Jenny by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

It is important to keep in mind while reading "Jenny" that the theme of inequality runs beneath every interaction between the speaker and the sleeping Jenny. The speaker enjoys much more social power than Jenny herself: he has more money than her, his reputation is not tarnished in the same way that hers is, he is a man, and he is well-educated. These facts are implicit within the poem itself, but they paint a strong contrast between Jenny and her client. Jenny is a silent prostitute who spends the entire time sleeping with her head on the speaker's knee. The way that their bodies are positioned also speaks to the power imbalance between the two characters, as Jenny is laying down and the speaker is sitting up, "looking down" on her as he contemplates her life. While the speaker has a rich internal monologue within the poem, Jenny is completely silent, even when she is awake in the first few stanzas. We do not see her voice or her point-of-view at any point within the poem.

Several literary critics have accused the speaker of "Jenny" of contributing to the objectification and oppression of Jenny within the poem itself. While he laments that society has silenced her and pushed her down, she does not speak a single word in the poem and his opinion of her is often disparaging. For example, when he imagines what Jenny's dreams are about, they are exclusively about himself or about money: "Whose person or whose purse may be / The lodestar of your reverie?" (20-1). In these lines, the speaker reduces Jenny completely to her profession and assumes that she does not think about anything outside of that. He perpetuates the same violence that he disparages in society upon Jenny herself. Similarly, the speaker often objectifies Jenny by comparing her to books, flowers, and paintings. These descriptions indicate her beauty and illicit power within the poem, but they also turn Jenny into a commodity rather than a human being.

The inequality between the speaker and Jenny is emphasized by the fact that he has the power to decide whether or not Jenny is awake or asleep throughout the poem. For example, when the speaker becomes too despaired after musing about the difficulties that Jenny faces in her life, he tries to wake her up despite the fact that she needs the sleep: "Well handsome Jenny mine, sit up, / I've filled our glasses, let us sup, / And do not let me think of you, / Lest shame of yours suffice for two" (88-91). The speaker fears having to take moral responsibility for Jenny's lifestyle and wants to wake her up to distract him from that "shame." That he can decide whether or not she sleeps or wakes—and that he is not automatically ashamed even though he is complicit in her profession, which he considers shameful—speaks to the power imbalance between Jenny and the speaker. This power imbalance does not change: at the end of the poem, the speaker tries to wake her up again. "Jenny, wake up," he urges her, "Why, there's the dawn!" (300). We know that the speaker could wake up Jenny from her sleep if he wanted to, with little consequence. It is not truly Jenny's decision whether or not she is awake, and she sleeps only with the speaker's implicit permission.

Another important facet of the theme of inequality within "Jenny" is the oppression that Jenny faces on a day-to-day basis. The speaker emphasizes Jenny's less-than-comfortable living conditions as well as the bullying that she faces on a day-to-day basis on the streets of London. At the very beginning of the poem, the speaker notes that Jenny's room is very different from his own. He also imagines the city of London as witness to Jenny's shame, "have seen your lifted silken skirt / Advertize dainties through the dirt / Have seen your coach wheels splash rebuke / On virtue; and have learned your look" (144-7). Jenny is fundamentally different from the "common" Londoner because she is a prostitute, which makes her stand out to everyone and be at the mercy of their cruelty. A "pale girl . . . rebuke[s]" Jenny and a "wise unchildish elf" points her out to his friends (72,76).