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RICE UNIVERSITY Awkward Visits: District Visiting, Gender and Middle-Class Identity in the Victorian Imagination by Anne LeBeau Dayton A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE Doctor of Philosophy APPROVED, THESIS COMMITTEE: ffUJ^^U^L^-^ Helena Michie Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor in Humanities, Chair English Robert L. Patten Lynette S. Autrey Professor in Humanities English / Martin J. Wiener Mary Gibbs Jones Professor History HOUSTON, TEXAS MAY 2008 UMI Number: 3362148 Copyright 2009 by Dayton, Anne LeBeau INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI8 UMI Microform 3362148 Copyright 2009 by ProQuest LLC All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Copyright Anne Lebeau Dayton 2009 ABSTRACT Awkward Visits: District Visiting, Gender, and Middle-Class Identity in the Victorian Imagination by Anne LeBeau Dayton This project explores the textual representation of district visiting, a form of philanthropy in which a volunteer, usually a middle-class woman, called on working- class homes within a geographically specified district. Drawing on novels and non-fiction prose published between 1850 and 1900,1 argue that district visiting is best understood in the context of middle-class anxieties about upward mobility and the expansion of their own class. While guidebook authors were limited to exhaustive descriptions of the proper behavior of district visitors, novelists imagined successful district visiting as evidence that a woman of questionable class origin had internalized the identity of a lady. The status of male charitable visitors, most of whom were clergymen, was less defined: some authors relished visiting as a site of female influence, while others feared the feminizing influence of lady visitors. District visiting evolved in the last half of the nineteenth- century from the voluntary duty of gentry daughters at home to a professionalized commitment with protocols and training regimes. This changes led, in turn, to new ways of plotting female character development; plots that earlier in the century might have ended in marriage and a retreat from public commitments were now imagined as culminating with marriage to a man who shared the heroine's dedication to the "slums" or a renunciation of marriage in favor of a life of service and often female companionship. My chapters interweave literary and archival sources, including novels, memoirs, advice manuals, religious tracts, and the archived records of Victorian charities. Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the patience and good advice of my committee. Helena Michie first encouraged me to look critically at what we then called "charitable visiting," and it was in her "Around 1860" seminar that I began my research. I first read The Daisy Chain at Bob Patten's suggestion, a recommendation made, I believe, at our first meeting as advisor and graduate student. He was an engaged reader and attentive editor throughout the long writing process. Marty Wiener helped me place my arguments in historical context. I have been blessed with a wonderful committee, and the strengths of this project are a testament to their generosity as scholars. I also thank the School of Humanities for funding two research trips to London. The staff of Rice University Interlibrary Loan tracked down a variety of obscure publications and helpfully let me know when a source was only available at the British Library. Meredith Skura provided encouragement early in my graduate career. Victorianists at Rice are fortunate to have a strong scholarly community. I am particularly indebted to Janna Smart Chance, whose fascination with Evangelical women was only matched by my obsession with female High Church novelists. Ayse Celikkol has been a wonderful friend and early in this project, roommate. Diana Strassmann and Deborah Barrett have been supportive supervisors who have made a variety of accommodations to facilitate my writing. My students in the Program for Communication Excellence have inspired me with their tireless efforts to improve their writing and argumentation. My greatest debt is to my family. My parents Carol and Jim Dayton assisted me both tangibly and intangibly. They have always encouraged me to read and think, and are vi models of scholarly engagement. My husband Mando Gonzalez, whom I have actually known longer than I have known what district visiting is, has been unfailingly supportive. His faithful love is a constant source of encouragement. Table of Contents Introduction Chapter One ' She owed it to herself to be a gentlewoman': Charitable Visiting and Middle-Class Femininity 31 Chapter Two Men Bearing Gifts: The Problem of the Clerical Visitor in Oliphant, Yonge, and Trollope 71 Chapter Three Sensational Visits: Feminine Humor and District Visiting in Braddon and Broughton 107 Chapter Four Visiting Professionally: Class and Gender and the Profession of District Nursing in Ward's Marcella 138 Works Cited 166 Introduction In the middle of the nineteenth century, many middle-class English women regularly visited their poorer neighbors. These visits were frequently known as district visits, a term that originated in the practice of dividing parishes into geographical "districts."1 Working-class Britons also encountered middle-class men at their doors, but—as I discuss in the second chapter with particular attention to clerical visitors— these men usually came in a professional capacity as clergymen, doctors, or like James Kay-Shuttleworth, as investigators compiling statistical portraits. Often, although not always, female middle-class callers were under the supervision of the local Anglican clergyman who would oversee the division of his parish and assign visitors who would, in turn, report the circumstances of his parishioners.2 Proponents of district visiting presented a variety of reasons for their calls which ranged from spreading Christianity; to alleviating poverty, poor sanitation, illness, and injury through provision of education and supplies; to encouraging cross-class friendship. Originally these visits were an extension of the lady of the manor's role: squire's wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters had an interest in and felt a responsibility toward the squire's tenants.3 The womenfolk of doctors' and clergymen's families played a similar role in the lives of parishioners and patients.4 When industrialization and the rise of the professions expanded the ranks of the upper portion of the middle class, many men and women, for the first time, considered themselves ladies and gentlemen. Critics enumerated the cultural implications of the rise of the British middle class with particular attention to the rise of the novel. In Desire and 1 2 Domestic Fiction (1989), Nancy Armstrong shows how novelistic depictions of gender roles, particularly the expectations placed on upper middle-class women, were essential to upper middle-class self-definition. Armstrong argues that women connected to rising men needed to be perceived as ladies. Visiting working-class homes became one of the many ways in which middle-class women could demonstrate their status as ladies. Armstrong maintains that domestic novels played a crucial role in masking political and economic choices as the products of individual psychology. Where in eighteenth-century narratives a heroine might marry for money or position, by the mid nineteenth century, romantic love was the only acceptable motive. Just as transformation of the marriage plot that Armstrong traces correlates with new expectations of elite female behavior, Jessica Gerard's historical work on the charitable practices of rural gentry women suggests that the idealization of the domestic lady coupled with "social change" (187) led "women of the landed classes" to increase their involvement in "informal face-to-face charity" (184). Elite rural women of earlier generations had endowed "charities, almhouses, and schools" (Gerard 186), but mid-century women were particularly interested in personal contact. This effort to transform charity into personal relationships corresponds to Armstrong's findings about the transformation of the marriage plot from an external tale of wealth and power to an internal psychological drama of choices and desire. The movement away from institutionalized displays of rural charity, and in turn, power that Gerard observes parallels what Armstrong sees as the transformation of fictional portrayals of the working class from dangerous "combinations" that threatened institutions to individual "target[s] for novels to domesticate and feminize" (177). In both 3 evolutions charitable lady's importance surpasses that of the institution or class she represents.5 This tension between individual charitable ladies and larger philanthropic bureaucracies plays out in most fictional portrayals of the practice. Most mid-century authors portray charity as the natural behavior of