The Secret Life of Jane Ellen Harrison

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The scholarship on Jane Ellen Harrison's personal religious beliefs has focused solely on her Evangelical upbringing, which involved a strict stepmother and a religion based on the fear of hellfire and damnation. The current scholarship has translated her antagonism against Evangelicalism as a hatred of all religion, however, a close reading of Harrison's letters and work reveal that as a young girl in Yorkshire she discovered a religion that made her intensely aware of ritual and the religious impulse. Her letters, autobiography, and notes in the Newnham Archive at Cambridge University combine to help piece together a puzzle about an undetected aspect of her life-the High Church Movement that became synonymous with what was called Anglican "ritualism." This work will shed light, not only on a surprising aspect of Harrison's life, but on the almost forgotten ritualistic saga, which seeped into all aspects of Victorian culture. Understanding how the ritualistic movement affected Harrison and her interpretation of Archaic Greek religion opens up new avenues for understanding Victorian art, literature, society, and religion.