







































Abstract: American marriage laws in the 19th and early 20th centuries promoted a culture of oppression which was 
inherently detrimental to women. In order to achieve a stable lifestyle and maintain their social standings, young 
women were expected to marry; yet the laws and customs in place required that they concede at all times to the 
expectations of their husbands. !is conciliatory behavior lent itself to the objecti"cation of women, which further 
propagated the culture of oppression.  !e following paper is a multidisciplinary project which examines the e#ects 
of oppressive marriage laws on women through the lens of 19th and early 20th century literature and poetry as well 
as the arthropod reproductive strategy of traumatic insemination. !e two are compared both through in-depth 
literary analysis and a creative element. !e negative consequences of the institution of marriage during the period 
are explored from a perspective which does not romanticize human courtship behavior, but rather demonstrates the 
pitfalls of a system which required women to diminish themselves in order to obtain or else remain secure in their 
marriages.  

Aisthesis      Volume 11,  202011

Spiders in a Wreath of Orange and Poppy: An Analysis of 
19th and Early 20th Century Marriage Laws through the 
Lens of Literature and Traumatic Insemination

by Teresa Sauer

Introduction
      In the natural world, the onus of attracting a 
mate o$en lies with the male. Since the production 
of viable egg cells requires more energy than the 
production of sperm, females are selective in their 
choice of a mate, which drives males to compete in 
an energy-consuming and o$en highly elaborate 
courtship ritual (Freeman 467). !is phenomenon 
of female choice and male competition in the natural 
world contrasts with the historical treatment of 
women in marriages. In the 19th and early 20th 
centuries, women in Europe and America had little 
to no agency in their own lives. Wives especially were 
considered by the law to be, as written by the Seneca 
Falls Convention of 1848, “civilly dead” (Stanton). 
In his 1869 essay, “!e Subjection of Women,” John 
Stuart Mill comments, “If married life were all that it 
might be expected to be, looking to the laws alone, 
society would be a hell upon earth” (Mill 32). !e 
law of the nineteenth century in most Western 
countries dictated that a wife must “vow a lifelong 
obedience to him [the husband] … She can do no 
act but whatever by his permission…She can acquire 
no property but for him” (30). Although, as Mill 
points out, most men did not exert the full force of 
the law upon their wives, the power it granted them 
established a dynamic that made married women at 
all times subject to the whims of their husbands. 

 !e subversion of female agency in the 19th 
century through strict marriage laws and social 
oppression closely mirrors a reproductive tactic 
known as traumatic insemination, which has been 
observed in a number of arthropod species. !is 
alternative male reproductive tactic diminishes acts 
of female selection, just as exploitative marriage laws 
in the nineteenth century reduced the right of women 
to control their lives and reproductive output. A$er 
approaching the female cautiously in a pseudo-
mating dance, the male traumatic inseminator will 
pierce the female’s abdomen and expel semen into 
her blood or ovaries directly. !is signi"cantly 
reduces the chances that any subsequent males 
with which she may choose to mate would be able 
to fertilize the eggs (Yong). While this reproductive 
strategy ensures the continuance of the male’s genetic 
line, it is highly costly to the female. !e insertion of 
the male’s genitalia into her abdomen causes massive 
internal damage which can be fatal (Reinhardt et al.). 
Even so, despite the increased probability that his 
mate will die due to injuries that he himself in%icted, 
it is bene"cial to the male to continue mating 
in this way, because it ultimately maximizes his 
reproductive success.  In the same way, men of the 
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were loath 
to change the culture and laws which gave them full 



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Aisthesis      Volume 11,  202012

control over their wives and children, thus assuring 
them reproductive success. While they enjoyed this 
bene"t, the women they married su#ered. 
 !is essay will further examine the similarities 
between the overtly disturbing biological process of 
traumatic insemination and the poor treatment of 
young women preparing for and already in marriage 
during the 19th and early 20th centuries which still 
impacts our discourse on marriage in the Western 
world today.  !rough the lens of a creative element 
entitled Spiders in a Wreath of Orange Blossom and 
Poppy (Figure 1), I will examine literature written 
during this period of women’s oppression and 
objecti"cation to illustrate the tremendous cost which 
marriage and society posed to women. Ultimately, 
I will argue that the institution of marriage which 
required women—both "nancially and socially—to 
cede much of their identities to their husbands gave 
rise to a toxic male perception of love as possession, 
a perception which was inherently damaging to 
women. 

Figure 1. Creative element entitled Spiders in a Wreath of 
Orange and Poppy.

A Harsh Inevitability
 !roughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, 
the law treated married women as property rather 
than people. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote in 
“Declaration of Sentiments,” the famous Seneca 
Falls document,  “In the covenant of marriage, she is 
compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he 
becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master - 

the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, 
and to administer chastisement” (Stanton). Married 
women were without rights and legal recourse for any 
abuse or mistreatment their husbands might in%ict 
upon them. Yet despite the negative implications of 
marriage, it was perceived not as a harsh inevitability 
for women, but touted as the culmination of their 
lives, their “destinies” (Caird 78). In !e Young Bride’s 
Book, an 1849 marriage manual by Arthur Freeling, 
he contends, “A woman’s happiness is essentially 
domestic—it is centered in the home” (Freeling 
iv). To be chosen by a man for marriage was to be 
worthy of that happiness. However, women were also 
entirely dependent on their husband for resources, 
given the limited availability of jobs for women. 
!ey were also reliant on the social position which 
marriage a#orded them, as unmarried women were 
o$en expelled from high society. !is forced women 
to defer to her husband regardless of the cost to her 
dignity or sense of self. Women were compelled 
to enter into these problematic unions because, as 
already mentioned, they o$en had no acceptable 
social or "nancial substitute for marriage.
 Mill wrote that marriage was “the destination 
appointed by society for women, the prospect they 
are brought up to, and the object which it is intended 
should be sought by all of them” (Mill 29). Women 
were taught not only that marriage was something 
which should be anticipated with excitement, but also 
that the failure to marry was a failure of character. 
Any woman who failed to marry became a woman of 
lesser repute or even immoral character. In her essay, 
“Why Women Are Ceasing to Marry,” Ella Hepworth 
Dixon observes, “A strictly brought-up person was 
not supposed to have the only woman’s privilege, 
the privilege of saying ‘No’” (Dixon 84). When a 
man of the appropriate social standing proposed 
to a woman, she was expected to say yes, since he 
was in many ways validating her place in society and 
ful"lling her socially prescribed purpose.  
 If a woman did remain unmarried, she had 
few alternatives available to her, and no means 
of maintaining a high social standing. In Edith 
Wharton’s !e House of Mirth, the protagonist Lily 
Bart re%ects on her position in her social circle, 
saying, “I’ve been about too long—people are getting 
tired of me; they are beginning to say I ought to 
marry” (Wharton 10). Published for the "rst time 
in 1905, Wharton’s story of Lily—an unwed woman 



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Aisthesis      Volume 11,  202013

desperately seeking marriage to maintain her place 
in society—is a commentary on the expectations 
set upon women of the nineteenth century.  Lily is 
permitted to participate in the activities of the luxury 
class only so long as she is a prospect for marriage. 
When insinuations of impropriety from characters 
who are secure in their own social positions along 
with a rapidly accruing debt make any possibility of 
a marriage proposal inconceivable, Lily is promptly 
relegated to the working class, where “society…
dri$ed by, preoccupied and inattentive, letting her 
feel, to the full measure of her humbled pride, how 
completely she had been the creature of its favor” 
(225).  Society did not permit a high station to a 
woman who failed to ful"ll her purpose of being a 
wife. Instead, women who remained unmarried were 
cast aside and forgotten, just as Lily was in the novel. 
 In the nineteenth century and early twentieth 
centuries, marriage was o$en a requirement for a 
woman’s survival. As with Lily Bart, many women 
of the period were brought up only to be wives and 
were not taught the skills to pursue even the limited 
job options available to women. Prior to her exile 
from the luxury class, Lily Bart re%ects on marriage 
with Selden, her closest con"dant throughout the 
novel, saying, “Ah there’s the di#erence—a girl must, 
a man may if he chooses…We are expected to be 
pretty and well-dressed till we drop—and if we can’t 
keep it up alone, we have to go into partnership” 
(13). Without some other source of income, whether 
it was an inheritance, the good grace of relatives, or 
other more improper sources, women were forced 
to marry. !e necessity of marriage for women can 
be seen again in A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen. 
First performed in 1879 in Denmark, Ibsen’s play 
sparked great controversy not only because the 
female protagonist—Nora—is openly unhappy in 
her marriage, but because she decides to leave her 
husband, which is the ultimate rejection of a woman’s 
purpose.  Just as with Lily, the women in Ibsen’s play 
perceive marriage as a means of survival. Towards 
the beginning of the play, Nora’s friend Kristina says 
of her own marriage proposal, “My mother was still 
alive; she was bedridden and helpless, and I had my 
two younger brothers to look a$er—I didn’t feel I 
could reject his o#er” (Ibsen 157). Desperate for 
income, Kristina married solely for the prospect of 
alleviating "nancial strain. 

 !e prevalence of “mercenary marriages” in 
which the woman actively sought out a proposal 
or accepted one in order to maintain her social or 
"nancial position precludes the notion that marriage 
was based on mutual a#ection and love; instead, it 
was a strategy of survival (Caird 78). In a similar 
way, females of those species which reproduce 
through traumatic insemination must engage in a 
dangerous mating ritual with males in order to ful"ll 
the female’s biological imperatives to reproduce. 
My creative project element, Spiders in a Wreath of 
Orange Blossoms and Poppy, encapsulates this notion 
of intentional participation in a detrimental ritual. In 
the center are two Harpactea sadistica spiders, a male 
and a female. !e female, laying vulnerable below 
the male, is decorated with excerpts of Freeling’s 
marriage manual, which exemplify the expectation 
placed on young women to enter into marriage. 
Just as the H. sadistica female permits the in%iction 
of damage on her body to successfully reproduce, 
women entered into marriages to ful"ll their socially 
and "nancially prescribed imperative to marry, an 
imperative which they then had to protect regardless 
of the cost to their identities.
      
Necessary Lies
 !e necessity of marriage for women’s survival 
and secure social status meant that there was 
signi"cant pressure on them to remain as desirable as 
possible to their husbands. In !e Young Bride’s Book, 
Freeling writes “…let your husband once believe that 
your a#ections are on the decline, and you lose the 
"rmest hold upon his. Gentleness, good humor, 
tenderness, and attention, will secure the a#ection of 
every sensible man” (17). It was more advantageous 
for a wife to be complacent to her husband so that 
he remained tolerant of her than it was to express 
her true opinions. !is manual, marketed towards 
women entering marriage, dictated that a woman 
must deliberately change her behavior, or conceal 
it, to lessen the probability that her husband would 
become angry with her. !is disregard for the 
woman’s opinions and individuality was rooted in 
the power which the law granted husbands and was 
propagated by the reliance wives had on the integrity 
of their marriages. 
 !is distortion of a woman’s identity as a means 
of appeasing a man is demonstrated by Wharton in 



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Aisthesis      Volume 11,  202014

Lily Bart’s interactions with Percy Gryce, one of her 
more promising marriage prospects at the beginning 
of the novel. In the pursuit of a marriage proposal, 
Lily aligns herself entirely with Percy’s dull and 
narrow interests. Wharton writes, “she resolved to 
identify herself with her husband’s vanity that to 
gratify her wishes would be to him the most exquisite 
form of self-indulgence” (45). In order to ensure that 
her husband, as she assumes at that time Percy will 
become, will freely give her those material objects 
which she struggles to acquire from her own meager 
income, Lily attempts to sacri"ce a part of herself 
so that she is more attractive to him, and therefore 
more secure in their relationship. !is attempt is 
unsuccessful, however, as the thought of “landing” 
Percy becomes an “unpalatable reward” (27). Lily 
receives no proposal, because she acted according 
to her own interests rather than continuing the 
pretense that she cared about his. !is choice is the 
"rst of many which leads to Lily’s eventual expulsion 
from New York society and her untimely death.
 !e nineteenth century woman’s con%ict between 
securing a marriage proposal and preserving a 
sense of independence and identity is seen again in 
A Doll’s House. When, at the end of the play, Nora 
declares that she must leave her husband Torvald 
and their children, he asks how he has wronged her, 
to which she replies, “You arranged everything to 
suit your own taste, and so I came to have the same 
tastes as yours…Or I pretended to…perhaps a bit of 
both” (Ibsen 226). In order to maintain their “lovely 
happy home” (161), Nora aligned her views to those 
of her husband out of necessity, so that when she 
looked back at their marriage, she found that they 
had never once “sat down…to get to the bottom of 
a single thing” (225). It was impossible for husband 
and wife to have earnest conversations because Nora 
had reasonable incentive to always concede to her 
husband’s point of view, which negated the need 
for discussion of any kind. Nora remained Torvald’s 
conciliatory skylark and Nora in turn was secure 
in his a#ection for her, until the point when she 
realized she must endeavor to become more than a 
“doll-wife” (226). When Nora resolves her con%ict by 
asserting her independence, her losses include not 
only social status but also the basic resources needed 
for physical survival: reliable access to food, shelter, 
clothing, and protection. However, staying would 

have been far more detrimental to her psychological 
health and sense of self, so she elects to take the risk. 
 A parallel can once again be drawn between 
women forced to concede at all times to their 
husbands and the females in species which 
reproduce through traumatic insemination. Both 
experience trade-o#s between resources gained and 
damage incurred. In the latter instance, the longer 
the male’s reproductive organ remains inside the 
female, the more ejaculate she receives from him. 
!is ejaculate can be used as a source of nutrition 
while she cultivates the fertilized eggs. However, 
longer mating sessions also cause the female injury. 
!e females must balance between the bene"ts and 
risks so that she maximizes the amount of ejaculate 
she can receive while minimizing the damage to her 
own body (Yong). In humans, a woman secured 
resources for survival and reproduction by being 
submissive and accommodating. !e cost of doing 
so was depression, anxiety and other psychological 
disorders, all of which were grouped into the singular 
diagnosis of hysteria throughout the 19th and early 
20th centuries (Wood).  

A Love of Possession
 !e laws established in the nineteenth century 
dictated the life of a woman should be “one of duty 
and service” to their husbands (Caird 78), and this, 
in conjunction with the compulsory appeasement 
of husbands by their wives, established a society in 
which men valued their wives not as partners, but as 
extensions of themselves. Since women were taught 
to be passive and obedient to their husbands, they 
became that much more easily objecti"ed until they 
were little more than, as Nora would put it, “doll-
wives.” 
 !e male attitude of possession is prevalent in 
the tone and subject of many male-authored works 
of literature and poetry in the nineteenth century. 
In Gustave Flaubert’s 1856 novel, Madame Bovary, 
the perspectives of newlywed protagonist Emma and 
her husband Charles Bovary are in stark contrast: 
Charles feels the elation of ownership while Emma 
has begun to bear the burden of being owned. In 
Charles’ mind, “he now possessed, for always, this 
pretty woman whom he so loved. !e universe, for 
him, did not extend beyond the silky contour of her 
underskirt; and he would reproach himself for not 



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Aisthesis      Volume 11,  202015

loving her more” (Flaubert 30). Marriage has allowed 
Charles to "nally lay claim over Emma. His marriage 
is not a symbolic claim of partnership and mutual 
admiration with Emma, but rather a validation of his 
ownership over her appealing physical form.  
 In contrast to Charles, Emma re%ects, “Before 
her marriage, she had believed that what she was 
experiencing was love; but since the happiness that 
should have resulted from that love had not come, 
she thought she must have been mistaken” (30). 
!e happiness which Emma had been brought 
up to believe came with marriage, the ful"llment 
of a woman’s destiny, remains elusive to her.  !e 
contrast between husband and wife in the novel 
clearly demonstrates that Charles’ love is rooted not 
in mutual partnership or contentment, but in his 
possession of her.
 Nineteenth-century poetry also elucidates the 
tendency of men to love of women as possessions 
rather than people. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a 
member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of 
artists, consistently portrayed women in paintings 
and poetry not as man’s equal, but rather as 
mysterious objects of beauty which the artist might 
seek to possess in his representation of her form.  In 
his sonnet, “!e Portrait,” Rossetti writes, “let this 
my lady’s picture glow/Under my hand to praise her 
name…Let all men note / !ey that would look on 
her must come to me (lines 2-3, 12, 14). Rossetti seeks 
to capture his subject in a manner which captures 
her whole being. While this notion alone may not 
be sinister in intention, Rossetti’s "nal statement 
makes the painter’s intentions disturbingly clear; he 
has painted his muse not only to memorialize her 
beauty or capture her “inner glow,” but rather to 
possess her identity so completely that anyone who 
sought to understand her would have to look at his 
interpretation of her being rather than ascertaining 
the details from her themselves. !e painter has 
become the possessor of his muse’s identity, just as 
a man became the possessor of his wife’s identity as 
soon as they were married. 
 Other nineteenth-century poems that exemplify 
the male attitude of possession towards the 
women they claimed to love are Robert Browning’s 
“Porphyria’s Lover” and “I Worship You” by Charles 
Baudelaire. Browning uses situational irony to 

highlight the toxic nature of the male narrator’s 
desires while Baudelaire uses grotesque imagery 
to depict the speaker’s desire to possess his lover. 
Browning’s poem describes in detail the insane 
narrator murdering his vivacious lover, Porphyria, 
so that she may become to him “mine, mine, fair…” 
(line 36). !e poem ends with the gruesome image 
of the speaker sitting with the corpse, demonstrating 
the disturbing notion of what the love of a woman 
should be. !is same problematic notion of love is 
seen in Baudelaire’s poem, in which the speaker says 
of the woman he worships, “I rise to your attack…
Crawling like a host of worms that gormandize/ 
Some rotting corpse” (lines 7-8). Selections of these 
poems, as well as Rossetti’s “!e Portrait” adorn the 
sides of the male spider in the creative element of 
my project to highlight the toxic nature of this type 
of “love.” Just as the narrators of these poems take 
delight in the possession of their dead lovers, so 
too is the male H. sadistica compelled to spear the 
abdomen of his mate despite the tremendous injury 
in%icted on her.
 
!e Cost of Objecti"cation   
 It is important to note that the women of the 
nineteenth century were not passive actors in their 
oppression; the women’s su#rage movement that 
began in America at the Seneca Falls convention in 
1848 as well as the social New Woman movement 
both called for a shi$ in the social and legal power 
dynamic which made women so vulnerable to the 
powers of men. However, the call for change and its 
full implementation throughout society did not occur 
simultaneously. Women who shirked convention 
by refusing to marry, leaving their husbands, or 
demanding real partnership within their marriages 
had few options. As previously discussed, there was 
no “reasonable alternative” to marriage at the time 
(Caird 78), which was precisely why it had become 
such a powerful oppressive force in the "rst place. 
!ough the need for women’s legal and social 
liberation had been recognized, there were not yet 
pathways by which that liberation could be pursued 
by the masses. As Mona Caird notes, “We cannot ask 
every woman to be a heroine and choose a hard and 
thorny path…” (78). If such a thing were possible, all 
liberation movements throughout history would be 
easily won. 



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Aisthesis      Volume 11,  202016

 !is powerful social moment in the late 
nineteenth century saw women recognizing and 
reacting against oppression without yet being 
successful in freeing themselves. !is brought forth 
a plethora of poets and authors whose stories clarify 
the condition of women as property.  Kate Chopin 
lived from 1850 to 1904, just as challenges to the 
social restrictions of marriage were beginning to 
emerge. She was known for confronting the social 
expectations which made women an extension of 
their husbands. In her short story, “!e Story of an 
Hour,” Chopin demonstrates that though a woman 
may love her husband, the institution of marriage 
was a source of anguish because it required her to 
forfeit her free will. When Louise Mallard, the subject 
of the story, is told that her husband is dead, she is 
overcome by the realization that “there would be no 
powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence 
which men and women believe they have a right to 
impose…” (Chopin 5). Without her husband, Louise 
is no longer subject to his whims, nor does she have 
to face the consequences for attempting to impose 
her will onto him. !at freedom, Chopin contends, 
is far more important than any a#ection which 
is shared between a husband and wife. She writes, 
“What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for 
in face of this possession of self-assertion…” (5). As 
soon as she believes she is free from the oppressive 
institution of marriage, Louise "nds that her own 
free will is far more important than the mysterious 
and transient emotion which had kept her bound to 
Mr. Mallard in the "rst place. 
 Another example of the cost of a marriage based 
on possession is Elizabeth Siddall. Known as “the wife 
and muse” of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Trowbridge 7), 
she was from the onset a victim of objecti"cation and 
possession by her lover and later husband, the same 
man who wrote the sonnet “!e Portrait.” Although 
she was a painter and “poet of great promise” 
(Orlando 616), Sidall’s work never achieved the same 
fame as Rossetti. She is, as Trowbridge points out in 
the introduction to her anthology of Siddall’s work, 
My Lady’s Soul, a woman “represented purely by her 
face” (7). Rossetti successfully possessed her image, 
thereby controlling the way which society perceived 
her, a perception which was antithetical to Sidall’s 
own perception of her identity. !e distinction 
between Siddall and her controlled image becomes 

clear in her work and the work of Christina Rossetti, 
Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s sister. 
 Rossetti was more focused more on capturing 
the beauty of his muse than he was with actually 
understanding her. In her poem, “In An Artist’s 
Studio,” Christina Rossetti writes, “He feeds upon her 
face by day and night/ And she with true kind eyes 
looks back on him…Not as she is, but was when hope 
shone bright; Not as she is, but as she "lls his dream” 
(Rossetti). !e poem was a scathing renunciation 
of Rossetti’s treatment of Siddall as his muse. !at 
Gabriel Rossetti “feeds upon” Siddall’s beauty implies 
an inherently exploitative relationship, and one in 
which Rossetti values Siddall not for her character, 
but for her beauty. Gabriel’s painting showing “her 
true kind eyes,” from when “hope shone bright” also 
implies that there was a time in which, believing still 
that marriage would yield happiness, Siddall was 
content to sit as a model for Rossetti in order to ful"ll 
his whims and secure his a#ection. Siddall herself 
re%ects on this love in her poem “!e Passing of 
Love,” writing, “Love help me joyful through the day 
/ And dreaming ever through the night…” (Siddall 
lines 13-14). In the poem, Siddall acknowledges 
that though she had at one time felt great love for 
Rossetti, that time quickly passed. 
 !e resentment which Siddall felt for Rossetti’s 
objecti"cation of her and its ill e#ects is re%ected 
both in her life and her work. Sick for many years 
prior to her death, in 1862 Siddall succumbed to 
her addiction to laudanum (Marsh 9). As with “!e 
Passing of Love,” her poems focus on the falsehood 
and transience of love, as well as the harm which 
it in%icted upon her. In “Worn Out” she writes, “I 
cannot give to thee the love / I gave so long ago / !e 
love that turned and struck me down…” (Siddall). 
Again, she admits that she once had great love for 
Rossetti, but it was a love which betrayed her. She 
even renounces Rossetti’s worship of her beauty in 
“Love and Hate,” demanding, “Li$ thy false brow 
from out the dust…And turn away thy false dark 
eyes” (Siddall). !e love which brought Rossetti 
and Siddall together was tainted by his desire to 
capture and possess her beauty. Siddall was not 
Rossetti’s partner, but instead was a “…constructed 
"gure who bolster[ed] her husband’s reputation and 
[was] a signi"er for his status and power…erected 
on the negation of the female model’” (Trowbridge 



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Aisthesis      Volume 11,  2020

8). Rossetti’s treatment of Siddall during the creation 
of his 1865 painting Beata Beatrix exempli"es his 
exploitation of her. In Orlando’s essay, “!at I May 
not Faint, Die or Swoon,” she points out “…an 
unfortunate rumor had it that Rossetti propped up 
Lizzie’s corpse on her deathbed while he painted 
Beata Beatrix. Urban legends of this sort—coupled 
with the uncomfortable fact of Rossetti’s exhumation 
of Siddall’s body—cement her status as a woman 
whose beauty was exploited, in death as in life, in the 
name of art” (Orlando 622). Just as in Browning and 
Baudelaire’s poems, Rossetti was perfectly willing 
to worship the corpse of his lover and wife, because 
that is the aspect of her which he considered to be 
valuable and worthy of love. 
 !e circumstances of Siddall’s actual death are 
replicated time and again in the deaths of women 
in the literature of the period. Emma Bovary dies 
a$er overdosing on arsenic, while Lily Bart dies 
from an overdose of sleeping draught (Wharton 
276).  !ese women, disillusioned with the myth 
of marriage, femininity, and societal ful"llment, 
died from overdosing on drugs meant to sooth and 
placate those who take them. In both stories, it is a 
male character who provides commentary on their 
corpses: Charles Bovary and Lawrence Selden, 
respectively. In the creative element of my project 
I have surrounded the pair of H. sadistica with a 
wreath of orange blossoms and ripened poppy fruits. 
!ese are representative of the dichotomy between 
the expectations and realities of marriage during the 
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During 
that era, orange blossoms were o$en woven into the 
hair of brides on their wedding day (Powell). On the 
other hand, poppy fruit is the source of the drugs 
like laudanum and opium which are associated with 
the deaths of Elizabeth Siddall and Lily Bart. !e 
inclusion of both symbols in my creative element 
highlight the di#erence between the societal illusion 
of marriage and its stark reality. Women bound by 
the social and legal restraints of marriage found the 
condition to be intolerable because they were treated 
as prized possessions or objects of beauty rather than 
human beings. !at the death of women through 
overdosing or despair became a trope in nineteenth-
century literature implies a persistent despair within 
the female population, a despair that was fetishized 
by male authors like Rossetti and Baudelaire and 

condemned by more progressive authors like 
Chopin, Wharton, and Flaubert. 

Conclusion
 Phenomena like traumatic insemination are 
perceived today as nothing more than “nature 
taking its course,” isolated entirely from the civil 
and ordered world which we as humans have 
created. Yet, as I have argued through the literary 
and symbolic elements of my project, the treatment 
of women in the nineteenth and early twentieth 
centuries in regard to marriage is not unlike the 
ways in which traumatic inseminators exploit 
females to ensure their reproductive success. Just as 
H. sadistica females are driven to mate to ful"ll their 
biological imperatives, so too were women driven 
by their social and "nancial situations to enter into 
the oppressive union of marriage. Just as H. sadistica 
females risk greater injury to themselves in order to 
obtain as much nutrition as possible from the male 
ejaculate, so too did women concede to the desires 
and opinions of their husbands to remain secure in 
their marriage. Finally, just as the H. sadistica male 
is driven to pierce the female in order to ensure that 
it is his o#spring which she bears, so too were men 
driven to marry and possess the women who were 
motivated to appear to them at all times perfect. 
 !e literature and poetry which I have examined 
above demonstrate a cultural moment in which 
society promoted the political and social oppression 
of women. !e culture which shaped that literature, 
though in"nitely more dynamic than that which 
dictates the social interactions of spiders, was de"ned 
by the same drive to ensure success no matter the 
detriment to anyone else. In species like H. sadistica 
which reproduce through traumatic insemination, 
females evolve strategies to deter males from 
in%icting injury like stomach barbs or thicker 
abdominal exoskeletons. So it was in the nineteenth 
century. What else was the social rebellion of women 
and the "rst women’s rights movement but a tactic to 
overcome the intolerable and injurious institution of 
marriage which had been thrust upon them by the 
men in power?

Works Cited 
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and Other Works, edited by Wallace Fowlie, 
Dover Publications, 1992, pp. 32. 

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Spiders in a Wreath of Orange and Poppy

Aisthesis      Volume 11,  2020

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Yong, Ed. “Traumatic Insemination–Male Spider 
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