Van Galen 4022653/1 “THE NEW WOMAN” FEMINIST WRITING AND

Van Galen 4022653/1 “THE NEW WOMAN” FEMINIST WRITING AND THE PERCEPTION OF GENDER PATTERNS DURING THE VICTORIAN FIN DE SIÈCLE Linda van Galen S4022653 Supervisor: Dr. Chris Louttit Submitted to: The Department of English Language and Culture 30 June 2017 Van Galen 4022653/2 Abstract This thesis analyses the work of Anthony Trollope and Ouida to obtain knowledge about the perception of gender patterns during the Victorian fin de siècle whereby the phenomenon of the “New Woman” will be focused on. It aims to provide an answer to what extent and how the work of Trollope and Ouida reflect concepts of the fin de siècle New Woman. In doing so, the thesis discusses two authors who lived and wrote during the mid and late Victorian period. The four chapters focus on identifying New Woman concepts to bring to light where the authors position themselves in the New Woman debate through their writing. The thesis concludes that although New Woman concepts and with that gender patterns are clearly present, the New Woman is not stable as a term and should therefore be treated with great caution. Van Galen 4022653/3 Table of Contents Chapter Introduction……………………………………………………………...………..4 I. Trollope and The Vicar of Bullhampton……………………………………......…9 II. Trollope and He Knew He Was Right…………………………………....……....20 III. Ouida and Idalia…………………………………………………………….……31 IV. Ouida and Princess Napraxine………...…………………………….…….……..39 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………..47 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………...….53 Van Galen 4022653/4 Introduction 0.1 Sensation Fiction: Dirty Reading The literary genre of sensation fiction emerged and rose in popularity in Britain from roughly around the 1860s and onwards (Rubery, par. 1). It is said that as a literary genre sensation fiction was based upon three major novels: Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret and Ellen Wood’s East Lynne (Sweet, par. 4). The name ‘sensation fiction’ however, came from the sensation dramas in theatres which were known for their “spectacular effects and displays of intense emotion” (Rubery, par. 1). Its literary counterpart included several popular forms like melodrama and domestic realism whereby plots varied in degrees of scandal ranging from murder to madness and sexual deviance (Rubery, par. 1). What made these novels so scandalous were not only the issues they dealt with – involving everything the Church had forbidden – but especially the protagonists committing these sins as they were often the seemingly morally right characters. The sensation novel became hugely popular since the often domestic settings were so familiar to a multitude of people through all the layers of society. It was designed “around the concept of the family as a domestic group bound together by shared literary tastes” (Wynne 1). This was reason for both religious and political authorities as well as literary authorities to denounce these novels for “eliciting intense physical responses from their readers” (Rubery, par. 1). It was also feared that the genre’s newly gained interest and popularity would become the new standard and set the norm for other types of writing. In short it meant that its criticism was mainly focused on the threat of it eroding literary standards and the undermining of domestic tranquillity; that it would become “the guiding fiction of middle-class life” (Bernstein 213). About this decline of family values and about sensation fiction in general Margaret Oliphant says: “We have grown accustomed to … the narrative of many thrills of feeling. … What is held up to us as the story of the feminine soul as it really exists underneath its conventional coverings is a very fleshy and unlovely record. Women driven wild with love for the man who leads them on to desperation. … Women who marry their grooms in fits of sensual passion; women who pray [sic] their lovers to carry them off from husbands and homes they hate; women … who give and receive burning kisses and frantic embraces, and live in a voluptuous dream … such are the heroines who have been imported into modern fiction” (Oliphant qtd. in Bernstein, p. 213). Van Galen 4022653/5 What this quote from Oliphant’s 1867 essay concretizes is that there was a clear ideological concept when it came to gender and genre, one that was not supposed to be meddled with especially with regards to the woman construct. 0.2 Fin de Siècle Fiction and the New Woman It is not uncommon for the approach of the end of a century to come with fears that the world might be coming to an end. This was no less so for Victorian Britain, which is how this section is connected to the previous one because sensation fiction was closely connected with fin de siècle fears. However, something else was happening too. The term fin de siècle was not only indicative for the end of the nineteenth century, but it also came with a set of moral, artistic, and social – as well as political – concerns (Livesey, par. 1). Referring to the end of the century in French rather than in English is said to help trace its critical content, for “it was, and continues to be, associated with those writers and artists whose work displayed a debt to French decadent, symbolist, or naturalist writers and artists” (Livesey, par. 1). Literature of the Victorian fin de siècle then not surprisingly often shows characteristics of these French aesthetic movement(s), but at the same time Victorian fin de siècle literature covers a wider range of social concerns that are on strained terms with aestheticism. One of those socio- political concerns was the emergence of the New Woman. Many aspects of society were improving and evolving during the fin de siècle, and so was the traditional view of how women were to fit in that picture. The educational system had been improving for some time with the 1870 Elementary Education Act or Forster Education Act setting out a frame for all children between the ages of five and twelve to go to school by setting up school boards so schools could be managed and built where previously none existed (“The 1870”, par. 5). Some Education Acts later with the Education Act of 1899, school attendance was compulsory for all children till the age of twelve including the blind and deaf (“The 1870”, par. 9). This improvement of the educational system was vastly important for women living in an ever more urbanizing society because it meant that with improving education and improving economic prospects they were not dependent on marriage anymore as the sole solution to securing a stable financial future. They could now work and more or less provide for themselves. Coventry Patmore’s long poem “The Angel in the House” is so often taken as the epitome of the traditional view of a woman’s gender identity and so her role in society through the eyes of a masculine society whereby the woman – in an ideal world – is supposed to obey her husband and practically devote her life to his care. Patmore’s poem became so Van Galen 4022653/6 immensely popular that his ideal came to serve as the norm for Victorian womanhood. The poem sold over a quarter of a million copies, which proves that the idea of women as submissive mothers, daughters, and wives was both popular and widespread (Markwick 10). With such strong opinions regarding a woman’s ideal gender identity, strong fictions going against this ideal soon appeared too. A more radical example is Sarah Grand’s 1893 novel The Heavenly Twins in which the protagonist refuses to consummate her marriage after she discovers her husband’s dubious sexual past (Buzwell, par. 7). The Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866, and 1869 – issues that Grand’s novel deals with – in short meant that the police could subject any woman who was suspected to carry whatever venereal infection to embarrassing inspections (“The Contagious”, par. 6). Many innocent women were victim of these inspections and many were innocently detained whilst the men could go scot-free spreading disease, hence the outrage these acts caused. The New Woman as a cultural phenomenon was a progressive feminist figure striving for social modernity, whereas in literature she more often took a seemingly more different form of “someone whose thoughts and desires highlighted not only her own aspirations, but also served as a mirror in which to reflect the attitudes of society” (Buzwell, par. 6). What often seems to go unnoticed in this discussion is that at the time of the rise of the New Woman the ‘New Man’, for instance in the form of the dandy, was fashionable as well, so it was not only the traditional view of women that was challenged, but also the “accepted view of masculinity” (Buzwell, par. 3). This is important to be aware of because it shows that the discussion was not single-sided. It is also equally as important to take into account that many men found the idea of a woman – not necessarily their own – making her way in the world and being at least able to provide for herself quite sensible whereas some women like for instance Mary Augusta Ward – known as Mrs Humphry Ward – found that same idea preposterous (Buzwell, par. 4). 0.3 Aim of the Thesis This thesis aims to explore Victorian literature as a reflection of attitudes towards gender, in particular the representation of the New Woman whereby the research will focus on the determining of Victorian women’s gender identity. It will be done so by discussing two Victorian authors and two of their novels. The first author to be discussed is Anthony Trollope; a more conservative and domestic writer seen as a “mythmaker of an England long lost to modernity” (Dever and Niles 1).

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