The text of "No, Thank You, John" implies a number of facts about the norms of romance, and the politics of rejection, in Christina Rossetti's nineteenth-century milieu. Firstly, it hints at the gender norms that characterized these romances. The poem features a male pursuer and a woman tasked with either accepting or rejecting him. However, her choice is constrained by factors other than romantic preference. Rossetti shows how the speaker's choice to reject John has endangered her reputation and kept her, despite her best efforts, somewhat under John's control. Moreover, the speaker struggles between courteousness and bluntness, evidently trying to balance expectations of politeness with her own feelings. Here, we'll discuss the historical context in which this poem was written. What did marriage and romance represent to Rossetti's society, and what did real Victorian women risk by rejecting a proposal or romantic overture?
The Victorian era saw the rise and dominance of many ideas regarding gender that are now thought of as traditional or conservative. In general this was a period of growing (though unequal) prosperity and economic growth, with a greater number of men earning money in professional, urban careers. Moreover, the growth of British colonialism brought with it a new set of expectations for men, who were considered, broadly speaking, the political and military stewards of empire. In other words, this period offered an array of unprecedented pressures and opportunities for middle-class men outside of the home. In turn, middle-class women were regarded as guardians of the private realm: marriage, family, and the home. Whereas men's power was economic, women were considered arbiters of moral and social life, responsible for raising and comforting male sons and husbands. At the same time, beneath this idealized presentation, wives were responsible for much of the economic functioning of the household and for managing their husbands' income. Marriage, far from an entirely personal relationship, was instead linked to every sphere of life and was in a sense seen as the basic unit of British cultural and political life in the period.
While in theory women were free to consent to or reject marriage, a number of factors—ranging from the social to the legal and economic—constrained their decisions. Beyond the social pressure placed on young women to marry, a sheer lack of other ways to make money meant that marriage was often the best route to financial safety and stability. Working outside the home, while common for lower-class women, was highly stigmatized for middle-class ones. Moreover, because most universities and areas of study were closed to women (educational colleges being a notable exception), the economic opportunities available through education were limited to men. Legally speaking, women became essentially their husbands' property upon marrying them, giving up control of their own finances and property. Indeed, married woman could neither sue others nor be sued. Divorce, meanwhile, was almost impossible to obtain except in instances of violent abuse. Thus, women both gained and lost by entering into a marriage—they gained social status and economic stability, but lost much of their independence.
Though marriage was considered the pinnacle of Victorian femininity, exerting enormous changes over the day-to-day lives of women, these women had relatively little agency when it came to navigating romance or choosing a husband. After all, the idealized wife of this era was modest and subservient, meaning that for a single woman to actively seek out a husband or propose to a suitor would have been considered a violation of the very gender norms that made her a desirable wife. Thus women were advised not to display romantic or sexual interest until married or at least engaged. Men were encouraged to propose quickly by the standards of today, while women were encouraged to readily accept these proposals and to see them through to marriage. In many ways, therefore, these women faced a paradox: they had little choice about whether to marry and little choice about whom to wed, even though their husband and the act of marriage itself would radically affect and even control their futures.
Despite these strictures, gender roles and marriage in the late Victorian era were not altogether neatly regulated or unchanging. A great deal of anxiety circulated as both men and women worked to buttress, or to disrupt, the status quo. Some of this anxiety was caused by what was known as "surplus women." Because marriageable women increasingly outnumbered their male counterparts during the nineteenth century, some commentators feared a sudden increase in single women unsupported by a husband. The very possibility of a demographic shift threatened the foundations of Victorian marriage. Meanwhile, early and proto-feminists began to push back against women's legal status, arguing that women should be granted suffrage and that married women should be permitted to maintain their rights. Thus, in many ways, Rossetti's poem is an accurate representation of the period for two reasons. The first is that it faithfully portrays the powerlessness of single women and the multiple pressures on women to marry (as well as on men to court them). The second, however, is that she portrays, through her speaker's refusal, the growing anxieties and tensions around marriage and gender in the period.
