‘Crossing borders of representation’: Intersections of race, class and gender in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘Jenny’ and William Holman Hunt’s The Afterglow in Egypt, Illona Meyer

This paper considers the intersection of issues of race, class and gender in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘Jenny’ and William Holman Hunt’s The Afterglow in Egypt. Specifically, the intersection of class and gender, as exemplified by the prostitute Jenny, is analysed in Rossetti’s work, whilst the intersection of race and gender, focussing on the lone Eastern female figure on which the Hunt work is centred, is likewise contemplated. In closing, the intersecting representations in these two works are compared and contrasted with reference to the role and representation of the female in the Victorian period.