Environmental Ethics in Christina Rossetti's Time Flies

Abstract

This article makes a case for Christina Rossetti's environmental ethics, which are grounded in her Tractarian literary influences. The Tractarian concepts of analogy and reserve are of particular relevance to Rossetti's view of nature. Reserve refers to withholding absolute understanding. One way in which reserve is practiced is by analogically reading nature in order to attain spiritual knowledge. Nature is valued in this theological system as God's way of communicating to humankind. While Rossetti uses these esthetic concepts throughout her work, we see their environmentalist implications most clearly in her late devotional prose work Time Flies (1885). Time Flies is written in a diary format, which allows Rossetti great creative freedom. The text contains poetry and readings of scripture, but many of its entries contain Rossetti's analogical readings of the natural world. The message that emerges in Time Flies is ultimately one of conservation over renunciation.