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Dangerous Crossings: Victorian Feminism, Imperialist Discourse, and Victoria Cross's 'New Woman' in Lndigenous Space

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Dangerous Crossings: Victorian Feminism, Imperialist Discourse, and Victoria Cross's 'New Woman' in Lndigenous Space DANGEROUS CROSSINGS: VlCTORlAN FEMINISM, IMPERIALIST DISCOURSE, AND VICTORIA CROSS'S 'NEW WOMAN' IN INDIGENOUS SPACE A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Guelph In partial fulfilrnent of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts April, 1999 O Melisa Brittain, 1999 Nat ional Lib rary Bibliothèque nationale 1*1 of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. nie Wellington Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Ottawa ON KI A ON4 Canada Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, ban, distribute or seil reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. ABSTRACT Dangerous Crossings: Victorian Feminism, Imperialist Discourse, and Victoria Cross's 'New Woman' in lndigenous Space Melisa Brittain Advisor: University of Guelph, 1999 Professor Susan Brown This thesis examines the intersections of gender and race in the construction of the New Woman in three of Victoria Cross's early novels: Anna Lombard (1902), Six Chapters of A Man's Life (1903), and Life of Mv Heart (1905). These texts explore the dangers of boundary crossing, which are constructed through representations of indigenous space in general, and the 'native' male in particular, as physically threatening to the sexually transgressive New Woman. The stereotype of lndian women as quintessential victims operates, in these texts, as a mode1 against which to define the New Woman in her quest for social and sexual freedom. By representing gender and sexual deviancy in ternis of racial deviancy, Cross critiques British masculinity, attempts to manage the crisis in gender categories, and challenges utopian representations of the colonies in late Victorian ferninist discourse. The analysis both situates Cross' texts historically and interrogates the recuperative methods of late-twentieth-century feminist literary criticism. Acknowledgements Deepest and sincerest thanks go to my advisor, Susan Brown, who provided excellent academic guidance and incredibly well-timed words of encouragement during the research and writing of this thesis. Her commitment, generosity, and willingness to share both her time and resources will always be remembered. Thanks to Diana Brydon, my second reader, for her insights, suggestions, and questions, which have helped me push rny thinking in a different direction, and to Ajay Heblé, my examiner, whose outstanding questions, comments, and wisdom continue to help me develop my thinking. Thanks to al1 the above for the excellent questions and feedback during the thesis examination, and for your continued support. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Harry Lane, whose exemplary directing skills were in evidence in his role as chair of the examination cornmittee. I would also like to thank the faculty and staff of the School of Literatures and Performance Studies in English who have made my stay at Guelph an incredibly productive and gratifying experience, and extend a special thank-you to Donna Pennee, whose wonderful pedagogical style and political commitment to teaching and learning greatly influenced my decision to become part of this department and discipline in the first place. And finally, thanks to Frances for the steady stream of entertaining and encouraging letters, and to Roberta, Amy, and Maryanne, whose friendship and kind words of support were invaluable. Table of Contents Acknowledgements Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction Three New Woman Texts and a Critique of Imperialism: Reading at the Intersections of Race and Gender Chapter Two: Critiquing Masculinity/Reinscribing Femininity: The Rape of the Decadent New Wornan Chapter Three: The 'Fall' and 'Rise' of the Transgressive New Woman: Representing the Unrepresentable in Anna Lombard Chapter Four: 66 The New Woman 'Beyond the Pale': Racial and Spatial Transgressions in Victoria Cross's Life of Mv Heart Chapter Five: Conclusion Victoria Cross's New Women: Helpmeets of Empire? Works Cited 102 Works Consulted 107 Dedicated to the Memory of my Grandmother Marion Marguerite (Martin) Brittain 1902-1989 Chapter 1 Introduction Three New Woman Texts and a Critique of Imperialism: Reading at the Intersections of Race and Gender "How do you like me in Eastern dress, Helen?" she said, addressing her sister, for whom Digby was deciphering some old coins. Digby and I confessed afterwards to each other the impulse that moved us both to suggest it was not at al1 complete without the trousers. I did offer her a cigarette, to en hance the effect. (Victoria Cross, "Theodora: A Fragment" 33) In a fourth-year English class entitled "Queer Matters," I first encountered the work of Victoria Cross, and the figure of the New Woman. We read a number of nineteenth-century literary works, examining and discussing them for their representations of homosexuality, but the passage quoted above, from "Theodora: A Fragment," Cross's first published work, stood out for me from the rest. Because al1 the texts in the course dealt in some way with representations of unconventional sexualities, I was not surprised by Cross's depiction of an androgynous woman. I was, however, struck by the fact that Theodora's androgyny, her gender and sexual 'deviance', is constructed so obviousiy in relation to race. In Theodora," published in 1895 in the avant garde periodical The Yellow Book, the British New Woman's gender and racial cross-dressing stimulates the sexual desires of Cecil, a decadent aesthete Egyptologist who likes "everything extraordinary" (6). In rny subsequent research on Cross's work, 1 found that four out of five of her earliest texts engage in some way with racial and colonial stereotypes and 'Eastem' settings, and 1 became curious about the intersection of discourses of gender and race at the fin-de-siècle. How, I wondered, would these texts have been read by Cross's contemporaries? What meaning is produced by the depiction of a British woman in 'Eastern' dress? In British men's clothes? How, exactly, does the New Woman as gender and racial 'deviant' work to construct a transgressive female subjectivity? It became clear that an analysis of these works would enable a deeper understanding of some of the ways in which female subjectivity was constructed by New Woman writers at the fin-de- siècle, and how these subjectivities are related to discourses of race, empire, and feminism. As the only recent scholar who has published articles on Victoria Cross, Shoshana Milgram Knapp's work is important for its recognition of this best- selling author as a strong voice in the contentious debates around gender roles and identities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In her article " Revolutionary And rogyny in the Fiction of 'Victoria Cross,"' Knapp celebrates this late Victorian and early Edwardian novelist for "her increasingly daring attempts to place at the core of popular fiction a woman who challenged conventions of gender and thought." She says that "years before Modernist writers . used cross-dressing as a metaphor, Victoria Cross considered what it would mean for women and for men to cross the border of gender construction and identity" (4). Knapp says that Cross is characterized by critics "primarily as a 'New Woman' novelist and a defender of the rights of women against the wrongs of men," but that this description of Cross as a "late Victorian polemicist" is limiting : [Cross] exemplified, in fact, not only a rejection of the legal restriction of women's freedorn and the social constriction of women's biological and emotional identity, but a thorough engagement in what Majorie Garber has called "category crisis," the disruption and foregrounding of "cultural, social, or aesthetic dissonances" . testing and questioning boundaries. (4) Knapp characterizes Cross as a t'revolutionary":a writer with "radical visions" whose readers "seemed to miss the point" (3) of much of her writing. She says that one contemporary reviewer could not "see in Theodora," the protagonist of both "Theodora: A Fragment" and the later novel Six Chapters of a Man's Life, "anything more than a 'woman who did.' Victoria Cross's crossover character remained, to a large degree, invisible" (15). Knapp participates in the vital feminist project of recovering 'lost' or neglected women writers whose work is part of a larger cultural and political discourse. However, like most Western feminist work of this kind, produced as it was in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it demonstrates a blind spot with regard to race and imperialism. While Knapp does mention that many of Cross's earliest novels "al1 dealt with erotic adventures, several in exotic settings," and that Cross sometimes "portrayed romances across racial boundaries" (1 6), there is no 3 analysis of the role discourses of race and empire play in Cross's depictions of transgressive New Women and alternative gender identities. My project attempts to move beyond Knapp's work by examining the ways in which racial and colonial stereotypes are mobilized as a means of critiquing British masculinity and constructing the New Woman's subjectivity in three of Victoria Cross's early novels: Anna Lombard (1902). Six Chaoters of a Man's Life (1903). and Life of Mv Heart (1905). In "Three Wornen's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism," Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak laments the continued reproduction of "the axioms of imperialism" produced in feminist criticism that practices "a basically isolationist admiration for the literature of the female subject in Europe and Anglo-America" (798).
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