Fallen Angels : Female Wrongdoing in Victorian Novels
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University of Lethbridge Research Repository OPUS http://opus.uleth.ca Theses Arts and Science, Faculty of 2005 Fallen angels : female wrongdoing in Victorian novels Barnhill, Gretchen H. Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Arts and Science, 2005 http://hdl.handle.net/10133/241 Downloaded from University of Lethbridge Research Repository, OPUS FALLEN ANGELS: FEMALE WRONGDOING IN VICTORIAN NOVELS GRETCHEN HUEY BARNHILL Bachelor of Arts (With Distinction), University of Lethbridge, 2003 A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies of the University of Lethbridge in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS English Department University of Lethbridge LETHBRIDGE, ALBERTA, CANADA © Gretchen Huey Barnhill, 2005 DEDICATION To my husband, Al Barnhill, who continues to encourage me to turn my dreams into reality. iii ABSTRACT In the Victorian novel, gender-based social norms dictated appropriate behaviour. Female wrongdoing was not only judged according to the law, but also according to the idealized conception of womanhood. It was this implicit cultural measure, and how far the woman contravened the feminine norms of society, that defined her criminal act rather than the act itself or the injury her act inflicted. When a woman deviated from the Victorian construction of the ideal woman, she was stigmatized and labelled. The fallen woman was viewed as a moral menace, a contagion. Foreign women who committed crimes were judged for their 'lack of Englishness.' Insanity evolved into not only a medical explanation for bizarre behaviour, but also a legal explanation for criminal behaviour. Finally, the habitual woman criminal and the infanticidal mother were seen as unnatural. Regardless of the crime committed, female criminals were ostracized and removed from 'respectable' English society. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to express my appreciation to those who contributed so generously to the completion of my thesis. I would like to thank my committee members, Dr. Morgentaler, Dr. Arnold, Dr. Hosgood, and Dr. Stovel for their insightful comments and criticisms, all of which greatly added to my thesis. I wish to especially thank my supervisor, Dr. Goldie Morgentaler, who contributed countless hours as my mentor, not only discussing my ideas, but who also read and re-read my drafts, providing direction and support. I wish to also thank Dr. Hosgood who assisted me by directing the historical component of my research, and Peter Scott, LLB, who tirelessly assisted me by offering his expertise in the legal portion of my research. v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE ~ THE FALLEN WOMAN : 7 OLIVER TWIST, EASTLYNNE, TESS OF THED'URBERVILLES CHAPTER TWO-THE FOREIGN WOMAN: 49 BLEAK HOUSE, UNCLE SILAS CHAPTER THREE-THE MAD WOMAN: 74 JANE EYRE, LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET, MAN AND WIFE CHAPTER FOUR - THE UNNATURAL WOMAN : 115 ADAMBEDE, ARMADALE CONCLUSION 149 BIBLIOGRAPHY 154 vi KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS A Armadale, by Wilkie Collins AB Adam Bede, by George Eliot BH Bleak House, by Charles Dickens EL East Lynne, by Ellen Wood JE Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte LAS Lady Audley 's Secret, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon MW Man and Wife, by Wilkie Collins OT Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens T Tess of the d'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy US Uncle Silas, by Sheridan LeFanu vii INTRODUCTION "I like to hear of adventures, dangers, and misfortunes, and above all, I love a mysteiy. " LeFanu, Uncle Silas The dark side of human nature, replete with intrigue, secrets and mysteries is compelling. Everyone loves a mystery. While our better natures may bristle at the thought of peeking through a keyhole or listening at a closed door, the reader's interest is piqued when he hears, "Do you want to know a secret?" A story filled with mystery, murder and passion provides a legitimate form of intimacy with the dangerous side of life as well as a vicarious participation in the secrets, passions and struggles of others. The fascination with the dark side of life is not a recent phenomenon. For centuries mankind has been fascinated by crime. The eighteenth-century Gothic novel, with its rape, sadism, incest, ghosts, vampirism, permanent imprisonment, natural and man-made cataclysms, and other such inducements to horror, deliciously stirred the sensibilities of readers who had fed too long on the bland diet of the domestic novel and polite essay. (Altick, Studies in Scarlet 67) Together with the Gothic novel, during the eighteenth century, newspapers, broadsides and street ballads sensationalized crime for public consumption. Typically, broadsides were peddled at executions, detailing the crime as well as the confession of the criminal, embedding within their texts the moral that 'crime does not pay.' The Newgate Calendar, first issued in 1773, was a series of books that reported the details of criminal cases heard at the Old Bailey in London. The popularity of the Newgate Calendar reflected "an unmistakable indication of the increasing and enduring taste for tales of fatal violence" (Altick, Studies in Scarlet 44). Influenced by the success of the Newgate Calendar, and in response to the public's taste for crime, the Newgate novel, sometimes referred to as the 'penny dreadful,' gained in popularity during the 1830's. The Newgate novel was typically a narrative of murder or robbery, ending with the criminal's demise on the Newgate gallows (Altick 72). The Newgate novel focused on the depravity of crime, and like the eighteenth-century broadsides, the Newgate novel celebrated the moral lesson that honesty is rewarded and crime is punished. During the mid-nineteenth century, the sensation novel gained popularity. Authors such as Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon exploited the public's fascination with violence. As Elaine Showalter notes, sensation novelists made crime and violence domestic, modern, and suburban; but their secrets were not simply solutions to mysteries and crimes; they were the secrets of women's dislike of their roles as daughters, wives, and mothers. These [...] novelists made a powerful appeal to the female audience by subverting the traditions of feminine fiction [...] by expressing a wide range of suppressed female emotions, and by tapping and satisfying the fantasies of protest and escape. (Showalter, A Literature of Their Own, 158-159) Furthermore, the melodramatic style of nineteenth-century journalism encouraged sensationalism. Victorian newspapers echoed Disraeli in suggesting that there were two Englands. There was the ideal Victorian society that existed in English minds, and the reality of poverty, passion, and criminal sensation that existed in the streets (Boyle, 34). Undoubtedly, it was the 'sensational England' that mesmerized readers. Women accused of wrongdoing held a special fascination for the Victorians. Their blend of passion, eroticism, and danger served to spark the Victorian imagination. Dickens, who witnessed the hanging of Maria Manning and her husband, Frederick, was much impressed by the spectacle that accompanied their execution. In fact, in 1852, 2 three years after the event, he stated in an article, "Lying Awake," that he was unable to forget those two forms dangling on the top of the entrance gateway [...] the woman a fine shape; so elaborately corseted and artfully dressed, that it was quite unchanged in its trim appearance as it slowly swung from side to side. (Qtd. in Lindgren 9) Dickens's description is a seamless merging of the horror of the execution with the attraction of the erotic woman. The mingling of death and erotic attraction is also evident in Thomas Hardy's account of the execution of Martha Browne on August 9, 1856: I remember what a fine figure she showed against the sky as she hung in the misty rain [...] & how the tight black silk gown set off her shape as she wheeled half round & back. (Qtd. in Kalikoff, "The Execution of Tess d'Urberville at Wintoncester" 113) Both of these descriptions conflate the mysterious and macabre with the erotic woman. The fascination that the woman criminal held for the Victorians flowed in part from her deviation from the nineteenth-century notion of ideal womanhood. The ideal Victorian woman, or the 'angel of the house' was defined by her role within the home because the family served as a sanctuary for the "preservation of traditional moral and religious values" (Zedner 12). The qualities valued by Victorian society in the ideal female were submissiveness, innocence, purity, gentleness, self-sacrifice, patience, modesty, passivity, and altruism. The middle-class Victorian woman was to have no ambition other than to please others and care for her family (Zedner 15). According to the Victorian ideal, a woman was to be "a monument of selflessness, with no existence beyond the loving influence she exuded as daughter, wife, and mother" (Auerbach 185). The woman of the nineteenth century occupied a position of duality within Victorian culture. She was either Madonna or Magdalene, pure or ruined, familiar or 3 foreign. Within this cultural construct, the criminal woman was defined largely by her departure from the ideal Victorian woman who was passionless, chaste, innocent, submissive and self-sacrificing. In contrast to the Victorian ideal, the woman who contravened the idealized conception of womanhood, whether by sexual misconduct or criminal act, was viewed as deviant and unnatural. She represented an unsettling anomaly that both repelled and fascinated the Victorians. In this thesis I intend to argue that during the nineteenth century morality helped to define what constituted a 'criminal act.' As a result, gender-based social norms greatly influenced societal attitudes towards female wrongdoing. Criminality was often measured by a failure to live up to the feminine ideal of the 'angel in the house.' When a woman contravened societal expectations, she was judged far more harshly than her male counter part. I will also touch on how the sex of the author impacted on the representation of female wrongdoing in the Victorian novel.