I chose the art piece called Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In this painting, a woman in despair has taken a bite out of a pomegranate. In class, we have talked about how women who eat fruit in paintings usually resembles eating the forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden. This implies that this woman indulged in pleasure she should not have, curing her. As I read from the Tate Britain website, the fruit, in this case, is fatal, and the light behind her is from the upper world. This woman is meant to represent an unfaithful wife. The incense-burden, according to the Tate website symbolized the attribute of a goddess. We can see an unhappy and gloomy woman in this painting that symbolizes a classic Victorian woman, which relates to the poem called Remember by Christina Rosetti. The poem is also a classic Victorian poem about mourning. She writes about her lover and her refusal to let the memory of her to be sad. Both of these forms of art explore women’s role in society. They both also have a theme of oppression. Both women are suffering. Personally, when I saw this painting at the Tate, it made me think of how Victorian women were represented, and I could feel the pain of the woman in this painting. Reading the poem by Christina Rosetti, although there is a little bit more of a play with gender roles, the reader still experienced the pain and suffering of women at this time.

Sources Used:

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/rossetti-proserpine-n05064

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45000/remember-56d224509b7ae