Men of the Moment: Emergent Masculinities in the Victorian Novel

Tara MacDonald Department of English McGill University, Montreal

April 2008

A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

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Table of Contents

Abstract iii

Resume v

Acknowledgements vii

List of Figures ix

Introduction 1

Chapter One "Good and bad Angels": Race, Class, and Models of Masculinity in 29 Charles Dickens's David Copperfield

Chapter Two "Fascinating" Men and the Challenges of Moral Reform in Anne Bronte's 70 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Amelia B. Edwards's Hand and Glove

Chapter Three Doctors, Dandies, and New Men: Revising Male Sexuality in Ella Hepworth 119 Dixon's The Story of a Modern Woman and Sarah Grand's The Beth Book

Chapter Four Clerks and Cads in an Age of Transition: George Gissing's The Odd Women 164 and Thomas Hardy's The Well-Beloved

Conclusion 213

Works Cited 221 Abstract

This dissertation examines the behaviours and values that qualify as male sexual deviance in Victorian novels from the mid-century and 1890s. Male seducers from mid-nineteenth-century fiction have often been described as later versions of the eighteenth-century libertine or rake. This dissertation argues for a critical reorientation of these figures towards the fin-de-siecle. Specifically, I argue that mid-century depictions of vexed masculine behaviour anticipate important patterns in the representation of male sexuality and morality, and that they gesture to later-century portrayals of masculinity embodied in figures like the dandy or New Man. Examining fiction from these two periods, which are conventionally treated as ideologically discrete, reveals a dialogue about male sexuality between mid- and late-century novels. Indeed, although the 1890s was a decade of sexual change, a literary discourse questioning the boundaries of male sexuality was in formation throughout the Victorian period.

Chapter One examines models of masculine behaviour in Charles

Dickens's David Copperfield (1849-50). These models of masculinity have varying class and racial implications, and they respectively trace David's movement from an aristocratic to a middle-class masculine ideal. Chapter Two explores deviant male sexuality in Anne Bronte's The Tenant ofWildfell Hall

(1848) and Amelia B. Edwards's Hand and Glove (1858), arguing that the novels offer cautionary tales about the glorification of male cruelty through the deviant but "fascinating" Arthur Huntington and Xavier Hamel. While these mid-period novels encounter tensions between fascinating men and reformed men, the late- century novels I examine translate these tensions into a contest between the New

Man and Old Man. Chapter Three argues that the doctor and dandy emerge as figures who threaten the New Woman's desire for intellectual, social, and sexual equality in Ella Hepworth Dixon's The Story of a Modern Woman (1894) and

Sarah Grand's The Beth Book (1897). In Chapter Four, I trace the representation of the New Man and Old Man in George Gissing's The Odd Women (1893) and

Thomas Hardy's The Well-Beloved (1897), novels that expose challenges to male

sexuality in an increasingly feminist society. Resume

Cette dissertation examine les attitudes et valeurs considerees comme participant de la deviance sexuelle masculine dans la litterature de l'epoque victorienne, de 1850 a 1890. Les personnages de seducteurs presentes par la litterature romanesque du 19e siecle sont souvent considered comme ayant leur

origine dans les personnages de libertin ou de debauche depeints par la litterature

du 18e siecle. Cette dissertation suggere, cependant, que ce type de personnage a

fait l'objet d'une reorientation critique vers la fin de siecle. En particulier, il est

suggere que les representations, au milieu du siecle, de ces comportements

masculins, anticipent d'importants changements dans la representation de la

sexualite et de la moralite masculines, tels qu'incarnes par les personnages du

dandy et de l'Homme Nouveau. L'examen des oeuvres litteraires datant des periodes de la mi-siecle et de la fin de siecle, deux periodes habituellement

considerees comme etant distinctes, revele un dialogue entre celles-ci sur le sujet

de la sexualite masculine. Ainsi, alors que les annees 1890 sont caracterisees par

des changements quant a l'approche a la sexualite, un discours litteraire remettant en question les limites de la sexualite masculine existait des la periode

victorienne.

Le Chapitre 1 examine les modeles de comportement masculin offerts par

David Copperfield, de Charles Dickens (1849-50). Ces modeles de masculinite

comportent plusieurs implications sociales et raciales, qui accompagnent

revolution du personnage de David, d'un ideal masculin aristocratique a celui de

la classe moyenne. Le Chapitre 2, a travers The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), d'Anne Bronte, et Hand and Glove (1858), d'Amelia B. Edwards, explore la deviance sexuelle masculine : a travers l'examen des personnages deviants mais

« fascinants » d'Arthur Huntington et de Xavier Hamel, il est ici suggere que ces ceuvres litteraires component des avertissements contre la glorification de la cruaute masculine. Alors que les romans du milieu du 19e siecle identifient une tension entre les hommes « fascinants » et les hommes reformes, de l'examen de romans de la fin du siecle ressort plutot un contraste entre 1'Homme Nouveau et l'Homme Ancien. Le Chapitre 3 suggere que les personnages de medecin et de dandy, dans The Story of a Modern Woman (1894), de Ella Hepworth Dixon, et

The Beth Book (1897), de Sarah Grand, sont presented comme des menaces au desir de la Femme Nouvelle pour 1'egalite intellectuelle, sociale et sexuelle. Le

Chapitre 4 retrace les representations de l'Homme Nouveau et de l'Homme

Ancien telles que presentees dans The Odd Women (1893), de George Gissing, et

The Well-Beloved (1897), de Thomas Hardy, qui exposent les defis a la sexualite masculine que represented une societe de plus en plus feministe. Acknowledgements

I am extremely grateful for the emotional, intellectual, and financial support I have received throughout this project. First, I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Tabitha Sparks, who helped me to craft a dissertation of which I am proud. Her intelligence and good-humour were invaluable. It was a privilege to work with her. I also want to thank Professors Monique Morgan and

Allan Hepburn for their encouragement and insight. Professor Hepburn recommended that I read The Well-Beloved and The Man of Property, for which I am grateful.

I wish to acknowledge the generous support I have received from the

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Graduate and

Postdoctoral Studies, the Faculty of Arts, and the Department of English at

McGill. Thanks too to Professors Tom Mole and Tabitha Sparks for employing me as a research assistant. My work for them taught me a great deal. I am also grateful for my teaching assistantships and lectureships in the Department of

English.

I would like to extend my gratitude to the many friends, both at McGill and elsewhere, who have offered support along the way. Thank you to Caroline

Lavergne for her translation help. A special thank you to Caroline Herbert,

Lindsay Holmgren, and Jessica Riddell for their valuable proofreading and encouragement during the final busy weeks. Lindsay deserves further thanks for her thoughtful advice and friendship during my five years at McGill.

Words cannot express how grateful I am to my parents, Roderick and Valerie MacDonald, for their constant love and encouragement. You instilled in me a love of learning; thank you for that amazing gift. Thank you to my brother,

Brad MacDonald, for always being in my corner. And a final thank you to Chad

Burt for his love, support, and unwavering confidence in me. IX

List of Figures

Fig. 1 William Makepeace Thackeray, Frontispiece of The History of

Pendennis, 1850

Fig. 2 "What the New Woman Will Make of the New Man!"

Punch (27 July 1895): 42. Introduction

After reading Charles Dickens's David Copperfield (1849-50), the young heroine of Ella Hepworth Dixon's The Story of a Modern Woman (1894) asks her governess to explain a moral ambiguity in the novel: "Dickens says that little

Em'ly is a fallen woman, because she goes to Italy with Mr. Steerforth. Was Mr.

Steerforth a fallen man, too?" (56). Mary Erie's innocent question exposes the

Victorian sexual double standard that insisted on women's purity while allowing men far greater sexual freedom. Mary's query also encourages readers to compare

Dickens's Steerforth with the deviant male characters populating Dixon's later- century novel, and to consider whether they, too, might be "fallen." My dissertation takes up where Mary leaves off, as it examines the behaviours and values that qualify as male sexual deviance in English novels from the mid- and late-nineteenth century. Further, I consider how these male characters support or compete with the marriage plot and the moral and educational mandates of

Victorian fiction.

Characters such as Steerforth and other male seducers from 1840s and

1850s fiction1 often have been described as later versions of the eighteenth- century libertine or rake, a figure exemplified by Samuel Richardson's Lovelace

(Clarissa, 1748) and Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (Tom Jones, 1749).2 This

1 Examples include George Osborne in William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1847-8), Henry Bellingham in Elizabeth Gaskell's Ruth (1853), and Arthur Donnithorne in George Eliot's Adam Bede (l%59). 2 For instance, in "The Rake, The Writer, and The Stranger. Textual Relations between Pendennis and David Copperfield" Mark Cronin suggests that Thackeray invokes Richardson's Lovelace as a literary prototype for Arthur Pendennis in Pendennis (1848-50). He notes that Dickens's James Steerforth is even more reminiscent of Lovelace. dissertation argues for a critical reorientation of these figures towards the fin-de- siecle. Specifically, I argue that mid-century depictions of vexed masculine behaviour anticipate important patterns in the representation of male sexuality and morality, and while they build on previous representations of the eighteenth- century rake, I am more concerned with the way that they gesture to later-century portrayals of masculinity, embodied in figures like the dandy or New Man.

Radical changes in sexual identity and behaviour occurred during the final decades of the Victorian period, and an important but under-recognized feature of these sexual and moral changes was the re-examination of male sexuality. Many contemporary literary critics (and historical late-Victorians) argue that critiques of

Victorian sexual morality broke completely from earlier-period writings and beliefs. For example, Annette Federico contends that in comparison to fin-de- siecle novelists, mid-Victorian novelists worked to uphold a moral code that was unchallenged and patriarchal (27). Yet such critical generalizations threaten to obscure similar discourses across the mid to late periods by treating these eras as ideologically discrete. In contrast, this dissertation compares novels from the mid- century and the 1890s, suggesting that a diverse range of novelists questioned codes of male sexuality in both time periods. This reorientation reveals that the origins of the sexual revolution that are associated with the fin-de-siecle emerged earlier than has commonly been acknowledged. Although the 1890s was indeed a decade of startling sexual change, I maintain that a literary discourse questioning the boundaries of male sexuality was in formation throughout the Victorian period. My title is drawn from Sarah Grand's essay "The Man of the Moment"

(1894), and while this dissertation focuses on the mid- and late-century as separate cultural "moments," it also underscores similar negotiations of masculine identity working in both periods.

Furthermore, while I argue that the mid-century novels forecast later developments in the representation of male sexuality and morality, I also demonstrate that later-century novels were in dialogue with mid-century fiction regarding these issues. Late-century writers, including Sarah Grand, Ella

Hepworth Dixon, George Gissing, and Thomas Hardy, looked to reinvent earlier

Victorian heroes and villains, and often were outspoken in their intentions to re­ examine, rewrite, and reanimate these earlier characterizations. This was part of a larger attempt at the end of the century to define Victorianism, to attach to this term an identifiable set of values and attitudes, and to question whether such values still held currency as the century came to a close.3 When Sibyl Carnaby tells her husband in Gissing's The Whirlpool (1897), "You're rather early

Victorian," it is certainly an insult (54). By this term, Gissing reveals, she "was wont to signify barbarism or crudity in art, letters, morality, or social feeling"

(54). The "barbarism" Sibyl identifies also applies to male sexuality. Novelist

Sarah Grand explains in "On the Choice of a Husband" (1898):

A few years ago the fashionable hero of fiction was a fast man. He

appeared in books written for the most part by young unmarried women,

who idealized him into a beautiful creature, whose ways were vaguely but

3 The effort to define and make sense of the Victorian period was, in part, carried out in the canon formation of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Early criticism of the Victorian novel appeared in volumes such as Margaret and F.R. Oliphant's The Victorian Age of English Literature (1892), Frederic Harrison's Studies in Early Victorian Literature (1895), George Saintsbury'sA History of Nineteenth Century Literature, 1780-1895 (1896), and James Oliphant's Victorian Novelists (1899). These writers selected worthwhile authors and texts, and attempted to characterize Victorian fiction in general. deliciously wicked, but not unpleasant. He had associated with the dregs

of society, male and female, yet escaped contamination, and when he

chose he could shake himself free of his vices, and offer himself

unpolluted to the spotless heroine, who was certain to accept him: and

there the story ended. Nowadays we are more prosaic. We carry the case

to its inevitable conclusion, and the beautiful brilliant creature is shown to

be a nasty-minded vulgar fraud. (1.109)

Despite the assumption from late-century novelists and critics that most mid-century writers presented uncritical representations of male deviance, many mid-century novelists attempted to resist sensationalizing "fast men" and the awe that these characters inspired in Victorian heroines. Accordingly, I analyze novels that engage in such reformations of masculine behaviour. Anne Bronte's The

Tenant ofWildfell Hall (1848) may be the most overt mid-century rejection of deviant male sexuality, and the novel also questions masculine ideals more generally. For instance, when Annabella Lowborough mocks her husband's decision to remain with the female guests after a meal instead of joining the other men, she doubts his manhood. It "looks so silly to be always dangling after the women" instead of drinking and smoking, she tells him (270). The heroine of the novel, Helen Huntington, however, praises Lowborough's self-control and complains of the unruliness and bad behaviour of the other men, "who arrogated to themselves the name of gentlemen" (361). Indeed, concerns over masculinity in this period were articulated largely in the debates over how to define a gentleman, as the impact of industrialism and the rise of the middle classes altered long­ standing associations between gentlemanliness and status. In his influential Self 5

Help (1859), Samuel Smiles argues that the qualities of a "True Gentleman" depend "not upon fashion or manners, but upon moral worth - not on personal possessions, but on personal qualities" (326).

The mid-century novels I examine, Charles Dickens's David Copperfield,

Bronte's The Tenant ofWildfell Hall and Amelia B. Edwards's Hand and Glove

(1858), all subscribe to Smiles's notion of the "True Gentleman." These novels portray men of questionable character who are alluring to both male and female characters. I argue that these figures expose what critic Natalie Rose calls a

"rhetoric of fascination," which reveals them to be both sexually appealing and

(or because) dangerous (518). These characters, Victorian versions of the Byronic hero, come under attack by late-century critics like Dixon and Grand. Yet even in the mid-century, the hedonism of the characters is cracking, and the novels I discuss demonstrate a movement away from such men and towards men of "moral worth." The morally-minded men, however, are also in need of teaching and reform, and their growth offers a lesson of humility to willing readers, both male and female. Thus, the heroes of these novels are not commanding Byronic figures who exude sexuality, but are men who have suffered regrets and losses and have been humbled by their experiences.

I treat these "moral" men, including David Copperfield, Tom Traddles,

Gilbert Markham, and Charles Gautier, as precursors to the New Man of the fin- de-siecle. While the earlier novels encounter tensions between "fascinating" men and reformed men, the late-century novels I discuss, Dixon's The Story of a

Modem Woman, Sarah Grand's The Beth Book (1897), George Gissing's The Odd

Women (1893), and Thomas Hardy's The Well-Beloved (1897), reveal tensions between what I label "New Men" and "Old Men." Old Men tout earlier-Victorian values, and the presence of such characters reveal the novelists' interest in revisiting mid-century characterizations and novelistic conventions, especially in regards to male sexuality and morality. As I later explain, the New Man was understood to be the male counterpart to the feminist "New Woman," and he promised sexual uprightness and modern notions of gender equality.

As evinced in the figure of the New Man, late-century social changes brought about fresh concerns for masculine identity. In The Dandy: Brummell to

Beerbohm, Ellen Moers notes that in the final decades of the century it was "the vogue to laugh at the Victorian 'idea of a Christian gentleman'" (308). For "the fin de siecle, the nature of the gentleman was a minor question. Wilde's era asked instead, and with new urgency, what it meant merely to be a man" (308). Indeed, the 1890s saw challenges to long-held beliefs of men's sexuality, most notoriously in the Wilde trials of 1895, when a shocked British public was forced to confront homosexuality. Despite differences between the mid- and late-century, debates and anxieties in both periods disputed ideal manhood, and when evaluating manliness, Victorians took into consideration variables of race, class, profession, age, physique, and relationships with both men and women. My dissertation, too, examines and historicizes such factors in my assessment of masculinity. Furthermore, by comparing both transgressive and accepted forms of masculinity, I hope to reveal a larger picture of Victorian novelists' preoccupation with male sexuality in the mid- and late-century.

I. Male Sexuality and Morality at Mid-century

There are various terms to describe a man characterized by licentiousness and loose morals in the mid-nineteenth century, including libertine, rake, cad, philanderer, and profligate. Of these, the libertine is the most historically specific.

In their introduction to Libertine Enlightenment: Sex, Liberty, and Licence in the

Eighteenth Century, Peter Cryle and Lisa O'Connell offer a useful definition of libertinism, as "the name given to the free operation of sexual desire against or in delicate negotiation with conventional moral, religious and civil codes - a freedom available to an educated, often titled elite" (2). Tiffany Potter explains that critics tend to assume that the English libertine was rendered extinct as libertinism was subsumed by the sentimentalism of the early eighteenth century.

In fact, Potter argues, "libertinism continued as a powerful cultural force long after 1700, informing the public personae and private discourse of the most privileged part of society" (5). In the Romantic period, the works of Byron were perhaps the most influential in engaging with the figure of the libertine and tracing ideas of sexuality and their relationship with cultural authority and social convention. Indeed, the Byronic hero remained influential in mid-nineteenth- century novels, as evinced in Charlotte and Emily Bronte's notorious male characters Rochester {Jane Eyre, 1847) and Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights, 1847).

Aspects of the aristocratic libertine can be found in these characters; notably, many fictional Victorian seducers (Heathcliff excepted) are from the upper classes. Such sexually liberated figures were attractive to many readers, but were also at odds with the aims of the novel, a literary mode meant to instruct its readers morally and tout middle-class values including domesticity and companionate marriage.4

4 On the middle-class values of the early- and mid-Victorian novel, see Nancy Armstrong's Desire 8

The sexually deviant Victorian man differs from the libertine in that he is not part of a recognized philosophical and social movement that seeks to challenge social dogma (Potter 10). He is more often depicted as a man lacking moral strength than as a lover of pleasure or proponent of individualism. I use

"deviance" throughout the dissertation to denote male behaviour that is problematic, contested, and criticized. Deviance is a useful term for its very fluidity. That is, deviance means literally behaviour that deviates from the norm;

"sexual deviance" thus relies on and refers to the existence of a sexual norm, and varies according to whom is offering judgement. When I speak of deviant male sexuality, I am referring to what would have been considered immoral acts by the

Victorians as they pertain to heterosexuality and marriage, including premarital sex, adultery, and sexual acts not motivated by procreation. Sexual deviance in the

Victorian period could also imply talking loosely about sexuality, inappropriate flirtations, masturbation, and homosexuality; the term thus takes into account a wide range of behaviours resulting from the improper regulation of desire. What constitutes deviance in the late-century is largely the same set of behaviours that we see in the mid-century, but concerns over venereal disease and degeneracy raise the stakes and make the male body an even more tangible site of deviance.

Despite relatively clear notions of deviant behaviour that we can extract from and normalize across Victorian novels, historical middle-class Victorian men received contradictory prescriptions concerning sexuality. Though they were expected to discipline their natural sexual energy, they were also expected to have

and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (1987) and Elizabeth Langland's Nobody's Angels: Middle-class Women and Domestic Ideology in Victorian Culture (1995). gained "experience" before marriage. Herbert Sussman explains the difficulties inherent in regulating male desire:

While psychic discipline defines what the Victorians term manliness, if

such discipline becomes too rigorous the extreme constraint of male desire

will distort the male psyche and deform the very energy that powers and

empowers men. Setting the intensity of discipline, then, becomes the

crucial issue within the practice of the self. (3)

While Victorian women's sexuality was defined by dichotomies (the "angel in the house" versus the "fallen woman"), the boundary between a positive and negative understanding of male sexuality was subtler and less uniform. Even Dickens, whose heroes, according to Margaret Oliphant, are "spotless in their thoughts, their intentions, and wishes" (451), admitted that "if his own son were particularly chaste, he should be alarmed" (Emerson 10.551). Dickens's confession reveals that literary ideals and actual belief frequently differed.

The contrast between Oliphant's valorization of Dickens's "spotless" heroes and Dickens's own admission that he would not encourage his son to be so

spotless reveals the contradictory ideals at work in fictional and historical masculinities. As John Tosh details in A Man's Place: Masculinity and the

Middle-Class Home in Victorian England, sex was considered a rite of passage

for young men, and repeated intercourse not only satisfied men's desires, but

"was a form of display intended to impress other males" (108). Tosh argues that it was this connection between sexual identity and "reputation" that Evangelicals

attempted to curb; instead of relying on reputation to prove manliness, they

suggested, "character" should be emphasized as a valuable model among young men (112). Yet even amongst those who saw sexual activity as enhancing manliness, "the complete transition to manhood depended on marriage" (108).

That is, a man's identity in this period was only fully formed once he could exercise authority over, as well as protect, his wife, children and servants as lord of his household.

New middle-class standards of living, however, meant that many men were forced to delay marriage until they could afford to support their wives. This

"economic 'abstinence'" (Adams 5) is routinely examined in fiction, as when

Dickens's Tom Traddles (David Copperfield) is forced to wait years to marry his fiancee, and, later in the century, when Gissing's Micklethwaite (The Odd

Women) must also delay marriage. Such characters are treated sentimentally, but present unrealistic models of sexual restraint. The fact is that most men, as well as most novelistic depictions of men, lay somewhere between idealized figures and sexual philanderers.5 The pull between ideal domesticity, what Traddles and

Micklethwaite ultimately achieve, and sexual desire, is represented visually in the frontispiece to William Makepeace Thackeray's The History of Pendennis (see

Fig. 1). The drawing, which Thackeray himself illustrated, depicts Arthur

Pendennis's struggle between an "angel in the house" on his left and a seductive, half-clothed siren on his right. Standing below the temptress, an ominously cloven-footed figure attempts to pull Pendennis into the world of sin. While he stares at the mermaid's half-naked body, the Victorian lady wraps her arms

5 Tosh explains that if men of the Victorian middle class desired sexual experience before marriage, it was usually to be had not with women of their own class, but with prostitutes: "For most young men of the middle class sexual experience was to be found not in the home, but on the streets.. . . Those who resisted this convention were either men of low libido, or paragons of self- control, usually sustained by their membership in churches and improvement associations like the YMCA. They were a significant minority, but a minority nonetheless" (108). 11 around Pendennis protectively, as a tiny angel mimics her actions below. The image, as Andrew Dowling observes, is a visual representation of a man "torn between Pleasure and Duty" (64). Though the domestic angel ultimately wins out as Pendennis marries Laura Bell by the end of the novel, Thackeray wanted, in this novel, to portray honestly the attractions of pleasure.

Thackeray's preface to Pendennis reveals the constraints of mid-century authors in depicting "what moves in the real world" of young men (lvii). He complains:

Since the author of Tom Jones was buried, no writer of fiction among us

has been permitted to depict to his utmost power a MAN. We must drape

him, and give him a certain conventional simper. Society will not tolerate

'ITHE Jil STORY

VpLI

BY \v - M T H A C K E. R >\ Y

Fig. 1. Thackeray, Frontispiece of The History of Pendennis, 1850 the Natural in our Art. Many ladies have remonstrated and subscribers left

me, because, in the course of the story, I described a young man resisting

and affected by temptation, (lvi-lvii)

Even though Thackeray reveals at the end of the novel that Pendennis has "the manliness and generosity" to overcome his foibles, the author bemoans the literary constraints associated with honest representations of male sexuality and desire (lvii). "If truth is not always pleasant," he insists, "at any rate truth is best"

(lvii). Mark Cronin observes that Thackeray, as well as Dickens in his depiction of Steerforth, was "probing an issue still sensitive to [his] Victorian audience"

(223). That is, characters like Pendennis and Steerforth were part of a central debate of the period: "whether morally suspect characters should be made attractive, romantic figures" (223). Though, unlike Steerforth, Pen does not in fact engage in illicit sexual experiences, he is controversial to a conservative mid- century audience because he is the hero of the novel, and not an expendable, secondary character. Thackeray had an unlikely precursor in his desire to represent the "truth" about Victorian masculinity in Anne Bronte. Her representation of an alcoholic, verbally abusive, and disloyal husband in The

Tenant of Wildfell Hall offended many critics, as I detail in Chapter Two. Yet in her preface to the second edition of the novel, she maintains her aims for honest representation: "I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it" (3).

Because the inclusion of deviant male characters potentially challenged the moral clarity of a novel, this figure usefully foregrounds the ethical aims of fiction in the nineteenth century. Despite concerns over characters like Pendennis 13 and Huntington, most mid-century novelists successfully consolidated the moral and educational function of the novel even while depicting deviant men. Bronte's portrayal of Huntington's deterioration following a life of debauchery provides a warning for "those who are able to receive it." Indeed, by revealing a character's change of heart or by detailing a sexually deviant villain's inevitable punishment, novelists used morally questionable characters as lessons for willing readers.

What was often important, however, as Thackeray's case makes clear, was that these questionable characters remained on the sidelines, allowing readers to learn from their mistakes, but not to identify with them too closely.

In "The False Morality of Lady Novelists" (1859), W.R. Greg claims boldly that more people are influenced "from reading novels than from hearing sermons" (146):

[W]e are convinced that the instances are numerous beyond conception in

which souls trembling and hesitating on the verge of good and evil have

been determined towards the former by some scene of fiction falling in

their way at the critical moment of their mental history; in which minds

have been sustained in hours of weakness and strengthened in hours of

temptation by lifelike pictures of sorrows endured and trials surmounted in

virtue of some great principle or some true sentiment; and in which

sinners, fallen indeed, but not lost, have been induced to pause, to recoil,

and to recover, by seeing in some work which they had opened only for

amusement the hideousness of a crime whose revolting features they could

not recognise except when reflected in a mirror. (146-7)

Greg imagines that, like religious awakenings, the positive influences of fiction- 14 reading occur unintentionally, by a scene "falling in [a reader's] way" at a vital moment or by a reader opening a book initially "only for amusement." Novelist

Anthony Trollope too makes a connection between sermons and the benefits of fiction in his Autobiography (1883), where he claims, "I have ever thought of myself as a preacher of sermons, and my pulpit as one which I could make both salutary and agreeable to my audience" (132-3). He believes that, in reading his novels, "no youth had been taught that in falseness and flashiness is the road to manliness; but some may have learned from me that it is to be found in truth and a high but gentle spirit" (133). Trollope and Greg, whose advice I have pursued in my examination of David Copperfield, The Tenant ofWildfell Hall, and Hand and

Glove, suggest that novelistic depictions of both ideal and negative models of masculinity can offer valuable lessons to readers.

II. Male Sexuality and Morality at the Fin-de-siecle

Later in the century, writers played with the common convention that evil characters should meet a bad end, often giving immoral characters a positive resolution, and thus commenting on the corruption of society rather than individual figures. While the educational directive of fiction wavered in the later- century, the focus on what could be written about continued to be contested, as the 1890 editorial debate on "Candour in English Fiction" among Walter Besant,

Eliza Lynn Linton, and Thomas Hardy in the New Review demonstrates. The authors lament restrictions surrounding literary censorship. Besant emphasizes the power of "Average Opinion," and he points to the problem of financial gain: "It is with [the novelist], then, if he desires to treat of things forbidden, a question of money - shall he restrict his pencil or shall he restrict his purse?" (9). Linton 15 complains that "murder, forgery, lies, and all forms of hate and malevolence" could be discussed in literature, while "the very fringes of uncertified love" remained taboo (10). Her solution is for "specialised literature," fiction fit for young people and fiction "which gives men and women pictures of life as it is"

(11). Hardy criticizes the awkward compromises that novelists are forced to make, given contemporary restrictions. He imagines writing for a periodical magazine and realizing that "only one event" could possibly follow, but "though pointing to a fine moral, it is just one of those issues which are not to be mentioned in respectable magazines and select libraries" (18). He is then faced with the difficult choice of either making his characters do "something contrary to their natures" or bringing "down the thunders of respectability on his head" by writing truthfully

(19). By 1892, however, George Gissing noticed that realistic portrayals of life were becoming more accepted. In a letter to Eduard Bertz, he mentions a positive review of his latest work, Denzil Quarrier (1892), in which the critic wrote, "A bolder subject would better suit this writer" {Letters 5.22). Gissing comments,

"That would have been extraordinary a few years ago. They tell me that not a single paper has objected to the theme. - Indeed, after Hardy's 'Tess,' one can scarcely see the limits of artistic freedom" (5.22). Though Hardy would challenge these limits again with the publication of Jude the Obscure in 1895, Gissing's suggestion that "bolder subjects]" were now encouraged has important implications for depictions of male sexuality.

Middle-class men continued to receive mixed messages regarding sexuality in the late-nineteenth century. New Women were among the social groups that engaged most fervently in such discussions. The New Woman was a controversial female figure, recognized variously as a social reformer, liberal feminist, and sexual rebel. In addition, the New Woman was frequently a writer, penning controversial journalism and novels. As Sally Ledger has observed, she was also a fictional construct, a discursive response to the activities of the late- nineteenth-century women's movement (1). The capitalized term "New Woman" was officially coined in 1894 in Sarah Grand's article "The New Aspect of the

Woman Question" and Ouida's (Marie Louise de la Ramee) response, "The New

Woman," both in the North American Review. The concept of the New Woman circulated earlier, however; in The Odd Women, Everard Barfoot rightly identifies

Rhoda Nunn as "one of the new women" (83). Further, the "Woman Question" had been substantially debated throughout the century, so rather than view the

New Woman as a figure who emerged quite suddenly in the fin-de-siecle, I treat her as late-century incarnation of a figure who evolved, in part, from earlier debates on gender and women's roles in society. Towards this end we can cite

Dixon's assertion in "Why Women Are Ceasing to Marry" (1899), that Elizabeth

Barrett Browning, by penning Aurora Leigh (1856), "undoubtedly proclaimed herself one of the earliest of the 'new women'" (262).

A defining feature of the New Woman was that she was critical of male promiscuity and the current state of marriage. Two of the most commonly misunderstood features concerning the New Woman was that, given her critical view of marriage, she voluntarily entered into "free unions" with willing men or that she opposed marriage altogether. While true of some women, both fictional and historical, this aspect of the New Woman was manipulated by the popular press, and was encouraged by the release of Grant Allen's scandalous and widely popular The Woman Who Did (1895). Most New Women, however, did not equate women's liberation with sexual liberation, and many, including Sarah

Grand, considered themselves to be "social purists." Social purists did not argue for the dissolution of marriage, but for a new understanding of marriage in which spouses would be treated equally and husbands refrained from extramarital sexual dalliances. Social purists thus encouraged men to adapt to the sexual models of women. The somewhat feminized, "spotless" David Copperfield and Tom

Traddles can thus be seen as precursors to this ideal of male sexuality.

An important cultural event both in the histories of feminism and male sexuality was the work of social purists, led by Josephine Butler, to repeal the

Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s, a goal that was ultimately carried out in

1886. As I explain in Chapter Three, the acts were motivated by public anxiety relating to prostitution and the spread of venereal disease, particularly amongst the army and navy. The acts maintained that any woman suspected of being a prostitute could be forced to undergo medical examination. They therefore reflected the social belief that a woman's body served "as the site where a contaminating sexuality becomes visible" (Anderson 104). Social purists argued, instead, that it was male sexuality that needed controlling, and it was the male body that was responsible for social degeneration (Ledger 112). In an effort to confront these promiscuous men, Butler wrote a tract in 1885 with the sub-title,

"An Appeal to Young Men." Social purists adopted nationalistic rhetoric by

6 The plot of The Woman Who Did engendered this stereotype through the main character, Herminia Barton. Herminia has a child out of wedlock because she refuses to marry her lover, Alan Merrick. She later commits suicide when her grown daughter rejects her because of her supposed immorality. 18 contending that deviant male sexuality was not only a threat to individual marriages, but to the entire nation. Sarah Grand, in "The Man of the Moment," claims, "Philosophers show that the stability of nations depends practically upon ethics. When they do not aspire to be as perfect as they know how to be, they collapse. . . . The man of the moment does anything but aspire, and it is the low moral tone which he cultivates that threatens to enervate the race" (622-3). Grand, with her claim that negative male morality would weaken the British race, points to the process of degeneration, a notion that became a pervasive fear in the late nineteenth century.7 Fears of degeneration were associated with the emerging science of eugenics, which aimed to improve the race by encouraging "fitter" reproductive pairings and discouraging others deemed "unfit" (Ruddick 24). The emergence of "eugenic feminism," which labelled sexually deviant men unfit for procreation, emphasized how important it was for women to choose a healthy male partner rationally by replacing passion with sexual selection (Richardson,

Love 9).

Debates like that over the Contagious Diseases Acts set the stage for the emergence of the New Man. In 1894, Reynell Upham wrote an article in which he discussed the possible emergence of a "New Man" to follow the advent of the

"New Woman." He declares, "The world is growing old, they say; but if it can produce the new woman it can, and will, bring the New Man upon the scene"

(390-1). Although the New Man was not as widely discussed as the New Woman, he too was a discursive response to the feminist movement of the 1890s. The New

7 These fears were encouraged by works such as Max Nordeau's Degeneration (1895) and Eugene Talbot's Degeneration: Its Causes, Signs, and Results (1898). 19

Man was often parodied in the popular press as a figure even more effeminate than the masculine New Woman (see Fig. 2). Yet feminists of the late-nineteenth century also envisioned a New Man as an idealized counterpart to the New

Woman. He was imagined as a man who supported her views for equality and who, when paired with the New Woman, would help create new ideals and definitions of marriage. Indeed, the rise of the New Woman invariably led to the question of how men would adapt to the social changes that had so profoundly altered women's lives, including the integration of women into higher education, legislative acts that improved women's legal status in marriage, and the movement towards suffrage. Yet, as I show in Chapters Three and Four, the New

Man remained a difficult character to depict in fiction. To insert the New Man and the New Woman into the traditional marriage plot was to make them no longer

Fig. 2. "What the New Woman Will Make of the New Man!" Punch 27 July 1895: 42. 20

"new." Late-century novelists frequently depict the New Man abandoning his flirtation with the New Woman in favour of a more traditional woman. Grant

Allen's The Type-Writer Girl (1897) depicts the hero's struggle between a feminist type-writer and his meek fiancee; Mr. Blank wants to remain with the exciting New Woman, but feels obligated to return to his fiancee. In fact, much fiction of this period maps the difficulties for male characters to adapt to the changes they witness amongst women. While I discuss other models of masculinity, such as the male clerk and the dandy, the struggle between the Old

Man, a man trapped in mid-century sexual and domestic roles, and the emerging

New Man shapes my examinations of late-century novels.

III. Critical Contexts

Over the past two decades, studies of Victorian masculinities have been preoccupied with examining representations of discipline and deviance. While we can trace the emergence of this field back even earlier, it was during the early nineties that the examination of Victorian masculinities came to constitute its own field of study. Feminist studies in the 1970s and even 1980s had more cogent need to re-examine the treatment of female characters and women writers, who were identified as oppressed. Feminist criticism offered critics the lexicon to examine masculinities. Important, and oft cited, early works on Victorian masculinities include Sussman's Victorian Masculinities: Manhood and Masculine Poetics in

Early Victorian Literature and Art (1995), James Eli Adams' Dandies and Desert

Saints: Styles of Victorian Masculinity (1995), and John Tosh's historical study, A

Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England

(1999). Sussman and Adams both explore the male intellectual in early Victorian 21 literature and culture, with Sussman focusing on "masculine poetics" and

"constructions of artistic manhood" (1) and Adams on "the 'manliness' of intellectual labour" (1). Sussman emphasizes that two of the goals of his study are to see masculinity as an "historical construction rather than an essentialist given" and "to present early Victorian masculinity not as monolithic but as varied and multiform" (14), and Adams underscores the performative nature of masculinity and "the importance of masculinity as a central problematic in literary and cultural change" (3). These claims, thanks to such work, are now largely unnecessary to foreground. Tosh's work was significant in presenting domesticity as an important facet of masculinity. He argues that for much of the nineteenth century, the "home was widely held to be a man's place, not only in the sense of being his possession or fiefdom, but also as the place where his deepest needs were met" (1). Important work on the study of Victorian masculinities has continued since the publication of these books, in works like Arlene Young's

Culture, Class and Gender in the Victorian Novel: Gentlemen, Gents and

Working Women (1999), Kelly Boyd's Manliness and the Boys' Story Paper in

Britain: A Cultural History, 1855-1940 (2003) and Trev Lynn Broughton and

Helen Rogers's collection, Gender and Fatherhood in the Nineteenth Century

(2007). Queer readings of Victorian texts, including those by Richard Dellamora and Ed Cohen, have been influential in the field of Victorian masculinities.8

While my project will pay attention to the variety of relationships between male characters, my emphasis is on deviant heterosexual masculinity, which is a

8 See, for example, Dellamora's Masculine Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism (1990) and Cohen's Talk on the Wilde Side: Towards a Genealogy of a Discourse on Male Sexualities (1993). surprisingly under-represented area of study.

In a 2006 review article in Dickens Quarterly, Chris Louttit questions whether masculinity studies, which "has become something of a boom topic for literary studies over recent years has reached its natural saturation point" (202).

He reviews two books, Andrew Dowling's Manliness and the Male Novelist in

Victorian Literature (2001) and Martin Danahay's Gender at Work in Victorian

Culture: Literature, Art and Masculinity (2005). His review of these books, which, drawing from Danahay's classification, he categorizes as "second wave" studies of masculinity in contrast to the work of "first wave" critics such as

Adams and Sussman, leads him to surmise unfortunately that "the study of

Victorian masculinities does not currently seem in an especially healthy state"

(202). Louttit suggests rightly that there was a boom in masculinity studies in the late nineties and early twenty-first century, but it seems that many recent scholars have been able to build on earlier studies, while uncovering new topics for analysis. For instance, Seth Koven's Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in

Victorian London (2004), which includes a chapter on "The 'New Man' in the

Slums," examines the "cross-class brotherhood" amongst upper-class practitioners of slumming and the urban poor (21), and Lisa Surridge's Bleak Houses: Marital

Violence in Victorian Fiction (2005) discusses fictional narratives of domestic abuse, exploring an important negative model of Victorian masculinity. The burgeoning field of disability studies likely has much to add to our understandings of manliness and the male body in the Victorian period.

My own work on male sexuality in the mid- and late-nineteenth century has benefited from these studies of Victorian masculinities, but also from the research of New Women critics. Both early work on Victorian masculinities and revisions of New Women criticism appeared during the early to mid-nineties, and both offer reconsiderations of earlier feminist work. Ann Ardis's New Women,

New Novels: Feminism and Early Modernism (1990) is an important example of the kind of critical work done by New Women scholars in the 1990s and into the twenty-first century. These critics aimed to modify earlier works that disparaged the lack of the "literariness" of New Women novels. An example of such earlier criticism is Elaine Showalter's A Literature of their Own: British Women

Novelists from Bronte to Lessing (1977). Showalter argues that "the feminists were not important writers" (31). Further, as writers like Olive Schreiner, George

Egerton, and Sarah Grand "themselves often seem neurotic and divided in their roles, less productive than earlier generations, and subject to paralyzing psychosomatic illnesses, so their fiction seems to break down in its form" (30). In

New Women, New Novels, however, Ardis argues, along with critics like Jane

Eldridge Miller, that the New Woman novel deserves a place in the genealogy of

Victorianism and modernism. One of the most common complaints from earlier critics like Showalter was that the New Woman novel was overly polemical and thus did not qualify as "real" literature. Ardis rewrites the New Woman's interest with politics as a conscious choice rather than a fault:

Insofar as they make frequent reference to extratextual circumstances, they

resist a reader's efforts to extricate the literary artifact from history, and

thereby from politics. Because their authors choose not to view art as a

sphere of cultural activity separate from the realm of politics and history,

these narratives refuse to be discrete. (4) Criticism like Ardis's not only opened up the discussion of New Women writers as legitimate, but the topic of the New Woman as well, as can be seen by the increase in New Woman scholarship since the early 1990s.9 My dissertation argues, if indirectly, that the proliferation of criticism on the New Woman facilitates criticism on the New Man.10 I draw upon critics such as Ardis and

Miller when I argue that both the New Woman and New Man were important figures in the transition between Victorianism and modernism, and, in fact, that they relied on each other to conceptualize their individual gender codes.

While a small number of critics have begun to observe the role of the New

Man in novels by New Women writers,1' less critical attention has been paid to the way that male authors of the fin-de-siecle worked to accommodate the New

Man in their writings. On the other hand, studies of mid-century masculinities, including those by Adams, Sussman, and Dowling, have focused almost entirely on male authors. I contend that male and female novelists alike explored the meaning of manliness in the Victorian period. The female-authored novels I examine explore male sexuality from the perspective of female narrators or

Important studies include Teresa Mangum's Married, Middlebrow, and Militant: Sarah Grand and the New Woman Novel (1998), Ann Heilmann's New Woman Fiction: Women Writing First- wave Feminism (2000) and New Woman Strategies: Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner, Mona Caird (2004), and Angelique Richardson's Love and Eugenics in the Late Nineteenth Century: Rational Reproduction and the New Woman (2003). 10 Margaret Markwick's recent New Men in Trollope's Novels: Rewriting the Victorian Male (2007) offers an example of how work on the New Man has trickled down to critics working on mid-century masculinities. When she discusses the New Man, however, she refers to the New Man of the 1980s and 1990s, not the late-nineteenth century. She claims, "The New Man, so heralded by our generation, is alive and well in Trollope's novels, changing the nappies, making the gravy, pushing the pram, hugging his sons and his daughters" (13). " See, for example, Linda Dowling's "The Decadent and the New Woman in the 1890s" (1979), Stephanie Forward's "The 'New Man' in Fin-de-Siecle Fiction" (1998), Gail Cunningham's '"He- Notes': Reconstructing Masculinity" (2001), and Barbara Tilley's doctoral dissertation, "New Men?: Exploring Constructions of Masculinity in Late Nineteenth-Century New Woman Novels" (2002). 25 protagonists, while the male-authored novels explore these issues from a primarily male perspective, and so examining these novels side by side allows for a greater understanding of the impact of male sexual deviance and sexual restraint on both male and female characters.12 My analyses of novels are concerned with how men size up other men as potential models of masculinity, as well as with how women evaluate and judge male character.

In writing this dissertation, I hope to contribute to the discussion of male sexuality and morality in mid- and late-century Victorian novels, as well as provide new ways of thinking about the relationship between early- and late-

Victorian fiction more generally. Though I emphasize surprising similarities between the two eras, an important difference between the novels of these periods is the treatment of the marriage plot. In the mid-century novels I examine, the deviant male characters are expended, and the more suitable men find happiness in marriage; thus, the representation of male deviance does not serve to disrupt the closure of the marriage plot. By the latter half of the century, however, the machinations of the marriage plot begin to break down. Rachel Blau DuPlessis notes that in the late-nineteenth century, "romance (whether marriage or courtship) is less able to be depicted as satisfying the urgencies of. . . self- development, desire for useful work, ambition, and public striving" (15). Indeed, novelists were compelled to respond to social concerns over marriage during this period. The centrality of marriage to the novel as a genre, and specifically its role

12 Gissing's The Odd Women is unique in revealing both his male and female characters' points of view. 1 T as a concluding device, presented a difficulty to many late-Victorian novelists.

While the New Women characters in the late-century novels I examine often remain single, the men, surprisingly for this period, retain a desire for marriage and domestic happiness.

Chapter One, '"Good and bad Angels': Race, Class, and Models of

Masculinity in Charles Dickens's David Copperfield' examines Steerforth, Uriah

Heep, and Tom Traddles as masculine role models for David Copperfield. David, as the narrator, bestows radically different moral judgements on the sexual behaviour of the wealthy, aristocratic James Steerforth and the lower-middle-class clerk Uriah Heep. David's emphasis on Heep's difference, represented by his grotesque physique and sexuality, serves to racialize him. Towards this end, I argue that Heep may be aligned with Victorian anti-Semitic representations of

"the Jew." In contrast, Traddles's sexual constancy and professional diligence reveals him to be a positive model of middle-class masculinity for David. David's transition, from his early valorization of Steerforth's robust, careless masculinity to Traddles's moral sensitivity and self-discipline, also demonstrates the novel's movement away from aristocratic idealization towards a focus on middle-class values of manliness.

Chapter Two, "'Fascinating' Men and the Challenges of Moral Reform in

Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Amelia B. Edwards's Hand and

Glove," explores deviant male sexuality from a female romantic perspective. I

Novelists writing about feminists had difficulty in concluding their narratives, since, as Jane Eldridge Miller explains, they found that the principal resolutions of Victorian novels impeded the representation of feminist rebellion, for they "inevitably moved toward or endorsed stasis, the status quo, and social integration through marriage, and thus ran contrary to the heroine's desire for independence, rebellion and social change" (3). argue that the novels offer warnings of the glorification of male cruelty through the representation of the deviant Arthur Huntington and Xavier Hamel, both of whom charm and seduce naive young women. The female characters in both novels are committed to reforming these men morally, but Bronte and Edwards suggest that moral instruction should not risk the abuse or debasement of women.

In addition to their critique of Victorian chauvinism and their revisions of ideal masculinity, Tenant and Hand and Glove thus reveal careful revisions to the conventional role of the female as spiritual guide to man.

Chapter Three, "Doctors, Dandies, and New Men: Revising Male

Sexuality in Ella Hepworth Dixon's The Story of a Modern Woman and Sarah

Grand's The Beth Book" examines the various male characters in these New

Women novels. I argue that the doctor and dandy emerge as figures that threaten the New Woman's desire for intellectual, social, and sexual equality. While Dixon avoids writing the New Man into her novel, evading the courtship plot in favour of a more realistic mode, Grand presents, in the character of the American Arthur

Brock, a unique, and not idealized, solution to New Manhood and the marital ending.

Finally, Chapter Four, "Clerks and Cads in an Age of Transition: George

Gissing's The Odd Women and Thomas Hardy's The Well-Beloved" points to the compromised nature of male sexuality in an increasingly feminist society. In The

Odd Women, Gissing's characters, the rakish New Man Everard Barfoot and the insecure former clerk Edmund Widdowson, reveal frustration at their inability to possess the women of their desires, and their struggles force them to renegotiate their masculine identities. The visionary sculptor Pierston, from Thomas Hardy's final novel, exemplifies the difficulty men face in adapting to the sexual and social changes that had already begun to alter women's lives. My claim that early

Victorian masculinity prepares the way for understandings of late-century masculinity is distilled into Pierston's narrative, in which Hardy maps his character's life in neatly divided sections, "A Young Man of Twenty," "A Young

Man of Forty" and "A Young Man of Sixty."

While I suggest that these novels are a response to the social examination of emergent masculinities, it is clear that these works also constitute this examination. As Nicholas Daly claims, Victorian novels may be read as performative as well as reflective, providing a narrative that works to shape society rather than simply mirroring social anxieties (35). Studies of masculinity are constantly linked to anxiety and crisis; this dissertation demonstrates, however, that while the novels I study enact certain social anxieties, they also attempt to work through and reconcile these concerns. That is, the novels I examine imagine new models of masculine behaviour that were under negotiation throughout the Victorian period. Though their plots often end in compromise, these novels experiment with male characterization and sexual representation in ways that increasingly question the Victorian marriage plot and Victorian ideology more generally. Chapter One

"Good and bad Angels": Race, Class, and Models of Masculinity in Charles

Dickens's David Copperfield

In his 1850 preface to David Copperfield (1849-50), Charles Dickens confesses that he feels "as if he were dismissing some portion of himself into the shadowy world" (11). He likely felt this way because of the autobiographical aspects of the novel, the way that it reveals a "portion of himself." In fact, by the end of the novel, the title character has achieved the financial and professional stability that Dickens too had realized by this point in his career. In the novel,

Dickens maps David's gradual adoption of a model of male self-discipline that is characterized by his dedication to his profession and his commitment to his second wife, Agnes, and he rewards David for such discipline. While David

Copperfield valorizes sexual and financial restraint, it is a novel filled with male characters who are unable to adhere or adapt to such ideals, and Dickens thus tempers David's rise to success with many stories of male struggle and failure.

Dickens's possessive feelings about David, as noted above, underscore the precariousness of male identity and the identification of male success in this novel more generally.

The type of deviant male most prolific in the novel is that of the seducer, as we see in James Steerforth, Edward Murdstone, Jack Maldon, Uriah Heep, and

Littimer, who is not distinguished with a first name. Critics have noted that these characters teach David through their negative actions. It has become a critical commonplace to assert that David displaces his sexual and social desires onto these deviant men. Of all of the deviant male characters in the novel, James

Steerforth, David's schoolboy friend, and Uriah Heep, a fellow lodger in the

Wickfield home, get the closest to David, and they may be regarded as David's doubles, as characters who act out his sexual fantasies with Emily and Agnes.

Because of David's intimacy with these men and his privileged position as narrator, his characterizations of Steerforth and Heep offer striking examples of a

Victorian male character's mediations of homosociality and proper male sexuality. While Steerforth and Heep may indeed teach David through their failed models, it is not an uncomplicated or effortless process of education.2 In this chapter, I focus on the complex negotiations that David undergoes in evaluating these models of masculinity. I argue that throughout the novel, David struggles to understand appropriate sexual and social behaviours that broadly reflect

Steerforth's robust masculinity and condemn Heep's sexual perversities.

In general, there exist two kinds of seducers in Dickens's fiction: those men whose tendency towards manipulation and social control extends to women, and those who are diabolically obsessed with their victims. The first type, which includes characters such as James Steerforth, James Harthouse {Hard Times,

1854), and Eugene Wrayburn {Our Mutual Friend, 1864-65), is a conventional

1 As Rosemarie Bodenheimer explains, critics agree that David's narrative works by "the othering and casting out of several figures on whom are projected the ugly undersides of ambition, illicit sexual desire, class shame, and class contempt that David represses in himself ("Knowing" 223). See also John O. Jordan's "The Social Sub-Text of David Copperfield" (63) and Andrew Dowling's Manliness and the Male Novelist in Victorian Literature (48). 2 Dowling, who also examines deviant men in the novel, argues that David is "made full by the unscrupulous men he is continually defined against; in particular Murdstone, Steerforth and Uriah Heep" (48). Though I agree with Dowling's argument that these men offer deviant models of masculinity, I question the notion that David is "made full" through his interactions with them. Dowling claims that "the effect of these deviant men is to consolidate a seamless and obvious meaning of manliness' (47-8), while I suggest, instead, that these characters reveal uncertainties in David's character and in notions of Victorian masculinity more generally, despite their narrative resolutions. rake, characterized by carelessness, boredom, and a desire for sexual dalliances but not marriage. The second type of seducer, however, is a predatory, watchful figure, whose deviant body demonstrates his perversity. These men, who include

Uriah Heep, Bradley Headstone (Our Mutual Friend), and arguably John Carker

(Dombey and Son, 1846-48), are typically social climbers who are interested in morally or socially superior women. In Steerforth and Uriah, Dickens thus exemplifies the two types of male seducers that he explores elsewhere.

In parallel with their sexual identities, Uriah Heep and James Steerforth exemplify the boundaries of the class system, with the upper-class Steerforth representing David's social ideal, and Uriah, the clerk, representing his class- based anxiety and shame." That is, throughout the novel David's physical fascination with these men suggests homoeroticism, but also specifies their respective class and, in the case of Uriah, racial identities. In David's descriptions of erotic encounters with Steerforth and Uriah, and in his criticisms of their inappropriate sexual behaviour, he draws on cultural norms that figure Steerforth as an ideal aristocratic Englishman and Uriah as a feminized and Jewish outsider.

Later in the novel, however, David is able to turn to a more viable model of middle-class masculine behaviour in Tom Traddles.

As I specify below, Uriah Heep is an unruly presence within David

Copperfield, and he stimulates a remarkable variety of insults and anxieties.

David, perceiving the similarities between himself and this socially ambitious

I will take my cue from David in most often referring to James Steerforth as Steerforth and Uriah Heep as Uriah. This is one manner in which the narrative signals more formal respect for the aristocratic Steerforth, and gives less esteem to Uriah, who is one of the only male characters consistently addressed by his first name. 32 clerk, calls attention to Uriah's difference as characterized by his grotesque physique and deviant sexuality. These markers of difference also act as racial indicators of Uriah's presence as "other." More specifically, Uriah may be aligned with anti-Semitic representations of "the Jew." The stereotypical Jew in Victorian

England incorporated a variety of anxieties, and demonstrating Uriah's similarities to this trope offers a way to identify his diverse collection of signs and stigmas. Criticism on Dickens's Jewish characterizations focuses most often on the way that Fagin in Oliver Twist (1837) draws from a long history of anti-

Semitic representations. No critics have offered sustained arguments that connect

Uriah Heep with anti-Semitic stereotypes. By doing so, I hope to broaden our understanding of the ways that Dickens's novels interact with nineteenth-century racial discourses, as well as the ways that these racial discourses interact with economic, sexual, and masculine anxieties.

Calling attention to Uriah's difference in turn reveals how David's valorization of Steerforth relies specifically on nineteenth-century British ideals of manhood, which privileged forthrightness, strength, and economic independence.

Dickens, however, combines these valued qualities with Steerforth's upper-class apathy and cruelty. Though Dickens draws on the literary tradition of the sexually promiscuous rake in his characterization of Steerforth, he further demonstrates how Victorian society functioned to create and encourage men like Steerforth.

John Tosh explains that the social identity of Victorian masculinity is constructed through the categories of home, work, and all-male association (2). Steerforth, more than any of the other boys at Creakle's school, excels in the all-male school system, a system which Dickens, in this novel as well as others, associates with 33 cruelty.4 Like Uriah's, Steerforth's character links economic and social deviance with sexual deviance, so that his social apathy translates into his careless treatment of Little Emily. David's gradual understanding of Steerforth's immorality contrasts with his idealized picture of his boyhood hero; as his assessment of Steerforth falters throughout the narrative, David must revise his masculine ideal.

After examining Steerforth's and Uriah's characters, I turn to the character who finally becomes David's masculine role model, Tom Traddles. John O.

Jordan notes that if "Steerforth is David's role model during the first half of the book, Uriah, curiously enough, teaches him how to become middle class" (78).

Yet there is another male figure who is presented as a possible model for David, and a positive one at that. After learning of Steerforth's indiscretion, David replaces Steerforth's position as his most important male confidant with the more deserving Traddles, a character who Steerforth had slighted in boyhood and adulthood. David repositions his ideals of manliness by moving focus from

Steerforth's brand of robust, careless masculinity to Traddles's moral sensitivity and resolute self-discipline. This revaluation of masculinity also involves a transition from aristocratic idealization towards a focus on middle-class values. In

Dandies and Desert Saints, James Eli Adams encourages critics to consider

"unexpected points of continuity and contact between normative and transgressive masculinities" (19). By so examining Traddles, who practices sexual constancy -

4 For example, Robin in Dombey and Son endures frequent beatings from the other schoolboys, so that Dickens hyperbolizes, "His social existence had been more like that of an early Christian, than an innocent child of the nineteenth century" (126). the result of waiting to marry his fiancee Sophy until he is financially stable - we see the rewards of a different model of male sexuality than those more darkly evinced by characters at the other end of the sexual spectrum.

I. "red-headed animal": Race and Uriah Heep

During Mr. Micawber's dramatic "pulverisation of Heep" near the end of

David Copperfield, he claims, "HEEP, and only HEEP, is the Forger and the

Cheat" (776, 755). In doing so, he effectively removes blame from the other characters who have been implicated in Uriah's schemes, including Mr.

Wickfield, David, and Micawber himself. Micawber thus positions Uriah as a scapegoat figure on a grand scale, and those present all hope to purge themselves of his contaminating influence. Uriah has, after all, disrupted the lives of nearly all of the key characters: Mr. Wickfield, the Micawbers, the Strongs, Aunt Betsey,

Agnes, and, of course, David, for whom Uriah figures as a scapegoat on a more personal level. By displacing his own class, gender, and sexual anxieties onto the figure of Uriah, David creates, in the process, "a monster in the garb of man"

(761). Uriah is the key threat to social order in David Copperfield, and he works as the primary figure standing in the way of David's growth, in economic, social, and romantic terms. In dealing with the threat that Uriah presents, David emphasizes those markers of racial difference that serve to alienate Uriah. Racial discourse, I argue, incorporates the perverse class and sexual representations evident in Uriah's characterization. This is not to say that race was a more important category of difference for the Victorians, but that racial discourse often worked as an all-inclusive form of difference that encompassed other forms of social diversity. In this way Uriah figures as the ultimate scapegoat of the novel, 35 with racial characteristics offering a key explanation for his social and sexual deviance.

In demonstrating Uriah's particular villainies and David's intense repulsion for this character, Dickens draws, specifically, on the long history of anti-Semitic associations and stereotypes. Uriah's appearance, his lust for money, and his dangerous sexuality all resemble the "anti-Semite's Jew" (Halberstam 92).

I do not wish to suggest that Uriah is really a Jew in disguise, but that the codes through which he is represented are similar to anti-Semitic representations of

Jews. While Uriah's "race" marks him socially, physically, and sexually, he embodies a kind of Gothic monstrosity that draws multiple elements of

"otherness" (race, class, gender, and sexual difference) into one body. My reading of Uriah does not simply place him within historical racial discourses, but examines the impact of his characterization within the narrative itself, with specific emphasis on David's narrative voice. Although David calls attention to

Uriah's unruly body in order to mark its differences, his focus on Uriah becomes, in the process, captivating. In a perverse way David is attracted to Uriah's uncontained body, which diverges dramatically from the English masculine ideal.

At the same time, Uriah's body is presented as sexually threatening, a sentiment that is most fully realized in the danger he presents to Agnes's virginity. Jews were frequently associated with deviant sexualities in Victorian England,6 and in

David Copperfield, Uriah exemplifies the way that foreign bodies were marked as

5 My argument is indebted to Halberstam's understanding of Gothic monstrosity in Skin Shows, specifically the notion that Gothic monsters produce monstrosity as "never unitary but always an aggregate of race, class, and gender" (88). 6 On the way that Jews were associated with deviant sexualities in nineteenth-century England, see Gilman's The Jew's Body, particularly Chapter Four. 36 sexually aberrant.

In addition to his sexual deviance, Uriah is a figure of economic deviance.

David is unnerved by Uriah's refusal to keep to his station. Uriah is an outsider who gains access into Wickfield's middle-class home and his law practice.

Although he obsessively acknowledges the social differences between himself and

David, Uriah's actions challenge these differences. For instance, he fails to recognise the value of the modest, gradual rise to success, demonstrated by Tom

Traddles, and he works as an "economic parasite," infecting the financial dealings of many of the key characters (Rosenberg 5). Uriah's subversive attempts to attach himself to unwitting hosts link him to the Anti-Semitic stereotype of the

Jew as an economic parasite. Dickens references the alleged Jewish thirst for money in David Copperfield with Micawber's reference to bills as "a convenience to the mercantile world, for which, I believe, we are originally indebted to the

Jews, who appear to me to have had a devilish deal too much to do with them ever since" (777). David's narrative is also one of social ambition, and it is because

David recognises the similarities in their motives that he attempts to denigrate

Uriah by drawing upon racial discourses.

a. The "Science" of Jewishness in Victorian England

The new science of anthropology was emerging when Dickens was writing David Copperfield, and it gave race an all-inclusive meaning, claiming that moral, intellectual, and physical traits were biologically determined (Lorimer

7 Judith Halberstam notes that fears of sexual and economic parasitism were often associated with Jews in late-Victorian anti-Semitic discourse (96-7); many of these sentiments were also pervasive earlier in the century. 14). As Douglas Lorimer explains in Colour, Class and the Victorians, many

Victorians claimed to be able to infer mental and psychological characteristics from simply identifying differences in skin colour or head shape and size (14).

While Victorian racial discourses were complex and varied, a key tenet was the privileging of English self-discipline as compared to the loss of control exhibited in "other" races. While English men were understood to possess a strong sexual energy by nature, they were encouraged and expected to discipline this behaviour in a display of their civilized nature. In Races of Men (1850), the Edinburgh anatomist and racial theorist Robert Knox reinforces characterizations of undisciplined and uncivilized foreigners. He comments on the "restless, treacherous, [and] uncertain" Celtic character, and he likens Gypsies to "wild animals" (26, 197). Many non-Englishmen, most notably Celts, Jews, Africans, and Indians, were considered feminine because of their lack of masculine self- control, but they were also seen as possessing a dangerous, savage sexuality that was a threat to Victorian women.

Stereotypes of the supposed Jewish lust for money were linked with sexual fears in the depiction of Jewish men who were imagined to plot against

Englishmen and prostitute their daughters (Sicher 141). This stereotype prevailed throughout the nineteenth century. In The World of London, published in book form in 1844, but originally published in Blackwood's Magazine from 1841-43,

John Fisher Murray describes the Jewish district of London where "Christians are foreigners, strangers in a strange land" (27). As he observes the neighbourhood, he detects "the daughter of a Christian man patrolling the streets, decorated in the trumpery properties of a Jewish brothel, while the devil's dam, in the shape of an hideous Hebrew hag, follows the poor unfortunate, like the shadow of death, to clutch the wages of her shame" (28). Although in this case the "Hebrew hag" is a woman, this figure locates "the Jew" within the larger anxieties of the contamination of nationhood, class, and domesticity (Sicher 139).

b. Dickens's Use of Jewish Stereotypes

Dickens evinces the stereotype of the sexually threatening and economically grasping Jew in the figure of Fagin in Oliver Twist, and also in

Uriah Heep. Dickens's views of Jews seemed to vary through the years, with his arguably adopting a milder anti-Semitism by the 1850s. Some critics see this change demonstrated by his more sympathetic portrait of Riah in Our Mutual

Friend (1865); perhaps this depiction was the result of the criticism Dickens received from his negative portrayal of Fagin. In his well-known 1863 defence of

Fagin, Dickens writes to Mrs. Eliza Davis, a Jewish woman who complained about Fagin's representation, and asserts that the character is a Jew, "because it unfortunately was true of the time to which that story refers, that that class of criminal invariably was a Jew" (10.269). Dickens here denies his own agency by drawing uncritically upon the racial discourses of his time. Furthermore, Dickens uses Jewish characters and characteristics elsewhere to embody specific anxieties.

Efraim Sicher, in an examination of Jewish characters in Dickens's fiction, notes that "the prejudiced caricature of 'the Jew' seems to carry some of the recurrent anxiety throughout Dickens's work that the shameful past will catch up with the author and shatter the hard-won bourgeois security" (147). Sicher also notes that this "personal bogey" figure is translated onto other non-Jewish characters throughout Dickens's career, such as Rigaud in Little Dorrit (147). The notion that the figure of "the Jew" in Dickens threatens to reveal a disgraceful past is certainly apt for Uriah Heep, who both reminds David of his unfortunate beginnings, and who also literally holds the secrets of David's past. At Uriah's

"explosion," he reveals, much to David's shame, that David was once "the very scum of society" before "any one had charity on [him]" (753). Sicher's reading also highlights the complex merging of racial and class-based discourses in the nineteenth century.

c. Uriah as Jew

When David first meets Uriah, he notes immediately that this strange man

"particularly attracted [his] attention" (229). David observes that Uriah's face

"was quite as cadaverous as it looked in the window, though in the grain of it there was that tinge of red which is sometimes to be observed in the skins of red- haired people" (229). David emphasizes Uriah's colouring through his multiple references to Uriah's "red head" (240) and his characterization of him as a "red­ headed animal" (389). Uriah's red-head could have Celtic connotations, but this description also aligns him with another famous Dickens villain, Fagin. Fagin is

"a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair" (64). Jonathan Grossman notes that

Fagin's hair references the red hair of the stereotyped "evil stage Jew" (38). This theatrical tradition dates to the medieval period, when a red wig was worn by the devil before being transferred to the Jew. Uriah is also likened to the devil, which reinforces the symbolic meaning of his red hair. Wickfield explains that Uriah

"has always been at my elbow, whispering [to] me" (584), and when Uriah stays in his rooms David feels as though he has "some meaner quality of devil for a lodger" (391).

David's close analysis of Uriah in their first meeting initiates a careful surveillance that will continue throughout the narrative, and reveals that in the

"grain" of Uriah's skin there lies a difference. David makes numerous references to Uriah's odd skin colour. For example, he notes that Uriah looks "flabby and lead-coloured" (580) in the moonlight, and he calls attention to Uriah's

"pervading red" skin (752). In their first meeting, David records that Uriah "had hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown; so unsheltered and unshaded, that I remember wondering how he went to sleep" (229). Uriah's

"unsheltered and unshaded" physique implies that he is laid open and exposed to

David's uneasy gaze.

It is not only that Uriah's skin is red, but that it resists boundaries. For example, when Uriah reads the law manual Tidd's Practice, he leaves "clammy tracks upon the page" (243), an act that can be interpreted as masturbatory, and which is purposely performed in front of David. Well-known nineteenth-century physician William Acton's description of the masturbator as one whose

"complexion is sallow [and] pasty" and whose "hands are damp and cold, and the skin moist" (qtd. in Marcus 19), leads Steven Marcus, in The Other Victorians, to note humorously that Acton's account "teaches us that masturbation was

8 For more on the significance on Uriah's red hair, and on the way that red hair connotes uncontrolled masculinity and impropriety in Dickens's writing, see my '"red-headed animal': Race, Sexuality, and Dickens's Uriah Heep." 41 unquestionably at the bottom of all Uriah Heep's troubles" (19). Like Knox,

Acton associated physical otherness with sexual deviance. Uriah's deviant,

"clammy" body is particularly threatening to David. When Uriah stays over in

David's rooms after dinner at Mrs. Waterbrook's, David takes the opportunity to watch him while he sleeps. He sees him "lying on his back with his legs extending to I don't know where, gurglings taking place in his throat, stoppages in his nose, and his mouth open like a post-office" (391). Reading the scene as a homoerotic encounter, Oliver Buckton comments that "Uriah's spread-eagled legs and gaping mouth mimic, in grotesque form, the posture of sexual receptivity" (211). Uriah's

"gurglings" and "stoppages" identify his body as one that is always leaking, and, as Buckton recognizes, this seepage implies sexual openness. David is an unlikely audience for such displays, but he remains fascinated by Uriah's presence, even as it unnerves him.

Moreover, Uriah's body is feminized, as well as racialized and eroticized.

As Andrew Dowling argues, "Uriah's physical body suggests not manliness but rather a sexualized, 'wet' femaleness" (50). The feminization of the Jewish male body was such a common theme in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature that "Jewishness - or, more precisely, the Jewishness of Jewish men - became as much a category of gender as of race" (Pellegrini 108). Uriah's body clearly diverges from the ideal Englishman's, marked by control and self- discipline, as we see in Ham's and Steerforth's "manly" bodies. Ham is presented as a masculine, working-class ideal that David sentimentally esteems, and David consistently alludes to Steerforth as "handsome." Even after Steerforth's indiscretion with Emily is revealed, he remains an idealized male body, indicating an important difference between Steerforth and Uriah, who is punished merely for looking at Agnes.

d. Uriah's Economic Deviance

As a clerk, Uriah inhabits "a special position in-between classes" (Titolo

186). He is a lower-middle-class man who has gained passage into a middle-class home. Uriah is clearly below David on the social scale after David receives the benefits of Aunt Betsy's money, and this class disparity is evident in Uriah's excessive exclamations of "Master Copperfield" (243). Despite this disparity, as

Mary Poovey asserts, "Heep's real threat in the moral scheme of the novel [is] not that he is fundamentally different from David Copperfield, but that he is, in some important respects, the same" (117). What unnerves David is not only that Uriah desires to be Wickfield's partner and Agnes's husband, but that Uriah parades his alleged humbleness to excess. Uriah is unlike the Peggottys, who enact humility without calling attention to it; Uriah's scornful "Master Copperfield" contrasts starkly to the Peggottys' ardent "Mas'r Davy" (Jordan 80). Indeed, Uriah's false humility makes him a character who deserves punishment, and his subversive social climbing also aligns him with the trope of the "Secret Jew."10 The trope of the "Secret Jew," as Michael Ragussis explains in his Figures of Conversion, involved the belief that England was being infiltrated by rebellious, power-hungry

Jews in Christian disguises (234-90). Indeed, in Uriah's constant painful explosions of'"umbleness," we see a character who recognises the machinations

9 Uriah's body can best be compared to Rosa Dartle's similarly undisciplined body. Like Uriah, Rosa is a figure whose deviance is encoded upon her body. For more on Rosa, see Barbara Black's, "A Sisterhood of Rage and Beauty: Dickens's Rosa Dartle, Miss Wade, and Madame Defarge." i0 David Thiele suggests that Uriah's "red hair and unctuous manner" recall the figure of the "Secret Jew," as identified by Michael Ragussis in Figures of Conversion (Thiele 219-20, n. 11). of the Victorian social system, but who fails to hide his selfish motives through a guise of benevolence. As Matthew Titolo argues, Uriah "is too honest about a status system which masks its hypocrisy in the discourse of natural rank, gradual rise, and small successes" (191). Throughout the novel, Uriah enacts a careful surveillance of the world he wants to enter. He admits to David: "We umble ones have got eyes, mostly speaking - and we look out of 'em" (615).

Uriah is not only threatening to David because of his quick rise to professional success, but also because he rises through parasitism, by attaching himself to unwitting hosts, and by raising himself by lowering others. In this way, he can be likened to David's stepfather, Murdstone, who also rises by punishing others (Thiele 205). Murdstone intrudes upon David's once happy life, taking away his mother, and separating him from his home by forcing him to work at

Murdstone and Grinby's, a life that David admits is fraught with "much mental suffering and want of hope" (225). Uriah is introduced in the narrative just as

Murdstone exits David's life (although he makes a brief appearance later), and

Uriah comes to embody the fears of economic disgrace and domestic unease associated with Murdstone. After David learns of the financial troubles that threaten his aunt, and therefore himself, he connects his potential disgrace with

Uriah. He dreams of attempting to "get a license to marry Dora, having nothing but one of Uriah Heep's gloves to offer in exchange, which the whole Commons rejected" (511). David associates his downfall with Uriah's prominence, signalled by Uriah's dandiacal gloves. In fact, this parallel is quite accurate, as we later learn that Uriah is implicated in Aunt Betsey's financial woes.

While Uriah's role as an economic parasite remains a constant threat to David, this threat is most fully realized through the character of Wickfield. Uriah smoothly becomes a partner in Wickfield's law firm, and he does so by diminishing Wickfield in both mind and body. When Uriah enters the room with the dejected Wickfield, now his partner, David comments on the reversal in their positions: "If I had seen an Ape taking command of a man, I should hardly have thought it a more degrading spectacle" (521). By aligning Uriah with an ape,

David expresses fear over his rise to power as well as uses a derogatory racial signification. This remark, and David's labelling of Uriah as a "malevolent baboon" some pages later (579), is part of a larger animal trope throughout the novel, whereby David marks Uriah's degeneracy by likening him to a "fox,"

"vulture," "bat," "fish," "eel," "snail," "ape," and "baboon."

e. Uriah's Sexual Deviance

Although Uriah provokes David's disgust, this disgust is always mingled with an intense fascination and desire, as evinced by David's assertion that he is

"attracted to [Uriah] in very repulsion" (391)." After touching Uriah's "clammy" hand, David relates: "I rubbed my hand afterwards, to warm it, and to rub his off"

(235 original emphasis). If skin works as a marker of bodily boundaries, then

Uriah's clammy body constantly threatens to get inside of David, initiating a peculiar physical contact between them. Just as Uriah's body threatens to permeate David, he also threatens the purity of Agnes's virginal body. When

David and Uriah's relationship offers an example of the notion of "erotic rivalry" that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick discusses in Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, whereby a triangular love plot shifts its focus from the heterosexual relationship to the male homosocial one: "In these male homosocial bonds are concentrated the fantasy of energies of compulsion, prohibition, and explosive violence; all are fully structured by the logic of paranoia" (162). 45

Uriah first discloses his feelings for Agnes, he raises an image of "female purity under threat" (Dowling 55). After following David home from Mrs. Waterbrook's party, Uriah reveals to David: "Umble as I am . . . the image of Miss Agnes (I don't mind trusting you with my secret, Master Copperfield, for I have always overflowed towards you since the first moment I had the pleasure of beholding you in a poney-shay) has been in my breast for years" (389). David is outraged by this admission, as well as by Uriah's attempt to involve him in his desire. After

Uriah's admission, David wants to seize "the red-hot poker out of the fire and

[run] him through with it" (391). He continues: "It went from me with a shock, like a ball fired from a rifle; but the image of Agnes, outraged by so much as a thought of this red-headed animal's, remained in my mind (when I looked at him, sitting all awry as if his mean soul griped his body), and made me giddy" (391).

Though this moment is filled with David's homoerotic suggestions - the phallic image of a red-hot poker running through Uriah's body, and a ball fired from a rifle, which implies a kind of orgasmic discharge - it also points to Uriah, the red­ headed animal, as a threatening phallus himself. Dowling notes that David's reaction connotes "the type of retribution given to rebellious savages through bayonet, ball and shot" (54). Further, the image of the "red-hot poker" alludes to the actions of slave owners against slaves; in his American Notes, Dickens observes marks from "red-hot irons" on the bodies of slaves (310). These associations suggest that David desires to punish violently the "savage" Uriah, though they also point to David's own loss of control.

Uriah's position as a lodger within the Wickfield home lays Agnes open to his advances, and forces her into sexual knowledge. David does not reveal Uriah's desires to Agnes after this initial confession. David relates, "I was so sure, from her manner, of [Uriah's aims] being unseen by her then, and having cast no shadow on her yet; that I could as soon have injured her, as given her any warning of what impended" (393). What David does not realize, however, is that Agnes knows and understands more than she reveals. Agnes has often disappointed twentieth-century critics, especially feminist critics, because she seems such a bland female character and such an idyllic male fantasy of the "angel in the house."12 While her role as David's moral guide certainly fits within the prescribed role of the proper Victorian woman, Dickens also bestows Agnes with rather unconventional knowledge - her knowledge of Uriah's, Steerforth's, and her father's deviance, " as well as her awareness of her own desire for David.

Though David tells Uriah that he believes Agnes to be "as far above you, and as far removed from all your aspirations, as [the] moon herself (580), Uriah gets bolder with his growing power. He announces to David and Wickfield, when the three gather for an after-dinner drink, what a wonderful distinction it would be to

"be her 'usband" (582). This provokes Wickfield into hysterics and as Agnes glides in to rescue her maddened father, David meets her eyes and realizes "how much she knew of what had passed" (585). Though Agnes is saved from marrying

Uriah, his desires threaten the purity of her mind, just as his permeating presence in her home uncomfortably exposes her to his "ugly form" (578). At the close of

12 For example, in "Late-Twentieth-Century Readers in Search of a Dickensian Heroine: Angels, Fallen Sisters, and Eccentric Women," Catherine J. Golden argues that Agnes represents the ideal Victorian angel in the house. Golden complains that Dickens's depictions of women in his novels "seem startling lacking and thoroughly steeped in the traditional views of his times" (5). George Orwell famously said of Agnes that she is "the most disagreeable of his heroines, the real legless angel of Victorian romance" (73). 13 By Mr. Wickfield's deviance, I mean his alcoholism, as well as the financial negligence that emerges as a result of his alcoholism. the chapter, which is ominously entitled "Wickfield and Heep," Uriah tells David that he has apologized to Wickfield for his admission, entreating David, "you have sometimes plucked a pear before it was ripe, Master Copperfield?" (586).

Uriah here invokes a further potential violation of Agnes's body. As David takes leave of him, Uriah "made motions with his mouth as if the pear were ripe already, and he were smacking his lips over it" (586).

David's reactions to Uriah's sexual desires for Agnes are often imagined acts of violence. While David only suggests violent retaliation in these moments, he actually enacts this violence later in the novel when he strikes Uriah. He does so after Uriah reveals that David suspected Mrs. Strong of adultery with her cousin, Jack Maldon, thus implicating David in suspicions of inappropriate desire.

After David slaps Uriah, he admits: "I felt only less mean than he. He knew me better than I knew myself (627). This is a surprisingly illuminating moment, where David closely aligns himself with his enemy. Indeed, as I have suggested throughout, much of David's antagonism stems from his recognition that he is not so different from this "creature." Although David attempts to obscure their similarities by drawing upon a racial discourse that emphasizes Uriah's deviance,

Uriah is actually a fellow Englishman. By positioning the contaminating body at the centre of the novel as an English body, and by endowing him with stereotypically Jewish traits, it may be argued that Dickens is working to subvert anti-Semitic stereotyping.14 However, the characterization of Uriah does not

14 Jonathan Grossman highlights the "Jewishness" of Scrooge, but also cautions readers against assuming that all characters with stereotypically Jewish traits might be thinly veiled caricatures or portraits of Jews, since these characters may "do more to subvert anti-Semitic stereotyping than confirm it" (55). question these stereotypes convincingly. Instead, the tropes associated with Uriah, tropes which readers of Dickens would very likely have associated with Jews,1 label Uriah as dangerous and contaminating. Uriah demonstrates that these threatening traits may be found amongst Englishmen, but his character comes to work as a scapegoat for all of the middle-class characters, and he is ultimately punished for his economic and domestic transgressions with a prison sentence.

For David's benefit and, by the implicit extrapolation of the novel, for the benefit of all of England, Uriah is imprisoned and sentenced to "transportation for life"

(860). Ironically, though, even prison is not such a punishment for "Number

Twenty Seven" since he thrives amongst his fellow prisoners, and continues his deceptive ways. Indeed, prison is figured as the appropriate habitation for the

"deviant," and Uriah insists that he is "far more comfortable here, than [he] ever was outside" (857).

While Uriah's experience in the foundation school where everyone was taught to "know [his] place" (580) does give David, and the reader, a glimpse into the formation of Uriah's character, Dickens does not offer a sympathetic portrait of this man. Matthew Titolo argues that Uriah is a "profoundly sympathetic figure," who "cannot be faulted for 'looking about him' for his path to professional independence" (184). Yet David's violent and grotesque depiction of

Uriah, even if it is at times humorous, does not work to encourage identification

15 In an 1850 review of the novel, an anonymous critic from Fraser's Magazine offers an example of the way that readers looked for racial and national signals in characters when he comments of the Micawbers, "they must be of Irish extraction, though the author does not say so" (706). with Uriah Heep.1 On the other hand, Steerforth's manly English demeanour and his economic and social status allow for a very different treatment of sexual dissidence.

II. Steerforth and Seduction

James Steerforth manages to charm nearly everyone in the novel. In addition to Emily and David, the boys at Mr. Creakle's school, Miss Creakle, the

Peggottys, Mrs. Gummidge, Rosa Dartle, and Mrs. Steerforth are all, in varying ways, attracted to Steerforth's appearance and his light, easy manner. Upon meeting Ham and Mr. Peggotty, Steerforth also charms them and puts them at ease, despite their differing social positions. David's admiration for his friend inspires this musing on Steerforth's character:

There was an ease in his manner - a gay and light manner it was, but not

swaggering - which I still believe to have borne a kind of enchantment

with it. I still believe him, in virtue of this carriage, his animal spirits, his

delightful voice, his handsome face and figure, and, for aught I know, of

some inborn power of attraction besides (which I think a few people

possess), to have carried a spell with him to which it was a natural

weakness to yield, and which not many persons could withstand. I could

not but see how pleased they were with him, and how they seemed to open

their hearts to him in a moment. (115)

Arnold Kettle claims that David's idealization of Steerforth, "the Byronic superman, aristocratic self-confidence and all - is revealed in the novel as no

16 Much the same can be said for Steerforth's servant, Littimer, who has a part in Steerforth and Emily's "wicked story" (678), and who is conveniently placed next to Uriah Heep in prison. Like Uriah, Littimer is depicted as almost inhuman; David calls both men "creatures." arbitrary personal 'weakness' in David's character, but as an important and complex socio/psychological problem of nineteenth-century England" (73).

Indeed, in his characterization of Steerforth, Dickens draws on Byron-inspired heroes, but also on contemporary models of confident, upper-class masculinity.

Steerforth's naturally "gay and light manner" demonstrates his aristocratic light-heartedness, as well as his manly self-mastery. Many critics have highlighted self-control as a key attribute of Victorian manliness.17 The Victorian notion of manly self-control encompassed more than just sexual behaviour.

Steerforth exhibits emotional control and physical self-reliance, which qualities place him in a position of authority at Mr. Creakle's school. David explains, "I was not considered as being formally received into the school. . . until J.

Steerforth arrived. Before this boy, who was reputed to be a great scholar, and was very good-looking, and at least half-a-dozen years my senior, I was carried as before a magistrate" (96). Steerforth positions himself as protector of the younger boys, and even goes so far as to offer David advice on his future career.

Steerforth's robust physique further reflects his superiority in the drawings by

Hablot Browne, who provided all thirty-eight illustrations for the original publication of the novel in monthly parts between 1849-50. For example, in

"Steerforth and Mr. Mell" and "We arrive unexpectedly at Mr. Peggotty's fireside," Steerforth is the tallest and most commanding figure, towering over all the other men.

17 See Sussman in Victorian Masculinities, who argues that the "formations ofVictorian manhood may be set along a continuum of degrees of self-regulation" (3). 18 Edwin Eigner argues that Steerforth bestows David with his identity as a storyteller when they are children at Salem House School (43). Also, later in the novel, Steerforth tells David, "Daisy, my advice is that you take kindly to Doctor's Commons," to which David resolves, "I made up my mind to do so" (353). 51

Steerforth's manly qualities, as well as his comfortable social and economic status, become painfully obvious to David upon reuniting with

Steerforth in London some years after their time in Creakle's school. David feels extremely young and inexperienced around his older friend, who takes it upon himself to change David's inappropriate lodgings and to christen David with a new effeminate nickname, "Daisy." Meeting Steerforth in his grand rooms, David admits "I was rather bashful at first, Steerforth being so self-possessed, and elegant, and superior to me in all respects (age included)" (299). For David,

Steerforth is a heroic young man who takes him under his wing quickly and effortlessly. In this way, he functions as a kind of father figure, a role that is so clearly missing from young David's life, and David fully accepts Steerforth as his protector. Though Steerforth's casual remark to David, "I feel as if you were my property" (299), causes David to glow with pleasure, this assertion should warn the reader that Steerforth is willing to take advantage of his position of power.

Steerforth is, in many ways, a model English gentleman, even attending Eton and

Oxford. Yet, as Margaret Oliphant astutely noted in 1855, Dickens's "heroes are not the young men of clubs and colleges - not the audacious youngsters of Eton, nor the 'awful swells' in whose steps they follow" (451).19 Dickens's heroes are, like David, middle-class boys and men who are, in Oliphant's words, "home-bred and sensitive" (451). Though Steerforth is David's hero, he is never the hero of the novel. Despite his positive manly qualities, his aristocratic manner is one that comes with the negative attributes of insensitivity, carelessness, and social apathy.

19 Though the article is anonymous, I take my cue from The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals in ascribing the article to Oliphant. As Margaret Myers explains, "he comes to represent the worst aspects of indulged cultural manhood" (110).

Critics often describe David's admiration for Steerforth as homoerotic.

Indeed, the young David enjoys looking at his hero in the moonlight, and he frequently comments on Steerforth's attractive stature and handsome face.

However, it is important to understand their relationship in terms of social as well as sexual dominance. David admires Steerforth not necessarily because "he wants him, but because he wants to be (like) him" (Buckton 202). Rather than understanding their relationship simply as erotic, David's affections towards

Steerforth can be defined as romantic; indeed, they offer a characteristic example of Victorian schoolboy romance. Upon reuniting with Steerforth in London,

David records his strong emotions: "[M]y old love for him overflowed in my breast so freshly and spontaneously, that I went up to him at once, with a fast- beating heart" (296). Later, when David drinks with Steerforth and his Oxford friends, he pours out his drunken heart to his friend, exclaiming, "Steerforth- you'retheguidingstarofmyexistence" (368). Even as Dickens makes clear David's attachment to his friend, he offers subtle warnings of Steerforth's character. In fact, the day after David proclaims Steerforth to be his guiding star, Agnes warns him of this "bad Angel" (374).

Despite David's idealization of his friend, Dickens allows doubts to

20 Oliver S. Buckton notes that the relationship between David and Steerforth is one of the earliest examples of schoolboy romantic friendship in nineteenth-century English fiction. He explains, "A genre that flourished in the second half of the nineteenth-century, the story of boyhood romantic friendship featured intense affectional bonds between boys, usually within the institutional confines of the English public school, that were, at least on the surface, scrupulously de- sexualized" (220, n. 41). See also Carolyn Oulton's '"My undisciplined heart': Romantic Friendship in David Copperfield." 53 surface regarding Steerforth's character, often by registering David's uneasiness.

When a young, insecure David meets Steerforth for the first time, Steerforth procures his money in order to "take care of [it]" for him (96). David admits, "I smiled because he smiled, but I was a little troubled in my mind, too" (96). As

Rosemarie Bodenheimer suggests in "Knowing and Telling in David

Copperfield," there is nothing innocent about Steerforth's stealing David's money or David noticing Steerforth's "great power" (226). "Such passages," she claims,

"present a David who chooses to be silent about matters both he and the reader clearly understand" (226). In addition to this early exchange between schoolboys, there are moments when David is troubled by Steerforth's class biases and his careless assessments of others. A key warning of Steerforth's disregard for those below him in social status comes with his assessment of Ham as "rather a chuckle-headed fellow for [Emily]" (326). David feels a shock "at this unexpected and cold reply," but he then assumes quickly, and naively, that his friend is teasing (326). Of course, Steerforth's assessment of Ham, we later learn, may not be so light-hearted.21

Steerforth's attack against Mr. Mell, one of the Masters at Salem House, is one of the most shockingly cruel moments in the novel, and offers an important commentary on Steerforth's abuse of power. David records, "It always gave me pain to observe that Steerforth treated [Mr. Mell] with systematic disparagement,

21 Rosa Dartle's linguistic skills also allow her to betray Steerforth's class indifference. David explains, "It appeared to me that she never said anything she wanted to say, outright; but hinted it, and made a great deal more of it by this practice" (301). For example, Rosa picks up on Steerforth's casual reference to the Peggottys as "that sort of people," asking with feigned innocence, "Are they really animals and clods, and beings of another order? I want to know so much" (302). 54 and seldom lost an occasion of wounding his feelings, or inducing others to do so"

(105). This "systematic disparagement" results in Steerforth's attack against Mell in front of all the students, an attack that implicates David and results in Mell's firing. Not only does Steerforth get Mr. Mell dismissed, but he publicly humiliates him in front of all of the students and Mr. Creakle by accusing him of being a

"beggar" (107). In fact, as Steerforth admits afterwards, it is only Mell's mother who "lives on charity in an alms-house," but if "he is not a beggar himself, his near relation's one," and therefore, he concludes, "[it's] all the same" (110).

Steerforth's cruelty is mimicked unthinkingly by the boys, who cheer when Mell is dismissed. Even David, who feels shame since he has told Steerforth about

Mell's mother, cannot help observing "what a noble fellow [Steerforth] was in appearance, and how homely and plain Mr. Mell looked opposed to him" (109).

Jordan notes that "David, the mature narrator, recounts the incident without a word of condemnation for Steerforth and without treating his own breach of Mr.

Mell's confidence as more than an innocent lapse in judgment" (68-9). Yet

Dickens encourages a disconnection between young David and the reader in this scene. While the older narrator does not intervene explicitly, and the younger

David's shame is quickly forgotten by a visit from Ham and Mr. Peggotty (the same visit where we learn of Steerforth's "gay and light manner" with them),

Dickens encourages the reader to pity Mell by drawing attention to his emotional pain. He emphasizes how "white" Mell's face turns and the "trembling" of his lips as he attempts to respond to Steerforth (107).

Further, Dickens sets up Mell as a critical voice who offers insight into the social dynamics at work in the school. When Steerforth begins his attack, Mell 55 replies,

"If you think, Steerforth,. . . that I am not acquainted with the power you

can establish over any mind here" - he laid his hand, without considering

what he did (as I supposed), upon my head - "or that I have not observed

you, within a few minutes, urging your juniors on to every sort of outrage

against me, you are mistaken." (107)

Mell's final words emphasize Steerforth's negative influence over David. With his hand still placed upon David, Mell says to Steerforth, "At present I would prefer to see you anything rather than a friend, to me, or to any one in whom I feel an interest" (111). At this moment, the mature narrator chooses to be silent about matters that both he and the reader clearly understand, though the parenthetical note - "(as I supposed)" - again reveals the disconnection between the younger and older David. Young David's silence is understandable. Though he has

"remorse in [his] heart," to betray Steerforth would socially align David with the lower-class Mell, and to demonstrate emotion would threaten his masculinity

(110). Traddles is the only boy to challenge Steerforth, and his tears of reproach cause him to be caned by the tyrannical Creakle and feminized by Steerforth who calls him "Miss Traddles" and "Polly" for betraying his emotion (112).

Steerforth's social status allows him to take advantage of others, and the episode with Mr. Mell demonstrates that Steerforth is in fact rewarded for his manipulations, as Creakle fires Mell and praises Steerforth while the young boys all cheer. Indeed, Steerforth's manipulative behaviour demonstrates the dangers of his brand of masculinity. Just as David and his schoolmates are enamoured with their hero, Steerforth holds a power over women such as Rosa and Emily. Natalie 56

Rose identifies a "rhetoric of fascination" in a number of Dickens's novels, which

Dickens uses to "describe dynamics of interpersonal influence and the difficulties of asserting individual identity" (518). More specifically, she notes that "properly regulated subjects" in Dickens's writing "must neither allow their vulnerable boundaries to be invaded, nor overstep those boundaries: they must neither be fascinated nor fascinating" (528). David is in fact one of those subjects who constantly risks invasion, and he records his fascination with characters such as

Uriah, Steerforth, Dora, and Rosa. In her recent article, "Dickens, Fascinated,"

Bodenheimer also recognizes the importance of "the gaze of fascination" in

Dickens's fiction, and she argues that "fascinated looking" reveals charged relations between men (272). For a male character, such "fascinated looking" can reveal, as with David, those aspects of the self that he has attempted to bury or the man he might have been but for his pride, class position, or age (274, 275).

Bodenheimer highlights the way that the rhetoric of fascination enables Dickens's men to revel in their own "transformation possibilities, the potential, yearned-for multiplicity of themselves" (275). Nonetheless, both Rose and Bodenheimer are aware that the anti-individualist blurring of boundaries implicated in this language of fascination can often prove unsettling.

Though Uriah's fascinating, leaking body is more overtly troubling,

Steerforth also risks overstepping personal boundaries. Rosa admits that she

"descended - as I might have known I should, but that he fascinated me with his boyish courtship - into a doll, a trifle for the occupation of an idle hour, to be dropped, and taken up, and trifled with, as the inconstant humour took him" (806).

Steerforth's ability to fascinate is here marked as dangerous. Earlier in the novel, David closely watches Steerforth with Rosa: "Steerforth exerted himself with his utmost skill, and that was with his utmost ease, to charm this singular creature. . . .

That he should succeed was no matter of surprise to me. That she should struggle against the fascinating influence of his delightful art - delightful nature I thought it then - did not surprise me either" (441). In her fascination, Rosa allows her

"vulnerable boundaries to be invaded" by Steerforth (Rose 528), and when he is finished with her, she is left empty, with "no eyes, no ears, no feelings, no remembrances" (807).

While Steerforth's treatment of Rosa is malicious, Steerforth's class prejudice and manipulative tendencies culminate in his maltreatment of Emily.

While Steerforth's abandonment of Emily may be considered his cruellest act, it is through this plot twist that David comes to understand and sympathize with

Steerforth's character most fully. In those moments associated with his seduction of Emily, we see Steerforth struggling openly with his self-will. When Steerforth and David visit Yarmouth, David returns to Mr. Peggotty's home to find

Steerforth alone, staring into the fire. He exclaims, "David, I wish to God I had had a judicious father these last twenty years! ... I wish with all my soul I had been better guided!" (329). Just as Emily's lack of a mother puts her at risk,

Steerforth's lack of a father puts him at risk of sexual indiscretion.22 This is the strongest glimpse the reader has of Steerforth's interiority. David catches

Steerforth out of character, and this moment reveals Steerforth's self-control, and perhaps masculine self-control in general, as a performance. Steerforth

22 Though David is also without a real father, his many father figures, such as Mr. Wickfield, Dr. Strong, Mr. Dick, and perhaps even the masculine Aunt Betsey, offer him guidance. emphasizes the relationship between proper manliness and the performance of self-discipline when, with a toss of his hand to signal the end of his emotionality, he quotes Macbeth: "Why, being gone, I am a man again" (330). With the renewal of his cover of strength and emotional control, he is once more a self-possessed man. In a similar moment of anxiety, when Steerforth visits David in his London lodgings, and presumably when his plans for escape with Emily are being worked out in his mind, he again puts on a show of determination. As he leaves,

Steerforth exclaims, "Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride over all obstacles, and win the race!" (434). David is overwhelmed by this explosion and can only ask, confused, "And win what race?"

(434), and as he watches Steerforth leave, he "wished, for the first time, that he has some worthy race to run" (435). Indeed, Steerforth's very name "steer forth" means the same thing as "ride on," but the forward movement signalled by both his name and his motto proves destructive without an honourable motive.

Steerforth thus seems destined for self-destruction, and Dickens forecasts his death by drowning early in the novel. Vybarr Cregan-Reid links Steerforth's name to his demise (28). When David reminds Mr. Peggotty of his friend's name,

Peggotty cries, '"That's the name!' ... 'I knowed it was something in our way,'" meaning a name related to their employment, fishing (152). When Ham teases

Peggotty, saying '"You said it was Rudderford,'" Peggotty retorts, '"And ye steer with a rudder, don't ye? It ain't fur off" (152). Narrative foreshadowing of

Steerforth's doom, though perhaps not as explicit as Emily's, also occurs in

23 Rosa similarly questions what drives Steerforth's behaviour: "[Is] it anger, is it hatred, is it pride, is it restlessness, is it some wild fancy, is it love, what is it, that is leading him?" (439). David's descriptions of Steerforth at school. When the two are schoolboys,

Steerforth asks if David has a sister, explaining, "I should think she would have been a pretty, timid, little, bright-eyed sort of girl" (99). This scene not only suggests a romantic relationship between the boys, but sets up Steerforth's later seduction of Emily, who, with her ambitions to be a lady, is predestined to fall.

David looks at Steerforth "where he lay in the moonlight, with his handsome face turned up, and his head reclining easily on his arm" (99). This moment anticipates

Steerforth's death, when his body mimics this same pose. David's speech further suggests an ominous future for Steerforth: "No veiled future dimly glanced upon him in the moonbeams. There was no shadowy picture of his footsteps, in the garden that I dreamed of walking in all night" (99). The manuscript version, which includes "the garden that I dreamed of- the garden that I picked up shells and pebbles in, with little Em'ly, all night" (948 n.3), is explicit in anticipating

Steerforth's seduction of Emily.

Steerforth's careless pose is echoed later in the novel when David visits

Steerforth in his home, and again this reinforces the inevitability of his early death. David rises early and looks into Steerforth's room to see him "fast asleep; lying, easily, with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at school"

(443). He continues:

The time came in its season, and that was very soon, when I almost

wondered that nothing troubled his repose, as I looked at him. But he slept

- let me think of him so again - as I had often seen him sleep at school;

and thus, in this silent hour, I left him.

- Never more, oh God forgive you, Steerforth! to touch that passive hand in love and friendship. Never, never, more! (444).

We receive here an interjection from the mature narrator, the narrator who knows what is to come in the next chapters. While David rejects somatic contact with

Steerforth, his passionate apostrophe directly addresses his now dead friend,

signalling his regret even before Steerforth's affair has come to light. The third

and final moment when Steerforth's body adopts this careless pose is in his death.

Ham's body washes up first, followed by Steerforth's, which David finds "among the ruins of the home he had wronged" (801). He relates, "I saw him lying with

his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at school" (801). Though a reviewer for Fraser's Magazine called this scene (in which Steerforth dies next to

the home he desecrated) a moment of "poetical justice" (706), David's language focuses not on the justice of this moment, but the sorrow. Bodenheimer argues that in this scene Steerforth is not to be condemned for his sexual betrayal. He is

"covered with a prebetrayal memory," lying as David had often seen him at

school ("Knowing" 225). David's "desire to fix the betrayer in an idyllic 'time before' is presented as an act of the imagination that desires to dwell upon

innocence and wishes to 'hush forever' the indictments it is capable of making"

(225). Yet David's desire to fix Steerforth in an innocent "time before" is

complicated by his previous acts of foreshadowing. Those earlier moments when

David sees Steerforth lying with his head upon his arm consistently forecast his

affair with Emily. The first time David watches Steerforth he motions to, even as he negates it, Steerforth's "veiled future" (99) and when he looks at Steerforth in

his bedroom, he asks God to forgive his friend, and notes, "I almost wondered that

nothing troubled his repose," as if Steerforth's repose signals his very cruelty 61

(444). This complicates, then, the innocence of these earlier scenes, and

Steerforth's careless pose presents his character as one that is reckless and unthinking.

Drowning in Victorian literature can be understood as deserved punishment or as a tragic death, and in Steerforth's case both representations are legitimate. Drowning is certainly fraught with ethical implications in Dickens's novels, as well as in Victorian culture more generally. Drowning was often understood as an act of sexual shame. The most popular cultural allusion to drowning was the prostitute who attempts to drown her polluted body, a representation Dickens helped create with his early depiction of the prostitute

Nancy in Oliver Twist.24 Steerforth's dying amongst the ruins of the home he had wronged highlights the way that his death figures as punishment for past sins.

Dickens, then, uses drowning as an appropriate death for a morally controversial character, even if David evades direct condemnation of his friend at the moment of his death. Cregan-Reid argues that because drowning symbolizes oral and bodily penetration, it is a particularly sexualized and even queer means of death.

Though we can debate the queer connotations of Steerforth's death scene, Cregan-

Reid's assertion that "Steerforth dies with some dignity, but still he suffers the effeminising death of those who have the mark of sexual impropriety" is convincing (28). Steerforth's death thus enacts a kind of purging of past sins, both for himself as well as for Emily. Though she threatens to drown herself and others

24 Nancy says: "Look at that dark water. How many times do you read of those such as I who spring into the tide, and leave no living thing, to care for, or bewail them. It may be years hence, or it may be only months, but I shall come to that at last" (389). Emily and Martha are also linked to drowning in David Copperfield (48, 687). 62 wish this death upon her, Steerforth perhaps dies for his actions so that Emily need not. Unlike the excessively penitent Emily, Steerforth never fully demonstrates regret for his actions. His death, nonetheless, makes him a martyr.

More than simply allowing for a release from past sins for those involved in the affair, Steerforth's and Ham's deaths allow David to reflect on his past more generally. In Death Sentences, Garrett Stewart argues that drowning in narrative functions as a symbol of retrospect: "[D]rowning declares its parallels to the literary work of epiphany or synopsis at the instant of decease" (32). In David

Copperfield, Steerforth drowns so that David can review their time together.

Stewart explains, "For David, his false friend Steerforth was a myth generated out of the moral sleep, that suspension of critical consciousness, into which David was betrayed by his adolescent identification with his idol as the incarnated dream of invincible vitality and charm. It is a dream laid to rest here" (78). Though

David's realization that Steerforth is not an appropriate idol first comes when

David learns of his seduction of Emily, Steerforth's death allows David a further opportunity for contemplation. I agree with Stewart's claim that something dies in

David with the death of Steerforth. Though Ham drowns at the same time, and

David's wife, Dora, has recently died, it is Steerforth's death that prompts David to reflect that "all the world seemed death and silence" (808). Soon after, David leaves England for a period in Italy and Switzerland, and he becomes conscious of

"all that had been shattered - my first trust, my first affection, the whole airy castle of my life" (819). David's connection between his first trust, Steerforth, and his first affection, Dora, is an appropriate one. As Arnold Kettle argues, "The two . most serious mistakes that David makes are his judgements of Steerforth and Dora" (72). David romantically idealizes both Dora and Steerforth, and it seems that he must abandon these youthful infatuations in order to progress to mature manhood. Though Steerforth's death does not bring David a clear epiphany, it does lead him to gradual maturity. It also precedes a shift in the novel, as soon after Steerforth's death David realizes his love for Agnes. Though Steerforth receives narrative retribution, David attempts to understand his character and his limitations. David mourns for "him who might have won the love and admiration of thousands, as he had won mine long ago" (820). Steerforth's death, then, is both a punishment and a tragedy.

III. "Wait and hope": Male Constancy and Tom Traddles

Tom Traddles is often critically overlooked in favour of characters such as

Steerforth, Uriah, and Murdstone. Yet Traddles emerges as a valuable model of masculinity in the novel. He demonstrates professional industriousness, moral resolve, and sexual constancy, and he is rewarded for his actions. Though

Traddles may not be as "fascinating" as Uriah or Steerforth, he is a key character in the novel; he is present and influential during many of the most important moments of David's life, including David's wedding to Dora and Uriah Heep's entrapment. Traddles proudly tells David that his motto is, "Wait and hope!"

(413), and this motto expresses different goals than Steerforth's "Ride on!" (434).

Though they are engaged for years, Traddles waits until he is financially secure before he marries Sophy, his "dearest girl" (429). In his fiscal and romantic restraint, then, Traddles opposes both Uriah and Steerforth.

David meets both Traddles and Steerforth at Mr. Creakle's school.

Traddles is radically different from the gallant, robust Steerforth: "Poor Traddles! 64

In a tight sky-blue suit that made his arms and legs like German sausages, or roly- poly puddings, he was the merriest and most miserable of all the boys" (102).

Traddles certainly does not suggest idealized masculinity. David notes, though, that he "was very honourable, Traddles was; and held it as a solemn duty in the boys to stand by one another" (102). After this praise, David relates a specific incident in which Traddles took the blame for laughing in church when the real culprit was Steerforth. Steerforth, however, repays his schoolmate by teasing him in front of all of his classmates for crying when Mell is fired. Traddles's tears, as I have already suggested, signal both an unmanly display of emotion, as well as a defiance of Steerforth's judgement. Steerforth does not take this defiance lightly, challenging Traddles's masculinity by calling him "you girl," "Miss Traddles" and "Polly" (112). Traddles, with his strong sense of integrity, tells Steerforth that he has "hurt [Mell's] feelings, and lost him his situation" (112). When Steerforth insists gallantly, and no doubt falsely, that he had been all along planning to write home and "take care that [Mell] gets some money," David records that the boys

"thought this intention very noble in Steerforth" and they "were all extremely glad to see Traddles so put down, and exalted Steerforth to the skies" (112). It is not until later in life that David starts to see through Steerforth's manly facade, and in turn to value the quiet strength within his more humble friend. As I have suggested, this involves, for David, overturning Steerforth's more ostentatious brand of masculinity in favour of Traddles's quiet humility.

Significantly, Traddles is reintroduced into the narrative directly after

Agnes warns David of Steerforth's and Uriah's dangerous behaviour, in the chapter "Good and bad Angels." Traddles, at this point in the novel, is "a young 65 man reading for the bar" (380), and though his physical description still has humorous elements, with his "comic head of hair, and eyes that were rather wide open," he is also "a sober, steady-looking young man" (379). The attribute

"steady" contrasts him with the careless, unsteady Steerforth. David witnesses this disparity for himself later in the novel when he dines with Traddles and the

Micawbers. After they have left his lodgings, David hears footsteps and thinks it is Traddles returning. Instead, it turns out to be his other schoolboy friend,

Steerforth. When David "triumphantly" announces to Steerforth that he has just missed their old friend Traddles, David does not receive the reaction he expects

(432). First, Steerforth forgets Traddles all together, and he then inquires, "Is he as soft as ever? And where the deuce did you pick him up?" (432). David remarks,

I extolled Traddles in reply, as highly as I could; for I felt that Steerforth

rather slighted him. Steerforth, dismissing the subject with a light nod, and

a smile, and the remark that he would be glad to see the old fellow too, for

he had always been an odd fish, inquired if I could give him anything to

eat? (433)

Steerforth's carelessness contrasts with Traddles's thoughtfulness, and this moment allows David to compare their very different natures.

Despite Traddles's own financial limitations (he admits to David, "I am fighting my way on in the world against difficulties" [410]), he assists many financially strapped characters in the novel. For example, after Aunt Betsey's financial disaster, Traddles finds David work recording Parliamentary debates, and he later sells David's writing during his absence from England. Traddles is also generous with the Micawbers, much to David's concern. He assists Micawber 66 in orchestrating the "pulverisation" of Uriah (776), and he restores all the money that Uriah procured unfairly. In restoring the money that Uriah had stolen,

Traddles symbolizes Christian generosity in contrast with Jewish-identified Uriah.

When Uriah's evil acts are revealed, Traddles directs much of the action, and

David admits, "I cannot help avowing that this was the first occasion on which I really did justice to the clear head, and the plain, patient, practical good sense, of my old schoolfellow" (763). Just as in the scene in which Mell is fired, what emerges here is Traddles's sense of justice, appropriately fitting since he is to later become a judge.25 The majority of the characters in the novel do not attempt to understand Uriah Heep, but Traddles may be the sole exception. He endeavours to comprehend Uriah's motives when discussing his character with David, Agnes, and Aunt Betsey:

He is such an incarnate hypocrite, that whatever object he pursues, he must

pursue crookedly. It's his only compensation for the outward restraints he

puts upon himself. Always creeping along the ground to some small end or

other, he will always magnify every object in the way; and consequently

will hate and suspect every body that comes, in the most innocent manner,

between him and it. (784)

Traddles's astute observation of Uriah emphasizes his "clear head" as well as his sympathetic understanding. When Aunt Betsey calls Uriah "a monster of meanness!" (784), Traddles thoughtfully observes, "Really I don't know about

25 Traddles is based on Dickens's friend Thomas Noon Talfourd (Tambling 947 n. 7), to whom Dickens dedicated Pickwick Papers as "a memorial of friendship." Like his fictional counterpart, Talfourd became a judge in 1849. Although Traddles never actually becomes a judge in the novel, David insists to him in the final chapter, "you know you will be" (881). Also, in Dickens's plans for the novel he writes, for the final chapter, "Traddles a Judge" (939). that. . . . Many people can be very mean, when they give their minds to it (784).

Though perhaps not as central as Agnes, Traddles emerges as an indicator of morality in the novel. Just as he asks others to question Uriah's innate meanness, his comments after Steerforth's attack on Mell attempt to alert Steerforth to the manner in which he is abusing his position of power.

Traddles's character underscores the connection between economics and desire that is so important to Dickens's discourse on masculinity. While Uriah is too eager in both respects and Steerforth too careless, Traddles exhibits a remarkable self-discipine. James Eli Adams marks the connection between economics and sexuality as historically appropriate. He remarks that in the

Victorian period

traditional associations of manhood with sexual prowess were weakened

by the pursuit of middle-class standards of living, which led men

increasingly to delay marriage in pursuit of adequate income; tributes to

economic "abstinence" were thus increasingly associated with, and

energized by, a regime of specifically sexual restraint. (5)

This notion is exemplified by Traddles's motto, "Wait and hope" (413). David marvels over Traddles's forbearance and his willingness to endure seeing Sophy so seldom during their extended engagement, in marked contrast to David's youthful impatience to marry Dora. When David praises his patience, Traddles responds with characteristic humbleness: '"Dear me!' said Traddles, considering about it, 'so I strike you that way, Copperfield? Really I didn't know that I had.

But she is such an extraordinarily dear girl herself, that it's possible she may have imparted something of those virtues to me'" (498). Though Traddles refers to 68

Sophy's virtues of constancy and patience in general, we might imagine her as imparting the feminine virtues of sexual constancy and patience onto his model of masculinity.2

Traddles's extended engagement, a middle-class phenomenon, and his initially humble lodgings are never presented as ideal. These compromises exemplify the challenges of middle-class male sexuality, if rather sentimentally.

Ultimately, Traddles's motto proves successful: at the close of the novel, he is set to become a judge and he owns a large house, much like the homes about which he and Sophy used to dream. Indeed, as Margaret Myers claims, this ending is certainly "overly optimistic" (119), as like David, Traddles realizes the middle- class dream. Yet Traddles remains humble, and David notes that he is "exactly the same simple, unaffected fellow as he ever was" (881). David too, despite his rashness with Dora, is rewarded for his later maturity when he marries Agnes. Just as David learns to value Traddles's humanity over Steerforth's spectacular manhood, he must, it seems, first experience the outcomes of his desire for Dora in order to value Agnes's goodness.

Steerforth, Uriah, and Traddles offer David important models of sexual and economic behaviour, even if his judgements of them are often amiss. In fact,

David's ambiguously homoerotic relationships with these men parallel his heterosexual romantic desires. David mistakenly idealizes Dora and Steerforth for their attractiveness and upper-class origins; he becomes both fascinated and

26 In "The Lost Self: Gender in David Copperfield" Margaret Myers highlights the mix of feminine and masculine qualities in Traddles and David, what she calls their "androgynous reconciliation" (110). Myers argues that Traddles is a model of this reconciliation ("he appears to reconcile internally the masculine with the feminine, the rational with the moral and the emotional, but even more significantly he appears to reconcile the private with the public" [119]), and that David realizes that he too must accept the feminine qualities within him. repulsed by social outsiders Uriah and Rosa; and he is finally rewarded with the friendship and love of Traddles and Agnes. Through Agnes, Dickens reveals the value he places on the model of the female as moral guide to man. David constantly relies on Agnes's guidance, just as Traddles too insists that his goodness arises from Sophy. Yet the novel also foregrounds the benefits and instructive qualities of male friendship, and Dickens suggests that positive male friendship may offer similar ethical and emotional benefits. As David travels through Europe after Steerforth's death, he receives an encouraging letter from

Agnes: "She, who so gloried in my fame, and so looked forward to its augmentation, well knew that I would labour on. She knew that in me, sorrow could not be weakness, but must be strength" (822). She inspires David to write a story, which he sends to Traddles, "and he arranged for its publication very advantageously for me" (823). It is therefore through the mutual guidance and encouragement of Agnes and Traddles that David achieves his professional dreams and becomes a writer. In the next chapter, I will explore further the challenges that early- to mid-Victorian women face in adopting the conventional role of moral guide to men. Chapter Two

"Fascinating" Men and the Challenges of Moral Reform in Anne Bronte's

The Tenant ofWildfell Hall and Amelia B. Edwards's Hand and Glove

While David Copperfield explores David's homosocial encounters with various "fascinating" men, Anne Bronte's The Tenant ofWildfell Hall (1848) and

Amelia B. Edwards's Hand and Glove (1858) demonstrate the dangers of such men from a female, romantic perspective. What Natalie Rose calls the "rhetoric of fascination" in Dickens's novels, which reveals characters' difficulties in maintaining individual identities, can extend to these romantic narratives (518).

While Dickens's fascinating characters and their tendency to permeate boundaries invoke specific fears relating to masculine self-discipline and homoeroticism, an expression of fascination as threatening to the self-determining Victorian subject applies to depictions of deviant men and their female victims in mid-century fiction more generally.

Fascination is often a response to mystery or enigma, and is thus an applicable term for the intrigued female response to the mysterious Byronic hero found in the fiction of Edwards, the Brontes, and other mid-century writers.

Oliver Harris suggests that there are always "contrary forces at work in fascination: seduction and shame, attraction and repulsion" (15). In David

Copperfield, David admits that he is "attracted to [Uriah] in very repulsion," an assertion latent with both homoerotic and homophobic undertones (391). The mixed reaction of mid-century heroines to these male figures, however, stems from the heroines' struggle between desire and duty, with the male figure of 71 fascination offering a precarious rejection of conventional duty. In these novels, the Dickensian threat of bodily and psychic permeability is translated into social concerns over the fragility of female autonomy within romantic relationships, especially in the case of marital coverture whereby the wife's legal personhood was absorbed into that of her husband.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Hand and Glove register such concerns primarily through the threatening characters Arthur Huntington and Xavier

Hamel, both of whom possess "powers of fascination" (Tenant 195; Hand and

Glove 151). These novels are not simply narratives of women enthralled by captivating Byronic heroes. Instead, the heroines achieve a degree of critical distance from these men and chastise their inappropriate behaviour, even as they continue to aid in the men's moral development. The revisions of domineering masculine behaviour in the novels are thus revealed through the moral education of the male characters at the hands of their female counterparts. Through their focus on the sexual double standard and women's status within marriage, The

Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Hand and Glove demonstrate a kinship to feminist novels of the late-nineteenth century. Nonetheless, they also demonstrate a commitment to the model of the Victorian woman as moral guide, and thus to conventional mid-Victorian morality. Even in their attraction to the model of the female as moral counsellor to man, however, both Bronte and Edwards suggest that moral instruction should not risk the abuse or debasement of women, and they thereby offer careful qualifications to this conventional female role.

Bronte's and Edwards's deviant men may be considered alongside other depictions of Byron-inspired Victorian rakes, most notably Rochester in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847) and Heathchff in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

(1847). In an 1848 review of Jane Eyre and Tenant, E.P. Whipple records the appearance of "Jane Eyre fever" across New England (355). This "distressing mental epidemic" encourages young men "to swagger and swear in the presence of the gentler sex, and to allude darkly to events in their lives which excused impudence and profanity" (355). Further, "Mr. Rochester" is "a great favourite in the boarding schools and in the worshipful society of governesses" (355-6).

Whipple demonstrates rather humorously the romanticization of Rochester, and the Byronic hero more generally, in the culture of mid-nineteenth-century

America and England. Although Whipple points to Rochester's attractions, Anne

Bronte and Edwards focus on the cruelty of such figures and seek to de- romanticize the rake and his potential for reform. The novels warn against such glorification of male cruelty through Huntington and Hamel, both of whom charm and seduce naive young women.

Even though the novels challenge the social scripts of Byronic attraction,

Bronte and Edwards allow their heroines, Helen Lawrence and Marguerite

Delahaye, to fall victim to such scripts, at least initially. The heroines read the domineering behaviour of the men as both sexually charged and threatening. The novels signal the immorality of Huntington and Hamel through a variety of conventional signs: violent behaviour, cruelty toward animals, and a love of money and finery. Sarah Stickney Ellis identifies these male shortcomings in her chapter "Trials of Married Life" from The Wives of England: Their Relative

Duties, Domestic Influence, and Social Obligations (1843). She further points to the "two particular defects in the moral character of men, which . . . constitute the severest and most painful trials of married life," namely "intemperance" and

"unfaithfulness" (141, 149). Only Huntington is guilty of these sins, and Tenant deals more extensively with the negative results of a bad match, since Marguerite in Hand and Glove escapes marriage with Hamel.

Helen and Gartha Wylde, Marguerite's companion, are unable to effect moral transformations of Huntington and Hamel; however, they use their failures to influence the moral development of other men, specifically Huntington's and

Hamel's romantic rivals, Gilbert Markham and Charles Gautier, who belong to a model of manhood that is less threatening but still problematic. While Gilbert and

Charles exhibit possessive tendencies, they are not as dangerous as their romantic rivals. In Tenant, Helen positively influences not only her future husband, Gilbert, and her son, but also her husband's friends Lord Lowborough and Ralph

Hattersley. In Hand and Glove, Gartha acts as a "severe Mentor" to Charles and softens the behaviour of Alexander Delahaye (138).

The educational focus of the novels also extends to the female characters.

In her preface to the second edition of Tenant, Bronte makes clear her pedagogical aims: "[I]f I have warned one rash youth from following in their steps, or prevented one thoughtless girl from falling into the very natural error of my heroine, the book has not been written in vain" (4). In addition to her warning for "rash" young men, Bronte is concerned with the problem of unthinking females falling in love with bad men. In Hand and Glove, Edwards too offers a

' While Tenant contrasts the naive, premarital Helen with the more reserved woman whom Gilbert meets, Hand and Glove offers the juxtaposition between sensibility and sense with two characters, Marguerite and Gartha, who are both the heroines of the novel. As I later explain, Gartha takes over the role of moral guide, even in the case of Marguerite's lovers. warning for "thoughtless girl[s]" in the example of Marguerite's suffering.

Through the failed relationships they detail, the novels reveal the importance of rational female choice of a romantic partner, a concern that would become developed more fully in New Woman fiction at the end of the century.

I. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: Wild Men and Domestic Unhappiness

Tenant charts the outcome of Helen Lawrence's decision to marry the dashing, if troubled, Arthur Huntington over her aunt's preference, Mr. Boarham.

Though Helen hopes to redeem Huntington spiritually, she fails, and instead watches him become an abusive and adulterous husband. After escaping from him, Helen finds a new partner in Gilbert Markham, whom she marries after

Huntington's death. Criticism on Tenant has focused largely on two contentious issues: the narrative structure of the novel and the character of Gilbert Markham.

Critics disagree whether the structure of the novel, with Helen's diary enclosed within Gilbert Markham's lengthy letter to his brother-in-law, validates or silences Helen's voice. There has also been much critical debate as to whether

Gilbert is a suitable husband for Helen. Though I respond to these issues, I concentrate largely on the way that Helen herself responds to and judges the male characters within the novel.

Despite her aunt's warning that she must "[fjirst study; then approve; then love," Helen falls quickly for Huntington and chooses him over the older and appropriately-named Mr. Boarham (132). Though her aunt claims correctly that the rakish Huntington is "a bit wildish," Helen assumes that she can save him

(135). She exclaims somewhat maniacally in her diary, "If he has wandered, what bliss to recall him! If he is now exposed to the baneful influence of corrupting and 75 wicked companions, what glory to deliver him from them!" (153). As a number of critics have claimed, Helen attempts to convert her sexual attraction towards

Huntington into a religious calling (Berry 43; Langland, "Voicing" 117).

Huntington's daring flirtations offer a form of escapism for Helen, and he saves her from Boarham's attentions. She admits that Huntington's "graceful ease and freedom" give "a sense of repose and expansion to the mind, after so much constraint and formality as I had been doomed to suffer" (135). Bronte thus constructs Helen's fascination for Huntington as a form of youthful rebellion.

In assuming she can save her wayward lover, Helen follows the romantic social script also voiced by Rosalie Murray in Bronte's earlier Agnes Grey (1847), who asserts naively that "reformed rakes make the best husbands, everybody knows" (172). Bronte's employment of the reformed rake narrative connects her novels to her sisters', and critics have suggested that Tenant may be seen as a response to Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. In this view, Huntington's treatment of Helen during their marriage can be considered Anne Bronte's direct challenge to the romantic vision of the Byronic hero embodied by characters like

Rochester and Heathcliff. In Anne Bronte: The Other One, Elizabeth Langland argues that in Tenant and Agnes Grey, heroines do not humble themselves before aggressive men in the often submissive manner of her sisters' heroines. Indeed,

Tenant and Agnes Grey attend to the dangers of male cruelty in a manner that

For instance, in Anne Bronte: The Other One, Elizabeth Langland writes, "Critics have recently begun to recognize that Tenant is clearly a response to Wuthering Heights. The initials of the titular houses - 'W.H.' - are identical. In Emily's novel we find Heathcliff, Hareton, Hindley; in Anne's Huntington, Hattersley, Hargrave, Halford. Both novels use a framed narrative" (49). Jan B. Gordon suggests that Tenant is a "supplement" to Wuthering Heights (737). She claims that Tenant "is always on the verge of collapsing back into its originary, Wuthering Heights" (736). differentiates Bronte's work from her sisters'." Langland observes, "Not only does

Anne Bronte thus revise our awe at male physical strength, she exhibits in her heroines no symptoms of attraction to that violence" (57). While I contend that

Bronte attempts to strip the reformed rake narrative of its romantic qualities, a strictly unromantic response to male cruelty is something that Helen, at least early on, struggles rather unsuccessfully to maintain.

Further, rather than view Tenant as simply a response to her sisters' earlier novels, a critical move that implicitly places Anne in a derivative position, it is useful to consider the three Brontes as responding differently to the tradition of the rake, as Jill Matus has suggested.4 The Brontes had access to much of the same reading material, such as Thomas Moore's Life of Lord Byron and other texts detailing rakish behaviour, and Tenant and Jane Eyre were likely written at the same time, in the summer of 1846 (Matus 102, 100). Given that Tenant was advertised by Thomas Newby as written by the author of the new bestseller Jane

Eyre, comparisons between the male characters seemed inevitable. In fact, W.S.

Williams, Charlotte Bronte's publisher, wrote to her in 1848 that Huntington reminded him of Rochester.5 Though I suggest that Anne Bronte attempted to

3 In Agnes Grey, for example, Agnes is shocked to find that her young charge, Tom, enjoys torturing birds. When she chastises him for doing so, he responds, "I'm not a bird, and I can't feel what I do to them. . . . Papa knows how I treat them, and he never blames me for it; he says it's just what he used to do when he was a boy" (78). As with Tenant, the novel makes a link between cruelty towards animals and the potential for cruelty towards women. For more on this topic, see Maggie Berg's '"Hapless Dependents': Women and Animals in Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey." 4 Matus points to the similarities between Jane Eyre and Tenant in '"Strong family likeness': Jane Eyre and The Tenant ofWildfell Hall." She suggests, "It is as if each Bronte sister broke off a piece of the same large clump of creative clay and set to kneading and shaping it in her own way" (100). 5 In her response, Bronte insists that "the foundation of each character is entirely different" (Letters 2.99). Rochester "has a thoughtful nature and a very feeling heart; he is neither selfish nor self-indulgent" (2.99). Heathcliff is simply "a mere demon," while Huntington is a "specimen of the naturally selfish, sensual, superficial man . .. who never profits by experience" (2.99). 77 accomplish something radically different in her depiction of Huntington than what her sisters achieved with Rochester and Heathcliff, she does employ similar language in describing her heroine's enthrallment with her eventual husband.

Helen responds to her lover's bold behaviour with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. She registers immediately her physical attraction to him. After their first meeting, Helen records, "there is one face I am always trying to paint or sketch. ... As for the owner of that face, I cannot get him out of my mind - and, indeed, I never try" (130). Helen realizes that there "might be, it is true, a little too much careless boldness in his manner and address," and this boldness becomes materialized in Huntington's urge to invade Helen's physical boundaries (135). In one instance, Huntington flirts openly with Helen at a party, and though she fears that there is "more of conscious power than tenderness in his demeanour," she responds shyly to his advances (146). She is interrupted by her aunt, who leads her away, embarrassed by Helen's "shocking colour," a blush of sexual excitement (147).

Indeed, Helen's naive display of her desire, Bronte suggests, leaves her open to Huntington's forward behaviour. Helen expresses her feelings for

Huntington most tangibly by painting his portrait. Though she relegates these secret expressions of desire to the back of other paintings, Huntington turns one over boldly, and thus discovers his likeness and Helen's feelings for him. This discovery reveals Helen's act of impropriety. As Ruth Yeazell explains in

Fictions of Modesty, conduct books and novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth century encouraged the belief that a woman should not comprehend her own desire (let alone figure it in a painting). Not until young men "declare themselves" should female consciousness and sexuality be awakened (Yeazell 51). Helen's aunt expresses this belief when she tells Helen that "[i]t is not, indeed, to be supposed that you would wish to marry any one, till you were asked: a girl's affections should never be won unsought" (131). In accord with her aunt's warnings, Helen's unintended display of her feelings in this instance places her under Huntington's control, and he uses this knowledge to gain further access to her person. Helen panics after Huntington sees the portraits and she retreats to the library, enacting a need for seclusion that only becomes stronger after their marriage. Later that evening, as she tries to sneak away after the other guests are gone to bed, she is trapped by Huntington:

"But you'll shake hands, won't you?" said he, placing himself in

the doorway before me. And he seized my hand, and held it much against

my will.

"Let me go, Mr. Huntington!" said I - "I want to get a candle."

"The candle will keep," returned he.

I made a desperate effort to free my hand from his grasp.

"Why are you in such a hurry to leave me, Helen?" he said, with a

smile of the most provoking self-sufficiency - "you don't hate me, you

know." (157)

Then, as Helen explains, he "had the audacity to put his arm round my neck and kiss me" (157). Helen's reaction is one of agitation, but registers the possibility of sexual excitement. She "tremble[s] with anger and agitation - and 1 don't know what besides" (157 my emphasis).

Huntington's forwardness anticipates other impudent actions on his part 79 and signals his aggression. Helen is left open for his advances not only because she cannot hide her desires, but because her uncle, against her aunt's wishes, invites Huntington to be a guest in their home. In one instance, he intrudes upon

Helen while she is alone painting. He passes by her window with the other sportsmen on the way to a hunting expedition: "It was partly open, and Mr.

Huntington must have seen me as he went by, for in half a minute he came back, and, setting his gun against the wall, threw up the sash, and sprang in, and set himself before my picture" (159). Huntington's intrusion into Helen's private

space signals an invasion of her physical boundaries, and his gun is certainly a foreboding sign of his potential for violence. Upon his return from hunting,

Huntington is "all spattered and splashed . . . and stained with the blood of his prey," another warning of his violence and aggression (161).

Helen comes to recognize her desire, but not the inevitable outcome of her bad choices. The novel demonstrates how such naivete arises from social resistance towards female sexual and romantic education. That is, Helen, like

Marguerite in Hand and Glove, is unprepared for the romantic experiences she

faces. Helen's aunt attempts to warn her of men like Huntington, and she insists that her niece let her ears be "deaf to all the fascinations of flattery and light

discourse" (132). Yet her aunt's case is weakened by the fact that she has another

suitor, Mr. Boarham, in mind, whom Helen gives the unbecoming nickname,

"Bore'em" (134). Further, as Christine Colon notes, Aunt Maxwell's advice

ignores the fact that Helen is maturing and may have her own desires (406). Colon

argues that the type of education offered by her aunt "almost forces Helen to

rebel, for she refuses to be treated as a child any longer" (406). The notion that 80 girls were thought to require more moral sheltering than boys was pervasive in the nineteenth century, and Helen attacks this double standard later in the novel. She insists that she would have both boys and girls "profit by the experience of others," and would not abandon young women to socially sanctioned ignorance

(34).

Despite her inexperience and her aunt's cautions, Helen marries

Huntington, and as the novel progresses, his physical intrusions and possessiveness emerge as less alluring and more dangerous. Huntington's invasions of Helen's physical space become threatening when they share a home together, and they often occur while she is painting, reading, or writing in her diary, all of which constitute her private creative outlets, linked to her own pleasure and autonomy. Because of Huntington's intrusiveness and his demand for Helen's attention, she is often forced to use her own chamber or the library as a space of private refuge. Huntington's sexual frankness becomes particularly distressing to her, and when he insists upon telling Helen stories from his immoral past, she storms off to her room and locks the door. When Helen tells him that she will not let him in and does not want to "see [his] face or hear [his] voice again till the morning," Huntington pauses "as if dumbfoundered [sic] or uncertain how to answer such a speech" (210). Helen's desire to exclude Arthur in these moments of retreat both shocks and irritates him. Further, her insistence that Arthur has no moral right to her person also defies British law, which made wives the sexual property of their husbands.6 Though, as Colon notes, "Huntington would like to

6 The concept of marital coverture meant that wives were essentially the legal property of their husbands. consume Helen completely," she is able to take refuge in her creative outlets and in her spirituality (408). In addition to her desire for seclusion, Helen's frequent reading proves frustrating for Arthur, as when she reads, he is "sadly at a loss for something to amuse him and occupy his time" (211). His intrusions upon her physical space, then, reveal both his aggressiveness and jealousy.

Huntington's behaviour unmistakably deviates from Victorian husbandly ideals. Helen writes in her diary, "Arthur is not what is commonly called a bad man: he has many good qualities, but he is a man without self-restraint or lofty aspirations - a lover of pleasure, given up to animal enjoyments" (244). Husbands were, as John Tosh explains, expected to be "uplifted by the moral wholesomeness of the home and refreshed by its innocent amusements" (123).

Huntington, however, takes extended trips to London alone and, when he does stay home, he shows no refinement or "moral wholesomeness." His deviant actions comprise adultery, alcoholism, and verbal abuse, and in one instance he threatens physical abuse. In this instance, Huntington's jealousy arises when he feels alienated from his wife, who is reading, and his dog, who prefers Helen's affection. When the dog refuses to answer Huntington's call, he hurls a heavy book at the animal's head, grazing Helen's hand accidentally in the process (212).

Helen and the dog are joint recipients of Huntington's abuse, and Lisa Surridge has demonstrated that such a comparison between women and animals, specifically dogs, is often present in Victorian narratives of marital violence (77).

That is, pet abuse often signals the possibility of wife abuse. While Huntington does not physically abuse his wife, his verbal abuse is no less traumatic; he calls

Helen a "confounded slut" moments after he hurts her hand (213). Tenant, Surridge argues, repeatedly emphasises the link between women and hunted or wounded animals, a theme made prominent by Huntington's name and his frequent hunting escapades (80).7 Helen, however, refuses to be likened to a dog, complaining, "I could do with less caressing and more rationality: I should like to be less of a pet and more of a friend, if I might choose" (202).

Helen's concerns over her wifely role are a response to her husband's infantilization of her, as well as his disregard of her private boundaries, and her situation reveals the dangers inherent in falling for fascinating men like

Huntington. Again, as Natalie Rose explains, the "threatening power of fascination lies in its anti-individualist traversing of borders" (538). The concept of marital coverture, in which the wife's existence was incorporated into that of her husband, theoretically disallows her a voice and a separate identity. The notion of the femme couverte, literally "covered woman," was still in place in the mid-nineteenth century. In A Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Most

Important Laws Concerning Women (1854), Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon explains that within coverture "[a] man and wife are one person in the law; the wife loses all her rights as a single woman, and her existence is entirely absorbed into that of her husband. He is civilly responsible for her acts; she lives under his

Q protection or cover, and her condition is called coverture" (125). For Surridge,

Helen challenges the concept of coverture in Tenant by asserting her right to act

7 For example, Hattersley complains of his timid wife Milicent, "how can I help teasing her when she's so invitingly meek and mim - when she lies down like a spaniel at my feet and never so much as squeaks to tell me that's enough" (289). 8 As Surridge discusses in Bleak Houses, the concept of coverture allowed for the physical abuse of wives. In her 1854 pamphlet, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon further explains, "A woman's body belongs to her husband; she is in his custody, and he can enforce his right by writ of habeas corpus" (125). 83 as her own moral agent (90-1). Helen in fact makes clear that Arthur's "notions of matrimonial duties and comforts are not my notions.. . . [H]is idea of a wife is a thing to love one devotedly and to stay at home - to wait upon her husband, and amuse him and minister to his comfort in every possible way" (244). Helen records her determination to "show him that my heart was not his slave, and I could live without him if I chose" (210).

Because Arthur feels that he does not receive enough dependency and attention from Helen, especially after they have a child, he turns to his friends for enjoyment. The men only perpetuate negative models of masculinity. For example, when Lord Lowborough tells Huntington of his desire to reform,

Huntington responds, "Oh, that's nothing new! You've been going to reform these twelve months and more," to which Lowborough replies bitterly, "Yes, but you wouldn't let me" (195). Huntington's decision to bring these unruly alcoholic men into the home signifies a further invasion of Helen's domestic autonomy, and disrupts the Victorian notion that the family circle should be intimate and inward- looking (Tosh 28). Helen writes in her diary that the men "made the house night after night one scene of riot, uproar, and confusion" (348-9). With the men in her home, Helen is constantly at risk of abuse. As she walks by them, "Hattersley stopped short in his animadversions and stared like a bull calf, Grimsby glowered upon me with a leer of malignant ferocity, and my husband muttered a coarse and brutal malediction" (345). In addition to the rude Grimsby and Hattersley,

Huntington invites his friend Hargrave into his home, and he proves equally threatening by making his attraction towards the married Helen quite clear. His intrusions, in fact, mimic Huntington's, and, as Stevie Davies suggests, Hargrave, even more than Huntington, comes to embody predatory sexuality" in the novel

(xiii). On one notable occasion, Hargrave threatens rape. He tells Helen, "I will be your consoler and defender! and if your conscience upbraid you for it, say I overcame you and you could not choose but yield!" (358). Helen is shocked and must defend herself with her palette-knife.

Huntington attempts to defend his sexual deviance by relying on the mid-

Victorian sexual double standard, the belief that women are naturally sexually constant, while men are naturally flirtatious, sexual beings, but Helen does not accept such reasoning. He explains to his wife, "It is a woman's nature to be constant - to love one and one only, blindly, tenderly, and for ever - bless them, dear creatures! and you above them all - but you must have some commiseration for us, Helen; you must give us a little more licence" (236). Huntington, of course, is desirous of more than a little licence, and Helen is shocked when she discovers his affair with Annabella Lowborough. Though she agrees at first to stay, she tells Arthur, "henceforth, we are husband and wife only in name. ... I will not be mocked with the empty husk of conjugal endearments, when you have given the substance to another" (306). Surridge claims the key issue here is

"Helen's right to judge her husband's sexual conduct," and Helen makes a bold move in shutting her bedroom door to her husband (91). As feminist May Sinclair wrote in 1912, "Thackeray, with the fear of Mrs. Grundy before his eyes, would have shrunk from recording Mrs. Huntington's ultimatum to her husband. The slamming of that bedroom door fairly resounds through the long emptiness of

Anne's novel" (54).

As Sinclair implies, Bronte's novel is notable for its frankness in 85 representing male deviance. In her "Biographical Notice Of Ellis and Acton Bell"

(1850), Charlotte Bronte expresses her lack of surprise at the unfavourable reviews of her sister's novel. She writes, in what is now a well-known criticism of her deceased sister's work, "The choice of subject was an entire mistake. Nothing less congruous with the writer's nature could be conceived. The motives which dictated this choice were pure, I think, but slightly morbid" {Letters 2.745).

Bronte continues, "She brooded over it till she believed it to be a duty to reproduce every detail ... as a warning to others" (2.745). Bronte's comments in fact echo those of many reviewers. An anonymous critic for the Spectator bemoans the "morbid" and "coarse" passages in the novel, and suggests that

"Acton Bell" might reply "that such things are in life: and probably glimpses of such a set as Huntington and his friends are occasionally caught in Doctors

Commons cases, and tradition pictures such doings as not very rare in the early part of George I's reign, - although Mr. Bell paints them as contemporary" (qtd. in Allot 250). The reviewer charges that the abusive relationship between Helen and her husband, and the rowdy masculine behaviour that Bronte depicts are outmoded by the Victorian period. His comments thus question the realism of

Bronte's novel, and attempt to distance Victorian men from the unbecoming actions that Bronte describes. Juliet McMaster argues that the behaviour of

Huntington and his friends offers a commentary on the "masculine ethos of the

Regency" (354), and Bronte does, in fact, set the early part of the novel in the

9 A number of reviewers, perhaps defensively, questioned the realism of the rowdy men of the novel. The anonymous critic for The Literary World writes, "one of the chief improbabilities of the book consists in the absurdity of supposing any community or family in England would tolerate such a household as Mr. Huntington's among them. In this world men do not maltreat their wives, seduce openly other men's, and beat their brothers-in-law with impunity. In our American world, at least, some friendly bullets would rapidly cure such disagreeable habits" (544.) 1820s. McMaster argues, however, that the marriage of Helen and Huntington disrupts historical classification: "The husband is Regency, stylish, irresponsible, and characterized by laughter; the wife is Victorian, dour, morally earnest, easily moved to disapproval and tears" (362). Indeed, Bronte points to the men's actions as outmoded; that should not suggest, however, that she believed that such behaviour no longer existed in the Victorian period, and that her revisions of manliness were not urgent concerns.10

Though the latter half of the novel maps the gradual deterioration of

Huntington, it also traces the attempt of Helen to reform him. Even as she records her determination to "show him that my heart was not his slave" (210), Helen resolves not to abandon her wayward husband. The notion of the female "angel" as moral guide to man was a commonly held ideal in the mid-nineteenth century.

In the popular The Women of England: Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits

(1839), Sarah Stickney Ellis exemplifies this trope. She paints a picture of a husband returning home "confused by the many voices" that greet him in the public sphere, only to stand "corrected before the clear eye of woman" (1584).

She explains that man may carry his wife's influence about him "like a kind of second conscience," and when he faces worldly temptation, he need simply think of his "humble monitress who [sits] alone, guarding the fireside comforts of his distant home; and the remembrance of her character, clothed in moral beauty,

10 In fact, it has been a critical commonplace to argue that Huntington's behaviour is based largely on Branwell Bronte's actions. Anne worked as a governess for the Robinson family from 1840-45 and she recommended her brother Branwell as tutor for their son. In 1844, Branwell seems to have developed a passion for Mrs. Robinson. In midsummer 1845, Anne wrote in her diary: "During my stay [with the Robinsons] I have had some very unpleasant and undreamt-of experience of human nature" (qtd. in Langland, Anne Bronte 17). Anne gave her notice in June of 1845, while Branwell stayed, only to be dismissed in July when Mr. Robinson discovered the liaison (18). [will scatter] the clouds before his mental vision, and [send] him back to that beloved home, a wiser and a better man" (1584). In his well-known poem "The

Angel in the House" (1854-62), Coventry Patmore also valorizes the "humble monitress." He too locates the woman's eyes as a correcting force: "While she, too gentle even to force / His penitence by kind replies, / Waits by, expecting his remorse, / With pardon in her pitying eyes" (111). The Christian figuration of the forgiving wife dominated notions of Victorian femininity. The notion that this recovery was "gentle" is highlighted by Patmore's and Ellis's insistence that the locus of persuasion is in the woman's pitying eye. Such an ideal of passive influence is embodied by many of Dickens's heroines, such as Agnes Wickfield and Florence Dombey.

Tenant revises this traditional Victorian female position. Those critics who argue that Tenant is a reworking of Jane Eyre often suggest that Anne Bronte wished to rewrite the notion that a well-intentioned young woman could reform a rake in the manner that Jane does. A number of critics further suggest that the novel challenges completely the concept of the female as spiritual guide. Tess

O'Toole argues that the example of Helen and Arthur deems the entire notion of the wife as agent of reform problematic ("Siblings" 717); Jill Matus contends that the novel opposes the nineteenth-century notion that women can be agents of moral reform (117); and Elizabeth Langland argues that Tenant "explodes the myth of woman's redemptive spirituality and insight" ("Voicing" 118). While

Bronte asks her readers to reconsider the certainty and simplicity of the notion of the "angel monitress," she does not reject wholeheartedly the concept that women

should act as agents of moral reform {Tenant 199). Helen fails to improve her husband, but she aids in reforming Gilbert, Lowborough, and Hattersley. Bronte thus revises the feminine ideal by suggesting that women can, and should, guide only those men who desire to change. Further, the novel suggests that moral instruction should not be accompanied by the abuse or debasement of women.

Helen has a strong sense of duty to her husband, but she resolves "not to give myself up to misery for the transgressions of another" (246). The ideal of woman as spiritual guide must be moderated to take into account women's personhood, since, in this revision, an "excessive focus on someone other than the self can no longer be seen as a positive attribute of femininity" (Torgerson 34). Helen learns to adopt this point of view throughout her marriage, thus distancing herself from the self-effacing ideal espoused by Ellis and Patmore."

The novel reveals the difficulties inherent in the wife's position as moral guide, specifically the complications that arise when such feminine instructions are not as transparent as they should be. Before they are married, Arthur indulges

Helen's delight in reforming him by insisting that "the very idea of having you to care for under my roof would force me to moderate my expenses and live like a

Christian - not to speak of all the prudence and virtue you would instil into my mind by your wise counsels and sweet, attractive goodness" (174). Once they are married, however, Arthur finds Helen's attempts to reform him tiresome, and he insists that she is "too religious" (204). He explains, "To my thinking, a woman's religion ought not to lessen her devotion to her earthy lord" (204). Helen learns

11 Further evidence of Bronte's commitment to the wife as moral reformer may be found in Agnes Grey. Agnes encourages her former charge, Rosalie, to alter her husband's bad behaviour: "[C]ould you not try to occupy his mind with something better; and engage him to give up such habits?" (235). Rosalie replies selfishly, "It's the husband's part to please the wife, not hers to please him. . . . I've enough to do to bear with him as he is, without attempting to work a reform" (235). quickly that Arthur is disgusted by her frequent moralizing. As Langland claims, in Helen's "incessant lecturing aimed at [Arthur's] moral improvement, she both alienates him and she hastens his ruin" (Anne Bronte 143). Helen's alienation of her husband is not due simply to the intensity of her lectures, but the fact that they come from a woman's mouth. Though the role of woman as moral guide was a conventional one in Victorian culture, Arthur is unnerved by the manner in which

Helen, by assuming this part, achieves a position of superiority. After Helen reprimands Arthur for flirting with Annabella openly, he complains, "You promised to honour and obey me, and now you attempt to hector over me. ... I won't be dictated to by a woman, though she be my wife" (235). Arthur is in fact following the logic of Victorian advice manuals, which recommended that both spouses take and receive advice, but that the husband should be master (Tosh 28).

For example, in the anonymous "Letter of Advice from an Experienced Matron to a Young Married Lady" (1849) the author instructs young wives to manipulate their unknowing husbands:

[I]n all cases I strongly recommend you never openly to claim power, not

to boast of governing your husband, either to him or to anyone else. ... It

is glorious to represent yourself as submitting with angelic meekness to

the imperious sway of your lord, when in reality you have prevailed on

him to give way, and to be guided by your better judgement to do just

what you think best. (399)

Such comments expose the precariousness of the mid-Victorian wife's responsibilities, and the rather sly machinations required by wives who wished to keep up an image of "angelic meekness." Though Helen comes to recognize her own limitations, she does not assume that Huntington is lost forever. Again, however, the novel rewrites the role of wifely duty. While Helen desires to help her husband, she will not allow this counsel to harm her or little Arthur, and she refuses to take ownership for

Huntington's behaviour and his alcoholism. She explains that he

says I drive him to it by my unnatural unwomanly conduct; it will be the

ruin of him in the end, but it is all my fault; - and then I am roused to

defend myself- sometimes, with bitter recrimination. This is a kind of

injustice I cannot patiently endure. Have I not laboured long and hard to

save him from this very vice? would I not labour still, to deliver him from

it, if I could? (321)

Helen ends this passionate speech with a defiant, "he may drink himself dead, but it is NOT my fault!" (322). Though she continues to try to aid Arthur even after she discovers his affair with Annabella, she acknowledges that she is not responsible for his behaviour, and her final decision to leave him demonstrates this independence most fully. Helen's challenge to conventional Victorian notions of wifely duty is not met with praise by all the characters in the novel. The rather judgemental Reverend Millward sees Helen's decision to leave Huntington as "a violation of her sacred duties as a wife . . . and nothing short of bodily ill- usage (and that of no trifling nature) could excuse such a step - nor even that, for in such a case she ought to appeal to the laws for protection" (459). But Helen

12 Despite leaving Huntington, Helen returns to aid him when he is on his deathbed. Their final words reflect Helen's desire for Arthur to take responsibility for his actions and his future. When he asks her to pray for him, she responds, "I do pray for you - every hour and every minute, Arthur; but you must pray for yourself (447). 91 realizes that "the laws" are in place to protect men. As she explains to Lord

Lowborough, who is legally able to obtain a divorce from his unfaithful wife,

"you are a man, and free to act as you please" (343). Though Helen feels that she is a "slave, a prisoner" in her own house, she remains until Huntington invites a new governess, clearly also his mistress, into the home (368). The combination of this direct insult to Helen's role as wife, and perhaps more importantly, her role as mother, encourages her to leave Huntington and escape to Wildfell Hall with little

Arthur.

Even before she leaves, Helen transfers her reformist efforts to her son and her husband's friends, who are often guests in her home. Her heroine's efforts reveal Bronte's commitment to redefining Victorian ideals of manly behaviour. In the case of little Arthur, Helen records that she has "the father's spirit in the son to contend against, the germs of his evil tendencies to search out and eradicate"

(324). Helen follows the advice of Sarah Stickney Ellis, who notes in The Wives of England that when men like Huntington have "silly mothers," it is often beyond the wife's power to "remedy this evil" (132). In such cases, the wife should transfer her efforts "to the youthful minds committed to her care, or subject to her influence" (133). Helen recognizes that she must rid Arthur of the bad behaviours passed on from his father. For instance, when Arthur is just a young child, Huntington attempts to "make a man of him" by having him drink wine and swear with the grown men (350). Helen attempts to discourage her son's taste for alcohol by introducing a small amount of tartar-emetic into his wine, and thus making him sick. Later, when Helen visits the Markham home, Gilbert's mother is shocked by Helen's reforming techniques and she insists, "Only think what a man you will make of him, if you persist. . . . [Y]ou will treat him like a girl - you'll spoil his spirit, and make a mere Miss Nancy of him" (31, 33). But

Mrs. Markham's traditional notions of masculinity are precisely what Helen hopes to challenge in her rearing of young Arthur, as well as in her relations with other men.

In her counsels of Huntington's friends Hattersley and Lowborough,

Helen takes over the position of moral guide often relegated to the wife, and again offers revisions to the brutal masculine behaviour the men valorize. Before his marriage to Annabella, Lowborough, a recovering alcoholic and gambler, hopes that his future wife "will save [him], body and soul, from destruction" (197).

Instead, however, Annabella mocks his attempts to avoid drinking with the other men, telling her husband, "you might stay with them a little: it looks so silly to be always dangling after the women" (270). Helen commends Lowborough for his temperance and self-discipline, and she challenges Annabella's adherence to outdated ideals of manhood. While Annabella praises the "bold, manly spirit[s]" of the other men, Helen points to Lowborough's self-control as the height of manliness, and she later commends him for not resorting to violence when he learns of Annabella's affair (271). Helen also advises Huntington's friend

Hattersley, the husband of her friend Milicent. Hattersley, along with Huntington and Hargrave, demonstrates Bronte's critique of male dominance and brutality; at one point he shakes Milicent and crushes her slight arms (277). Later in the novel, he informs Helen that he has decided to behave decently towards his wife and child. Helen praises his intentions, insisting that "it is never too late to reform, as long as you have the sense to desire it, and the strength to execute your purpose" (378).

Like Hattersley and Huntington, Gilbert Markham is flawed by desires for possession and dominance that he must attempt to restrain. Gilbert's character

development is one of the most contentiously debated subjects of Bronte's novel.

E.P. Whipple writes, "Gilbert, the hero, seems to be a favorite with the author,

and to be intended as a specimen of manly character; but he would serve as the ruffian of any other novelist. His nature is fierce, proud, moody, jealous,

revengeful, and sometimes brutal" (359). Charles Kingsley also recorded in 1849

that Gilbert has "a very passionate and somewhat brutal temper," and he could see

no reason why he "should excite such passionate love in Helen" (425). A number

of contemporary critics have registered similar concerns and confusions. O'Toole,

for example, finds Gilbert oddly unsuitable for Helen and she suggests that a man

like Lawrence would offer a more appropriate second match (716, 723). Others

have come to Gilbert's defence. For instance, Surridge asserts that he exemplifies

"Victorian manliness and self-control" (73). Most readers can perhaps agree with

Jill Matus who claims that Gilbert is never an idealized replacement for

Huntington, but "a means by which Anne Bronte puzzles over the question of

masculine adequacy - what makes a worthwhile, redeemable, 'good enough'

man" (108). What makes him so controversial are his similarities to Huntington

and Hargrave. Like both of those men, Gilbert courts Helen aggressively, often

intruding upon her unexpectedly. He also spies on her when she is unaware of his

13 O'Toole argues that Frederick is Helen's only male equal in the novel (727). I agree that the relationship between Helen and Frederick offers an alternative to the violence and power plays that dominate romantic relationships in the novel. Nonetheless, Frederick finds an appropriate match in Esther Hargrave. presence. Though he does not exhibit many of Huntington s negative attributes, such as his idleness, financial irresponsibility, and alcoholism, Gilbert too is attracted by the allure of masculine domination and violence.

Critics disagree as to whether Gilbert does in fact change throughout the course of the narrative. However, he is offered a pedagogical tool when he receives Helen's diary. Gilbert, like the reader, is encouraged to draw parallels between his behaviour and that of the "specimens" of manliness that Helen describes (396). After reading Helen's diary, Gilbert thinks that Rachel, Helen's maid, doubtless "saw in me another Mr. Hargrave, only the more dangerous in being more esteemed and trusted by her mistress" (398). Helen's diary also forces its reader to rid himself of false notions of married life. Whereas Huntington's

story reveals ultimately the failure of reform, the example of Gilbert, despite his character's imperfections, provides a more hopeful possibility.

Gilbert's friendship with Helen, which involves abandoning the frivolous and gossipy Eliza for the more intellectual, spiritual Helen, pushes him to adopt new values, as well as to regulate his own passionate nature. As Juliet McMaster highlights, Gilbert's narrative parallels Helen's in that both demonstrate a movement from emotional immaturity to maturity, with Eliza Millward representing on a small scale what Arthur was for Helen (364). After Helen returns to aid Huntington in his sickness, Gilbert must content himself to hear about Helen only through the letters she sends to her brother, Frederick Lawrence.

Though Gilbert snatches the first letter out of Frederick's hand, he recognizes the need to practice self-control and "the minute after," he records, "I offered to restore it" (423). Moments such as this demonstrate that Gilbert desires to possess 95

Helen, with her letters, as well as her diary, offering a metonymic extension of her physical self. Gilbert asks, "Were not those characters written by her hand? and were not these words conceived in her mind, and many of them spoken by her lips?" (430). He is, at the very least, attempting to curb his desires. Indeed, the act of reading Helen's letters, which record Huntington's deathbed experience, offer

Gilbert a further warning of Huntington's life of indulgence. His reading of

Helen's diary and letters motions towards one of the key tenents of the novel, that narrative can transform the reader vicariously (Kemp 208). In her letters, Helen records her attempts to "promote the recovery and reformation of [her] husband"

(430). By agreeing to marry Helen, Gilbert must agree with her notions of proper masculine behaviour and her reforming ideals as well.

In addition to his apparent willingness to learn from Helen, Gilbert benefits from the influences of other men. In fact, both Tenant and Hand and

Glove, rather than simply affirming the role of woman as moral guide, imply that men too must act as positive moral influences on other men. Like David

Copperfield, the novels demonstrate that positive models of masculinity offer important guides to social behaviour. Helen's brother Lawrence acts as a mediator between Helen and Gilbert when he controls their correspondence; he both encourages Gilbert's restraint and offers him a positive example of male behaviour.14 And just as Helen's letters forge a connection between Gilbert and

14 Their relationship is understandably strained when Gilbert whips Lawrence in a jealous rage, thinking that he is Helen's lover. Gilbert, then, must (re)build trust not only with Helen, but with her brother. Gilbert's violence is perhaps the strongest mark against him as a suitable suitor for Helen. Edward Chitham, however, suggests that a comparison to Heathclit'f s violent treatment of Hindley reveals a key difference in these depictions of violence. "At no point in this sadistic recital does Emily let us feel Hindley's dreadful pain," he suggests, while Gilbert's "violence and its 96

Lawrence, her diary is enclosed within Gilbert's efforts to reach a harmonious relationship with his other brother-in-law, Halford (Carnell 5). A number of critics have pointed to the danger in Gilbert's act of narrative enclosure. O'Toole notes, for example, "It strikes the reader as curious at best that Gilbert would transcribe for another man the contents of his wife's intimate diary, and disturbing at worst that Helen's hellish experience is used for a homosocial end" (720). While

Gilbert's rather flippant introduction of their narrative as "an old world story" does seem somewhat inappropriate (10), O'Toole's assumption that this

"homosocial" interchange is disturbing deserves to be reconsidered in light of the opportunity this narrative affords Halford. In her preface to the novel, Bronte makes clear the volume's educational aims: "I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it" (3). Might

Halford's reading experience, then, mirror that of Bronte's imagined reader, as well as Gilbert himself, in that he too may be transformed by the "wholesome truths" of the narrative ("Preface" 4)? Gilbert's enclosure of Helen's story may indeed reveal Bronte's concerns over the authority women retain in marriage, yet his decision to impart a story of his own moral development to Halford also

signifies a relationship of learning and shared experiences between men. As

Andres Lopez claims, "The implication at the novel's end is that what Helen does

for Gilbert he is also capable of doing for someone else" (189). Though Helen's

voice remains the teaching tool, Gilbert's act indicates that women do not bear the

sole burden of moral instruction.

aftermath is meant to be felt.. . . Thus Anne takes her sister's balladic episode and demythologizes it" (151-2). 97

While Helen's final choice of Gilbert as her husband is a contentious one,

Helen makes what appears to be a reasoned decision, coupled with her recognition of her sexual desire for Gilbert. Helen and Gilbert are separated while she attends to her dying husband and Gilbert waits months after Huntington's death to see her. In the end, he only attempts to see her because he hears mistaken news of her remarriage. During their reunion, Helen both proposes to Gilbert and initiates a waiting period before their marriage. She also tells him that her aunt "must know you herself and learn to like you" before they marry (484). Notably, Helen's social position is altered radically at this point in the novel, the result of her inheritance of her uncle's wealth and estate. While Helen can be seen as an

"assertive woman expressing feminine desire" during her proposal, any power she gains from her new social status and wealth will legally vanish after her marriage to Gilbert (Langland, "Voicing" 121). Intriguingly, Helen's aunt tells Gilbert,

"Could she have been contented to remain single, I own I should have been better satisfied; but if she must marry again, I know of no one, now living or of a suitable age, to whom I would more willingly resign her than yourself (487).

Though Helen's aunt would prefer that she remain unmarried, Helen's rational decision in her choice of a husband and a father for her young son bodes well for their marriage in the context of the novel. Through her marriage to Gilbert, Helen will legally become afemme couverte again; yet what is at stake, as the novel implies through the negative example of her first marriage, is choosing a husband who will allow her to maintain her identity.

II. Hand and Glove: Romantic Girlhood and Male Imposture

Hand and Glove is narrated by English governess Gartha Wylde, who is sent to the French countryside to work as a companion to the young, rich, and naive Marguerite Delahaye. The narrative recounts Marguerite's choice between her cousin Charles Gautier, and the town's captivating new minister, Xavier

Hamel, who wins the romantic rivalry initially. Gartha becomes involved in the love triangle as she acts as an advisor to both Marguerite and her suitors. Just before Marguerite is to marry Hamel, however, secrets of his past (including embezzlement and penal service) emerge, and he commits suicide. This turn-of- events enables Marguerite to realize, with Gartha's assistance, that Charles is a more appropriate match for her after all. Gartha attains happiness of her own with

Marguerite's uncle, Alexander.

Hand and Glove has received almost no critical attention. The small amount of research on Edwards, nearly all of which has been written in the past ten years, focuses on her travel writing, which she completed near the end of her life. Edwards wrote a number of popular novels throughout her lifetime, contributed regularly to Dickens's periodicals, and received flattering letters from

Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning (Rees, Writings 71).15 Details of her life in the 1850s and 1860s are difficult to come by. After breaking off an engagement,

Edwards lived in Paris in the 1850s. Her biographer Joan Rees notes that Hand and Glove belongs to the time of Edwards's life when she "frequented artists' studios in Paris, smoked cigars and perhaps wore trousers and when the writings and behaviour of George Sand were part of the atmosphere of the circles she

15 Edwards sent a copy of Hand and Glove to Dickens via a mutual friend. He wrote back to her on 12 June 1858 (six days after its publication), saying, '"Hand and Glove' and I are presently going down together into Kent, there to become closely acquainted" (qtd. in Moon 42). 99 moved in" (Amelia Edwards 71).I6 Edwards later extended her travels to

Germany, Switzerland and Egypt. These details incite comparison to the character

Gartha; though Gartha is certainly more conventional than her creator, she too travels to France without a male companion.

While Tenant was composed during the same time period as Wuthering

Heights and Jane Eyre, Edwards's 1858 novel may be considered a belated response to the Brontes' Byron-inspired, reckless heroes. Edwards recorded in her diary on 16 March 1857 that she obtained The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, likely from a circulating library in Rome where she was visiting (Moon 39). The next day, however, Edwards writes, "[I] changed my book for Wuthering Heights" (qtd. in

Moon 39). As Edwards's own fiction bridged the divide between sensation fiction and realism, she may have enjoyed Emily's passionate tale more than Anne's moralizing narrative. Edwards's debt to the Bronte sisters is most explicit in her novel Barbara's History (1864), which is a rewriting of Jane Eyre, and contains a later version of the attractive, but tortured rake that Edwards first depicts with

Hamel in Hand and Glove. The Rochester-like hero, Hugh Farquhar, houses his old lover (whom he never actually marries) in the upper rooms of his home. When he marries the heroine Barbara, she begins to see dark shapes flitting around the rooms, and hears doors opening and closing mysteriously. Upon finding her husband addressing a woman as his wife, Barbara flees. After a series of adventures on the continent, she discovers that the woman was an old lover of

16 Rees's is one of two contemporary biographies of Edwards. Published in 1998, it offers a useful starting point for critics, but has only a single chapter on "Amelia Edwards and Fiction." Brenda Moon's More Usefully Employed: Amelia B. Edwards, Writer, Traveller and Campaigner for Ancient Egypt (2005) was recently published by the Egypt Exploration Society. 100

Hugh's, and that the love was one-sided. She learns that her husband has fallen ill, and returns in time to nurse him to health. Edwards's sensational slant reveals the manner in which her fictional goals differ slightly from Charlotte and Anne

Bronte's. The Athenaeum described Barbara's History as "a compromise between her own sense of right and the depraved appetite of the public" (16). As this reviewer foregrounds, Edwards's novels maintain a credible moral focus, the absence of which characterizes much sensation fiction, while relying simultaneously on the typical subjects of sensation novels, such as bigamy, false identity, and murder.

Though Bronte's Huntington stands in contrast to the mysterious Byronic hero, Hamel embodies that role more conventionally. Joan Rees, the only critic who has written at length on Hand and Glove, comments, "[Hamel] deserves a distinguished place among all those romantic heroes sired by Byron who are brilliant but blighted by the dark secrets in their past" (17). When he arrives in the small French community of Montrocher, he fascinates all of the villagers.

"Fascinating," in fact, is the term most often used to describe him. The opening of

Hand and Glove begins with warnings of experience similar to those given by

Helen's aunt in Tenant. Though Helen's aunt only implies that her marriage to

Helen's alcoholic uncle has been difficult,18 Dr. Bryant, an old friend of Gartha's mother, tells Gartha explicitly that her mother was unhappy in her marriage with her "cold and gloomy" father (11). He also provides her with another warning in

17 The Morning Post reviewer noted that Edwards "has the strength, without the rudeness, which marked that memorable book Jane Eyre. . .. Her greatest success is in the delineation of male character" (qtd. in Rees 75). 18 When Helen insists that she will save Huntington from his demons, her aunt replies, "O Helen, Helen! you little know the misery of uniting yourself fortunes to such a man!" (150). 101 the example of her Aunt Eleanor's marriage to a husband eighteen years her junior, a foreign adventurer of whose history she was ignorant. "Fascinating and unprincipled to a rare degree," this man ruined both Eleanor and Gartha's father financially (22). Gartha learns of these financial losses only after her father's death, and it is for this reason that she is forced to seek employment and become a companion to Marguerite. Not until much later in the novel do we learn, in a typically sensational contrivance, that the man who pilfered her family's fortune was Hamel. Since Gartha is affected by her aunt's bad choices, she develops a caution about "fascinating" men like Hamel. In fact, her situation at the beginning of the novel - her need to earn a living coupled with her careful reserve around

men - is similar to Helen's after she has learned the painful lessons of her marriage.19

Despite her early distrust of Hamel, Gartha is intrigued by him, and she

describes him as "the most striking, if not the handsomest man whom I had ever

seen in my life" (64). When he is introduced to the town during his first sermon,

she describes his appearance at length:

His beauty was of that massive, masculine order that Cagliari loved - a

large head finely poised, a full, firm mouth, a square jaw, and a somewhat-

heavy brow, resolute, thoughtful, and broad. A complexion pale, but dark,

such as one sees among the Creole population of the West Indies; a

general expression of power, both in features and build; a something

19 A further similarity may be found in the fact that Hand and Glove opens with Gartha nursing her father. The scene is reminiscent of Helen's nursing of Arthur late in Tenant. Both men are extremely demanding and irrational, and Gartha recalls that her father was angry and neglectful throughout her life. which was at the same time fascinating and repellent, intellectual and

sensuous, gave to this man a special individuality. . . . Above all his eyes

were beautiful; deep, dark, glowing, and unfathomable. Eyes whose

tenderness would be dangerous, and whose scorn intolerable. (64)

Gartha's description offers an early warning of the dark side of Hamel's character, of his potential for brutality and scorn, and it also registers an unnameable quality

"which was at the same time fascinating and repellent" (64). While Huntington is distinctly English in his appearance, Hamel is racialized in Gartha's description, like both Rochester and Heathcliff, and he is likened specifically to the Creole population of the West Indies. Madame Vaudon, Dr. Bryant's cousin, jokes that one of the villagers "vows that he is no Frenchman - inclines to the opinion that he is of Spanish or Creole blood" (123). She also notes that "there are plenty of young ladies who can see in him only a hero of romance" (123). Both Hamel's unknown past and his racial ambiguity encourage this guesswork and fascination.

Through Hamel's characterization, Edwards utilizes the common Victorian convention of uniting sexual deviance with foreignness. In addition to his dark complexion, Hamel's extensive travels (he tells Marguerite that he has "been in most places that [she] could mention" [219]) also place his racial purity in question.21

Though Gartha maintains a detached interest in Hamel, Marguerite is captivated quickly and easily by his charms. His first sermon serves as the site for

20 Both men are described as dark. When Jane first encounters Rochester, she notes, "He had a dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow; his eyes and gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted" (134). Heathcliff s origins are unknown; when Mr. Earnshaw brings him to Wuthering Heights, he is a "dirty, ragged, black-haired child" and Hindley calls him a "gipsy" (35, 38). 21 Notably, Huntington has "only lately returned from the Continent" when Helen meets him (136). their initial flirtation. His eyes remain riveted on Marguerite and she colours, attempting to "repress the faintest trembling of a smile" (65). Like Huntington,

Hamel has the advantage of a rather dull romantic rival, and his freedom from constraint and formality is in part what makes him so attractive to Marguerite. In an early incident, Gartha comes upon them accidentally as they are hiding behind a curtain and engaging in an intimate discussion. Hamel pleads to Marguerite,

"My attachments have been few, and I have been little understood from my very boyhood. Could I but hope, even now to find one sympathetic friend. . . . Will you, can you be that friend - that sympathizer - that consolation, - MargueriteT

(109). Marguerite, uncertain of how to act, colours deeply, "tremblefs], hesitate[s], and look[s] down" (109). Even after Hamel learns that Marguerite is engaged to Charles, he flirts openly with her, turning her pages as she plays piano and hanging "over her, like a lover" (150). Marguerite's reaction again demonstrates her awareness of Hamel's inappropriateness, mixed with her pleasure at his attentions: "She, trembling, confused, happy and fearful at the same time, dared not look round" (150). Gartha watches as Hamel flirts boldly with Marguerite in front of her fiance Charles: "Impassioned and accomplished, his powers of fascination were almost magnetic; and it is no wonder that she should have forgotten all else in favour of his rare gifts and splendid person"

(151).

Hamel's "rare gifts," including his intelligence and powers of elocution, set him apart from his rival, as well as the other villagers. Rees explains,

"Immeasurably superior in intelligence to his company, he indulges in a quiet irony which they fail to observe" (16). While Gartha is the narrator, Hamel's voice sometimes merges with the implied author, as in those moments when he pokes fun at M. Delahaye and other narrow-minded characters, and when he discusses novel reading. In her introduction to the novel, Rees admits, "it is a fascinating feature of the book that this man, so much at odds with social and moral convention as he is, should be at many points evidently a spokesman for

Amelia Edwards herself (viii). At the same time, however, Edwards discourages unreserved empathy for Hamel, as his lofty, satirical attitude is sometimes cruel.

Further, his attempts to educate Marguerite, though more playful and seductive than Charles's, have the troublesome element of dominance. Gartha admits, "it did occur to me that... his very love had something sultan-like and condescending in it" (168).

Marguerite and Hamel's intimate moments - their hiding behind curtains and Hamel's affectionate musical assistance - demonstrate the manner in which

Hamel intrudes upon Marguerite's physical space too boldly. His impropriety is even more daring than Huntington's, however, since Marguerite remains engaged to Charles for much of their courtship. Again, though Bronte's and Edwards's sexually charged characters lack the bodily permeability so overt in Dickens's characters (such as the way that the porous David is "steeped" and "saturated through and through" by Dora [480]), the fascinating men in both novels threaten to consume or permeate the physical boundaries of the women they fascinate. The risk of bodily invasion from beguiling men is implied in Helen's aunt's warning in Tenant, "Keep guard over your eyes and ears as the inlets of your heart" (132).

Yet in Hand and Glove, Marguerite's mother resists such warnings as she too is enamoured with Hamel. She allows Hamel to enter their home freely, so that he, despite Gartha's apprehension, becomes "like one of the family" (112).

Marguerite's foppish father is criticized by Edwards for not possessing an awareness of the danger Hamel poses for his daughter. While Hamel offers an example of "magnificent manhood" taken to a frightening extreme (65), M.

Delahaye invites a critique of another category of masculine identity, the dandy.

Ellen Moers relates that elements of English dandyism travelled to France around

1815, after the dramatic events of the French Revolution: "[T]he English dandies took Paris much as Wellington had taken Waterloo" (108). M. Delahaye meets

Moers's definition of the dandy as "a creature perfect in externals and careless of anything below the surface, a man dedicated solely to his own perfection through a ritual of taste" (13). Marguerite's father is a ridiculous character, who frustrates the family with his terrible singing and financial incompetence. Gartha describes their first encounter memorably:

M. Delahaye walked in - a little withered old gentleman in a flaxen wig, a

flowered dressing-gown, an embroidered smoking-cap, and velvet

slippers. His shirtfront was loaded with lace, and his fingers with rings. He

carried a worked pocket-handkerchief in his hand, and he perfumed the air

as he moved. (48)

Though he is largely a comic character,22 his frivolousness becomes problematic,

Edwards reveals, when he must act assertively. When Marguerite breaks her engagement with Charles, in the presence of both Charles and Hamel, M.

Delahaye hides in his office crying. Gartha is frustrated at his behaviour,

22 Humorously, M. Delahaye insists upon being called by his second name, "Hippolyte," rather than his given name, "Jacques," the very mention of which makes him "turn pale with indignation" (49). 106 especially since he has given Hamel permission to marry his daughter: "It enraged me to see him sitting there on the edge of the sofa, flourishing his pocket- handkerchief, and shedding selfish tears" (162). M. Delahaye is himself carried away by Hamel's fascinations. His brother, Alexander, however, is set up as his opposite, and just as he is more adept at managing the family finances and the wine business, Alexander is also resistant to Hamel's charms, and he reacts strongly to Marguerite's announcement that she is breaking off her engagement with Charles so that she may marry Hamel: "Charles was an honest gentleman, and would have been a good husband! You are not the first who has changed away substance for shadow, and given up a true heart for an oily tongue!" (167).

Alexander's comments underscore Marguerite's bad judgement, which relies too heavily on sexual desire rather than reason.

In her infatuation with Hamel, Marguerite turns to fictional models and social scripts that are ultimately misleading. Though Gartha attempts to advise her young companion, she herself lacks experience in reading male character. The limited romantic education Marguerite receives comes from the French novels

Hamel gives her. Marguerite abandons the English reading Gartha attempts to introduce to her in favour of "Indiana, Lelia, Mauprat, and others of the early productions of George Sand" (112). Hamel urges Marguerite to gain knowledge from novels, saying that to "those who, young and candid like yourself, have seen little of that toiling world which lies beyond the charmed circle of a happy home, good novels are better than experience" (107). Both Charles and Gartha are critical of Marguerite's exposure to such a "class of literature which, however admirable in its way, deals too largely with feeling to be quite healthy reading for the inexperienced and the young" (112). Such arguments over women's reading material were common in the mid-nineteenth century,23 and anxieties over women's reading and their abilities to judge male character accurately were interrelated. Charles is not only unnerved by the content of Marguerite's reading material, which he proclaims is "most unfit for a young girl," but by the dangerous "intimacy" between Marguerite and Hamel implied by their book exchange (117, 118).

Inherent in such novel reading is the danger of prioritizing what Gartha labels "feeling" over reason. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792),

Mary Wollstonecraft identifies romantic and sentimental fiction as limiting to a woman's intellectual development: "Another instance of that feminine weakness of character, often produced by a confined education, is a romantic twist of the mind, which has been very properly termed sentimental" (215). Such romantic reading is misleading as it often fails to offer realistic models of gender relations.

Hand and Glove suggests that romantic education in the combined form of novel reading, guidance from others, and worldly exposure may allow young women to negotiate relationships with men more easily and equally. Indeed, Gartha's rationality is supported by her intellectual reading material, just as in Tenant

Helen's frequent reading during her marriage parallels her intellectual growth and maturity. The meta-narratives of Tenant and Hand and Glove thus offer in the form of Gartha and a matured Helen a proxy for how to "read" male character.

Marguerite's narrative, however, reveals a story of the failure to read men

23 See, for instance, George Eliot's "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" (1856). For contemporary criticism on Victorian women readers, see Catherine J. Golden's Images of the Woman Reader in Victorian British and American Fiction and Kate Flint's The Woman Reader, 1837-1914. properly, and the destructive outcomes that follow such misreadings.

In her critique of male dominance, Edwards, like Bronte, relates the treatment of animals and women. Though Hamel never becomes violent towards

Marguerite, his potential for violence and cruelty is displayed when Gartha and

Marguerite spy him whipping his dog. They accidentally see him as they walk on a path above the road. When his dog Caesar does not follow his angry orders to return home, Hamel takes out his whip. After six blows, Hamel pauses to tell the dog, "I will stay here all night, but I will conquer you" (192). Gartha relates, "he struck again and again, the whip curling round the dog's palpitating body at every blow, and those piteous yells of almost human agony following after each" (192).

Edwards's comparison of the dog's yelps to "yells of almost human agony" makes explicit the similarities between animal and human maltreatment, and anticipates many of the arguments made by women in the antivivisection movement later in the century.24 As she watches her fiance, Marguerite whispers,

"how cruel he is!" (192). Later, however, she admits to Gartha, "How pitiless he was, and yet there was something fine about it after all!" (241). While the incident reveals Hamel's potential for cruelty, Marguerite continues to follow the Byronic script which denotes such male dominance as sexually charged.

As the novel progresses, hints of Hamel's deviance emerge that even

Marguerite cannot ignore. During their first visit to Hamel's lodgings, Gartha and

Marguerite are greeted unexpectedly by an acquaintance of Hamel's, Emile

24 As I explain in Chapter Three, many antivivisectionists related women to suffering animals. Coral Lansbury relates that "[w]hen Frances Cobbe lectured about the experiments being conducted upon dogs, the women in her audience would often sob and become hysterical. . . . [Wjomen persisted in seeing themselves as animals hunted, trapped, and tortured" (84). Sylvestre. Gartha notes that "the coolness with which he sauntered into the room and leaned upon the back of a chair, the familiarity of his address, the nonchalant politeness with which he removed his cap, and the unmistakeable insolence of his stare and laugh, made my blood boil" (221). This moment is reminiscent of

Helen's responses to Arthur's impudent male houseguests, and in both novels such moments place the women in what Gartha calls dryly "an awkward moment"

(221). Marguerite is unnerved by this "intruder," who is "not a pleasant specimen of M. Hamel's associates," and the news of Hamel's gambling skills only further alarms her (221, 223). She later reveals to Gartha, "The more intimate we become, the less I seem to know him. There are depths in his nature which I can never penetrate - there are moments when I almost fear him. With all his calm, he can be fierce and terrible" (241). Though Marguerite realizes her lover's faults, she is unable to effect a radical change in him and Gartha, therefore, must act as a mediator.

By positing Gartha and not young, naive Marguerite as the novel's

"second conscience," in Ellis's words, Edwards challenges the belief that woman's innate spirituality or innocence allows her to alter male behaviour naturally. Instead, Gartha's life experience, thoughtfulness, and her role as a teacher make her a suitable counsellor to Hamel and Charles. Further, the novel contests the fact that such alterations in male behaviour may occur in the passive, gentle manner described by Ellis and Patmore; rather, Gartha engages in more active, and much more challenging, counsels. Edwards posits the outspoken woman as heroic and Gartha's interventions are demonstrated to be positive and necessary. Gartha focuses not simply on challenging overtly deviant behaviour, 110 but in revising subtly contemporary models of masculinity. While she admits that

"perhaps [she has] no right to judge either" Hamel or Charles, she does in fact offer judgement, claiming that both men are "very unfit" for Marguerite (122).

Her position is a unique one; unlike Helen, whose initial reforms are directed towards her husband, Gartha is a social outsider. Her somewhat removed social and familial position allows her a degree of objectivity in Marguerite's affairs. As

Gartha watches Hamel and Charles battle for Marguerite's affection, she records her perspective: "[S]o things came to pass . . . and I, the sole observer, sat apart and noted all" (151).

Gartha steps in as a mediator for Marguerite since she finds Hamel's

"sultan-like" demeanour disconcerting, and she is confused by his paradoxical religious beliefs (168). When the two are alone watching a storm approach the

Delahaye home, Gartha chastises him for his superstitious thoughts, suggesting,

"a member of your profession should be among the last to place such matters in a ridiculous point of view" (197). Hamel responds, "Not at all. It is precisely because I am behind the scenes that I am so far desillusionni'' (197). When

Gartha responds with shock, Hamel laughs, explaining to her that he "find[s] it too much trouble to be serious" (197). Yet Gartha, along with the rest of the family, later discovers that Hamel was only posing as a minister; this realization confirms Hamel's immorality and Gartha's suspicions. Hamel's past is unearthed moments before he is to marry Marguerite. M. Deligny explains Hamel's long history: among other transgressions, he fronted a fraudulent business that ruined hundreds of families; escaped from penal servitude in the mines of the French

Guiana; posed as a Count in Vienna; and gambled frequently. With both Gartha's aunt and Marguerite, Hamel combined his skills of fraud and seduction. Despite this lengthy list, Hamel's nature and his potential for cruelty remain somewhat of a mystery. When Dr. Bryant tells Gartha of how Hamel misled and financially ruined her aunt as well as others, he notes that there were other circumstances

"still more humiliating, which it were useless to repeat after the lapse of so many years" (22). Hamel's mysteriousness is part of his Byronic persona, but it hides a life of crime. His glove, which he never removes from his right hand, is in fact what confirms his identity since prisoners of French Guiana are branded with a cross on their right hand. When his glove is removed, Gartha records melodramatically, "there in the unwilling palm, a deep red cross seamed indelibly upon the flesh!" (266).

Though she is unable to aid Hamel, Gartha views him sympathetically, insisting that he was a victim of harmful social influences. She tells Alexander,

"Under other influences, he might have developed into a great and good man!"

(271). This assertion sounds much like David's in David Copperfield when he laments that Steerforth "might have won the love and admiration of thousands"

(820). Hamel seems to have hoped that his love for Marguerite would save him from his past. Gartha recognizes, "be his sins what they may . . . with regard to

Marguerite, his only crime was loving her too much" (268). Hamel appears to repent his actions, and his suicide note merits inclusion in Gartha's narrative. He writes, "Life has no joy left for me, and no hope. It is a game which I have lost; a race in which I have been distanced; a fever of which I am weary" (281). He is also the focus of the last paragraph of the novel, as Gartha records that in the mountains of Santenay, "lies the dust of that misguided man whose strange and 112 fatal history I have here recorded. . . . Peace be with him - peace and forgiveness"

(294). Though Gartha is too late to correct Hamel's "misguided" education, she recognizes that Charles may benefit from her feminine attention.

Charles is presented as a more suitable marital choice for Marguerite; nonetheless, he, like Gilbert, must battle his proud and possessive tendencies. His attentions towards Marguerite are not "sultan-like" in the manner of Hamel, but

"as a proud father might look down upon a fretful child" (168, 46). His intense efforts to educate his young fiancee all fail, and while Hamel's brutal nature is sexually charged, Charles's intensity emerges as "cerebral and cold" (Rees 16).

Gartha recognizes, however, that even though Charles is proud and easily exasperated by Marguerite's immaturity, he loves his cousin and is a more appropriate match than Hamel. As Gartha observes Charles, she notes:

I loved to sit by and watch the development of this character, so outwardly

cold, so inwardly genuine. Manly, undemonstrative, grave, honourable,

and hospitable was he. Somewhat exacting at times it was true, and

scarcely so indulgent as a lover might have been to the careless errors of

our little Marguerite; but that he did love her tenderly, deeply, nay,

passionately, could one but look into his heart of hearts. (86)

Part of Charles's error is that his pride results in this "outwardly cold" manner.

Much like Darcy in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813), he must learn to subdue his pride, and allow Marguerite to recognize his affection for her. While in

Austen's narrative this transformation occurs as Darcy and Elizabeth mutually educate each other, in Hand and Glove, Gartha again must act as a mediator.

Gartha attempts to aid Charles early in the narrative when she sees that 113

Marguerite is unable to negotiate with him, and she renews her mentorship after

Hamel's death in an attempt to bring the two together. Her guidance focuses on subduing Charles's dominant and sometimes severe disposition. When Charles chastises Marguerite for not reading an historical pamphlet he has given her, his lover runs away crying. Gartha asks him, "Do you wish to make Marguerite afraid of you, and do you not think that fear may end in aversion?" (91). Later, Charles approaches Gartha with concerns over Hamel's intimacy with Marguerite, and she continues her advice. She explains that he has "treated Marguerite as if she were a child to be schooled and governed, not as a woman to be won" (137), but he admits to Gartha, "I hold it beneath a man's dignity to sigh and serenade like a lover in a romance" (138). Notably, Charles resists adopting the identity that the villagers give to Hamel, that of a "hero of romance" (123). Though Charles is insulted by Gartha's chastisements initially, he admits, "You are a severe Mentor .

. . but a very straightforward one, I am sure" (138). The novel suggests that his ability to accept Gartha's advice is a lesson in humbleness itself. Charles benefits from Gartha's honesty and he later admits that he has lost his "domineering pride"

(284). Alexander recognizes Gartha's influence in Charles and Marguerite's eventual reunion, and he tells her, "but for you and your counsels, Charles would never have made it up with Marguerite" (290).

In addition to Charles's character, Gartha also tempers Alexander's disposition, and he begins to act with less gruffness and more courtesy towards her. Dr. Bryant, upon meeting Alexander, insists, "I never saw any one who looked more disagreeable in my life," but Gartha explains, "it is the old story of the husk and kernel,... for a better heart never beat beneath a rough exterior" 114

(257). Gartha not only comes to understand Alexander's character, but she also subdues his desire for dominance. While she admits that he possesses a "stronger will" (290), Edwards's heroine, like Helen Huntington, "does not seek a master; she seeks a partner" (Langland, Anne Bronte 57). Though Charles explains to

Marguerite, "I strove to teach, and, in the vanity of my heart, forgot that I also needed teaching!" (164), Gartha and Alexander are doubtless capable of a relationship of mutual education. Like his brother, Alexander recognizes Gartha's intellect and he tells her, "you've got more common sense than anybody in this house" (268). His proposal is characteristically unromantic: he asks Gartha to calculate their life expectancies and then asks her whether, rather than live alone, might they "as well be happy and comfortable together?" (293). Though Edwards pokes fun at Alexander's gruffness, both Alexander and Gartha are informed and experienced at this stage in their lives. In accord with the novel's critique of naivety and impetuosity, Alexander's rational proposal and their combined knowledge bode well for their future marriage.

The final marriages of Marguerite and Charles, and Helen and Gilbert offer correctives to the women's earlier relationships as these second pairings evolve away from the facile choices of their girlhoods. Marguerite matures after

Hamel's death and the European tour that follows. In fact, both Charles's and

Marguerite's temperaments change: "His character had softened, while hers had strengthened. . . . Starting from opposite extremes, they now met on tolerably equal ground" (285). Their meeting on "tolerably equal ground" occurs as a result of both Marguerite's maturation and Charles's humbling. Charles, like Gilbert, must endure a period of rejection, aligning him with the "feminine hero" 115 discussed by Elaine Showalter in A Literature of Their Own. Showalter notes that a number of female novelists of the nineteenth century believed that a limited experience of dependency, frustration or powerlessness could be healthy and instructive for a hero (150). This process of "emotional education through symbolic role-reversal" allows the "woman's man" to rediscover his humanity

(150). In fact, an anonymous reviewer for Literary World complained of Tenant,

"If any one chooses to study [Bronte's] male characters, it will be found that all that is good or attractive about them is or might be womanish" (544). Again, however, such a criticism points to the attempts of these novels to redefine masculinity, so that qualities that might be regarded as "womanish" are instead valorized as the height of masculine sensitivity and affection.

Edwards demonstrates that Marguerite's nai've rashness leads to very different results than her more "thoughtful" decision at the end of the novel to marry Charles (283). Marguerite matures after her experience with Hamel and, as with Tenant, the novel demonstrates the value, as well as the pain, of actual experience in women's growth. As I have signalled, the exposure she gains from travelling throughout Europe late in the novel develops her character.

Marguerite's travels develop her mind and her conversation becomes less childlike and more thoughtful. Gartha explains that the "life of intellectual and bodily activity worked miracles upon her" and these new cultural experiences "all braced and developed the natural capabilities of her mind" (283). Her newfound

25 Her emphasis on the benefits of travel for a young woman like Marguerite is not surprising given the importance of world travel in Edwards's life. She later became famous for her travel narratives such as Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys (1873) and A Thousand Miles Up the Nile (Mil). 116 maturity allows Marguerite to understand Charles's value fully. Though

Marguerite errs in her judgement of Hamel, the novel ultimately values the importance of female choice of a romantic partner. In fact, part of Marguerite's unhappiness in her initial engagement to Charles is that she is not permitted to choose her husband for herself. She laments to Gartha, "Why did they promise me to Charles when I was a child, and neither knew nor loved him?" (144). It is in her choice to marry Charles, rather than her initial obligation, that Marguerite comes closest to embodying the notion of the self-determining subject, one free to make her own choices and to withstand the saturation of personal boundaries.

For all of Bronte's and Edwards's concerns about overbearing men and gender imbalances, both narratives ultimately promote the integration of the sexes. While Hand and Glove ends happily, with two seemingly compatible marriages, most feminist critics cannot help feeling somewhat uncertain as to

Gilbert and Helen's future. Gilbert's delight in marriage and fatherhood, as well as his choice to inhabit Helen's home, suggests a positive ending. Yet when Helen proposes to him, Gilbert's response echoes eerily the language of Huntington and

Hargrave. He exclaims, "My darling angel - my own Helen," names which both

Huntington and Hargrave have called her throughout the novel.26 This suggests that Helen may continue to battle the fragility of female autonomy within

In fact, all instances of either Huntington and Hargrave calling Helen "my angel" or "my own Helen" occur when Helen is unnerved or threatened by them. For instance, Huntington boldly calls Helen, "my own Helen!" before they are engaged. As he does so, he sneaks up behind her and attempts to place his arm around her waist and kiss her (172). Hargrave calls Helen "my angel" during his threatening proposal; as he says this, he holds both of her hands "very tight" (357). 117

Victorian marriage."

The endings of both novels may be likened to Marianne Dashwood's decision in Austen's Sense and Sensibility (1811) to marry Colonel Brandon after her heart is broken by Willoughby. This conclusion is dissatisfying for many readers as it seems to exchange romance for stability, offering up Brandon as a consolation prize. The endings of Tenant and Hand and Glove might be seen as registering a similar ambiguity. That is, the endings of each, which see an exchange of sensibility for stability, may actually reinscribe the fascination of the original men. In Hand and Glove, Hamel remains a figure of mystery and attraction even after his death, but this argument is perhaps more difficult to make in the case of Huntington, who becomes an unambiguously cruel, alcoholic adulterer. Yet for all her concern with male brutality, Bronte gives her heroine a second husband who, in the words of Charles Kingsley, "beyond the general dashing, manful spirit of a young farmer, [has] a very passionate and somewhat brutal temper" (425). So despite Bronte's movement away from romantic, melodramatic genres, there remains a rather veiled attraction to passion and the sometimes violent or aggressive male tendencies related to such passion in

Tenant. After Gilbert reads Helen's diary and they express their feelings for one another, she wanders the room with "a violent conflict between reason and passion . .. silently passing within" her (400). Indeed, both novels demonstrate such a conflict between passion and reason, with the endings offering somewhat ambiguous results.

27 The marriage of Esther and Frederick, as well as the marriage between the second generation Arthur and Helen, Arthur Huntington and Helen Hattersley, may offer a hopeful forecast for the next generation of men and women. 118

The fragility of women's identity in marriage as well as the importance of rational female choice of a romantic partner are taken up in New Woman fiction decades later. As I will discuss in the next chapter, these later novels abandon traditional principles of moral reform, instead stressing the need for women to practice careful and informed sexual selection. 119

Chapter Three

Doctors, Dandies, and New Men: Revising Male Sexuality in Ella Hep worth

Dixon's The Story of a Modern Woman and Sarah Grand's The Beth Book

In an anonymous 1848 review of Anne Bronte's The Tenant ofWildfell

Hall, a critic for Sharpe 's London Magazine surmised that Acton Bell must in fact be a woman, since "no man would have made his sex appear at once coarse, brutal, and contemptibly weak" (qtd. in Allott 265). By the late nineteenth century, the charge of unfairly presenting men as coarse or brutal became standard for reviewers of New Woman fiction. The New Woman was a radical figure, known variously as a feminist activist, social reformer, and sexual rebel. The figure of the New Woman and New Women novels were topics for frequent and heated discussion in the periodical press and novels of fin-de-siecle England. A critic for The Times complained in 1894, "What is really the distinctive note in these novels about the New Woman is the very poor figure which man cuts in them" (qtd. in Farmer 195). A reviewer for The Critic echoed this sentiment a year later, noting that in these "books by women about women," man "is considered worthy of serious mention only if he can be made to shoulder some crime, recent or of long standing, against womankind" (178). Though these reviews imply that New Women novels complained about men in general, New

Women novelists in fact used their fiction to criticize what they identified as particularly harmful forms of masculine behaviour. Further, they frequently used the novel form to imagine new, positive styles of masculinity, embodied in the notion of the New Man. 120

Part of what made the New Woman so new was the manner in which she attacked the sexual double standard, and specifically promiscuous male sexuality, with such vehemence. Demonstrating their commitment to eradicating the sexual double standard, New Women writers made male sexuality one of the key issues in their writing well into the end of the nineteenth century. Towards this end, New

Women novels often focus upon various betrayals of women by men. In this chapter, I focus on two such novels, Ella Hepworth Dixon's The Story of a

Modern Woman (1894) and Sarah Grand's The Beth Book (1897).

Both Grand and Dixon were well known nineteenth-century feminists and authors. Grand's The Beth Book charts the life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, who is described in the subtitle as "A Woman of Genius." Grand marks Beth's exceptionality from a young age, as well as her lively and passionate inner life, what Grand labels her "further faculty" (28). Alternatively, the typicality of Mary

Erie, the heroine of The Story of a Modern Woman, is announced by the very title of Dixon's novel. This novel, however, does feature a New Woman in Mary's more animated and politically motivated friend, Alison Ives. Alongside their modern women, Grand and Dixon pen rakish male characters, and transform them from aristocratic libertines to modern anti-heroes. In doing so, both authors

"update" the realism of the eighteenth- and early- to mid-nineteenth-century novel by rewriting the male hero and the marriage plot. As Grand explains in her essay

"On the Choice of a Husband" (1898), "A few years ago the fashionable hero of fiction was a fast man. He appeared in books written for the most part by young unmarried women, who idealized him into a beautiful creature" (1.109). Late- century female authors, however, "carry the case to its inevitable conclusion, and 121 the beautiful brilliant creature is shown to be a nasty-minded vulgar fraud"

(1.109). Similarly, Dixon claims in "Why Women are Ceasing to Marry" (1899) that "[m]ost of the married ladies in the great mid-Victorian novels looked up to their spouses with admiration tempered by awe.. . . [T]his wifely meekness is no longer possible" (261). Like Grand's, Dixon's fiction corrects earlier representations of awe-inspiring heroes; as she explains, "the old masculine idols are shattered, and the heroes of ladies' novels are no longer Greek gods, or

Guardsmen, or even men of blameless life" (261). Such comments attest to changes not only in the representations of male character, but in the romantic ending of the novel. We see these changes specifically in The Story of a Modern

Woman and The Beth Book, in which the male villains are neither killed off nor reformed. Neither novel, furthermore, ends with a marriage.

Rather than occupying the familiar villain's role of the aristocratic rake, the modern villains in The Beth Book and The Story of a Modern Woman occupy culturally charged professions of the fin-de-siecle. The novels isolate two masculine positions as particularly threatening to the New Woman: the doctor and the dandy.' Though these roles constitute radically different identities, Dixon and

Grand suggest that they similarly challenge the New Woman's feminist politics.

Fin-de-siecle feminists were particularly concerned with improving women's social and intellectual education, and in these novels both the doctor and dandy jeopardize the New Woman's quest for such knowledge.

New Women frequently levelled attacks against the medical profession's

1 Grand does offer a positive alternative to the dangerous doctor in the example of Dr. Galbraith in The Beth Book. 122 desire to shield women from information about their own bodies. In the case of venereal disease, such secrets could be deadly. In a letter to F.H. Fisher, Grand insists, "Doctors advise these men to marry, and only the most conscientious acknowledge that the disease is incurable. The marriage certificate should be a certificate of health" (Sex 2.41). Though Grand suggests that if the marriage certificate took men's health into account women might be protected, she also recognized that the institutions of marriage and medicine both legitimized male power. Indeed, New Woman fiction often demonstrates the struggle between doctors and husbands for the control of the wife's sexual health (Liggins 175). Dr.

Dan Maclure in The Beth Book and Dr. Dunlop Strange in The Story of a Modern

Woman make the doctor-husband an alarming figure who exposes feminist concerns with the institutions of both medicine and marriage. That is, the objectification of women they practice publicly figures dramatically in the private sphere as well. Dan, Beth's husband, is a doctor at a Lock Hospital and therefore is involved in the quarantining of prostitutes under the directives of the

Contagious Diseases Acts. In addition, he is also a vivisectionist, an adulterer, and a prying and obsessive husband who reads Beth's mail, looks secretly through her drawers, steals her income, and wrongly accuses her of infidelity. In The Story of a Modern Woman, Dr. Dunlop Strange also demonstrates an interest in women's ailments; his speciality is nervous diseases. Though Strange is only engaged to

Alison, he risks demonstrating the behaviour exhibited by Dan. Alison, however, is prevented from marrying Strange when she dies soon after meeting an ill,

2 For more on this, see Emma Liggins's "Writing Against the 'Husband-Fiend': Syphilis and Male Sexual Vice in the New Woman Novel." 123 poverty-stricken woman, with whom Strange had an affair and then discarded cruelly.

Like the doctor, the dandy is presented as a figure that stands in the way of the New Woman's desire for intellectual, social, and sexual equality. While a number of critics including Angelique Richardson and Lisa Hamilton have noted

Grand's distaste for male effeminacy, I expand upon such criticism by demonstrating the ways in which effeminate male characters, specifically dandies, offer challenges to late-Victorian feminism that are similar to those associated with doctors. Though the dandy and the New Woman were often linked in the periodical presses of the fin-de-siecle as figures who elicited fears over the malleability of gender distinctions, The Beth Book and The Story of a Modern

Woman demonstrate the very different cultural concerns of these two social and literary groups. Most importantly, the notion of female solidarity and community championed by the New Woman in both novels is in direct opposition to the dandy's fantasy of the individual detached from the social whole, embodied in

Baudelaire's concept of the "cult of the self (Gagnier 32). Ellen Moers explains that the "decadence of dandyism" emerged during the fin-de-siecle (287). The revised "decadent dandy" was connected to the earlier-century dandy's focus on irresponsibility, idleness, and material culture, but also to the Decadent and

Aesthetic movements of the late-nineteenth century. While the dandy's creed of languor slighted the late-Victorian masculine ideal, associated with energy and

3 For example, the day after the second Wilde trial, Punch's "Angry Old Buffer" wrote a satirical ballad against "Sexomania" that expressed the concerns of many: "a new fear in my bosom vexes; / Tomorrow there may be no sexes! / Unless, as end to all the pother, / Each one in fact becomes the other" (203). 124 duty (Gagnier 34), he also challenged the New Woman's socio-political aims. The social purity feminism preached by Grand and, less overtly, Dixon, was in contrast to the decadents' apparent sexual avant-gardism. Social purists demanded that men meet the high standards of sexual purity that had been enforced upon women, and they were thus not radical feminists in favour of sexual liberation, as were some other New Women (Ledger 112-3). Grand situates the dandy-artist solely in the character of Alfred Cayley Pounce, while Dixon has Mary encounter a number of dandified men, including Vincent Hemming, the nameless editor of

The Fan, Mr. Bosanquet-Barry, and his young companion, Beaufort Flower.

Further, the decadent dandy is positioned as threatening on a more personal level: though they are married, both Pounce and Hemming attempt to seduce the New

Woman.

Grand and Dixon also depict more positive versions of masculinity. New

Women, especially eugenic feminists and social purists, imagined a New Man to be paired with the New Woman. The New Man of the popular press, often depicted as an effeminate character, drew attention to the masculine nature of the

New Woman, compared to whom he appeared small, weak and ineffectual (Tilley

3).4 Yet the notion of a New Man was more than just a satirical concept; he was also a figure who was regarded optimistically by New Women of the period. The

New Man, they imagined, could be recognized by his pure mind and body; he would support the New Woman's views of gender equality and would renegotiate

4 For example "The New Man (A Fragment from the Romance of the Near Future)," which appeared in Punch in 1894, is a melodramatic story of a husband waiting at home with dinner while his wife enjoys herself in society. The vignette ends with the emotional husband "bursting into tears" (167). traditional gender roles in partnership with the New Woman. Such a figure is largely absent in Story, though the artist Perry Jackson perhaps comes closest to

New Manhood.5 Grant Allen's mock New Woman novel, The Type-Writer Girl

(1897), which rewrites Story, tells the story of a woman writer struggling in

London; unlike Mary, the heroine Juliet Appleton has a brief love affair with her boss, an ideal New Man.6 As I later suggest, Dixon's decision to avoid such an idealized relationship for Mary demonstrates her commitment to evading traditional love plots in favour of a more realistic mode. The Beth Book contains a

New Man in the character of Arthur Brock, also an artist. While a number of critics have suggested that the romance narrative that concludes The Beth Book is a departure from the New Woman quest narrative, I argue that Sarah Grand, like many other New Women, saw the positive union of man and woman as central to her feminist concerns, and that the American Brock presents a unique, and not idealized, solution to New Manhood and the romance ending.

I. The Story of a Modern Woman: "The Eternal Question of Sex"

Though Story was Dixon's only novel, like Grand she was an active member of the London literary scene. Her father, William Hepworth Dixon, was also an author and edited The Athenaeum from 1853-69. Partly through her

5 Jackson seems genuinely to love Mary Earle, and he encourages her painting. Early in the novel he is described as "good-nature itself (86). As I detail later, he becomes distanced from the ideal of the New Man as the novel progresses. 61 label The Type-Writer Girl a "mock" New Woman novel for its satirical narrative style. Labelling Allen a New Woman author is problematic as his insistence that women could only find true fulfillment through motherhood distanced him from most New Women. The novel playfully utilizes New Women conventions and Allen even adopts the female pseudonym Olive Pratt Rayner, but, for the most part, it lacks the serious socio-political aims of conventional New Women novels. For more on this see, Vanessa Warne and Colette Colligan, "The Man Who Wrote a New Woman Novel: Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did and the Gendering of New Woman Authorship." 126 father's influence, Dixon knew and worked with many of the period's most important writers and artists, including Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw,

Aubrey Beardsley, H.G. Wells, George Meredith, George Moore, Henry James,

"7

Sarah Berhardt, and Elizabeth Robbins. Though much of her work may be considered less overtly political than Grand's, The Story of a Modern Woman announces Dixon's entrance into the New Woman conversation in its very title.

The novel was very successful and W.T. Stead began his influential review article

"The Novel of the Modern Woman" by quoting directly from Story. In her 1930 memoir, As I Knew Them, Dixon records that The Vagabonds dining club invited her to attend a dinner, along with five other women writers, "as the author of one of the six most 'successful novels of the year'" (107).8 With Story, Dixon hoped to achieve a realistic representation of the life of a lonely working woman in

London, a life she was not forced to experience herself. She described the novel as "a somewhat gloomy study of the struggles of a girl alone in the world and earning her own living" (As I Knew Them 136).

The novel recounts the story of Mary Earle, following the death of her father. Her mother dies when she is a child and her father's death forces her to work to support herself and her rather idle younger brother. Her long time friend

Vincent Hemming proposes to Mary early on in the novel. Immediately after she

7 Dixon details her relationships with these artists in her 1930 memoir, As I Knew Them. Most chapters describe a different late-Victorian celebrity, writer or aristocrat. Some sections describe groups of people and are given playful headings, such as "People in the Gay 'Nineties" and "People I have met in Trains." 8 Dixon includes little information about the political identity of The Vagabonds club. She records, "The present Lord Crewe, who was so recently Ambassador in Paris . . . made a charming and much too flattering speech about the achievements of the young women who were put in a row, at the high table, for all the large company to gaze upon. It was a proud though slightly embarrassing evening" (107). accepts, however, Hemming leaves for a tour of India, Australia, and Canada to collect material for his book on "the Woman Question" (82). After Hemming's departure Mary attends the Central London School of Art, where she meets successful painter Perry Jackson, and decides to give up painting for writing.

When Vincent returns to London, he drifts apart from Mary and marries a woman whose wealth and family will help to start his political career. After refusing a second proposal from Vincent to run away with him, which would necessitate his abandonment of his wife and child, Mary continues her work alone. The novel also recounts the story of Mary's best friend, Alison Ives, an intelligent, wealthy

New Woman with a good sense of humour. Her story takes a dark turn when she discovers her doctor-fiance's dark sexual past and dies soon after, though not before she makes Mary pledge to "never, never do anything to hurt another woman" (164).

Alison's appeal comes after she has witnessed a frail, hospitalized woman abandoned by Dr. Dunlop Strange, an episode that directly challenges the ethical interest of male doctors. This plot twist references the fraught relationship between the New Woman and the doctor in the last decades of the century. A key cultural event that registered their hostility was the repeal of the Contagious

Diseases Acts, largely attributed to feminist interventions, and carried out in 1886.

The Acts were instituted in 1864, 1866, and 1869 by Parliament in an attempt to control the increase of venereal disease among the armed forces. They were motivated by public anxiety relating to both prostitution and the spread of venereal disease, and the first Act of 1864 was introduced without debate 128

(McHugh 37).9 Eventually, the Acts covered eighteen military districts throughout

England, and they maintained that any woman suspected of being a prostitute could be forced to undergo medical examination. If surgeons found the prostitute to be infected, she could be confined to a Lock Hospital for three months; the maximum stay was increased to nine months in the 1869 Act (Walkowitz 76, 86).

Lock Hospitals, facilities for the treatment of venereal disease, also provided social and educational services, and were "as much a product of sexual and social ideology as the state of medical knowledge" (57).

The Acts effectively provided state backing for the sexual double standard, thus legitimizing male promiscuity. The Royal Commission on the Contagious

Diseases Acts states this double standard clearly: "[T]here is no comparison to be made between prostitutes and the men who consort with them. With the one sex the offence is committed as a matter of gain; with the other it is an irregular indulgence of a natural impulse" (qtd. in Mangum 166). The women who sought to repeal the Acts, dubbed social purists, argued that it was male, not female, sexuality that needed controlling, and that it was the male, rather than the female, body that was responsible for social degeneration. The overturning of the Acts in

1886 therefore challenged long-held perceptions of male sexuality and the campaign helped to consolidate the feminist activism that was to be associated with the New Woman. At the same time, New Women were also angry at the manner in which most doctors kept wives sexually ignorant of their husband's

9 As Paul McHugh relates, they were passed with a degree of secrecy: "Introduced in a thin house, late at night, a government measure with a title deceptively similar to an act dealing with veterinary rather than venereal disease, the Bill passed silently through both houses, receiving the royal assent on 29 July without a word being said about it" (37). contracting of venereal disease from prostitutes. The repeal movement thus

registered a widespread antagonism between feminists and the medical

establishment, which was also articulated in the antivivisection campaign and in

New Women's attempts to use birth control and to become doctors themselves.

What was most at stake in these medico-moral movements was the New

Woman's claim to control and safeguard her own body.

In The Story of a Modern Woman, Dr. Dunlop Strange comes to represent

the medical profession's complicity with the sexual double standard and the

objectification of women. Strange takes advantage of the male doctor's intimacy

with his female patients: "The half-chaffing, half-caressing tone in which his

patients addressed him (for Dunlop Strange was popular with great ladies); the

role, three-parts confessor and one-fourth adorer, which he played with these beautiful victims of the vapours and megrims, appealed directly to his vanity"

(158). Throughout the novel, Strange is informally engaged to Alison Ives.

Though Alison is an upper-class society woman, she is more of a candidate for

New Womanhood than Mary: she is intelligent, possesses an "utter absence of

snobbery," and a "real desire to be in sympathy with her own sex" (70). She

commits herself to aiding ignorant, poverty-stricken girls in London's East End,

going so far as "slumming" in Mile End Road and the Mayfair district and

rescuing a young girl from Whitechapel. Dr. Strange recognizes that to marry this

attractive, clever woman would be "the crowning act of a brilliantly successful

career" (149). Less confidently, Alison imagines that the life of a doctor's wife

will be a "busy, sensible" one and, she reasons, "in her world, one had to marry

some day or another" (149). Though Alison is in no rush to marry, she recognizes 130 that marriage will prove useful to her someday. "[I]t was absurd to suppose that old maids had any influence on people's lives," she thought, "and Power, to put it plainly, was what the modern woman craved" (92). Dixon contradicts her character's views in "Why Women are Ceasing to Marry," when she claims,

"Formerly, girls married in order to gain their social liberty; now they more often remain single to bring about that desirable consummation" (263). Though Mary

Earle achieves questionable power as a single woman, Alison's assumptions that women could only achieve power once married are largely contradicted in the novel. As she discovers secrets of Strange's past, she questions the liberty permitted in a union with such a man, and she begins to elevate the value of female solidarity above the marriage union.

Dixon draws explicit connections between Alison, Mary, and the nameless, lower-class woman abandoned by Strange who, as Erin Williams writes, haunts the novel as "a spectre of women's victimization and an insistent reminder of the precariousness of their economic situation" (276). Even before

Alison meets Strange's nameless lover, labelled in the hospital as "Number

Twenty-seven," the novel sets up the theme of solidarity and connectedness between women (151). Perry Jackson's painting, Two Sisters, which depicts two young women in Trafalgar Square, one wealthy and attractive, the other "painted, bedizened, supercilious," offers a striking visual example of the interconnectedness of women (127). Further, Mary actually meets "Number

Twenty-seven" in the park twice before seeing her in the hospital and this woman functions as Mary's lower-class double, waiting for her lover just as Mary waits for Vincent to return from his travels. 131

Dixon's method of connecting her female characters through their similar struggles and regardless of their class reaches its climax when Alison meets

"Number Twenty-seven." When Strange takes Mary and Alison on a tour of the hospital, they encounter a girl with "rapid consumption" (151). The nurse informs them that the young woman tried to commit suicide by jumping into the canal, only to be fished out by the police. When the girl turns over, Mary recognizes her as the young woman from the park, and Strange recognizes her as a girl who was fond of him, "but who had grown so bad-tempered and suspicious that he had been obliged to break off all relations with her" (152). This "unsightly corpse . . . of his dead pleasure" recognizes him and laughs coarsely (152). Though Strange attempts to deflate the moment by exclaiming, "Poor creature! She mistakes me for someone else," Alison intuitively understands their connection, and she comes back the next day to learn the girl's story (152). Later, she informs Strange at a dinner party at her home that she has discovered his secret. When she tells him that she has been visiting "Number Twenty-seven," he tells her, "Dear Miss

Alison, those are terrible cases. They are cankerous evils, eating away the very life of our social system" (159). In placing blame upon the sickly woman, Strange echoes the language of the Contagious Diseases Acts. When he claims that he finds such a subject "painful to discuss with young ladies," Alison quickly retorts,

"I am not a 'young lady.' I am only a woman, taking a great deal of interest in others of my own sex" (160). Though her social sphere encourages her to ignore women like "Number Twenty-seven," Alison refuses to do so. Alison's allegiance thus shifts quickly from Strange to the young woman, who she learns was a shop- assistant before her affair with the doctor. As soon as Alison knows the story of 132 his past, Strange recognizes that his relationship with her is over, for she "was not one of those girls who have infinite complaisance for a possible husband" (161).

Strange is not only a "man with a past," but also a site of contagion. In their representations of deviant masculinity, New Women novelists depicted degenerate subjects as texts to be read, as displaying the character of their minds on their bodies. Strange has a "perpetual pucker just between his eyes; those eyes,

[Mary] noticed, spoilt his face; they were small and somewhat shifty" (92). His hands, vital to his professional duties, also serve as a warning to his degenerate nature, and Mary uneasily watches his "nervous, sinewy fingers" (176). The novel further suggests that Strange spreads his contagion metaphorically. As Emma

Liggins argues, Alison sickens and dies "from the very knowledge that Dr Strange had abandoned 'Number 27'" (185). Immediately after witnessing the encounter between Strange and "Number Twenty-seven," Alison feels "a curious kind of nausea," which she imagines to be "the air of the ward" (152). Yet Strange's

"dead pleasure" seems to kill his fiancee, even in the absence of a sexual encounter (152). Alison becomes sicker after her second visit to the ward: "She was tired, her head ached, her throat felt dry, and she must have caught a chill. . . .

The long journey home in an omnibus, an omnibus for which she had waited a long time at a corner, had thoroughly tired and chilled her" (156). Liggins claims that her waiting outside is what actually sickens Alison (185), while Steve Farmer assumes that Alison contracts consumption from the dying girl (32). Yet the very ambiguity behind Alison's death only reinforces Strange's apparent responsibility.

Dixon here is committed less to detailing accurate medical facts than she is to demonstrating a moral conflict between the doctor and the New Woman. In an 133

1894 interview, Dixon explained that she wished Story to show "how hardly our social laws press on women, how, in fact, it is too often the woman who is made, as it were, the moral scapegoat, and who is sent out into the wilderness to expiate the sins of man" (Stead 71).

While the deviant male characters examined in Chapters One and Two, including Uriah Heep, James Steerforth, Xavier Hamel, and Arthur Huntington, die or are jailed, neither Strange, nor, indeed, Dan in The Beth Book, receive substantial retribution for their social crimes. Dixon avoids the common mid- century convention in which deviant characters meet a bad end, and the immoral men in these New Women novels remain in society, thus commenting on that society's complicity with the sexual double standard and the doctor's powerful social authority. Audaciously, Strange appears at a party at Alison's mother's home after her death. Lady Jane greets him kindly, not knowing his culpability in her daughter's death nor Alison's angry rejection of his affections. Rather ominously, Lady Jane introduces him to her niece Victoria, "[presented to-day, and so devoted to society" (176). Mary records his entrance with resentment:

And the face of the fashionable doctor, smooth, smug, successful, was

seen here and there chatting in the crowd. If the mouth was still hard, the

smile was more insinuating than ever. A voluptuous feminine atmosphere

surrounded him as he moved about, as pretty women bent forward to

whisper, meeting his eyes with an intimate look, or laying detaining, half-

caressing fingers on his arm. All of these charming ladies had been, were

now, or would be, his patients. His reputation had grown apace in the last

five years; no one could have the megrims in Belgravia or Mayfair without 134

consulting Sir Dunlop Strange. (176)

Strange thus suffers nothing after ruining the lives of two women. He is free to continue as a doctor, and as a "smooth, smug, [and] successful" man in the upper echelons of society.

The dandy figures constitute the other society men in the novel, and though they are not as overtly threatening as the doctors, they similarly challenge the New Woman's desire for intellectual, social, and sexual equality. As previously suggested, the late-nineteenth-century dandy combined the earlier dandy's focus on apathy and material culture with a relationship to the Decadent and Aesthetic movements of the fin-de-siecle. In The Forgotten Female Aesthetes,

Talia Schaffer distinguishes between aestheticism and decadence, arguing that decadence "was actually a brief defensive reaction of embattled elite male writers who perceived themselves to be losing status to popular women writers and consequently fetishized their own decay" (6). For Schaffer, contemporary critics often conflate decadence with aestheticism, a critical generalization that gives the

Decadent movement's "masculinist assumptions and male coterie a disproportionately large role in our critical consciousness" (6). Schaffer thus encourages critics to avoid the assumption that aestheticism was solely a male domain, and she includes Dixon among her list of "forgotten female aesthetes."

Nonetheless, both Grand and Dixon conflate the aesthete, the decadent, and the dandy in their writings, creating a "new kind of masculine foil" (Moers 311). In both novels, the decadent dandy is positioned in opposition to the New Woman in terms of their respective social and literary values. Notably, he also emerges as an unlikely lover of the New Woman. 135

Dixon was friends with a number of famous late-century dandies, such as

Oscar Wilde and Max Beerbohm, the well-known caricaturist. Dixon records in her memoirs that "[Wilde] had not an engaging personality, being too much occupied with his own personal appearance and his carefully prepared paradoxes"

(34). Dixon's description of Beerbohm is more complimentary, though again focuses on his personal appearance: "Max had beautiful manners, long, curling eye lashes, the most marvellous clothes, and a habit of offering subtle compliments to women" (250). She humorously describes his influential trend- setting: "Max was a dandy of such importance as to be able to set the fashion among the young bloods. . . . When he first tucked a brightly-coloured silk handkerchief into his coat pocket, so that a tiny corner was visible, Pall Mall was astounded, but followed suit" (250). Dixon clearly draws from such acquaintances in her creation of the silly Bosanquet-Barry and his young companion Beaufort

Flower, or "Beaufy," in The Story of a Modern Woman. Bosanquet-Barry is a thinly veiled version of Wilde and, as Margaret Stetz notes, Beaufy appears to represent Wilde's lover Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed Bosie ("The Bi-Social

Oscar Wilde" 517). A Wilde-like figure also turns up later in the novel as the editor of The Fan, a magazine modeled after Wilde's The Woman's World, to which Dixon contributed.10 All three men are defined by fashion, flirtation, and constant, often vindictive, gossip. But two of the men also hold powerful positions as editors of periodicals. With these positions they dictate the kind of work women like Mary can do, such as when the editor of The Fan tells Mary that all

10 The Fan editor tells Mary, "I want it to be quite the smartest thing out, and a real authority on dress and fashion. As to the dress part, I'm not afraid of that. I do it all myself (111). Wilde also appears in Dixon's novella My Flirtations (1893) in the character of Val Redmond. 136 he needs from her "is a really good society article. Only about smart people, don't you know" (111-12). Thus, Mary reluctantly, though with good humour, engages in the world of gossip along with Bosanquet-Barry and Beaufy. Though these men are cruel gossipers, their characterizations remain rather ridiculous. The dandy takes a more serious cast, however, in Mary's fiance, Vincent Hemming.

Despite the homosexual overtones of the dandy, evinced in all three characters mentioned above, he emerges as a threatening seducer of women in the character of Hemming. Lisa Hamilton has argued that a number of New Women writers imagined a literary trajectory for the decadent male, placing him as "the moral and philosophical heir of the eighteenth-century libertine," and identifying such men not as "wild" but as "degenerate" ("New Women" 70, 72). Dixon thus maps the dandy's sexual avant-gardism onto a heterosexual romance narrative in which he, like the doctor figure, becomes a modern version of the eighteenth- century rake. Yet since Dixon expressed her desire to modify "mid-Victorian novels," her literary revisions apply more forcefully to mid-century embodiments of the eighteenth-century rake, such as characters like Steerforth and Hamel

("Why Women are Ceasing" 261). In Story and The Beth Book, however, the dandy is less an example of dangerous manhood than one of weakness and failure.

Like Strange, Hemming's professional and sexual endeavours are linked and, like

Grand's dandy-lover in The Beth Book, Alfred Cayley Pounce, Hemming is unable to rid himself of "imposture and self-pretence," both in terms of his sexual behaviour and his failing career (Heilmann, New Woman Strategies 90).

Hemming is a not a decadent dandy in the manner of Bosanquet-Barry or 137 even Grand's Pounce," but Dixon emphasizes his manicured appearance, his attraction to wealthy society, and his falsity, all qualities that link him to other negative portrayals of dandies. Gazing at his picture, Mary calls attention to "his intellectual forehead, his impotent mouth, and the slight frown which he sometimes affected" (98). Later she notes that he is "like one of those men whose rather pompous manner surrounds them like a suit of armour" (182). Like

Strange, Hemming considers himself an expert on women. Immediately after he surprises Mary with a marriage proposal, he leaves for a research trip for his book on the Woman Question. The narrator belittles Hemming's interest in "the enfranchisement of women" by suggesting that it is merely a social pose: "It was a subject on which he was persuasively eloquent. It was quite pretty, ladies always thought, to hear him talk of his dreams, his sacrifices" (77). Despite his faults,

Mary genuinely loves Hemming, although she immediately regrets accepting his proposal: "Only a minute ago and she had been ready to face the world alone, to be herself, to express herself, to work out her own destiny. And now it was all changed. . . . His hands, which held her two wrists as they stood there gazing at each other, felt like links of iron" (82). Her engagement to Hemming, as well as his subsequent voyage, places Mary in a subservient position, as she anticipates here. Their relationship consists of Mary anxiously waiting for Hemming's letters and for his eventual visit. Hemming's distant behaviour when he returns foreshadows his abandonment of Mary. He meets a woman whose wealthy

" Hemming is not involved in the Aesthetic or Decadent movements. In fact, he preaches "the necessity of maintaining a high ethical standard, and he always waxed exceedingly wroth over the literary excesses of MM. Zola and de Goncourt, and thanked heaven, so to speak, that those eminent pioneers of Realism did not belong to the Anglo-Saxon family" (77-8). As with his support of the Woman Question, however, Hemming's resistance to such literature seems merely a social pretence. 138 manufacturing family will further his political career and so he chooses Violet

Higgins over the struggling New Woman.

Hemming's abandonment of Mary for Violet signals his romantic immorality and also demonstrates the dandy's attraction to privilege and social

status. The Higgins' essentially offer up their daughter, complete with "a considerable fortune," to Vincent (125). And though he is not attracted to her (he describes her as "a young lady with beady eyes, a high colour, and a complete absence of chin" [125]), he courts her nonetheless. Notably, his attraction to politics does not accompany authentic political or reformist aspirations, but instead offers him a higher rung on the social ladder. Valerie Fehlbaum suggests that the unknowing Violet is a sympathetic character, who is "'sold' into a loveless marriage, and could be the heroine of another New Woman novel" (135), but Dixon is rather ambivalent in her treatment of Hemming's wife. When Mary spots Violet at the opera before the marriage, she takes in her competition's

"underbred face, with its beady eyes and fretful mouth, her over-trimmed, provincial clothes, and her uneasy attitude" (140). Mary incorrectly assumes that such a woman will not meet Hemming's "fastidious tastes" (140). In this description of Violet's physical deficiencies, Mary's and perhaps Dixon's class biases are revealed.12 In fact, other characters in the novel, such as Lady Jane, openly snub Violet, inviting only Hemming to their parties. Dixon's message is that in picking Violet, Hemming has chosen incorrectly and he is punished for his selfish and misplaced ambitions.

12 Such sentiments are echoed in Dixon's treatment of "pale, underbred" artist Perry Jackson, whose proposal Mary refuses later in the novel (176). 139

Mary's condescension and possible resentment of Hemming's wife, however, shifts by the end of the novel when he proposes to her a second time.

Like Alison, Mary chooses female solidarity over a fraught relationship. Dixon's depiction of this scene emphasizes Mary's great effort to reach a decision, and

Hemming's actions thus foreground the New Woman's struggle between feminist politics and heterosexual passion, or what Mary calls "the mysterious, inexorable bond of the flesh" (182). When Hemming tells her that he is dreadfully unhappy with his wife and child, Mary cannot help but feel triumphant. And when he asks her to run away with him to the Dalmatian coast, she is conscious of "the odious fascination which belongs to sin" (183). Yet his proposal warns of future subjection: he tells her "you are capable of being a true woman, of giving up

something for the man you love. . . . You would inspire me to noble things" (183).

Mary's refusal comes not from her uneasiness with Hemming's arrogance, but from the promise she has made to Alison to "never do anything to hurt another woman" (164). She tells Hemming:

"I can't, I won't deliberately injure another woman. Think how she would

suffer! Oh, the torture of women's lives - the helplessness, the impotence,

the emptiness! ... I should not like [your baby] to grow up and hate me.

All we modern women mean to help each other now. We have a bad

enough time as it is ... surely we needn't make it worse by our own

deliberate acts!" (184)

In a reversal of their previous situation, Mary then sneaks away from the

apartment, leaving Hemming unknowingly waiting for her.

The next chapter, "The Woman in the Glass," further details Mary's 140 struggle with "the eternal question of sex" and her realization that she possesses a

"strange sense of dual individuality" (185, 186). Mary looks into her mirror and imagines the image as a second self. The woman in the glass is a suffering woman in love, demanding pleasure. Mary finally resists her double, however, by taking solace in her independence and in Tennyson's words, "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield" (189). Erin Williams puzzles over Mary's suffering in this scene; for her, "The repeated motif of unwilling self-sacrifice, both when she becomes engaged to [Hemming] and when she refuses him, undermines the political status of her choice of celibacy as any choice at all" (273). Yet celibacy per se is not

Mary's choice; it is simply the necessary outcome of her decision not to run away with Hemming. As Ann Ardis claims, "Mary chooses celibacy because it is the only way she can possess her 'self in a culture that conceives of a sexual relationship as a man's 'possession' of a woman" (110). When Mary rejects her mirror image, "she rejects not only Hemming's image of her but also heterosexuality as it could be practiced at the end of the nineteenth century in

England" (111). Further, Hemming's position as a dandy is important, as male aesthetes were criticized for their treatment of women as "mere texts to be interpreted, circulated, consumed, and discarded" (Stetz, "Debating Aestheticism"

31). Through Mary's schizophrenic identity, Dixon demonstrates how challenging it was for New Women to claim their own sexuality. Mary also refuses Perry

Jackson, the lower-class artist who rises to celebrity status by painting pictures that the public desires. Though he is kind to Mary, his desire to "make the thing pay" shows that he is not a suitable mate for the New Woman writer (135). His commercial values are opposed to the New Woman's search for an authentic 141 aesthetic mode, one distinct, as Lynn Pykett argues, from stylized decadence and the marketplace ("Portraits of the Artist" 145).13

Dixon's desire to represent modern life truthfully drives her to avoid the traditional romantic ending for Mary. Earlier in the novel, when Mary talks to her editor about the novel she would like to write, she is met with resistance. He complains, "The British public doesn't expect novels to be like life. ... I should suggest a thoroughly happy ending. The public like happy endings" (147).14 In an

1899 article written for Lady's Pictorial, Dixon wrote:

It seems tolerably certain that whatever the novel of the next century is

about, it will not concern itself exclusively with the gentle art of angling

for husbands. Marriage as the end of everything does not appeal to our

modern novelist, and the love-story pure and simple would seem to have

gone clean out of fashion, (qtd. in Fehlbaum 35)

Though The Story of a Modern Woman is a love story of sorts, the relationship

Dixon anticipates for Mary is that between her and London. The final image of the novel is of Mary standing above the city: "[S]he made feint as if to grasp the city spread out before her, but the movement ended in a vain gesture, and the radiance of her face was blotted out as she began to plod homeward in the twilight of the suburban road" (192). Ultimately, then, Dixon is interested in representing an authentic New Woman's personal narrative rather than in imagining the

13 Jackson also becomes more dandyish with his financial success. When Mary sees him at the galleries of the Society of United Artists after he has achieved a degree of fame, she notices "with amused surprise, that he was dressed in the height of fashion, and wore a pink carnation in his buttonhole" (127). 14 Ironically, what the editor rejects, in addition to the ending, is an indecent proposal of the kind Mary will receive from Hemming a few pages later: "Why, there's a young man making love to his friend's wife. I can't put that sort of thing in my paper. The public won't stand it, dear girl" (146). compromises that would accord with a relationship between the New Man and

New Woman.

II. The Beth Book: Degenerate Men and Artistic Ideals

A year before Dixon published The Story of a Modem Woman, Grand excited attention and controversy with the publication of The Heavenly Twins in

1893, the second in a trilogy that The Beth Book completes. The novel, which deals overtly with venereal disease and unhappy marriages, was called "the modern equivalent of Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Arnold Bennett and "the most- talked about novel today" by the Chicago Tribune (qtd. in Richardson, Love and

Eugenics 102).15 It relates the story of Angelica Hamilton-Wells, one of the twins of the title, who is determined in her quest for an honourable partner and freedom within marriage. It also details the doomed marriages of Evadne Frayling and

Edith Beale to degenerate men. With this novel, Grand was deemed responsible for "breaking up the conspiracy of silence in society on the serious side of marriage" (Stead 67).

This "serious side of marriage" placed women in the role of victim, with men most often occupying the role of abuser. In her periodical writing, Grand was vocal in her criticisms of male immorality, arguing that "man morally is in his infancy" ("New Aspect" 273). In "The Man of the Moment," she complained,

"The man of the moment does anything but aspire, and it is the low moral tone which he cultivates that threatens to enervate the race" (623). For Grand, and for many other social purists, deviant male sexuality was not only a threat to

15 Humorously, Grand was once implored not to read her own novel by a "dear old gentleman," who claimed that "a knowledge of such books would entirely spoil the charm of women like myself (Sex 2.37). 143 individual marriages but to the entire nation. Though this rhetoric drew on earlier nineteenth-century conceptions of woman's maternal role as the moral guardian of the empire,16 this extension of private relations to public institutions in terms of sexuality was a keynote of New Woman discourse and Grand, like Dixon, points to venereal disease as one influential link between public and private spheres.

In The Heavenly Twins, Evadne functions as Grand's mouthpiece when she complains of Tom Jones, "Another young man . . . steeped in vice, although acquainted with virtue. He also marries a spotless heroine. Such men marrying are a danger to the community at large" (20). Though Evadne becomes one of these unlucky heroines, Grand demonstrates no moral ambiguities in her depiction of

Evadne's first husband, Colonel Colquhon. She presents a similarly startling depiction of male immorality in Dr. Dan Maclure. The Beth Book traces Beth's often unhappy childhood with her mother, who frequently beats her, and her brother, who is given Beth's inheritance to further his education while Beth is denied such schooling. One of Grand's central criticisms in the novel is Beth's lack of structured education, and this is in part what leads her to marry Dan at such a young age. While she is married to Dan, dandy Alfred Cayley Pounce, with whom Beth had a childhood romance, attempts to seduce her and guide her literary career. Later, after she has left Dan, Beth encounters the first man who may actually be a suitable match for her, artist Arthur Brock. While the novel maps Beth's romantic endeavours, it also tells the story of Beth's attempts to

16 Sarah Stickney Ellis is an example of an earlier nineteenth-century writer concerned with woman's position as the moral guardian of the empire. In The Women of England, Ellis writes, "as far as the noble daring of Britain has sent forth her adventurous sons .. . they have borne along with them a generosity, a disinterestedness, and a moral courage, derived in no small measure from the female influence of their native country" (1584). 144 become an author. Grand details young Beth's vibrant dream world and the promising qualities that will make her a "woman of genius."17 Beth writes professionally while married to Dan and later while living on her own, but at the end of the novel she finally finds her true calling as an orator.

Like Beth, Grand married a medical man over twenty years her senior.

Grand, born Frances Bellenden-Clarke, was married in 1871 at age sixteen to

Chambers McFall, a thirty-nine year old army surgeon. Like Dan, McFall treated men with venereal disease in the military and was likely involved with the Lock

Hospital in Lancashire (Kersley 47). Grand left her husband in 1890 to pursue her literary career. In The Beth Book, Grand dooms the relationship between Beth and

Dan from the start. Beth imagines that marrying Dan will offer her a "means of escape" from her lonely and unsatisfying existence with her mother, and she wonders to herself, "Why not marry him and be independent of every one?"

(329). Beth's innocence is betrayed by her assumption that marriage will bring her independence and also by her lack of proper information about her fiance. At the time of their marriage, she "hardly knew what [Dan's] full name was" (337). He is introduced to Beth by her mother as simply "the doctor" (321). After they are married Beth accuses Dan of fraud, claiming that had she known of his disreputable activities she would not have agreed to marry him (441).

The initial mystery surrounding Dan's character, later revealed to be his deliberate withholding of information, is the first of many links between Dan and the diseased men who came under criticism in the late-nineteenth century for

17 In fact, details of Beth's childhood take up much of the novel. She marries Dan on page 337 of the 527 page novel. 145 lying to their wives about their health and knowingly infecting them with venereal disease. When Beth discovers that Dan is a vivisector in addition to being a doctor at the Lock Hospital, she connects his concealment to the social practice of keeping young women ignorant, complaining, "Anything that might prevent a woman accepting a man is carefully concealed from her" (441).18 Indeed, only after they are married does Beth learn the extent of Dan's sexual history. He insists upon telling Beth of his former lovers, including a "fair-haired little devil

[he] picked up one night in Paris" (349), and he eventually begins having an affair in their own home with one of his young patients.

Though Dan keeps many secrets from his wife, he demands that Beth be allowed no private life of her own, and the novel documents his systematic invasion into Beth's private life and person. Dan's treatment of Beth is in fact strikingly similar to Huntington's behaviour towards Helen in The Tenant of

Wildfell Hall. Yet the novel consistently links Dan's attempts to control Beth to his profession as a doctor, detailing the manner in which his objectification of women in his public life carries over to his private life with Beth. Discussions of women's property and women as property were in wide circulation in the late nineteenth century. In her infamous 1888 essay "Marriage," Mona Caird articulates such concerns: "It need scarcely be said that there must be a full understanding and acknowledgement of the obvious right of the woman to possess herselfbody and soul, to give or withhold herself body and soul exactly as she

18 Grand earlier attacked society's method of keeping women ignorant of their fiances' behaviour in her short story "Eugenia" (1894), where she writes, "accepting a man in ignorance of everything concerning him except that his social position is satisfactory and his manners and appearance are pleasing, is like picking up a peach and eating it in dark. Of course, it may be a very good peach, but, on the other hand, it may have a wasp on it, or be rotten" (qtd. in Richardson 122). wills" (198). Legislation such as the Married Women s Property Act of 1882, which, among other things, allowed women to keep the property they possessed upon marriage or acquired later, and the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts in

1886 demonstrated feminists' willingness to fight for control over their property

and their bodies (Holcombe 203).19

Such legal acts permitting Beth control over her person, finances, and belongings, however, offer her no protection in her private life. Though Beth possesses an inheritance from her Aunt Victoria that she legally controls, Dan insists upon managing her finances, telling Beth, "you are too young to have the care of managing money" (340). Grand thus demonstrates that laws meant to protect women did not always translate into practice in the domestic sphere. Dan

also opens Beth's letters and secretly examines her belongings. After he opens

Beth's mail, he explains, "Husband and wife are one.. . . They should have no

secrets from each other" (342). Yet he uses his profession as an excuse for Beth's

inability to know his secrets: "I should like you to open my letters, too, but they

contain professional secrets, you see, and that wouldn't do" (342). On more than

one occasion, Beth finds him hiding in her bedroom, feeling in the pockets of her

dresses or picking up scraps of paper she had thrown away and piecing them

together to see what she had been writing (382, 427). Beth's reaction is

surprisingly defeatist in these moments, as she merely sneaks away and does not

confront her husband.

19 The Act of 1882 sought to alter what were seen by many Victorians as inadequate provisions made to the 1870 Married Women's Property Act by the House of Lords. For example, money that a woman had saved from her earnings before marriage, or had saved after her marriage but before the Act was passed, was not recognized as her separate property unless she had invested in the ways specified in the Act (Holcombe 179). She is more firm, however, in her demand for physical privacy. Again like

Bronte's Helen, Beth is forced to lock herself in her room in order to find solitude.

Though Beth opens the door when Dan demands it, she complains, "I want to be alone for a little; can't you understand that?" (345). Dan responds, "No, I cannot understand a wife locking her husband out of her room.... I've a legal right to come in here whenever I choose" (345). Grand's biographer Gillian Kersley relates that Grand endured strikingly similar behaviour from her husband:

To his already reprehensible habits of opening up her letters, drinking,

smoking in her bedroom, piling up debts . . . and telling her lewd stories,

his sexual demands on her - usually late at night and reeking of alcohol

and tobacco - continued and she also suspected he had a mistress. When

she locked her bedroom door he demanded she open it[.] (46)

Grand left her husband after a time, but her heroine is more reticent, and Beth does not depart until later in the novel when Dan demands that she leave. Instead,

Grand figures a fantasy solution for Beth, when her heroine discovers a secret attic room. Insisting that she "must have some corner where she would be safe from intrusion," Beth searches their new home and miraculously finds a

"charming little room" connected to the attic, tastefully decorated, and with a fireplace and bow window (345, 346). In a Literature of their Own, Elaine

Showalter dismisses such fantasy spaces in New Woman fiction as isolationist:

"The private rooms that symbolize their professionalism and autonomy are fantastic sanctuaries closely linked to their own defensive womanhood" (215).

Lyn Pykett challenges the claim that Beth's room denotes defeat, instead arguing that the secret room functions not as "a means of escape from reality and the self, 148 but as a route to reality and the self (Improper Feminine 184). Indeed, the room allows Beth a private place to read and write without interruption; it is a space where she can reclaim aspects of her old identity. Grand is explicit, too, that the writing Beth accomplishes in this room offers her a kind of replacement for romantic love. Beth likens her literary inspiration to "love without the lover; there being all the joy of love in it, but none of the trouble" (424). Further, the secret space allows her to learn the truth about her husband's behaviour, as she spies

Dan kissing his patient Bertha from the attic window.

Though Beth judges her husband's sexual behaviour harshly, it is not until she learns of his devious activities as a doctor that she truly recognizes his cruelty.

Further, such discoveries allow Beth to relate her experience as a mistreated wife to the lives of lower-class women and animals, links that were commonly made by feminists, social purists, and antivivisectionists in this period (Lansbury 82-4).

Beth makes clear that she does not consider all medical men to be morally depraved like her husband. She optimistically claims, "The hope of humanity is in the doctors, and they will not fail us. Like Christ, they will teach as well as heal"

(443). Beth's optimism is based on her knowledge of Sir George Galbraith

(formerly Dr. George Galbraith in Grand's The Heavenly Twins). Galbraith,

Evadne's second husband, is sympathetic to the feminist movement; he even functions as Beth's literary advisor in the novel. When discussing novels with

Beth, he reveals his humanitarian stance: "[HJappiness is the end of life, and . . . the best way to secure it for ourselves is by helping others to attain it" (374). Dan represents healing gone perversely wrong, and as soon as she learns of his involvement in the Lock hospital from Angelica, Beth confronts her husband. 149

While Beth is horrified by the treatment of "those poor unfortunate women," Dan simply tells her, "Doctors can't be expected to preach morals" (400). He reiterates this sentiment when Beth confronts him about vivisection, which he practices secretly in their home.

The figure of the villainous vivisector was popularized in the fiction of this period in characters like Dr. Benjulia from Wilkie Collins's Heart and

Science (1882) and Dr. Moreau from H.G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau

(1896), but this figure had particular resonance for feminists of the late-century.

Women were the strength of the antivivisection campaign, to such a degree that the public often assumed that antivivisectionists and suffragettes belonged to the same movement (Lansbury 83). Coral Lansbury explains that a number of women identified with tortured animals: "[M]any saw their own condition hideously and accurately embodied in the figure of an animal bound to a table by straps with the vivisector's knife at work on its flesh" (84). When Dan brings home a little terrier,

Beth thinks only that the animal will make a nice pet. After Dan leaves for the night, however, Beth hears the animal's pained cries and finds it fastened in a painful position. She kills the dog out of mercy and confronts her husband the next day:

"How dare you?" she inquired.

"How dare I, indeed, in my own house!" he bawled. "Now look

here, madam, I'm not going to have any of your damned interference . . ."

"Please, I am not deaf," she remonstrated gently. "And now, look

here, sir, I am not going to have any of your damnable cruelties going on

under the same roof with me. I have endured your sensuality and your 150

corrupt conversation weakly, partly because I knew no better, and partly

because I was the only sufferer, as it seemed to me, in the narrow outlook I

had on life until lately; but I know better now. I know that every woman

who submits in such matters is not only a party to her own degradation,

but connives at the degradation of her whole sex. Our marriage can never

be a true marriage[.] (439)

In this passage, Beth moves from a discussion of vivisection (Dan's "damnable cruelties"), to Dan's "corrupt conversation," to female "degradation" in general, to her own marriage, linking Dan's various immoral behaviours and placing herself as a victim alongside tortured animals and degraded prostitutes. As

Lansbury claims, "Dan the philanderer and Dan the vivisector are aspects of the same unsavoury individual" (147). Further, Dan's practicing in the home makes links between the puppy and Beth more obvious. Ann Heilmann argues that his actions reveal an unsettling instance of private and public collapse: the surgery becomes a space for recreation, while the marital home is the site of sexual domination and a place of torture (New Woman Fiction 95).

In positioning Dan as both a vivisector and an employee of the Lock hospital, Grand takes on what were by this time common fictional tropes for villainous doctors. By lumping both of these medical "crimes" onto one character, as well as demonstrating his inappropriate relations with a young female patient,

Grand created such a villainous figure that some reviewers dismissed him as unconvincing. For instance, W.M. Payne thought Dan an "utterly unimaginable brute" (78) and the reviewer for The Athenaeum found many of the men "simply ridiculous puppets which would be disgusting were they not so absurdly unreal" 151

(744). Further, critic Frank Danby complained in The Saturday Review that Grand was ruining her art by focusing on "the controversies that raged twenty years ago around the dead CD. Acts" (558). It is true that the Acts had long since been repealed, yet Grand's depiction of Dan attests to the enduring importance of the doctor to New Women writers who continued to view him as a figure who obstructed women's social development.

Like Strange, Dan's degeneracy is marked on his body. Lyn Pykett notes that several New Women writers have used doctors as bearers, rather than curers, of disease and disorder, and Dan's polluted body is an example of this ironic inversion (Improper Feminine 155). When Beth first meets him, she notes his unusually bright complexion, and surmises radically different impressions: "[I]t gave to some people the idea of superabundant health, to others it suggested a phthisical tendency" (257-8).20 Later, she notes that his smile "was not altogether agreeable, because his teeth were too far apart; and she thought his finely-formed hands would have looked better had they not been so obtrusively white" (321). To

Grand, a eugenicist, Dan's physical appearance holds important signs of his moral laxity, and Beth clearly suffers in her selection of an inappropriate partner. Dan's hands later become symbols of his degeneracy and of the doctor's lost potential.

After she has discovered his corrupt medical behaviour, Beth becomes fixated on

Dan's hands as mediums that bridge the public and private divide:

His hands . . . had a horrid sort of fascination for her. She had admired

them while she thought of them as the healing hands of the physician,

20 A "phthisical tendency" indicates the possibility of tuberculosis. According to the OED, phthisis is a "wasting disease, esp. one involving the lungs; spec, tuberculosis." bringing hope and health; but now she knew them to be the cruel hands of

the vivisector, associated with torture, from which humanity instinctively

shrinks; and when he touched her, her delicate skin crisped with a shudder.

(445)

Beth eventually leaves her unhappy marriage, or, more accurately, is thrown out by her jealous husband. In a reversal of blame reminiscent of the logic behind the

CD. Acts, Dan demands Beth leave because of her perceived infidelity with

Arthur Cayley Pounce, when he is the actual adulterer. Yet Beth has already rejected Dan and all he represents. Leaving him thus means not simply abandoning a bad marriage, but joining a social movement and, like Dixon's female characters, Beth rejects her husband in favour of solidarity with other women.

Even more than Dixon's Hemming, Arthur Cayley Pounce embodies the negative late-century stereotype of the dandy-artist. He is shallow and obsessed with style, and his artistic and aesthetic views run contrary to those espoused by

Grand and her fictional counterpart Beth. The dandy's association with sexual deviance makes him a useful figure for Grand in her critique of male sexuality.

Hamilton notes that after the Wilde trial of 1895, the effeminate man was seen as a "pathological threat to the health and robustness of the body politic" ("Oscar

Wilde" 234), and Grand articulates such fears in her novels and periodical writing. In her article "The New Aspect of the Woman Question," Grand enters the debate on the Woman Question, but concludes by suggesting that the state of

British manhood is a more vital public concern: "The trouble is not because women are mannish, but because men grow ever more effeminate. Manliness is at 153 a premium now because there is so little of it" (275). She asks, "Where is the chivalry, the truth, and affection, the earnest purpose, the plain living, high thinking, and noble self-sacrifice that make a man?" (275). Like Dan, Pounce does not live up to Grand's manly ideal, and he is physically, sexually, and artistically degenerate.

The early romance between Beth and Pounce teaches Beth the dangers of boundless sexuality. As a young woman, Beth is immediately attracted to the dandyish Pounce. She notices his "long, delicate, nervous hands" and his

"somewhat sallow complexion [which] looked smooth to effeminacy" (237).

Grand describes Beth's budding sexuality with surprising openness. When Beth first sees Pounce, she is "all one sensation" (236), and their first interaction, in which they are caught under the rising tides, signifies sexual intercourse and orgasm (Heilmann, New Woman Strategies 99). As they wait, holding each other tightly, "the water came creeping up and up again. It had swelled so high the last time that Beth was all but gone; and now she held her breath, expecting for certain to be overwhelmed" (242). Beth's sexuality is frequently linked to the ocean in these early episodes and Ann Heilmann notes that Grand draws attention to Beth's sexuality as "a spontaneous, natural and healthy overflowing of physical, emotional and spiritual energy" (98-9). Yet Heilmann also notes that Beth and

Alfred's near drowning demonstrates the risk of intoxication associated with heterosexual desire as it nearly submerges female identity (101). Indeed, as with

Mary and Hemming, the relationship between Beth and Pounce reveals the dandy- lover's desire to consume the New Woman's identity. The young Pounce tells

Beth, "I don't want you to be anything, or to care to be anything, but just my wife" (247).

Further, throughout her romance with Pounce, Beth is forced to learn the way in which society judges female sexual behaviour more harshly than male behaviour. In order to sneak away to attend a menagerie with Alfred and his friend Dicksie, Beth dresses up as a boy. When her mother discovers her actions, she chastises Beth for "meeting this young man in a clandestine manner" and for making "the whole place talk about [her]" (255). Later, when the vicar's wife comes to reprimand Beth for the more general charge of "carrying on an intrigue" with Alfred, her mother defends her in order to salvage the family's reputation

(261). Afterward, Lady Benyon, Beth's good-natured great aunt, tells Mrs.

Caldwell, "I think you may consider Miss Beth out of that scrape. But take my advice. Get that girl married the first chance you get" (263). Beth's actions with

Pounce, then, lead to her (self-)punishment in the domestic realm as Dan's tortured wife. Pounce conveniently resurfaces to "rescue" Beth after she has discovered Dan's medical crimes and has renounced her affection for her husband. Yet Beth's second relationship with Pounce replicates the social chastisement she received in their initial courtship, and results in her finally being thrown out of her husband's home.

While Pounce is only marked as "effeminate" as a young man, he is a dandy in terms of his appearance, behaviour, and literary style when he emerges as an adult later in the novel. Beth spies him at a party hosted by the Kilroys in

London. After he flirts with her Beth discovers that, though married, he has come to the party with a young woman who, as Angelica explains, "improve[s] young men. She improves them away from their wives" (451). Pounce quickly transfers 155 his attentions to Beth, whom he does not recognize as his adolescent love. He calls on her when she is alone to offer unwanted and rather arrogant literary advice and scoffs at Beth's notion that the best works of literature all contain a

"purpose" (455). Pounce thus serves as a representation not only of the dandy- aesthete's perverse sexuality but also of his immoral, style-based fiction, in contrast to the New Woman's socially elevating, "art for man's sake" literature

(358 my emphasis). As Beth tries to find her own aesthetic, she is coached by Dr.

Galbraith and her New Woman friends Angelica and Ideala regarding French writers, who were heralded as the literary forefathers of the Decadents. In a statement conflating decadent writing with a dangerously effeminate manhood,

Galbraith tells Dan and Beth that the "lascivious authors" in France "are sapping the manhood of the country and degrading the womanhood by idealising self- indulgence and mean intrigue" (367). Many late-nineteenth-century critics thought that both decadence and New Woman fiction traced their "neuropathic" or "erotomanic" tendencies to the influence of French literature (Dowling, "The

Decadent" 441). Grand very consciously attempts to position New Woman fiction in contrast to such "degrading" writing. She makes direct reference to Wilde when

Ideala claims that the "art for art's sake, and style for style's sake ... authors end in the asylum, the prison, and the premature grave" (460).2I Pounce too is positioned within this group, and the falsity of his decadent pose is all the more striking as he is first introduced as an idealistic young man who hopes to be a sculptor.

21 Teresa Mangum notes that the "Aesthetes, or 'Stylists,' in the novel appear to be a compilation of Algernon Swinburne, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, and, in the references to early death and suicides, perhaps Earnest Dowson, Aubrey Beardsley, and John Davidson" (148). As with literature, Beth s and Pounce's views of love and sexuality also differ. Though Beth resists Pounce's literary advice and his sexual advances, he remains fascinated by her and continues his attempts to court the married Beth, culminating in a late-evening discussion that leaves him dejected. While Pounce proclaims his devotion to her, Beth is "more interested in him as a human specimen" (466). Again, Pounce's appearance mirrors his actions and he is marked as degenerate: "[A]n ignoble life had written prematurely on his face, and his attitude emphasized the attenuation of his body. He looked a poor, peevish, neurotic specimen" (477). As Angelique Richardson notes, Grand draws on eugenic feminism when she presents degeneration as a masculine narrative, while marking regeneration as feminine (Love and Eugenics 52). In addition to allowing for Beth's critical examination of Pounce as a "specimen," their lengthy conversation, in which they discuss passion, love, marriage, celibacy, and literature, further allows Grand to distinguish between the ideals of the decadent dandy and the New Woman. For example, though both figures were seen to jeopardize the survival of the race, Beth makes clear that she, in contrast to

Pounce, does not believe in celibacy (478).

Like Hemming, Pounce is both a dandy and an "Old Man" and his misogynistic values mark him as an inappropriate match for the New Woman.

Pounce echoes Ruskin when he tells Beth, "I have the greatest respect for woman.

I believe that her part in life is to fertilise the mind of man" (469). Beth reacts with humour, telling him that he is "old-fashioned" and wants to treat her like "a ballet-girl" (469). Beth does not struggle with her feelings in the manner of Mary, and she seems to regard the situation with a degree of detached humour. Notably, 157 however, she does talk to Pounce until very late in the night, and though this is in part because she wants to understand this "specimen" of dandyism, she also tries to instruct him morally in the manner of mid-Victorian heroines Helen Huntington and Gartha Wylde, as discussed in Chapter Two. Beth encourages Pounce to resist adultery against his unknowing wife: "If, being miserable, we are also disloyal, then we are insensibly degraded" (478). Though Beth attempts to rescue Pounce from his bad behaviour here, she comes to his aid in a more literal sense when she attempts to free him from a murder charge.22 Her support of Pounce, however, is the last straw for her suspicious husband, and she ends her relationship with both men by entering "the world alone, knowingly and willingly" (486).

Soon after Beth takes a room in London she meets painter Arthur Brock, the man who comes closest to qualifying for New Manhood in the novel. Brock rents a room in the same boarding house as Beth, and not long after they meet, she cares for him during a lengthy episode of rheumatic fever. Though Beth nurses

Brock at the expense of her own well-being, she enjoys having someone "she could respect and care for [be] dependent on her" (504). Like the male characters discussed in Chapter Two, Gilbert and Charles, Brock is an example of Elaine

Showalter's "feminine hero," a male character who undergoes a limited experience of dependency or powerlessness that is shown to be healthy and instructive (150). Beth revels in her "close association with a man of the highest

22 Dan tells Beth that Pounce has been charged with a murder on the very same night in which she stayed up talking with him, and Beth decides to go public with her late-night discussion in order to save Pounce. When Dan hears that Beth and Pounce sat up until four o'clock together, however, he is outraged, and tells her that she has compromised herself and that by going public she will "bring disgrace" on his name (485). "My wife must be above suspicion," he tells her (485). Nonetheless, Beth travels to London with the intent to save Pounce from the murder charge. Though she finally does not need to reveal Pounce's whereabouts - the Kilroys' butler beats her to it - Beth remains alone in London. 158 character and the most perfect refinement. She had never before realized that there could be such men, so heroic in suffering, so unselfish, and so good" (504-5).

Though Grand presents Brock as a feminist New Man - he tells Beth,

"Woman's work and man's work are just anything they can do for each other"

(505) - with his lengthy illness, he also possesses similarities to the effeminate

New Man of the popular press. In "Oscar Wilde, New Women, and the Rhetoric of Effeminacy," Lisa Hamilton presents the intriguing argument that Brock is a quasi-decadent or reformed decadent. He combines "the best parts of the virile athlete and an amoral Decadent aesthete" (248). She notes that he is physically similar to Pounce and is not "the vigorous masculine type hailed in Grand's non- fiction essays as the saviour of civilization, but a more moderate and unusual man" (249). For Hamilton, Grand presents the effeminate man both as villain and as problematic object of desire so as to shift focus from the charges of excessive masculinity that were directed towards the New Woman (249). While this may be the case for Pounce, this argument is less convincing for Brock as Grand does not problematize his character wholeheartedly. Though he is "an unusual man," he remains the hero of Beth's story. Brock demonstrates the positive influence of the

New Woman upon a man who requires a degree of reformation. Specifically, Beth and Brock's relationship allows Grand to articulate a fictional example of her social purist and eugenic feminist beliefs, of which the central goal was what

Angelique Richardson calls "civic motherhood" ("Eugenization" 228).

Both social purists and eugenicists relied on older models of separate sexes and argued that women were biologically designed to be morally superior

(Richardson, "Eugenization" 240). Eugenic feminism held that individuals should glory in self-sacrifice for the good of the community, and this was especially true for women, who were encouraged to choose their own partners (230). Many critics have been troubled by Beth's subservience and self-denial as she cares for

Brock during his illness. For example, Lyn Pykett remarks that their relationship shows that "individual rebellion is ultimately reincorporated into the traditional attributes of the proper feminine: duty, self-sacrifice and suffering" {Improper

Feminine 186) and Teresa Mangum finds Beth's relationship with Arthur a regression to the very feminine characteristics Grand so often rails against (189).

Yet notions of female duty and self-sacrifice, related to earlier-century feminine tropes, do not in fact contradict Grand's brand of feminism. Further, Brock's illness places him in an infantile position and forces him to become dependent upon Beth. His claim, "I don't feel much of a man lying here and letting you work for me," is precisely to the point (505). Though Beth's self-sacrifice is rather excessive (she donates her room to Brock in addition to selling her hair and clothing to buy food for him) her management of both of their dwindling finances still affords her a degree of control that she was unable to achieve with her husband.

Though their relationship is not physical, Beth loves Brock as she does no other man in the novel. What she feels for him is not passion, which can be

"cosmic and brutal," but love which, as she tells Pounce earlier in the narrative,

"is a great ethical force" (471). As Beth does not have a child herself, their relationship demonstrates her mothering qualities and her commitment to improving relations between the sexes. In "The New Aspect of the Woman

Question," Grand explains the New Woman's commitment to eradicating male 160 immorality as a form of mothering:

It is the woman's place and pride and pleasure to teach the child, and man

morally is in his infancy. There have been times when there was a doubt as

to whether he was to be raised or woman was to be lowered, but we have

turned that corner at last; and now woman holds out a strong hand to the

child-man, and insists, but with infinite tenderness and pity, upon helping

him up. (273)

Brock does not exhibit the immorality of either Dan or Pounce, but his illness serves as a metaphorical example of the "disease" from which New Women imagined men must be cured. Further, Brock undergoes a type of moral reform as he learns through his relationship with Beth that he must value women more highly. When he learns that Beth is married, he does not want to hear her story, which, for Beth, bespeaks "a doubt that made his generous expression an offence"

(511). This instance links him to the judgemental members of Beth's family who take Dan's side in their separation. Her brother Jim is particularly harsh to her, his judgement guided by his assumption that "any woman would misconduct herself if she has the chance and was not well watched" (490). Further, Brock's friend

Greshem Powell tells Brock that Beth is likely to take advantage of him. Brock is at least partially convinced by Powell and agrees to leave with him for a trip to the country, abandoning the woman who helped him. Only later does he learn of

Beth's sacrifices, and he chastises himself for being such a "blind fool" (514).

Though he must learn these lessons, Brock, unlike Dan and Pounce, possesses a latent potential for New Manhood.

The ending, in which Beth sees Brock riding towards her as "the Knight of 161 her long winter vigil," has unnerved critics who see Beth's feminist quest plot superseded by a romance narrative (527). Yet with this ending, Grand attempts to merge these two narratives. Though, like Dixon, she stresses the importance of female solidarity and vocation, at the end of The Beth Book Grand also points to the importance of reconciling women and men and of re-imagining the romance narrative. In New Woman Fiction, Ann Heilmann expresses strong dismay over

Grand's decision to include romance in the ending of the novel: "When Beth sees her Arthurian knight riding towards her, even Victorian readers must have felt the impulse to groan. Fortunately for us perhaps, not many relationships between

New Women and New Men are allowed to proceed to such a state of bliss" (97).23

Such resistance to The Beth Book's ending bespeaks a disconnect between

Grand's late-Victorian feminism and contemporary feminism, and ignores the fact that Grand wholeheartedly endorsed heterosexual partnership, including marriage.

Though Grand occupied a number of shifting positions in her various fictional and non-fictional writings, she was consistently committed to reconciliation between the sexes. "The New Woman can be hard on man," she writes in 1898, "but it is because she believes in him and loves him" ("The New Woman" 75). Given her strong support of motherhood and marriage (despite her own experiences), the ending is remarkable for its lack of conservatism and closure. As Teresa Mangum notes, the ending resists the marriage plot as "neither character fits comfortably into the social order the marriage plot affirms" (190).

23 Heilmann offers a more tempered reading in her later New Women Strategies (2004), where she suggests that Brock "reveals a New Man with human blemishes, though with none of the serious moral failings of the Old Man. Through this character, Grand seeks to outline the potential that might be possible in the relations between women and men once both have passed the test of maturity and purity" (83). 162

Mangum is one of the few critics who rightly calls attention to Brock's non-conventionality. As a middle-class American and an artist he is "hardly the hero of the traditional British marriage plot novel" (Mangum 190).24 Indeed, though many critics call attention to the Britishness of his name, specifically his connection to King Arthur,25 his Americanism is a key aspect of his character.

Beth celebrates Brock's nationality and the manly qualities associated with

America's growing power. When he leaves, she says, "Give my love to America - and may she send us many more such men" (512). As Beth is unable to obtain a divorce from Dan, it is difficult to imagine where their relationship might lead, yet the very act of writing a New Man is an important step in Grand's goal of rewriting the romance narrative.

In "The Modern Young Man" (1898), Grand states that women "are responsible for the subtle change which is already apparent in the views of society on the subject of what a man should be; by creating the demand for a higher type, they are ensuring the production of one" (1.60). That is, Grand imagined that by writing the fictional New Man and discussing this figure in her non-fiction writing, she would eventually see such a man emerge within society. Such correlation between fiction and concrete social change was a keynote of New

Woman writing. In The Story of a Modern Woman, Dixon is less committed to imagining a man of the future than she is to demonstrating the male figures that

24 Though as an artist Brock is connected to Pounce, he certainly has more in common with the young, idealistic man who wants to be a sculptor, than with the older Pounce who adopts a decadent pose. 25 For example, Lisa Hamilton notes that the "Britishness of [Arthur's] name is quite significant because it emphasizes that he is not French" ("Oscar Wilde" 249), and Terri Doughty says that "Arthur's name has all the chivalric and romantic associations of King Arthur" (192). Iveta Jusova's article on colonialism in The Beth Book makes no mention of Arthur's nationality. challenge the New Woman's ideals and pursuits. For Dixon and Grand, male doctors and dandies were figures who posed a very real threat to late-century feminists. They were also recognizable fictional types who could be situated as villains. Both novelists' choice to allow the deviant men to live and continue functioning in society - in contrast to their roles in earlier fiction - shows their desire to avoid pat fictional outcomes. Instead, Dixon and Grand show the impact of the sexual double standard still present at the end of the nineteenth century. 164

Chapter Four

Clerks and Cads in an Age of Transition: George Gissing's The Odd Women

and Thomas Hardy's The Well-Beloved

George Gissing's The Odd Women (1893) and Thomas Hardy's The Well-

Beloved (1897) offer alternatives to the New Woman's harsh critique of male sexuality and the one-dimensional characters that can result from such critiques.

In contrast to the deviant men and wronged women of The Story of a Modern

Woman and The Beth Book, Gissing's The Odd Women and Hardy's The Well-

Beloved depict somewhat weakened male characters who are beset by rumours of their sexual wrongdoing and feel threatened by the New Woman. The male characters in these novels exhibit sexual pathologies in more tempered forms than many of my earlier examples. Everard Barfoot and Edmund Widdowson from The

Odd Women, and Jocelyn Pierston from The Well-Beloved (as well as the somewhat different Pearston from Hardy's 1892 version, The Pursuit of the Well-

Beloved) may be understood as later-century versions of the aristocratic cad who exploits younger, impoverished women - exemplified by Dickens's Steerforth.

These earlier male characters desire relationships in which they dominate female characters; inequalities of class and age further exaggerate power imbalances between the men and women. Hardy and Gissing, while depicting a similar form of male dominance and exploitation, demonstrate that by the 1890s such behaviour is outmoded and in need of alteration. Their male characters differ from earlier examples of deviant men because they attempt to understand and negotiate their own sexual and erotic leanings. Such self-awareness makes these characters more like the male hero of

The Beth Book, Arthur Brock, than the villainous male characters of Grand's novel. Barfoot and Widdowson represent, respectively, the New Man and the Old

Man, while Pierston, whom Hardy traces from age twenty to sixty, represents, at different points in his life, both of these categories of late-nineteenth-century masculinity. In these novels, the New Man is defined by his modern views on relationships and marriage, confident sexuality, healthy body, and social and physical mobility. Alternatively, the Old Man embodies high Victorian values with respect to marriage and gender, and displays a lack of ease within the modern urban environment, as well as an aging body. While the Old Man may be identified by his values, he is also an older man; so that aging men in the novels often stand for outmoded Victorian patriarchy. Geographic movement figures ideologically in these narratives, too; the New Man's mobility demonstrates his narrative potential, while the Old Man's fear of movement reveals his narrative limitations in the late-nineteenth century.

Despite the differences between the New Man and the stagnant Old Man, neither is, on the whole, sexually or romantically successful. Barfoot and young

Pierston's desire for power, as well as their early sexual mistakes (Barfoot has an affair with a lower-class woman and Pierston deserts his fiancee) plague them throughout their romantic lives, and prevent them from engaging in fulfilling relationships with women. Alternatively, Widdowson and the older Pierston have difficulties in their relationships with younger women; these relationships ultimately fail when the women leave them for younger men, or attempt to do so.

These varying examples of dissatisfied couples gesture to the social and 166 narrative upheavals associated with what Gissing labelled a period of "sexual anarchy" (Letters 5.113). Rather than marry their ideal partners the men are forced to compromise. Barfoot and Pierston enter what appear to be passionless marriages, while Widdowson chooses to live with a male companion. The difficulties of maintaining romantic relationships lead the men in each novel to imagine altering or freezing time. What we witness instead are various forms of narrative disruption - expected or desired endings are derailed and stories are repeated. By betraying the inadequacy of late-Victorian novelistic forms to articulate fully these new characters, as well as to find a place for outmoded Old

Men, these novels anticipate the problems that would later encourage modernist writers to rewrite the novel radically, especially in regard to its plotting of masculine and feminine destiny.

In Masculine Identity in Hardy and Gissing (1991), Annette Federico also pairs The Odd Women and The Well-Beloved, arguing that Barfoot and Pierston offer examples of "the idealist, the romantic fantasizer who seeks the woman of his dreams" (16). This is one of the four male roles that Federico explores in her book, along with the seducer, the saint, and the realist. I am indebted to Federico's arguments in this early study of late-Victorian masculinities, especially her notion that Barfoot and Pierston are frustrated by their "growing inability to dominate over the women they desire" (82). Instead of focusing on these two characters as idealists or fantasizers, this chapter situates Barfoot, Pierston, and Widdowson primarily in terms of the New Man and the Old Man of the 1890s, as well as the long-established character of the rake. In the seventeen years since Federico's monograph has been published, criticism on masculinities within the writing of 167

Gissing and Hardy has expanded. I therefore align my arguments with a growing body of work that seeks to understand how these two authors contributed to new literary understandings of male character and sexuality, and how they related to their New Woman counterparts.

Gissing was heavily influenced by Dickens, and his novels build upon

Dickens's understandings of male competition and rivalry. John Goode has suggested that Gissing's major point of reference was Dickens (15), and Simon J.

James builds upon Goode's work by arguing that it was Dickens "against whom

Gissing had to define himself as an author" (36). "Elements of Dickens's plots, often disordered or parodied, recur throughout Gissing's novels," James suggests

(38). While parodying Dickensian plots, Gissing takes up the theme of male sexual and financial rivalry that so populated Dickens's novels. The intense and often physical male rivalries exhibited in Dickens's fiction, such as those between

Uriah Heep and David Copperfield, and Eugene Wrayburn and Bradley

Headstone, are more muted in Gissing's novels. Nonetheless, he frequently depicts two contrasting male characters in his novels - one competent, manly, and self-assured, the other isolated, emasculated, and uncertain. Jasper Milvain and

Edwin Reardon in New Grub Street (1891) perhaps offer the clearest example of this pairing, though Everard Barfoot and Edmund Widdowson are also a key example of such male opposites, a point that Widdowson painfully realizes. The intense jealousy and insecurity felt by characters such as Reardon and Widdowson demonstrates Gissing's interest in the way that men understood their own masculinity, as well as his interest in depicting the under-represented lives of lower-middle-class men. As he wrote to his friend and biographer Morely Roberts in 1895, "the most characteristic, most important, part of my work is that which deals with a class of young men distinctive of our time - well-educated, fairly bred, but without money" (Letters 5.296).

Hardy's novels also reveal a preoccupation with failed masculinity. Like

Gissing, Hardy was committed to representing men and women truthfully. As a contributor to "Candour in Fiction" (1890) Hardy protested against restrictions surrounding late-nineteenth-century fiction. He asserts:

Life being a physiological fact, its honest portrayal must be largely

concerned with, for one thing, the relations of the sexes, and the

substitution for such catastrophes as favour the false colouring best

expressed by the regulation finish that "they married and were happy ever

after," of catastrophes based on [the] sexual relationship as it is. (16-17)

Much to many conservative Victorian critics' dismay, Hardy's novels show an intense preoccupation with the "sexual relationship as it is." Michael Cronin has argued that the forces of society in Gissing's novels function much like nature in

Hardy's, both assuming "the guise of a malevolent will or hostile fate" (1).

Indeed, Hardy relies heavily on fate and genealogical forces in his fiction, but he

also demonstrates an awareness of the way that social forces such as poverty or lack of education affect his characters, and, in the case of his male characters such

as Jude Fawley and Jocelyn Pierston, of the way that such forces compromise their manhood.

Both authors, along with other late-century male novelists like George

' Gissing includes in this list of poverty-stricken men Reuben Elgar and Ross Mallard from The Emancipated (1890), Edwin Reardon, Harold Biffen, and Jasper Milvain from New Grub Street (1891), and Godwin Peak and John Edward Earwaker from Born in Exile (1892). 169

Moore and George Meredith, saw the contemporary debate on the New Woman as integral to the development of modern fiction. Although they do not articulate a specific feminist agenda, a number of Hardy's and Gissing's novels, such as Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), Jude the Obscure (1895), The Unclassed (1884), and

The Odd Women, with their focus on the sexual double standard and lower-class women, "were products not only of the new realism but also of the new feminism in British fiction" (Miller, Rebel Women 21). As Jane Eldridge Miller and more recently Amanda Claybaugh have detailed, Hardy was surprised and unnerved when critics equated Tess and Jude with New Woman fiction and the "novel with a purpose" {Letters 2.94). Yet that even these serious, male novelists were taking up such matters made clear that it was no longer possible to ignore the fact that feminism had the potential to change British literature in a wide-ranging and influential manner (Miller, Rebel Women 35). Further, as men themselves, Hardy

and Gissing were in a key position to explore the way that feminism was affecting masculinity. The two novels detail how the New Woman and changing notions of

gender relations challenged romantic relationships. These male characters, the rakish New Man Everard, the insecure former clerk Widdowson, and the visionary sculptor Pierston, all reveal frustration at their inability to possess the women of their desires, and such struggles force them to re-evaluate their sense of

masculine identity and their understandings of their own sexuality.

2 For instance, the reviewer for the Fortnightly Review said of Jude, "If we consider broadly and without prejudice the tone and scope of the book, we cannot but class it with the fiction of Sex and New Woman, so rife of late" (858). In a letter to Edmund Gosse, Hardy expressed his astonishment that the novel was being read as a "manifesto on 'the marriage question'" {Letters 2.93). In a letter to Florence Henniker written on the same day, he insisted the novel was a tragedy and could therefore not be considered "a novel with a purpose" (2.94). I. The Odd Women: Sexual Struggles and Domestic Compromises

The Odd Women is Gissing's most concerted effort to enter the debate on

New Womanhood, but his opinions on the feminist movement are often difficult to ascertain. Reflecting this ambivalence, David Grylls calls Gissing a "woman- worshipping misogynist with an interest in female emancipation" (141), while

Jacob Korg claims that Gissing was "an enemy of the Victorian myth of the inferiority of women, [and] he believed firmly that women were the intellectual and spiritual equals of men" (185). Though Gissing intended The Odd Women to depict the lives of unmarried working women, the novel foregrounds the romantic relationships between Monica and Edmund Widdowson, and Rhoda Nunn and

Everard Barfoot. In Widdowson and Barfoot, the novel offers two very different examples of how late-nineteenth-century men responded to the modern woman.

Though the New Woman was a relatively definable figure - in popular fiction, at least, she could be identified as a working, educated, smoking, bicycle-riding, liberal woman - the New Man was less clearly defined, largely because he was still a concept of the future. In an 1894 article entitled "The New Man," Grant

Allen, a contemporary of Gissing and Hardy, asserts, "the better New Women, it seems to me, will probably insist upon being supplied with the New Men, who will be the complement of their personality, the male of their species. It is to the

New Man, then, that the future belongs" (2). Even in The Odd Women, the New

Man remains a notion of the future, as Barfoot briefly, though significantly, flirts with this role, while Widdowson remains far from the ideals of the New Man.

Ultimately, Gissing fails to find a place for the New Man in his narrative. Instead, it is the New Woman who points to a hopeful future, even though she also 171 introduces romantic challenges.

The Odd Women begins by describing a characteristic example of mid-

Victorian masculinity in the character of Dr. Madden. As Mark Gibson relates, this section is presented historically (the year is 1872), and Dr. Madden is "almost a caricature of a mid-Victorian gentleman" (8). In a scene of ideal domesticity,

Dr. Madden reads a passage from Tennyson's "The Lotus-Eaters" to his daughters, though one which foretells changes to come: "Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast. / And in a little while our lips are dumb. / Let us alone. What is that will last? / All things are taken from us -" (5). Dr. Madden's introduction precedes that of another caricature of high Victorian manliness, Edmund

Widdowson, who is introduced after Dr. Madden's death and after the Madden sisters have left their idyllic family home.3 In the second chapter the novel jumps to 1887 and follows the lives of Alice, Virginia, and Monica Madden in their struggles to find employment and survive on their small incomes. Dr. Madden, though indirectly, is criticized for failing to prepare his daughters for the future by neither providing for them financially nor educating them properly. Though they are resigned to spinsterhood, Alice and Virginia are hopeful that their younger, more attractive sister, Monica, might be rescued from her life as a shopgirl with a happy marriage. Her eventual marriage to the much older Edmund Widdowson, however, does not bring the domestic fidelity that the sisters anticipate.

Throughout the novel, the lives of the three Madden sisters are contrasted to those of the more worldly feminists, Rhoda Nunn and Mary Barfoot, who run a

3 The other sisters die in a series of tragic, but near comic, circumstances. Gertrude dies of consumption, Martha is "drowned by the overturning of a pleasure-boat," and Isabel, after a bout of brain trouble and melancholia, drowns herself in a bath (11). 172 type-writing school for women. Everard Barfoot, "an advanced young man," is introduced through these characters (76). He is the cousin of Mary Barfoot, who it is later revealed has loved him for years, and he frequently visits the home of

Mary and her feminist disciple, Rhoda Nunn. Before his first visit, Mary warns

Rhoda that she "disapproves[s] of him," and the reader soon learns that he impregnated a lower-class girl, whose child later dies (77). Despite his deviant behaviour, Mary is willing to give her cousin a second chance, and his interactions with Mary and Rhoda provide Everard an education in the world of socially conscious, professional women.

Like Arthur Brock in The Beth Book, Everard Barfoot is a qualified New

Man with a hint of the dandy about him. In contrast to the hard-working feminists of the novel, Everard leads a life of languor, and his idle behaviour forces Mary to question his lack of "social usefulness" (82). Trained at Eton and Oxford,

Everard enters the engineering profession without much enthusiasm and ceases to work at age thirty. He insists that he is not "prompted to any business or profession"; instead, he is drawn to experiencing "an infinite series of modes of living" (82). Although Everard lacks social usefulness, his educational background and his knowledge of the world make him an intriguing figure for

Mary and Rhoda. Everard's talk of his travels on the Orient Express excites

Rhoda, and Monica Widdowson is quite right when she calls him a "man of the world" (227), an expression that implies that Everard is well-travelled, but also sexually experienced. Everard's desire to experience a variety of "modes of living" suggests a kind of anthropological pursuit, and aligns him with the New

Woman's challenge to conventional Victorian social habits and living arrangements.

Everard's meetings with Mary and Rhoda allow him to explore his sympathies with the feminist movement, yet these meetings also reveal that he may not be as "advanced" as his New Women friends. Everard tells Mary that while he is "strongly on [their] side," he despises "the great majority of women - the typical woman. All the more reason for my admiring the exceptions, and wishing them to become more common" (83-4). The exceptions that Barfoot admires are the New Women, while the "typical woman" is a "feebler female," unworthy of the modern man's attentions (84). Sounding much like his creation,

Gissing wrote in a letter to his friend Eduard Bertz in 1893, "I am driven frantic by the crass imbecility of the typical woman" (5.113). Everard is frustrated with the way that society has misinformed and improperly educated women. Yet since his anger often centers on the results of this system and not the system itself, he sometimes sounds misogynistic. For example, Everard posits his "own ideal of marriage [as involving] perfect freedom on both sides," but this ideal can be realized only after women are "civilized" (104). Everard's desires for female education and equal marriage are in line with many New Women sentiments, but he does not acknowledge the transformations that must take place amongst men in initiating change between the sexes. He claims justly, "[I] am full of contradictions" (83). Nonetheless, Everard's progressive leanings suggest that, for much of the novel, he is on his way to New Manhood. As Annette Federico explains, "unlike Widdowson and Bevis, Everard achieves a kind of heroic status in the novel by adventuring in the world of intelligent and economically independent female 'revolutionaries'" (91). While Everard has his shortcomings, Mary's assessment of him is verified. She tells Rhoda that her cousin is "a fine specimen of a man, after all, in body and in mind" (87).

Everard's potential as a New Man is tested when he and Rhoda engage in a romantic relationship. Initially, they take up each other as simply an interesting

"specimen" for examination. Everard "had enjoyed no opportunity of studying this type," and he insists that his concern for Rhoda is "purely intellectual" (101).

His desire to "make love to her" is encoded as a chance to "see further into her mind" and to test her strict feminist principles (126). Everard and Rhoda engage in various "tests" throughout the novel; they serve as attempts to uncover the other's intentions and limitations. While Everard wants to break down Rhoda's self-restraint, she positions herself as an objective examiner who wants to understand what makes Everard so sexually attractive to women. Rhoda regards him as a "sexual curiosity" (147). She admits that he "interested her, and not the less because of his evil reputation. Here was one of the men for whom women - doubtless more than one - had sacrificed themselves" (147). This pair is poised to offer challenges to one another, Everard to Rhoda's feminist principles, and

Rhoda to Everard's chauvinism.

When Rhoda learns the details of Everard's affair with Amy Drake, the woman who bore his child, her reaction is radically different from that of the New

Women in Dixon's and Grand's novels. Instead of rejecting him wholeheartedly, she considers to what extent Everard might actually be guilty. She muses that

"morally he was neither better nor worse than men in general," and she views

"with contempt the women who furnished such opportunities" (186). Everard himself does not feel guilty. Early in the novel, he reveals his history to his friend 175

Micklethwaite, explaining that Amy was a shopgirl and in the "ordinary course of things I shouldn't have met her" (95). Everard finds himself travelling on the same train as her and reveals that "Amy put herself in my way. . . . Amy managed to get me into the same carriage with herself, and on the way to London we were alone. You foresee the end of it" (95). Anxieties surrounding women travelling alone were rife during this period, and Everard's story seems to confirm the risks inherent in such mobility. As Josephine McQuail details, women travelling on the tube, trains, and omnibuses promoted conservative social commentators to voice a concern that female sexuality would be let loose in such situations (140).

Notably, both Amy Drake's and Virginia's degradation occur on the railway, and when Rhoda later sees Monica and Everard together at the railway station, she thinks they are having an affair (McQuail 145, 144). Everard calls attention to

Amy's public travel, lower-class status, and boldness as justifying his behaviour:

"She was a reprobate of experience . . . and it was too much to expect that I should rebuke the young woman and preach her a sermon" (95). Does Everard's insistence that he was not to blame cast him as a typical rake, or does his suggestion that Amy was responsible for her own actions reveal a modern understanding of sexual relations? Though it is difficult to view his rejection of the child as anything but callous, such ambiguities point to the difficulty in

Gissing's casting of Everard as both rake and New Man. The Saturday Review weighed in on this issue by complaining that Everard "is meant to be a charming and aristocratic (though rather wild) person: in reality he is a very pronounced cad" (460).

Gissing attempts to maintain a balance between the cad and the charming man, or New Man, in his characterization of Everard, perhaps because such a character figures as a challenge for a New Woman like Rhoda, who is attracted to his intelligence but unnerved by his past behaviour. In this way, Rhoda's relationship with Everard anticipates Dixon's representation of her heroine's struggle between independence and desire in The Story of a Modern Woman.

Furthermore, Gissing complicates Everard's character by rejecting the equation between sexual deviance and physical degeneracy detailed in most New Women novels. When Everard is first introduced, Gissing provides a lengthy description of his pleasing appearance: "He had a tall, muscular frame, and a head of striking outline, with large nose, full lips, deep-set eyes, and prominent eyebrows. . . .

Excellent health manifested itself in the warm purity of his skin" (77). In most

New Women novels, Everard's sexual past would be reflected on his body, as in the way that Dr. Strange's and Dr. Maclure's deviance is represented through their physical degeneracy. Everard, however, continues to figure as the physical representation of New Manhood in the novel, especially in contrast to Edmund

Widdowson whose awkwardness and "ungainliness" unfits him for his social position (165). To Deirdre David, "where Widdowson is bent, pale, and sexually inept, Everard is muscular, rosy, and sexually experienced" (129). So although

Everard's "evil behaviour" (147) could translate into physical contamination, his virile sexuality, when compared to Widdowson's inadequacy and Bevis's inexperience, actually makes him Gissing's most physically attractive

"specimen."

Despite his positive status, Everard's affair with a younger, lower-class girl signifies his desire for dominance within romantic relationships. Rhoda and 177

Everard's relationship is characterized by a struggle for power. Such conflicts challenge Everard's identification as a New Man and reveal his conventional tendencies. Near the end of the novel, Everard admits his fear that their romance could become "a long, perhaps bitter, struggle for predominance" (268). Critics have noted this aspect of their union. David Grylls comments that their relationship, as well as that between Monica and Widdowson, recounts a love affair evolving into a "power struggle" (174). Federico argues that "the struggle of wills is sexually exciting for Barfoot, as it is to Rhoda, and comprises the core of his fantasy, but eventually he retreats when the struggle becomes frighteningly real" (94). Federico identifies this clash of wills as sexual as their conflicts often assume a physical element. Their relative physical equality is problematic, as

Rhoda's physical prowess threatens to "unman" Everard. For example, when

Mary comments that Everard is a "fine specimen, after all, in body and in mind," she immediately jokes, "But what a poor, ineffectual creature compared with you,

Rhoda!" (87). When Everard and Rhoda are in Cumberland, he tells her, "You have so often pointed out what a paltry, ineffectual creature I am" (156). Even though Rhoda responds, "I don't remember ever using those words, or implying them," the narrative implies that Rhoda may physically dominate Everard (156).

Physical domination over Rhoda, however, is what Everard desires; in fact, the first sensual encounter between them is one of violence. As Everard "saunter[s] about the neighbourhood" on a Saturday afternoon, he unexpectedly finds Rhoda walking through the gardens of Chelsea Hospital. When Rhoda tries to leave

Everard, he detains her by holding her hand with force. The sensation is "so pleasant," he relates, "that he could not at once release her" (128). He is 178 encouraged by her cheek, which had "coloured, ever so slightly" (128).4

Everard's desire is not only for physical domination, but possession of

Rhoda. He wishes to re-situate the New Woman in a more feminine, subordinate position. In "The Cultural Work of the Type-Writer Girl," an article that examines various type-writing characters of the fin-de-siecle, Christopher Keep writes that the progress of The Odd Women "is largely marked by its efforts to reconfigure the 'masculine' typist as a stereotypical female yearning for the love of a good man" (414). While Rhoda never becomes a completely "stereotypical female," it is clear that should she choose to remain with Everard, she would be forced to reconcile her feelings and her ideals. Everard proposes a free union to Rhoda, but as "a test only" (261). He believes that her consent to this union would test her feminist principles, but also, more importantly, her devotion and surrender to him.

Yet because of Everard's disreputable past, Rhoda is unable to trust such a union, and she insists that "[c]ustom is too strong for us" (266). Their decision to marry, though, is unsatisfactory. Everard feels as though Rhoda has "made him her obedient slave" in convincing him to choose marriage (268). A letter from Mary, which implies that Everard has been romantically involved with Monica

Widdowson, rescues them from their uneasy engagement. Although the claim is false, both Rhoda and Everard display characteristic resoluteness. She demands an explanation from him, and Everard, insulted by her lack of trust in him, refuses to attempt any explanation of the events. Everard continues their rhetoric of

"testing," urging Rhoda to let him "test [her] sincerity" (275). Such pleas do not

4 Another example of Everard's desire for physical domination of Rhoda is evident in his assertion that it "would delight him to enrage Rhoda, and then to detain her by strength, to overcome her senses, to watch her long lashes droop over the eloquent eyes" (143). help, and they part on strained terms. Everard meets Rhoda in London later in the narrative and this time he initiates the marriage proposal; Rhoda, however, has adopted the view that "sexual love had become, and would ever be, to her an impure idea, a vice of blood," and she refuses (281). Like the reunion between

Mary and Hemming in The Story of a Modern Woman, Everard and Rhoda's final meeting shows Gissing's disruption of the common trope whereby the lovers' reunion, as in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Jane Eyre, augurs a marital resolution.

Rhoda's solitude at the end of the novel is bittersweet, but need not be interpreted as tragic. As Erin Williams claims, it is difficult to understand why so many critics read Rhoda's decision not to marry as defeat (271). Everard's final action, his marriage to Agnes Brissenden, has also puzzled critics. Agnes's family displays a "quiet liberality" and they are "not in declared revolt against the order of things" (319). Agnes, Everard tells Mary, is "delightfully feminine" (287) and subdues his "masculine self-assertiveness" (320). Federico argues that Everard

"reverts to orthodoxy without even understanding the superficiality of his liberal pose" (20-1). Indeed, Gissing undermines Everard by having him opt for sexual and social security, and he disappears from the narrative after he performs his conjugal "duty" (327). The Brissendens are "wealthy and cultured people who seek no prominence, who shrink from contact with the circles known as 'smart,' who possess their souls in quiet freedom" (319). David argues that the

Brissendens' form of liberality, rather than revolutionary isolation, facilitates social progress (137). Nonetheless, they appear apathetic and isolationist: "They lived placidly; refraining from much that the larger world enjoined" (319). 180

Gissing thus fails to find a place for the New Man, as Everard abandons

New Manhood in favour of quiet domesticity. Indeed, Everard's wife's name recalls the heroine of David Copperfield, a character who invokes ideals of wifely influence and domestic bliss. Earlier in the novel, Everard is touched by the

Micklethwaites' Dickensian ideal of marriage, but claims that it is not his ideal:

"If he tried it, even with a woman so perfect, he would perish of ennui. For him marriage must not mean repose, inevitably tending to drowsiness, but the mutual incitement of vigorous minds" (176). This second ideal is met in his relationship with Rhoda, but Everard revises his principles by the end of the novel. In her 1893 review of The Odd Women, Clementina Black voices her frustration that Everard and Rhoda cannot resolve their problems, since she feels "that between two persons so clear-sighted, so outspoken, and so fully aware of the pitfalls of married life, the natural end would be a real marriage" (155). Sally Ledger has claimed that it is as if free unions, like the kind that Everard and Rhoda consider, could be projected in a Utopian way but not fully realized in literary language in the late-nineteenth century (186). Yet neither a marriage nor a free union is possible for Rhoda and Everard, and Gissing disrupts the expected ending between these two characters, playing with conventional novelistic closure by leaving Rhoda unmarried, and marrying Everard offstage. Despite their final dissolution, Everard and Rhoda are the most positive, dynamic representation of a couple within the novel.

In contrast to Everard and Rhoda, Edmund and Monica Widdowson are

5 In her introduction to the novel, Arlene Young suggests that the Micklethwaites are "suited to another era and a less emphatic brand of realism. [Their] marriage cannot be a model for the future" (14). 181 doomed from the beginning of their union. Widdowson, a lower-middle-class man who was once a clerk, inherits a substantial income upon his brother's death.

Critics disagree as to how much sympathy Gissing affords Widdowson, but most would find, along with David Grylls, that Widdowson is simultaneously repulsive and pitiful (171). While Barfoot is a "man of the world" (227), Widdowson is an uncomfortable and awkward man with "small knowledge of the world" (236).

When he marries the much younger Monica Madden, her need for independence clashes with his intense desire for control: "Never had it occurred to Widdowson that a wife remains an individual, with rights and obligations independent of her wifely condition" (152). He is the quintessential mid-Victorian conservative, preaching Ruskinian views that are clearly dated by the 1890s, and certainly dated for his young wife, who was accustomed to a degree of freedom before her marriage.

Though Widdowson has ceased to work by the time he meets Monica, his previous life as a clerk continues to determine his character. As Uriah Heep's painful story in David Copperfield relates, the life of a clerk was often an unhappy one for the Victorian man.6 Clerks belonged in the lower middle classes socially and financially, but were permitted limited entry into the world of the privileged classes, allowing them a taste of a life they would likely never attain. As Robert

Selig points out, in The Odd Women a clerkship ironically signifies a feminist salvation for the women trained by Rhoda and Mary, while it is a "living hell" for

5 John Carey explains in The Intellectuals and the Masses that "[b]etween 1860 and 1910 the section of the middle and lower-middle class employed in commerce, banks, insurance, and real estate increased markedly in all Western European countries, as a result of the emergence of the imperialist and international economy of the late nineteenth century" (58). On clerks and lower- middle-class masculinity more generally, see also Arlene Young's Culture, Class and Gender in the Victorian Novel. 182 men like Widdowson (20). Widdowson explains to Monica:

Nowadays, if I happen to be in the City when all the clerks are coming

away from business, I feel an inexpressible pity for them. I feel I should

like to find two or three of the hardest driven, and just divide my

superfluous income between them. A clerk's life - a life of the office

without any hope of rising - that is a hideous fate! (43)

Gissing depicts two other clerks in the novel, one of whom Widdowson does rescue at the end of the novel, Widdowson's friend Newdick, and Mr. Bullivant,

an irritating clerk who works with Monica. In The Rise of the Office Clerk in

Literary Culture, Jonathan Wild identifies two types of clerks in Gissing's fiction,

"the pathetic, doomed victim, or the pretentious encroacher" (45), and Newdick

and Bullivant occupy these two opposing roles in The Odd Women. While

Bullivant is reminiscent of Uriah Heep with his unattractive appearance (he has

"an unhealthy countenance, with a red pimple on the side of his nose" [26]) and

the obsessive attention he pays to Monica, Newdick, "a musty and nervous City

clerk" who shuns foreign travel, has much in common with his more financially

stable friend (121).

Widdowson's inheritance alters his financial life, but does not change his

social prospects. He admits, "I haven't made any new friends," and his social

isolation is what leads to his unusual meeting with Monica Madden (44). Without

any family to introduce them, the two meet on a bench at Battersea Park where

Widdowson strikes up a conversation with the young woman. Monica is unsure of

the appropriateness of such an encounter, and she leaves him "ashamed and

confused" (33). Yet without any opportunities to encounter men of her own class, 183 she continues to see him. Part of Monica's difficulty is that Widdowson's appearance leaves her unsure of both his age and his class status. She evaluates him on their first meeting: "His utterance fell short of perfect refinement, but seemed that of an educated man. And certainly his clothes were such as a gentleman wears. He had thin, hairy hands, unmarked by any effect of labour. . . .

Was it a bad sign that he carried neither gloves nor a walking stick?" (32). As

Sally Ledger claims, he is an "unclassed figure in the city" (166). Widdowson later admits to Monica that he is "not suited for society. If I hadn't met you in that strange way, by miracle, I should never have been able to marry" (167).

Widdowson's marriage to Monica is not the escape from isolation and into domestic happiness that he hopes for, as it reveals a clash between early- and late-

Victorian values. Their wedding resembles a funeral more than marriage celebration. "Depression was manifest on every countenance," Widdowson has a

"gloomy look," and Monica cries and has a "ghastly" face (121). Even before their marriage, Widdowson is desperately jealous of his young fiancee and disapproves of her walking around London alone. His disapproval is of course ironic since he would never have met Monica had she not been comfortable travelling in the city by herself (Ledger 165). They clash once married as Monica expects to continue her independent ways, while Widdowson, revealing his high

Victorian principles, expects her to remain at home. He takes it for granted "that it was his [duty] to direct, hers to be guided" (154). He orders Monica to read John

Ruskin and insists that "a woman ought never to be so happy as when she is looking after her home" (162). He is, as Arlene Young notes, "convention gone mad" ("Introduction" 13). Though Monica is not a New Woman in the manner of 184

Rhoda, she practices the independence of a modern woman, and thus challenges her controlling husband, who is made "anxious, suspicious, [and] irritable" by her behaviour (153).7 Widdowson becomes obsessively, and almost dangerously, jealous. He exclaims to Monica, "I would rather you were dead than that you should cease to love me!" (167), and when he confesses his fears to his sister-in- law she insists, "The Othello business won't do" (330). Widdowson's jealous behaviour arises not simply because Monica does not act the way he had imagined, but because his inability to control her and make her happy makes him agonizingly insecure. His marriage comes to define his manhood since, as Susan

Colon notes, "having failed to 'be a man' professionally, he is all the more desperate to 'be a man' conjugally" (448-9).

Through Widdowson, Gissing thus reveals the painful insecurity of a man who fails to find success either socially or sexually. His sexual inadequacy is alluded to by Gissing: "On the wedding-tour in Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset - it lasted about seven weeks - Monica learnt, among other things less agreeable, that her husband was generous with money" (151 my emphasis). As she realizes that she does not love him, Monica finds it harder and harder to respond to his affections. Much like Beth in The Beth Book, when her husband embraces her,

Monica "struggle[s] with a sense of shrinking, of disgust," which Widdowson does not fail to notice (200). Further, Monica attacks his manhood, telling him that his restrictive behaviour is "very weak, very unmanly" (201). He imagines

7 Sally Ledger argues that Monica is even more threatening than the New Women of the novel, Mary and Rhoda: "Given the havoc that Monica wreaks on conventional marriage, and the emphasis placed on the disruption to gender codes she causes by occupying the public places of the city, it is odd how little Rhoda Nunn and Mary Barfoot, the New Woman of the novel, pose a challenge either to marriage or to the masculine public arena" (167-8). 185 her comparing him with other men, and refuses to take her to the Continent for that very reason: "Above everything he dreaded humiliation in Monica's sight; it would be intolerable to have her comparing him with men who spoke foreign languages, and were at home on the Continent" (158). In particular, he is threatened by Everard Barfoot, who is exactly this kind of worldly man:

"Everard's bearing, the something aristocratic in his countenance and his speech, the polish of his manner, especially in formal converse with women, from the first gave offence to Widdowson's essentially middle-class sensibilities" (236). When

Widdowson and Monica travel to Guernsey, he is unable to demonstrate the

"polish" he witnesses in Everard. They meet some of Monica's London acquaintances unexpectedly, and Widdowson cannot hide his awkwardness: "[T]o be graceful in a high wind is difficult for any man; the ungainliness with which he returned Mrs. Cosgrove's greeting could not have been surpassed" (165).

The shame of being compared to other men is represented in other novels by Gissing, most notably New Grub Street, which registers the humiliations of pained writer, Edwin Reardon, as well as those of writer Harold Biffen. Reardon is not successful commercially and is unable to support his upper-class wife,

Amy, and their baby. Though Reardon already feels the "unmanliness in his own position" (185), his wife reinforces this by calling him "unmanly" and telling him,

"You are much weaker than I imagined" (46). She often compares him with successful writer Jasper Milvain, whom she marries after her husband's death.

"Milvain's temperament is very different from mine," Reardon attempts to explain, "He is naturally light-hearted and hopeful; I am naturally the opposite"

(47). Also, in contrast to Amy's foppish, well-dressed brother, John Yule, 186

Reardon feels "himself a poor, pitiful creature, and hated the well-dressed man who made him feel so" (242). Near the end of the novel, Gissing directly addresses the reader's reactions to the defeated Reardon and Biffen, who both die shortly after, Reardon from illness and Biffen from suicide:

The chances are that you have neither understanding nor sympathy

for men such as Edwin Reardon and Harold Biffen. They merely provoke

you. They seem to you inert, flabby, weakly envious, foolishly obstinate,

impiously mutinous, and many other things. You are made angrily

contemptuous by their failure to get on. . . .

But try to imagine a personality wholly unfitted for the rough and

tumble of the world's labour-market. From the familiar point of view these

men are worthless; view them in possible relation to a humane order of

society, and they are admirable citizens. Nothing is easier than to condemn

a type of character which is unequal to the coarse demands of life as it

suits the average man. (413)

In Aaron Maltz's opinion, Gissing includes this passage to demonstrate the realism of these characters, to show that they should not be regarded as merely satirical. In this moment, then, Gissing emphasizes that "we cannot evaluate a society's failings and deficiencies without witnessing how people must live within it" (Maltz 233). Maltz's point may be extended to Widdowson's characterization.

The case of Widdowson reveals not so much society's failings as it does the growing pains of a society in transition. Instead of regarding him as simply a parody, readers might take Gissing's suggestion from this earlier novel to grasp the reality of such a character and his situation, and perhaps afford Widdowson 187 further sympathy.

Monica, however, is unable to accept the reality of her husband's temperament. She endeavours to escape her unhappy marriage and a husband who is "unequal to the coarse demands of life" by attempting to discover her masculine ideal in fiction. She borrows books from Mudie's Lending Library and is influenced by their messages (58). Her desire for romance leads her not to

Everard Barfoot, who Widdowson believes is his competition for his wife's affections, but to the young singer and composer, Bevis. When Monica asks

Bevis, with whom she has kept up a relatively innocent flirtation, to elope with her to Europe, he is unprepared for such a proposal: "The unmanliness of his tone was so dreadful a disillusion. She had expected something so entirely different - swift, virile passion, eagerness even to anticipate her desire of flight, a strength, a courage to which she could abandon herself, body and soul" (231). Bevis's reaction reveals "virile passion" to be only a figment of the female imagination.

His inaction stops their potential affair, preventing Monica from becoming a romantic (if sinning) heroine.

Widdowson, unable to trust his wife, is also reduced to secrecy, and he hires a detective to track Monica's movements in the city. His need of a detective is the climax of his obsessive stalking of Monica throughout the novel. In George

Gissing, the Working Woman, and Urban Culture, Emma Liggins argues that

8 Widdowson is frequently called a parody by critics. Erin Williams says he is a "parody of a gentleman" (269), and Arlene Young notes, "Barfoot and Widdowson could be taken to represent, in rather broad terms, the flaneur and the failed or parodic flaneur respectively" ("Character" 51). Young argues elsewhere, however, that Widdowson, just like Maurice Hilliard in Eve's Ransom (1895), is a complex and profoundly interesting character, that is, "interesting as something other than the butt of a joke that assumes an identification between the narrator and the reader in opposition to the characters who inspire their mirth" ("Money and Manhood" 18). 188

Gissing's representation of male stalking demonstrates that women no longer require male protection, "at a time when the out-dated system of chaperonage was dying out" (xxxi). That is, stalking in Gissing's 1890s novels reveals more "about men's anxieties and inadequacies as (potential) sexual partners than about unacceptable kinds of female behaviour" (122). Monica's flirtation with Bevis is admittedly "unacceptable," but Liggins's comments reveal that Widdowson's actions are also objectionable. Since Bevis and Barfoot reside in the same building, Widdowson's detective brings him back information that reinforces his assumptions - assumptions that eventually sever the relationship between

Widdowson and Monica, as well as that between Everard and Rhoda. Monica's pregnancy only offers Widdowson more evidence of her infidelity. His unwillingness to claim paternity reveals, in addition to his blinding jealousy, his feelings of impotence and his firm break with modern society. He can have no connection with this new child, who will become a woman of the twentieth century. Monica is also not allowed to sustain a relationship with her daughter; instead she dies in childbirth, "the classic fate of a (would-be) adulteress" (Ledger

169).

Perhaps surprisingly for a man so out of his time, Widdowson does not die at the end of the narrative. Unlike New Grub Street's Edwin Reardon, who dies of a lengthy illness brought about by poverty, and Harold Biffen, who commits suicide, Widdowson survives. Again, Gissing disrupts the expected endings available to such a character (death, remarriage, or seclusion) by having him live with his friend Newdick. The narrator relates, "Fearful of solitude, [Widdowson] proposed to his friend Newdick that they should live together, he, as a man of substance, bearing the larger share of the expense" (335). Thus, both Everard and

Widdowson exhibit, in the end, a desire for quiet domesticity. Like Rhoda and

Mary, Widdowson achieves domestic life in a same-sex pairing. Widdowson seems to realize finally that he is out of touch with the modern world, and he opts for a quiet life with Newdick, who exhibits a similar fear of high society and travel. Both Widdowson and Barfoot, then, escape from their modern women and retreat to domesticity.

An anonymous reviewer in the Nation commented on the way that the novel forecasts, but does not fully depict, the relationship between the New Man and New Woman: "Mr. Gissing points to the voluntary relation between men and women only as the far-off ideal consummation of human striving towards self- knowledge, self-reverence and self-control. But the time is not yet" (31). Indeed,

Gissing is not interested in ideals, but in realities. He exhibits a commitment to realistic depiction throughout his writing that frustrated some critics. Archdeacon

Frederick W. Farrar, reviewing The Nether World (1889), objected to Gissing's desire to depict reality as he saw it: "That 'such things are' is not, in itself, an adequate excuse for dragging them into publicity" (qtd. in Coustillas and

Partridge 141). Other critics suggested that Gissing's unhappy endings were not always "realistic" depictions. Clementina Black commented of The Odd Women,

"It would almost seem as if hatred of the conventional 'happy ending' had led Mr.

Gissing to that same sacrifice of truthful portraiture into which so many of his predecessors have been betrayed by their love of it" (155). For Black, Gissing's endings veer too far away from Dickensian sentimentality to remain realistic.

Gissing, however, considered unromantic conclusions to be "truthful." When 190

Gissing finished Isabel Clarendeon (1886), he wrote to his brother Algernon, "I have done my utmost to make the story as realistic as possible. The ending is as unromantic as could be, & several threads are left to hang loose; for even so it is in real life; you cannot gather up & round off each person's story" (5.328). While

Dickens kills off the rakish Steerforth and imprisons the devious Uriah Heep,

Gissing's counterparts, Everard and Widdowson, receive rather ambiguous endings as their creator refuses to "round off their stories.

II. The Well-Beloved: Romantic Repetitions

While in The Odd Women Gissing rewrites Dickensian plots of masculine destiny and conventional Victorian "happy endings," in The Well-Beloved Hardy extends the process of revising and rewriting even further. In this novel Hardy too is influenced by earlier Victorian novels, most noticeably Wuthering Heights? but he also offers two versions of the same narrative (published in 1892 and 1897), and each version rewrites a similar love story three times. The complexity of this novel's two versions and its significant revisions in the 1897 edition demands a short summary before it can be examined analytically.

The story was serialized in 1892 as The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved and published with revisions in 1897 as The Well-Beloved. Hardy's earlier title emphasizes the hero's pursuit, while the later title emphasizes the object status of the desired women. The novel recounts the life of sculptor Jocelyn Pierston

(Pearston in the first edition) in his quest for love and his ideal partner. Though the 1897 edition is considered the definitive version, the date of 1892 is often

9 Tess O'Toole highlights many similarities between the two novels, including a remote locale, inbred communities, and erotic pairings verging on the incestuous {Genealogy 130). 10 The serial was printed in the Illustrated London News from 1 October to 17 December 1892. 191 misapplied to the work, with the consequence that Jude the Obscure seems to be

Hardy's final novel.

In both versions of The Well-Beloved, Hardy divides the story into three sections, "A Young Man of Twenty," "A Young Man of Forty," and "A Young

Man of Sixty." Pierston's "curse" is that his object of desire, his Well-Beloved, moves constantly from woman to woman. He insists, however, that though he frequently changes the object of his devotion, he always remains loyal to the

Well-Beloved: "To his Well-Beloved he had always been faithful; but she had had many embodiments. Each individually known as Lucy, Jane, Flora Evangeline, or what-not, had been merely a transient condition of her. He did not recognize this as an excuse or defence, but as a fact simply" (184). Throughout the novel, she embodies five key women: A vice Caro, Marcia Bencomb, Nichola Pine-A von,

Avice Caro the second (Avice's daughter), and A vice Caro the third (Avice's grand-daughter). The manner in which Pierston's Well-Beloved emerges in three successive generations of women, all named Avice Caro, structures the three sections of the novel. Pierston's desire to repeat reveals his obstinacy; that is, his idealization of later versions of the same woman reveals that he is stuck in an outdated masculine role.

The 1892 serialization, The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved, begins when

Pearston returns to his childhood village as a "sculptor of budding fame" (181).

He surprises himself by asking Avice, his childhood friend, to marry him. When

Avice doesn't meet Pearston the evening before he is to leave for London due to an innocent misunderstanding, he encounters another woman, Marcia Bencomb.

By jilting Avice in favour of Marcia, Pearston makes a decision that influences the rest of the narrative and all of his later romantic relationships. Pearston rashly marries Marcia, but they decide to separate and Marcia promises never to return to England. He later has a brief flirtation with an elegant society widower,

Nichola Pine-Avon, before encountering the daughter of his first love, Avice. The narrative here becomes more perverse, as Pearston reveals his desire first for

Avice the second, and then for the even younger Avice the third, the original

Avice's granddaughter. Pearston hopes to enlarge the mind of Avice the second, an uneducated laundress, and he takes her to live with him in London. Upon discovering that she is already married, he returns her promptly to the island and reunites her with her young husband. Rather surprisingly, years later she encourages a relationship between her young daughter and Pearston, now aged sixty. He marries the third Avice (a bigamous marriage since Marcia is still alive).

Pearston realizes after marrying her that Avice loves a young man, Henri Leverre, and he attempts to commit suicide by drowning, only to be rescued. In a twist of fate, he is nursed by Marcia, now an old woman, and is horrified by the contrast between her and the young bride he remembers.

The less sensational 1897 novel has Pierston marrying only once in old age. In the 1897 novel, Pierston also deserts the first Avice for Marcia Bencomb, but they instead live together, unmarried, for a short time. The novel recounts

Pierston's flirtation with Mrs. Pine-Avon, and his attempts to woo the second

Avice. The key differences between the two narratives emerge at the end. Instead of marrying Avice the third, Pierston is deserted by her directly before their wedding. His attempted drowning in the 1892 serial is rewritten as a description of Avice and her lover, Henri, escaping from the island. After reuniting with the 193 widowed Marcia in old age (in both versions she is Henri Leverre's step-mother),

Pierston and Marcia decide to marry, and their companionable marriage concludes the novel. By having Pierston marry only once late in life, Hardy's second version of Pierston's story abandons the theme of mistaken marriage, which he would explore even more extensively in Jude the Obscure. Hardy's revisions thus distance the 1897 novel from condemnations of the legal institution of marriage, and, instead, the later version offers "a relatively pure mediation of the nature of desire" (Kucich 225)." My discussion throughout will concentrate on the final edition of The Well-Beloved, the 1897 novel.

The Well-Beloved is a novel imbued with an awareness of its own fictiveness. Like Gissing, Hardy revealed a desire to be an artist "faithful" to life, and yet The Well-Beloved marks a departure from straight-forward realism and engages with genres such as fantasy and the fairy tale ("Candour" 18). In the 1912

Wessex Edition the novel is paired with four other works labelled "Romances and

Fantasies." The inclusion of the photographs as frontispieces to all the works, however, seems incompatible with such a fantastic tale. The frontispiece of the

1912 edition of The Well-Beloved is a photograph of the Isle of Slingers, actually the Isle of Portland, where much of the action takes place, and the Anniversary

Edition of Hardy's works (a 1920 American reprint of the Wessex Edition) contains what purports to be a photograph of the cottage of Avice Caro. J. Hillis

Miller notes that the "clash of incompatible features, mimetic realism in the mode

" In Thomas Hardy: A Biography, Michael Millgate suggests that Hardy's changes, which render the book version of the novel less outspoken and less overtly hostile to marriage, were in part a desire to make the volume less offensive to both newspaper reviewers and to his wife, Emma (383). of representation and fantasy in the action, has led some readers to dismiss the book" (Fiction 149). Indeed, The Well-Beloved is absent from many critical studies of Hardy's fiction. Despite the unusual qualities of the novel, it exhibits thematic similarities to many of Hardy's other novels, especially Jude the

Obscure and Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and offers a terminal point for the problematic representation of male sexuality and desire that absorbed Hardy throughout his career.

On the one hand, The Well-Beloved seems to resist historicization. Much of the action takes place on the remote Isle of Slingers, and is thus associated with primitivism and stasis. The reappearance of Avice, in her many variations, and

Pierston's apparent agelessness (at least until the end of the novel), lend it its fantastical quality. Yet Hardy's focus on male sexuality and control places the novel within contemporary debates on the changing relationship between the sexes. While the 1897 critic for The World situated The Well-Beloved within debates over candour in fiction by labelling the novel an example of Hardy's

"sex-mania" (qtd. in Millgate 382), the anonymous Athenaeum reviewer saw

Pierston as simply an exaggerated everyman with "a temperament which we believe to be that of the great majority of male human beings" (471). Hardy echoes this idea in his 1912 preface to the novel, when he describes Pierston as a character who "gave objective continuity and a name to a delicate dream which in

12 In fact, the serial emerged when publishers Tillotson and Son rejected the serialization of Tess for moral reasons, and Hardy promised them "something light" in its place ("On 'The Well- Beloved"' 133). Instead of Tess (originally called Too Late Beloved, or Too Late, Beloved), Hardy offered Tillotson The Well-Beloved. Patricia Ingham is one of a number of critics who have highlighted the thematic similarities of Hardy's final novels. In "Provisional Narratives: Hardy's Final Trilogy," she argues that The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved (1892), Jude the Obscure (1895), and The Well-Beloved (1897), should be understood as a trilogy due to their common thematic elements. 195 vaguer form is more or less common to all men" (vii). In The Life and Works of

Thomas Hardy, he writes that "underlying the fantasy followed by the visionary artist [is] the truth that all men are pursuing a shadow, the Unattainable, and I venture to hope that this may redeem the tragic-comedy from the charge of frivolity" (304). Yet Pierston's story is certainly an exaggerated form of this

"truth." Further, Pierston's pursuit of variations of the same woman becomes problematic as the nineteenth century progresses. Though there are no overt New

Women in the manner of Rhoda Nunn and Mary Barfoot, the various Avices represent symbolically the development of women throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. In this way, they contrast with Pierston, who becomes an Old

Man unable to adapt to social progression. By keeping Pierston's ideals static,

Hardy creates a romantic experiment that, though doomed to failure, represents the larger problems facing male-female relationships in an age of transition and sexual revolution.

In the first section, "A Young Man of Twenty," the narrator asks the reader to remember that the date, "though recent in the history of the Isle of

Slingers, was more than forty years ago" (190). The story, then, presumably begins in the early 1850s and ends in the 1890s. Though it is anachronistic to label young Pierston a New Man, he displays an awareness of his desires that suggests this later-century figure. Hardy thus creates a lineage for the New Man and Victorian masculinity more generally through the figure of Pierston. Like

Everard, Pierston displays an ease of social and physical mobility, and he leaves his origins in rural England to enter genteel urban society. He is an artist, but he receives support from his father, a successful stone-merchant. After his father's death, he is able to add eight thousand pounds to the twelve thousand in his possession, making him a man of independent means. Though born and raised on a remote peninsula, "the home of a curious and well-nigh distinct people, cherishing strange beliefs and singular customs," Pierston moves with ease into the drawing rooms of London ("Preface" 173). When he remerges in the Isle, he is dressed like "a young man from London and the cities of the Continent" (179).

While the Avices show a gradual movement away from the ancient Isle of

Slingers (Avice the first presumably never leaves, Avice the second travels to

London with Pierston though returns soon after, and Avice the third escapes the

Isle with her lover), Pierston thrives in these two very different environments and social circles.

Like many potential New Men, such as Perry Jackson in Dixon's The

Story of a Modem Woman and Arthur Brock in Grand's The Beth Book, Pierston is an artist. Pierston is commercially successful, but his success seems to come about by accident, not "on account of any care or anxiety for such a result" (211).

His "spring of emotion" following his separation from Marcia results in inspired creations, and he "prosper[s] without effort" and becomes a member of the Royal

Academy (211). Yet Pierston's work is not enough to satisfy him personally, and without a lover he is directionless:

[Recognitions of this sort, social distinctions, which he had once coveted

so keenly, seemed to have no utility for him now. By the accident of being

a bachelor, he was floating in society without any soul-anchorage or shrine

that he could call his own; and, for want of a domestic centre round which

honours might crystallize, they dispersed impalpably without accumulating and adding weight to his material well-being. (211)

Pierston obtains joy through the "study of beauty," which aids his artistic pursuits but only reinforces his desire for his Well-Beloved (211). That is, his aesthetic ideals can only be satisfied by the incarnation of the Well-Beloved by an actual female.

Pierston's ease of mobility allows him to meet various types of women, but the women of the Isle continue to fascinate him. It is difficult to label

Pierston's four key lovers (Mrs. Pine-Avon plays a secondary role) as definitively

New Women, but they all demonstrate a degree of knowledge or sexual awareness that suggests that Hardy, through these characters, at least explores the values associated with New Womanhood. Though a local girl, Avice the first is quite accomplished; she recites poetry to large crowds, plays the piano, sings, and draws. Pierston observes that "every aim of those who had brought her up had been to get her away mentally as far as possible from her natural and individual life as an inhabitant of a peculiar island" (186). Despite her modern accomplishments, Avice's tie to old island beliefs leads to the dissolution of their relationship. When Pierston innocently asks to meet her the evening before he is set to leave for London, she misunderstands and believes that he desires to enact the local custom of premarital sex to prove a woman's fertility. Avice writes to

Pierston, explaining, "the thing is contrary to my feelings" (189). Pierston, not having expected her to perform such an antiquated tradition, strolls along the ocean and, in Avice's absence, meets Marcia. Marcia is in a unique position among Pierston's many lovers, as she offers a middle ground between the A vices and the women of London, having a genealogical link to the island, but a London upbringing. Federico rightly labels her "modern-spirited,' and her desire for independence and adventure associates her with the New Woman (84). In the

1892 version, she reveals her modern views on marriage when she tells Pierston,

"I fail to see why, in making each our own home, we should not make our own matrimonial laws if we choose. This may seem an advanced view, but I am not ashamed of advanced views" (42).13

Avice the second offers particular challenges for Pierston because of their disparities in class and age. She is "less cultivated" than her mother and works as a laundress, and is thus not an obvious romantic match for a wealthy Royal

Academician (238). Yet her physical likeness to her mother - Pierston calls her

"her double" (238) - makes her his object of fantasy. J. Hillis Miller argues that

Pierston "desires the first Avice by way of the second" (172), and Pierston himself is able to see the strangeness of this situation. He views his "forsaking of the accomplished and well-connected Mrs. Pine-Avon for the little laundress" as a form of "satire," evidence of the way that Hardy posits the novel's fictiveness

(241). Pierston imagines that he will "pack her off to school for two or three years, marry her, enlarge her mind by a little travel" (255). Instead, he employs her to clean his studio in London, and so again lives unmarried with a woman.

Despite this Avice's lack of education, she exhibits a degree of sexual knowledge and control: she is the one who actually dupes Pierston when she keeps her marriage to an island man a secret, and she later orchestrates the union between

Pierston and her daughter.

13 As Patricia Ingham notes in the Penguin edition, this is precisely what Arabella does in Ju.de when she marries bigamously in Australia (343 n. 1). 199

Avice the third, like young Marcia, may be more clearly aligned with the

New Woman. In addition to being a beautiful reincarnation of her mother and grandmother, "Avice the Third" is a "still more modernized up-to-date edition of the two Avices" (289). While her mother was "something like the first," the final

Avice is "a glorification of the first" (294). She thus represents both a repetition and an idealization of the previous women. Her difference, however, lies not only in her finer appearance, but in her modern education. Her mother explains to

Pierston, "Her education was very thorough - better even than her grandmother's.

I was the neglected one, and Isaac and myself both vowed that there should be no complaint on that score about her" (289). The combination of her thorough education and late-Victorian upbringing are what make Avice the third stand out as the most "modernized" of the women.

Despite his desire for domestic happiness with his Well-Beloved, Pierston consistently demands a degree of distance from these women. Just as his sculptures offer ideal representations rather than detailed, naturalistic efforts,14

Pierston, in his personal life, searches for ideals, not sober realities. The first

Avice becomes irresistible to him once she has died and he has only the image of her as a beautiful young woman to remember her by: "He loved the woman dead and inaccessible as he had never loved her in life" (231). Indeed, her very accessibility while living is perhaps what makes Pierston "full of misgiving" immediately after he proposes to her (184). J. Hillis Miller points out that Pierston

14 Editor Patricia Ingham notes that Pierston's desire to represent ideal bodies in his sculpture is a throwback to the earlier century, when "Ideal Works" were valued. By the 1880s, however, British sculpture leaned towards naturalistic and meticulous representations of the human form. Pierston thus "belongs to a fading school of artists" (343, n. 5). 200

"is the most self-conscious, theoretical, and intense of Hardy's lovers because his loving is mediated not by the presence of a rival, but by the infinite distance of death" (Thomas Hardy 169). "As long as there is distance," Miller explains,

"desire is exacerbated. Some third thing or person must always stand between two lovers to sustain their love" (Thomas Hardy 175). Pierston's relationships, then, must always be "narratable," in the way that D. A. Miller understands this term to refer to "the instances of disequilibrium, suspense, and general insufficiency from which a given narrative appears to arise" (ix). While the nonnarratable are those moments or elements that answer specific narrative questions, and thus offer no narrative future, narratable elements inherently lack finality and keep going (xi).

The Well-Beloved is an exercise in the narratable, as Pierston's idealized woman interests him only when she is a narratable element, never fully attainable and impossible to understand: "[S]he was perhaps of no tangible substance; a spirit, a dream, a frenzy, a conception, an aroma, an epitomized sex, a light of the eye, a parting of the lips. God only knew what she really was; Pierston did not. She was indescribable" (184). Once nothing stands in the way of the two lovers, once the woman is achievable and understandable, Pierston's Well-Beloved "move[s] house," that is, she transfers to another body (196).

Pierston's relationship between desire and distance, to borrow Miller's terms, means that he is, for a man who in many ways meets the description of a philanderer, surprisingly resistant to physical intimacy. As Federico comments, he is "more sexually alive in his imagination than in his actual relationships with women" (82). The one woman with whom Pierston is intimate, though Hardy 201 never divulges exactly to what degree, is Marcia.1 Pierston's general lack of sexual intimacy, as well as Hardy's purposefully ambiguous portrayal of him, makes him a complex and somewhat confusing character. Is he a cad or a sensitive man? Is he under the spell of the Well-Beloved, controlled by beautiful women, or is he a controlling, manipulating man who desires power in romantic relationships? Pierston himself reflects, "Nobody would ever know the truth about him" (325). Hardy was certainly aware of his character's contradictions, and the novel contains two key passages that reveal the challenges in understanding

Pierston. In their overt evaluations of Pierston's character, these passages are similar to Gissing's direct address in New Grub Street when he questions the reader's sympathy for Edwin Reardon and Harold Biffen. The first passage highlights Avice the second and Avice the third's differing reactions to Pierston's marriage proposal to the latter:

[T]o every one except, perhaps, Avice [the third] herself, Jocelyn was the

most romantic of lovers. Indeed was there ever such a romance as that

man embodied in his relations to her house? Rejecting the first Avice, the

second had rejected him, and to rally the third with final achievement was

an artistic and tender finish to which it was ungrateful in anybody to be

blind. (315)

"Every one" here implies the uneducated inhabitants of the Isle of Slingers, and it is unclear, on an initial reading, if the narrator's tone is genuine or sarcastic. The

15 Even Marcia's charm for Pierston is in some degree dependent on her inaccessibility. Marcia is the daughter of Pierston's father's biggest stone merchant competitor, leaving him in the "position to play the son of the Montagues to this daughter of the Capulets" (194). Their familial hostilities constantly risk tearing them apart, and become one of the reasons for their eventual parting. 202 narrator's question to the reader registers doubts regarding Pierston's suitability as a romantic figure. For Patricia Ingham, this passage "lays bare the literary mechanism that turns a predatory pursuit into a pretty story of a debt of love repaid" (Thomas Hardy 105). Yet Ingham, who calls the novel "duplicitous"

(105), is at odds with Hardy, who, in a letter to The Academy, seems to defend

Pierston honestly as "an innocent and moral man throughout" ("On "The Well-

Beloved"' 133).

Hardy's defense of Pierston demands a separation of his character's desire for an ideal woman with illicit sexuality. Hardy insisted in the prospectus, "There is not a word or scene in the tale which can offend the most fastidious taste" (qtd. in Langbaum 141). And in 1897 he wrote that he was "surprised, and even grieved, by a ferocious review attributing an immoral quality to the tale. The writer's meaning is beyond me" (Life and Work 305). Hardy's attempts to separate Pierston's longings from immoral actions are detailed in a key passage:

It was not the flesh; he had never knelt low to that. Not a woman in the

world had been wrecked by him, though he had been impassioned by so

many. Nobody would guess the further sentiment - the cordial loving-

kindness - which had lain behind what had seemed to him the enraptured

fulfillment of a pleasing destiny postponed for forty years. His attraction

to the third Avice would be regarded by the world as the selfish designs of

an elderly man on a maid. (325)

The notion that the world would regard his attraction to this much younger woman as a "selfish design" differentiates this passage from the narrator's musings that "to every one . . . Jocelyn was the most romantic of lovers" (315). 203

The more tortured thoughts in the second passage ("Nobody would ever know the truth"; "Nobody would guess the further sentiment") can be more closely aligned with Pierston than with the narrator. Furthermore, the reference to Pierston's age may be related to his growing anxieties over aging and thereby represents the character's own perspective.1 Though some readers may scoff at the idea of

Pierston's "cordial loving-kindness," Hardy, in this passage, challenges readings of Pierston as simply a predatory older man. This excerpt contrasts the assumptions of "the world" with "what seem[s]" true to Pierston, and leaves readers to judge for themselves. Hardy's awareness of the way in which Pierston's motives can be so easily misunderstood thus make his later professions of astonishment regarding the story's negative reception seem surprising, if not disingenuous.

Though they are laced with good intentions, Pierston's love affairs with the young Avices reveal a desire for control and possession. The chapter in which

Pierston and Avice the third's wedding is to take place is titled ominously "On the

Verge of Possession." His desires for control distance Pierston from the category of New Manhood. In his relationships with the second and third Avices, Pierston is concerned with both repeating and revising the past, and he uses the women as tools to allow him to achieve this. That is, these later Avices repeat an earlier ideal, but they are repetitions that can allow Pierston to correct his previous

16 Throughout his courtship with Avice the third, Pierston appears only in the moonlight or dimly light rooms. When she first sees him in revealing daylight, she is shocked: "She was so overcome that she turned and left the room as if she had forgotten something; when she re-entered she was visibly pale. . .. Pierston could not get over that first scared look of hers" (305). When he reveals to her that he courted both her mother and grandmother, she is further surprised. Pierston imagines that she now looks "at him no longer as a possible husband, but as a strange fossilized relic in human form" (306). actions. In Genealogy and Fiction in Hardy, Tess O'Toole suggests that "the

simultaneity of genetic replication and narrative repetition" in the novel evokes

"the familiar metaphorical equation between biological reproduction and fictional production" (52). Moreover, O'Toole points to the way that the later Avices become textual objects. Pierston calls them "editions," "reproductions," or

"likenesses" of the original (289, 292), and he thus emerges as a controlling artist

or author. In fact, Avice the second's name is actually Ann, but Pierston insists on calling her Avice ("Ann or otherwise, you are Avice to me" [237]), as does the

narrator. And when Avice the second gives birth to a girl, Pierston tells her that

her child must be christened with the name Avice. O'Toole claims that "[b]y

insisting that the daughter and the granddaughter of the original Avice be given

her name, Pierston assigns these women to a family history narrative, scripting

their histories as continuations of the original Avice's" (55). Pierston's naming

thus allows him a degree of control over the Well-Beloved, who, he imagines, is

always controlling him.17

Avice the second's revelation that she is married begins a chain of events

that repositions Pierston from lover to father figure, a transition that repeats in his

relationship with the third Avice. When Pierston takes Avice the second with him

to work in his London studio, he hides his history with her mother from her, and

attempts to conceal "the oddity of her situation" when he dismisses his other

servants (267). Yet like Pierston, the second Avice is victim to the inconsistency

17 Yvonne Bezrucka notes further that Pierston's desire to assume control can be observed "in the scopophylic command and the voyeuristic attitudes he assumes in spying on women" (234). For example, he often watches Avice the second when she is unaware. He watches her from behind, "[e]ngaged in the study of her ear and the nape of her neck" (248), and later in her home, "the blinds were not down, and he could see her sewing within" (250). of desire, and when she lives with him in London, she is in fact secretly married.

Avice reveals that she has abandoned her husband, and Pierston chastises her for

"your letting me love you" (274). "Men of my sort always get the worst of it somehow," he complains (274). Pierston's language echoes earlier speeches where he describes the Well-Beloved as a source of intense feminine power, contrasting with his own passivity. For example, he worries earlier in the novel about "the Phantom" coming to "seduce him before he [is] aware" (210). Such language is an attempt to divorce himself from responsibility for his actions.

Nonetheless, Pierston assumes a degree of responsibility for the second Avice, and he restores her to her husband and her home. He is even present at the birth of her daughter. This section ends with Pierston's exclamation, "Here endeth that dream!" (279), but twenty years - and only a few pages later - Pierston reunites with the baby as a grown woman, and he initiates the dream once again.

If Pierston was aware of an age disparity with Avice the second, his age becomes an almost insurmountable problem in his relationship with the third

Avice. In both versions of the story, Avice the third becomes a kind of sacrificial victim, forced by her mother into a marriage she does not desire. Significantly, she goes through with the marriage in the first version of the story, while in the

1897 novel, she escapes with her lover. Most critics point to these revisions, as well as Pearston's early marriage to Marcia in the 1892 serial, as constituting a less critical stance on marriage than we saw in the first novel. These alterations also reveal an important change in Avice the third, who moves from the position of powerless victim to determined woman. Avice the second orchestrates the meeting of Pierston and her daughter, and guesses that Pierston will fall in love 206 with her. Though she does seek to "sacrifice her daughter to narrative closure"

(O'Toole 54), their potential union does not achieve the closure she intends. Rose

DeAngelis argues that by encouraging the union between her daughter and

Pierston, Avice the second "reinforces nineteenth-century discourse that figures marriage in terms of financial stability and class mobility and defines the female as dependent upon the male" (416). Avice the third, however, has "internalized the emerging middle-class values regarding love and marriage" (416). She also appears to have internalized more modern values that insist that women not be dependent upon men.

Though Pierston receives hints of Avice the third's reluctance to marry him, he attempts to construct narratives that support his wooing of this young girl.

He imagines his relationship with Avice as not merely a second (or more accurately a third) chance for him to marry his childhood love, but as a way of correcting his past wrong of jilting this Avice's grandmother. He tells Avice the second, "It would set right something in my mind that has been wrong for forty years. After my death [your daughter] would have plenty of freedom and plenty of means to enjoy it" (296). Though he appeals to her mother, Pierston does not consider Avice's feelings, and he reverts in the final section of the narrative into an Old Man unattached to the values of the late-nineteenth century. DeAngelis argues that Pierston also constructs his relationship with Avice the third as a fairy tale romance, "Cinderella revisited, lost shoe, Fairy Godmother, and all" (415). In this fantasy realm, she suggests, Pierston can "transcend the effects of time that have aged him, something that he tries to do in the real world by keeping [Avice the third] from seeing him in full light" (415). Despite this connection to fantasy, 207

Pierston's bizarre hiding in darkness reveals his awareness of his age and of the difficulties surrounding his proposed union with the newest Avice. He is aware that "[t]ime was against him and love, and," he resolves, "time would probably win" (300).

Pierston's agelessness begins to break down at this point in the novel and his mature appearance overwhelms him. Before Avice the third is startled by his appearance in the daylight, Pierston is surprised when he accidentally sees himself in the mirror: "The person he appeared was too grievously far, chronologically, in advance of the person he felt himself to be. . . . While his soul was what it was, why should he have been encumbered with that withering carcass, without the ability to shift off for another, as his ideal Beloved had so frequently done?"

(305). In contrasting spirit and body, Hardy refers to Wilde's The Picture of

Dorian Grey (1890), yet Pierston does not have Dorian's youthful looks at his disposal. Pierston's sculpture is committed to making time stand still; his own figure, however, cannot resist fully the forces of time. Though The Well-Beloved has achieved a degree of fantasy in the representation of Pierston's age, the fantasy begins to collapse in the final section of the novel. His relationships with both the second and third Avices are tainted by incest through the inbreeding of the island, but also more specifically because Pierston could have been Avice the second's father or Avice the third's father or grandfather. Such associations become even more confused when he becomes engaged to Avice the third and calls Avice the second, "mother" (312). Ultimately, such relations cannot hold up, and the final Avice escapes the narrative closure laid out for her.

The final Avice's desire for independence defies the old order, resulting in 208 her mother's death and the death of Pierston's former self (Thomas 145). The end of the novel sees Pierston assuming a parental role and aging with a vengeance.

Old age thus brings renewed vision in the form of a cure to Pierston's vice.

(Avice's name may of course be read as "A vice.") Jane Thomas argues that

Pierston's breakdown and illness "represent a crisis in masculinity in which the feminine object no longer guarantees the subjectivity of the masculine viewer"

(145). His abandonment of the feminine ideal and his desire for possession, then, usher in a new order. Whereas before he was able to move with ease from London drawing rooms to the Isle of Slingers, at this point in the novel, Pierston does not leave the island. As with Widdowson, this physical mobility is figured ideologically as Pierston's immobility demonstrates his narrative limitations.

Pierston decides finally to enter a loveless but companionate marriage with

Marcia, effectively making him Avice the third's stepfather and thus placing him officially in a role that he had already adopted informally.

Hardy foregrounds the challenges of completing his narrative satisfactorily in this story that has been written twice and employs repetitions within each version. In the 1892 serialization, Pearston awakens from his attempted drowning to find that his marriage to Avice the third has been declared null, and that Marcia has returned. His realization that his wife was "not Avice, but that parchment- covered skull moving about his room" excites Pearston into a fit of laughter (168).

He exclaims, "'0 - no, no! I - I - it is too, too droll - this ending to my would-be romantic history!' Ho-ho-ho!" (168). Pearston's language demonstrates an

18 As with previous male characters such as Grand's Arthur Brock, and, in a more qualified form, Bronte's Arthur Huntington, Hardy uses the stock device of a near-fatal illness to bring about self- awareness and growth. 209 awareness of the fictionality of fiction, an awareness that is carried over to the

1897 novel, and which Miller aligns with twentieth-century writing in his Fiction and Repetition. He suggests that The Well-Beloved challenges assumptions which seem to have been taken for granted in many Victorian novels (151). That is, though a number of Victorian novels "are a good bit more explicitly self- conscious about their status as fiction than might at first appear," Miller maintains that most Victorian novels "at least superficially maintain the illusion that they are imitated from some extralinguistic reality" (153). The Well-Beloved, then, may be seen as a transitional text between the Victorian and modernist novel. In this strange ending to the serialization, the "Ho-ho-ho!" emerges from the narrator who laughs along with Pearston, or at his expense. This is a surprising outburst from a narrator who has kept a degree of detachment from Pearston until now.

Andrew Radford rightly suggests that this is "one of the most powerfully disturbing moments in Hardy's fiction, and belies the critical charge that [the story] is merely delicate or contrived whimsy" (211).

The marriage between Pierston and Marcia in the 1897 novel calls attention both to the public's desire for a happy ending, and the difficulty for novelists to finish their narratives satisfactorily without adapting to convention.

When Marcia and Pierston reunite as friends, their neighbours learn their past history and take an interest in their affairs. Pierston tells Marcia, "They say 'those old folk ought to marry; better late than never.' That's how people are - wanting to round off other people's histories in the best machine-made conventional manner" (334). Though Gissing insisted that he would not "round off each person's story" (Letters 5.328), with the marriage of Marcia and Pierston, Hardy 210 concedes to the traditional marital ending, while simultaneously drawing attention to its construction. The novel's odd final paragraphs describe how Pierston modernizes the Isle:

His business was, among kindred undertakings which followed the

extinction of the Well-Beloved and other ideals, to advance a scheme for

the closing of the old natural fountains in the Street of Wells, because of

their possible contamination, and supplying the townlet with water from

pipes, a scheme that was carried out at his expense, as is well known. He

was also engaged in acquiring some old moss-grown, mullioned

Elizabethan cottages, for the purpose of pulling them down because they

were damp; which he afterwards did, and built new ones with hollow

walls, and full of ventilators. (336)

Pierston's aggressive erasure of the anachronistic features of the Isle seems to represent an erasure of his own personhood. Though he can rejuvenate the island, he cannot modernize himself. In the next and final paragraph the narrator says that he is "sometimes mentioned as 'the late Mr. Pierston'" (336). At the end of the novel, historical time is no longer suspended, and Pierston and the island both age accordingly.

Hardy's novel finally offers, as the anonymous Athenaeum reviewer noted in 1897, "no implied conclusion, no 'moral,' as we call it" (471). The reviewer agrees with Pierston's friend Somers, who tells the hero, "Essentially, men are fickle, like you; but not with such perceptiveness" (203). All men fall victim to

Pierston's curse on some level, the Athenaeum critic contends, but most men

"bring this sort of thing to an end by marriage" or they don't attempt to 211 understand their feelings (471). "The peculiarity of Pierston's temperament lies really in its refinement," the reviewer insists (471). Pierston still falls short of

New Manhood despite his so-called "refinement" since he is unable to control or change his behaviour until old age, and only then seemingly by accident. Though

Hardy elsewhere defends Pierston, the end of the novel reveals that Pierston's actions define him as an Old Man, and the marriage that represents the new order is not that of Pierston and Marcia, but Avice and Henri.19 Avice the third's successful "resistance to specification in the face of masculine insistence" shows that the novel displays thematic similarities to New Women novels by Dixon,

Grand and others (Thomas 134). Miller suggests that "[i]f it closes the great sequence of Hardy's own novels, it may also be seen as bringing to an end a form of prose fiction characteristic of the Victorian novel" (Fiction and Repetition

151). The Well-Beloved thus complicates "machine-made" endings, and characters that may be easily labelled and moralized.

Hardy's radically pessimistic fiction anticipates the decline of the marriage plot in modernist fiction. That is, the thematic adventurousness of Hardy's novels would later be met with formal challenges in works by Virginia Woolf and James

Joyce. Indeterminate endings, circular narrative patterns, and other formal devices challenged the possibility for a satisfying resolution. Indeed, as Jane Eldridge

Miller maintains, "only after traditional forms and conventions have been revealed to be inadequate can formal innovation and experimentation occur" (7).

That is not to say that novels such as The Odd Women and The Well-Beloved, with

19 There are suggestions that the relationship between Avice the third and Henri challenges conventional gender hierarchies. His physical ailments, for instance, force her nearly to carry him when they make their escape. their often ambivalent relationships towards the New Woman and New Man, should be regarded as failed novels. Instead, these novels can be understood as part of the process by which modernist fiction evolved. Indeed, the thwarted representation of the New Man and the exploration of new relationships situate

The Odd Women and The Well-Beloved within an important transitional moment in the history of masculinity, feminism, and the novel. 213

Conclusion

By examining the fiction of the "moral" mid-century and "radical" late- century, Men of the Moment has revealed a surprising exchange between two eras conventionally treated as distinct. This dissertation has argued that the sexual restraint and self-awareness of mid-century characters like David Copperfield,

Tom Traddles, Gilbert Markham, and Charles Gautier prefigures the New Man of late-century fiction. It also has read rakish mid-century male behaviour as anticipatory offin-de-siecle degeneracy in New Women novels, or sexual

(mis)conduct in the novels of Gissing and Hardy. In addition to mid-century depictions of emergent masculinities, I have identified a conscious looking backward in the fiction of late-century authors. By revisiting mid-century fictional characters and conventions, Dixon, Grand, Gissing, and Hardy endeavour to define this era, as well as their own. In so doing, late-century authors attempted to characterize Victorianism, just as they were conscious of writing in a period of transition away from what that term implied. For many writers, the notion of transition largely defined the 1890s. In Grand's "The Man of the Moment," she argues that both men and women are in a "transitional stage" (621). Similarly, heroine Anna Carrington in New Woman novelist Mona Caird's The Pathway of the Gods (1898) observes that "[w]e luckless beings of the transition period have to suffer the penalty of being out of line with the old conditions, before the new conditions have been formed with which we could have been harmonised" (qtd. in

Forward 451). The late-nineteenth century, then, encouraged both a looking back to "the old conditions" and a looking forward to the "new." In their revisions of mid-century conventions, late-century novelists frequently oversimplified earlier representations of male sexuality and romantic relationships. The mid-century novels I have discussed, however, reveal complex and wide-ranging male identities. In the writing of Dickens, Bronte, and Edwards we witness a privileging of middle- to upper-middle-class professional ideals and sexual restraint, along with an enduring interest in fascinating, Byron-inspired male characters. In David Copperfield, The Tenant ofWildfell Hall, and Hand and

Glove, key characters must overturn their interest in unsuitable but attractive men in order to (re)discover the value of less thrilling, but more stable male figures.

Thus, the identification of ideal or, at the very least, acceptable masculinities is configured as a process - and an often challenging one. These challenges underscore the role of the novel in depicting processes of (male) self- development, which in turn encourage readers to experience similar courses of moral and educational discovery.

As was conventional for early- and mid-Victorian novels, David

Copperfield, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and Hand and Glove end in marriage.

Nonetheless, they criticize specific kinds of marriages, in particular naive or rash unions, as witnessed in David and Dora, Helen and Huntington, and the would-be marriage of Marguerite and Hamel. Such criticisms argue for sexual and emotional reserve on the part of young men; David is a prime example of what occurs when such reserve is lessened. The novels direct another set of cautions and consequences at young women so that they may resist the charms of ill- intentioned seducers. The marriages that end the novels are between more experienced men and women who have gained a degree of sexual awareness. 215

These more experienced men - Tom, David, Gilbert, and Charles - are rewarded for their reserve and their willingness to endure moral education from both male and female characters. While these reformed men are rewarded at the end of the narratives, I have identified in these novels a continued, if somewhat veiled, attraction to male aggression.

By the late-century, novelists like Dixon and Grand unambiguously attack fascinating, aggressive male figures. In their revisions of what Grand termed "fast men," these New Women authors reveal such figures to be conniving frauds ("On the Choice" 1.109). Their characterizations of dangerous doctors and dandies may be seen as one-dimensional, but should also be considered in light of the historical revisions Dixon and Grand attempt, and the dialogue that such revisions established between late- and mid-century fiction. Only by referencing earlier

Victorian men like James Steerforth - and, as Dixon does in her novel, reclassifying them as "fallen" - could they seemingly exorcise such conflicted characterizations from the Victorian novel. The complex representations of

Gissing's Everard and Hardy's Pierston, as well as perhaps Grand's Brock, however, show that a definitive separation of Old and New Men at the late- century was not always possible, or, in fact, ideal.

Through Widdowson, Everard, and Pierston, Gissing and Hardy demonstrate the way that earlier styles of masculinity and male desires for dominance and possession still haunted late-century figures. In particular, Hardy and Gissing demonstrate in their male characters a desire for marriage and conventional domesticity, despite contemporary novelistic revisions to the marriage plot. Though New Women demanded new endings, the New Men of 216 these novels have no suitable new endings mapped out for them. In the end,

Gissing's and Hardy's male characters receive a comfortable, quiet domestic existence, one that retreats not only from the "larger world" but from the radical politics of the fin-de-siecle (Gissing, Odd Women 319).

Such compromises suggest that the New Man and other emergent masculinities were still being negotiated at the end of the century. Another instance of this exploratory masculinity is evinced by John Galsworthy's early- twentieth century novel The Man of Property (1906), which takes up the New and

Old Man. It is the first novel in what would become The Forsyte Saga (1906-21), and in these three novels and two interludes Galsworthy uses the Forsytes to trace social changes from the late-Victorian period into the twentieth century. In his preface to the novel, Galsworthy writes that he understands the work to be "an intimate incarnation of the disturbance that Beauty effects in the lives of men," an interest that links this work to The Odd Women and The Well-Beloved (viii).

Galsworthy's focus on "Beauty impinging on a possessive world" (viii) is materialized most forcefully in the relationship between Soames Forsyte, the

"man of property," and his wife Irene in the first novel of the saga. Soames is similar to The Odd Women's Widdowson and The Well-Beloved''s Pierston in his desire to possess his wife. A collector of art, he adds Irene to his collection as a beautiful object to be admired: "He had married this woman, conquered her, made her his own, and it seemed to him contrary to the most fundamental of all laws, the law of possession, that he could do no more than own her body - if indeed he could do that, which he was beginning to doubt" (61). His attempt to "own her body," even after she has locked him from her room and begun an affair with a 217 young architect, culminates in his rape of Irene. Soames wonders if "he [had] been right to yield to his overmastering hunger of the night before, and break down the resistance which he had suffered now too long from this woman who was his lawful and solemnly constituted helpmate?" (246). Jane Eldridge Miller argues that with this act Galsworthy reveals that marriage is, "at its core, a primitive relationship based upon power and subordination, and governed by animal instincts" (59). Galsworthy's concerns over power imbalances within marriage extend from a long history of Victorian novels about marriage, but his depiction of marital rape shows a modern candour.

Galsworthy contrasts Soames, an Old Man, with Soames's cousin, young

Jolyon, a New Man. Soames stands in contrast to young Jolyon's more bohemian lifestyle and his rejection of outmoded social conventions. Before the novel begins in 1886, Jolyon is ostracized by the family when he runs off with his daughter June's governess. After his first wife's death, he marries the governess and becomes a painter. Despite his questionable past, Galsworthy makes him a sympathetic character, one who is able to offer judgements on the snobbish, property-loving Forsytes. Lynne Hapgood argues that Soames and Jolyon "evolve in different directions and end up at different moral, economic and sexual points," but that they both desire "a large suburban house and a beautiful wife" (170). A key difference in their representations, however, lies in their relationships to their wives. While Soames wants to possess Irene, Jolyon genuinely loves his wife, and

Galsworthy praises love and attraction above the marriage bond itself. He writes in the preface, "where sex attraction is utterly and definitely lacking in one partner to a union, no amount of pity, or reason, or duty, or what not, can overcome a 218 repulsion implicit in Nature" (ix). Galsworthy writes these lines in defense of

Irene, but they also serve as a defense of Jolyon's actions while married to his first wife. Notably, these two rebellious characters marry later in the saga.

I include this summary of Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga to demonstrate how late-nineteenth-century concerns over sexuality and manhood were continued, but by no means solved, in the Edwardian period. Though popular in his day,

Galsworthy provoked famous attacks from Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence.

Woolf classified him, along with Arnold Bennet and H.G. Wells, as a

"materialist" in her essay "Modern Fiction" (1925). Materialists, according to

Woolf, "are concerned not with the spirit but with the body" and they "write of unimportant things" (2088). In 1928 Lawrence complained that Galsworthy

"might have been the surgeon the modern soul needs so badly, to cut away the proud flesh of our Forsytes from the living body of men who are fully alive"

(543). Instead, "he put down the knife and laid on a soft, sentimental poultice"

(543). Both Woolf and Lawrence desired Galsworthy to go deeper in his fiction, that is, to avoid the surface and sentimentality that they implicitly define as

Victorian. Galsworthy's thematic concerns and the methods by which they were depicted thus seem outdated by the 1920s. Read more pointedly in the direction of this project, Woolf and Lawrence's criticism can suggest that Victorian masculinity becomes a burden for early-twentieth-century writers like

Galsworthy. Nevertheless, Galsworthy's novels offer important developments in the representation of literary masculinities. His novels reveal the way that late-

Victorian styles of masculinity continued to be contested even as fiction began to move from the larger sociological engagements of Victorian fiction to the 219 psychological engagement that Woolf argues for in "Modern Fiction."

Just as Victorian masculinity continued to haunt Galsworthy's novels, I have argued that late-nineteenth-century writers were preoccupied by earlier masculine identities and character types. We witness a key example of this haunting in Everard Barfoot's resolution in The Odd Women. As I suggest in

Chapter Four, Everard's wife's name, Agnes, calls to mind the heroine of David

Copperfield. David's Agnes is a rather conventional "angel in the house" and

David relies on her moral guidance: "Ever pointing upward, Agnes; ever leading me to something better; ever directing me to higher things!" (848). Everard's

Agnes similarly subdues his "masculine self-assertiveness," and she makes him feel content: "[H]e broke off to marvel at himself, to appreciate the perfection of his own suavity, the vast advance he had been making in polished humanism"

(320). Despite such similarities, Dickens praises David's marriage unequivocally, while Gissing implicitly criticizes Everard's desire for a comfortable life with these "wealthy and cultured people who seek no prominence" (319). News of

Everard's marriage comes directly after he speaks to Rhoda for the final time. She tells him, "you will never love any woman - even as well as you loved me," and he responds, "Upon my soul, I believe it, Rhoda" (327). Only a few lines later, the narrator relates Everard's brief letter to his friend Micklethwaite where he announces, "I am about to do my duty - as you put it - that is, to marry" (327).

Everard's impetuousness begs the question, is Everard's Agnes David's Dora?

That is, the cross-textual references force the reader to question whether Everard has in fact made a decision that he is doomed to regret. Gissing's use of this familiar Dickensian name is an example of the kind of dialogue I have traced in this dissertation. This episode reveals the way that a perfectly acceptable mid- century ending is unsatisfactory in a late-century novel. The kind of comfort that

Everard finds in this lifestyle is concessional, as it shows his final unwillingness to forge a new masculine identity and path. Through Everard's compromise,

Gissing, by way of reference to mid-century conventions, explores the limits of male characterization and the possibilities for satisfying romantic unions. While late-century fiction challenges the Victorian marriage plot and husbandly ideals more forcefully than earlier fiction, this dissertation has revealed that novelists of both periods were invested in negotiating emerging models of masculine behaviour. 221

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