Images of Woman in Pre-Raphaelite Visual and Textual Narratives

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, banded in 1848 by a group of exuberant young painters and poets, swam against the tides of the standard teachings of the Royal Academy, thereby receiving the epithet of Victorian Avant-Garde. Their paintings' intense focus on nature and painstakingly studied details in vivid colours distinguish them as being notably Pre-Raphaelite. The Bible, Medieval romances, Arthurian stories, Chaucer, and Shakespeare are just a few of the canonical literature that inspired their ideas, and the female figures they portrayed on their canvases. It should be acknowledged, nonetheless, that their affinity to modern poetry was unquestionably the source of their avant-garde energy. Providing a pluralistic narrative through the combination of text and image, the female figures are means to their expression of demythologizing the Victorian identity of woman.

Through an interaction between key textual and visual narratives, Tülay Dağoğlu provides a critical and explorative interpretation of the prevalent theme of woman in art and text, particularly in the nineteenth century. The selection of visual and textual texts is justified by the recognition of conceptual image treatments as well as by the shifting attitudes toward women in Victorian culture: the symbol of female excellence, the woman in shadow, the madwoman, the fallen woman, and the femme fatale.