The Secret Life of Jane Ellen Harrison

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.