Sexual Taboos, Catholic Views, and Critical Reviews: The Unspoken Words About Two Pre-Raphaelite Paintings
Thomas J. Tobin
Dante Rossetti and William Holman Hunt openly use images of women as symbols or types in their paintings--from opposite viewpoints.  Yet most contemporary critical reviews of Rossetti's The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849) and Hunt's Awakening Conscience (1853) do not discuss the various messages these works contained.  This seems odd, especially since Rossetti accompanied his painting with two sonnets to explain the allegorical meanings of his symbols, and John Ruskin felt it necessary to explain Hunt’s didactic aim--the reformation of prostitutes--after he felt that Hunt’s reviewers had missed his point.
Why, then, if the viewing public--and, by extension, the critical media--were supposed to be challenged by the overtly religious and sexual messages in these two works, did the reviewers in the Athenæum, the Art Journal, the London Times, and the Illustrated London News not speak about the didactic elements of Girlhood and Awakening Conscience?
I posit that the reason that these critics did not address the messages of these works, instead turning to criticism of the works’ praxis, was that two forces were at work which silenced them. In the case of The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, critics were loath to claim sympathy with Rossetti’s Roman Catholic leanings.  Similarly, the Victorian taboo against male expression of knowledge of the seamier side of life--especially prostitution, drug-taking, and gambling--prevented these same critics from responding in print to the overt sexual messages in The Awakening Conscience. 
I wish to explore the disparity between the public and private male personæ in Victorian Britain, using the reviews of The Girlhood of Mary Virgin and The Awakening Conscience as examples of the double standard used to excuse and hide men's impolitic knowledge of religious popery, and their socially unacceptable knowledge of illicit carnal pleasures.
	Specifically, both The Girlhood of Mary Virgin and The Awakening Conscience represent women as types, the former through an image of the sacred, the latter using images of the profane.  The criticism which was garnered by these two paintings focuses primarily on Rossetti’s and Hunt’s lack of painterly technique, but this focus on technique, I argue, stems from two difficult critical tasks.  In order for the critics of The Girlhood to comment on its subject matter, they must needs give implicit, if not overt, acknowledgment of Rossetti’s Catholic symbology, at a time when Catholicism was out of favor with the conservative policies of many periodicals.  In the case of The Awakening Conscience, the critic would need to have commented on a subject about which the “proper” Victorian gentleman was supposed to profess no knowledge: prostitution.  An examination of the ways in which these two paintings were received may help to shed some light on the political and social codes by which the Victorian “gentleman” was to behave. 
Helene Roberts examines of specific reviews of Pre-Raphaelite output, in order to argue that the criticial press does mention the Roman Catholic leanings of the Pre-Raphaelites, but the passages which she cites do not contain overt explications of Papist leanings, and can be read as more and less polite allusions to such Catholicism.  Although I agree with  Roberts’ assertion that the Pre-Raphaelites “were seen as Roman Catholic and were burdened with all of the associations of popery and foreignness that so repulsed the English,” The Girlhood of Mary Virgin did not draw much criticism about the religious message that it portrayed.  Rather, the criticism of Mary Virgin focuses on Rossetti’s painting technique, or lack thereof.  Indeed, the 7 April 1849 review of the Free Exhibition of Modern Art which appeared in The Athenæum focuses on Rossetti’s up-and-coming talents in design:
[It is] a work which for its invention and for many parts of its design would be creditable to any Exhibition. . . .  The picture--which is full of allegory--has much of that sacred mysticism inseparable from the works of the early masters.  While immature practice is evident in the executive department of the work, every allusion gives evidence of maturity of thought--every detail that might amplify the subject has found a place in it. 
More important than what is written here is what is not; the reviewer, in the space where I have inserted ellipses, gives a lengthy description of the elements of the painting.  His attempt at balance is far less definitive, as we can see in this segment: though Girlhood is “full of allegory,” this allegory is never explained by the critic, because doing so would necessitate an open exposition of Papist symbols.  No example of the message inherent in the work is given, though the message is alluded to in broad terms.  After a year’s time, Rossetti found disfavor with the Athenæum because of his Papist subjects.  The 20 April 1850 issue of The Athenæum had much to say about this painting and its companion piece Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850): 
Here, a certain amount of talent is distorted from its legitimate course by a prominent crotchet.  Ignoring all that has made the art great in the works of the greatest masters, the school to which Mr. Rosetti [sic] belongs would begin the work anew, and accompany the faltering steps of its earliest explorers. . . .  An unintelligent imitation of the mere technicalities of Old Art--golden glories, fanciful scribblings on the frames, and other infantine [sic] absurdities--constitutes all its claim.
The Athenæum critic does not condemn Rossetti’s paintings as blasphemous, even though the typology of both of Rossetti’s canvases suggests Roman Catholicism--the suspicious Mary-worshipping idoloatry against which the politically conservative Athenæum often railed.  I believe that the mention of “fanciful scribblings on the frames” indicates the Athenæum reviewer’s unease with the Papist ideas that the painting espouses, without actually discussing the Catholic elements of either the painting or the verses.
	Though The Athenæum attempted to give some voice to its feelings about the didactic content of The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, the Art Journal did not.  Because its readers were by and large Tory, the Art Journal critic stays with a technical description of the work’s merits and faults in the April 1849 number’s review of “The Hyde Park Gallery.”  I here quote the review in its entirety:
This picture is the most successful as a pure imitation of early Florentine art that we have seen in this country.  The artist has worked in austere cultivation of all the virtues of the ancient fathers.  The Virgin is seated on the right of the composition, embroidering a lily on a piece of red velvet, her work apparently being directed by Elizabeth, who is seated by her side; and near them is a cherub, watering a lily.  There is no shade in the picture, the figures being rounded by gradations jealous of the slightest approach to depth.  The expression and character of the features are intense and vivacious, and these, together with the draperies and accessories, are elaborated into the highest degree of nicety.  Thus, with all the severities of the Giotteschi, we find necessarily the advances made by Pietro della Francesca and Paolo Ucello, without those of Masolino de Panicale.
I have quoted this review at such length to show that in it there is no discussion of anything but Rossetti’s form.  Though the critic offhandedly condemns Rossetti as a good imitator of the Quattrocento, he does nothing to address the iconography in the painting.  It is described, yes, but in such a manner as to catalog, not to comment.  A few final examples of this tendency may serve to aid my claim about the taboo against critics associating themselves too closely with Catholicism.
	The Literary Gazette and Journal of the Belles Lettres published its short notice of the Free Exhibition on 31 March 1849.  The entire exhibition is reviewed in about two hundred words, but The Girlhood of Mary Virgin is featured prominently at the end.  The Gazette reviewer states:
We must not forget to direct attention to a very uncommon work, in emulation of the old missal style, highly finished, indeed, though in oil; it is stippled all over, and the hairs, every one of them, touched with gilding; it is called the “Girlhood of Mary Virgin,” and by G. D. Rossetti.
This is true to this reviewer’s form, in that he compliments landscapes and portraits exclusively in the rest of the review.  This apoliticism in art criticism is striking, especially considering the political reportage concerning the Irish Question, and the excommunication of Robert Greaves, M.P. which were discussed in other sections of this issue of The Literary Gazette.  I can only conclude that for The Athenæum and The Literary Gazette, directly confronting the issue of Catholicism was taboo, except as a news item--and certainly had ought only to be infrequently a subject for public discourse through either painting or critical writing.
	A short notice of the painting also occurs in the 26 March 1849 Morning Chronicle, which reads:
. . .  there is a striking picture by G. D. Rossetti, “The Girlhood of Mary Virgin,” remarkable, as the first work of a very young artist, for the feeling with which it adopts the “early religious” style, and reprehensible for the blind idolatry of the imitation.  But the head of the Virgin, the background, and the general details of the picture are finely conceived and executed.
Here we can see again the codified condemnation of Popery, in the guise of “idolatry of the imitation.”  Though the Chronicle critic pays his respects to the technical merits of Rossetti’s canvas, and is able to speak very clearly about this admiration through the use of example, he is not at liberty to go into such detail about the Catholic religiosity of the subject or Rossetti’s portrayal of Papist symbols.
	A final short review of the piece appears in the 31 March 1849 number of The Builder.  Although the readers, and by extension other critics, are admonished in the opening paragraphs of the review “not [to] expect to find a Michelangelo or a Raffaele in every striver after the beautiful,” and not to “compare the works of the year of any set of men with galleries of ancient art--selected specimens of many masters from the works of many years,” Rossetti’s piece is judged in just such lights.  The brief notice includes, like that in The Literary Gazette, a note on Rossetti’s archaic handling of the finish:
“The Girlhood of Mary, Virgin,” by D. G. Rossetti, is in the manner of the early school, finished with extraordinary minuteness and displaying a high tone of mind.  It is one of the most noticeable pictures in the gallery.
Here again is a discussion of the effect of Mary Virgin couched in very neutral terms.  If indeed, Catholic subject matter were off-limits to the Builder critic, then one would expect that other, non-Catholic, works in the same review would receive dissimilar treatment.  Indeed, Christ Teaching Humility, by R[onald] S. Lauder is treated according to its subject matter, wherein the reviewer cites the relevant Biblical passage which explicates the subject of Lauder’s painting.  This reinforces my suspicion that the reason for critical silence about the subject matter of Girlhood was based on its overtly Papist nature.  This helps to shed light on the societal double standard employed by the Victorian gentleman.  Though he may have private knowledge about the taboo topic of Catholicism, as the reviewer from The Athenæum implies in his cryptic “full of allegory” statement, he may not publicly go into particulars.  Religious leaning was not the only taboo-generating area of critical appraisal; another equally powerful was the topic of prostitution.
In the case of The Awakening Conscience, as well, the critical press focused more on the technical merits (or faults) of Willian Holman Hunt’s canvas.  He thought of his paintings as vehicles by which he could spread his message of religious piety and strict morality.  He believed that his paintings existed in a dual social dynamic: art mirrors the actions of people, and people act upon what they see in art.  An example of this dynamic is The Awakening Conscience, which portrays a “kept woman” at the moment she realizes the sinful nature of her ways.  She is painted as rising from the lap of her lover in repentance for her wicked actions.  Christopher Wood says that this painting is one of the first Victorian paintings that explicitly deals with the problem of the kept woman. 
Though there is no verse from Hunt appended to the painting to explain it, Hunt did eventually perform an exegesis of his symbology, but well after the critical press had already commented on the painting.   Hunt’s intended message to his viewers was one of repentance.  In treating the subject of prostitution openly, he hoped to expose an evil that was less than uncommon in his time.  This painting was intended to change social attitudes toward sexuality because it deals openly with a very common, but not talked about, subject.  Indeed, previous canvases exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition entitled The Awakening Conscience caused very little stir because of their conventional angel-on-the-shoulder depiction of the innocent waif, as in Thomas Booth’s The Awakened Conscience, which was reproduced in the Illustrated London News on 14 May 1853.
Even though Holman Hunt painted The Awakening Conscience in an effort to warn society about the evils of infidelity and adultery, the Athenaeum critic denounced its subject matter and technique after the 1854 Academy competition, paying little attention to the intended didacticism of the work.  The critic does say that The Awakening Conscience was “drawn from a very dark and repulsive side of domestic life”, but spends the rest of his review in criticizing Holman Hunt’s painting technique, as happened to The Girlhood of Mary Virgin.
The Art Journal’s treatment of the painting in its review of the Academy exhibition for 1854 attempts to relate the subject to Scripture passages, an intent which Hunt himself later denied.   Other than this attempt at sanitizing the subject for its readership, the Art Journal piece focuses on the manner in which the details of the picture are represented:
The piano, the furniture, the dress of the figures, everything is made out with the most studious exactitude; but independent of many considerations into which we cannot enter, we humbly submit that the labour on such a version of the subject is thrown away [emphasis mine].
It is the element of The Awakening Conscience that the reviewer cannot enter into--that it is a de facto presentation of a prostitute engaged in her practice--that lends currency to my theory of the social taboo against public acknowledgment of the subject at all, especially in print.  Indeed, the Illustrated London News, usually an ally of the emerging Pre-Raphaelite style, devotes but one line to the piece by way of review on 6 May 1854, noting merely that it is “‘The Awaken[i]ng Conscience,’ a pre-Raphaelite picture, by W. H. Hunt.”
The 18 May 1854 London Times also reviewed The Awakening Conscience without directly mentioning its subject, saying that 
[w]ith the utmost readiness to humour even the caprices of art, when they bear the stamp of originality and genius, we can extend no toleration to a mere servile imitation of the cramped style, false perspective, and crude color of remote antiquity.
	John Ruskin, by now a supporter of the aims of Pre-Raphaelitism, wrote to the Times on 25 May 1854 to explain Hunt’s intentions, which had been left out of earlier reviews:
Not that this picture is obscure, its story feebly told. I am at a loss to know how its meaning could be rendered more distinctly, but assuredly it is not understood.  People gaze at in a blank wonder, and leave it hopelessly; so that, though it is almost an insult to the painter to explain his thoughts in this instance, I cannot persuade myself to leave it thus misunderstood. . . .  Even to the mere spectator a strange interest exalts the accessories of a scene in which he bears witness to human sorrow.  There is not a single object in all that room [in the painting], common, modern, vulgar (in the vulgar sense, as it may be), but it becomes tragical, if rightly read.
Ruskin’s dilemma, in writing his letter, was to impress upon the reading public of The Times the nature of the subject of The Awakening Conscience without actually printing it.  He resorts to phrases like “lost girl,” and “the woman taken in adultery” to disassociate the actress from her act, as though prostitution were a crime forced upon otherwise respectable women by unscrupulous men--which view was also espoused by William Acton in the introduction to the first edition of his famous treatise on prostitution.   Even Ruskin, who exhorts his readers to take heed of the sexual warning inherent in the painting, uses the politic phraseology of social convention to avoid naming the act.
	This political phraseology is also illustrated in a parody of the painting, which was distributed, along with other Pre-Raphaelite parodies, in a pamphlet entitled “Poems Inspired by Certain Pictures at the Art Treasures Exhibition, Manchester.”  Included opposite a rude cartoon of the painting is a poem which lampoons Hunt’s choice of subject matter.  The coarse jester who wrote the doggerel parody--whom we now know to be John Burley Waring--cannot, however, bring himself to name the subject matter of The Awakening Conscience, instead resorting to these lines:
Now, really, Mr. Holman Hunt, this can’t be called correct,
And in your more developed stage what are we to expect?
Some things, there are, you know, bon ton don’t recognise at all,
I’m really quite surprised that you should paint a what-d’ye-call!
It is in this parody that we can see most clearly the taboo against the open acknowledgment of even the existence of prostitution, where even the word “prostitute” must be replaced by the epithet “what-d’ye-call,” even when elsewhere Waring is quite bawdy, resorting to toilet humor and gross references to Dante Rossetti’s dubious sexuality.
	My conclusion is, by necessity, one of a speculative nature rather than a logical end to premises.  That art critics did not discuss Rossetti’s Catholicism or Hunt’s fallen woman in open terms is evident;  I posit that they refrained from doing so for fear of social disenfranchisement.  Public opinion--also read “social convention”--dictated that print discussions of unfavorable or disreputable topics was forbidden to the gentleman reviewer, and thus The Girlhood of Mary Virgin and The Awakening Conscience received criticism of their praxis only.

Notes

Bibliography
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---. The Illustrated London News 6 May 1854: 426. 
---. The London Times 18 May 1854: 8.
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---. Dante Gabriel Rossetti:  His Family Letters, With a Memoir. 2 vols. Ed. William Michael Rossetti. London, 1895.
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---. “The Pre-Raphaelites.”  The London Times 21,733 (25 May 1854): 7.
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