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Running head: JOSEPHINE AND RUTH 1 Josephine Butler and Ruth: A Case Study on How Literature Can Instigate Social and Legal Reform Regarding the Fallen Woman Christiana Johnson A Senior Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation in the Honors Program Liberty University Spring 2017 JOSEPHINE BUTLER AND RUTH 2 Acceptance of Senior Honors Thesis This Senior Honors Thesis is accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation from the Honors Program of Liberty University. ______________________________ Matthew Towles, Ph.D. Thesis Chair ______________________________ Marybeth Baggett, Ph.D. Committee Member ______________________________ Kristen Hark, Ph.D. Committee Member ______________________________ James H. Nutter, D.A. Honors Director ______________________________ Date JOSEPHINE BUTLER AND RUTH 3 Abstract This thesis analyzes how the protagonist in Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Ruth (1853) challenged the stereotypes projected onto the fallen woman in nineteenth century England. The prime moral figure, Mr. Benson, a clergyman in the story, cares for Ruth and provides for her with the help of his sister. Their kindness to a woman who would have been considered an outcast argues for a different response to sin than what society suggested. After reading the novel, Josephine Butler acted upon the novel’s ethos and became an activist for women who were viewed as social outcasts because they were prostitutes or unwed mothers. This eventually led not only to social reform, but also legal, as her work helped repeal the Contagious Diseases Act in 1886 (Watt 1). This had long lasting implications for women’s emancipation movement (Hamilton 27). The novel’s influence on Butler shows how literature can challenge, on moral grounds, people’s reactions to those less fortunate, as well as motivate practical change in the forms of social and legal activism and reform. JOSEPHINE BUTLER AND RUTH 4 Josephine Butler and Ruth: A Case Study on How Literature Can Instigate Social and Legal Reform Regarding the Fallen Woman During the nineteenth century, both male and female authors said much regarding the “fallen woman” within works of literature. For instance, Charles Dickens includes fallen women in several of his works. These works were strongly influenced by current beliefs surrounding fallen women, namely, that “women were divided into pure and impure and on the principle that dirt should be exorcised to be fully purified” (Fusco 56). Both Dickens in Dombey and Sons and William Thakeray in Vanity Fair include fallen women, placing her at “the fringes of the family . always ostracized from the sanctity of the hearth (Auerbach 33). Elizabeth Gaskell also involves a fallen woman as the protagonist in her novel Ruth (1853), but portrays her in a sympathetic light which helped challenge the law’s equality for all women. Many people equate the fallen woman with the prostitute, but the fallen woman does not necessarily have to sell herself for sex in order to be considered fallen. Instead, an unmarried pregnant woman may be viewed on the same social rung as a prostitute, like Ruth (Fusco 57). The unmarried mother was a common literary character in the Victorian Era, seen in works such as Charles Dicken’s Bleak House, where Lady Dedlock’s “physical disfigurement as a result of contracting smallpox is suggestive of her social impairment” or Collin’s novel Hide and Seek, where the fallen woman ends up with a physical disability, “used as a metaphor for social disability” (Cox 152). In contrast, Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel portrays a non-stereotypical fallen woman, one who maintains an innocence throughout, in order to challenge preconceived notions about these outcasts JOSEPHINE BUTLER AND RUTH 5 while humanizing them. One woman who read Ruth, Josephine Butler, went on to help repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts in 1886, which discriminated against women (Watt 1). The Contagious Diseases Act (CDA) was based on the ideology which said fallen women were inherently “linked to criminality and disease,” and were “a biological danger that society had to fight” (Fusco 54). This act permitted police to stop women on the street who they presupposed to be prostitutes, and force them to undergo a medical examination (Watt 2). The repeal of the CDA not only advocated for the equality of fallen women, but for all women and individuals, as its driving theme was that all people should receive the same basic rights. Ruth led to the repeal of the CDA, challenging legal structures towards women and demonstrating the written word’s power. Ruth, with its humane and helpful attitude towards a fallen woman, motivated Butler’s social and legal reform efforts, which had lasting impacts on the women’s emancipation efforts. The Victorian Era’s View of the Fallen Woman While Ruth does not sell herself for sex in the novel, she is still a fallen woman, and per Victorian England culture, receives all the blame for her fall. According to Fraser Joyce, this is because “women who lost their virginity outside marriage were frowned upon as illegitimacy was sinful: as they showed desire they must be slaves to greed and lust” (qtd. in Fusco 57). It was believed to be unnatural for women to have sexual desires, so society viewed women acting on these desires as immoral and odd. As McBee says, “Victorians believed that women lacked sexual desire, so to give in to temptation had to be a deliberate decision” (McBee 30). In Gaskell’s novel, Ruth, a poor orphan who works as a seamstress, is seduced by Bellingham, and her own innocence and surrounding JOSEPHINE BUTLER AND RUTH 6 factors lead her to run away with him, which results in her becoming pregnant. Fusco explains that according to people in the Victorian Era, “Being Bellingham’s lover without being married to him transforms Ruth into a fallen woman . Being a single mother parallels Ruth to a prostitute, with the aggravating circumstance that she succumbs to an upper-class seducer” (Fusco 57). Despite the necessity of two parties in Ruth’s fall, as a woman she receives all of the blame from society, and people consider her fallen when her sexual encounter with Bellingham leaves her an unwed mother. The woman binary, which defined women as either innocent or fallen, a viewpoint prevalent in the Victorian Era, justified the plight of the fallen woman, allowing society to ignore their own part in it. During this time period, fallen women were believed to be “generally desperate women who had no other chance to survive, an unacceptable view to the Victorian mind, which could not tolerate any possible disharmonies in the ideal image of the world it intended to support” (Fusco 55). Individuals in the Victorian Era failed to admit how industrialism and capitalism did not in effect solve all of the world’s problems and that these very systems could drive women to fall in the first place. While people in the Victorian Era wanted to believe that the economic and societal structures in place were without flaw, individuals who were not favored by those structures, such as orphans and widows, were put in precarious situations. For instance, the social expectation to work and make something of herself as a seamstress places Ruth in a vulnerable situation where Bellingham then seduces her. Thus, in order to rationalize the presence of fallen women in a society in which it must be possible to make something of oneself, “it was fundamental to drastically split wrong JOSEPHINE BUTLER AND RUTH 7 from right. This kind of classification divided women into two categories: madonnas and harlots” (Fusco 55). Instead of taking responsibility for the flaws in their society, people in the nineteenth century used a binary in order to fault the fallen for their problems. In order to commence with daily life and resist guilt for society’s problems, then, the Victorian Era blamed their societal issues on fallen women. Ruth’s Resistance In multiple ways Ruth challenged the assumptions and beliefs held by individuals in the Victorian Era regarding the fallen woman. The surrounding influences shaping Ruth and motivating her fall demonstrate how the fallen woman may not be inherently flawed, but instead pushed by society itself. Ruth’s story shows that “through seduction and betrayal, unwed pregnancy and motherhood, [Ruth] remains the victim of her destitution, her unprotected orphan state, her sexual ignorance, and the Phariseeism of respectability that generates all three” (Auerbach 40). Logan echoes Auerbach’s belief by arguing how “Gaskell vindicates Ruth of responsibility for her fall, thereby creating a heroine victimized by fate, by society, and by the class, gender, and economic circumstances into which she was born" (Logan 38). Ultimately, instead of blaming Ruth for her circumstances, there are many various outside influences which push helpless Ruth into this “fallen” state (Watt 22). The external factors influencing Ruth’s fall exhibit how some of the responsibility lies with society itself and its structures. First, Ruth challenged the woman binary by establishing God as the sole judge of sin and portraying Ruth as innocent despite her fall. Moreover, while many believed the economic structures in Victorian England were JOSEPHINE BUTLER AND RUTH 8 praiseworthy, Ruth exhibits a protagonist who suffers because of them. That, compounded with her class and orphan status, which have problems of their own, help exhibit the tangible needs of the fallen which will not be met by society continuing to ignore and displace blame. Finally, Ruth’s ignorance regarding sexual activities, which was normal in the Victorian Era, is a contributing factor to the ease with which she is seduced, also challenging the practices of the time period. The overt inclusion and mention of these influences make it difficult to ignore the realities of the Victorian Era which motivate Ruth’s fall, thereby challenging individuals like Butler to reform society.

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