In its anonymous reviewof Christina Rossetti'sSpeaking Likenesses(1874), theAcademynotes rather hopelessly: “this will probably be one of the most popular children's books this winter. We wish we could understand it” (606). The reviewer – who later dwells on the “uncomfortable feeling” generated by this children's tale and its accompanying images – still counts as the most generous among the largely puzzled and horrified readership of Rossetti's story about three sets of girls experiencing violence and failure in their respective fantasy worlds (606). While clearly such dystopic plots are not out of place in Victorian literature about children, something about Rossetti's unusual narrative bothered her contemporaries. John Ruskin, for instance, bluntly wondered how Rossetti and Arthur Hughes, who illustrated the story, together could “sink so low” (qtd. in Auerbach and Knoepflmacher 318). In any case, the book still sold on the Christmas market, and a few months later, Rossetti would publishAnnus Domini, a benign pocketbook of daily prayers that stands in stark contrast to the grim prose ofSpeaking Likenesses.It is therefore tempting to cast this work of children's fiction as a strange anomaly in Rossetti's oeuvre, which from the 1870s, beginning withAnnus Domini, to her death in 1894, became almost exclusively dominated by devotional prose and poetry. In contrast, I argue in the following essay thatSpeaking Likenessespoints to a widespread interest throughout Rossetti's writing – but especially in her most well-known poems fromGoblin Market and Other Poems(1862) andA Prince's Progress(1866) – in alternative modes of sociality that refract a conceptual preoccupation with likeness, rather than difference. Following traditions of critical thought that have paid increasing attention to relations that resist oppositional logic – Stephanie Engelstein and Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick's late work comes to mind here – I establish the primacy of a horizontal axis of similarity in bothSpeaking Likenessesand Rossetti's most canonical poem, “Goblin Market.” For Rossetti, the lure of similarity, or minimal difference, manifests itself most often in siblinghood and more specifically, sisterhood, the dominant kinship relation throughout her lyrics fromGoblin Market and Other Poems. Sisterhood anchors the title poem I will examine in this essay, as well as shorter verses such as “Noble Sisters” and “Sister Maude.” At issue in such relations of likeness is the discreteness of a (typically) feminine self. For Rossetti, shunning oppositional structures of desire and difference that typically produce individuation (exemplified in the heterosexual couple form and the titles of her uneasy lyrics “He and She” and “Wife to Husband”) allows for a new (albeit perilous) space to carve out one's particularity as a gendered being.

中文翻译：

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不稳定的生活：克里斯蒂娜·罗塞蒂和相似的形式

在其匿名评论中克里斯蒂娜·罗塞蒂的说话的相似之处（1874 年），学院相当绝望地写道：“这可能是今年冬天最受欢迎的儿童读物之一。我们希望我们能理解它”（606）。这位评论家——后来详述了这个儿童故事及其伴随的图像所产生的“不舒服的感觉”——仍然被认为是罗塞蒂关于三组女孩在各自的经历中经历暴力和失败的故事的大部分困惑和恐惧的读者中最慷慨的。幻想世界（606）。虽然显然这种反乌托邦情节在维多利亚时代关于儿童的文学作品中并不少见，但罗塞蒂不寻常的叙述却让她的同时代人感到不安。例如，约翰·拉斯金 (John Ruskin) 直言不讳地想知道，罗塞蒂和为这个故事作插图的亚瑟·休斯 (Arthur Hughes) 是如何一起“沉入如此之低”的（qtd. in Auerbach and Knoepflmacher 318）。在任何情况下，年多米尼，一本充满日常祈祷的善意钱包，与严酷的散文形成鲜明对比说话相像。因此，人们很容易将这部儿童小说作品视为罗塞蒂作品中的一个奇怪的反常现象，从 1870 年代开始，年多米尼，直到 1894 年去世，她几乎完全被虔诚的散文和诗歌所主导。相比之下，我在下面的文章中认为说话的相似之处指出了整个罗塞蒂写作的广泛兴趣——尤其是她最著名的诗作妖精市场和其他诗歌（1862）和王子的进步（1866 年）——在另类的社会性模式中，折射出对相似性而非差异性的概念关注。遵循批判性思想的传统，这些传统越来越关注抵制对立逻辑的关系——斯蒂芬妮·恩格尔斯坦和伊芙·科索夫斯基·塞奇威克的晚期作品在这里浮现在脑海中——我在两者中确立了相似性水平轴的首要地位说话的相似之处以及罗塞蒂最经典的诗歌《妖精市场》。对于罗塞蒂来说，相似性或最小差异的诱惑最常表现在兄弟姐妹关系中，更具体地说，姐妹关系，在她的歌词中占主导地位的亲属关系妖精市场和其他诗歌. Sisterhood 锚定了我将在本文中研究的标题诗，以及较短的诗句，例如“Noble Sisters”和“Sister Maude”。这种相似关系的问题在于（通常）女性自我的离散性。对于罗塞蒂来说，避开通常会产生个性化的欲望和差异的对立结构（例如异性恋夫妇的形式以及她不安的歌词“He and She”和“Wife to Husband”的标题）允许一个新的（尽管危险的）空间来塑造一个人作为一个有性别的存在的特殊性。