In the “Sugar” reading from last class, Eastlake talks about the gender implications of sugar and how they changed over the course of the Victorian era. She talks about how at the end of the century, sugar, which had previously been associated with women and children, became masculinized, writing: “This newly masculinized hunger for sugar reflects a broader cultural move away from the kind of midcentury masculine ideals described by James Eli Adams, which had emphasized ‘an elaborately articulated program of self-discipline'” (Eastlake 517). I thought this was interesting because in Mrs. Michaelson’s narrative, she notes multiple times how self-possessed Count Fosco was when taking Doctor Dawson’s criticism. When the Count offers his medical advice to Dr. Dawson, and Dr. Dawson tells him he will only reply to a “professional man,” Mrs. Michaelson is impressed how “Buffeted in this inexcusably uncivil way, on one cheek, the Count, like a practical Cristian, immediately turned the other, and said, in the sweetest manner, ‘Good morning, Mr. Dawson'” (Collins 362). This self-discipline is directly opposed to the Count’s sweet tooth, as Eastlake mentions earlier in the article.
We’ve talked about it in class a little, but it’s interesting how the foreigners in the books are not held to the same standards as the English people. Pesca and Count Fosco are vastly different. Pesca is open and excitable, and Fosco is creepy and unsettling, but both of them are characterized in some way as lacking self-discipline. Fosco eats lots of sweets, and Pesca was so excited to tell Hartright and his family the news of the job at Limmeridge House that he foregoes propriety and acts in a “boyish manner” (Collins 14).
The Woman in White was published before the end of the century, which means sugar was still feminized and juvenilized. Like the foreign men in the novel, the foreign women don’t seem to fit with Victorian norms. Mrs. Rubelle is very cold and I think she could be described as self-disciplined. The same goes for Countess Fosco (especially compared to her pre-marriage self). Even though she isn’t technically foreign, she seems to have been foreignized by Fosco. I’m not sure whether the novel sees the differences between Victorian expectations and foreigners as a strength – as in, they are free from the strict societal standards that English people are held to- or as a weakness – as in, they can never fully assimilate to British society and become an English person because they’re just different. I’m leaning toward the latter, because most of the foreigners in the novel are the bad guys, but Pesca’s role in this is complicated and makes it hard to generalize (which maybe is the point).