Jonty Claypole

Yeah, I love it.

The idea that Lizzie is also Elizabeth Browning.

Let's keep pulling out threads.

So we've got this kind of literary rivalry element.

We've got the riposte to pre-Raphaelite toxic masculinity.

We've got just the kind of love of animals and menageries.

The other thing I want to talk about is how this poem is a response to the big cultural, social, the social hysteria of the time, which was the idea of the fallen woman.

And the Victorians were obsessed with this notion of the fallen woman.

And I became very interested and was just looking at why this is.

So it's very clear that on one level, the poem with Laura tasting the forbidden fruit and reaping the consequences is, of course, referencing Genesis.

And of course, it's referencing Milton's Paradise Lost.

I don't want to say that much about Milton now.

You may beg to differ.

No, no.

But the reason why she's bringing this up is by the 1850s, there was a state of national hysteria about fallen women, as they were called.

So the fallen woman is different to the prostitute.

The prostitute is working class and therefore not really a concern of the middle classes, except as somebody whose services the men may use.

The hysteria is around the idea of middle class or well-brought-up women having sex outside of marriage.

And there's many theories about why this is happening at the time.

Because in the 18th century, people didn't worry about this so much.