Editing Effie Gray (section)

== Relationship with John Ruskin ==
John Ruskin wrote the fantasy story ''[[The King of the Golden River]]'' for Gray in 1841, when she was 12 and he was 21. Gray's family knew Ruskin's father and encouraged a match between the two when she had matured. After an initially unsteady courtship, she married Ruskin on 10 April 1848; she was 19 years old.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Pre-Raphaelite Girl Gang|last=Walker|first=Kirsty Stonell|publisher=Unicorn|year=2018|pages=20}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=The Order of Release: The Story of John Ruskin, Effie Gray and John Everett Millais Told for the First Time in their Unpublished Letters|year=1948|publisher=J. Murray|location=University of Michigan|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jU4RAAAAMAAJ&q=ruskin+gray+marriage|editor=James, William Milbourne|page=1}}</ref> During their honeymoon, they travelled to [[Venice]], where Ruskin was doing research for his book ''[[The Stones of Venice (book)|The Stones of Venice]]''. While in Perth, Scotland, they lived at Bowerswell, the Gray family home, and site of their wedding. It had, coincidentally, previously been the home of Ruskin's paternal grandparents. In 1817, Ruskin's mother, Margaret, during her engagement to Ruskin's father, had stayed at Bowerswell and was witness to three tragic deaths within its walls in quick succession (Ruskin's grandmother, grandfather, and newborn cousin). This caused her to develop a severe phobia concerning Bowerswell, keeping her from attending her son's wedding to Gray.<ref name="Garnett2012">{{cite book|author=Henrietta Garnett|title=Wives and Stunners: The Pre-Raphaelites and Their Muses|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xshaKqrZClAC&pg=PP227|date=30 August 2012|publisher=Pan Macmillan|isbn=978-0-230-76754-6|pages=227–etc}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Fagence Cooper|first=Suzanne|title=Effie: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, John Ruskin and John Everett Millais|publisher=St. Martin's Publishing Group|year=2011|isbn=978-1429962384|pages=19–21}}</ref>

Gray and Ruskin's different personalities were thrown into sharp relief by their contrasting priorities. For Gray, Venice provided an opportunity to socialise while Ruskin was engaged in solitary studies. In particular, he made a point of drawing the [[Ca' d'Oro]] and the [[Doge's Palace, Venice|Palazzo Ducale]] (Doge's Palace), because he feared they would soon be destroyed by the occupying Austrian troops. One of the troops, Lieutenant Charles Paulizza, made friends with Gray, apparently with no objection from Ruskin. Her brother, among others, later said that Ruskin was deliberately encouraging the friendship in order to compromise her, as an excuse to separate.

When she met [[John Everett Millais]] five years later, Gray was still a virgin. Ruskin had persistently put off [[consummate|consummating]] the marriage. Gray and Ruskin had agreed upon abstaining from sex for five years to allow Ruskin to focus on his studies.<ref name=":0" /> Another reason involved his apparent disgust with some aspect of her body. As she later wrote to her father:

<blockquote>He alleged various reasons, hatred to children, religious motives, a desire to preserve my beauty, and, finally this last year he told me his true reason...  that he had imagined women were quite different to what he saw I was, and that the reason he did not make me his Wife was because he was disgusted with my person the first evening.<ref name="Hewison1979">{{cite book|author=Robert Hewison|title=John Ruskin|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1XjntfarTykC&pg=PA201|year=1979|publisher=Ardent Media|pages=201–202|id=GGKEY:8PSQ7NGSATA}}</ref></blockquote>

Ruskin confirmed this in his statement to his lawyer during the [[annulment]] proceedings: "It may be thought strange that I could abstain from a woman who to most people was so attractive. But though her face was beautiful, her person was not formed to excite passion. On the contrary, there were certain circumstances in her person which completely checked it."<ref>Lutyens, M., ''Millais and the Ruskins'', p.191</ref> The reason for Ruskin's disgust with "circumstances in her person" is unknown. Various suggestions have been made, including revulsion at either her pubic hair<ref>Phyllis Rose (1983) ''Parallel Lives''</ref><ref>Franny Moyle (2009) ''Desperate Romantics''</ref> or menstrual blood.<ref>Peter Fuller, ''Theoria: Art and the Absence of Grace'', Chatto & Windus, 1988, pp.11–12</ref><ref>[[Suzanne Fagence Cooper]] (2010) ''The Model Wife: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, Ruskin and Millais''.</ref> Robert Brownell, on the contrary, in his analysis ''Marriage of Inconvenience'', argues that Ruskin's difficulty with the marriage was financial and related to concerns that Gray and her less affluent family were trying to tap into Ruskin's considerable wealth.<ref>{{cite journal |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/29/ruskin-effie-marriage-inconvenience-brownell |first=Michael |last=Prodger |date=29 March 2013 |access-date=24 March 2015 |title=John Ruskin's marriage: What really happened |journal=Guardian}}</ref>