Author: ladybug

Edmond Ramus’ Debut in the Studio (1885) and the Illman Brothers’ Feeding the Motherless (19^th c.) oppose each other in the way that they showcase women. In Debut, the woman stands, naked only partially concealed by pale fabric, in a dark room surrounded by three other figures wearing dark clothing. She is exposed from the waist up, and is covering her eyes with her arm, perhaps in an expression of shame. Her hair is up, perhaps to better expose her body. The other people in the room are all staring at her, and all are wearing clothes that drape over them excessively. The reclining figure, possibly another woman although gender is indeterminable, is reclined with more fabric wrapped around them. It is clear that this woman is on display not only to the other figures in the engraving but to the viewer of the engraving itself, as her torso is facing directly towards the “camera.” The man sitting on pillows to the right of the engraving seems to be some kind of artist; he sits before a canvas and easel. His entire body is facing the woman, rather than his art, even as her body is as turned away from him as it can be. The woman stands on an animal skin rug, perhaps in some kind of metaphorical irony that both her and the deceased animal can have no covering to the exposure within the engraving and the audience to the engraving are subjecting them to.

Feeding the Motherless, in visual contradiction to Debut, shows only one woman, the apparent vision of propriety. She is also pale in a dark room. However, this woman is fully clothed, almost conservatively: she wears long sleeves and her body isn’t defined indecently by the clothing she has on. Her hair is also up but in a way that is intentional and part of her fashion rather than to display her body. She stands in profile, shown only from the waist up in the engraving, in contrast to the woman in Debut whose whole body is exposed but is naked from the waist up. She doesn’t give any acknowledgement that she is being observed; instead, she focuses on the baby birds, the motherless, that she is generously and maternally caring for. In the background, there is a table with a vase of flowers on it. Just like in Debut, it is clear that this woman is the focus of the engraving, but for an entirely different reason.

The engravings show two women in contrasting situations, but ultimately are united despite the difference in the content that they display. Both are showing different iterations of an “acceptable” woman – hypersexualized or hyper-maternal. The woman in Debut and the woman in Feeding the Motherless are both being viewed by men and coded accordingly. Although Debut appears sexualized and Motherless appears the opposite by virtue of their surroundings, in actuality both women are displayed for the purpose of men’s art and viewing. They are being used for art, depersonalized and derealized as a fully human being, reduced only to stereotypes of the female body or the ideal of motherhood. They are reduced as “less than” by the male gaze, regardless of how much of their bodies are being displayed; they are used for their symbolism.

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.

“What does informal empire mean?” Jessie Reeder’s essay illuminating the paradox inherent in informal empire brings to his reader’s attention that the agents of empire, while invading lands they have no ownership over in quest for wealth, often do so without the awareness that they are “‘missionaries of capitalism’ and the ‘capitalist vanguard’” (Reeder, 432). Indeed, another definition for “informal empire,” he informs us, is “financial imperialism” (431). Freed from the hierarchies demanded by the supervision of centralized power, “most individuals simply followed their own individual, rather than any large systemic, motivations” (432). The key word here is most.

In The Women in White, both Count Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde operate as agents of informal empire, aiming to gain financial control over Laura Glyde née Fairlie. They do so outside of structured, hierarchal power dynamics: in this setting, that is the Glyde’s marriage and Count Fosco’s dominance over the takeover. Additionally, Count Fosco is himself a foreigner, and is entering not only onto English territory but specifically Laura and Percival’s territory, in order to enact “a system of coercive power” (432). Both Percival and the Count are aware of their actions and their financial desire, and both are enacting nefarious works to obtain their desires; however, where Percival strives to do so within the bounds of his marriage with Laura – when he is trying to convince her to sign the mysterious document: “I have told her this is merely a formal document – and what more can she want? You may say what you please; but it is no part of a woman’s duty to set her husband at defiance.” (Collins, 246) – Count Fosco exerts control over Percival himself, the sending and receiving of mail, the animals and people surrounding him, and the health of the people around him. Some scholars, Reeder informs us, reject the term “informal empire,” and instead suggest “that ‘sphere of influence’ or ‘dependency’ better fits the bill” (Reeder, 433). Both Fosco and Percival foster exert their influence to encourage dependency in others, often by using their status, in their effort to pursue their individual desires for first financial freedom, and then financial control. Walter and Mariane, upon their reunion, understand that “[they] had no mercy to expect from Count Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde. The success of the conspiracy had brought with it a clear gain to those two men of thirty thousand pounds – twenty thousand to one: ten thousand to the other” (Collins, 431).

In direct opposition to Percival and Count Fosco, Walter Hartright embodies the unaware vessel for informal imperialism within the novel. Whereas Fosco and Percival are actively participating in their desire for financial domination, Hartright leaves England to escape from his ill-begotten love for the then-Laura Fairlie. To do so, he joins an expedition to Central America, to “make excavations among the ruined cities” (178). While it is unclear exactly what is happening during his time away, it can be assumed that the excavations he is joining are in the interest of financial gain – if not for the individual, then for the empire. However, it is clear that upon his return to England, he has not netted financial gain from the expedition. Although he returns “a changed man,” the money he contributes to his and Mariane’s fund is only “the purchase-money obtained from the sale by the sale of [his] drawing master’s practice before [he] left England” (406; 432). Later, when Walter meets with Mr. Kyrle, he refuses to discuss Laura’s affairs with him and tells him “There shall be no money-motive…no idea of personal advantage, in the service I mean to render to Lady Glyde” (445). Although Walter can’t count himself among the individuals intentionally participating in the financial imperialism happening within the novel, and indeed flat-out denies wanting to, he is still complicit in it through his vague expedition to Central America – he faces death by “disease,” “Indians,” and “drowning” – and, I theorize, his involvement with Mariane and Laura. Although we have yet to read about it in the novel, I wonder the ways in which Walter Hartright will experience the benefit of his informal imperialism, just by virtue of being among the men intruding into Mariane and Laura’s lives.

Throughout the first third of The Woman in White “unexplainable feelings” often become entirely explainable. Walter Hartright’s first unexplainable uneasiness upon the prospect of his going to teach at Limmeridge House is enlightened given his disastrous love for Miss Fairlie. His unexplainable tension upon first seeing Miss Fairlie is realized when he at last connects her similarities with Anne Catherick. These “unexplainable” feelings have generally been found to be very explainable, when the situation is placed in the correct context. Mr. Gilmore’s obliviousness over the situation between Walter and Laura during Mr. Hartright’s last night at Limmeridge House is an excellent example of dramatic irony; the reader understands the situation the character is confused about.

When Miss Halcombe is obliged (perhaps coerced is the better word here) by Percival Glyde to write a letter to Anne Catherick’s mother, his behavior seems entirely by-the-book to Mr. Gilmore, but it is clear to the reader that Mrs. Halcombe doubts his character despite herself. She had “a certain hesitation of manner,” and “looked uneasy” (WIW, 132). There are small moments in the text that reinforce the importance of paying attention to “unexplainable uneasiness,” regardless of what a character is trying to convince themselves of – here, it is Percival’s upstanding character. The reader is encouraged to trust observations before the character’s feelings, and try to separate the two the best they can.

An excellent example of this is Percival’s interaction with Miss Fairlie’s dog. The reader has observed, along with Mr. Hartright in his account of events, that the dog is loyal to her mistress; she always accompanies Laura on walks, and the dog is “pressed against her dress impatiently for notice and encouragement,”  when Walter observes her from his window. Even as Mr. Gilmore is entirely convinced (or determined to convince himself) that Percival is a good man, he still details his observations; when Percival “good-humouredly” calls out to the dog, she instead “shrank away from his outstretched hand, whined, shivered, and hid itself under a sofa… As he opened the door, the [dog] poked out her sharp muzzle… and barked and snapped at him” (133-134). This makes the reader question what is real and what is not: we haven’t seen the dog interact beyond Walter’s observance of her with Miss Fairlie; perhaps this is just how she behaves.

Mr. Gilmore entirely attributes this behavior to the dog, but Miss Halcombe hesitates around him; Anne Catherick sent a warning letter; Walter is suspicious of Percival’s character – the investigation is ongoing. How much of the doubt can be attributed to easy explanations: young, foolish love between Walter and Laura; Anne Catherick’s mental illness; Marianne’s desire to see her sister in a happy relationship? Mr. Gilmore has thus far described Percival’s behavior as entirely morally upstanding. Walter and Miss Halcombe have received no concrete proof their suspicions are founded in fact. And yet the dog cowers away and snaps at him. When Mr. Gilmore himself later approaches Miss Fairlie and her dog on his own, he expects the dog to snap at him, too. Instead, “the whimsical little brute falsified [his] expectations by jumping into [his] lap, and poking its sharp muzzle familiarly into [his] hand” (141). Who is a better judge of character: Mr. Gilmore, or the dog?

When Mr. Gilmore leaves his meeting with Laura, he recalls that though he had entered the room “believing Sir Percival Glyde had fair reason to complain of the manner in which she was treating him… [he] left it, secretly hoping that matters might end in her taking him at his word and claiming her release” (145). By the end of his account, Mr. Gilmore has completely changed his attitude towards Percival – “no daughter of mine should have been married to any man alive under such a settlement as I was compelled to make for Laura Fairlie” (161). Character’s “unexplained feelings” or suspicions are often validated by the surrounding subtext – Anne and Laura’s white clothing, and the dog’s behavior are examples of this. The unreliability of narrators in this novel serves to encourage the reader to pay closer attention to what is written between the lines. What is real, and what is imagined? Paying attention to patterns and “unexplainable feelings” will very likely yield explanations in due time, if this trend stays consistent.