayer while Rossetti's version
emphasizes God's role in helping and loving the daughter. Although Cameron's reference
to "Thy Paternoster" invokes thoughts of a masculine religious authority, Cameron's
translation nevertheless upholds the impression of maintaining an active role in order to
steer the course of one's life. In underscoring what the daughter must do, Cameron's
version draws attention to the pursuit of strength despite hardship and places the
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responsibility of that pursuit on the daughter. The daughter is not encouraged to suffer in
silence but to actively seek solace through prayer. Like the soul in Cameron's "Farewell,"
the daughter, as the mother clearly demonstrates, must not be passive but must take her
existence into her own hands. This representation of mother and daughter exemplifies the
kind of agency available to women that existed within the private or domestic sphere. I
would argue that these women characters in Cameron's writings underscore the reality
that women were "misrepresented by stereotypes of Victorian women's passivity and total
subordination." 109 Cameron's challenge of gender roles in her written works reveals the
varying degree to which women actually found ways to assert their autonomy.
"Farewell of the Body to the Soul" and "Leonora" could be classified as
"contestatory alternative narratives of female subjects." 110 I would go a step further and
classify them as metaphors about Cameron's own challenges as a female artist. The
fierceness and diplomacy that the female soul must use for self-preservation mimics the
fierceness and diplomacy required of Cameron as a serious female photographer. Her
intense efforts at self-promotion and her persistence despite harsh criticism of her
technique were essential in her art. As Cox attests, "Her eccentricities were permitted to
flourish, expressed as they were in the name of artistic endeavor. She skated close to the
edge of [...] the codified proprieties of Victorian social decorum." 111 One such example
of a breach of proper Victorian social decorum was the occasion of Cameron's daughter's
death. In 1873 her thirty-four year old daughter Julia Norman died giving birth to her
seventh child. As chance would have it, the death, which deeply grieved Cameron,
occurred around the same time Cameron was getting ready to present a major solo
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exhibition. In spite of her own grief and very sharp disapproval from her family, she went
through with the exhibition. As Cox describes,
This episode illustrates just how determined Cameron was to maintain her
status in the world of art and bolster sales of her photographs. For
someone of Cameron's background and class, the social conventions
surrounding mourning were such that it was considered quite an
extraordinary action for her to have pursued such a public position for
herself so soon after her daughter's death. 112
Knowing from her own written accounts how highly Cameron revered motherhood and
family, this incident serves as an effective example of how conflicting the demands on
women like Cameron could be to fulfill the duties expected of wives and mothers and to
meet personal aspirations as artists.
Pre-Raphaelite scholar Jan Marsh relates how Christina Rossetti, a contemporary
artist and poet of Cameron's, also struggled to find the balance between being female and
also an artist.113 Marsh argues that, Rossetti's poem "The Lowest Room" "came from her
own, unsatisfactory experience as a young woman, trying to reconcile the desire for
creative achievement with the feminine ideal as promoted by Church and society." 114
"The Lowest Room" is a debate between two sisters about the life of Homer. Using
Homer as a figure whose life was enviable, the speaker laments what she refers to as her
"blank life" (70). "The Lowest Room" has also been characterized as a critique of the
way society "places primary importance on a woman's marital status." 115 In addition to a
woman's role as potential wife is the question of religious humility. As Rossetti scholar
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Kathleen Jones describes, the youngest sister reminds the other sister "their lives are
ruled by Christ and not the classical values of Homer. Like Rossetti, the 'I' of the poem
finds the resignation of all ambition hard to achieve." 116 Pulled in several directions, the
speaker weighs the many sacrifices demanded of her. The tension between a desire for
recognition as an artist and for a conflicting desire to uphold a conventional, albeit
subservient female role, in this case, is at the heart of the poem. As the following lines
attest, neither is ultimately satisfactory by itself:
While I? I sat alone and watched;
My lot in life, to live alone
In mine own world of interests,
Much felt, but little shown.
Not to be first: how hard to learn
That lifelong lesson of the past;
Line graven on line and stroke on stroke:
But, thank God, learned at last.
So now in patience I possess
My soul year after tedious year,
Content to take the lowest place,
The place assigned me here.
Yet sometimes, when I feel my strength
Most weak, and life most burdensome,
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I lift mine eyes up to the hills
From whence my help shall come:
Yea, sometimes still I lift my heart
To the Archangelic trumpet-burst,
When all deep secrets shall be shown,
And many last be first. 117
The poem's speaker expresses dissatisfaction at having "a world of interests," namely as
an artist, that must be suppressed according to the standards of the day, unlike Homer
who did not have to worry about how his accomplishments would be viewed. The
speaker articulates a wish to accept the "lowest place," one that has been "assigned" all
while admitting that the heart's desire is still that "last be first." Like Cameron, Rossetti
felt the tug between being recognized as an artist and being lauded for upholding
expected gender roles. Her literary endeavors in "The Lowest Room" epitomize the
woman artist caught between two worlds-- that of traditional gender expectations and that
of creative expression and ambition.
Like Cameron, who questioned women's roles and refashioned women's images,
Rossetti held an unusual place within and outside of her brothers' powerful circle. As
Marsh describes,
The young women of her own social world, with their churchgoing
albums, embroidery and what she called "perpetual talk of beaus," could
hardly compete with her brothers' new friends, with their exciting ideas of
astonishing the Academy and winning global renown. And even though
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she could not join in directly, her vicarious participation was considerable,
especially since neither Gabriel nor William were accustomed to
excluding women from general conversation. Moreover, amid the
excitement that attended the early days of the PRB, literary ambition was
not forgotten. Somewhat unexpectedly, William was the first to appear in
print.... Following this triumph, Gabriel declared something of Christina's
must be despatched [sic]. Publication was apparently not the same as
"display," and she allowed him to choose two poems from notebooks that
had not been selected from Verses. Both were accepted.
........................................................................................................................
To have two poems in a national paper at the age of seventeen was a
remarkable achievement, the literary equivalent of a prestigious debut at
the RA....118
Marsh's summary of Rossetti's interest in her brothers' artistic endeavors and her
subsequent publication highlights Christina's intellectual talent and her place as an artist
of significant merit regardless of the limited access to her brother's influential circle.
Marsh points out that "The Lowest Room" contains "a female protest against exclusion
from that modern, male, military world," and goes on to argue that "Christina struggled
with contradictions. Outwardly, she would be satisfied with the lowest place, but in her
heart, and in her art, she cherished a heroic secret self." 119 In other words, Rossetti's
poem "an examination of the meaningless of women's existence" reflects both her desire
to fulfill a particular feminine ideal while also seeking artistic autonomy-- a contrast
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indicative of the multiple constructions within what was once perceived as distinctively
male and female spheres. 120
Cameron, like Rossetti, faced the challenges of being a female artist. Her strong
opinions, generous nature and keen sense of social maneuvering enabled her to negotiate
the roles of wife, mother and artist with self-confidence. Cameron used her creative drive
to champion her own ideal vision of women and with works like "Farewell of the Body to
the Soul" made a case for women's diverse potential. Always aware of her place as a
woman and simultaneously aware of the prejudices against women, Cameron's writings
and photographs assert that women can be tender yet strong, sad yet hopeful, dejected yet
resilient. Rather than being reduced only to silence, exile or martyrdom, the women of
Cameron's writings and photographs articulate a gender ideology of women who possess
multiple dimensions, an ideology that now appears to have been more a part of real
Victorian life than before perceived.
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CHAPTER 4: REWRITING THE PRERAPHAELITES IN CAMERON'S "ON A
PORTRAIT"
One literary work of Julia Margaret Cameron's that provides extensive clues about
her views regarding the need for a deeper understanding of women's identities is her 1875
poem “On a Portrait.” Her only published original literary work, the poem describes a
painting of a woman whose physical attributes initially seem to resemble the women
typically depicted in PreRaphaelite paintings-- beautiful but tragic. However, unlike
many PreRaphaelite images of women, Cameron depicts "On a Portrait's" female sitter in
a state of perseverance, not inaction. While Cameron scholars like Gernsheim, Wolf, Cox
and Ford have emphasized that Cameron was influenced by the PreRaphaelites, this
poem is evidence that Cameron carved out her own path as an artist and made choices
that sharply deviate from what the Brotherhood was doing. "On a Portrait" serves as a
reaction against the PreRaphaelite agenda that perpetuated images of the languid/dying
woman: although the poem's speaker lauds the work of the painter, the painting itself is
an anti-PreRaphaelite painting, one that clearly transforms woman into a more complex
and vibrant figure.
As has been the case with so many of Cameron’s photographs, "On a Portrait"
underscores how the female sitter is a many-sided figure whose life amounts to more than
passive suffering. The crucial moment in the poem is when the woman's face reveals how
"great resolve comes flashing thro’ the gloom” (16). Despite the tragic circumstances of
the sitter's life, her features perpetuate an effort to rise above misfortune rather than
inertly buckle under its weight like so many stereotypical languishing women. So
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although Cameron is credited as admiring the PreRaphaelites, which she did, in "On a
Portrait" she appears to rework the canvas in her poem in order to privilege feminine
vitality.
Before analyzing Cameron's poem closely, it is important to note that part of what
Cameron admired in the PreRaphaelites was their determination to "view art and nature
afresh, without merely copying established conventions as to how art should look." 121 In
other words, these artists were willing to push the boundaries of art and depict real
objects accurately while at the same time conveying what they considered to be the best
possible version of those objects. So although they referred to their approach as realistic,
they simultaneously aspired to represent an idealized version of what they saw, arguably
negating that very realism to some degree in the process. However, the PreRaphaelite
ideal and Cameron's ideal were not the same. One aspect of their aesthetic that she
admired but rarely imitated was their close attention to detail. For instance John Everett
Millais' Ophelia came from his spending time outdoors and meticulously drawing the
landscape (see fig. 17).
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Figure 17. John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851-52. The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites By Elizabeth Prettejohn. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000, 154.
Millais' painstaking efforts to capture the natural world are preserved in great detail on
the canvas (see fig. 18). As described by art historian Elizabeth Prettejohn, "The reeds
near Ophelia's head do not simply resemble 'real' reeds that we may have seen ourselves,
in nature, in book illustrations or in other pictures. They are particular reeds, some of
them broken, waterlogged or turning brown, others growing at unpredictable angles and
catching the light in different patterns." 122
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Figure 18. Detail of fig. 17.
Although viewers know that Millais' reeds are a single representation of reeds, as
Prettejohn asserts, "we are persuaded that the representation documents a 'real' act of
looking at these particular reeds. Otherwise there would be no reason to show their
broken ends and wayward angles. A more regular clump of reeds would resemble 'real'
reeds just as adequately [...]." 123 Having documented a "'real' act of looking,"
PreRaphaelite paintings can be, and often are, considered a "realist" art. This realism was
something Cameron admired. However, although some of her photographs draw upon
the painterly style of the PreRaphaelites (their use of lighting and perspective), the
majority of her photographic subjects, especially her women, deviate from the passive
representations so typical of the brotherhood, as does her poem, "On a Portrait."
In addition to the works of Millais, Cameron was exposed to paintings by Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Frederic Leighton, Holman Hunt and George
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Frederic Watts-- all frequent visitors to her sister Sara’s Little Holland House long before
Cameron ever owned a camera. Although Cameron admired these artists and clearly
borrowed from them, she deviated greatly from them, and the majority of her
photographs depict active women as opposed to lethargic ones. Like her photographs,
"On a Portrait," provides occasion to present the portrait of a woman whose resilience
and multiplicity of traits makes her stand out from the inert one-dimensional women
portrayed in other nineteenth-century portraits.
"On a Portrait" lavishes a painter with praise and asserts that a woman's portrait
reveals not just her beauty or her sorrow but her resilience. The poem's speaker lauds the
painter of the portrait for capturing the emotional complexity of the sitter and ultimately
her multifaceted identity. Below is the poem in its entirety:
Oh, mystery of Beauty! who can tell
Thy mighty influence? who can best descry
How secret, swift and subtle is the spell
Wherein the music of thy voice does lie?
Here we have eyes so full of fervent love
That but for lids behind which sorrow's touch
Does press and linger, one could almost prove
That Earth had loved her favourite overmuch.
A mouth where silence seems to gather strength
From lips so gently closed that almost say,
'Ask not my story lest you hear at length
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Of sorrows where sweet hope has lost its way.'
And yet the head is borne so proudly high,
The soft round cheek, so splendid in its bloom,
True courage rises thro' the brilliant eye,
And great resolve comes flashing thro' the gloom.
Oh, noble painter! More than genius goes
To search the key-note of those melodies,
To find the depth of all those tragic woes,
Tune thy song right and paint rare harmonies.
Genius and love have each fulfilled their part,
And both unite with force and equal grace,
Whilst all that we love best in classic art
Is stamped forever on the immortal face. 124
"On a Portrait" begins with Beauty assigned the role of muse to a painter who
becomes inspired to create a portrait of a beautiful woman. Although readers soon learn
that the woman in "On a Portrait" has suffered, she is not characterized as a lamenting
figure. "On a Portrait" draws attention to eyes that possess love but that also possess signs
of sorrow. Further evidence of this woman’s misfortune is seen in her mouth “where
silence seems to gather strength / From lips so gently closed, that almost say, / ‘Ask not
my story lest you hear at length / Of sorrows where sweet hope has lost its way’” (9-12).
That juxtaposition of sorrow and hope is typical of the way Cameron joins dissimilar
attributes-- often stereotypically male and female attributes. This woman in the portrait is
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a complex representation of femininity, one that is beautiful and sorrowful, strong and
courageous. Although line nine reveals that the sitter is silent, Cameron seems to be
pointing out that even in her present state which requires silence (that of sitting for a
portrait) the woman still actively communicates courage or "gather[s] strength." So, while
this woman has obviously undergone painful experiences, Cameron does not create a
portrait of a collapsing, sleeping or near-dead/sleeping figure. Instead, as with so many of
the women Cameron portrayed in her photographs, this woman remains tall under the
weight of her misery. Like Cameron’s Ophelia and Elaine (see figs. 19-20), which will be
discussed at length in chapters Five and Six, this woman’s head “is borne so proudly
high” (13).
Figure 19. Julia Margaret Cameron, Ophelia, 1858. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 240.
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Figure 20. Julia Margaret Cameron, Elaine, 1858. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 474.
Unlike so many Pre-Raphaelite depictions of women that leave women in states of
victimization or inaction, the unnamed woman in Cameron’s portrait is a fuller portrayal
of woman.
"On a Portrait's" third stanza emphasizes the sitter's experiences while
simultaneously applauding the painter’s ability to portray both the beauty and the
heartbreak of its sitter. The speaker uses images of art and music, praising the artist for
capturing the “key-note” of the sitter’s experience by plumbing the depths of her
misfortunes and returning with an accurate description (18). Cameron's use of the phrase
"rare harmonies" suggests the uniqueness of the painter's ability to capture the
multifaceted nature of the sitter (20). In this poem Cameron appears to be deliberately
refashioning the typical PreRaphaelite painting and underscoring the need for women in
art to be depicted as something more than static figures whose identity is bound up only
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in their silent misery. Cameron used "On a Portrait" to emphasize the need for art to
convey a more comprehensive understanding of women.
Some Cameron scholars make the claim that Cameron was looking at a specific
painting by Watts when she composed "On a Portrait." The claim is certainly plausible,
and one painting that seems to fit with the description of the woman in Cameron’s poem
is the one titled Portrait Study of a Girl with Red Hair (see fig. 21).
Figure 21. George Frederic Watts, Portrait Study of a Girl with Red Hair. Leicester Galleries, London.
Even if this is not the exact painting Cameron had in mind, the woman in this study is a
fair representative of the type of fair, redheaded woman that appears in Watts’ other
works. It must be noted, however, that although Cameron admired Watts' work
tremendously, her own images of women differ significantly from his. Unlike Portrait
Study, Watts' other works portray women in a more characteristically Pre-Raphaelite
way: victimized, reclining or dead.
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Figure 22. George Frederic Watts, Hope, 1885-6. Victorian Painting By Lionel Lambourne. London: Phaidon P, 1999, 461. For instance, in Watts' Hope the female subject sits atop the world looking far from
hopeful (see fig. 22). She cannot see, cannot hold up her head, but her gown is
transparent, allowing the viewer to see the contours of her body. She leans over in such a
way that she appears to carry an imaginary burden on her shoulders, which also detracts
from her ability to aptly symbolize hope. She plucks and listens to a single string on her
harp, the reason for her bent over position, but the overall impression of the painting is to
leave viewers looking for hope elsewhere.
Another example of Watts' dispirited women is his Ophelia (see fig. 23).
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Figure 23. George Frederic Watts, Ophelia, 1864. Watts Gallery, London. As will be discussed in Chapter Six, Shakespeare's frequently represented Ophelia is
typically depicted at death's door. Looking pale and rather child-like, Watts' rendition of
Ophelia, a painting whose model was his wife Ellen Terry, leans over the reeds that
foreshadow her drowning. Her eyes look closed, as if to indicate she is already gone in
spirit although she is not yet immersed in the water. Unlike Cameron's Ophelias, Watts'
Ophelia is wan and deflated. Already ghostly, Watts' Ophelia seems resigned to her
watery fate, rather than desperate to resist it as Cameron's is.
Another Watts' image, Found Drowned, shows a woman who is beyond
resuscitation (see fig. 24).
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Figure 24. George Frederic Watts, Found Drowned, 1849-50. Victorian Painting By Lionel Lambourne. London: Phaidon P, 1999, 381.
The last image in a series of three, this painting portrays the suicide of a prostitute. Her
corpse is there for viewers to gape at, half submerged in the Thames, half splayed out on
the shore. Inspired by the poem "The Bridge of Sighs" by Thomas Hood, Watts portrays
the following moment:
The bleak wind of March
Made her tremble and shiver;
But not the dark arch,
Or the black flowing river:
Mad from life's history,
Glad to death's mystery,
Swift to be hurl'd—
Anywhere, anywhere
Out of the world!
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In she plunged boldly—
The rough river ran—
Over the brink of it,
Picture it—
Watts' painting evokes pity for the woman described in Hood's poem. Indeed she is "out
of the world," a victim of madness, and another Ophelia-type who meets her death in the
water. She is modestly dressed and, perhaps, not as fetishized as other dead women on
the canvas. In contrast to her lifeless state, a bright, single star shines in the sky above
her. Watts' portrayal of this fallen woman makes another figure that belongs under the
umbrella of the beautiful dead woman. Feminist scholar Elisabeth Bronfen characterizes
the dead woman as "within reach but lost forever," reinforcing Bram Dijkstra's
acknowledgement of how male viewers gaze upon the sleeping-dead woman from a safe
position.125 I would take Bronfen's analysis a step further and assert that this safety is
ironic and implies that man is no match against an active, vital woman. This safe
conquering results in man's emasculation. In the moment he gains power over a passive
woman, he simultaneously loses it. All three of Watts' women (figs. 22-24) serve as
examples of women who fail to show fortitude and demonstrate how different Watts'
renderings of women are from Cameron's renderings.
A final Watts image that must be mentioned is the portrait done of Cameron (see
fig. 25).
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Figure 25. George Frederic Watts, Julia Margaret Cameron, 1850-52. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 17.
As Olsen has pointed out, Watts' version of Cameron has her "looking surprisingly meek
and morose." 126 Olsen goes on to say,
for Watts to paint Julia Margaret with such pathos is surprising: the
woman everyone described as willful, imperious, lively and bursting with
energy is represented as a wan, drooping Romantic heroine. In the
painting she looks very young, though at the time she was in her late
thirties and had just delivered her sixth child. Compared to other
photographs of her that have survived, Watts has made her nose smaller,
her coloring fairer, and removed the small mole near her nose. Perhaps
Watts thought he was doing his friend a favor by idealizing her face and
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expression to fit the standards of the day. If so, he did her an injustice; the
portrait has none of the power of the two [photographs] taken in 1874 by
her son Henry Herschel. It may have been Watts' portrait that inspired
[Cameron's sister Sara] to tell Julia Margaret one day that she was looking
sick, but much more like her picture than ever before. 127
Olsen makes an important point in emphasizing that Watts' Cameron is not a vibrant
Cameron. The anecdote about Cameron's sister Sara remarking that she looks sick
reinforces the argument that Watts is repeatedly drawn to portray women as enfeebled or
incapacitated in some way. Furthermore, in idealizing Cameron by altering her natural,
albeit plainer, features, Watts joins the ranks of D. G. Rossetti with the way Watts makes
Cameron "Not as she is." While it is possible that Watts was attempting to make
Cameron look closer in resemblance to her more attractive sisters, whose portraits he also
painted, this version of Cameron serves as another painting of a woman whose final
appearance rests in the power of the painter.
Perhaps as a reaction against the sickly, fragile women of Watts and other
PreRaphaelites, in "On a Portrait" Cameron is able to manifest the image of a living
woman with diverse traits. But she may also be reacting against what has been called the
Victorian Celebration or Culture of Death. As historian James Stevens Curl reminds
readers,
It is not eccentric, foolish or absurd to reflect on these matters, nor is it
unreasonable to consider aspects of how the Victorians dealt with
something not only inevitable, but very often premature. The dangers of
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childbirth carried off countless mothers and their children: child-mortality
was endemic; diseases such as tuberculosis were widespread and
terrifying; and everywhere death was present. 128
Cameron's "Prayer Written When I Quickened" has already given readers a sense of
women's fear about childbirth. The ubiquitous nature of death for Victorians prompted
them to immerse themselves in a series of social practices meant to comfort,
memorialize, evangelize and celebrate death all at the same time. Curl describes the
"ephemeral aspects of the Victorian Celebration of Death" as practices beyond the
establishing of "cemeteries, tombstones and monuments" to include
the expression of social position and status found in coffin-plates and-
handles, in hearses, in mourning-cards, and in dress. They are found
among the faded discolored mementos of another age (a past that in many
respects seems infinitely remote), and include black-edged mourning-
envelopes and stationary; immortelles or artificial flowers protected by
glass domes; embossed patterns around verses of a lugubrious nature; and
dried colorless leaves from leaves long collapsed to dust.129
Curl goes on to discuss crape, mourning jewellery, sheet music, children's books and
funerals. In short, the considerable time, thought and financial investment given to death
was a cultural practice that twenty-first century scholars must keep in mind. It seems that
the inundation of death-related ideas and practices that became commonplace somehow
allowed death to find its way into depictions of art that eroticized death. Dijkstra explains
the fascination with sleeping or dead women in this way:
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Indeed, portrayals of women whose obvious inanition seemed to prove
that sleep was death and death sleep became a source of endless delight
among late nineteenth-century painters. Images of women who were so
fast asleep that they looked as if they were dead became legion. The trick
was that they could be portrayed in this ultimate stage of passive
sensuality with all the more impunity since, after all, they were only
sleeping and not actually dead; hence no one could accuse the artist of
morbidity. At the same time, however, nothing could prevent the male
viewer from indulging in the sleep-death equation and immerse himself, to
virtually any degree of pleasurable morbidity, in thoughts of sensual
arousal by a woman who appeared to be safely dead, and therefore also
safely beyond actual temptation, even while the viewer could continue to
tell himself that he was merely looking at a harmless image of a beautiful
woman sleeping.130
Dijkstra recognizes the interchangeability of sleep and death in artistic representations.
Without the assistance of the titles of many Pre-Raphaelite works, viewers could easily
mistake sleeping women for dead women and vice versa. Cameron's characterizations of
women however, both in her photographs and poetry deviate from that depiction.
PreRaphaelite paintings such as Lord Frederic Leighton's Cymon and Iphigenia
reveal how easily interchangeable the sleeping and dead woman become (see fig. 26).
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Figure 26. Lord Frederic Leighton Cymon and Iphigenia 1884. The Art Gallery of New South Wales.
In Leighton's painting, Iphigenia is sleeping. As Dijkstra would emphasize, Iphigenia
becomes the ultimate beauty because of her helpless passivity. Notice the light that
emanates from Iphigenia. Compared to the setting sun, she is the brightest object in the
painting and the viewer is immediately drawn to her. All but Cymon are asleep.
Compared to her sleeping neighbors, Iphigenia is the only one whose body is opened up
into a pose that stresses her figure and sensuality. There waits Cymon (and the artist and
the viewer), able to think, possibly do, whatever he likes while she lies in her passive yet
suggestive state.
Another Leighton work, Flaming June, also illustrates the sleeping-dead genre
(see fig. 27).
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Figure 27. Frederic Leighton, Flaming June, 1895. Victorian Painting By Lionel Lambourne. London: Phaidon P, 1999, 448. Nearly naked in her brilliant, transparent gown, June is made available for the male gaze
in her vulnerable state of inaction. Enough of her body is displayed to make her sensual,
although hers is not as open as Iphigenia's. Nevertheless, June's nipple is visible, as is the
outline of her buttocks. Thus, in her sleeping state, the erotic implications are undeniable.
As Dijkstra summarizes,
The self-sacrificial sleep-death of a woman thus came to symbolize the
extreme form of woman's compliance with the dualistic notion that made
male-female relationships a simple matter of dominance and submission in
an arena in which the nineteenth-century male could live out and realize
the dreams of power which might have escaped his grasp in the actual
realm of worldly affairs. 131
"Flaming June" fulfills the male fantasy of conquest, and in her ideal state of submission
June is considered beautiful via her seemingly dead, unthreatening state.
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Another nineteenth-century form of the female body that makes the body
available for the viewer is the image of the collapsing woman. Dijkstra relates how this
fad originated in Victorian society in
the male's demand that his wife be both a magnificent ornament to his
worldly success and the safekeeper of his household's collective spiritual
virtues. We have seen that in order to maintain those dual functions, she
must not-- at least not publicly-- engage in productive labor, for that
would imply her husband's inability to maintain her. 132
Dijkstra's analysis explains why there are so many images of women whose states of
inaction have nothing to do with any physical incapacity. Burne-Jones' Laus Veneris is a
good example of the collapsing woman (see fig. 28).
Figure 28. Edward Burne-Jones, Laus Veneris, 1878. Victorian Painting By Lionel Lambourne. London: Phaidon P, 1999, 454. Based on Algernon Charles Swinburne's dramatic and lyrical poem Laus Veneris, Burne-
Jones draws from this moment in the poem:
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Asleep or waking is it? for her neck,
Kissed over close, wears yet a purple speck
Wherein the pained blood falters and goes out;
Soft, and stung softly — fairer for a fleck.
Asleep or waking is it? could be asked of many women in PreRaphaelite paintings. This
need for the Victorian woman to appear collapsed is another way of making her passive
just as the dead, seemingly dead, or sleeping woman is at the mercy of male dominance.
Dijkstra elaborates further on the collapsing woman by saying, "As featured in the art of
the turn of the century, the collapsing woman was primarily characterized -- quite
appropriately, given her spineless nature-- by an overwhelming aura of lassitude. She was
often portrayed as being on the very brink of sleep or otherwise already asleep."133 I use
the works of Leighton and Burne-Jones in particular as examples of what has come to be
recognized as a frequent PreRaphaelite motif. Unlike Cameron's works in which women
assert their autonomy despite circumstances that would otherwise invite their collapse,
many PreRaphaelite works eroticize sprawling, passive women.
As previously mentioned, one of the most candid critiques of the PreRaphaelite
passive woman of languor occurs in Christina Rossetti's 1856 "In an Artist's Studio"
which attests that the model in the painting is "Not as she is, but as she fills his dream"
(14). 134 In other words, the female model is what her male artist wants her to be--
available for viewing from a safely passive place. C. Rossetti "constructs a critique of a
consuming masculine subjectivity that projects its own desires upon an idealized
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other."135 As Mulvey might assert, the consumption of the model is made possible for
both painter and viewer. Christina Rossetti scholar Kathleen Jones asserts that
The first lines of Christina's poem "In an Artist's Studio" are ambiguous in
that they refer to the proliferation of paintings and drawings featuring
Lizzie Siddal that Gabriel was turning out at the time, but her poem also
refers to the fact that whoever Gabriel now used as a model would take on
the same idealized form [...]. Even Holman Hunt remarked on Gabriel's
tendency to "convert features of his sitter to his favourite ideal type." 136
The model Elizabeth Siddall who inspires "In an Artist's Studio" is available for viewing
in her idealized form, but not fully available in real life. In Rossetti's poem, the speaker
describes Siddall as "A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,/ A saint, and angel--
every canvas means/ That same one meaning, neither more nor less" (6-8). From
Rossetti's perspective, her brother idealizes Siddall, therefore, the woman on the canvas is
repeatedly a better version of the model. At the finish of "In an Artist's Studio," Siddall is
characterized as "Not wan with waiting not with sorrow dim;/ Not as she is, but was
when hope shone bright " (12-13). So, despite how Siddall might change because of the
state of her health, which was poor, the canvas, in some ways, does not capture her true
multifaceted identity.
Bronfen describes the relationship between Siddall and D. G. Rossetti this way:
"It seems that from the start she was to be his Beatrice-- a romantic ideal, inspiring his
artistic production as model and muse, but as the embodiment of unattainable, adored
beauty, forever receding from his reach." 137 Her likeness in Rossetti's paintings was that
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of a woman both stunning and stunted. She was made to look beautiful but never
completely devoid of her weakened state making her an ideal specimen of the Victorian
languid/dying woman. One of the most famous images of Siddall can be found in the
1852 "Ophelia" painting by Millais discussed at the beginning of this chapter (see fig.
29).
Figure 29. Detail of fig. 17.
Certainly her vacant, hopeless expression epitomizes the weak and deranged Ophelia so
frequent in nineteenth-century depictions.
Another equally popular Rossetti painting is that of "Beata Beatrix" which was
painted between 1863 and 1870 after Siddall's death (see fig. 30).
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Figure 30. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Beata Beatrix, 1864-70. Victorian Painting By Lionel Lambourne. London: Phaidon P, 1999, 199. Her closed eyelids encompass the quintessential Rossetti version of Siddall. In this
painting, as Beatrice she is depicted lingering between earth and Heaven. As Bronfen
describes,
Her continual illness seems to have predestined her for these portraits that
render her as a languid, aloof, withdrawn woman, with almost translucent
pallor, in the weakness and flickering febrile flightiness of the
consumptive ill woman, supportive of the conventional notions of the
transitory nature of feminine beauty, femininity as virginal and vulnerable,
ideal and tainted. 138
As mentioned previously, Rossetti was fixated on Siddall's precarious state and
interestingly, the line "He feeds upon her face by day and night," from "In an Artist's
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Studio" reinforces a kind of voyeuristic consumption of Siddall that Dijkstra sees at the
root of the sleep-death cult. Literature scholar Michael Wheeler says of D. G. Rossetti
that "Rossetti's career as a painter is characterized by an obsessive interest in the
idealized female form which signifies the transforming, or perhaps transfiguring power of
eroticism which issues in death." 139 Cameron's poem, on the contrary, deviates from the
motif of the beautiful dead woman with its idealizing of female passivity and presents a
woman whose fortitude is elevated.
Despite multiple claims that Cameron's closest PreRaphaelite friends heavily
influenced her, when closely analyzed her work takes on its own message, one suggesting
that women need not bend to the prescribed social structures of the nineteenth century. In
"On a Portrait" Cameron's speaker lauds the painter for a portrayal of women that
encompasses Cameron's own vision of women as multi-faceted. A response to and
reaction against PreRaphaelite painting, this literary work demonstrates that the ideal
painting is one which illuminates a complete picture of woman, a woman whose identity
is not reduced to silent suffering. Unlike the motif of the dead woman that minimized
women to victims and objects of the male gaze, Cameron's portrayal of women, as
communicated not only through "On a Portrait" but also her photographs, insists on the
ability of women to rise up under demanding circumstances and pursue their own course
of action which we now realize is a more realistic and complete portrait of women in the
nineteenth century than those circulated by male artists.
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CHAPTER FIVE: REVIVING ARTHURIAN WOMEN IN CAMERON'S
ILLUSTRATIONS FOR TENNYSON'S IDYLLS OF THE KING
Julia Margaret Cameron’s neighbor and close friend Alfred Lord Tennyson plays
a crucial part in our understanding of Cameron's artistic development, not only because
of his literary productivity at the time Cameron was pursuing her own artistic endeavors,
but also because Cameron worked with Tennyson and illustrated his Idylls of the King
with her photographs. Cameron's friendship with Tennyson and his wife Emily began in
October of 1850 and was intense from the start. In June 1852 Emily Tennyson was
expecting a baby and when the baby arrived sooner than expected, Cameron rushed to
London herself to find a doctor and returned with him to the Tennyson home to see what
she could do further to help. Alfred wrote to her saying, "he would never, to the hour of
his death, forget her kindness," and indeed, Cameron would fulfill the role of a mothering
friend to the Tennysons for many years to come.140 While Cameron's devotion to
Tennyson was likely very genuine, she was also savvy enough to know that having such
an influential friend could help her own artistic pursuits. When Tennyson asked Cameron
"Will you think it a trouble to illustrate my Idylls for me?" Cameron responded, "Now
you know Alfred that I know it is immortality to me to be bound up with you [...]." 141 In
other words Cameron was fully aware that such a powerful association with the poet
laureate could potentially elevate her own position in the art world. As Cameron scholar
Sylvia Wolf argues, "While the original endeavor was undertaken purely for friendship,
Cameron hoped to see a profit with this volume, which appeared under the title
Illustrations to Tennyson's Idylls of the King." 142 Cameron even contacted her close and
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influential friend Sir Edward Ryan, who was the retired chief justice of Bengal, with the
hope that he would publicize her Arthurian endeavor. She "bluntly urged him to use his
influence with the editors of London's most popular news-paper to promote her work: 'I
am sure if it is favourably noticed in the Times I shall make a success of it after all.'"143
Like Florence Nightingale, Cameron operated within the "proper" female sphere of
friend/mother/ caretaker but once there, expanded her bounds and entered the male
sphere to pursue the life of a professional female artist and poet. Nancy Armstrong, in her
exploration of the political aspect of domestic fiction in this period, describes a similar
convergence of distinct identities in the cultural development of charitable institutions
that became for women an acceptable outlet for acts of generosity but also an acceptable
way to earn money. Armstrong asserts that
In allowing women to produce goods for charity when it was no longer
respectable for them to produce goods for their own kin, much less for
purposes of trade, the conduct books fostered a certain form of power
relations that would flourish later as the welfare institutions of modern
culture developed. It was their acknowledged aptitude for performing acts
of charity that first enabled women to move out of the home and into the
political arena.144
Like Nightingale whose work in the nursing industry forged a link between charity and
female financial independence, Cameron's motherly self-imposition into the lives of
Tennyson and his influential friends, I would argue, allowed her to be part of an
exclusionary male arena that would bolster her artistic ambitions. Joy Melville argues
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that "Julia was [...] intensely socially ambitious. She [...] determined to set up her own
literary and artistic circle [...]." 145 Through Cameron's determination and appreciation for
cultivating knowledge, she would succeed in forming close friendships with many
Victorian figures including Henry Taylor, William Makepeace Thackeray and Sir John
Herschel. As Olsen describes,
Over the course of the [1850's] the Tennysons and Camerons had grown
close. They visited at Freshwater and met often at Little Holland House,
where Tennyson would recite Maud (which he considered unappreciated)
or some of his works in progress. Tennyson always liked to compose his
poetry while walking and speaking the lines out loud, so over the years,
Julia Margaret probably had firsthand knowledge of his writing process.146
A comparative study of their works reveals ways that Tennyson potentially
influenced Cameron’s writings and photographs. For instance, Tennyson’s complex and
changing treatment of loss and death seems in particular cases to be echoed in Cameron’s
portrayal of these subjects photographically. Tennyson most famously dwells on personal
loss over the death of friend Arthur Henry Hallam in "In Memoriam." Tennyson says,
That 'Loss is common to the race'--
And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.
That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more:
Too common! Never morning woe
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To evening, but some heart did break.
(6; 1-8) 147
In this excerpt the speaker laments that the repetition of loss does nothing to make it more
bearable. Since readers know the speaker reflects Tennyson's own experience with the
death of his close friend, readers can also infer that Tennyson likely uses the death of
Hallam as both a literal representation of loss as well as a more figurative representation
of the loss Tennyson feels regarding the many disruptions to what he perceived as
traditional Victorian life. Cameron's work seems to embody the same grief at the
frequency of loss, but although she dwells on life’s fragility in her poetry and when she
depicts moments of familial and romantic loss in her photography, her depictions of
women challenge aspects of Idylls of the King that emphasize only women's suffering.
Cameron was the first to convey Arthurian tales through photography and as with her
portrayals of Shakespearean women, I argue that Cameron rewrites these women's stories
in ways that undermine conventional gender roles. While Tennyson tells of Elaine's
heartbreak, Vivien's evil, and Guinevere's guilt, Cameron retells these characters' stories
photographically in a way that underscores Elaine's independence, Vivien's humanity and
Guinevere's redemption.
In a climate of growing religious and social discord in the nineteenth century,
numerous writers, Tennyson among them, apparently sought order by setting their works
in the Middle Ages, a period that they imagined to be simpler and more orderly than their
own. For Victorians, the security found in religious stability had diminished due to
religious skepticism brought on by “an age of material advance and scientific discovery
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[where] the will to know frequently overpowered the will to believe.” 148 Indeed, with so
much confusion about whether religion or science should take precedence, and whether
economic stability trumped individual welfare, Victorians were bereft of their sense of
security. Without a firm belief in God to act as guide and stabilizer, as Christianity once
did for medieval society, Victorians were left grasping for something to replace the
structure of religion. Antony Harrison, in his study of Victorian cultural politics, says that
this, however, is a hopeless gesture: “Whatever spiritually unifying and redemptive
effects the Medieval church may have had are long gone, existing in idealized histories
only to highlight the modern [Victorian] world’s pervasive insufficiencies.” 149 Karen
Alkalay-Gut, in an analysis of Victorian poetry, argues that “Darwin’s Origin of Species
destroyed the absolute comfort of the bible, contested the justification of the ways of God
to humanity, and unsettled the concept of an afterlife.” 150 Reacting to the very kind of
insecurity described by Alkalay-Gut, Tennyson's neo-medieval works, Idylls among
them, celebrated the vision of security found in romanticized depictions of the Middle
Ages. Writers such as Tennyson chose to retreat to tales of the Middle Ages for solace, in
order to be consoled by an idealized imagined time when cultural boundaries seemed
more clearly outlined and the rewards of honor and duty appeared to be clearly
understood. Tennyson’s epic Idylls of the King was such a work.
In Idylls Tennyson tells the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round
Table. Separated into twelve sections, Tennyson traces the coming of Arthur, the
adventures of his knights, the relationship between characters Lancelot and Guinevere,
the quest for the Holy Grail and King Arthur's passing. Composed over two periods,
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1856-1859 and 1868-1874, Idylls was Tennyson's lengthiest and most ambitious work.
Through the form of the medieval romance, Tennyson used the Arthurian legend to
provide readers with more than an escape from everyday Victorian life; he embedded
within Idylls a message of lament about man’s inability to appreciate his fellow man and
criticized humanity for its treachery. In 1859 Tennyson published the first set of four
Idylls and within a few weeks, 40,0000 copies were sold followed by numerous
reprintings. After a decade-long hiatus, Tennyson returned to Idylls and finished the
remaining sections over a period of six years publishing the last sections in 1872.151
Tennyson's Idylls was very popular with the buying public but received a mixed reception
from Victorian literary critics. According to Arthurian scholar Derek Pearsall, Victorian
critics
admired the language and picturesque description but charged Tennyson
with fleeing from real life and the horrors of the industrial revolution
behind a medieval arras. Tennyson maintained against this that his
Arthurian cycle did have a point, that it did deal with major issues of the
time-- the corruption of society and the individual that results from neglect
of moral and spiritual values [...]. 152
Despite the literary critics who disapproved of Tennyson's setting, the popular Victorian
audience welcomed a return to medieval times and lauded Tennyson's Idylls. His
medieval revival as described by John Rosenburg “attempted to rediscover-or invent-a
world outside the unending flux and reflux of the [Victorian] time.” 153 Tennyson's
Arthurian world established a place for Victorians not only to retreat to but also from
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within which to discover their own identities. As Mancoff explains, Tennyson
"condensed the code of Arthur's order into simple moral precepts and personified them in
exemplary representations of heroes from the Arthurian Legend. A reading of these
virtues offered an encapsulation of the ideal national character." 154 In other words,
Tennyson's version was "an appropriate Victorian version of the Arthur story." 155
Despite Tennyson's popularity with a general readership, reviewers noted the
shortcomings in the worldview he portrayed. For instance, one reviewer from the July
1859 edition of New Quarterly Review said, "We wish that in these Idylls Mr. Tennyson
had given us at least one model of womanly excellence, such as may fairly be supposed
to have existed in the state of society described." 156 Another critique located in the
February 1, 1874 of the Fortnightly Review also condemns Tennyson by saying,
Though a believer in the ultimate destinies of the human race, he takes no
particular interest in present progress: and with the schemes of ordinary
reformers he has little sympathy.--Mr. Tennyson is a poetical Pangloss: by
which we mean that he regards all things as working for the best, in
consequence, not of what he sees, but of what he thinks he ought to see.157
While the New Quarterly Review and Fortnightly Review found Tennyson's women
unsuitable role models, for other reviewers, Vivien and Guinevere attracted them. 158
Some purportedly "admired Guinevere, the fallen woman remorseful and prostrate at the
feet of her wronged lord and king, who forgave her in tones both generous and slightly
pompous."159 Cameron was certainly attuned to Tennyson's narrow vision of women and
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would carefully craft her photographs of Arthurian women with a more progressive view
in mind.
While Tennyson's version of Arthur's world at times embraced characteristic
imagined aspects of medieval chivalry, like the need for women to be rescued, Cameron
was selective in how she depicted scenes where Tennyson described women submitting
to male authority. According to Thelma S. Fenster, Idylls' mixture of "female power and
deference to male authority suggests Cameron's own situation: ambitious artist who
sought to change the standards of photographic representation [and] make money at the
same time [...]." 160 While Idylls appeared to uphold chivalric values, those values
became, as Colin Graham argues in his study of nation and empire in Victorian poetry "a
site of pressure, reconsideration and disintegration in Idylls of the King, bringing [the
epic] irretrievably into question as a regulatory mode for the contemporary." 161
Although Tennyson looked to medieval times as a period possessing greater order
than his own, Tennyson's account in Idylls still confronts the disappointments and foibles
of human nature. For instance, in a description characterizing Arthur’s knights, Tennyson
has Arthur brag, “My knights are sworn to vows/ Of utter hardihood, utter gentleness,/
And loving, utter faithfulness in love,/ And Uttermost obedience to the King” (“Gareth
and Lynette” 540-43). Despite these binding vows, Tennyson demonstrates through
Guinevere and Lancelot that even the promises made by a queen and a knight, for
example, are not unbreakable. As readers delve further in the tale, they learn that “a
rumour rose about the Queen, / Touching her guilty love for Lancelot” (“Geraint and
Enid” 24-5). Infidelity becomes a slowly evolving plot throughout the work and
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culminates in Lancelot and Guinevere’s indiscretion, which leads to grave disruption in
the peace of Arthur’s kingdom. By examining complex human relationships, such as the
vulnerability of marriage, Tennyson brings to light the consequences of loss that result
when chivalric code is broken. Christine Poulson in her study of the literature of Idylls in
the visual arts, points out that "Tennyson's conservative view of the feminine accorded
with that of many of his readers, but it was a view held against a background of
increasing debate about the role of women. In the twenty years between the publication
of the first Idylls in 1859 and [1887], a long, slow erosion of the social and legal
inequality of women was taking place." 162
Tennyson's conservative view provided Cameron with an opportunity to
reevaluate the roles of the women portrayed in Idylls. As her point of departure, Cameron
reinterprets Tennyson's female characters and refashions Elaine, Vivien and Guinevere
into women whose experiences become a means for their empowerment and autonomy.
Both Cameron and Tennyson utilized aspects of medievalism. Just as Claire Saunders,
explaining the effects of nineteenth-century medievalism on women writers, points out
writers could overturn "political gender ideologies and exposed them as sterile," I argue
that Cameron did just that by not duplicating Tennyson's ideology. 163
As Debra Mancoff notes briefly in her discussion of Arthurian revival in
Victorian art, in addition to absorbing the cultural medievalism that was pervading late
nineteenth-century England, Cameron's "Illustrations have proved a rich source for
identifying an emergent feminist vision, for the negotiation of gender roles in a changing
society, and for the complex interaction of text and image as a marketable
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commodity.”164 While Mancoff alludes to the transformation of gender roles in a general
way, I would like to specifically addresses Cameron’s refashioning of female characters
from victims of suffering into victors of perseverance. Mancoff sells Cameron short by
arguing that "in posing for these Arthurian characters, Cameron's models were role-
playing," that "bringing the men and women of Camelot to an image of human life helped
diminish them to human scale." 165 Mancoff makes this remark in the context of
discussing a Victorian decline in serious Arthurian literature. Whether she speaks for
Victorians only when assessing the impact of Cameron's Idylls images is unclear, but her
notion that Cameron's images reduce legendary characters to "human scale" completely
contradicts what I see as Cameron's success in elevating the women characters she found
admirable.
Before discussing Idylls, I would like to examine one image of Tennyson’s
"Maud" that Cameron produced which, like some of her illustrations of Idylls, did not
adhere wholly to the original text (see fig. 31).
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Figure 31. Julia Margaret Cameron, Maud, 1875. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 480.
Like "In Memoriam," "Maud" dwells on loss and disillusionment, focalizing the poem
through a speaker who is tentative at first about love but then elated when Maud, the
subject of the poem, appears to return his affection. In the section of "Maud" depicted in
Cameron’s image, the speaker waits for his beloved at a garden gate, and as he does so,
he speaks aloud to himself:
There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near;'
And the white rose weeps, 'She is late;' 166
Cameron's image draws from the above lines from Tennyson, but her rendering makes a
significant alteration. According to Tennyson’s text, in this particular scene, Maud has
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not entered the garden yet. It is not until the second part of Tennyson’s poem begins that
Maud actually enters the scene only to be prevented by her brother from speaking.
Despite this poetic chronology, Cameron depicts Maud standing solemnly at the gate
wrapped in the passion flower vine. The flowers from Tennyson's text are personified in
anticipation of the emotional turmoil that Maud's lover (and Maud herself in Cameron's
version) feels. I would like to argue that when Cameron inserts Maud into this garden
scene ahead of her actual entrance, it literalizes the powerful feelings the speaker has for
her. The speaker's imaginative yearning to see his beloved becomes actualized in
Cameron's photograph in a way that is impossible in the chronological narration of the
poem. By shifting Maud's presence forward in the photograph, Cameron shows the
capability her visual art has to simultaneously represent the experiences of both mind and
body, something Tennyson cannot do with his linear verbal text. Furthermore, Maud's
insertion uniquely conveys the loss that eventually she and her beloved speaker will
endure.
As Cameron proceeds with the Idylls project, another female figure that Cameron
refashions is that of Arthurian legend’s Elaine. Around the same time as Cameron's
Elaine depictions there were numerous depictions of Elaine, for she was a popular figure
in Victorian art. Between 1860 and 1933 there were 63 paintings that depicted her
story.167 Although Elaine is most frequently portrayed after she has taken her life, which
places her within the Victorian fetishization of the dead. Cameron complicates this
tradition by portraying Elaine both alive and dead. As Elisabeth Bronfen argues in her
study of death and femininity in the nineteenth century,
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the choice of death is one of the nineteenth-century's privileged tropes for
a denial of women's ability to choose freely during her life and for the
constraints and incisions imposed on her due to the cultural construction
of femininity over her body. Since the female body is the cause for
constraints, the only freedom of choice open to her is to eradicate the
body.168
In contrast to most artists who used the figure of the dead woman to accentuate "the
denial of women's ability to choose," Cameron, who typically avoided the trope, carefully
reconstructed the deaths of women characters into either a deliberate act of choice or a
consequence of choice, as I will discuss in Chapter Six in the case of Cordelia. Cameron,
it would appear, sees Elaine's careful staging of her death as an articulation of her
independence, though Cameron is careful not to fetishize Elaine by making her into an
object that would invite the voyeuristic male gaze, as so many other renderings of Elaine
seem to do. Bronfen argues that, "The public rejoiced in the sight of a beautiful woman in
love, safely dead, and hence, not likely-- in her perfectly self-evident state of extreme
self-sacrifice-- to complicate the emotional life of the viewer any more than Elaine had
complicated that of Sir Lancelot." 169 In addition to Elaine's perfect fit within the cult of
the dead, Tennyson's version reproduces the "innocent child-woman that many men
found so appealing."170 In fact, Tennyson modified Malory's earlier version by expanding
the description of Elaine in the tower to accentuate her madness while simultaneously
emphasizing her womanly task of embroidery.171 Cameron's photographic illustrations of
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Elaine differ from Tennyson's in that she underscores Elaine's self-assertion rather than
reducing her to only an image of domesticity or desire.
Tennyson begins Elaine's story by describing how Elaine has been entrusted with
the care of Lancelot's shield. She takes it upon herself to make a protective case for his
shield when
fearing rust or soilure fashion'd for it
A case of silk, braided thereupon
All the devices blazon'd on the shield
In their own tinct, and added, of her wit,
A border fantasy of branch and flower,
And yellow-throated nestling in the nest.
Nor rested thus content, but day by day,
Leaving her household and good father, climb'd
That eastern tower, and entering barr'd her door,
Stript off the case, and read the naked shield,
Now guessed a hidden meaning in his arms,
Now made a pretty history to herself
Of every dint a sword had beaten in it,
And every scratch a lance had made upon it.
("Lancelot and Elaine" 5-20)
Victorian scholar Christine Poulson classifies Elaine as a woman "whose place is in the
home, and whose role is of service to others," and certainly in this scene she is consumed
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by her service to Lancelot.172 Tennyson paints a picture of an Elaine who, immediately
beguiled by Lancelot, has imprisoned herself within her tower and made a fantasy world
in which to live while she fashions his case. Some of Tennyson's language is notably
erotic, with Elaine disrobing the case from the shield and becoming caught up in her
reverie. Tennyson characterizes Elaine as being lovesick even before she can assess that
Lancelot may reject her. It becomes clear that Lancelot does not love her, as revealed
when he says,
This is not love: but love's first flash in youth,
Most common: yea, I know it of mine own self:
And you yourself will smile at your own self:
Hereafter, when you yield your flower of life
To one more fitly yours, not thrice your age:
("Lancelot and Elaine" 944-9)
Elaine's fate of self-internment is sealed after Lancelot dismisses her love as infatuation
of the inexperienced. That Lancelot emphasizes the age difference underscores the
characterization of Elaine as the "innocent child-woman," a description that Victorian
men found very appealing because, as Mancoff argues, it reinforced the image of women
as weak and dependent.173 Tennyson describes the dejected Elaine this way:
So in her tower alone the maiden sat:
His very shield was gone; only the case,
Her own poor work, her empty labour, left.
But still she heard him, still his picture form'd
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And grew between her and the pictured wall.
("Lancelot and Elaine" 982-6)
Elaine's mental state quickly diminishes in Tennyson's account, as does the worth of her
"labor," and Tennyson endows Elaine with a delicate mental constitution further
perpetuating the Victorian characterization of women as prone to hysteria. Just a few
lines later
Death, like a friend's voice from a distant field
Approaching thro' the darkness, call'd; the owls
Wailing had power upon her, and she mixt
Her fancies with the sallow-rifted glooms
Of evening, and the moanings of the wind.
("Lancelot and Elaine" 992-6)
Tennyson characterizes Elaine as intensely devoted to a man who does not love her, and
as a victim of unrequited love she is driven to "fancies" and a self-induced state of
madness and despair. By shrouding herself in fantasy, sacrificing her life in the tower and
eventually succumbing to death, in Tennyson's version she becomes a woman overcome
by her beloved's rejection. Although Cameron faithfully reproduces many elements of the
story of Tennyson's Elaine, it is possible to see below that she simultaneously endows
Elaine with more presence of mind than she possesses in Tennyson's text.
Cameron's first image of Elaine depicts her alive and alone in her tower with the
case (see fig. 32).
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Figure 32. Julia Margaret Cameron, Elaine, 1874. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 474. This image is rather ambiguous because it shows Elaine with the case on her lap, but
viewers do not know if this is before or after Lancelot's rejection of her. She sits as if
working on the case's construction, but it is difficult to tell whether she is examining a
finished product or not. No matter what the outcome, this Elaine has accomplished a
creative act by producing her own creative work. Her face appears doleful and the
lowered eyelids make her seem both mentally far away and despondent. There is a
hopeless quality that departs from Cameron’s usual emphasis of triumph despite tragedy.
Perhaps that is why this version of Elaine did not appear in Cameron's final editions of
Idylls.
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In the second image of Elaine that was used in the 1874 edition, the shield is seen
above the case and Elaine’s attention also seems directed upward, perhaps past the case
(see fig. 33).
Figure 33. Julia Margaret Cameron, Elaine "The Lily Maid of Astolat," 1874. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 474. Here Cameron depicts the moment in Tennyson’s Idylls when Elaine has finished the
case, but before Lancelot has rejected her. In order to capture Elaine’s fruitless devotion,
Cameron’s Elaine wears an expression of seriousness and longing. Conveying Elaine in
anticipation of Lancelot's love, after having lovingly fashioned his case, underscores that
Cameron's Elaine is stalwart in her devotion to Lancelot. The uplifted head in this second
version of Cameron's renders Elaine as thriving despite her ardor rather than maddened
by her passions the way Tennyson depicts her. Indeed, this Elaine does not look crazy.
While Cameron's photographic rendering of Elaine here, from the myriad of moments of
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Elaine's story she might have illustrated, stays true to Tennyson's story, it simultaneously
subverts his representation of Elaine's passivity and madness.
As with Cameron's living Elaine, Cameron's two images of the dead Elaine
deviate from Victorian tropes by drawing into question the cult of the dead. Cameron's
images closely recreate two separate moments from Tennyson's text. Although Elaine’s
self-abnegation through death could be viewed as an act of subservience, I argue
Cameron's photograph instead attempts to reflect Elaine’s obstinate nature, for while
living, Elaine does insist, in Tennyson's text, that her remains be displayed in this very
specific way. In Tennyson's poem, Elaine requests of her survivors
lay the letter in my hand
A little ere I die, and close the hand
upon it; I shall guard it even in death.
And when the heat is gone from out my heart,
Then take the little bed on which I died
For Lancelot's love, and deck it like the Queen's
for richness, and me also like the Queen
In all I have of rich, and lay me on it.
And let there be prepared a chariot-bier
To take me to the river, and a barge
Be ready on the river, clothed in black.
I go in state to court, to meet the Queen.
There surely I shall speak for mine own self,
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And none of you can speak for me so well.
And therefore let our dumb old man alone
Go with me, he can steer and row, and he
Will guide me to that palace, to the doors.
("Lancelot and Elaine" 1106- 22)
Although it is certainly problematic that self-annihilation becomes an act of self-
governing, Elaine's determination to love no man but Lancelot can still be viewed as a
woman's act of independence and free will. Bronfen describes Elaine's radical form of
expression this way: "By transforming suicide into an act of self-textualization, Elaine at
last controls her own life and insists on the public recognition of her love denied during
her lifetime. The paradox inherent in suicide is that it can either disintegrate identity or
reaffirm a woman's autonomy after defilement or abandonment." 174 I would argue that
Cameron's depictions of Elaine attempt to portray her in light of the self-actualization
Bronfen describes because Cameron shows how Elaine's post-death requests have all
been fulfilled.
In the first image of a deceased Elaine (see fig. 34), Cameron depicts Elaine
joined by “the lifelong creature of the house / Loyal, the dumb old servitor” as per
Tennyson's text and Elaine's request (1136-7). 175
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Figure 34. Julia Margaret Cameron, Elaine, 1875. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 481.
Elaine lies in a bed on a chariot-bier, lily in hand, with the servitor at her feet holding the
oars to transport her to Arthur's palace. The lily takes on the traditional symbolism of
both death and virginity. Just as Tennyson describes, “o’er her hung / The silken case
with braided blazonings” (1141-2).176 Perhaps Cameron dresses Elaine in a white gown
to emphasize her youth and innocence and also to accentuate her maiden state. Elaine’s
arm above her head seems to underscore a complete giving up of self to Lancelot.
Although these images resemble some aspects of nineteenth-century images of dead
women with respect to their sitters' lying down positions, Cameron's arrangement and
representation of the comportment of the sitters lessens the opportunity for the
voyeuristic male gaze. Elaine is dressed modestly, which discourages an invitation for
objectification. The servant seems to act as protector, standing guard and further
upholding her last requests.
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Cameron's second image of Elaine stays true to Tennyson's Idylls but like the
first, preserves Elaine's dignity despite her being portrayed as dead (see fig. 35).
Figure 35. Julia Margaret Cameron, The Corpse of Elaine in the Palace of King Arthur, 1875. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 480.
Cameron's Elaine here wears the same modest white gown that emphasizes her virginity.
Cameron underscores Elaine's self-actualization by depicting her with the very audience
she requested while still living. In Cameron's image the servitor reappears and Gawain,
Lancelot, Guinevere and Arthur stand over Elaine as described in this passage from
Idylls:
And reverently they bore her into the hall.
Then came the fine Gawain and wonder'd at her,
And Lancelot later came and mused at her,
And last the Queen herself pitied her:
But Arthur spied the letter in her hand,
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Stoopt, took, brake seal, and read it; this was all:
("Lancelot and Elaine" 1258-63)
The letter Elaine wrote to Lancelot is visible in Cameron's image as is the lily. Elaine's
letter to Lancelot reads as follows:
Most noble lord, Sir Lancelot of the Lake,
I, sometimes call'd the maid of Astolat,
Come, for you left me taking no farewell,
Hither, to take my last farewell of you.
I loved you, and my love had no return,
And therefore my true love has been my death.
And therefore to our Lady Guinevere,
And to all other ladies, I make moan:
Pray for my soul, and yield me burial.
Pray for my soul thou too, Sir Lancelot,
As thou art a knight peerless.
("Lancelot and Elaine" 1264-74)
The scene is mournful with nearly all figures looking down at Elaine with somber
expressions. Situated in between the two knights, the presence of Guinevere discourages
viewers from perceiving Elaine as a dead woman at the mercy of voyeuristic men, and
although there are men present, their role as mourners further squelches the inclination to
objectify Elaine. In fact, their presence does just the opposite and reinforces Elaine's
autonomy by fulfilling her request that they be present at this moment. As Cameron
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scholar Joanne Lukitsch argues, "Elaine stands as an important figure in her own right.
[Cameron's] photographs of Elaine [...] substantiate her importance by representing
Elaine as the creator of her own immortality: the fulfillment of her last wish that her body
be presented at the court of Camelot." 177As such, Cameron's renderings of Elaine draw
from Tennyson's Idylls but clearly underscore an Elaine that exercises her own free will.
While Cameron's Elaine takes control of her romantic destiny as a consequence of
unrequited love, the next pair of images I will examine demonstrate a woman whose
romantic inclinations are motivated by revenge. Vivien, who is described by Tennyson as
“an enemy that has left Death in the living waters, and withdrawn.” plays a crucial role in
exacerbating the struggle between Lancelot and Guinevere (145-6).178 Tennyson
characterizes Vivien this way:
She hated all the knights, and heard in thought
Their lavish comment when her name was named.
For once, when Arthur walking all alone,
Vext at a rumour issued from herself
Of some corruption crept among his knights,
Had met her, Vivien being greeted fair,
Would fain have wrought upon his cloudy mood
With reverent eyes mock-loyal, shaken voice,
And flutter'd adoration, and at last
With dark sweet hints of some who prized him more
Than who should prize him most; at which the King
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Had gazed upon her blankly and gone by:
But one had watch'd and had not held his peace:
It made the laughter of an afternoon
That Vivien should attempt the blameless King
And after that, she set herself to gain
Him, the most famous man of all those times,
Merlin, who knew the range of all their arts.
("Merlin and Vivien" 148-65)
The above excerpt establishes Vivien's motive for beguiling Merlin: as revenge for being
rejected by Arthur but also as retaliation against his knights. Analyzing passages like this
in the poem, Mancoff describes Tennyson's Idylls as possessing "a high moral line over
sexual mores [that] so often goes hand in hand with the salacious." 179 In her analysis,
Mancoff echoes nineteenth-century criticism of Tennyson that claimed Tennyson's telling
of Vivien's story "is treated with consummate skill, but such skill as rather heightens than
mitigates its disagreeable features." 180 For some Victorian readers, Vivien was
overdrawn. As Mancoff reads the poem, Vivien's allurements were intended to explain
how Merlin could fall victim to her destruction. At the same time, "it was hoped that
readers would find her behavior so repulsive that the lesson Tennyson sought would be
enforced." 181 Perhaps in response to Tennyson's bold, negative portrayal of Vivien,
Cameron's Vivien appears far tamer (figure 36) and, I would argue more humanly
accessible. While Cameron depicts two of Vivien’s boldest moments, her seduction of
Merlin and his enchantment within the tree, they lack any elements of the salacious. The
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first image of Vivien and Merlin captures what appears on the surface to be an intimate
moment between the two (see fig. 36).
Figure 36. Julia Margaret Cameron, Vivien and Merlin, 1874. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 472.
Although Merlin holds a dominant seated position, Vivien’s hand is central to the image
and appears to press down through his beard against his chest. This moment fits
Tennyson’s description of Vivien who “drew/ The vast and shaggy mantle of his beard/
Across her neck and bosom to her knee and called herself a gilded summer fly/ Caught in
a great old tyrant spider’s web” (253-7). 182 While the expression on Vivien’s face
appears tender, alluding to the innocence of the fly, it also possesses a firm quality. I
argue that Cameron alters this moment of the poem by dwelling on Vivien's vulnerability
as much as her vindictiveness. Tennyson's Vivien feigns lovesickness pining “’O Merlin,
do you love me?’ and again, ‘O Merlin, do you love me?’” (233-4). 183 Although
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Tennyson's Vivien is clearly disingenuous in her affection for Merlin, Cameron's
photographic rendering of Vivien exhibits a sad quality that suggests that in her heart of
hearts, she really longs to be loved by someone. That said, I argue that Cameron
humanizes Vivien by emphasizing her polarized emotions rather than just her villainy. In
Cameron's image, Merlin appears captivated by Vivien, and his serious expression and
downturned eyes and head foreshadow that he will succumb to Vivien's wiles as occurs
in Tennyson's text.
Some art critics have claimed that Cameron fails to accurately convey the
complex feelings between Merlin and Vivien. For example, Mancoff argues that
Cameron fell short of […] this serpentine sensuality. In her first image,
Vivien perches on Merlin’s lap, gazing in his eyes and stroking his beard.
In the second, she points her finger as she casts her spell, and Merlin
succumbs. There is little sexual tension between the seductress and the
sage; the gestures seem devoid of passion. 184
I speculate that the sexual tension is missing because Cameron wishes to change her from
Tennyson's seductress to a woman with a complicated range of emotions. Cameron seems
to want to underscore the duplicity of Vivien by clothing her in white but also wrapping
the dark shawl around her waist. The combination emphasizes the role of the innocent
maid Vivien plays time and again, but, perhaps, stresses more than Tennyson how that
innocence exists in some capacity but has been corrupted by selfish designs. It appears
that Cameron sees Vivien as a woman who has taken the willfulness of other women like
Elaine too far. Still, Vivien is not portrayed as the coldblooded temptress out to punish
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and overpower men. Since Cameron's version of Vivien dwells more on Vivien's
vulnerability than predatory desire, I am reluctant to label Cameron's Vivien as a true
femme fatale. Had Cameron wanted to capitalize on this nascent category of women she
would have played up the evil side of Vivien. With the virginal gown and firm rather than
sadistic expressions, this Vivien seems more caught up in a pitiable revenge scheme than
driven by insatiable sexual yearnings or vampiric hunger.
Cameron’s second Vivien image is visually more striking than the first but also
lacks overtly femme fatale-like qualities. Cameron utilizes space and light, and in this
image Vivien towers above Merlin and casts her spell by pointing her finger menacingly
at his face (see fig. 37).
Figure 37. Julia Margaret Cameron, Vivien and Merlin, 1874. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 473.
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As a result of Vivien's enchantment of Merlin he is transfixed with his eyes cast down or
closed and his arms akimbo. The tree behind him depicts the moment “she put forth the
charm Of woven paces and of waving hands, And in the hollow oak he lay as dead, And
lost to life and use and name and fame” (965-7). 185 In this picture as in Tennyson's poem,
Vivien has been Merlin’s undoing; although Vivien's power emasculates Merlin, Vivien's
success seems due more to one sorcerer outwitting the other than to a vampiric desire to
drain him of life. In Cameron's version, Vivien does not replicate the sexist stereotype of
the femme fatale but rather challenges the notion that powerful women only deserve to be
hated, the emotional response that the femme fatale evokes. Although Cameron
sometimes reinforced certain Victorian gender roles, more often she subtly challenged
them.
The final Idylls image I wish to analyze is The Parting of Lancelot and Guinevere
(see fig. 38).
140
Figure 38. Julia Margaret Cameron, The Parting of Lancelot and Guinevere, 1858. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, Another complex female character, Guinevere combines fallibility and strength but also
reveals how intricate a woman's interior life can become. Cameron selects an unusual
moment to focus on, the moment when Guinevere and Lancelot have their last meeting.
Unlike Tennyson who "traps Guinevere in Victorian domestic ideology, where she
becomes a mere sign of moral decline," Claire Saunders argues that Cameron "makes
Guinevere a more sympathetic figure and finds a way to focus on her redeeming
remorse." 186 Furthermore, Saunders argues, "Guinevere's adulterous relationship with
Lancelot is represented sympathetically. In 'The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen
Guinevere,' the queen is a beautiful, yet distraught lover." 187 Prior to the scene Cameron
depicts, in Tennyson's text, Guinevere makes this request of Lancelot:
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'O Lancelot, get thee hence to thine own land,
For if thou tarry we shall meet again,
And if we meet again, some evil chance
Will make the smouldering scandal break and blaze
Before the people, and our lord the King.'
And Lancelot promised, but remain'd,
And still they met and met. Again she said,
'O Lancelot, if thou love me get thee hence.'
And then they were agreed upon a night
(When the good King should not be there) to meet
And part forever.
("Guinevere" 87-98)
In Tennyson's text quoted above, Guinevere recognizes that she is tempted to act further
on her feelings for Lancelot. She fears scandalizing herself and her people and insists that
she make a permanent break. The final moment of parting is the moment that Cameron
illustrates. As in Tennyson's poem, Cameron's picture is unambiguous in its portrayal of
the couple's love for each other. Tinged with melancholy, the expressions of both
Lancelot and the Queen convey their sadness at having to part ways. Tennyson describes
the parting moment in this way:
Hands in hands, and eye to eye,
Low on the border of her couch they sat
Stammering and staring. It was their last hour,
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A madness of farewells.
("Guinevere" 99-102)
Cameron’s Guinevere, like Tennyson's, calls for sympathy, and as Mancoff argues,
Cameron “reveal[s] her deep response to Guinevere’s conflicted emotions, and her
progress, not to sin but toward redemption. The Parting of Lancelot and Guinevere
conveys the pain she feels as she tells Lancelot to leave her, sacrificing her heart’s desire
in the hope of avoiding her husband’s disgrace.”188 Mancoff recognizes Guinevere’s
conflicted state, and I would go a step further and argue that Cameron not only conveys
Guinevere’s pain, but also subversively emphasizes her redemption. Cameron's Lancelot
and Guinevere clasp hands tenderly and Guinevere appears to be holding part of his
armor in her other hand. Guinevere rests her head upon Lancelot's shoulder and chest in a
gesture of affection. Unlike Tennyson, Cameron does not portray a frenzied farewell. In
this moment, both parties remain quiet with their eyes closed. Guinevere sacrifices her
happiness for the sake of her kingdom-- and as Cameron fashions it, her sacrifice is great.
Tennyson's Guinevere grovels, stammers and stares while Cameron's Guinevere calmly
recognizes the necessity of a life without Lancelot. As Saunders elucidates, Tennyson's
Guinevere is condemned in the most extreme terms, called a disease and a
pollution, because his text has a social message: to offer an ideal in an age
where evolutionary discoveries shook religion to the roots;
industrialization changed the whole make up of society and created a rise
in materialism; and contemporary changes to the matrimonial law
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challenged the institution of marriage. Ultimately [...] Tennyson's
Guinevere is [...] sacrificed to his message. 189
Tennyson's need to stress the importance of women's fidelity accounts for his portrayal
and explains his less sympathetic view of Guinevere and why he included the scene of
her begging forgiveness at Arthur's feet.
Rather than upholding Tennyson's restrictive gender ideology, Cameron’s women
from Idylls are portrayed in ways that subvert the limitations thrust on them. Unlike those
of Cameron's critics who reduce Cameron's women to passive PreRaphaelite beauties, I
would argue that a close analysis of her photographs shows that while Cameron draws
from the Arthurian tradition via Tennyson, she challenges the traditions he upholds. As
Saunders expresses, this small but significant difference, "Cameron's photographs,
uphold the essential order of Arthur's kingdom and Tennyson's vision, but also highlight
the potential for activity of women characters, consistently allowing them a dignified
positive position. Elaine’s act of self-imprisonment and self-sacrifice emphasize her
autonomy."190 In addition to preserving her dignity, Cameron is able to avoid
objectifying Elaine while at the same time underscoring how carrying out Elaine's final
wishes demonstrates her independence. As Lukitsch has noted,
Elaine's prominence in Cameron's photographic illustrations of the Idylls
of the King illuminates the importance of the other women characters in
the Illustrations. As with images of Elaine, their importance is not overt
but becomes apparent in connections and continuities among the
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photographs in the Illustrations. The women characters are active, the
men, passive and reactive. 191
More significant than their activity itself is the fact that by conveying these women as
active, Cameron suggests a new construction of gender identity that clearly departs from
Tennyson's vision of these Arthurian women.
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CHAPTER SIX: CAMERON'S REFASHIONING OF SHAKESPEARE'S HEROINES
Julia Margaret Cameron dedicated the period from 1867-1874 to producing
photographic images from Shakespeare’s plays. Through her images of Shakespearean
women, Cameron refashioned a number of female characters, who were typically
depicted as passive and weak, into women whose identities extended beyond those
stereotypes. For instance, Cameron reinvents the character of Cordelia underscoring
Cordelia's independent nature by focusing on her proclamation of selfless love for her
father. Unlike works from other nineteenth-century artists, Cameron’s versions of
Ophelia and Juliet are not depicted in death; instead they are portrayed in contemplation
and action. Cameron rereads Cordelia, Ophelia and Juliet to emphasize moments of their
autonomy rather than their deaths.
During the nineteenth century, artists of multiple media appropriated
Shakespeare's works so much that a "Cult of Shakespeare" resulted. As Robert Sawyer
notes in his study of Victorian appropriations of Shakespeare, these appropriations varied
tremendously in their interpretations for "At the same time that Shakespeare's cultural
status may be used to subvert traditional ideas of politics and sexuality [...] it may also be
used to promote more conservative policies and literary interpretations [...]." 192 Visual
artists and writers alike "stole" from Shakespeare, to use Sawyer's terminology, to
comment on different aspects of Victorian society. 193 By examining the number of
Shakespeare-themed paintings or the frequency with which his characters were portrayed
and discussed it becomes apparent that Cameron's reliance on the bard for inspiration was
not unusual. For instance, between 1791 and 1828, five Ophelias were exhibited at the
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Royal Academy. Then in the 1831 Royal Academy exhibition, three Ophelias were
shown. After 1831, more Ophelias were displayed at the Royal Academy per decade than
had been shown between 1791 and 1838, making it apparent in Kimberly Rhodes'
analysis of visual representations of Ophelia in the nineteenth century that "Nineteenth-
century French and American commentators seemed to identify Ophelia as a national
British type." 194 While works at the Royal Academy were a good indicator of popular art
of the day, there were artists whose works in other media also demonstrated the appeal of
Shakespeare. With regard to Ophelia, as Rhodes notes, "her image appears across media
(painting, sculpture, photography, prints, book illustration) and status (from Royal
Academy pictures categorized as history paintings to cartes-de-visite photographs),
saturating the visual culture of the period." 195 At the time Cameron is working on her
images, Ophelia is, as Bram Dijkstra has argued,
the later nineteenth-century’s all-time favorite example of the love-crazed
self-sacrificial woman who most perfectly demonstrated her devotion to
man by descending into madness, who surrounded herself with flowers to
show her equivalence to them, and who in the end committed herself to a
watery grave, thereby fulfilling the nineteenth-century male’s fondest
fantasies of feminine dependency. 196
Ophelia's identification as a national British type makes sense because her "devotion to
man," her self-sacrifice and her "feminine dependency" fulfill the obligations of the
Victorian woman to be devout, self-effacing and not independent. Furthermore, as Sylvia
Wolf argues in her study of the women in Cameron's photographs,
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A Victorian woman's economic prospects [...] were largely defined by her
association with a man. This is one of the reasons why female characters
in art and literature who faced the loss or betrayal of a man were treated
with sympathy by the Victorians. Ophelia, [...] who faced the loss of both
her father and her lover, was one of the Victorian's favorite heroines.197
An unthreatening figure to sympathize with, Ophelia appealed to many artists because
she reinforced Victorian expectations for women. Kimberly Rhodes argues for the
insidious force of Ophelia's image in endlessly replicating Victorian patriarchal values:
During the Victorian period in Britain, the shape, function, and
representation of women's bodies were most often regulated and
interpreted by such public and private patriarchal institutions as [...] the
arts. This assured female passivity, beauty, and sexual innocence and
therefore protected the ideology of separate spheres for men (public) and
women (private), [...]. As a result, women superficially had a limited
amount of formal, cultural power in shaping their own bodily image. A
number of emblematic fictional female figures such as Shakespeare's
Ophelia dominated the visual culture of the period, functioning as
templates of Victorian femininities [...]. 198
Because Ophelia in many characterizations encompassed "passivity, beauty, and sexual
inexperience," she figures as an appropriate "template of Victorian femininity." Despite
the dominant sense of what Ophelia represented to Britain, as already mentioned,
Victorians appropriated Shakespeare's Ophelia and other women characters in
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significantly varied ways. Arguably Cameron was among the artists whose negotiations
with Shakespeare's heroines demonstrated how artists could transcend less favorable
aspects of Shakespeare's women in order to imaginatively suggest more progressive
views about gender.
One of Cameron's earliest images of Shakespeare's plays is an 1865 photograph
simply titled Cordelia and King Lear (see fig. 39).
Figure 39. Julia Margaret Cameron, Cordelia and King Lear, 1865. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 460.
Lear and Cordelia are pictured together shortly after he learns of her death. Lear's head is
bowed, and his face hovers over Cordelia's outstretched form; Lear's expression conveys
somber resignation and regret. Dijkstra argues that “representations of beautiful women
safely dead remained the late nineteenth-century painter’s favorite way of depicting the
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transcendent spiritual value of passive feminine sacrifice.” 199 While Cameron seems to
participate in this restrictive gender ideology with her image of Cordelia, I would argue
that in Cameron's depiction of Cordelia with Lear, Cameron emphasizes Lear’s hand
(literally and figuratively) in his daughter's demise. So while, on the surface, this
rendering of Cordelia resembles other Victorian images of dead, or seemingly dead,
women, I assert that Lear's presence as the mournful father, as well as the modest
portrayal of Cordelia, prevent her from being fetishized. It seems that Cameron reads
Cordelia as the self-governing daughter whose independence in refusing to pander to her
father with flattery has resulted in a chain of events that leads to her death.
Cameron underscores Lear's role in Cordelia's death by dominating the
photograph with his form. Lear's eyes are opened, although the angle of his head makes it
difficult for the viewer to see specifically where his eyes rest. Cordelia's visage is one of
soft repose. Her white garb, layered and shroud-like, underscores the purity of her selfless
devotion to Lear. Cameron contemporary Anna Jameson sees Cordelia as emblematic of
the kind of dignity Cameron underscores, and Jameson asserts that
If "Lear" be the grandest of Shakespeare's tragedies, Cordelia is herself,
as a human being governed by the purest and holiest impulses and
motives, the most refined from all dross of selfishness and passion,
approaches near to perfection; and in her adaptation as a dramatic
personage to a determinate plan of action, may be called altogether
perfect. 200
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Jameson recognizes Cordelia's rare nature and in addition to complimenting
Shakespeare's characterization of her, Jameson catalogs the qualities that Cameron
appears to admire. Victorian poet Algernon Charles Swinburne saw Cordelia in a less
favorable light, demonstrating the varying ways in which Shakespeare's heroines were
appropriated. As summarized in Victorian Appropriations of Shakespeare, (2003),
Swinburne challenged the image of Cordelia as saintly and stressed, "'We love her... with
a love that at once tempers and heightens our worship, for the rough and abrupt repetition
of her nobly unmerciful reply' to her father's demands. And this one response, 'almost
cruel and assuredly severe,' ignites the 'spark which kindles into eternal life the most
tragic of tragedies in the world.'" 201 Jameson seems much more sympathetic to Cordelia
than Swinburne, who underscores what he sees as harsh, while Cameron finds a middle
ground from which to recognize both Cordelia's love as a daughter and self-reliance as a
woman. By portraying Cordelia dead with Lear, Cameron highlights how patriarchy
suppresses women. Where Goneril and Regan demonstrate a subordinate compliance in
their expressions of love for Lear, Cordelia asserts her own will by refusing to lay
hyperbolic praise on her father. In this sense, Cordelia's refusal to speak falsely is an
assertion of power. Lear's heavy presence in the image represents the metaphorical
control he asserted over Cordelia, that patriarchy unjustly extinguished female autonomy.
Ultimately, by rendering a dead Cordelia in front of her mournful father, Cameron
illuminates the final moment of Lear's reckoning and, in my reading, epitomizes the
consequence of female assertiveness rejected.
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Created nearly a decade later, Cameron's 1872 photograph (see fig. 40)
emphasizes the exact moment Cordelia chooses to risk her father's displeasure for the
sake of her principles.
Figure 40. Julia Margaret Cameron, King Lear Allotting His Kingdom to His Three Daughters, 1872. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 460.
This image appears to be a far more complex "snapshot" moment of Cordelia's decision
to "Love and be silent." Cameron gives more attention to this title, calling it: King Lear
allotting his Kingdom / to his three daughters / 'What Shall Cordelia do / Love and be
silent.' In Seizing the Light: A History of Photography, (2008) Robert Hirsch analyzes
such titles noting that "As allegorical subjects gained popularity in the mid-1850's, many
photographers titled their portraits [...] so that viewers could bring their formal
knowledge to bear." 202 By using a more descriptive title, Cameron emphasizes Cordelia's
lines, which clearly directs viewers' attention to Cordelia's response to her father. It was
often the case, as Hirsch shows, that photographers "who did not wish for this type of
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interchange or who wanted to be more ambiguous and less directional referred to their
work as 'untitled.' Such an open-ended viewing situation made it the viewer's
responsibility to supply the meaning." 203 In this case, it seems Cameron fully intended
for viewers to recall Cordelia's active choice to "Love and be silent."
Although Cordelia’s lines are stressed in the title, viewers can’t help but notice
that the composition of the photograph draws immediate attention to Lear before
Cordelia. Lear's powerful presence and stark white hair and beard make up the core of the
image and take up the most space. In this Lear image, Cameron depicts Lear holding a
staff, a visual, phallic symbol of male power. By positioning Lear with his stern gaze in
the middle of the photograph, Cameron overtly conveys his displeasure with Cordelia.
Moreover, Lear’s centrality serves to highlight Cordelia's choice to “Love and be silent.”
By the angle of his gaze, viewers are directed toward Cordelia, although Lear does not
appear to be looking at her but past her, off in the distance. As Cameron encourages
viewers to remember Cordelia's act of independence, with their attention inevitably being
drawn to Lear, Cameron subtly calls on the viewers to question the consequences of a
patriarchy that stifles female autonomy.
Another aspect of Cameron's image that stands out is the way Cameron
distinguishes Cordelia from her family by making her appear blurry. If Cordelia's
response to "Love and be Silent" is so central to this photograph, why would Cameron
choose to make Cordelia out of focus like an apparition? The effect of this blurring I
would argue is to convey the ghostly but persistent presence Cordelia maintains
throughout the course of King Lear. Compared to Goneril and Regan, Shakespeare gives
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Cordelia the fewest number of speaking lines. Simultaneously, however, Shakespeare
centralizes Cordelia within the plot and, therefore, keeps her in the mind of both the
audience and of Lear. Because the memory of Cordelia's candid though brief declaration
of devotion haunts Lear throughout the course of the play, Cordelia's spectrality in
Cameron's photograph and Shakespeare's play gives her an unexpected, intangible form
of power. Jameson argues that Cordelia's character "rests upon the two sublimest
principles of human action-- the love of truth and the sense of duty; but these when they
stand alone [...] are apt to strike us as severe and cold. Shakespeare has, therefore,
wreathed them round with the dearest attributes of our feminine nature, the power of
feeling and inspiring affection." 204 As Cordelia's spectrality in Cameron's image gets the
attention of her viewers, I would argue that Cameron refashions Cordelia into a figure
whose visual absence (like her textual absence) actually empowers her by accentuating
her "silent" state, a state that can be viewed as an assertion of free will and independence
from patriarchal expectation.
Aware of the importance of her sitters’ body language, as is apparent with Lear's
dominating presence, Cameron positions Cordelia, Goneril and Regan very deliberately.
Cameron, as we know, studied how classical portraitists positioned their subjects, and as
Zirka Z. Filipczak explains in "Poses and Passions: Mona Lisa’s ‘Closely Folded’
Hands," that “if portraits described a sitter’s temperament, they did so through props and
settings, color, and especially positioning of the body.” 205 Cameron utilizes these portrait
techniques. In Cameron's photograph of Lear dispersing his kingdom, the position of the
three sisters demonstrates their degree of loyalty to Lear. These positions emphasize the
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daughters' honesty or deviousness respectively. Cordelia who is truthful, faces Lear while
Goneril and Regan, deceitfully flattering, remain hidden behind their father. Cameron's
placing of their hands is also significant. While Lear holds his staff with confidence,
Cordelia's hands are held clasped together in a fashion that makes them appear bound.
This physical positioning of Cordelia's hands duplicates the metaphorical reality that her
hands are indeed tied. If she chooses to flatter her father she risks his displeasure and her
inheritance; if she chooses to exaggerate her true feelings, she negates her autonomy.
Cordelia makes the choice that preserves her integrity.
Another important observation about Cordelia's hands is the way they maintain a
position of modesty with one hand crossed over the other and close to her body.
Leonardo da Vinci “noted without elaboration in his journal what ‘intention of the soul’
the pose of folded hands represented: ‘Women must be represented in modest attitudes
(atti vergogniosi), their legs close together, their arms closely folded.’” 206 Da Vinci’s
ideas echoed the prevailing traditions of early Italian portraits, which Cameron was
familiar with. Furthermore, the folded position of women’s hands also referred to
childbirth and demonstrated “a psychological indicator of modesty with a physical
reference to fertility." 207 Additionally, “The arc formed by joining the hands directs
attention to the uterus area yet also seems to protect and fence it in." 208 In Cordelia’s
case, Cameron seems to be suggesting that the moment in the play wherein Lear allots his
kingdom to his daughters is what determines Cordelia’s marriageability. She would be
more valuable as a wife with a portion of her father’s land than without. Although the
King of France still marries her, the moment of the allotment determines Cordelia’s
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potential to be both wife and mother, and it is appropriate, therefore, that Cameron
emphasizes these aspects of Cordelia's womanhood. Jameson asserts that in Cordelia "we
see that if Cordelia had never known her father, had never been rejected from his love,
had never been born a princess or crowned a queen, she would not have been less
Cordelia, less distinctly herself-- that is, a woman of a steady mind, of calm but deep
affections, of inflexible truth, of few words, and of reserved deportment." 209 Like
Jameson's characterization of Cordelia, Cameron's Cordelia withstands her challenging
circumstances and proudly displays her sovereignty by insisting on silence over false
declarations, thereby demonstrating her "deep affections" and "inflexible truth."
In the same way that Cameron emphasizes Cordelia's independence, another
female Shakespearean character that Cameron rethinks is Ophelia. Indeed the “weak-
witted expiring woman” was the model for a host of PreRaphaelite and later works.210 As
Alan R. Young articulates in his chapter “The Ophelia Phenomenon,” in his larger work
on Hamlet and the visual arts, there are two groups of nineteenth-century Ophelias. The
first group (see fig. 41) "almost invariably depicts Ophelia as a solitary figure within a
natural setting, often among dense trees or tall reeds and often beside the water that will
be her undoing.” 211
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Figure 41. John William Waterhouse, Ophelia, 1894. Essential Pre-Raphaelites By Lucinda Hawksley. Bath: Parragon, 2000, 238.
Ophelia of the second group, according to Young, is depicted in the water, generally on
her back (see fig. 42). With both groups, Ophelia typically “wear[s] a white dress […] her
arms, legs, and even breasts […] exposed, while her hair is loose and disordered.” 212
Cameron, however, revises these depictions and rewrites Victorian gender ideology by
giving Ophelia power within a living, enduring state.
Figure 42. John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851-52. The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites By Elizabeth Prettejohn. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000, 154.
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Cameron's Ophelias subtly and surprisingly undermine oppressive ideas of Victorian
femininity, specifically the fetishization of the beautiful dead woman. As Kimberly
Rhodes argues, Ophelia's "image can subversively point to the limitations of conventional
female social roles [...]." 213 Rhodes further comments on the way in which Ophelia
"embodies virtue and transgression equally as she journeys from dutiful daughter, loving
sister and devoted lover to madwoman and suicide in Hamlet. She is therefore an apt
figure through which to process the volatile, paradoxical construction of Victorian
femininities."214 It would seem that Cameron recognizes the complexity of femininity
that Rhodes speaks of in as much as Cameron privileges Ophelia in her living state. Art
Historian Carol Solomon Keifer has noted Ophelia's wide-ranging portrayals: "Once seen
only as a pathetic, innocent, submissive daughter, sister and lover, Ophelia is now [in the
twenty-first century] also perceived as a figure of strength, a heroine whose madness is
seen as an assertion of self, an act of rebellion against patriarchal control." 215 Indeed,
there were competing ways to interpret Ophelia's response to patriarchy during the
nineteenth century in part because
the appeal of Ophelia's character in nineteenth-century Britain seems to
have been Shakespeare's vaguely drawn outline of her and the multitude of
questions she presents. Multiple interpretations of her character ensue and
an exaggerated sense of femininity emerges from Shakespeare's portrait.
Ophelia [in the twenty-first century] becomes a blank page on which
patriarchy can inscribe and project its desires. 216
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Rhodes is right about depictions of Ophelia in the nineteenth-century generally reflecting
patriarchal values, though Cameron enters history as one artist whose Shakespearean
depictions seem to present a vision of women more stalwart.
Jameson, though a woman, provides one view of Ophelia that epitomizes the
patriarchal vision Rhodes discusses. Jameson sees Ophelia as a
poor dove, beating with weary wing, bewildered amid the storm. It is the
helplessness of Ophelia, arising merely from her innocence, and pictured
without any indication of weakness, which melts us with such profound
pity. She is so young, that neither her mind nor her person have attained
maturity: she is not aware of the nature of her own feelings; they are
prematurely developed in their full force before she has strength to bear
them; and love and grief together rend and shatter the frail existence, like
the burning fluid poured into a crystal vase.
Jameson gives very little autonomy to Ophelia and blames her heartbreak on emotional
immaturity. Jameson's view of Ophelia, though a sympathetic one, is more in line with
the artists that depict Ophelia as a frail, demented girl on the verge of suicide. Robert
Sawyer summarizes Christy Desmet's observation that although Jameson,
borrows from the romantic notion that "Shakespeare enjoys a superior
grasp of all human nature," she writes back against that tradition,
"submit[ting] to male authority in order to supercede it." Jameson, like
[George] Eliot, struggled with the place of the female writer in the
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nineteenth century culture, part of the ongoing debate between ego and
humility.217
Like both Jameson and Eliot, Cameron had to be conscious of the ways her
appropriations of Shakespeare differed from her fellow male artists. Regardless, unlike
many of her contemporaries, Cameron refused to give her viewers the satisfaction of
gaping at Ophelia on the edge of the water or at Ophelia dead. Cameron does not make
Ophelia available for male consumption by depicting her bare-breasted or with exposed
flesh. Instead, Cameron's Ophelias undermine the prevailing trend to gaze at beautiful
dead women from a safe position because her Ophelias maintain an active, living state.
Cameron's versions of Ophelia not only deviated from her fellow artists, at times
they actually influenced them. In Alan Young's study of what he calls the "Ophelia
Phenomenon," he notes how typically, “the principle reason for the attractiveness of
Ophelia to artists, feminist scholars have surmised, was that she provided artists and the
viewers of their works (particularly males) with the opportunity to contemplate and
contain (notably when madness leads to death) the threatening fantasy of uncontrolled
female sexuality.” 218 Cameron, however, deliberately chooses not to exploit the
character of Ophelia in this virgin/whore dichotomy or to give in to the demand for
spectacle. Instead Cameron’s Ophelia, alive and more lucid than most other versions of
Ophelia, is rendered in a strong, upright position, both facing the viewer and in profile
(see figs. 45-46). This close-up image that emphasizes Ophelia's humanity supposedly
had an impact on Rossetti's compositions of Ophelia. Julia Fagan-King, as Rhodes notes,
suggests that
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contact with Cameron's work precipitated changes in the painter's
compositions: 'it was not until 1867 that the unusual head positions with
which he had experimented in his photography appeared in his paintings....
About the same time, in the mid-1860's, his models began to occupy the
whole canvas, with no more than a hint of setting or scenery around
them.'219
Not only does Cameron avoid depicting Ophelia as a deranged, suicidal "fantasy of
feminine dependency," she also, apparently, influences Rossetti's compositions and
makes his version of Ophelia less passive. 220 Cameron shields Ophelia from the
voyeuristic male gaze associated with the viewing of most images of Ophelia; she also
brings Ophelia face to face with her viewer. By meeting Ophelia's gaze, viewers are
forced to acknowledge and confront this suffering woman's strength and fortitude.
Cameron’s first 1867 study of Ophelia is intense and striking (see fig. 43).
Figure 43. Julia Margaret Cameron, Ophelia, 1867. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 240.
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In contrast to other more elaborate images, Cameron employs dark clothes and minimal
flowers, with only a few roses at the base of Ophelia’s neck. This photograph lacks most
overtly Ophelia-like qualities of nineteenth-century portrayals. There is no water’s edge
shown here, and, though she is clearly troubled, Ophelia does not appear weak or
deranged. The Ophelia depicted here is contemplative with the open mouth suggesting
she may be burdened or preoccupied. The hair is free flowing, emphasizing her
unrestrained nature. While delicate and aloof, her gaze is fixed on an unseen focal point,
again suggesting a heavy-hearted inwardness. Unlike so many other nineteenth-century
versions that depict her dead or dying, this Ophelia persists.
Cameron’s second version of Ophelia, another study done in 1867, also conveys a
contemplative Ophelia (see fig. 44).
Figure 44. Julia Margaret Cameron, Ophelia Study No. 2, 1867. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 460.
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Her expression and gaze in this photograph depict a woman caught in a moment of
serious consideration. While there are flowers in her hat and at the base of her neck, little
else makes this image recognizable as Ophelia. In fact, the hat, which seems to be a kind
of sailor straw hat, makes her more of a nineteenth-century figure than one from Hamlet's
early medieval time. According to Fashion and Its Social Agendas, (2000), "The use of
men's hats by women [...] began in the middle of the [nineteenth] century. Sailors' straw
hats were first adopted as a fashionable style for children before becoming fashionable
for women in the 1860's." 221 Adhering to fashion standards indicates a presence of mind,
and Cameron might have used a hat in this image to create a modern nineteenth-century
Ophelia-- one sane enough to be mindful of her appearance. Nevertheless, perhaps
because Cameron realized that the hat would thrust viewers ahead of rather than back to
Hamlet's time, she omitted the accessory in her other renditions. Another possible
interpretation is that the straw was meant to symbolize the asylum. As Jameson
references in her introduction to Shakespeare's Heroines, "they used to condemn poor
distempered wretches to straw and darkness, stripes and a strait waistcoat...." 222 It is
possible that Cameron intended for viewers to make the association between Ophelia's
hat and the asylum, while simultaneously stressing that Ophelia still thrives. The long-
flowing hair under the hat, as in all of her Ophelia images, is a staple for most of
Cameron’s women. This choice of hair arrangement is almost certainly more an influence
of Pre-Raphaelitism than a symbol of Ophelia's psychic disarray. While this Ophelia
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image seems the least recognizable of Cameron's renditions, Ophelia is nonetheless
animate and persevering.
In Ophelia and Victorian Visual Culture (2008), Rhodes argues that Cameron
"concentrates more on the character’s state of mind and creates an inner life for her and
questions society’s privileging of rationality.” 223 While I agree that Cameron is likely
drawing viewers' attention to Ophelia's inner life as a way to see Ophelia as a more
complex character, I disagree that Cameron intends to make a statement against
"privileging" rationality. If that were her objective, wouldn't she emphasize Ophelia's
madness rather than subvert it? Cameron instead represents a woman struggling to
transcend her circumstances, and while the dark drapery might seem to suggest
impending death, the moment captured is of an Ophelia very much alive.
Significantly, as Cameron works with her vision of Ophelia over time, Ophelia
becomes more vital and more engaged, rather than perishing and detached as she is most
commonly portrayed by others. Cameron’s 1874 versions of Ophelia maintain the sitting
pose but depict a strikingly more present Ophelia who looks directly at the viewer (see
figs. 45-46). In doing so, Cameron enlivens Ophelia and asserts her humanity and
personhood, thus disallowing the viewer any opportunities for sexual fantasy or
objectification of her body. While both 1874 images maintain the symbolic significance
of the flowers, these faces of Ophelia make her fully present and so intensely human that
viewers feel uncomfortable making direct eye contact for too long. Indeed, the returned
gaze of these particular Ophelias erases the ability of the male viewer to feel as though, in
the words of twenty-first century feminist Annette Kuhn, he is "sneaking a peek." 224 As
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a result, reducing Ophelia to an object becomes less likely, and Cameron's
representations communicate a stronger more self-possessed Ophelia than the Ophelias of
her contemporaries.
Figure 45. Julia Margaret Cameron, Ophelia, 1874. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 238.
Additionally, these renditions resist emphasizing any state of fragile, suicidal passivity.
One bold countenance is defiant and assertive (see fig. 45), and the other seems to
recognize the kind of hardiness that comes from having endured great suffering and
reached an ultimate calm despite the experience (see fig. 46).
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Figure 46. Julia Margaret Cameron, Ophelia, 1874. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 239.
In both images, the hand in the hair emphasizes that Ophelia is dissatisfied, and the
gesture underscores the frustration and disappointment found in the faces. In one image,
(see fig. 46), Ophelia holds reeds, while in the other, (see fig. 45), the reeds are cropped
out. The Ophelia without the reeds, per Cameron's portrayal, is more emotionally
disturbed than the Ophelia with them. I would argue that the reeds' presence, therefore,
acts as a visual reminder that Ophelia, like Christ who is also pictured with reeds in
Christian iconography, meets with great suffering, but, in Cameron's version, continues to
endure. Indeed, without the clue of the reeds, viewers might not know they were looking
at a characterization of Ophelia. By the time viewers find from Cameron’s title who the
subject actually is, Ophelia has already been rewritten in their gaze since Cameron’s
Ophelia defies the “lack of control over her own fate” that so many other versions
emphasize 225 Yes, Cameron's Ophelia is in conflict, but she is not the same mad or dead
Ophelia found in so many other Victorian versions of her and, of course, in Shakespeare.
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In “Representing Ophelia,” Elaine Showalter attests that each succeeding age has
tailored Ophelia’s image to fit its vision of femininity. 226 Cameron, I argue, reforms
Ophelia in opposition to the Victorian versions of a dead, or near-dead, Ophelia and
creates a vital, unrelenting Ophelia. Cameron's Ophelia defies expectations of passivity
for women, and since Cameron cannot change Ophelia’s madness or death, Cameron
instead reshapes the way viewers think about how Ophelia faces her tragic circumstances
and resolutely moves toward her fate. Ophelia is a woman challenged by extraordinary
circumstances and her suffering is uncontrollable. However, a live Ophelia emphasizes
Cameron's determination to dispute the expectation that Victorian women are not
equipped to bear much hardship. Ophelia, like so many of Cameron's women, asserts
strength and autonomy in response to circumstances of suffering.
Another female figure that Julia Margaret Cameron recreates is Shakespeare’s
Juliet. Of all the key moments from the play Cameron could select, Cameron makes a
disorienting choice in depicting Juliet with Friar Lawrence. Despite this being one of
Romeo and Juliet’s less visually dramatic scenes, readers and viewers alike still know it
as a pivotal moment, a crucial moment of decision-making for Juliet. According to Gail
Marshall's study of Victorian Shakespeare appropriations, the majority of Victorian
images of the play depict either Romeo and Juliet's second balcony scene (in III.v), where
the lovers depart after consummating their marriage, or the crypt scene.227 Both scenes
have potential to present the viewer with varying degrees of sexual suggestion, according
to Marshall, because they capture a post-coital scene as well as the eroticism of death.
Marshall elaborates,
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The deathbed scene is the easiest way in which we gain entrance to the
Victorian bedroom, and Romeo and Juliet's deaths gain us a similarly rare
access to the sight of a mediated form of sexual intimacy. In this scene, the
pleasures of the death scene, which Regina Barreca argues is of popular
relish for the Victorians, is used to enable the punitive connection of sex
and death which is so prominent in Victorian culture.228
Marshall, via Barreca, offers an explanation for the visual ubiquity of these particular
scenes that is consistent with the culture of death theories of Bronfen and Dijkstra. Unlike
the artists who represent these moments of the play, Cameron makes a selection that
shows Juliet in an active, less exhibitionist light.
While some interpretations of the play emphasize Romeo and Juliet as "star-
crossed lovers" who are victims of fate, other readings view the characters as possessing
free will and making choices that lead to their tragic end. For instance, Douglas L.
Peterson in his chapter "Romeo and Juliet and the Art of Moral Navigation" focuses on
the lovers’ decision-making aptitude. He asserts,
They are “star-crossed” lovers in a quite literal sense. Providence, having
decreed that they will settle the feud, has selected the stars as the agency
through which its determination will be affected. Once they meet, they
will be powerfully attracted to each other. But it does not follow that since
their love at first sight is providentially ordained, they are deprived of
freedom of choice, or that their deaths are inevitable as the only means of
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restoring civic order. How they manage their affections, once they have
met—hence how they fulfill their destiny—will be up to them. 229
In both of her Juliet photographs, Cameron shows Juliet exercising this freedom of choice
in her procurement of the fatal potion. Unlike more frequently depicted moments, such as
the balcony scene or Juliet’s suicide that emphasize how Juliet is swept up in the intense
passions of the moment, this instance with Friar Lawrence marks Juliet’s thoughtful
deliberation and resolve. Jameson also recognizes in Juliet her merits as a self-governing
woman. Jameson says, "The picture in 'Twelfth Night' of the wan girl dying of love, who
'pined in thought, and with a green and yellow melancholy,' would never surely occur to
us when thinking on the enamoured and impassioned Juliet, in whose bosom love keeps a
fiery vigil, kindling tenderness into enthusiasm, enthusiasm into passion, passion into
heroism!" 230 Jameson goes on to exclaim, "I remember no dramatic character conveying
the same impression of singleness of purpose and devotion of heart and soul ...." 231
Cameron too recognizes Juliet's soundness of mind and focused devotion, and Cameron's
images of Juliet emphasize these aspects.
By highlighting the exchange between Friar Lawrence and Juliet, Cameron
deliberately emphasizes not Juliet's romantic love for Romeo, but Juliet’s resolve to defy
unreasonable familial and gender expectations. Instead of emphasizing the helplessness
that Juliet must feel in her circumstances, Cameron recreates this moment by giving
agency to her heroine even though her fate is already prescribed. In refashioning Juliet
this way, Cameron revitalizes Juliet as a woman capable of risky, momentous decisions,
like that of acquiring the potion.
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As with Cordelia and Ophelia, if we examine these two 1865 portraits of Friar
Lawrence and Juliet, we must note Cameron’s positioning of her sitters. In the first of the
two images, (see fig. 47), Juliet and Friar Lawrence face each other and join hands with
the all-important vial either missing or concealed.
Figure 47. Julia Margaret Cameron, Friar Laurence and Juliet, 1865. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 448.
The visually absent vial reinforces the clandestine nature of Juliet's task and underscores
Juliet's choice to take risks for the sake of securing her own happiness. In this portrait,
Friar Lawrence seems very grave, while Juliet looks solemn. Their mutual gaze reflects
the serious intensity of this moment of covert exchange. Juliet is positioned at more or
less equal height, perhaps to highlight their shared responsibility in this act of defiance.
Juliet's outfit is mostly white and accentuates Juliet’s purity and status as a new bride in
stark contrast with Friar Lawrence's dark habit, which signifies his religious orders as
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well as the cloaked task at hand. Juliet's white gown also makes her presence more
prominent in the photograph, perhaps to demonstrate that the final decision to accept and
use the potion rests on Juliet. Juliet's head is upturned delicately, while the Friar's head
seems magically suspended, perhaps to underscore his alchemical practices. Cameron's
image emphasizes the secrecy of the moment and reminds viewers that Juliet is a woman
attempting to take control of her circumstances.
In the second of the two images (see fig. 48), viewers see Friar Lawrence putting
the vial in Juliet’s hand.
Figure 48. Julia Margaret Cameron, Friar Laurence and Juliet, 1865. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 448.
Although the image with the vial concealed better shows the secrecy of Juliet’s task (see
fig. 47), allowing viewers to see the vial makes this crucial decision of Juliet's more
recognizable. The centrality of the vial in the image highlights the significance of the
171
potion in providing Juliet with forbidden happiness. In this version, Juliet's dark clothes
emphasize that her secret nocturnal visit must be hidden from her parents. Juliet's
expression and seemingly supplicant position convey her desperation. Friar Lawrence's
tender expression is calming and more compassionate than in the first image. Cameron’s
characterization of Juliet is compelling in a new way. Though she remains Romeo's star-
crossed lover, through Cameron's refashioning Juliet is shown as a woman who is self-
governing and willing to defy the oppressive wishes of her family and carve out her own
fate.
Roberta Barker, author of "The Feminist Ophelia and the (Re)production of
Gender," puts the rewriting of women such as Ophelia and Juliet into perspective when
she says of twenty-first century Shakespearean depictions: “they protest against the
victimization of women, but may reproduce the ‘natural’ opposition between male and
female that feeds gender asymmetry instead of exposing the constructed nature of gender
identities. Even those committed to eradicating gender oppression replicate the discourses
that give rise to it.” 232 With Cameron’s representation of Cordelia, Ophelia and Juliet,
the artist repeats the stories of female suffering from Shakespeare's texts, but chooses to
harness and refocus that suffering as a way of highlighting women's multi-faceted
identities. Cameron chooses to render these women as women who strive to reshape
rather than submit to their circumstances. Cameron subverts the discourses that promote
gender oppression when she rewrites or avoids the image of the beautiful dead woman
and her subsequent objectification. In Cameron's photographs, Cordelia’s declaration of
love becomes a site for reclaiming her respect. Similarly, Cameron's figuration of
172
Ophelia is in direct contrast with nineteenth-century depictions that focus on her madness
and suicide. Cameron's Ophelia is strong, thoughtful and vibrant, facing her
circumstances, and sometimes viewers, boldly. Finally, Cameron's Juliet is remade to be
a stoic, resourceful woman, determined to forge her own course in life. All three
Shakespearean heroines, via Cameron's renditions of them, become symbols of female
autonomy and call into question not only restrictive gender ideology but also the visual
perpetuation of that ideology that persists during the nineteenth century.
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CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUSION
Over the course of my analysis of Julia Margaret Cameron's literary works, I have
asserted that Cameron challenged Victorian gender ideology in important ways. After
considering her writings, I have argued that Cameron's photographs can now be
interpreted as further testament to her conception of women as far more multi-faceted
than they were given credit for. Through her female characters, Cameron refashioned
women from male-authored texts into figures that underscored female empowerment
rather than female submission and inaction. As Rhodes argues, "Images destabilize texts
by challenging their primacy and offering alternative interpretive methods." 233 I have
argued that Cameron's photographs do just what Rhodes describes. Cameron went
beyond just duplicating stereotypes and rewrote significant male-authored texts by
transforming female characters into women who contradicted expected Victorian notions
of women's roles. Using her writings as evidence, I have shown that Cameron's choices in
how to depict female characters stemmed from her bold ideas about the ways women
could be daughters, mothers and wives but could also demonstrate endurance, stoicism
and independence.
In addition to tracing the transgressive qualities of Cameron's works, I have also
drawn attention to Cameron's biography to assert that she was a living example of a
resilient and ambitious female artist. Cameron's entrance into the male world of
photography, I have argued, was a significant act that extended the boundaries of the
male and female spheres. In the same way that Florence Nightingale participated within
both the male and female sphere, Cameron likewise maintained positions within the two
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spheres. Where Nightingale occupied female space as a charitable caretaker, Cameron, I
argued, occupied female space as a mothering friend, devoted wife and doting mother.
Where Nightingale occupied male space as an independent, self-governing administrator,
Cameron occupied male space as a self-promoting female artist. Where Nightingale
occupied a male space within the confines of a military realm, I argued that Cameron
occupied a male space within the social circles of significant male artists and thinkers.
To better understand the significance of Cameron's emergence within Victorian
photography, I turn to the painting Nameless and Friendless (see fig. 49), by Emily Mary
Osborn.
Figure 49. Emily Mary Osborn, Nameless and Friendless, 1857, Painting Women: Victorian Women Artists By Deborah Cherry, London: Routledge, 1993. 78. Painted in 1857, the work depicts a female artist with a young male escort trying to sell
her paintings to male dealers. Next to the female artist a man in a top hat holds a painting
175
of a scantily clad ballet dancer. The dancer is meant to represent the frequent depiction in
nineteenth-century art of women as prostitutes. Juxtapose not only the painting of the
dancer with the unseen canvas of the female artist, but the dancer to the artist herself and
it appears that Osborn is making her own statement about the limited and often degrading
roles available to women. Art historian Deborah Cherry uses Nameless and Friendless to
outline the challenging position of emerging women artists. Cherry argues,
These representations of women managed one of the central constructions
of feminine sexuality in which the polarity of pure/fallen was mapped on
an axis of class: the respectable bourgeois woman was positioned against
and visually differentiated from the working-class prostitute. The painting
introduces a third figuration of femininity, the middle-class working
woman who could not easily be categorized in terms of either polarity and
whose respectability, the basis of her class identity and her sexuality, is at
risk. The representation of a woman artist entering a dealer's shop to
engage in an economic transaction contravened widely held views on
sexual difference. Bourgeois masculinity was hegemonically defined in
relation to paid professional and mercantile work, government, politics,
and the management of finance capital, industrial enterprises and public
institutions. By contrast bourgeois femininity was organized in the family,
around marriage, domesticity, motherhood, child-care and a newly
emergent idea of home. 234
176
Cherry points out the precarious position of emerging female artists, and I have already
mentioned how Cameron was quite aware that her role in the photographic world as a
self-promoting artist could potentially fall under great scrutiny. Although, as biographers
note, Cameron was determined to gain her own position in the growing field of
photography as art, she, nonetheless, was careful not to stray away entirely from
Victorian notions of women. Cameron maintained her roles as mother and wife at the
same time she forged ahead in her new career as an artist. Even in those capacities,
however, Cameron pushed against the defined boundaries of the domestic. For instance,
as Cameron scholar Sylvia Wolf argues,
Cameron fulfilled her duties as wife and mother. She also managed more
than simple domestic activities, sometimes assuming the patriarchal role in
her own household. Cameron's letters signal she had a strong command of
financial matters, including knowledge about the family's real estate
holdings in Ceylon, about annuities, and about which child would get what
percentage of the proceeds when property was sold. For a Victorian
woman to be privy to that kind of information in detail was uncommon:
estate and inheritance affairs were ordinarily the domain of a woman's
husband or father. The same could be said of home remodeling, yet in
1872, Cameron initiated the renovation of the family residence in
Freshwater, overseeing the knocking down of walls, the installation of
windows, and the building of two porches, with an eye toward making part
of her home attractive to renters. 235
177
Wolf's description of Cameron's investment in household affairs of all kinds coincides
with the picture of Cameron as a woman heavily involved in the security and well-being
of her family whether religious, financial or otherwise. Wolf's account also reinforces the
fact that Cameron easily fits as one of the Victorian women whose presence within male
and female spheres calls into question that traditional delineation in the first place. As an
artist too, Cameron's place is rather remarkable, and Cherry's description of the woman
artist "contra[vening] widely held views on sexual difference" captures the obstacles
Cameron and other artists faced if they were female. As I've already mentioned, Cameron
biographers acknowledge that she recognized that an active pursuit of monetary
compensation for her work might be misconstrued. This awareness did not stop her,
however, from heavily promoting her own work.
Unlike the woman in Osborn's painting who seems to be operating alone, I have
argued that Cameron was savvy in gaining her place among male artists. Her close
relationships with successful and revered artists and writers gave her a foothold in a
male-dominated realm. Cameron's space within both the male and female sphere, her
literary pursuits, and her refashioning of famous female characters from literature, make
her an interesting window into Victorian culture and the challenges facing the female
artist of the day.
Cameron's presence within the male and female sphere was not unlike the kind of
convergence that visual and literary artists Elizabeth Siddall and Christina Rossetti
experienced. Based on existing photographs, we know Cameron served as an occasional
model for photographers. Like both Siddall and Rossetti, then, Cameron knew what it
178
was like to be on the other side of the artist's apparatus, be it canvas or camera. For some
women, this was a risky place to be, for as Cherry points out, "In moving from millinery
to modeling and then to the practice of art [Siddall] risked her respectability, already
jeopardized by the association between needlework and prostitution." 236 Siddall's
connection with D. G. Rossetti was a source of both personal stultification and artistic
influence, and, as I have already argued, Rossetti's drawings of Siddall did little to
accentuate her identity as a creative, capable woman. Cherry argues,
These drawings were thus sites for the redefinition of femininity in the
social order of sexual difference in which woman as visual sign was
appropriated for the masculine gaze. It was in and against this regime that
Elizabeth Siddall pictured herself as one who sees, and produced a range
of work which was concerned with the gaze of women. 237
Just as Siddall operated within and against male conceptions of women, so did Cameron.
Like Siddall, Cameron's place among other artists, specifically male artists, invited their
influence but quickly evolved into a source from which to gain independence.
As a final example of Cameron's vision for women I turn to her image of Zenobia
(see fig. 50).
179
Figure 50. Julia Margaret Cameron, Zenobia, 1870. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs By Julian Cox and Colin Ford. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, 279. An ambitious and powerful woman from history, Zenobia represents many of the
characteristics of women Cameron sought to exemplify in both her writings and
photographs. Described as one of the most beautiful and noble women in the east,
Zenobia ruled the Eastern provinces of the Roman empire from 267 to 273 AD from
Palmyra in central Syria. She earned "the image of an independent woman capable of
performing any tasks of a competent ruler. The Historia Augusta tells that she was even
braver than her husband, that she actively took part in military campaigns in person, and
that she rode and drank with her generals." 238 Zenobia's determined, independent spirit
resembles Cameron's own personality and ambition. Similarly, "Tradition accords
[Zenobia's] renown for hosting literary salons and surrounding herself with philosophers
and poets."239 Cameron's representation of Zenobia is one of the most stern looking
women that she produced. In fact, the model for the photograph almost refused to sit for
180
the image claiming, "I secretly objected to be taken in a 'masculine' character, and it was
only after much persuasion that Mrs. Cameron succeeded in overcoming my
objections."240 The final product resonates with an intensity that captures Zenobia's firm
ambition (and 'masculine character') but not at the cost of her femininity. Like Cameron
and the women characters she depicted, Zenobia has a place in history that recognizes her
occupation within both the male and female sphere. In the end, Zenobia stands as the
perfect example of the multi-faceted identity Cameron so admired. Like her photographs,
Cameron's literary legacy illuminates her desire to subvert prescribed Victorian gender
roles for women, and through her art and life, Cameron fashions models of strength and
femininity like Zenobia for women to uphold.
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Appendix A
Julia Margaret Cameron, "Prayer Written When I Quickened," 1838.
Most merciful Lord God who in Thy loving kindness
dost bestow upon me blessings which I deserve not &
in Thy mercy dost spare me punishments which I
most justly deserve listen oh listen I beseech thee to
the voice of this Thy Servant who would lift up her
heart in thanksgiving & pour out her soul in prayer to
Thee. With every power of my heart do I thank &
praise thee most holy God for the blessed hope and
promise of offspring which thou hast granted me. Oh
perfect I beseech Thee the great work of creation
which Thou hast begun in me & grant that the child
whom thou hast now quickened with the breath of
life may in due time be safely born into the world and
may thro Thy care & blessing be preserved to be a
comfort to its Parents and thro Thy grace and guidance
a glory to Thy Church. Preserve me if such be Thy
will thro’ the pain and peril of Childbirth and spare
my life, enabling me thro Thy assistance to perform
my duties to Thee, to my best beloved and darling
Husband, and to the Child or Children with which
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Thou mayst bless me. Enable me with firm soul
and a steady heart to support the hour of my trial
feeling strong in Thy strength and resting firm dependence
on the promise
that Thou wilt allow no danger to befal [sic] me no
accident or evil to come near to hurt me which is not
ordered in Thy wisdom for my clerical good & that
of those most dear to me. And on This hope do I
most heavenly Father wholly & entirely set my trust,
only beseeching Thee if Thou should'st think fit to
remove me from this world to bestow in mercy a
double portion of Thy tender care on my poor deso-
late husband and Motherless Child. For my Husband I
more especially entreat Thy protection. In mercy hear
the cry of my soul and be unto him a Father and a
Friend, a God of love and of Compassion a Saviour,
a Comforter and a Redeemer. Most blessed Lord
forsake him neither by night nor by day. Take thy watch
about his path and about his bed and direct all
his ways. Thou alone dost know how fondly dear
This my husband is to me, how great is his tender-
ness, how true is his love. Thou knowest that I have
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only been too prone to make him my earthly Idol and
thus have feared to offend Thee-- Thou knowest also
that his constant tenderness has sweetened every hour
of my life & that
my only grief has been that his faith is not yet fixed
on the Savior the Rock of Ages in whom I trust &
to whom I make my prayer. Thine eye canst see what
no human eye has beheld & my secret sorrow is not
hidden from Thee. If it be then Thy will that I should
die in Childbirth my last prayer is that Thou should'st
grant me in death the blessing I have so earnestly
desired in life and enlighten his mind so as to enable
him to see more clearly & to believe more fully spiri-
tual things. Grant that in becoming a Parent his heart
may be touched with thy mercies and He may more
earnestly seek & desire Thy favour, and when he
seeks oh grant in mercy that he may find. Open to
him the veil of Thy sanctuary and engrave upon his soul
the blessed truths of Thy gospel so that the
Savior may become to him his only hope & the
Savior's blood seal him with the seal of redemption.
When he is in affliction and his widowed heart doth
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mourn for heaviness do Thou send him that peace
which this world cannot give-- comfort him with Thy
love and enable him to fix a steady eye of faith on the hope
which is my abiding trust & joy that we may
thro' our Savior's merits be finally
re-united in the realms of bliss above-- and having
implored This Thy Heavenly Care and Watchfulness
for one who is more dear to me than tongue can
tell I would beseech thee to calm my mind and enable
me to leave this earthly scene without regret
having made my peace with Thee. Now that I have
time left me on earth may I endeavor unceasingly
to finish the work of my salvation and to prepare my mind
simply to believe and that I may believe may I
be constant in prayer fervent in spirit serving the
Lord. Now whilst I have health may I make the
Saviour my friend so that if the dangers of Child-
bearing are great I may bear them with a quiet soul
having made peace with Thee. And in the hour of
death let not my heart be troubled but enable me to
enter Eternity with humble faith in that Redeemer
who is sufficient to save the greatest of sinners who
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put their trust in him. But should I be spared to rise
from my bed of sickness and know the fullness of a
Mother's joy oh grant that I may live to praise and
magnify Thy Holy name for all Thy mercies towards
me. Grant me the assistance of Thy Spirit in enabling
me to watch over the body & soul of my Infant &
spare me to be a tender and loving wife to my
husband giving us both joyful and contented hearts
that we may gratefully receive the blessings of which
a Parents heart must be full. And when possessing
the gifts-- may we not forget the Giver of all good but
so walk in this world as to secure a continuance of thy
mercy both here and in the world to come. Through
the merits of Jesus Christ our Savior & Redeemer-