360: Victorian Sexualities – Page 2

Peter Pan is Lewis Carroll

A boat, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily

In an evening of July—

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear—

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream—
Lingering in the golden gleam—
Life, what is it but a dream?

-Lewis Carroll, 1871, Through the Looking-Glass

Carroll’s poem “A Boat, Beneath a Sunny Sky” is a more sophisticated re-write of the childhood nursery rhyme, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” which punctuates the transformation that Alice goes through from adolescent youth to a matured young adult.

On a website I found online (http://shenandoahliterary.org), which told the background of Carroll’s writing of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass, Alice Pleasance Liddell was an actual person and not a fictional character.Carroll was friends with the Liddell family and would tell the Liddell children (there were three of them) stories about his own adventures while they would all hang out on a boat and Alice became his “muse”. This poem at the end of Through the Looking-Glass is just an autobiographical account of his relationship with Alice and the Liddell children as being something that engulfed his memories and haunted his dreams.

This is all very reminiscent of the tale of Peter Pan to me. Carroll was clearly saddened by the fact that Alice grew up and her youthful self still haunted him. Carroll is essentially begging Alice to never grow up, but that is only possible in his dreams and memories of her. He essentially took her and her two siblings to Wonderland through his stories, which is completely parallel to Peter Pan in the sense that Peter took Wendy and her two brothers to Neverland (Similar names for a childhood fantasy world… coincidence? I, personally, think not!). In both cases there are three children taken to an adolescent fantasy world where they frolic and roam free, with the little girl in the story being the center of attention and the fantasy for the man who is telling the story, yet alas, the girl must grow up eventually and leaves her mark on the guy who awakened her maturity or guided her through her transition. Carroll, like Peter Pan, realizes that children must grow up and be adults at one point- also there is the creepy factor that Carroll was an older man who probably spent a bit too much time with adolescent female children. Peter Pan could also be read technically as a really old man who chose to never “grow up” which may be symbolic of something else- but I digress.

So looking at Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland tales with the context behind it now in mind, the text just seems to be autobiographical, or at least a retelling of events that actually occurred in the form of a “fictional”, fun children’s novel. Carroll is essentially keeping his memories of Alice in a metaphorical glass jar of sorts. He seems to embody the character that he saw Alice as, so her own personal narrative and personality is re-written by Carroll and that is the Alice we as a modern audience gets aquainted with.The children’s novel is Carroll’s way of keeping Alice youthful eternally, throughout time. An interesting connection between time and Alice is that in the modern movie directed by Steven Spielberg, Alice Through the Looking-Glass, Time is a personified character and Alice is running out of time throughout the movie to grow up and face the real-world where she is expected to marry and be a Victorian wife.

Also, here is a link to see some of the pictures that Carroll took of ALICE (who was brunette, by the way…).

Alice’s real fear

In class we’ve talked a lot about Alice growing and her desire to stay a child. At the beginning of Through the Looking-Glass Alice is talking to her cat about punishment and utters, “suppose each punishment was to be going without a dinner: then, when the miserable day came, I should have to go without fifty dinners at once! Well, I shouldn’t mind that much! I’d far rather go without them than eat them!” (116) One reason this statement is problematic is simply because one needs food in order to live. A second reason that this is an important part is that it makes evident Alice’s hopes to not grow, and perhaps shows her desire to avoid being nourished in a sexual way. Though it is not stated directly that the food eaten for these dinners would be sweet, the idea of fifty dinners is a whole lot of food. Eating that would be like a desperate attempt to satisfy some sort of desire. After experiencing quite unpredictable growth in the first half of the book, it makes sense that Alice is scared to become bigger and maybe even outgrow her home. Shortly after that statement, Alice speaks to the kitten about the weather. She says, “Do you hear the snow against the window-panes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds! […] I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, ‘Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.’ And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about — whenever the wind blows — oh, that’s very pretty” (116-17). There are a lot of different things going on in this passage. First, the fact that she likes that the trees wake up in a changed state, as green beings, reveals something that our assumptions about her may have gotten wrong. Perhaps it’s not the actual act of growing up that Alice is afraid of, maybe she is moreso afraid of the rapid speed at which this growing is taking place. The fact that Alice enjoys the uncontrollable weather, the snow, further suggests that she is not afraid of the inevitable change her body is going through. Adding to this argument her enjoyment that arises about the trees sleeping for such a long time, through a whole spring season. This insinuates that it is, in fact, the rate at which she will experience this change that terrifies her.

A second part of this passage that, when examined, reveals Alice’s beliefs is the banal idea of whiteness representing purity. Snow is the white quilt that would hypothetically cover the trees as they sleep and mature into changed beings. As they emerge into the summer season, the snow is gone. This loss of snow could represent a loss of purity. It is as if snow’s kiss is a goodbye to a young Alice; she is undergoing a change that dictates the rest of her life.

Women and Pets as Domestic Objects

The print “Fannie’s Pets” captured my eye as it appears to be one of the most dynamic prints in the way the subjects appear to be moving, and who doesn’t adore the cute animals? The print features a woman outside, perhaps in a small garden, interacting with many species of birds: parakeets, ducks, a rooster, a peacock, etc. The light shines upon her and the animals so the audience’s attention immediately is drawn to those subjects. Behind the woman, on the left of the print, is a man crouched down in the dark, observing her.

This print brings to mind the role of Count Fosco in The Woman in White and his interaction with women and animals. The woman in the print seems to be interacting with the animals very naturally, while Count Fosco’s interactions with his pets are very strategic due to his training of them. He gives his pets treats when they perform to his satisfaction. He goes as far to call his birds his “children” (270). Count Fosco also gives his wife treats as she gives him his cigarettes which seems to parallel his treatment of his pets. He does not seem to have much of a sense of humanity or intimacy, instead his wife and his pets are objects of enjoyment and entertainment who are rewarded for how they serve him.

“Fannie’s Pets” creates a discourse with The Woman in White that shows the roles of women and domesticated animals to be more similar than different under the observation and manipulation of a Victorian Man. From the male view (assuming the audience takes on the viewership of a man or uses the man in the work itself), the main subject of the print is a woman and her pets and their values are both in their inherent beauty and entertainment-value. When the image is read through the lens created by The Woman in White, the woman and her pets are just objects to be manipulated and observed for enjoyment. There is further symbolism in the image of the birds flying and grabbing the garments of the woman, and while it might be a playful action, it seems to also represent freedom. Birds have the ability to fly away and the woman does not. Yet, this brings light to the captivating qualities that Count Fosco has over women and his manipulative nature towards his pets and women which really leave no opportunity for freedom.

You Don’t Own Me – Ownership and the Female Body

In Christina Rossetti’s poem, In an Artist’s Studio, we are guided around the studio of a painter who has depicted the same model as different characters. She becomes the queen, the virgin in a green dress, a saint, and an angel, but remains nameless throughout. The problem here is not just that the nameless girl remains nameless, but also that her body is used and objectified by this artist. She is no longer a person, but an aesthetic subject that is to be manipulated into a trope. Like Jen Marsh is quoted in Lee’s article “The Femme Fatale as Object”:

women are rendered decorative, depersonalized; they become passive figures rather than characters in a story or drama… women are reduced to an aesthetic arrangement of sexual parts, for male fantasies. (Marsh, The Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood)

Sure, the model is lovely, but that’s all she is. She is a passive figure to be manipulated in the way the artist wishes she could be. The depersonalization of women figures into tropes is too common, and in terms of Victorian literature, it is inherently connected to sexuality. The well-known trope of the Femme Fatale is played out in another poem: My Last Duchess.

In Browning’s My Last Duchess, the Duke is narrating a story about his last Duchess, who is depicted in a painting that he keeps behind a curtain. In the Duke’s eyes, she fulfills the trope of Femme Fatale because she finds pleasure in being looked upon and speaking with men other than him. He sees that she smiles at everyone, and does not value him over everyone else. The Fatale part comes into play when he seemingly murders her to keep her from smiling at everyone, and now keeps her behind the curtain. In this instance, her sexuality is totally under the control of the Duke for the rest of eternity: only he can look upon the “spot of joy” on her cheeks.

Like Marsh and Lee assert in the essay, the Duchess is literally reduced to aesthetic parts – the painting to look upon and then move on from to other paintings. She no longer has agency – she is trapped in a painting, posed beautifully forever. The Femme Fatale is fascinating only because of what she used to be, the amalgam of fear over “female malevolence” and therefore, a control over her own sexuality. Now, as an object, she can be controlled and fascinate her onlookers on command.

Victorian Prostitutes: Alone and Palely Loitering

Katheryn Hughes claims that during the Victorian Era, “A young girl was not expected to focus too obviously on finding a husband. Being ‘forward’ in the company of men suggested a worrying sexual appetite. Women were assumed to desire marriage because it allowed them to become mothers rather than to pursue sexual or emotional satisfaction (Hughes, Gender Roles in the 19th Century).” However, the societal standard of sexual purity and a lack of carnal desires did not exist for men during the 19th century. In fact, many men would pay for a prostitute’s services because they [these men] were eager to bed and not looking to wed. Yet, even married men would stray from their wives in search of sensual satisfaction from their standard village entrepreneur (prostitutes are really strategic opportunists if you think about it.) With the boom of this business, came the clap… and other sexually transmitted diseases that forced the Victorians to think about intercourse as a danger rather than a harmless recreational activity.

Correspondingly, the female body was mystifying to artists and poets most likely because it was uncommon for a woman to present herself in an overtly suggestive manner. Fascinatingly enough, the19th century definition of “prostitute” did not only describe women who sold their bodies, but it was also used to label “women who were living with men outside of marriage, women who had illegitimate children, or women who had relations with men solely for pleasurable purposes and not for monetary gain (Flanders, Prostitution).” Nevertheless, women were often mistaken for prostitutes (corporeal entrepreneurs) because men would misinterpret social cues. Remarkably, a man wrote to the Times magazine in 1862 to complain that his daughters were being hassled by “lewd scoundrels” in the streets; In the same way that the 21st century handles jeering and cat-calling, the man’s concerned comment was met with a series of men who suggested that perhaps “the girls’ dress or behavior had encouraged the men (Flanders, Prostitution).”

Similarly, La Belle Dame sans Merci by John Keats discusses a knight-at-arms who is “alone” and “palely loitering.” The knight says that the “harvest’s done” and that the “sedge has withered from the lake” which both sound like euphemisms for dwindling sexual prowess as a result of infertility represented by the barren harvest and an inability to ejaculate which is represented by withering sedge near an uninspiring lake. Furthermore, the knight meets a woman with wild eyes and long hair who makes a “sweet moan” when he places a garland on her head as he continues to “set her on [his] pacing steed.” However, once the sexual encounter between the knight and the beautiful lady finishes, the knight realizes that he has been deserted on a cold hill side where he can see other “pale kings and princess [who are] death-pale.” Keats details the “starved lips” of the other men and ends with a discussion about the sedge that has withered from the lake, which is most likely the result of a sexually transmitted disease. Yet, it is unclear whether the last four lines of the poem suggest that the woman is left, like a prostitute, “Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is withered from the lake, and no birds sing.”

Indeed, all of the men fall victim to their own desires and they pay for services that could endanger their health. This poem seems like a didactic tale that warns the public about prostitutes or other sexually liberated women. Yet, I wonder whether the Victorian men are afraid of female sexuality or if they are actually afraid of their own lack of self-control? It’s probably the former.

Expectation and What We’ve Come to Expect

Illman Brothers. "Expectation." Trout Gallery, http://www.troutgallery.org/ — Illman Brothers. “Expectation.” Trout Gallery, http://www.troutgallery.org/

In the Illman Brothers’ “Expectation,” the female subject’s clothing loses shape the further away from her face you go, making it clear that her visage is the main focus of the work. Looking expectant is hard to visualize, in my opinion. It’s a trait you see in domesticated pets or in children who are waiting for gifts or fun outings. Maybe the woman is waiting patiently for the artist illustrating her to be finished more than anything else. Though, it’s not hard to deduce that Victorian women lead less active lifestyles than their male counterparts, especially those belonging to a higher class. The background appears almost amorphous; I interpret a sun surrounding the top of her head, either sky or clouds going down to her shoulders, a muted horizon to the right of her, and reflecting water. She must be waiting for her significant other to return from somewhere, as she has her hands (or at least her left hand) placed over her chest.

At the Trout Gallery, we briefly discussed the intricate ornamentation framing the portrait. The ovular shape of the frame suggests a mirror, highlighting the motif of the “woman as object” aesthetic that male artists go gaga for. And this one in particular is a sensual plaything, a fantasy. Grapes and cherubs (or whatever those angel babies are called) holding what looks like martini glasses only enhance the mood. I am of course reminded of Walter falling in love with Laura while making her his muse in the beginning of The Woman in White, as well as a more fragile Laura hoping for him to return from his errands when she loses her memory. The image also reminds me of a couple of lines from Christina Rossetti’s “In an Artist’s Studio”: “We found her hidden just behind those screens, / That mirror gave back all her loveliness” (3-4). The man who gazes at this etching is meant to siphon that loveliness (longing, yet perfectly poised) to feed his desire, to spurn him on.

Delicate, Fair and Naive–but Beautiful?

Two points about the connections between the picture above, Feeding the Motherless, by the Illman Brothers, and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins.

One, her face. Not that she isn’t beautiful–although it would be truthful to note that her face is not crafted to the perfect subtle beauties in some of the other prints. Her eyes have a little strangeness to them in the way they droop, and her lips lack the perfect delicate fullness of, perhaps, the one in Expectation.

Yet from her neck down, there is little, if at all, one could point out to be at fault. The somewhat simple dress (of all colors, white) traces the graceful shape made by her figure, and the fabric of her dress makes slight creases about her arms. And even more so, her hands are crafted to perfection. The one holding the spoon has the most elegant curves, the fingers bending tenderly, and the other holds the nest at a becoming angle. Both are softly shaded.

This reminded me, in fact, of the female characters of The Woman in White. Marian is described to have a very becoming figure, then an ugly face, for one. (With a mustache, hence my pseudonym) Laura Fairlie, more interestingly, is described more on the basis of her body than her face also. It is her bosom and her ribbons that brush against Walter Harwright and make his heart beat, not, for example, her full lips or her wide, sparkling eyes. It makes me wonder, then, if Laura was actually the perfect beauty at all. Perhaps in the standards of the time, she was so well adorned by her figure, her white dress, her passive loving nature and her status as an heiress that she didn’t need those pearly teeth and long eyelashes at all. The only person described to be handsome regarding the face was actually Count Fosco–the increasingly feminine male villain with beautiful eyes.

The second thing I noticed about the picture was still about the face. I don’t take any problem with the distance it has from the “classic beauty,” at all. But something about her expression is still troubling. The woman in the picture doesn’t actually seem to be looking at the baby birds. Her gaze lies somewhere between then and us, the viewer. What is she looking at? We don’t get to find out, but only that she isn’t really concentrating on the task. Is she “feeding the motherless” because she wants to? Despite being engaged in what must surely be a very maternal, loving action, her expression yields no tenderness, no affection or pity at all. This is, to say the least, troubling. What’s going on in her mind…?

I wonder if this is, in a way, also a connection to Laura Fairlie. We never get to find out her thoughts, and never get to hear her voice. Although we didn’t get many hints on whether she was actually not what the people around her thought her to be, it is true that the narrators (especially Walter Hartwright) may have consciously and unconsciously manipulated the story to reflect their own perceptions.

I also wonder if Laura cared about animals all that much. Count Fosco (again) was the one who was good with animals, and Marian was the person who took care of Mrs. Catherick’s wounded dog until its death. Laura Fairlie too had a dog, which strangely disappeared after her marriage and she didn’t seem to look for it… The image of the tender-hearted naive beauty who sings with her birds, then, may not be Laura Fairlie either.

Illman Brothers. “Feeding the Motherless.” Trout Gallery,
http://www.troutgallery.org/

Count Fosco and The Prostitute

When initially looking at the chaos and crude happenings in the engraving titled “Mixing A Recipe for Corns”, I could not help but think of the main character in the image as a strange reflection of our dear Count Fosco in The Woman in White. Just as Count Fosco keeps a constant flurry of animals around him at all times, the woman in the engraving is surrounded by an uncomfortable number of little animals or animal references (such as peacock feathers). There even appears to be a cockatoo in the image, just as Count Fosco had a cockatoo, “a most vicious and treacherous bird towards towards every one else” (219). In the photo the wild animals add to the sense of frenzy and lack of control this woman has in her declining youth, whereas in The Woman in White, Count Fosco’s animals serve to show his desire for control, which highlights how a multitude of animals could be seen in contrasting lights based on the gender of who is controlling them.

I also noticed a similarity to Count Fosco in the subject of the engraving. The declining prostitute, who is wildly stirring a cauldron with one hand, is a bit gender ambiguous. I, at first, mistook the subject for a man, as the hair is tied away and the facial features err on the more manly side. Count Fosco also seems to have more feminine traits at times, such as his elaborate clothing and how he moves about a room, “he is as noiseless in a room as any of us woman” (219). In regards to the engraving, the prostitute is also the most colorful, and the viewer’s eyes are drawn to her and her activities instantly. This hearkens to the characters in the story, even Marian, who are inevitably drawn to this figure of Count Fosco. We discussed in the Trout Gallery that the prostitute seems almost witch-like, with her cauldron on the fire and bottles of potions thrown on the table and around her feet. This relates to Count Fosco’s obsession with alternative medicine, and all the references we have to his likeness for poison. Thus like the woman in the etching, it’s easy to picture Count Fosco deviously mixing a concoction of flowers and herbs to use against the other characters in the book.

Why did I spend so long pointing out the strange similarities between the prostitute in “Mixing A Recipe for Corns” and Count Fosco’s character in The Woman in White? I find it interesting that while these two people have many similar qualities, habits, and affinities, one is a withering prostitute who will spend her life teaching other women to learn how to degrade themselves to men and the other is a formidable man who has an immense amount of authority and respect. This just seems to highlight the influence of gender within the time period, and how males can flourish while holding the same characteristics of females, or in this case, a frumpy, old prostitute.

Cruikshank, George. Mixing a Recipe for Corns. 1835. Trout Gallery, Carisle. http://collections.troutgallery.org/Obj22845?sid=59379&x=621534. Web. 11 Oct 2016.

Sex-ploration in the Victorian Era

The Victorian era is often characterized by sexual prudishness, however, what many do not understand that it was actually an age of sexual exploration, or sex-ploration. In her article Victorian Sexualities, Holly Furneaux disembowels this stereotype by explaining that Victorians explored sex “in a wide range of contexts including the law, medicine, religion, education”(Furneaux). However, it is important to keep in mind that this sexual exploration was only to a certain extent: there were no circulating copes of Fifty Shades of Grey to read or raunchy Nicki Minaj songs to listen to, and that overtly discussing sex and sexuality was still taboo.

What I found particularly interesting was the mentioning of the sexual exploration pertaining to the field of science and medicine. After reading her article, I am convinced that these ‘scientific’ discoveries involving sexuality at first glance seem progressive, given the inherent prudishness of the Victorian era, but instead only work to reinforce gender stereotypes. For example, Victorian gynecologist William Acton claimed that “the majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled by sexual feelings of any kind” (Furneaux), thus reinforcing the stereotype and common-held belief at the time that women are not sexual beings in the way that men are. Aside from the field of medicine, Furneaux also mentions that legislation, such as the Matrimonial Act of 1857 also reinforced these stereotypes, by making it much more difficult for women to divorce their adulterous husbands than it was for men to divorce their adulterous wives.

Aside from science and legislation, I did not find an adequate discussion of the topic literature in the article. From what we have read in class, I have found that literature, such as The Woman in White, have pushed the boundaries of sexuality much more than the scientific discoveries or new legislation. Much of The Woman in White is written in sort of a coded language, due to social norms preventing an overt discussion of sexuality or publishing a smutty novel, which allows for a more discreet yet honest exploration of sexuality. The novel features a multitude of characters that challenge the polarizing gender stereotypes of the Victorian era: such as the masculine, mustache-bearing Marian Halcombe and the possibly homosexual Mr. Fairlie. While there were ‘scientific’ discoveries regarding sex, I still believe that much of the conversation regarding sexuality remained repressed; and that this repression manifested itself in works of literature. These latent explorations of sexuality present in literature such as The Woman in White demonstrate that despite new discoveries on the topic of sex and sexuality in the fields of science and legislation, literature allowed for a more honest and in-depth discussion of sexuality and perhaps even questioned the polarizing gender stereotypes of the time.

Gendered Futures: The Limits of Female Desire in the Victorian Era

The etching “Looking into the Future” by the Illman brothers depicts a woman kneeling by a window with her hands clasped, face turned up and out towards the sun, which presumably is the source of light bathing her clothing and face. The pose is strongly reminiscent of kneeling to pray, which would suggest that she is not only looking to the future but hoping to better her future by making requests of God. The specific future she imagines is unknown to the viewer and must, therefore, be assumed or imposed upon her, which relates to ideas described in the article “Gender roles in the 19th century” by Kathryn Hughes. In the article, Hughes discusses the stigma against women displaying their desires, sexual or for activities outside of the usual realm of women’s duties. The female subject of the etching, therefore, has no agency to display her own desires. Even the title, “Looking into the future,” is so vague as to say nothing whatsoever to differentiate this woman from any other. No one else should know her specific desires for the future because anything outside of the home would be considered deviant.

Because of the strict gender roles during the Victorian era, all that was left for women was to dream of a future, with no agency to decide their own lives. The expectation was to marry and have children, and few alternatives were considered legitimate, as is exemplified by Florence Nightingale’s outbursts because of her unrealized desires to be useful. The only option in the limited world of a woman was to gaze outward and upward to God, dreaming of a future beyond a contained life like the one shown visually by the walls of the woman’s home.

This interpretation, however, would not have been the assumed one at the time. The well-covered woman has soft lines forming her face and a brightness in her face and clothes, showing her chastity and respectability. She appears gentle and feminine. Likely, the interpretation at the time would have been that she hopefully awaits her life in the home, or prays for the future health and prosperity of her family. What, we might wonder, would this etching look like were a man the subject, looking to his own future? Would the title even remain the same, or would a man’s entire approach to the future be so radically different that he would take action rather than passively anticipating his life? Would he be making decisions, assertively, with a range of possibilities available?

The article initially announced itself as describing gender roles during the time period and then, to my surprise, devoted itself almost entirely to the role of women, with only a few sentences in comparison devoted men. This idea that describing gender roles can be accomplished only through looking at women reminded me of the concept that men are a blank slate, the norm, whereas women are the deviation from the norm that inherently must be imbued with meaning, instead of merely describing each as normal though distinct in the context of a limited gender binary. I should acknowledge, then, that either my interpretation of the etching or the etching itself conforms to this belief as well, saying that the meaning is inherently altered by virtue of the gender of the subject. I have to wonder whether the message of a gender-flipped version of the etching could have been the same in that era, or if the assumption of male normalcy was so ingrained that it would never be possible.