Book contents
- Gerard Manley Hopkins in Context
- Gerard Manley Hopkins in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Note on Editions and Abbreviations
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Places
- Part II Aesthetic and Cultural Contexts
- Part III Religious, Theological, and Philosophical Contexts
- Part IV Nature, Science, and the Environment
- Part V Gender, Sexuality, and the Body
- Chapter 21 Queerness and Homosociality
- Chapter 22 Masculinity and the Labouring Body
- Chapter 23 Femininity and Martyrdom
- Chapter 24 Eroticism
- Part VI Form, Genre, and Poetics
- Part VII Reception and Influence
- Further Reading
- Index
Chapter 23 - Femininity and Martyrdom
from Part V - Gender, Sexuality, and the Body
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2025
- Gerard Manley Hopkins in Context
- Gerard Manley Hopkins in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Note on Editions and Abbreviations
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Places
- Part II Aesthetic and Cultural Contexts
- Part III Religious, Theological, and Philosophical Contexts
- Part IV Nature, Science, and the Environment
- Part V Gender, Sexuality, and the Body
- Chapter 21 Queerness and Homosociality
- Chapter 22 Masculinity and the Labouring Body
- Chapter 23 Femininity and Martyrdom
- Chapter 24 Eroticism
- Part VI Form, Genre, and Poetics
- Part VII Reception and Influence
- Further Reading
- Index
Summary
This chapter argues that Gerard Manley Hopkins’s preoccupation with agony and martyrdom is best understood in the broader context of Victorian figurations of religious suffering as inherently feminine. The chapter outlines the multiple factors shaping Victorian interest in female martyrs, from new theories of sexology to anxieties over Roman Catholicism. It then examines texts by writers such as Sarah Stickney Ellis, John Mason Neale, and Charles Kingsley that contain representations of suffering as a Christian virtue to which women are innately disposed. Such texts ostensibly frame women’s martyrdom as a paradoxical means of power through self-disavowal while often containing voyeuristic descriptions of suffering female flesh. Next, the work of Christina Rossetti is introduced as a counterpoint that avoids lurid depictions of sexualized violence in favour of reflections on female subjectivity and salvation. The chapter ends by finding in Hopkins’s martyr texts a complex and nonreductive engagement in this wider discourse.
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- Gerard Manley Hopkins in Context , pp. 202 - 209Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025