In Mona Caird’s “The Yellow Drawing-Room”, Vanora Haydon is placed into the complicated position of queenliness. The protagonist, Mr. St. Vincent, is hopelessly in love with her against what he considers to be his own best judgement. Because, to him, Vanora has “many qualities and ideas that are not suited to [her] sex” (106), and borders on “inevitably ridiculous” (107), she cannot be his ideal woman. He repeats several times that a woman’s true power lies in the “sacred realms where a woman is queen” (106). By this he means the home, as a wife and mother, which Vanora expresses absolutely no interest in. He also means by this that Vanora should be silent, submissive, and unopinionated. For Mr. St. Vincent, Vanora’s true power as queen lies in her giving up her authority and self to him and reigning only over “womanly” areas.
But Vanora is already a queen in her own right, with a kingdom of her own. Her yellow drawing room serves as her own sacred realm where her authority reigns and her ideas are allowed to exist. In Victorian times, the country’s regent was a queen, and Vanora’s attitude about herself and her agency reflect the attitude that women are not simply wives and mothers, but leaders, and can hold positions of authority. Mr. St. Vincent’s rejection to this attitude because it is not “ideal” reflects the resistance against the “new woman” ideology and women’s liberation movements that were born out of the Victorian era and the extensive reign of a queen.
Mouseinthewalls, I think your point about Mr. St. Vincent’s desire for Vanora to be queenly is interesting. I am especially interested in the claim that you make in your second paragraph, where you suggest that Vanora is a queen in her own right, particularly in the setting of her drawing room. While I understand where you are coming from, I wonder if Vanora herself might reject the label of queen, as she explicitly states that “[she] rather prefer[s] the realms where woman is not queen” (106). I also think Queen Victoria is an interesting and complex person to study because while she was the queen of England, she was also a wife and mother and went into deep mourning after Prince Albert’s death. I am not certain that Queen Victoria herself would be considered a New Woman, or if she would choose to label herself as such. Vanora, on the other hand, seems to fully embody this idea of the New Woman. That said, I think that Queen Victoria being in the position she was in might have been the catalyst, like you suggest, for women’s liberation movements.