Tate Britain Pre-Raphaelites Exhibit and The Magdalenin Modern Times: The Mythology of the Fallen Woman in Pre-Raphaelite Painting, author Lynn Nead

I decided to start the research by reading The Magdalen in Modern Times: The Mythology of the Fallen Woman in Pre-Raphaelite Painting, author Lynn Nead.  The papers aim was to establish the way in which paintings and other forms of cultural representation participated in the definition of sexual behavior and ‘respectability’ during the nineteenth century. The paper starts with a background of nineteenth century society and what was thought to be normal?  Using the term “Victorian morality” you start to learn the certain rules inflicted upon men and women during Victorian England, such as the different gender roles in society. One of the best ways to describe the women’s role is the term “women’s mission” or domestic being. Women were seen to have three roles as a mother, a wife and daughter and that was the women’s aim in life. Her respectability was based on an appearance of carefully arranged neat hair and a modest dress.  A woman was to have no sexual desire whilst males sexual urge was seen to be active and spontaneous. To sum it up males were seen to be strong and women were seen to be weak. Using a repeated Victorian metaphor, he is the oak and she is the ivy describes the roles that were acceptable for a man and a women during the nineteenth century.  There seems to be two lives for a man during the nineteenth century, city and country life. City life was regarded as impersonal and just a place for a man’s work it was seen as a dangerous place with displaced people such as the homeless and prostitutes breeding ground whereas country life was the family home regarded as safe, permanent and ordered. Going on from city life the paper starts to discuss the falling women. The falling woman was seen in terms of lost innocence. The image of a falling woman became a subject of pity with the end of their life as suicide on the Thames being no other way out.

The Pre-Raphaelites exhibit at Tate Britain describes the Pre-Raphaelites as the Victorian Avant-Garde at its time overturning current orthodoxies in art and replacing them with new. The museum discusses the qualities of the paintings such as a more realistic figure specifically on facial features rather than the Italian beautified perfect figures. The paintings were more flattened with crisper features and bolder colors this is partly due to the new technology of photography meaning people were seeing the world differently.  The PRB made the subject of the falling women an acceptable subject in art rejecting the Italian tradition of history and religious paintings they applied these subjects to modern times one being by John Everett Millais painting ‘Christ In The House of His Parents’ who depicts Jesus in ordinary working people house with the figures depicting ordinary working people. In the exhibition there was no mention of the subject of the falling women brought up. In a way the museum uses the Italian Renaissance of beautifying some of the real subject matter giving the museum goer a more glamorous version of the era.