Class Blog

Mona Caird’s short story, “The Yellow Drawing Room,” paints a powerful portrait of the New Woman. The New Woman, according to the Victorian Web, “departed from the stereotypical Victorian woman” and “was intelligent, educated, emancipated, independent and supporting.” Caird’s depiction of Vanora Haydon shows the complexities and multifaceted-ness of the New Woman, raising questions about the role of women and marriage.

Told from the perspective of Mr. St. Vincent, “The Yellow Drawing Room” attempts to understand the innerworkings of a man’s mind and questions the logic he might use to justify the subordination of women. St. Vincent describes himself as “old-fashioned” when it comes to his understanding of sex and gender roles, yet despite this apparent self-awareness, he refuses to reconsider his preconceived notions about women and their role in Victorian society (106). When introduced to Vanora Haydon, St. Vincent is alarmed by his attraction to her as she does not fit into any of his boxes about what a woman should be like. Rather than rethink his view on women, he desires Vanora to change and become “‘a woman in the old sweet sense, for [his] sake’” (108). He repeatedly tells himself that “[Vanora] shall love [him], and she shall learn, through love, the sweet lesson of womanly submission” (108). Here, St.Vincent’s refusal to adapt to a changing world is made clear. By suggesting that he can coerce Vanora into loving him, and through that love convince her that she should submit to him as he believes that is her role, he becomes the living embodiment of the patriarchy.

St. Vincent’s need to control Vanora in order to re-establish his own sense of masculinity and power is explored repeatedly throughout the text. St. Vincent explicitly states that “[he] had the burning desire to subdue [Vanora]” (108). He even goes so far as to say that “[he] would make her proud of her subordination; [he] would turn the splendid stream of her powers and affection into the true channel” (108). St. Vincent’s desire for dominance over Vanora highlights the power imbalance between men and women during the nineteenth century, and yet, the dynamics were obviously beginning to change, too. George Inglis remarks on this change, claiming that “‘the contest is a typical one; if one could imagine the Eighteenth Century as a lover wooing the Nineteenth Century, this is the sort of angular labyrinthine courtship we should have!’” (108) When St. Vincent overhears Inglis say this, he states that he has no idea what Inglis could mean by it. However, the personification of the two centuries and their fraught courtship seems to directly reflect the same sort of fraught relationship (I use that term loosely) that St. Vincent and Vanora have.

The strained relationship between St. Vincent and Vanora is displayed fully in their final heated argument. St. Vincent declares his love for Vanora and accuses her of not loving him in return. However, Vanora disputes his accusation, saying “‘Ah! That is the horrible absurdity of it! . . . You enthral one part of me and leave the other scornful and indifferent . . . yet to the end of time I should continue to shock and irritate you, and you would stifle, depress, and perhaps utterly unhinge me” (109). Here, Vanora points out how strict gender roles and patriarchal social practices hurt both men and women, as they cause great strife in relationships and do not adequately engage with the complexity of human thought and feeling. Through the story of St. Vincent and Vanora, Caird seems to suggest that the dismantling of patriarchal social practices is necessary for men and women to be able to participate in equitable romantic and platonic partnerships, and that a woman’s role has the potential to go beyond only being a wife and mother.

Throughout “The Yellow Drawing Room”, Miss Vanora Haydon sets a fascinating example of the “new woman” in Victorian society. At multiple points in the short story, she freely expresses her opinions, especially when they are contradictory to the male main character’s beliefs. One glaring example of this is when she states, “you are very naif… you seem just now to me like a nice, egotistical child” (Caird 108) during an argument with Mr. St. Vincent. She is not afraid to express her feelings of intellectual superiority over him, despite gender stereotypes. What’s more, she seems relatively unconcerned with marriage and childbearing compared to the other women in her family, particularly her sisters. This idea, that she might seek other pursuits outside the home, flies in the face of Victorian social conventions surrounding the role of women. Heterosexual marriage and reproduction were considered the only respectable path for women at this time, and Vanora’s unwillingness to prioritize these things could be interpreted as a moral failing.  

The author gives clear evidence of Varona’s aversion to societal expectations of women when she says “My father never constrained me to move in any particular direction because of my sex. He has perhaps spoiled me. I have hitherto had only a joyous sense of drawing in what was outside and radiating out what was within me. When you describe your doctrines, I seem to see the doors of a prison opening out of the sunshine; and strange to say, I feel no divine, unerring instinct prompting me to walk in” (Caird 109). The thought process that Vanora describes here is particularly unique for the Victorian era for a variety of reasons. First, she states that her father has given her a lot of leniencies when it comes to conducting herself, which is rare for a culture that saw women as objects to be controlled rather than full independent people. In this way, her statement that he never constrained her because of her sex AND this sentiment stuck with her into adulthood despite outside influences is rather revolutionary for the time. Furthermore, her outright rejection of the marriage that St. Vincent proposes, and referring to it as “a prison” is the Victorian equivalent of giving the finger to the social hierarchy she was born into.  

By writing this dramatic scene, where Vanora passionately defies St. Vincent’s expectations of womanhood in every way and yet he is still attracted to her, Caird is making a comment about the contradictory nature of Victorian society. Vanora is completely undeterred by male expectations, and she does not appear to be catering to the male gaze in the way that her sisters do. However, part of her is still intrigued by him, even though she believes he would “turn all homes into prisons” (Caird 109). In this way, Vanora’s character is more than one-dimensional feminist hero, because she portrays the emotional complexity involved in defying a system you were born to conform to.  

The Victorian Web cites Charlotte Brontë’s 1849 novel Shirley as a New Woman novel, as well as Charlotte herself as part of the New Woman movement. Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, published a year earlier, upholds the same characteristics in a defining way. The article writes that “many New Woman novels strongly opposed the idea that home is the woman’s only proper sphere. The female authors revealed the traps of conventional Victorian marriage, including the condition of marriage which tolerated marital rape, compulsory or enforced motherhood, and the double standard of sexual morality.” The article outlines the paradox of the New Woman: alternately oversexed and undersexed, hyperfeminine or hypermasculine, “manhating and/or man-eating or self-appointed savior of benighted masculinity.” Wildfell Hall exemplifies the duality of the New Woman almost half a century before the New Woman phenomenon made the socially significant changes talked about in the Victorian Web article.

The protagonist of the novel, alternately Helen Huntingdon and Helen Graham, does what the article defines as characteristic to New Woman novels: it “expressed dissatisfaction with the contemporary position of women in marriage and society … New Woman novels represented female heroines who fought against the traditional Victorian male perception of woman as ‘angel in the house’ and challenged the old colds of conducts and morality.” Helen Huntingdon, the wife to Arthur Huntingdon, represents one side of the New Woman attempting to reform the degeneracy of her husband, while Helen Graham, the fugitive single mother hiding from her abusive marriage, represents another. When Helen first marries Mr. Huntingdon, it’s the definition of an “I can fix him relationship” even before she is exposed to the depths of Huntingdon’s depravity. Throughout the novel, Huntingdon operates as a corrupting force on other characters, encouraging alcoholism, addiction, and adultery; he attempts to “make a man” out of his very young son in his image, giving him alcohol and teaching him to swear. At first, Helen tries to encourage reformation, though she is met with resistance at every turn.

Helen spends the entirety of her marriage with Huntingdon trying to reform him. She tries to curb his drinking and his partying, to manage his debts, and even turns a brief blind eye to his adultery. He resists her at every turn, gaslighting and manipulating her, flaunting his cheating and trying to corrupt her. He calls her his “household deity” and confines her to the property, refusing to allow her to accompany him when he leaves for months to “do business” (read: party) in London or even to attend her father’s funeral. Their marriage falls apart. Helen, in an act of defiance, bands Huntingdon from her bedroom and so denies him access to her body. Huntingdon refuses to allow her to divorce him, or even to live separately from him. When Helen at last runs away from Grassdale Manor with her son, and assumes the name Helen Graham, she is resisting the institution of marriage that has become so confining for her. This is only a brief overview of the ways in which the New Woman ideology can be read through Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and it is possible to go much more in depth about it. I felt that Anne deserved her name among the New Women movement along with her sister.

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.  

My Last Duchess by Robert Browning tells the story of a duke who has taken an advisor from another nobleman whose daughter the duke is trying to marry. On his tour, the duke runs across a portrait of his ex-wife. This is not his last wife because it is his final love; she was his most recent. This seems to imply that this is a constant string of marriages and murders for him, and the woman that we see in this portrait is his latest victim. The meeting with the advisor suggests he is not slowing down. This oppressive violence towards women becomes even more insidious when one takes into account that the possessive nature does not end at the death of the duchess. The painting itself is an act of violence against the woman, for it takes away her autonomy as it both stills and silences her. She is objectified in a literal sense. Trapped within the oil paints bought by the duke’s wealth, she is his forever. His wealth and standing allowed him to marry her in the first place, allowed him to capture her image, and allowed him to kill her without consequence. He even covers her with a curtain so that he alone may be allowed to dictate who is allowed to see her “(since none puts by / The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)” (Browning). However, I think that the last three lines of the poem give the clearest demonstration of Browning’s intentions with this poem. Neptune taming a seahorse, a wild beast, made into a trophy, a possession. Similar to how the duke sought to tame his last duchess. Obvious symbology aside, how the duke talks about the trophy of Neptune is at the same level of grandeur as how he talks about his dead wife, and he moves on from her with startling ease. She is no more than a horse cast in bronze to him.

Help Me I’m Trapped Inside of This Computer,

Carmine “Red” Zingiber

In Mona Caird’s “The Yellow Drawing-Room,” Vanora is initially described by the narrator, Mr. St. Vincent, as “a headstrong and probably affected young person” (Caird 103). She is everything that St. Vincent hates in a woman; she is too loud and independent, and he detests her before he even meets her. However, his opinion of Vanora is immediately confused when he meets her for the first time. It seems that the last thing he expected to see in Vanora’s appearance was femininity, yet, “She was supremely, overpoweringly woman” (Caird 105). St. Vincent is bewildered at the fact that Vanora’s feminine beauty could exist at the same time as her headstrong personality. Surely a woman with a lovely figure and beautiful golden hair could never be anything but quiet and amenable.

A very similar instance occurs in Wilkie Collins’ “The Woman in White.” When Walter Hartright sees Marian for the first time, she is turned around, and Hartright marvels at the beauty and femininity of her body. However, the second that he sees Marian’s face, he is at once struck with the same confusion as Mr. St. Vincent. To Hartright, Marian’s masculine face completely contradicts the femininity of her body. Additionally, he makes judgements about her personality in a way that mimics St. Vincent’s judgements about Vanora: “Her expression – bright, frank, and intelligent – appeared, while she was silent, to be altogether wanting in those feminine attractions of gentleness and pliability, without which the beauty of the handsomest woman alive is beauty incomplete” (Collins 35).

In these two instances, St. Vincent and Hatright both have a hard time grappling with the contradiction of the women’s ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ attributes. Hatright states it plainly, saying “to see such a face as this set on shoulders that a sculptor would have longed to model […] was to feel a sensation oddly akin to the helpless discomfort familiar to us all in sleep, when we recognize yet cannot reconcile the anomalies and contradictions of dreams” (Collins 35). The reactions of both men likely represent the general public’s views on gender roles. There is a very narrow definition of what a woman or a man can be, and anything that deviates from this is difficult to understand and accept.

The fourth and fifth paragraphs on page 108 of Mona Caird’s The Yellow Drawing-Room illustrate how intensely the narrator feels shame surrounding his sexuality. Although the narrator does not deny that he wishes to court Vanora, throughout this passage, he places distance between himself and the actual effects of a courtship, like sex. First, despite the fourth paragraph’s equal focus on Vanora and the narrator, seven of the eight sentences begin with “I.” This repetition obviously favors the narrator’s feelings over how they may affect Vanora. However, it also highlights the difficulties he has in figuring out his feelings. Every attempt he makes at naming his emotions falls flat and necessitates another sentence. He cannot say that complex feelings he has are not just love, but also sexual desires. As with many pieces of Victorian literature, the length of a passage or even an entire book reflects how the characters skirt around the unsaid.

When it comes time for the narrator to admit his love for Vanora, he falters, and writes, “I suppose I must have been in love with her…(Caird 108).” Instead of directly saying “I loved her,” the narrator creates both physical space on the page and a string of apologies for his feelings by adding two additional verb clauses. In a setting where marriage was at stake, love equated sex. By questioning his declaration of love, he distanced himself from the thought of having to perform with the confident, liberated Vanora in an intimate setting.

The narrator’s hidden desires become clearer in the following sentence, where he writes, “I longed to make her yield to me…I had a burning desire to subdue her (Caird 108). The sentence carries dual meanings, pointing to both the narrator’s wish to quell her rebellious, “New Woman,” characteristics, and wish to subdue her sexually. Because Vanora holds power over the narrator because she reputes his advances, he secretly wishes to match her power in a physical way. Using “burning,” an adjective frequently associated with the heat and intensity of sex, further paints this picture. However, the way he explains it is characteristically confusing and shadowed by inuendo.

The narrator’s shame revolving around sex can partially be pinned on the old-fashioned views on romance that he admits that he has. However, these textual elements point to an additional factor: how Vanora emasculates the narrator by refuting him. By losing the power in courtship that his gender would normally afford him, he becomes ashamed of his inability to be viewed as a legitimate, sexual man. He wishes to act as a “man” by being sexually dominant, but to plainly admit this would also implicate his feelings of insufficient masculinity.

In his article “The New Woman Fiction” from The Victorian Web, Dr. Andrzej Diniejko outlines the socially constructed image of the “New Woman” as it developed toward the end of the 19^th century. As Diniejko describes, the New Woman “departed from the stereotypical Victorian woman” in her desires for independence, education, and employment (Diniejko 2). This departure from traditional femininity was mocked in popular satirical depictions of the New Woman, which “usually pictured her riding a bicycle in bloomers and smoking a cigarette” (Diniejko 2). This image presents the New Woman as markedly masculine: she wears pants to allow her to straddle a bicycle and she smokes cigarettes, a typically male activity (for the time) involving a phallic object.

However, Diniejko qualifies this masculinization, considering Lyn Pykett’s observations of “the ambivalent representations of the New Woman in the late-Victorian discourse: ‘The New Woman was by turns: a mannish amazon and a Womanly woman…’” (qtd. in Diniejko 2). Pykett links these seemingly contradictory descriptions with “and,” illustrating the New Woman as a multi-faceted figure containing both masculinity and femininity. As a result, the New Woman evades gender distinctions as well as any kind of singular identity or face.

Considering these complexities of the New Woman, I will analyze how Mona Caird’s The Yellow Drawing Room engages with the cultural conversation. In the story, Vanora Haydon presents a fascinating take on the New Woman which both holds up and challenges the popular image. Before even meeting Vanora, Mr. St. Vincent learns of her garish decoration of the drawing room and determines that she must be “headstrong” and attention-seeking (Caird 103). He muses plainly, “I hate that sort of girl,” and contrasts her with his idea of the “true woman,” who is “retiring, unobtrusive, and indistinguishable” (Caird 103). Caird sets up Vanora against the image of “true” womanhood, playing into the popular masculinized caricature.

This division is seemingly continued when Mr. St. Vincent considers Vanora’s plain sister Clara as his “ideal woman,” who would never decorate in bright yellow (Caird 104). However, upon seeing Vanora for the first time, Mr. St. Vincent observes her “mass of glistening, golden hair,” her “eyes like the sea,” and her “robust” figure (Caird 104). This description recalls Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, the pinnacle of the female form. Indeed, Mr. St. Vincent goes on to describe Vanora as “supremely, overpoweringly womanly. The womanhood of her sisters paled before the exuberant feminine quality which I could not but acknowledge in Vanora” (Caird 105). Here, Caird overthrows Mr. St. Vincent’s idea of the “true” or “ideal” woman,” because Vanora’s femininity exceeds that of her sister Clara. His “scheme of the universe” (Caird 105) is entirely upended by Vanora’s extreme womanliness and beauty, for although Vanora’s behavior frustrates gendered expectations, her image overwhelmingly fulfills them.

With the character of Vanora, Caird challenges the popular masculinization of the New Woman by presenting an overly feminine figure whose personality contradicts her appearance. Caird engages with the ambiguity observed by Lyn Pykett but completely avoids the “mannish amazon” image. On the outside, Vanora is purely feminine, yet beneath the surface she bewilders traditional gender norms. With this choice, Caird presents her own version of the New Woman which blends with the “true” woman,” casting doubt on the Victorians’ ability to clearly distinguish a traditional woman from a rebel.

In Mona Caird’s “The Yellow Drawing Room,” Clara is depicted as the archetypal “angel in the house.” This term stems from a Coventry Patmore poem describing the ideal woman as tame, docile, and living to serve men. The main character of this story, Mr. St. Vincent, comments that this ideal woman should be “retiring, unobtrusive, indistinguishable even until you come to know her well, and then she is very much like what every other true woman would be under the same conditions” (103). St. Vincent expresses “Certain suspicions which I had harboured that Clara Haydon was my ideal woman grew stronger as I watched her quiet English face bent over the tea-tray… If I was to give up my liberty, the reins should be handed over to a kind, sensible young woman like Clara, who would hate to make herself remarkable, or her drawing room yellow” (104). In other words, a woman who would not actually take the reigns or distinguish herself in any way.

Though St. Vincent clearly feels that Clara checks all the boxes of his perfect wife, it is not Clara that St. Vincent falls for. It is her total opposite– the wild, “new woman” Vanora, who stands out as much as the bright yellow walls she chose for the drawing room. He is incredibly sexually attracted to her, describing her figure as “robust, erect, pliant” and he expresses feeling “penetrated” by her “glowing atmosphere” (105-106). In sexual contexts, the word “penetrates” is usually an action a man does to a woman. Interestingly, here it is Vanora penetrating him, suggesting that she challenges his power and masculinity (not just through her personality, but also her sexuality). In comparison, Clara is physically described with much more boring terms, with a “straightforward look” and “blue eyes and a fair complexion” (104). 

St. Vincent’s contempt for Vanora’s behavior and attitude only seem to increase his sexual attraction towards her. He says, “all the dominating instincts of my manhood roused into activity by this hateful experience,” the sexual connotations of the phrase “my manhood roused” connecting his hatred to his lust (108). Further, this desire to dominate her suggests that he is turned on by Vanora’s disobedience and wants to “tame” her (both emotionally and physically).   

Ultimately, St. Vincent confesses that he loves and wants to marry Vanora. Clara, fades into the background of the story, still “gentle” when wounded by St. Vincent’s choice. 

St. Vincent’s feelings for Vanora, despite Clara meeting every one of his standards for the ideal woman, implies that as the “new woman” emerged, not only were men challenged, but the “angel in the house” was challenged. St. Vincent’s aggressive attraction to Vanora suggests that some Victorian men were intrigued by the “new woman,” desiring the sexual satisfaction of “taming” these women, presenting conflicting guidance for how women should draw in men.

This double standard continues today, as men are often sexually attracted to archetypes like the “femme fatale” that challenge their control. Simultaneously, they don’t want their power challenged, and also to some extent want “traditional wives.” Which is more appealing: an outspoken woman in a tight dress, or a loving, modest woman doing your laundry for you?