Elaine Shefer, Birds, Cages and Women in Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite Art.

Hall, Donald E.

Elaine Shefer, Birds, Cages and Women in Victorian and PreRaphaelite Art (Peter Lang, 1990), 278 pp., $81.50.

Elaine Shefer's strange but intriguing title, Birds, Cages and Women in Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite Art, proves to be quite misleading, for it fails to mention the windows, dresses, cottages, undergarments, fruits and convents that also receive attention in what is unfortunately a muddled and maddening study. Nearly three hundred pages long, Shefer's book seems both thin and endless, full of poorly supported and randomly organized commentary culminating in a meandering final paragraph, quoted here in its entirely:

 Of the four artists who were closely associated with the group [the
 Pre-Raphaelites], Walter Deverell presents an outstanding example
 of an artist who adopted the use of personal meanings. The further
 removed the artist became from the original group, the less
 personal his work grew. So too, although various paintings by those
 who came after the original Brotherhood look reminescent of the
 Pre-Raphaelite style, capturing as they may do a certain mood, a
 way of dress, or a stylistic mannerism, none of them contained the
 personal level of meaning that characterized the original movement.
 Ironically, this personal message still conveyed the traditional
 Victorian view of women. (252)

Just as this conclusion wanders vaguely over time, intent, and vectors of influence, so too does the work as a whole lack both a clear purpose and a unified theoretical substructure. So much is wrong with this book that it is impossible in a brief review to address adequately its many digressions, omissions, and organizational flaws. But in mentioning a few of its most glaring problems, I hope to communicate to the reader of this review some on the profound frustration that

I felt as I read Shefer's study.

Shefer states that she wishes to introduce a "new approach to Pre-Raphaelite art" by demonstrating how "close the Pre-Raphaelites were to Victorian values" (xxiii), even though "these artists were unaware that they were expressing such values at all" (4). But is this really a "new approach"? A cursory perusal of any standard art history text would reveal that the Pre-Raphaelites were deeply influenced by their cultural context. Shefer in effect sets up a spurious dichotomy that she then proves did not actually exist. For Shefer, the Pre-Raphaelites were "personal" artists, which means they were consciously autobiographical in their paintings and poetry, and they were determined to resist all that was "traditional," a term that for Shefer vaguely refers to a unified set of sexist beliefs shared by all other artists, indeed all individuals throughout time before the birth of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. She argues (questionably) that other Victorian artists had consciously "joined forces ... to dissuade the Victorian woman from taking a course contrary to cherished values" (50). The Pre-Raphaelites, on the other hand, wished to "dissociate themselves" from such "conventions," to "explain the real-life situations of the women with whom they were personally involved" (245), yet finally could not escape many of their own sexist preconceptions. To this reviewer, such an inevitable linkage between individuals and the world in which they live seems predictable and easily substantiated, perhaps worthy of an article, but not a book.

Of course, in focusing on images of birds, cages, and women, Shefer certainly could have added to our knowledge of Victorian iconography and the dynamics of social oppression, but should have avoided lengthy discussions of intent and spent more time exploring the complex relationship between artistic representation and lived experience. Shefer does not even consistently recognize the influence of social and historical forces on the artist that she examines. Walter Deverell is presented as as "outsider and a relatively objective observer" (112), whose painting The Grey Parrot is reduced to a direct, personal attack on Dante Rossetti and his relationship with Elizabeth Siddal. Shefer admits that the woman in the painting does not actually resemble Siddal, but gives nearly an entire page of convoluted and unconvincing reasons why the figure nevertheless must represent Siddal and only Siddal. She substantially ignores any larger social context for the painting and more or less designates Deverell a "good guy" and Rossetti a "bad guy." The latter's shetch of himself and Siddal in 1853 then becomes an unmediated expression of the reality of their daily lives--he is "svengali-like" and she is in a "hypnotic state" (92). Shefer uses such "proof" to make the overly simple point that Rossetti was sexist and therefore "Victorian." Throughout Birds, Cages and Women she belabors and repeats such facile analysis, never actually probing the role of art in the production and reproduction of Victorian "values."

But at the same time that the study is repetitious, it is also digressive and confusing. Her discussion wanders aimlessly over artists, centuries, quotations from poetry, and images of strawberries, hoopskirts, and peasants, as well as the ever-present birds, cages, and women. Her chapters are filled with barely relevant material and bizarre phrases and statements. In her introduction, Shefer refers to the "home-cage syndrome" (xxiv), but neither defines the term nor returns to it. She later mentions the "syndrome of the fallen woman" (174), a phrase that also goes unexplained. In a particularly long digression, she chastizes Samuel Richardson for "playing light" (179) with the seduction and mistreatment of Clarissa, indicating clearly her belief that his novel is a comedy rather than a tragedy; one wonders how carefully Shefer read Clarissa before taking issue with Richardson. Time and again she makes broad claims that are easily challenged and dismissed. She first states summarily that "The Victorians were a sentimental people" (13), but ten pages later claims that "Like Ruskin the Victorians in general wished to approach nature from a more practical, common-sense point of view" (23). Neither generalization is convincingly supported, and they seem, in fact, to stand in contradiction. I could continue listing such questionable passages, but am in danger of becoming repetitious myself.

I can only guess about some of the reasons behind this book's many problems, but in examining the bibliography (which incidentally contains many format errors), one failing becomes very clear. Her section "General Studies on Women" shows a notable lack of current feminist social, literary, and art criticism. Granted, the research for this study was carried out between 1976 and 1978 according to the preface, but given the fact that twelve years then passed before publication, I cannot understand why Shefer did not, for example, examine and build upon Nina Auerbach's incisive analysis of Victorian art and literature in Woman and the Demon, published in 1982. Most of her secondary sources here and throughout the bibliography date from the early- to mid-twentieth century and help make this book seem strangely anachronistic as well as hopelessly muddled. Furthermore, the publisher's list price is absurdly high at $81.50, even when one considers its numerous (but poorly reproduced) plates. In sum, I can not recommend this book to any individual or library.

Donald E. Hall

California State University, Northridge