‘FALLING OVER THE SAME PRECIPICE’: it was first published in serial form in Tinsley’s Magazine , The Wing of 5 THOMAS HARDY, MONA CAIRD AND Azrael has only recently been reprinted. The Wing of Azrael deserves to be read in its own right, but it is also JOHN STUART MILL rewarding to read it alongside A Pair of Blue Eyes . Such a comparative reading reveals not only how Caird’s novel is in dialogue with Hardy’s, but also the differences and correspondences in the ways each novelist DEMELZA HOOKWAY engages with the philosophy of John Stuart Mill. This essay will consider how Hardy and Caird evoke, explore and re-work, through their cliff- edge narratives, Millian ideas about how individuals can challenge On July 3 1889, Hardy, by his own arrangement, sat next to Mona Caird customs: the qualities they must have, the strategies they must deploy, at the dinner for the Incorporated Society of Authors. 1 Perhaps one of and the difficulties they must negotiate, in order to carry out experiments their topics of conversation was the reaction to Caird’s recently published in living. Like Hardy, Caird regarded Mill as her intellectual hero. When novel The Wing of Azrael . Like Hardy’s A Pair of Blue Eyes in 1873, The asked by the Women’s Penny Paper in 1890 if she was influenced by any Wing of Azrael features a literal cliffhanger which is a formative event women in forming her views on gender equality she replied ‘“No, not in the life of its heroine. This similarity suggests that Caird, a journalist particularly. I knew so few whose intellect I respected. My views were and novelist who was born in 1854 and died in 1932, may have been pronounced at an early age. John Stuart Mills [sic], I think, was the first to 6 influenced by Hardy’s novel when writing her own. Reviewers of The help me to bring these thoughts and feelings into form by his writings”.’ Wing of Azrael in the months preceding the dinner were not struck by Caird’s critique of marriage in the Westminster Review followed Mill’s any resemblances to A Pair of Blue Eyes , however. They mainly debated The Subjection of Women (1869) in insisting that under the current social whether The Wing of Azrael had artistic value, or whether it was purely arrangements nothing could actually be known about women’s nature or a didactic work. Caird’s three-volume novel had been published in the its potential for development. As part of her commitment to individualism, wake of the controversy caused by her article on ‘Marriage’ for the Caird engages with Millian ideas of free discussion throughout her fiction 7 Westminster Review in the summer of 1888 . In the article, for which to offer an ideal of ‘creative, liberating’ conversation. Hardy’s use of Caird remains most well-known, she declared that ‘the present form of Mill in his fiction is not as obviously pervasive as it in Mona Caird’s, but marriage – exactly in proportion to its conformity with orthodox ideas Millian themes and echoes of his language occur throughout the novels. – is a vexatious failure’. 2 She used an historical analysis to demonstrate In On Liberty , published in 1859, Mill called for greater diversity in that ideas about marriage which were supposedly firmly established had society, for ‘new and original experiments in living’. 8 In his copy of On in fact been constantly changing. The Wing of Azrael fleshes out and Liberty, Hardy underlined the phrase ‘experiments in living’ and most dramatises many of the concerns she raised in ‘Marriage’ about women’s famously used the words in Jude the Obscure (1895) when Jude laments ‘moral starvation’ (p.194). As a consequence, in the preface to her novel, to Sue ‘Perhaps the world is not illuminated enough for such experiments she is anxious to deny that her fictional characters are representatives of as ours!’ 9 Mill anticipated that those who were opposed to experiments social questions and principles. Even those reviewers who insisted that in living would argue that: The Wing of Azrael was a polemical piece acknowledged its other merits. There must be some length of time and amount of experience, after ‘It is avowedly a story with a purpose,’ declared The Academy , ‘Yet there which a moral or prudential truth may be regarded as established: is abundance of cleverness in it.’ 3 The reviewer in the Young Folks Paper and it is merely desired to prevent generation after generation was far more laudatory of Caird’s skills: ‘She has wit, humour, dramatic from falling over the same precipice which has been fatal to their intensity, and tragic force, and with these qualities so highly developed predecessors. (p.89-90) as they are with her, she may achieve a wide and enduring fame’. 4 Nevertheless, whilst Hardy’s novel has been continuously in print since

132 133 In On Liberty, the precipice represents the danger that society perceives jumping over the precipice. Mill’s precipice metaphor resonates through in improper or unconventional behaviour. The possibility of falling over A Pair of Blue Eyes and the image is reprised and extended in The Wing the precipice to one’s death is a threat used as a means of control: to of Azrael . reinforce customs and to discourage people from taking risks in the way The cliffhangers in both novels create suspense and drama, but they they live their lives. This threat forms part of also have something to say about how social structures impinge on or the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, enable individuality. If the cliffs can be threatening and dangerous, they its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent can also offer the chance for spontaneous action to be taken and liberty from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the claimed. On the cliff side humans are made aware of their smallness, formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and vulnerability and mortality, and this can act as a levelling factor. Though compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its an individual might feel dwarfed by the landscape, they are far from ‘lost own. (p.9) in the crowd’ – in that famous phrase of Mill’s from On Liberty (p.73). Rather, they are called upon to confront their own sense of selfhood. This exact formulation is found in The Return of the Native (1878) when Removed from domesticity and community, the cliffs can be a space Mrs Yeobright warns Eustacia: ‘You, Eustacia, stand on the edge of a conducive to philosophical reflection, a place where it is possible to put precipice without knowing it. Only show my son one half the temper problems into perspective or gain an insight into how difficulties can be you have shown to me to-day – and you may before long – and you will resolved. The danger, excitement, and energy generated by proximity to find that though he is gentle as a child with you now he can be as hard a sheer drop or to the tumult of the sea can be harnessed to add vigour as steel.’ 10 Eustacia’s ‘reckless unconventionality’, her ‘forwardness of and conviction to newly-formed opinions. In the preface to A Pair of mind’ and her ‘instincts towards social non-conformity’ position her Blue Eyes Hardy describes the Cornish coast as ‘the region of dream on the edge of a precipice in the eyes of the traditional Mrs Yeobright, and mystery’ (p.3). Caird’s Scottish coastline is similarly imbued with who is consumed by thoughts of how actions will be interpreted by local spiritual significance – and importantly for her tragic novel – a sense of gossip. 11 The effectiveness of the precipice threat perhaps lies in the hope. Her heroine Viola loves ‘the wonderful sea that spoke and sang all sense of inescapability and inevitability it conveys: if individuals are too the year long … eternally speaking and prophesying and lamenting’ 14 unorthodox – that is, if they get too close to the edge of the cliff – then bringing to mind another comment in Hardy’s preface about ‘the eternal the effects will be catastrophic, there will be no turning back. The threat soliloquy of the waters’ (p.3). Her name evokes the ship-wrecked Viola in of danger is coupled with the lure of safety offered by ground which Twelfth Night , and this association with the sea is perhaps also intended is firm and well-tested. Uncustomary behaviour brings with it unknown as a more hopeful counterpoint to the story of Azrael, the Angel of Death, consequences, often imagined as a leap into the abyss; when Elfride and which gives the novel its title. Azrael, Caird explains in an introduction, Stephen in A Pair of Blue Eyes contemplate their elopement, they do so inhabits the desert. Whether in the Cornwall of Hardy’s novel or the ‘in spite of its daring, its fathomless results’. 12 Orthodoxy and custom, Scotland of Caird’s, the extremity and potential instability of the cliffs on the other hand, are conceptualised in terms of stability, solid ground, make them an effective site for opposing established customs, but also firmly established foundations and deeply-rooted ideas. Hardy’s editor for exposing the difficulties of deviating from the accepted path. Leslie Stephen used just such language to question the advisability of diversity and experimentation in ‘Social Macadamisation’, a response Rosemarie Morgan has argued that in A Pair of Blue Eyes Hardy to On Liberty published in Fraser’s Magazine in 1872. He insisted that uses ‘a moralising, didactic narrator’ to ‘disguise his oppositional views’ ‘A constant state of revolution shakes the nerves as a long series of about female non-conformity and in so doing creates a ‘dialectic of earthquakes is said to do. Our steps are uncertain and hesitating, because opposing discourses and discordant voices of remarkable argumentative we don’t know where the ground will bear us, or what settled institution vigour’. 15 If this is the case then it is a strikingly Millian device. In or dogma may give way beneath us’. 13 In effect, On Liberty counsels Hardy’s copy of On Liberty he highlighted the following: ‘the only way readers that it is necessary to defy such threats and risk falling or even in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole

134 135 of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every indeed desirable, but that Elfride must defer to the opinions of her local variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at community and the power of its talk. Such small talk always emphasises by every character of mind’ (p.25). Though Mill was not talking about the negative, and therefore always has a detrimental effect. The narrator literature, this sounds like the way a reader of fiction, or a novelist, might later constricts Elfride’s world even further to ‘the globe of her father’s engage empathically with a variety of characters. Whether or not Hardy’s brain’ (p.157). Just as Giles Winterbourne in The Woodlanders (1887) intention was to create a thought-provokingly argumentative narrative is fixed to the spot by his apple tree in the market, Elfride is tied to her in order to give readers ‘the whole of the subject’, the descriptions of locality by Mr Swancourt’s words. Mr Swancourt is a conservative man Elfride often recall On Liberty. And though Hardy said that he could who ‘does not think hard’ (p.25) while Elfride’s disposition is to be a not remember reading Mill’s essay on The Subjection of Women, his questioner: her ‘erratic mind had from her youth upwards been constantly portrayal of Elfride frequently evokes that essay too. 16 In Subjection Mill in the habit of perplexing her father by hypothetical questions’ (p.100). In conveys a vivid sense of the restricted range of some women’s lives and Utilitarianism (1861) Mill writes that ‘A cultivated mind – I do not mean Elfride’s day-to-day reality is ‘lonely and narrow’ (p.97). When Stephen that of a philosopher, but any mind to which the fountains of knowledge arrives, ‘Her start of amazement at the sight of the visitor coming forth have been opened, and which has been taught, in any tolerable degree, to from under the stairs’ conveys the jolt caused by anything of interest exercise its faculties – finds sources of inexhaustible interest in all that emerging from her domestic surroundings (p.13). Like the women Mill surrounds it’. 18 The narrator echoes this with the comment ‘Anything imagines in Subjection , who ‘pine through life with the consciousness anywhere was a mine of interest to Elfride,’ suggesting the extent to of thwarted vocations, and activities which are not suffered to expand’, which her incipient intellectual curiosity is stifled by her father’s limited Elfride is keenly aware of her circumscribed existence. 17 She emphasises outlook (p.264). to Stephen the contrast between the restrictions of her life and the Of course, it is not only Mr Swancourt’s words that curtail Elfride’s opportunities available for work, travel and social interaction in his. freedom. Mrs Swancourt fits Elfride’s unwonted interest in medieval art When Stephen complains that his life is ‘solitary as death’ Elfride’s sharp and manners into a framework of conventional behaviour. In Subjection response is ‘The death that comes from a plethora of life?’ (p.22). When Mill finds it unacceptable that ‘The greater part of what women write about Mr Swancourt confesses to Stephen that Elfride writes his sermons for women is mere sycophancy to men. In the case of unmarried women, him, Stephen’s admiring ‘She can do anything’ is immediately reduced much of it seems only intended to increase their chance of a husband’ by Mr Swancourt to ‘She can do that’ (p.29). When Elfride is debating (p.498). Mrs Swancourt nevertheless prefers to think of the romance the possibility of her marriage to Stephen with her father, Mr Swancourt Elfride has written in terms of her marriage prospects, rather than as an says: indication of intellectual or economic independence. She assures Elfride ‘His family are living in precisely the same spot in England as yours, that many women publish such work ‘not for profit, you know, but as so throughout this county – which is the world to us – you would a guarantee of mental respectability to their future husbands’ (p.117). always be known as the wife of Jack Smith the mason’s son, and Mrs Jethway is traditionally seen as ‘a Gothic avenger, a piece of stage not under any circumstances as the wife of a London professional machinery (necessary to Hardy) to bring about Elfride’s downfall’, 19 but man. It is the drawback, not the compensating fact, that is talked of she is also the embodiment of Mill’s idea of harmful small talk from always. There, say no more. You might argue all night, and prove On Liberty. She personifies ‘the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and what you will; I’ll stick to my words.’ (p.80) feeling’, trying to impose rules of conduct on Elfride by other means Mr Swancourt’s intransigent words echo those of On Liberty where Mill than civil penalties. Elfride’s ‘sense of a whispering in her ear’ (p.268) points out that ‘the world, to each individual, means the part of it with is the voice of public scandal hampering her individual inclinations and which he comes in contact’ (p.22). Mill disapproves of this narrowness, choices. Initially Elfride is forceful in her defiance of Mrs Jethway: ‘Do but Mr Swancourt accepts it as incontrovertible. Elfride, and the reader, and say all you can to ruin me; try; put your tongue at work; I invite it! are reminded that a more enlarged view of the world would be possible, I defy you as a slanderous woman!’ (pp.253) Ultimately though, as the

136 137 incarnation of public opinion, Mrs Jethway not only has the capacity to Characteristically, Mill considers how society’s intolerance of spontaneity alter other people’s views of Elfride; her ‘blasting reproaches’ change on a personal level impacts on improvement on a larger scale. Spontaneity Elfride’s perception of her own actions: ‘she herself now painted her is a necessary quality for moral and social reformers, so individuals flight in the darkest colours’ (p.257; p.270). capable of spontaneity have more of the raw material of reformers. In the first cliff scene, however, Elfride’s unchecked inclination is to exploit to Knight’s words too diminish and disparage Elfride, and yet when the full the sway she has over Stephen. It was ruling a heart with absolute they first meet, she perceives a lack of spontaneity and originality in ‘ despotism for the first time in her life’ that Elfride ‘led the way out of the them: ‘There was a hard square decisiveness in the shape of his sentences, lane and across some fields in the direction of the cliffs’ (p.55). The phrase as if, unlike her own and Stephen’s, they were not there and then newly ‘absolute despotism’ evokes Mill’s Subjection when he talks about the constructed, but were drawn forth from a large store ready-made’ (p.146). despotism of husbands, but also of the counter-tyranny of wives who are Knight’s lack of individuality is indicated from his first introduction to denied any legitimate outlet for their intelligence and powers. Of course, the narrative when Stephen, in an attempt to convey Knight’s importance, Elfride is not only flouting the literal danger of the cliff path, but also the says ‘his personality, and that of several others like him, is absorbed in a impropriety of her unaccompanied liaison with Stephen and its potential huge WE, namely, the impalpable entity called THE PRESENT – a social for public scandal if discovered. James Abbott Pasquier’s illustration ‘On and literary Review’ (p.60). This lack of character is no bar to his making the cliffs’ for Tinsley’s Magazine has Elfride’s figure framed by the void authoritative statements, however. The epigraph to Chapter XIII, from on the other side of the cliff, while Stephen, despite his uncertain position Ecclesiastes, is ‘He set in order many proverbs,’ indicating the confidence socially, is placed against the imposing bulk of the cliff face, indicating Knight reposes in his view of the world, despite his recognition that his that Elfride’s position is even more precarious than Stephen’s. 20 So while knowledge is theoretical rather than practical (p.120). In Millian terms, her desire to control Stephen is not an admirable trait, her action is in Knight, Mr and Mrs Swancourt, and Mrs Jethway, assume the infallibility some ways courageous. During the literal cliffhanger with Knight, the of their opinions. Elfride’s more tentative, questioning mode gives her urgency of the situation allows Elfride to act independently like nowhere greater scope for self-development. else in the novel. Her ingenuity and disregard for propriety enable her to Set against the narrowness of Elfride’s life elsewhere, then, the cliff save Knight. Though her moment of triumph precipitates the sublimation scenes offer increased possibilities for freedom and experimentation of her individuality, it also indicates that she has more of the qualities with different roles. As well as, at times, a greater propensity for required for a moral or social reformer than the man of letters. When interrogating her circumstances and surroundings, Elfride demonstrates Knight belatedly has promptings to ‘stand forward, seize upon Elfride, a greater capacity for spontaneity – and on the cliffs she is freer to act and be her cherisher and protector through life’ he is able to ‘reason her in unpremeditated and unforced ways. In his copy of On Liberty Hardy down’ by dwelling on her supposed ‘indifference to decorum’ (p.317). underlined the second occurrence of spontaneity in the following While Knight’s established status in society renders him unable to act passage: on his convictions for fear of the consequences, Elfride’s more marginal … individual spontaneity is hardly recognized by the common position enables her to risk the precipice – literally and figuratively. modes of thinking, as having any intrinsic worth, or deserving any The inconsistency of the narrative voice towards Elfride – if she is regard on its own account. The majority being satisfied with the rebellious and brave, she is also capricious, coquettish, fickle and artlessly ways of mankind as they now are (for it is they who make them what artful – has provoked much discussion. Rosemarie Morgan is convinced they are), cannot comprehend why those ways should not be good that it is the product of ‘literary stratagem’ while Pamela Dalziel thinks for everybody; and what is more, spontaneity forms no part of the it is more likely to have been the result of Hardy’s relative inexperience ideal of the majority of moral and social reformers, but it is rather at the time of writing and the exigencies of serial publication. 21 With looked on with jealousy, as a troublesome and perhaps rebellious regard to this inconsistency Pamela Dalziel has also remarked that obstruction to the general acceptance of what these reformers, in ‘Elfride does emerge as both the most stereotypical of women and the their own judgement think would be best for mankind. (pp.63-64) 138 139 progenitor of those Hardy heroines who seek to transcend the bounds Her mother is passively obedient to Christian morality, recalling both of conventionality – and are simultaneously celebrated and punished On Liberty, when Mill argues that most people derive their creed from for their audacity.’ 22 This conflict can be read in Millian terms as the the people around them, and his essay on ‘Theism’ (1874) when he clash between Elfride’s desire for expression of individuality and the juxtaposes ‘unthoughtful believers’ with ‘thoughtful unbelievers’. 23 unsatisfactory educational and vocational opportunities available to her. Viola’s mother is also unfailingly submissive to her husband, bringing Mill’s hypothesis in Subjection is that ‘What is now called the nature of out the worst of his tyrannical tendencies (as the narrator in A Pair of women is an eminently artificial thing – the result of forced repression Blue Eyes comments that Elfride’s docility worsens rather improves her in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others’ (p.493). References relationship with Knight). Mrs Sedley tries hard to pass on her received to ideas of artificiality can be found throughout A Pair of Blue Eyes. The opinions about religion to Viola. discussion between Elfride and Knight about women preferring ornament However, Viola’s response to reading the Bible, and to watching the to edification suggests Mill’s contention that inadequate education and wildlife in her garden, is to be filled with a tumult of questions, putting vocational opportunities have made women attach disproportionate value her firmly in Mill’s ‘thoughtful unbelievers’ category and aligning her to ‘personal beauty and dress and display’ (p.578). Mill insists that the with Elfride’s questioning spirit. Encouraged by her mother to suppress current social arrangements have rendered men’s knowledge of women her questions about religion and nature, Viola internalises her sensitivity ‘wretchedly imperfect and superficial’ (p.497) and this is evoked by to cruelty and suffering: ‘she wondered as painfully as ever at the strange Knight as he confronts the news of Elfride’s death: ‘Since we don’t know conflict and struggle of Nature, though she closed her lips and let the half the reasons that made her do as she did, Stephen, how can we say, problem eat deeper and deeper into her soul’ (1: 14-15). Where Mr even now, that she was not pure and true in heart?’ (p.350) The novel ends, Swancourt is negligent as to Elfride’s inner life, Mrs Sedley consciously then, with this focus on the unknowable, which in many ways is the point aims to crush Viola’s developing intellectual curiosity. She succeeds only Mill was making in On Liberty and Subjection : unless people are given in limiting her ability to articulate her thoughts, though. Other clever the freedom to carry out experiments in living along with the freedom girls in the novel, such as Harry Lancaster’s sister Adrienne, are shown to from adherence to public opinion, the true potential for development on adopt an accepted and customary vocabulary in order to provide an outlet an individual and a societal level will remain undiscovered. for their intelligence. Viola, however, has a keen sense of the disjunction The Wing of Azrael tells the story of Viola Sedley’s restrictive between ordinary phrases and their true meaning. As a consequence she childhood and her forced and desperately unhappy marriage to Philip is left incapable of speech at decisive moments in her life. Like Elfride, Dendraith. Harry Lancaster is a Mill-like figure, sympathetic to Viola’s who complains, ‘My poor stock of words are like a limited number of situation, who tries to offer her an alternative life on the basis of equality. rough moulds I have to cast all my materials in, good and bad; and the Harry ultimately fails in his attempt to excise Viola’s deeply-rooted novelty or delicacy of the substance is often lost in the coarse triteness notions of duty and the novel ends in tragedy, with Viola killing her of the form’ (p.173), Viola does not have the vocabulary to express her husband and committing suicide, the reader assumes, by jumping over a thoughts satisfactorily. Caird’s portrayal of Viola movingly captures the cliff. It undoubtedly sets a bleaker tone than A Pair of Blue Eyes from the feeling of powerlessness in childhood which can result from an inability start, in the way it describes the narrowness of its heroine’s life: Viola’s to verbalise thoughts and feelings, and the terrifying repercussions of home is ‘closed in, and silent as the grave’; it is ‘stagnant and eventless’ an education which does not allow for progression beyond this state in (1:1; 1:4). Viola is, in the terms of On Liberty , one of those people with adulthood. ‘promising intellects combined with timid characters’ who is prevented The formative event of Viola’s childhood occurs after a gardener by familial and societal demands from fulfilling her potential (p.36). In unwittingly destroys a leafy nook which was her only escape from the Subjection Mill equates sensitivity with spirit, passion, leadership and the claustrophobia of her home. She is grief-stricken because ‘The bower ability to inspire others: a woman with a nervous temperament betrays was sacred to Life and Liberty; the drawing-room to servitude and death’ latent talent. Viola’s timidity is the result of her deficient education. (1: 64). She is so distraught that she is uncharacteristically disobedient

140 141 and leaves the grounds of her parents’ home: as with Elfride’s actions out experiments in living will not always follow Mill’s injunction not to rescue Knight, the extremity of the situation frees her from normal to harm others, and that the education and legal system give Philip constraints. She is drawn irresistibly towards the sea and the cliffs permission to act as he does. As Viola struggles to escape from Philip she and as she wanders there ‘wished that she too had been a child of the accidentally pushes him over the cliff-edge on which he is perched. coastguardsman, so that she might always live upon this cliffside’ (1: 72). While Elfride’s cliff-side impetuosity is her moment of greatest In her introduction to the new scholarly edition of The Wing of Azrael, triumph, Viola’s sets the tragic tone for the rest of her life. Harry and Alexandra Warwick emphasises the Gothic tropes Caird uses, in creating Caleb rescue Philip and he survives his cliff-edge plummet, but Viola’s a ruined castle – the historic home of the Dendraith family – which Viola sense of anguish and guilt remain. Philip cultivates Viola’s guilt as she 24 However, Caird also uses the ruined castle observes on the cliff-edge. grows up and though she has a deep antipathy for him, the combination of to position the late-nineteenth-century drawing room – representative her guilt and pressure from her family lead her to become his wife and to of servitude and death – in a precarious position on the edge of a cliff. inhabit the restored part of the castle on the cliff edge. Philip uses his cold The castle had once ‘stood far inland, but the hungry sea had gnawed at and unfeeling mastery of language to dominate and subdue and Viola is the cliffs till it crept up close to the castle, which now stood defiant to as unequal to his verbal onslaught before their marriage as she is to his the last, refusing to yield to the besieger’ (1:72). ‘Part of the castle had sexual violence after it. He is the type of power-loving domestic tyrant been repaired and converted into a dwelling … which stood perilously Mill describes in Subjection , delighting as much in her speechlessness as balancing itself’ (1:74), as if the long-established customs of the drawing her physical subjugation . room, transferred to the cliff-edge, are finally being undermined. As she wanders, Viola happens upon Philip Dendraith, with Harry Lancaster and At the time of the Incorporated Society of Authors dinner in 1889, Caleb Foster, in the ruined part of the castle. She hides and overhears their Hardy would have been working on Tess of the d’Urbervilles 25 and it conversation on philosophical ideas and topical issues: a conversation is noteworthy that it has some echoes of The Wing of Azrael . As Tess simultaneously evocative of the drawing room and freed from its contemplates her family’s dead horse – ‘“’Tis all my doing – all mine!” restraints. When Viola’s dog Bill Dawkins is spotted by Philip, he ties the distracted girl cried, gazing intently at the spectacle’ (p.33) – she the creature’s legs together as a form of amusement, causing Viola to resembles Viola on the cliff edge after Philip Dendraith has fallen. rush from her hiding place in indignation. Philip physically restrains her, ‘Nobody blamed Tess as she blamed herself,’ and like Viola her guilt declaring: ‘it is of no use fighting, for I am stronger than you; but I don’t becomes the handle by which her family can manipulate her (p.34). want to make you stay here against your will; I want you to stay willingly, After the horse’s death Tess’s ‘face was dry and pale, as though she and to say that you forgive me, and that you like me very much’ (1: 92- regarded herself in the light of a murderess’, prefiguring how society will 93). This is an enactment of Mill’s observation in Subjection that ‘Men eventually come to see her, just as with Viola (p.35). Like Viola, Tess do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments. perceives a disconnection between the language of religious orthodoxy All men, except the most brutish, desire to have, in the woman most and its true meaning. She convinces the Vicar – who had spent ten years nearly connected with them, not a forced slave, but a willing one; not endeavouring to ‘graft technical belief on actual scepticism’ (p.96) to a slave merely, but a favourite. They have therefore put everything into give her baby a Christian burial by imploring: ‘Don’t for God’s sake practice to enslave their minds’ (p.436). Even when Philip is more subtle speak as saint to sinner, but as you yourself to me myself – poor me!’ in his approach to Viola, attempting to distract her by ‘cleverly spinning (p.97). Alec also has elements of Philip Dendraith in his character. What stories’, she remains aware of the disconnection between his charming is deadly serious for Tess is a laughing matter for Alec. He relates his manners and his capacity to laugh at suffering (1: 95). Later in the novel, cruel treatment of his horse Tib to Tess – just as with Philip Dendraith his ‘honeyed phrases’ are contrasted to his capacity for cruelty towards his capacity for brutality towards animals indicates his capacity for cruel a frightened horse (2: 17). Harry’s reproach – ‘You want to experiment treatment of Tess. When Tess resists his attempts to kiss her, he says: with your diabolical power’ (1: 94) – is a reminder that those who carry ‘You shall be made sorry for that! … Unless, that is, you agree willingly to let me do it again’ (p.56). This recalls Philip’s treatment of Viola as a

142 143 child, and Mill’s hypothesis that men want women to be willing slaves. In Caird’s re-imagining of this concept, the disconnection between When Tess stabs Alec, Angel ‘supposed that in the moment of mad grief words and their true meaning becomes even more frightening, actively of which she spoke her mind had lost its balance, and plunged her into threatening health and survival. Thus though Adrienne ‘had the consoling this abyss’ (p.385). His mixture of horror and overwhelming love for her thought that she had, at any rate, done her best to save her erring friend is like Harry Lancaster’s reaction to the same deed committed by Viola from the abyss of guilt and ruin towards which she had been drifting’ in The Wing of Azrael . after she counsels Viola in conventional language not to leave Philip, or to question his authority, she actually hastens Viola’s demise (3: 170). Caird makes it clear that what plunges Viola into the same abyss as Tess is not only Philip Dendraith’s diabolical experimentation with his The Wing of Azrael offers alternatives to the domineering figures of power but also the seemingly innocuous small talk of the community of Viola’s father, Philip Dendraith, and the purveyors of damaging small which she is a part. Caird’s participation in the society life which brought talk. Caleb Foster is Caird’s most fully realised working-class character her into contact with Hardy, and the focus in her novels on the upper – a scholar and philosopher whom Harry has rescued from poverty. In classes, did not stop her from being extremely critical of ‘the washed- fact, Caleb, the ‘custodian of the castle’, inhabits the cliff side in a book- out flattened humanity of the British drawing-room’. 26 Ever-present in lined dwelling built with his own hands, as if this liminal space were her fiction is the contrast Mill establishes between harmful small talk or the natural home of the philosopher. Caleb’s philosophy makes him a conventional phrases, and meaningful conversation. When Harry climbs cold figure, though: he can quote from Mill, but he cannot interpret it or over the cliff edge to attempt to rescue Philip he becomes concerned apply the philosophy to personal relationships as Harry can: ‘“If other for Viola’s wellbeing and suggests that she communicates with him by people take pleasure in emotional excess, I regret it; but on the principle throwing pebbles if she can hear him. This ‘pebble language’ represents that the individual is at liberty to do what he pleases, on condition that the way accepted forms of language can conspire to silence and repress he does not encroach upon the liberty of others, I offer no obstruction individuality: the stones are worn by the waves until they all appear to the errors of our friends’” (3: 114). Conversely, Harry Lancaster is the same (1: 110). Later in the novel, Viola tells Harry ‘“my will and funny, provocative and empathic. Able to recognise his own fallibility, yours are mere pebbles on the shore’” (3: 87). Harry goes on to speak but willing to dare an extreme opinion, Harry uses conversation to of conventional language as a devouring and destructive force. He talks provoke, stimulate and advise. While Philip laughs at suffering, Harry’s sadly to his friend Sibella of the division which he now feels from his sense of humour has a positive role. In his verbal sparring with the witty sister Adrienne, after the openness of their childhood communications: but superficial Lady Clevedon, he uses comedy to challenge her most ‘She belongs to that vast band who suffer from what I call the disease of cherished convictions in a non-threatening way, seeking to pin down the words ; who are eaten up by words, as some wretched animal is devoured precise meaning of words such as ‘gentleman’. In his attempts to rescue by parasites. Adrienne pronounces to herself (for instance) the word Viola from her desperate situation, his language becomes increasingly ‘duty’ or ‘right’ and lets it fasten upon her soul and feed there as a leech’ reminiscent of Mill’s. Harry’s words are straightforward and truthful, but (p.201). also heartfelt and passionate. He tells Viola that he wants to find out what her true nature is: This striking image seems like an elaboration of Mill’s warning in On Liberty about what happens when opinions become habitual: ‘I know that underneath the crust of your acquired sentiments there lies some feeling which responds to mine. We can break the The words which convey it, cease to suggest ideas, or suggest loneliness and silence for each other; we can piece together some only a small portion of those they were originally employed to of our broken fragments, and be more clearly whole and sane, more communicate. Instead of a vivid conception and a living belief, there nearly complete beings, together than apart. If the artificial crust has remain only a few phrases retained by rote; or, if any part, the shell so far prevailed, yet I am sure that if I only had a fair chance to make and the husk only of the meaning is retained, the finer essence being you understand your own latent self, I should prevail.’ (2: 70) lost. (p.45)

144 145 Viola does not have the verbal resources to respond to what he says, of view as he pursues her in the darkness along the cliff edge. As Viola replying that she can only cling to the ideas which she has been raised ‘stood on the very verge of the precipice’ (p.217) it becomes clear that on – as if to the edge of the precipice. Viola’s life plays out the idea caught between the desire to challenge convention and her conventional Mill expresses in Subjection and his essay on ‘The Utility of Religion’ upbringing, the precipice will still be fatal to her. (1874) of the often insurmountable difficulty in overcoming that which When Viola is on the cliff edge as a child, it is her love for her dog is deeply rooted – in ourselves from childhood, or in public opinion. In Bill Dawkins which causes her to betray her presence to Philip Dendraith the end, Viola’s ‘heart stirred beneath its crust of acquired sentiment, – she cannot bear to think of the animal suffering as a result of Philip’s but she felt as if she could curse the man and woman who had disturbed cruel treatment and though she does not intend to jeopardise the slight that crust, and awakened her to a new and more exquisite anguish’ (3: amount of freedom she has gained, her compassion for the dog overrules 67). She responds to something in the entreaties of Harry, and his friend thoughts of her own wellbeing. In her overriding sympathy Viola has Sibella, but has not made the ideas her own convictions through thought affinity with another of Hardy’s characters who looks death in the face and experience. Viola stabs Philip in self-defence as he makes unwanted on the edge of a cliff. As Gabriel Oak in Far From the Madding Crowd sexual advances and attempts to prevent her escaping with Harry. When (1874) peers over the precipice at his dead sheep, the narrator comments Harry discovers what has happened, he tries to convince an intractable on the way that his pity for their fate supersedes thoughts of the disaster Viola that her best option is still to flee with him: which has overtaken his own life: ‘Oak was an intensely humane man: ‘Two miles along the coast, beyond the headland, Caleb discovered indeed his humanity often tore in pieces any politic intentions of his a part of the cliff which would have offered an easy descent had it which bordered on strategy, and carried him on as by gravitation.’ 27 In her not been for one steep little bit about midway, which was unscalable. love for Knight, Elfride is equally unstrategic: she never, for example, It struck him that a few artificial steps cut in the rock would make causes him to question ‘whether he did not owe her a little sacrifice for it continuous with the slopes above and below, where one could her unchary devotion in saving his life’ (p.318). As Harry and his friend scramble down without much difficulty. He made those steps (Viola, Sibella in The Wing of Azrael discuss how best to ensure Viola’s rescue, hear me to the end) and now we can descend by this way to the they are convinced that a strategic approach must prevail if conventions beach and put out to sea. Do you see how many advantages that are to be effectively challenged: gives us? ...the cliff is thought unscalable for miles in that direction; ‘Picture to yourself a man bound hand and foot, and at the same time our means of escape, therefore will never be suspected until some cunningly persuaded by those who have bound him that he must chance adventurer discovers Caleb’s steps. The course that we shall make no deceitful and underhand attempt to liberate himself. The take will be quite different from any that their calculations could man is evidently an idiot if he does not laugh at such teaching, and lead them to expect.’ (3: 212-213) employ any method that offers itself – subterfuge, stratagem, what Harry’s detailed explanation of how their escape route has been created you will, in order to oppose the brute force which has been used might seem an implausible way of dealing with the traumatised Viola, but against him.’ it does make sense in terms of the way the cliffs function in the novel as a ‘I wish you could persuade Viola of this.’ potential site for conventions to be challenged. Caleb – the philosopher – has made previously inhospitable and perilous terrain accessible. It is up ‘I can never persuade her,’ Sibella answered. ‘The grim necessities to Harry, a man who has been able to put his philosophy into sympathetic of her position may force her to use distasteful tools, but she will action, and Viola, a woman who has been awakened to the limitations of never lose her scruples. She will never see that these hesitations, her life, to avail themselves of this opportunity for freedom. Such a course this half-heartedness in the struggle for freedom, tend as much as of action will be surprising to many people because of its experimental the direct force of the enemy to make it unattainable. But this is the nature. Viola, however, cannot escape the deep-rootedness of the ideas work of centuries; it is in the blood; arguments are unavailing. We of her subjugation. The last few pages are mostly from Harry’s point must trust to the force of the personal impetus in Viola’s case. She

146 147 will never change her feeling rapidly enough through the suasion of 9 Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure , ed. Patricia Ingham (Oxford ideas. What are ideas in the face of prejudices? Stars at midday.’ (3: University Press, 2002), p.341. 124-125, Caird’s emphasis) 10 Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native , ed. Simon Gatrell (Oxford If, as Mill suggests, spontaneity is an important quality for those who University Press, 2008), p.238. 11 wish to effect moral reform and carry out in experiments in living, then The Return of the Native, pp.69-70. 12 Caird and Hardy seem to insist that an ability to strategise is equally Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes , ed. Tim Dolin (Oxford University necessary. Press, 2005), p.92. Subsequent references are given parenthetically within the text. 13 Leslie Stephen, ‘Social Macadamisation’, Fraser’s Magazine 6:32 NOTES (August 1872), p.168. 14 Mona Caird, The Wing of Azrael , 3 vols (London: Trübner & Co, 1889.), 1 See Michael Millgate, Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited (Oxford vol.1, pp.4-5. Subsequent references are given parenthetically in the text University Press, 2004), p.275. by volume number and page number. 2 Mona Caird, ‘Marriage’, Westminster Review 130:1 (July 1888), pp.186- 15 Rosemarie Morgan, Women and Sexuality in the Novels of Thomas 201. Subsequent references are given parenthetically within the text. Hardy (London: Routledge, 1988), p.2 and p.10. 3 William Wallace, ‘New Novels,’ The Academy 890 (25 May, 1889), 16 Jane Thomas, Thomas Hardy, Femininity and Dissent: Reassessing the p.355. ‘Minor’ Novels (London: Macmillan, 1999), p.47: ‘Hardy was apparently 4 ‘The Literary Mirror. Mrs Mona Caird: Novelist’, Young Folks Paper unfamiliar with Mill’s written contribution to the feminist debate until 966 (1 June 1889), p.350. Florence Henniker drew his attention to On the Subjection of Women [in 5 I am grateful to Pamela Dalziel for confirming that there has never 1895].’ been a time when A Pair of Blue Eyes has not been on the active sales 17 The Subjection of Women, in On Liberty and Other Essays , p.579. lists of one or more publishers. The Wing of Azrael, edited by Alexandra Subsequent references are given parenthetically in the text. Warwick, is volume 3 of New Woman Fiction, 1881-1899 (London: 18 Utilitarianism, in On Liberty and Other Essays , p.145. Pickering & Chatto, 2010). 19 Tim Dolin, Introduction to A Pair of Blue Eyes , p.xxx. 6 ‘Interview: Mrs Mona Caird’, Women’s Penny Paper 88 (1890), p.421. 20 Philip V. Allingham, www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/pasquier/2. 7 Angelique Richardson has explored how Caird drew on Mill’s concept html. In his analysis of ‘On the Cliffs’ Allingham remarks: ‘While the of individual liberty as part of her anti-eugenic stance. See Love and open sky highlights Elfride’s form, Stephen’s is framed by the “tempting Eugenics in the Late Nineteenth Century: Rational Reproduction and the alcove”.’ New Woman (Oxford University Press, 2003). My own work considers 21 Rosemarie Morgan, Women and Sexuality , p.28; Pamela Dalziel, how Caird draws on Mill’s ideas about free discussion throughout her Introduction to A Pair of Blue Eyes , (London: Penguin, 2005), p.xxi. fiction. ‘Creative, liberating’ conversation is from the sixth of her seven 22 Pamela Dalziel, Introduction, p.xxi. novels, The Stones of Sacrifice (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, 23 John Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Religion (New York: Prometheus, Kent & Co, 1915), p.36. 1998), p.138 and p.126. 8 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and Other Essays (Oxford University 24 Alexandra Warwick, Introduction, p.xi Press, 2008), p.89. Subsequent references to On Liberty are given 25 Tim Dolin, ‘A History of the Text’ in Thomas Hardy, Tess of the parenthetically in the text. d’Urbervilles (London: Penguin, 1998), p.xlv. Subsequent references to Tess are given parenthetically within the text

148 149 26 Mona Caird, One That Wins, 3 vols. (London: T Fisher Unwin, 1887), FEAR AND COURAGE vol.1, p.146: Caird’s second novel, published under the pseudonym G. VERSUS GOOD AND EVIL: Noel Hatton. 27 Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd , ed. Rosemarie Morgan WARRING POLARITIES IN THE WRITINGS (London: Penguin, 1985), p.86. OF THOMAS HARDY AND D. H. LAWRENCE

TIM PARKS

The novels of Thomas Hardy and D. H. Lawrence have aroused fierce controversy, above all for their account of sexual behaviour. In Hardy’s case the controversy has subsided, contemporary critics reserving their censure, if they consider the matter at all, for the prudish Victorian society that attacked him. 1 Lawrence, on the other hand, remains the object of heated debate, though the kind of criticism levelled at him tends to change with each passing decade. 2 The aim of this paper is to analyse these writers’ novels and the reaction to them in the light of the dominant polarities that structure their narratives.

Exclusive to Char-Chars of Dorchester The British anthropologist Gregory Bateson was the first to suggest

HARDY’S TEA that personality differentiation occurs around the behavioural polarities 3 dominant in a given cultural ethos. Exhibitionism, for example, invites A robust breakfast tea, which reflects Hardy’s either competing, hence escalating, exhibitionism, or alternatively character and taste. a passive response, whether admiring or critical, each behaviour With the help of the County Museum and Hardy pattern consolidating its opposite in a process Bateson referred to as Society we’ve created a profile of Thomas schismogenesis. Because an individual might feel trapped or limited Hardy, which has been the basis of our tea blend. in one behaviour pattern or social role, personality would be unstable, frequently seeking escape valves that allowed for role reversal and the Using only the best quality tea leaves, our possibility of exploring different areas of experience. Hardy’s blend has a deep maltiness, with a smoked caramel smoothness. This model has since been enhanced by behavioural psychologists interested in personality differentiation within families and larger Come in and try it - it goes really well with our 4 homemade cakes and scones! groups. In particular, the Italian psychologist Valeria Ugazio introduced the notion that schismogenetic polarities have semantic content, as in You can also buy tins of Hardy’s Tea at the County Museum, Tourist Information, Wellworths and the Lyme Regis Museum. an ongoing conversation. Comparing themselves with others, people see themselves as fearful or courageous, selfish or altruistic, winners or Char-Chars Tea Room is a few doors up from M&S on the main pedestrian street in Dorchester and serves a selection of fine loose losers, and so on. Ugazio argued that, although in any family various leaf tea, coffee and local food. polarities would always be present, one in particular would dominate

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