mccrillm – Victorian Sexualities

Archive Project: Olive Schreiner’s Dreams

This is an excerpt from “The Sunlight Falls Across My Bed,” a chapter of the New Woman Olive Schreiner’s 1898 book, Dreams, which she wrote in South Africa, where she spent much of her life. The chapter follows a narrator’s journey through hell and heaven for which God is her tour guide. It defies expectations of Victorian literature through its manipulation of and deviation from Victorian strategies of addressing sexuality. Schreiner begins with hallmark elements of Victorian art and literature. For example, the narrator compares women to fruit and uses sensuous imagery that creates a vision of gluttonous pleasure in corporeal satisfaction. She says, “they were tall and graceful and had yellow hair… over their heads hung yellow fruit like large pears of melted gold” (Schreiner 134). The reader expects that this work will remain within the confines of Victorian depictions of sexuality in veiled terms and will paint women as passive actors and objects of pleasure. This impression is quickly shattered in the paragraphs that follow. In this way, this piece of writing defies the Victorian expectations of sexuality depictions and acceptable gender roles.

The first break from expectation is the women’s active role. Instead of tasting the fruit and being confined to hell, the women the narrator sees simply prick the fruits that they, “are poisoning” before the men eat them (Schreiner 135). Setting aside the connotations of that action, women in this scene are deciding the fates of men, something that does not happen in the sexual dynamics of typical Victorian works. Though the women possess some of the ideal traits of this era, being “tall and graceful” and “delicate,” they use these qualities for nefarious purposes (Schreiner 134). I argue this is a step past the seductive women portrayed by so many of the Pre-Raphaelites and other aesthetes, who were a danger to men, yet not through their own agency and confined to the role of passive object.

The next break from the monolithic Victorian is in the subject matter of this excerpt. Though it is coded, there is a metaphor which explains the spread of venereal diseases through the illegal sex trade. Schreiner highlights the covert nature of such interactions by repeatedly reinforcing the women’s attention to secrecy. Before piercing the fruits, each woman, “looked this way and that,” and only attempt their mission when they “saw no one there” (Schreiner 135). God explains to the narrator that the women “touch it with their lips, when they have made a tiny wound in it with their teeth they set in it that which is under their tongues: they close it with their lip—that no man may see the place, and pass on” (Schreiner 135). This depiction is much more explicit than most addresses of sexuality, prostitution, and disease seen in the Victorian canon.

This passage deviates from accepted discourse on sexuality by addressing specific aspects of venereal disease. By stating that the men do not and cannot know which fruits are tainted, Schreiner describes how symptoms present differently (or not at all) in women versus men. The fact that the author knew about such particulars would be shocking in itself, but placing them in a narrative and putting them in conversation with religion by choosing to have God explain them falls far outside the perceived Victorian norm.

More subtly, but I think more meaningfully, Schreiner addresses the emotional bankruptcy of both parties after a sexual transaction. Instead of focusing on the moral deprivation of participants in the sex trade, which would be permissible as a didactic woman’s writing informed by faith, Schreiner points out that both women and men are losers at the end of such transactions when God says they gain, “Nothing” (Schreiner 136). Going even further, she asserts that their carelessness is from fear, which eliminates other concerns. This is a claim by Schreiner that Victorian suppression of sexuality is the root cause of its most chastised behaviors and a much more pervasive threat to people’s well-being, and such a challenge is the most radically “queer” aspect of this selection.

My VQA Entry Image from HATHI TRUST

If a Little Girl Challenges a Queen in a Dream, Does it Make a Sound?

Through the Looking Glass expands themes found in Alice in Wonderland but brings them to a more complete stage of thought. Alice continues to question her identity, focusing more on her name and her ownership of narrative than her physical size as in the first volume. Additionally, Alice struggles to understand why people behave the way they do and what or who defines acceptable actions.

Towards the end of Through the Looking Glass, Alice encounters the Red and White queens, who represent successful and failed attempts at Victorian womanhood, though both are equally compliant with Victorian society’s demands of women. The Red Queen insists upon avoiding challenges to propriety and passes judgement on other women, while the White Queen fails to visually or behaviorally reflect the ideal Victorian woman’s composure and delicacy. The Red Queen embodies the ideal authority female figure when she critiques the White queen and Alice’s behavior. She instructs Alice to, “Speak when you are spoken to!” (Carroll 211). Alice promptly responds, saying, “if you only spoke when you were spoken to, and the other person always waited for you to begin, you see nobody would ever say anything, so that—–“ (Carroll 211). The Red Queen silences her and proceeds to flail at a response before changing the subject. This exchange is important because Alice leaves out a key facet of Victorian social rules in her rebuttal. She fails to take into account those who are given the authority to speak before addressed. Even though the queen is one such individual, Alice’s failure to recognize and question the viability of this fact reveals how much she has been trained to accept such a hierarchy.

This passage is also important because it demonstrates the way Alice’s dream allows her to challenge and question rules that she could never discuss in waking life. When Alice’s nurse or mother instructs her to behave in a certain way, Alice would expect to be denied and punished, while she feels much more free to do so when faced with a figure like the Red Queen, whom she does not recognize from Victorian society. Her ability to point out an inconsistency in the queen’s instruction reveals and important takeaway from the book as a whole. By suggesting that the only conceivable method for exploring such ideas is a dream, Carroll also indicates that no one in Victorian society will speak on such topics even to discuss them, never mind object to them.

The circumvention of Alice’s question has significance as well because she is not able to bring up her point again. The Red Queen successfully moves on to another topic, proving the effectiveness of Victorian evasion at preventing reform or challenge to the status quo. Alice is likely accustomed to such a shift in conversation when there is a danger of substantive debate, just as she is used to someone in authority, like the nurse she mentions, instructing her.

This passage is a good example of the way Carroll asks the reader to consider why individuals are not discussing behavioral norms in Victorian England. By setting this story in a dream, he shows the extent to which Victorians would consider pursuing such topics. While he does indicate people are concerned about these ideas’ truth, he also acknowledges the likelihood of change or discussion. He does this by continually limiting Alice’s success in reaching definitive answers and by denying her understanding of her own thoughts. Without realizing that she is questioning her society, Alice will not continue to do so when she returns to her home and her cats.

Image from Wikipedia (Red Queen and Alice)

Victorian Chicks

The print called “Feeding the Motherless” from the Illman Brothers is striking because I think it directly relates to ideas about social responsibility that were strong throughout the Victorian Era and The Woman in White. The woman in this image is feeding baby birds, which are a completely helpless and frail entity. These are characteristics often applied to women in the Victorian Era, and the chicks physically resemble the image of women at this time. Both the woman and the birds are the same shade of white, indicating that they are related in some way. There is limited shading, but the artist has designed the image so that is seems as though light is emanating from the woman in the photo, while the darkness surrounds her. That light quality represents the supposed purity and moral superiority of noble women. These visual aspects of the print lead me to connect the baby birds to abandoned women and poor women, who cannot survive on their own. This relates directly to The Woman in White and its assortment of helpless females that must be helped to survive, even at the most basic level.

One such woman is Anne Catherick, who is “helped” first by Lady Glyde, who sees her as motherless and in need of moral and intellectual education. Glyde cleans her, dresses her all in white, and is attracted to her in large part because of her helplessness and inability to be like Laura herself. In a way, Anne promises to be an ongoing project that can never function independently, just as a bird trained to expect food from a human will never learn to hunt on its own. The fact that an upper class woman is feeding the birds as a leisure activity reveals an interesting aspect of Glyde’s care for Anne, as she sees it as something that fills her time and gives her satisfaction. She tells her husband the result of Anne’s consultation with the doctor, writing, “he says her careful bringing-up at school is a matter of great importance just now, because her unusual slowness in acquiring ideas implies an unusual tenacity in keeping them,” which is very revealing because it shows that the doctor essentially wants someone to control the ideas entering Anne’s mind (Collins 60). Lady Glyde proceeds to educate Anne, dressing her all in delicate lace frocks and beginning to instill ideas about traditional femininity in her mind. Like the abandoned birds, Lady Glyde feeds Anne things that are not natural for her, leaving her without the ability to live on her own. In this way, the doctor’s prophecy comes true when her mind becomes warped and cannot function properly.

Laura exemplifies the way that hand feeding a helpless woman through adulthood leaves her similarly without the ability to be independent. She is raised being fed ideas, and so when she is faced with opportunities to decide her own fate, she cannot act on her own behalf. She has been trained to serve men and to remain pure and honest, and so even though she does not love Percival, she cannot exit her engagement for fear of defying all that she believes a woman should be. She expects to be delivered the correct answer, much like a domesticated bird waits to be fed in the nest. Even though she ends up in a stable situation, her welfare has been the activity filling Walter and Marion’s lives, and will presumably continue that way. These two delicate birds in the novel end up unable to survive on their own, dependent on patrons to care for them.

Image: http://collections.troutgallery.org/Obj18174?sid=59379&x=611464

These Truths Are Not Self-Evident: Victorian Denial and Internal Bargaining

For this blog post, I will be analyzing Walter Hartright’s statement about Victorian preference for truth and examining what it means in the greater context of the novel. He says, “When an English jury has to choose between a plain fact on the surface and a long explanation under the surface, it always takes the fact…” (442). This is striking for two reasons. The first is that this quote speaks to the characters’ continual refusal to state the truth, while vehemently claiming untruths as the reality. Second, when put into a Victorian Historical context, I think this statement speaks to the lack of support in the English legal system for women, especially married ones. The law rules almost every case in favor of the richest, most male option because it makes sense or seems true to the jury and Victorian society as a whole.

The Woman in White has a set of characters that reflect this quote from Hartright. They deny reality with their words and actions, which is simpler for them despite the complications of lying. This is because Victorian culture has created a set of acceptable realities that its inhabitants mold their narratives to fit. Mr. Fairlie claims to be “one of the most easy-tempered creatures that ever lived,” after refusing to actively help Laura and expressing irritation at Marion’s severe illness. His lack of self-awareness allows him to live with himself despite his complete lack of humanity. Percival’s entire premise as a baronet is based in lie, but this is not revealed until the third epoch, and even then is not explicitly stated. Laura marries Sir Glyde despite being in love with Walter, and I think this is largely because breaking off and working through her feelings seems too complicated. In addition, she does it to preserve her and her family’s reputation as Victorian ideals dictate.

Characters in this novel refuse to acknowledge obvious truths and avoid honesty, which, as we discussed Wednesday, leads to much of the mystery and danger in the plot. Walter’s statement about a jury’s desire to leap to an obvious conclusion also applies to the other characters in the novel. Mr. Fairlie, for example, wants everything to be explained to him as simply as possible. He wants this expedient delivery not so as to understand the situation better, but so as to avoid facing anything that makes him uncomfortable. Laura expresses little desire to find out the details of her inheritance agreement, despite its effect on her life. Marion, Laura, and other characters choose to ignore the suspicions they have about Fosco and Glyde because admitting something nefarious about these men society defines as superior would challenge every tenet of their cultural ideology.

In this quote, Hartright expresses his belief that people want the simple truth, but this is proved false, or at least incomplete. Instead of the truth, characters want to avoid any realities that are difficult to accept or that challenge their concept of morality and social norms. They will accept any explanation, no matter how implausible or complicated, provided it preserves their understanding of the world. the “simple” part of these explanations is that they exclude all contradictory evidence in order to maintain believability. A good way to achieve this is by avoiding all mention of sex, emotion, or other related topics. If these are not discussed, they cannot interfere with one’s worldview, but as we read in Cohen, they still exist. I think that, based on the actions of characters in this novel, Victorians avoided so many topics in order to maintain a kind of internal plausible deniability.

White Frock Imperialism: Collins’ Detrimental Charity

While reading The Woman in White, something that stuck out to me was the effect of Mrs. Fairlie on Anne Catherick as a child. Specifically, Mrs. Fairlie describes in her letter one statement she made to Anne. She writes, “So I arranged, yesterday, that some of our darling Laura’s old frocks and white hats should be altered for Anne Catherick; explaining to her that little girls of her complexion looked neater and better in all white than anything else. She hesitated and seemed puzzled for a minute; then flushed up, and appeared to understand… and said (oh so earnestly!), ‘I will always wear white as long as I live’” (Collins 60-1). This seemed important because when Hartright meets Anne, she is wearing white, and she clearly still recalls that this is due to Mrs. Fairlie’s suggestion. It made me consider the relationship between members of the upper and lower classes in Victorian England; specifically, the pressure on poorer people to imitate the upper class moral standards. In this scene, an upper class woman tells a disadvantaged little girl that she should be wearing white in an effort to improve her appearance, and the little girl holds onto this as an eternal truth throughout her life, acting as though maintaining Mrs. Fairlie’s wishes will bring her happiness or fulfillment.

In the larger context of the novel as a whole, I think this idea is fairly prominent. When Mrs. Fairlie seeks to improve Anne as a project, she is following the imperialist mindset we have discussed in class. She feels it is her responsibility to enforce her own standards of dress, and I think by extension, general behavior and moral conduct. Because of her plentiful resources and ignorance of lower-class reality, Mrs. Fairlie views Anne’s response as a charming devotion, while its effects will continue to spin out of control after Mrs. Fairlie’s departure. I would suggest this is a much smaller-scale version of the chaos that ensues when nations are colonized by Europeans who want to “improve” their morality and gain satisfaction from perceived success. This interaction is also significant because wearing white clothing is in fact not a practical or maintainable state of affairs for most middle or lower-class women, which relates to the difficulty of maintaining the strict social standards and boundaries for people who do not have all the material or educational resources of the upper class.

When I thought about this scene even more, I also began to consider its relation to the parallel drawn between Laura and Anne. Laura is given all the education and white clothing as a child of a wealthy family and turns out to be the ideal Victorian dainty woman. Anne’s experience with these resources produces a nearly opposite result: she is scarred and experiences some intense trauma we do not yet know the details of. I wonder if Collins could be suggesting that while Victorian standards and conventions suit and elevate the upper class, they have a hugely damaging effect on the lower classes. Perhaps he is arguing that if the lower classes do not have appropriate support, they will be confined to their station in a society that requires adherence to such extreme standards prior to admission. I wonder if this novel is in part a statement about the impossibility of social progress without acknowledgement and consideration for the realities of lower class life.