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2018 Evolving Constructions of Love and Marriage in Austen, Eliot, and Wilde Paula Jean Anderson

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FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

EVOLVING CONSTRUCTIONS OF LOVE AND MARRIAGE

IN AUSTEN, ELIOT, AND WILDE

By

PAULA JEAN ANDERSON

A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

2018

Paula Jean Anderson defended this dissertation on January 18, 2018. The members of the supervisory committee were:

Candace Ward Professor Directing Dissertation

Aimee Boutin University Representative

Barry Faulk Committee Member

Eric Walker Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

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To all who strive for greater understanding and humanity in a world sorely in need of both

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My deep appreciation to Dr. Candace Ward for directing the research and composition of this dissertation; for sharing her keen understanding and original interpretations of the authors, literary works, and philosophies of love and marriage contained herein, and for consistently blending thoughtful critique with heartening encouragement and welcome humor. Her guidance has proven that the pursuit of higher education can be a true pleasure.

Sincere gratitude is due Dr. Barry Faulk, whose wealth of scholarly insight clarified the vital importance of being earnest in enriching a thesis and acknowledged the greater power of an ever- evolving reality over an ideal, always, in literary representations of loving partnerships, particularly when analyzing the life, loves, and artistic works of a man of such importance as Oscar Wilde, who cared for men but repeatedly wrote about a good woman.

For his continued commitment to my academic efforts, my thanks to Dr. Eric Walker, whose scholarly understanding of Jane Austen’s life, literary works, seminal contribution to the development of the English novel, and insistent argument for companionate marriage, which serves as the springboard for this argument, cannot be overstated.

For Dr. Aimee Boutin’s early faith in my premise, practical research suggestions, and structural direction, I am very appreciative. Her initial defense of my original vision clarified my goals and served as a sound foundation for years of study and composition.

Heartfelt thanks also to Dr. John Fenstermaker, my academic mentor, for long and unwavering encouragement, and to Ms. Janet Atwater for invaluable moral support and technical expertise.

While the pursuit of higher knowledge is individual, realizing the goal is communal. I thank all who have steadfastly supported my efforts, my son and daughter first and foremost, who shared the sacrifices required. They have been and will always be my greatest inspiration. I hope to be as gracious and loving in my encouragement of their dreams as they have been of mine.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ...... vi

INTRODUCTION ...... 1 Evolving Realism ...... 2 Chapter Outline ...... 4 Summation ...... 8

CHAPTER 1: INITIATING THE CONVERSATION, CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO: JANE AUSTEN ...... 9 Historical Overview: To Early Nineteenth Century ...... 9 Introduction ...... 21 Biography ...... 27 Works ...... 32 Summation ...... 72

CHAPTER 2: DEEPENING THE CONVERSATION, CHALLENGING THE VICTORIAN IDEAL: GEORGE ELIOT ...... 75 Historical Overview: Mid-Nineteenth Century ...... 75 Introduction ...... 81 Biography ...... 84 Works ...... 91 Summation ...... 134

CHAPTER 3: EXPANDING THE CONVERSATION, CHALLENGING THE SEXUAL NORM: OSCAR WILDE ...... 137 Historical Overview: Late Nineteenth Century ...... 137 Introduction ...... 145 Biography ...... 157 Works ...... 165 Summation ...... 202

CONCLUSION ...... 205

REFERENCES ...... 216

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 222

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ABSTRACT

British literature of the long nineteenth century, exemplified by three authors who lived and wrote in England from the late eighteenth to the turn of the twentieth centuries, was deeply focused on understanding human relationships and increasing equality between the sexes. From the novels of Jane Austen in the late Romantic period, through George Eliot’s Victorian novels, to the prose and plays of Oscar Wilde written on the cusp of a new century, constructions of love and marriage matured within and throughout the authors’ life experiences and art, affecting and reflecting cultural changes in all levels of English society but most notably through the changing mores of the rising middle class. Attesting to their lasting universality in depicting male and female emotions, social standards, and cultural goals, the written works of Austen, Eliot, and Wilde influenced a century of contemporary readers and continue to draw audiences for their timeless understandings of, and insightful approaches to, human relationships. Through detailed analysis of the authors’ selected works, with references to contemporary and modern critical interpretations, I will focus on these ever evolving individual and collective constructs of love and marriage, from Austen’s practical approach to love and sometimes deceptively witty arguments for equal partnership in marriage, through Eliot’s complex studies of individuality and redefined concepts of marriage, to Wilde’s insistence that love, marriage, and partnership be redefine by and true to self, despite pressure to conform. Throughout this detailed study of increasing realism in English society and fiction, changing gender roles and rights, developing relationships between the sexes, and the evolution of conceptions of love, the institution of marriage, a partnership between and within the sexes, this dissertation will focus on the long-term effects of the literary contributions of Austen, Eliot, and Wilde to ever evolving constructions of love and marriage in nineteenth-century England and their enduring effects on the Western World.

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INTRODUCTION

The poet and the novelist write largely out of personal experience, and must give expression to the effects of their own history. What they have seen and felt, gives shape and tone to what they write; that which is nearest their own hearts is poured forth in their books. To ignore these influences is to overlook a better part of what they write, and is often to lose the explanation of many features of their work. (Cooke 3)

Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Oscar Wilde, authors whose creative lives spanned England’s long nineteenth century, followed highly individual literary paths in an era of unprecedented social and cultural upheaval. Yet, they shared a focus on evolving constructions of love and marriage, individually and collectively influencing what each could become in English society, from the Romantic through the Victorian periods. Today, Austen, Eliot, and Wilde are considered literary icons. In their own times, they were rebels, radicals, and threats to the status quo, social reformers who openly challenged accepted ideas of marital relationships between and within the sexes based not on money and power, but on feeling. All were realists, as the term was progressively defined across the century, who – anonymously, nom de plume, or openly – disputed entrenched social assumptions, re-envisioning, living, and continually championing constructions of individual love, companionate marriage, and partner relationships as they evolved. The literary works of Austen, Eliot, and Wilde remain remarkably modern, enhancing our understanding of the past and encouraging more equal partnerships for the future. The goal of this dissertation is to explore these evolving constructions of love and marriage, singly and in close relation to each other, as Austen, Eliot, and Wilde understood and created them within the social dynamics of the early, middle, and late nineteenth century in England. As these constructions changed within and between the three authors, altering their own philosophies and prose, succeeding generations of the English public absorbed and reacted to them. Within this dissertation, I will explore the evolutions of each author’s ever-changing constructions of love and marriage, first with Austen’s written works early in the long nineteenth century, primarily Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion; Eliot’s novels, notably Adam Bede and Daniel Deronda, and Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray as well as his plays, principally An Ideal Husband and A Woman of No Importance. Following progressive historical overviews of constructions of love and marriage in England and on the Continent, each of three chapters will address a single author’s philosophies and evolving constructions of love

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and marriage within their fictional works, with references to contemporary and modern criticism. Throughout the chapters and conclusion, I will analyze the ways in which Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Oscar Wilde created fictional constructions of love and marriage founded on the realities of personal experience and changing concepts of that realism. Evolving Realism The great cultural changes of the English long nineteenth century were reflected in a rich body of literature that attempted to clarify the challenges that social and interpersonal change posed for men and women. Between 1790 and 1900, sensational gothic fiction gave way to novels that supported a fundamental shift from the norm of contractual marriages meant to secure family fortunes to more companionate partnerships based on feeling – from Jane Austen’s depictions of male/female relationships based on personal choice and mutual love, through George Eliot’s mid-century rejection of traditional Victorian marriage in lieu of innovative partner constructs, and culminating in Oscar Wilde’s late-century redefinitions of traditional and nontraditional companionships that defied established moral codes. In the nineteenth century, their lives informed their art; in the twenty-first century, the novels and plays of Austen, Eliot, and Wilde continue to provoke scholarship shaped by open, equal, and meaningful definitions of loving companionship. Realism became increasingly important in nineteenth-century literature. In nearly every facet of English life, what had long been accepted was challenged and replaced by what could be; in perceptions of love and marriage, this meant less fantasy and more true feeling. The literary realism that ushered in the long nineteenth century was a rejection of the excesses of sensational romantic literature. Rebelling against outmoded constructions of contractual marriage and initiating a new literary style, Austen, by unblinkingly observing everyday life, created more realistic and relatable fictional characters involved in increasingly credible, loving, and equal relationships. As a Victorian, Eliot’s challenge deepened, in life and art, as she pursued and constructed ever more meaningful realism in both. Wilde, attempting but unsatisfied with conventional male/female love and marriage, carried his challenge of companionate relationships into brief Uranian loves and same-sex relationships, yet his most lasting partnership was with his wife. All chapters will address such influences on the evolving constructions of love and marriage in each author’s art.

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Ushering in the nineteenth century, Jane Austen was precocious in her attempt to depict male/female relationships with realism, although that particular term would not come into common usage in England until midcentury (Williams 258). Her novels were intended to entertain and inform. Writing about life as she experienced it, and arguing for love and companionate marriage, Austen rejected the sensational romantic writing style of Ann Radcliffe to expand on the more realistic literary approaches of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Henry Fielding. Austen wrote clearly, honestly, and in vivid detail about the fundamentals and complexities of relational dynamics between the sexes, with progressive understanding and lessening sentimentality. An unmistakable tension between social and personal expectations runs throughout her fiction. By mid-century, Victorian thought attempted to reconcile daily experience with empirical science and metaphysical truth. George Eliot’s realism developed from her early attempts to understand complex human interactions in the rural Midlands she knew as a child and young woman; then, in evolving male/female relationships in ever-changing English and Continental environments, and finally, within loving partnerships in which she redefined marriage. Eliot’s vision of realism in love and marriage spanned the past (what society had mandated), present (what society expected), and future (what society might accept). Within the everyday, much as Austen had done, she searched for the highest truth of human existence. Where Austen argued and brought her readers into the narrative, Eliot pondered and narrated, imbuing her novels with an often-photographic realism. Before Darwin released The Origin of Species, which Eliot read in 1859 (Spittles 36), she avidly sought realism in her art; after his work, with Daniel Deronda, she reached the limits of the realism she was able to create. In the last decades of the long nineteenth century, with its pseudoscience, experimental fiction, aesthetic art, and distrust of normative human experience, Oscar Wilde again redefined realism, juxtaposing it with fantasy for comparison. His realism was individual and subjective, a blend of art and life, both in constant flux. What reality was to him, momentarily or over time, he assumed was superior to others’, a product of his genius which, once publicly recognized, became credible. As with his brand of aestheticism, however, Wilde’s reality was credible only to an exclusive group in which realism in art and literature constantly evolved, as did his constructions of love, ever-changing realities he fostered with wit and wisdom in his novel and plays. To the end, Wilde argued for an alternate reality in love and companionship, challenging

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an outmoded Victorian moral code and ushering in a new interpretation of relationships between, and within, the sexes that would not be fully recognized until long after his death. Chapter Outline Jane Austen was a rebel – a fact too often ignored in critical attempts to reinvent her as a prim and proper spinster – in her efforts to represent life sincerely, without the restrictive conventions accepted by many of her contemporaries. Beyond the deliberate misrepresentations the Austen family created for posterity after her death, and within the countless reinterpretations of her life and works, modern readers have become increasingly alienated from the real, and very human, Jane Austen. She was bright, perceptive and inquisitive, well read, and quite well traveled for a woman of the early nineteenth century; she also had a temper, was often quarrelsome, and could be blunt and cutting when she lost patience. Writing on universal themes in artfully clear prose, Austen is, however, accessible, even strangely familiar, Jane when Eliot is never George (or Marian) and Wilde is rarely Oscar. Insightful and literarily proficient, she wrote with increasing authority on human dynamics, fully developing characters of both genders, single and married. Her messages are timely and her constructions of love and marriage surprisingly modern. Yet, Jane Austen has become a symbol of what her audiences want to believe was a simpler time with clearer truths. It was not; human nature changes slowly. Realism lends credibility to Austen’s novels. Born in one century and completing her best work in another, Austen, as she wrote, was a talented but unknown author who exposed social hypocrisies endemic to entrenched and highly structured ideal relations between men and women. Despite class and cultural limitations, Austen openly questioned socially ingrained assumptions of gender stereotypes and the morality – or immorality – of contractual marriage for fortune rather than feeling, as explored in Chapter 1. Publishing anonymously, in part to avoid being typed as a less consequential female author, Jane Austen wrote to vent. That she simultaneously encouraged open dialogue and equal partnerships between the sexes was and remains a fortunate byproduct. First and foremost, she was frustrated and angry, even indignant and righteous, and protested in novels offered as entertainment. Austen had a keen instinct for false pretense, in life and in art. Austen also wrote to pay her way, as did Eliot and Wilde; writing was her profession. Far from romantic fantasy, the actualities of love and marriage were the most practical of subjects for every young woman of her time and social position. Novels doubled as instructional

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manuals. A second daughter of a large family with no provision for dowry and little income, almost pathologically opposed to working as a governess or marrying only for financial security, Austen wrote for paid publication. Gaining the favor of the Prince Regent, as Eliot was later endorsed by the Queen and Wilde’s plays were favored by the heir to the throne, Austen enjoyed a measure of financial success that, eventually, in addition to a small inheritance, allowed her to live comfortably. As important as was the personal satisfaction she gained from writing her novels, Austen also published them and, in doing so, became a voice for change. Mid-century brought a resurgence of her novels, largely due to G. H. Lewes and George Eliot, who considered them the highest form of fictional realism. Her rebellion had begun an enduring literary conversation. George Eliot, a woman of artful re-creation, was a study in contrasts. A country girl who went, alone, to the city, she possessed a formidably sharp mind. Socially awkward, Eliot was adaptable but often intractably stubborn, loved deeply but dismissed harshly, and possessed a strong will but a tormented soul throughout her life. She is often caricaturized as a plain and pensive philosophical author of period tomes, a grossly unjust stereotype. Mary Anne Evans – indoctrinated, dutiful, and starved for love, yet bright, individualistic, and determined – studiously reinvented herself by questioning her most fundamental beliefs, turning her back on a village childhood to make her way in the city and daring to defy, and finally break down, sacrosanct social rules. Seeking companionate love, yet forced to defy traditional morality to realize it, Evans forged her own marital code as the acting wife of a man married to another woman. That she defied conventional standards of love and marriage is fact. That she also valued them is evidenced by her decisions to be called Mrs. Lewes and to legally marry at the end of her life, as well as by her harsh judgment of female characters who defied sanctioned marital codes. While waiting out the social ostracism of her long partnership with George Henry Lewes, Marian Evans combined self-taught journalistic skills with a visceral understanding of the midland personalities of her childhood to transform, once more, into a successful, if conflicted, novelist. As George Eliot, never fully at peace with her choices, she both reinforced and protested Victorian concepts of love and marriage in her works. Her novels chronicle an expanding sense of self in the world and progressively broader thematic interests. With the novels becoming popular successes under a pen name that itself was a personal statement, and

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bolstered by increasing literary power and unfailing partner support, Eliot challenged readers to rethink love and to reevaluate marriage partners as companions in spirit rather than as purveyors of social acceptance and financial security. As she matured and became more certain of herself and her talent, Eliot’s constructions of fictional love and marriage became increasingly complex, from marriages of convenience in which love may or may not grow, to spiritual marital partnerships based on shared goals beyond self. Chapter 2 will explore George Eliot’s power as both an intellectual and instinctual writer who did not spare her characters, readers, or herself the moral struggles of love and marriage. While Austen’s key characters are often referred to as heroines and heroes, and her stated purpose was to write honestly about male/female relationships yet with happy endings, Eliot’s characters materialize as flesh and blood men and women. Rooted to circumstances that offer little hope of external change, their growth must be internal. Her first novels were heavily autobiographical, but as her world widened with travel and new acquaintances, Eliot expanded her themes, plots, and settings, reformulating fictional types Oscar Wilde would take to new levels. Eliot’s experiential insight into evolving constructions of male/female love and marriage lend a deeply personal, yet often harsh and even vindictive, tone to her works: love is sorely tested, and partnerships are never guaranteed. Characters are forced to make difficult choices and suffer consequences. For George Eliot, fiction writing seems to have been therapeutic. Oscar Wilde came to this literary conversation as a harbinger of change, ushering out stringent Victorian ideals and instigating, for a new age, radical ways of rethinking love, commitment, and partner choices, male/female and male/male. Expanding on Austen’s clever satire and Eliot’s unblinking gaze, but with no less anger than either, Wilde forced late Victorians to acknowledge the inevitable social change a new century would bring. With charm and a barbed wit that audiences craved but did not trust, he reflected their narrow thinking, stale social stereotypes, and blatant hypocrisies back to them through his prose and plays. Clever and uninhibited, Wilde first covertly and then openly mocked restrictive marital and sexual ethics in his lifestyles, partner choices, and artistic works, unique less in his sexual preferences – including those he was tried for – than in his frank defense of personal choice that included both sexes. Because Wilde spoke with authority from experiencing both heterosexual love and marriage, and loving homosexual partnerships, his credibility threatened the social bedrock of

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English marital culture. Refusing to deny his truth, and a victim of tragic timing, Wilde paid his dues but paved the way for inevitable change in same-sex dynamics. By the final years of the nineteenth century, unsustainable social foundations of what had served as love and had constituted marriage were crumbling from within. Women were demanding a voice and a vote, seeking autonomy, independence, and, if they chose, equality in marital partnerships. Caught in what they perceived to be, and often were, power struggles with women, men also began to redefine their social and sexual roles, openly reinventing themselves not only in their relationships with the opposite sex but, in growing numbers, within their own. As a husband and father, even as an author and playwright, Oscar Wilde fulfilled late Victorian expectations of what constituted love and marriage. As a lover of men, he increasingly snubbed English law and ignored sacrosanct rules of polite society. Wilde’s high visibility as an increasingly popular playwright, his ruthless critiques of the social hypocrisies of his audiences, and the subjective morality he displayed with his ever-bolder partner choices were conspicuous challenges to established social authority. As Wilde’s success as a playwright grew, and the public demanded more of his art, author and audience found it increasingly difficult to enjoy Wildean wit while his personal moral code was being viciously attacked. Wilde and those close to him paid dearly for his futuristic attitudes and practices. If he had lived a century later, Wilde could have more freely acknowledged himself an artist and bisexual and followed his inclinations without threat of imprisonment. Yet, would he have been as appreciated or needed in our time as he was in his? A significant part of his charm today is the courage with which he anticipated and defended his cause. Few would entirely condone his actions; surely, his family suffered unfairly from his personal choices and cavalier disregard. There is an undeniable nostalgia in twenty-first century appreciation of Wilde’s witticisms and works, a respect for his nineteenth-century daring and defense of alternate concepts of love, even his ability to retain the loyalty of loved ones, before and after his death. Wilde is respected today for living openly and unashamedly during a time that punished his truth. Despite a never-ending fascination with his mawkishly reported downfall, Wilde’s works and philosophies continue to be restaged, reprinted, and endlessly quoted. In Chapter 3, I will argue that, in his novel and successful plays, Wilde pioneered evolving constructions of love, marriage, and companionship that continue to provoke thought and foster change in relationships between and within the sexes.

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Summation Collectively, then, through increasingly realistic life choices, ever-changing philosophies, and expanding arts, Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Oscar Wilde challenged nineteenth century English audiences to re-evaluate long-held beliefs and practices of conventional love and contractual marriage in favor of progressively evolving constructions of equal and loving relationships in companionate marriage and consensual partnerships. In this way, over time, the literary and dramatic works of Austen, Eliot, and Wilde initiated and influenced lasting social change in relational philosophies and conduct from which both sexes benefit today. Experiencing social rejection of their own lifestyle choices – Austen electing to remain single, Eliot living with a married man, Wilde committing to women and men – these authors asked nothing of their public that they did not openly commit to themselves. By questioning their own values, allowing their personal relationships and their works to evolve, and widely sharing their reconsidered philosophies of love and commitment with English society across the long nineteenth century, Austen, Eliot, and Wilde helped England progress from a male-centric culture with a predominance of unfeeling but financially lucrative contractual marriages toward the individual right to choose whom to love, to establish companionate marriages and caring partnerships, and to experience increasingly equal gender rights within satisfying relationships.

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CHAPTER 1 INITIATING THE CONVERSATION, CHALLING THE STATUS QUO: JANE AUSTEN

Historical Overview: To Early Nineteenth Century The passion that Austen, Eliot, and Wilde shared for a foundational restructuring of nineteenth-century constructions of love and marriage through their art sprang from their knowledge of and experiences within the injustices and indignities of long-established marital practices. Love and marriage have always been political, less often realistic, prey to what Michael McKeon has coined “the two destructive passions of love and money” (261). Twelfth century primogeniture – the aristocratic favoring of the firstborn – resulted in younger sons being discouraged from marrying. Meant to protect family fortunes, this practice resulted in “turbulent and errant bands” of juventes riding across England in search of adventure and rich heiresses to regain their fortunes, creating a new aristocracy and unwittingly encouraging great numbers of commoners (ministeriales) to rise through marriage (or service), as well, tightening marriage markets and fostering the concept of the self-made man (Watt 141). Late medieval poetry and popular romances had idealized chivalric love (147). With the enlightenment of the Renaissance, individual experience became the ultimate indicator of reality; long gone were classical epics of history or fable judged by adherence to tradition, and chivalry also faded, with its serving and lusting from afar. Virtuous female chastity pursued by a corrupt male aristocracy, highlighting the struggle between female common virtue and aristocratic male corruption, was more than fiction and became a powerful norm of the progressive narrative (McKeon 256), in which the twin threats of forced aristocratic rape and aristocratic marriage were closely related and violent expressions of corruption (258). As realism came into vogue and made way for a new and unique – novel – narrative founded in personal reality (Watt 13), an evolving concept of love as a personal right, and marriage as a public ceremony to confirm that love, became a momentous and far-reaching development of the early modern period (McKeon 372), with attending reconstructed familial constructs. Mate choice evolved from legal unions for transfer and consolidation of fortune (marriage by contract) to companionate marriages based on feeling.

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English attitudes toward sex also evolved in phases over the course of modern history, with alternating patterns of repression, permissiveness, and moderate tolerance from the sixteenth century to the high degree of sexual choice from the twentieth century to the present (Stone 339). During these phases, conditions of contraception were influenced by several factors, among them theological and moral acceptance, increasing male awareness of the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth, economic incentives to reduce birthrates, and increasing focus on the family (261-5). The average number of children born to one wife was lower than once believed, with four or less in upper-class families and four to six in middle- and lower-class families, birth intervals averaging twenty-four to thirty months (52). From the sixteenth century forward, attitudes toward newborns and children evolved dramatically, from an early belief that infants were born in original sin through increasing understanding that life experience, genetics, and social corruption played vital roles in individual psychological development (254-5). Based on available research, sixteenth-century marriages are believed to have lasted, on average, from seventeen to twenty years, due in large part to shorter lifespans (Stone 46). Christianity strengthened the concept of family and “its fundamental if ambiguous grounding in the kinship system” (McKeon 140). The early family was transient and temporary; husband and wife had less than an even chance of time together after their children left home. Sexual satisfaction risked often life-threatening poor hygiene, disease, pregnancy, and childbirth. Marriage manuals advised restricted marital sex through the nineteenth century (Stone 308). The double standard seems to have been at issue mainly in the aristocracy, but women’s legal status and rights generally declined from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. In marriage, husband and wife literally became one by law, he by acquiring control of his wife’s property and she by losing all legal status, a result of male belief that females could not reason, despite the successful reigns of English queens; indeed, many questioned whether a woman had a soul (136). Adult mortality rates remained high, remarriage was common, and many families were blended. Although infanticide was legally punishable by death, since it deprived an infant of baptism and salvation, abandonment was common. Children were routinely fostered out at an early age, and most had lost at least one parent by adulthood, all of which weakened family relations (48). By the seventeenth century, Puritanism flourished, and an Act passed in 1650 made adultery punishable by death (Watt 156). The traditional patriarchal family became by far the most common (140) as the educated lady was replaced by the traditional female accomplished in

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domestic arts (Stone 143). A silent, docile, and virtuous housewife who bore and reared children became the feminine ideal. Rather than love and marriage enabling equality and companionship, wives were required to submit to husbands, strengthening male authority. Such suppression begged resistance. In 1642, petitioners of the Levelling Party sought greater autonomy by claiming that women did not seek equality with men but only to follow their example, yet, in 1649 when they rejected male representation, the movement foundered (226). While traditional mothers seemed to raise more loving and trusting children, young boys were sent to boarding schools that treated them harshly and reversed the effect. The Act of 1662 established paternal child maintenance, but unwed mothers were often pressured to reveal paternity only to be punished or deported (400). The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries brought great social change. As John Locke insisted that procreative and paternal power of the father was the origin of political right, Aphra Behn and fellow feminists championed the status and rights of women (Stone 227), educating daughters who began attracting men of rank over uneducated women of fortune (Armstrong 19). England also experienced a sharp reduction in population during the late 1600s. With a decline in male births that severely challenged direct male descent, indirect male inheritance increased; by 1690, the husband of a daughter or niece could adopt the family name and inherit by land law (McKeon 153). As the number of spinsters increased, widely regarded as socially deplorable and morally dangerous, a strong objection to bachelorhood developed, with Puritans and others calling for bachelors to be taxed more heavily than married men (Watt 146). If all men had married, however, there were still more women; even polygamy was briefly considered. With a general lack of employment for women, men not wanting their wives to work, and a tendency for men to marry later on economic grounds, marriage became a bargaining tool, sans love; if wives did not please, they could be, and were, sold, from sixpence to three and a half guineas (143). Such subordination forced a shift in the social paradigm, from women being considered lesser versions of men to naturally different than men. The novel emerged during this socio-political shift, with Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Henry Fielding its first major proponents. Realism, the antithesis of idealism, was the defining characteristic of the early eighteenth-century English novel and the chief goal of these novelists who sought to portray human experience through fiction (Watt 10). French Realists argued that their novels were most dispassionate and scientific in their scrutiny of life,

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but all realistic fiction assumed that truth was individual and discovered through the senses (12). “Before the 1740s, English culture still tended to subsume the sexual within the social” (McKeon xxix). In Gulliver’s Travels, published in 1726, Jonathan Swift argued for marriage, not for love or consolidation of fortune but “to preserve the Race from degenerating” through a survival system that young couples “see done every Day… one of the necessary Actions in a reasonable Being’” (346). The Houyhnhnms, who care little for power or fortune, avoid “degenerations and corruptions of the human race” through abstinence and planned marriage (354). If Defoe and Richardson did not discover literary realism, they enhanced their novels with such realistic details and descriptions that Lamb later felt it was “like reading evidence in a court of Justice” (Watt 34), a style George Eliot would attempt to emulate. Rejecting classical plots and structure, Defoe allowed his narrative to flow simply from what his protagonists might do, and Richardson and Fielding contributed by basing plots on contemporary incidents (15). Where classical characters had been given single names representative of human traits, Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding identified nearly all characters with first and last names (19-20). While classical fiction had been timeless, the novel required that plots and characters develop over time (22). Defoe presented individual life both broadly and minutely, Richardson more traditionally but with unprecedented detail, and Fielding chronologically (24-25). Place, traditionally vague, gained physicality with Defoe and Richardson added detailed interiors (26). Fielding, in Tom Jones, featured the first Gothic mansion in the history of the novel and named and identified locations evidentially (27). The specificity of these literary tools heightened realism, as did the clear and easy prose suited to the realistic novel. Defoe created a new literary form to embody a style of realism that ridiculed aristocratic notions of inherited honor “as if he were a different Species from the rest of Mankind” (McKeon 154). Richardson was highly successful in avoiding an episodic plot by basing his novels on a single action, a courtship (Watt 135). Both Richardson and Fielding broke with the old- fashioned romances (10). In 1667, John Milton had published Paradise Lost, an epic poem of a romantic and sexual partner relationship that morphed into a Puritanical concept of marriage and sexual relations, a unique God-given unity that became the accepted code of English society through the nineteenth century. Samuel Richardson, writing at a time when marriage was important for women but difficult to achieve, played an important part in establishing this code. Pamela, in particular, “has all the absolute quality of romantic love” (137). Richardson and his

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circle believed that friendship was love perfected and marriage was the highest state of that friendship that mortals could know (160). Fielding, breaking least from the Augustan prose style, detracted somewhat from the authenticity of his narratives, but strove to demonstrate that “marriage designs may be more vicious than the most abandoned profligacy” (283). Although Fielding’s Tom Jones was a favorite, Austen’s preference for Richardson’s novels was no coincidence, and both his penchant for understanding the human condition and style of realism can be seen in her works. In Pamela (1740), Michael McKeon types the protagonist as “an enchantress… who transforms reality” and considers her rape a “distastefully crude expedient” for B.’s “aristocratic plot”. Yet, when Pamela is pinned to the bed and at B.’s mercy – “You see now you are in my Power” – he does not rape; he nearly begs her to accept his proposal of marriage (qtd. 359). In the gender power code of the time, Mr. B assumes that his decision not to rape Pamela, and his desire to raise her to his station or to meet her halfway, are proof of his sincere intentions, what he considers a proof of love. Pamela becomes his wife and, attempting to justify her newly acquired power, shows herself, a former servant girl, to be deserving of social elevation (a concept of earned acceptance later explored by the three authors addressed here) by rationalizing her capitulation through its potential results: “O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good!” (qtd. 365). Yet, while marriage elevates Pamela’s social status, she remains subordinate to Mr. B as a woman. Her virginity, which has value on the marriage market, is a power negated by marriage, and she remains ashamed that she could not bring him a fortune. Even as Mr. B is now convinced that Pamela brings him something “infinitely more valuable, an experience’d Truth, a well-try’d Virtue, and a Wit and Behaviour more than equal to the Station” (qtd. in McKeon 374), Pamela is hampered by gratitude. Some accepted Richardson’s view, some did not. For Ian Watt, Pamela marks “the emergence of a new, fully developed and immensely influential stereotype of the feminine role… an ideal of womanhood… very young, very inexperienced, and so delicate… that she faints at any sexual advance; passive, devoid of any feelings towards her admirer until the marriage knot is tied,” a stereotype he ascribes to most fictional heroines through the Victorian period (161). Henry Fielding, who parodied Pamela with Shamela, believed Richardson’s protagonist was “at heart a whore” (McKeon 396). Fielding’s reaction to Richardson’s Clarissa, in which the protagonist is raped but does not become the rapist’s wife, may have more closely paralleled Watt’s critique that the novel

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proves “no individual or institution can destroy the inner inviolability of the human personality… a Puritan tradition of the tragedy of feminine individualism George Eliot’s Middlemarch” portrays” (225). In this novel, sexual passion occupies a higher plane than institutional marriage, but is valued less than the sanctity of the individual. Watt argues that Lovelace’s rape of Clarissa “proclaims to all the barbarity which lies below the genteel veneer of rakery” (227), yet there is deeper significance. Clarissa’s honor is far more important to her than social reputation, and beyond the guilt Lovelace attempts to absolve with a proposal. After his actions have killed any opportunity for Clarissa to reciprocate his feelings, he realizes his love for her. Here, Richardson’s psychological complexity foreshadows not only that of Austen, Eliot, and Wilde, three nineteenth-century authors, but an ongoing challenge to sexual dichotomy of the twenty-first century. Diderot was astute in identifying Richardson’s forte as “the exploration of the deeper recesses of the mind” (235). Despite the tantalizing realism of these early novels’ representations of love and marriage, and their attending sexual mores, there were basic challenges for those who wanted to read them. Early in the eighteenth century, Defoe estimated that more than half the English population lacked the bare necessities of life. While even the poor could occasionally afford a penny to stand in the pit of the Globe, novels were beyond the means of most; Tom Jones cost more than a labourer’s average weekly wage. The middle class made up most of the eighteenth- century reading public (Watt 40); indeed, Balzac, the French novelist and playwright, wrote: Many husbands find it difficult to keep their wives from reading, and there are even some who contend that reading has this advantage, that at least they know what their wives are doing when they are thus engaged” (Mainardi 157). In 1740, the first circulating library was established in London, with novels its main attraction (Watt 43), but only a small percentage of the population could read or had the leisure to do so. Schooling was casual and intermittent; as late as 1788, about a quarter of English parishes still had no school (38). There was no general agreement that reading was beneficial for everyone; some believed reading, writing and arithmetic were pernicious to those who would labor all their days, particularly children who worked from the age of five to offset industrial shortages (39). By the 1790s, only an estimated 80,000 could read out of a population of at least six million; three-fourths of the poor could not (36-37). Assuming one had learned to read in any of several ways, and could do so at the level required to consume novels, reading was considered proper only for the leisure classes, and a

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dangerous distraction for those who worked with their hands. Beyond leisure and cost, there was little privacy for any pursuit in overcrowded housing, particularly in London. If all of these challenges could be overcome, there was rarely enough light to read, even by day; the window tax imposed at the end of the seventeenth century had reduced windows to a minimum and those that remained were usually deep-set and covered with horn, paper, or green glass. At night, lighting was a serious problem since candles, even farthing dips, were considered a luxury. Some attempted to read by the light of the moon (Watt 46-7). London booksellers pandered novels to the reading public as they became more entertaining and profitable (54), but the novel’s serious consideration of the lives of ordinary people required that society value the individual as a proper subject for serious literature, that beliefs and actions of ordinary characters must be detailed enough to interest readers (60), and even that reading was worth the time and effort required to overcome the obstacles. Yet, as Leslie Stephens later argued, “The gradual extension of the reading class affected the development of the literature addressed to them” and the rise of the novel “effected change in the audience for literature” (qtd. in Watt 35). Art imitated life in the development of the realistic novel, and eighteenth-century life was viscerally real. Lord Hale’s The History of the Pleas of the Crown clarified the legalities – and potential consequences – of marital relationships of the period: “the husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract’… The denial of bodily integrity to wives was a major reason William Thompson called marriage the ‘white-slave code” (qtd. in Pateman 123). Such repressive marriage customs in both England and France informed Austen’s philosophies of love and marriage and directly affected Austen family members. The legal age of marriage for girls was twelve years, for boys fourteen, although fathers could betroth either at seven. Women reached legal majority at twenty-five, men at thirty, when they could marry without parental consent, although the father held any fortune or dowry. Rather than a union based on love, marriage was a function of uniting and consolidating the fortunes and properties of two families (Mainardi 4). Until the French Revolution of 1789, when Austen was fourteen, the Catholic Church forbade divorce; marriages could not be dissolved except by separation in extremis and then only for the upper classes who could pay tributes. Within English and French aristocracies, marriages had been arranged for centuries for the express purpose of producing male heirs; contracts were considered fulfilled

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with the birth of two sons, considered a safe heir and a spare due to high child mortality, after which husband and wife often lived separately. Austen wrote about love and marriage because, during her lifetime, “Marriage was the institution that defined women’s lives” (4). Although companionate marriage was increasingly championed throughout the eighteenth century, change was slow. Marriage based on love before fortune shifted the foundation of the family from wealth to affection. By law, husband and wife were equally responsible for adultery, but the husband virtually always won any contested case. A separated wife could be prosecuted for adultery, while a separated husband could maintain a mistress in the family home. For a husband who caught wife and lover in flagrante delicto in the conjugal dwelling, murder was excusable. Proof was not required against a wife; it was enough that the magistrates suspected her (Mainardi 23). A wife accused of adultery could claim abandonment, often true, but this plea was never accepted, although it could lessen her sentence. Such restrictions had a definite purpose; any children born during a marriage inherited equally, regardless of paternity. Most cases of adultery came from the petit-bourgeois, who so detested scandal that they rarely went to court. The lower classes simply did not often marry (25-6). Such laws, understandably, satisfied no one. The eighteenth century was an era of upheaval. Social mores were changing and there was increasing pressure to redefine marriage. In 1688, Lord Halifax had published Advice to a Daughter in which, in “counsels of resignation and despair,” he had urged acceptance of what could not be changed: “disadvantages of your sex, that young women are seldom permitted to make their own choice”. He advised ignoring or manipulating, for her own survival, a husband who may be drunk, mean, abusive, unfaithful, or neglectful. This ‘advice’ proved so popular, and evidently necessary, that it was reprinted throughout the eighteenth century (Stone 186). Premarital pregnancy rates in this century were, conservatively, about 30 per cent of all marriages (Mason 7). In the late seventeenth century, divorce a vincula had been initiated to circumvent the Church’s ban on remarriage, protect property, and ensure legitimate heirs. The process for a husband who wished to divorce an unfaithful wife was complicated: successfully petitioning ecclesiastical courts for a divorce a mensa, suing for monetary damages against a correspondent in the wife’s adultery, and presenting a private bill by counsel to the House of Lords, submitted to the Commons. If successful, the monarch would assent and the plaintiff

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could remarry. The husband’s property rights over his wife and his responsibility for her debts were ended (Poovey 55). There were few choices for women in the eighteenth century. In 1765, Sir William Blackstone outlined the legal and personal consequences, under the common law doctrine of coverture, of a woman entering into a marriage contract: “By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law… the very being, or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage… incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband; under whose… cover, she performs everything; and is therefore called … a feme-covert … her husband, her baron or lord” (Pateman 90-1). Blackstone, while allowing there were inequities for the female spouse, considered this to be a form of protection: “Even the disabilities which the wife lies under are for the most part intended for her protection and benefit. So great a favourite is the female sex of the laws of England” (Corbett 71). Not surprisingly, companionate marriage was initiated and championed in this century, and the median age of first marriage among the upper-class rose sharply to twenty-four for women (from twenty-one) and twenty-nine for men (from twenty- five). Economic security was still a necessity, but companionate security became the goal. Approximately seventy percent of all grooms of the middle and lower classes who married where they were born chose brides from the same village or within ten miles of it (Mason 51), which, since they knew each other well, indicated more satisfying marriages. By mid-century, the trend was toward companionate marriages, particularly in the highest and lowest levels of society. There were contradictions. Improved education of upper- and middle-class women greatly increased with companionate marriage. Yet, late in the century, reading fiction was still considered tantamount to seduction (Armstrong 18). Wives continued to address husbands deferentially in all classes. Young people were increasingly making their own mate choices, but parents continued to push mercenary matches, as depicted in Hogarth’s Marriage à la Mode, published in 1745 (Stone 186). Fielding’s Tom Jones, in 1749, had encouraged love in marriage, but also placed family before self (188). Middle- and lower-class families considered women capable stand-ins for absent husbands, but were often valued more highly for their work than companionship. While power was still transferred to husbands upon marriage if it was doubted that affection would develop, those husbands increasingly put feeling before ambition, equalizing spousal roles. In 1753, a Marriage Bill was introduced which was meant to improve “the conjugal relations of the people of England, high and low” and end confusion about what

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constituted legal marriage: a ceremony performed by a minister of the Church of England after public reading of banns and receipt of an official license. Yet, marriage of mutual consent by word of mouth remained legal, as did secret marriages (Watt 149). Paradoxically, with the rise in companionate marriage there was also a rise in those who never married (Stone 241). A shortage of marriageable males, due to low marriage rates of younger sons and rising dowry costs, led to identification of the spinster, whose numbers rose to twenty-five percent (243). The term spinster referred to an unmarried woman beyond usual marriageable age who, in earlier times, would have supported herself as a spinner or weaver. The decay of domestic industry created a great surplus of women in the labour market, which brought down wages at a time when women found it difficult to find a husband unless they could bring him a dowry. By the eighteenth century, there was less need for this labor and unmarried women were faced with working for very low wages or becoming dependents. Marriage became a commercial matter. Newspapers advertised marriage marts and girls were driven into flagrantly unsuitable marriages for economic reasons (Watt 142-43). No eighteenth-century woman is recorded as having lived solely by her pen (145). With the increase in companionate marriage, child-rearing practices also changed. Doctors warned of infant mistreatment, fewer mothers fostered their infants out to wet nurses; swaddling and mother’s milk was healthier. Bastard children were accepted into households and reappeared in wills, a significant change from two centuries of rising illegitimacy (Mason 66). Yet, more infants were abandoned to become charges of the parish or workhouse, where death rates were nearly as high as on the streets (Stone 297). Even as childhood was recognized as a distinct growth period and parents stopped naming children after dead siblings, boys were tormented in boarding schools and girls wore whalebone and wire corsets to misshape their bodies to attract husbands. Advised by John Locke, aristocracy began teaching their children at home, but most children were sent away as young as seven and neglected for years. Not until the late 1700s were mothers encouraged to praise their children. Sexual practices evolved over time, as well. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had fostered conjugal sex for the procreation of a male heir and extra-marital sex for love, companionship, and pleasure. In the eighteenth century, these archetypes fused as companionate marriages increased and spread beyond the middle class and gentry (Stone 327). Despite this, it was common for upper-class men to keep mistresses, and wives were generally indifferent to

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adultery. In the early decades, same-sex clubs existed for the upper classes in London, which protected wealthy patrons. Still, there were many trials for sodomy; as late as 1772, Captain Robert James was executed for the charge. Upper-class society became more tolerant of this practice; the poor, as its chief victims, remained violently opposed. Male homosexuality was practiced and discussed more freely in the eighteenth century than in any previous time except in restricted court circles of the reign of James I (337). Sexual privacy was a luxury and the practice of bundling was widespread in England, on the Continent, and in America. In the marriage market, males bargained with property and status and women traded chastity; withholding of sexual favors was a woman’s greatest power over a man and a bride’s chastity ensured her husband’s son would inherit (Watt 158). Sexual relations began at betrothal, with the marriage ceremony occurring later, often when the bride was several months pregnant. If the couple married, both retained their honor. If there was no marriage, they were both ruined in the community, the man considered a liar and the woman unchaste. Pre- nuptial conceptions reflected community standards of honor, and marriage ensured economic viability. Pregnancy without marriage carried heavy penalties for mother and child. The child was often abandoned or worse. The mother lost her job, was sent to prison, deported, or driven to prostitution, where competition was great: respectable women open to affairs, educated daughters of bankrupt fathers, actresses, milliners, whores, maids, seduced and abandoned girls entangled in a growing culture of sexual promiscuity (381). After 1780, romantic love became a respectable reason for marrying. The lower middle class accepted that children should choose their mates, but not that affection should be the basis. The gentry and squirarchy accepted the need for affection, but parents still exerted influence (Stone 191). Patterns began to emerge within the complex realities of marital politics. Least free were the heirs and heiresses, yet those free to choose might opt for money. The loveless marriage encouraged adultery. As love-based marriage became increasingly common, aristocratic parents began coercing their children to marry acceptably out of affection for them (212). By the turn of the nineteenth century, the new family adopted by the upper-middle and landed classes had spread into the working class. Two factors were key to such social change: the growth of affluence and influence of the middle class, and the cultural homogeneity of this class and the landed squirarchy, since many of the former were younger sons of the latter (421). Many of these dynamics would be reflected in the novels of both Austen and Eliot.

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Marriage, then, was redefined in the late eighteenth century, just as Austen was beginning to write. Across Europe, but particularly in England and France, a new type of literature debated the nature of, and conduct within, marriage. Conduct books were read seriously, although satirical material was also written by young men to torment older husbands with the idea that their wives’ unfaithfulness was inevitable. Marrying for dowries was increasingly condemned. Literature and theatre debated love and marriage: fortune versus love, arrangement versus choice. By the 1790s, Austen believed she had identified the core social problem of marriage by contract: women had no acceptable alternative means of supporting themselves. For her, the root evil of forced marriage was a lack of options for women. Eighteenth century marital and property laws did not support women’s independence; an enlightened companionate marriage was the easiest path to happiness. As Austen approached adulthood, she realized that female powerlessness, unjust inheritance laws, uneducated women, and the vulnerability of the heiress, widow, or spinster led to forced marriages, and began to champion women’s rights in her novels. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries brought progress to an England caught up in a vast expansion of commerce, an intense shift of the pace of life, and startling changes in male/female roles and responsibilities. In the early 1800s, the Court of Chancery established an equity law that allowed a married woman to possess property separately from her husband if a man (usually her father) settled it on her as a trust. The trust agent (often her husband) could raise money on the property, sell or rent the title, or contract capital. The woman could be prevented from selling her property while she was married, and the trust provisions could set additional restrictions, such as loss of the property if she remarried. Separate property did not extend her rights; it protected the property rights of her husband. Women remained dependent on the controllers of their money; even their earnings had no legal protection under common law. Yet, there was movement toward female autonomy (Poovey 71-2). In the earliest years of the nineteenth century, as Austen was revising and publishing her novels, marriage of feeling, companionate marriage, was increasingly championed, yet remained controversial. Parents argued that a marriage of reason was founded in financial stability and might develop into a loving relationship over time; young people of marrying age increasingly considered arranged contractual marriages as loveless, lifelong prison sentences. It was arguably possible that a marriage begun in love might outgrow passion, with no reason on which to develop mutual respect. The companionate marriage concept, with its principle of equality,

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required a continual restructuring of power. Joining a man and a woman, each with limited experience of the opposite sex and strong ties to birth families and friends, into one construct expected to be the primary source of social and emotional fulfillment was an extreme culture shift. The concept of love also contributed to pre-marital pregnancy; in the first half of the century, in some areas of England, nearly half of all brides were pregnant, with similar numbers in other parts of England. It seems courtship, with intercourse, was expected to lead to marriage (Mason 67). Yet, not for all; in the nineteenth century, an average of seven per cent of working- class pregnancies were aborted (62). Despite these early vagaries in evolving love and marriage, Austen continued to champion marriage based on love. Inter- and intra-familial politics evolved, as well. Establishing a family by marriage relegated the biological family to second place; allegiances shifted and responsibilities blurred. Beyond marrying for love, restructuring family and social dynamics, and realigning a sense of self, there were political legalities of transfer and ownership of property, which fostered a new structure of male/female control. Companionate marriage and its resulting family, rather than being basically a unit of survival, was now being consciously constructed by individual husbands and wives. Even privacy was strange to most young men and women who still lived in close family quarters before marrying; few enjoyed any semblance of privacy. After marriage, “the couple immediately sets up as a new conjugal family, wholly separate from their own parents and often far away from them” (Watt 139). A honeymoon, originally a brief time after marriage to bond, became a necessary and extended beginning for a future based on love and partnership. Marriage as a construct was firmly established, and the customs that regulated it were considered “triumphs of culture” painfully won from the “unbridled promiscuity of primitive life” (Corbett 14). Early nineteenth-century novels explored such marital dynamics, beginning with the novels of Jane Austen. Introduction Such was the background of love and marriage in England between fictional realism and marital dynamics into which Jane Austen introduced her novels, which she described in Northanger Abbey as works “in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language” (829). Her brief lifetime played out against a background of constant social change, in war,

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industry, education, and marital relationships. Male and female power were in flux on both sides of the English Channel. Although Austen pointedly avoided national politics, she was keenly aware – with brothers in the navy, militia, and business – of world events, and used them as key elements in, or backgrounds for, her fiction. Primarily, however, Austen focused on love and marriage between men and women at home. Initiating a century-long discussion of evolving constructions of love and marriage, Austen, challenger of the contractual marriage status quo, was certainly not the “dainty porcelain ideal” two centuries of family and critics have crafted (Jenkyns 31). From childhood, she understood what it meant to be a virtually powerless female with no formal education, few work skills, and little financial support. A feminist when feminism was associated with sexual licentiousness and considered anti-English by mainstream English society, Austen saturated her novels with women’s issues (Ty 19). Challenging contemporary ideas about women’s place in society, she raised love in marriage to a key element of the social structure and the crux of her protest. Austen transitioned eighteenth-century ideas of woman as property, with marriage a binding fiscal and physical contract, into a more progressive nineteenth-century ethos based on feeling over fortune. The key to her continuing literary applicability is that she wrote about fundamental truths in male/female partnerships. Reading and writing from an early age, Austen’s favorite fiction included Ann Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest and The Mysteries of Udolpho, which led to her writing of Northanger Abbey, and works by Samuel Richardson, particularly The History of Sir Charles Grandison, the character Charlotte inspiring Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (Tomalin 75). Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa must also have influenced her treatment of potential rape with Catherine’s solitary journey after being turned out by Captain Tilney. Austen’s plots reflect her own experiences with, and close observations of, love and marriage. In the England of her time, marriages were typically local and arranged. Women often accepted proposals out of gratitude, dowries were expected, contracts and monies were exchanged, and female rights were determined between male heads of families; love was extemporary. Courtship was serious business, a last chance to avoid a lifetime of either loneliness or marital misery. Yet, this long- accepted bargaining process was changing; with industrialization and the creation of jobs, increased literacy, and rising criticism of established marital constructs, women were demanding agency. Austen contributed novels focused on gender inequities by contrasting thought-

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provoking alternatives to encourage open dialogue about women’s and men’s roles in marital bargaining: love or money, capitulation or resistance, autonomy or partnership. Women were no longer content to be used as financial collateral. Austen argued for equal and loving companionate marriage. Absorbing the literary works of her time, Austen, with her own novels, bridged to those that came after. Although there is no proof that she read Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1792, many of her ideas align with Wollstonecraft’s work, particularly regarding “alluring mistresses and affectionate wives and rational mothers” (Wollstonecraft, 6). Austen’s partnership marriages of the Gardiners in Pride and Prejudice and the Crofts in Persuasion would have satisfied Wollstonecraft’s goals for marriage. Austen also developed male characters punished by marriage (Mr. Elton, Mr. Palmer) and would have agreed with Wollstonecraft on spinsterhood (Ch. V), the effect of childhood association on character (Lydia, Wickham, Tom Bertram, the Crawfords) (Ch. VI), and morality and reputation (Isabelle and John Thorpe, Maria Bertram) (Ch. VIII) (Wollstonecraft). Austen’s philosophy also predated John Stuart Mill’s argument against compulsory marriage in The Subjection of Women, published in 1869, a half century after her death: “Until a late period in European history, the father had the power to dispose of his daughter in marriage at his own will and pleasure, without any regard to hers… there was nothing to show that [her] consent was other than compulsory” (Mill, 164). Austen’s evolving constructions of love and marriage revolted against this concept. Within her novels, Austen also identified and challenged courtship rituals: dancing as the gateway to social interaction, wit as an enhancer, sexual tension as attraction until a bargain could be made, and marriage consummated with the birth of an heir and a spare. Austen heroines are strong and spirited individuals who possess intelligence, a willingness to learn, goodness, a measure of humility, and fierce sense of self; her heroes demonstrate integrity, resolution, action, and heart. Men and women of like minds find and battle for each other; mutual attraction and agreement are key. Austen characters are more believable than those of most of the authors who went before her because her interests revolved around people – their eccentricities, appearance and dialogue. From them she created the characters which gave her novels universal and lasting appeal” (Le Faye 3). Austen characters are realistically flawed; they make mistakes and learn from them. Their psychological traits are universal; two centuries later, they are the traits of strong individuals in lasting partnerships. Anne Elliot, in Persuasion,

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Austen’s last completed novel, is the most self-actualized of Austen heroines because she defies society and family to seize a second chance for marital companionship; heroine and author have matured, and demand freedom of choice. Although her novels are now recognized classics of English literature, persistent myths have intermittently threatened her credibility. Because Austen never married, some have questioned that she had enough personal experience with men to understand their roles in male/female relationships. Austen’s family was predominantly male, from her earliest years Mr. Austen conducted a boys’ school in their home, and she experienced love herself. Jane Austen was surrounded by men throughout her life and understood them well. Throughout her novels, she explores roles, interactions, and restrictions of both sexes: Austenian heroines possess spirit and intelligence, but other female characters, particularly mothers, are often ridiculous. Male characters, however, are generally effective, honorable, and necessary to security and social order: “Her depiction of ordinary men and manners is outstandingly accurate, complete, and solid” (Jenkyns 183). That Austen did not marry has led some to assume that she was inexperienced in love and, therefore, could not write credibly on love or marriage. Austen did remain single, but single women and men may experience love under circumstances that allow them to understand marital relationships in different and sometimes deeper ways than many who marry. Austen loved, but could not marry for a variety of reasons, including lack of fortune. A respectable man of fortune who proposed, Harris Biggs-Wither, she did not love, and Austen was incapable of marrying without feeling, although his offer would have protected her from spinsterhood. In the end, she rescinded her acceptance, essentially choosing ‘the system of marriages of integrity or love instead of marriages of prudence and material and social advancement’” (MacDonagh 40-41). In an age when unmarried women almost surely faced poverty and/or dependence, and were even pitied and mocked, rejecting a viable marriage proposal took great courage. Austen chose not to marry. Instead, she earned her support by writing realistically and credibly about her experience with love and understanding of marriage, incorporating and reflecting contemporary social mores she felt must be challenged. Some have charged that Austen did not write about marriage at all, but she never pretended to be an expert on marriage; her novels focus on the need for love and commitment rather than the dynamics of day to day marital life. She was interested in matching personalities

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capable of partnerships. Jane Austen was not George Eliot; she did not delve into the intricacies of every fictional relationship she created, or even the deep psychological makeup of every character. As an early supporter of equality in love and companionate marriage, she identified primary issues and argued fundamental changes in relationships between the sexes. As the first English female author to seriously attempt this since Mary Wollstonecraft, Austen focused her novels on the need and desire for, and the establishment of, commitment based on feeling, matching personalities conducive to such partnerships and providing exceptional insight into love and marriage from a broad perspective. Later authors built upon Austen’s early efforts, further developing the dynamics and intricacies of love in marital interactions. Austen has also been questioned for having led too isolated and narrow a life to effectively write about adult relationships, an unfair comparison to women’s social exposure in later periods. Austen’s lifetime encompassed the heart of the Industrial Revolution, the American Revolution, French Revolution, and Napoleonic Wars: “[M]uch of her intention… [was] in showing what things were like for young women in England during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars” (Honan 223). She wrote in rural Steventon, cosmopolitan Bath, the heart of London where her books were published, and the village of Chawton; was intimately involved in the society of the wellborn and wealthy through aristocratic Leigh and Knight connections, and corresponded with brothers whose naval careers took them to the Americas, West Indies, and the Orient. She was close to her brother Henry, a militiaman and London businessman, and his wife Eliza, who had lived in India and France before her first husband was guillotined and whose mother, Jane’s aunt, had gone to India as a contract bride. Thomas Langlois Lefroy, her first love, was from Ireland and became that country’s Lord Chief Justice. Indeed, Austen was so well versed in cultural, historical, and current events that Edward Said has argued “Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Mrs. Gaskell shaped the idea of England in such a way as to give [it] an identity, presence… And part of such an idea was the relationship between ‘home’ and ‘abroad’.’ Thus, England was surveyed, evaluated, made known, whereas ‘abroad’ was only referred to or shown briefly” (72). Through correspondence with her brothers and Eliza (whose husband was guillotined), conversations during their visits, and following the news from home, Austen was well aware of what was happening in the world: “She kept a close eye on news in the papers regarding the campaign in the Iberian Peninsula against Napoleon. On 10 January 1809 she wrote to her sister

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Cassandra, ‘The St. Albans perhaps may soon be off to help bring home what may remain by this time of our poor army, whose state seems dreadfully critical.’ She was referring to the notorious Battle of Corunna” (Byrne 246). Austen was also familiar with events in India, France, and the West Indies through her father’s connections. However, she made a conscious choice to write on the universal politics of human relationships rather than on national and international events. Her stated goal for writing novels was to entertain; that they were also instructive was due to her wit and wisdom. “[It] must surely be granted that she writes excellent comedy and gives us people we can still recognize… [I]t is irrelevant to condemn her for not writing about the Napoleonic wars… Jane Austen had intuitively grasped the sound principle that writers can only write interestingly of what they know about, and which interests them” (Robson 156). Few of Austen’s early nineteenth century contemporaries would have had a more comprehensive understanding of world events. Austen has been doubted for having insufficient social background or education to be a credible author. George Austen, her father, descended from gentry and was sent to Oxford by a wealthy uncle. In turn, he sent his sons, and, after his daughters had attended boarding schools, encouraged Jane to write. Cassandra, her mother, was descended from the ancient and titled Leighs, some of whom were Oxford dons (Tucker 15, 67). From her father, Austen acquired style and a love of literature, from her mother, shrewd judgment and writing ability. Highly literate, Austen wrote novels that contrast male formal educations (Wickham and Henry Crawford at Cambridge; Henry Tilney, Edmund Bertram, James Morland, and John Thorpe at Oxford; Edward Ferrars privately tutored) with females’ extensive reading. She abhorred the double standard that women were insufficiently educated to support themselves and so were forced to marry for financial security. Exposing marriage as economic bargaining between men, with lack of education contributing to women’s voicelessness, was an Austen leitmotif and bid for change. A more modern critique, with she shares with George Eliot, has been that Austen was insufficiently feminist, an unfair comparison to current standards of feminism. Considering the narrow constructions of marriage in her time, Austen was unusually outspoken in, and refreshingly daring with, her fiction. Her entire canon is concerned with women’s issues, but Austen was a gentleman’s daughter who wrote about what she knew in her way. In every novel, an intelligent young woman with moral courage but few resources, and with varying levels of

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sophistication and maturity, is pitted against competing females, indifferent males, and strong social opposition in a quest for love and personal happiness. She must identify a man of character who fulfills her marital expectations and will recognize in her the qualities he is searching for in a companion. Every Austen heroine is, to some degree, a feminist, as was Jane Austen herself. The facts of her life and experience demonstrate that Jane Austen was eminently qualified to write about evolving constructions of love and marriage. Biography As Richard Jenkyns has written, “In seeking to interpret any writer… it is worth finding out what we can about his life… [but] ultimately we have to believe the work itself” (106). Jane Austen’s art and philosophies took root in her childhood. Born December 16, 1775 in her father’s Steventon rectory, the seventh child and second daughter of a country parson and his proud but practical wife, from the first she was made to feel unexceptional (Shields 11). Jane could claim no unique gender, birth order, or even beauty within the Austen clan; a brother was born three years later and sister Cassandra was considered the fair daughter. As she later wrote of Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, no one would have suspected her of future fame. Soon after her birth, Jane was denied even family bonding when her mother sent her to a village wet nurse, who cared for her well into her first year, a possible beginning of the lifelong conflict between mother and daughter. As a toddler, Jane was taken from the mother she knew and returned to a mother who was a stranger, a woman who openly favored sons (Tomalin 25). Sibling bonding was survival for the Austen children. Brother George had disappeared from the rectory to live out his life with a distant family because of a disability. When Jane was five, brother Edward left to be adopted by distant relatives who lived a hundred miles away. Before she was ten, brother Frank joined the navy, and a few years later younger brother Charles joined, as well. Such parental philosophy, not uncommon for the late eighteenth century but potentially disturbing to an impressionable young girl, would have required early resilience. When Jane was seven, she and Cassandra were sent to boarding school, where both caught a fever and Jane nearly died. They were removed, but a year later, both were sent to another. When this final year of education ended, although she would live her entire life under the parental roof, Jane had learned she would have to care for herself. The Austen brothers, by contrast, were university educated and/or established in careers that took them far from home, some for years at a time.

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Disappointed in love, but expected to marry for fortune, or, at the very least, act as a spinster aunt as Cassandra did, Austen began writing. From the time Cassandra’s fiancé died of fever and she received an inheritance, Jane was the only Austen sibling without an independent income. Until she published Sense and Sensibility a few years before her death, Jane personally experienced the circumstances of many of her female characters and understood their social, emotional, and financial challenges. Writing both for autonomy and to encourage companionate marriage, she established a unique fictional blueprint. When Jane was twenty-five, the Austens retired and moved to Bath, a well-known husband-hunting ground. She had written three novels in Steventon, but wrote nothing in the city, and when her father died there, she lost her greatest literary support. Not until the female Austens returned to the stability of the English countryside did Jane return to writing and publish her works. The novels that provided a modest personal income for her while she lived, and a fortune for descendants who benefited from a resurgence of her works, were released from the small crossroads village of Chawton. Jane’s work was deeply influenced by family relationships. The Austens formed her earliest and most lasting impressions of love and marriage and served as character models. Her fictional mothers and fathers often fail their daughters. Elizabeth is mortified by an immature and man-crazed Mrs. Bennet and an ineffectual father. Mrs. Dashwood is a burden on her daughters rather than their support after her husband dies. Emma is motherless, raised by a paid surrogate who leaves her, when she marries, with a diabolically manipulative father. Due to their very large family, the Morlands are oblivious to Catherine’s needs. Lady Russell, self-appointed to replace Mrs. Eliot, controls and manipulates Ann, while her father lives in a fantasy world of self-obsession. Fanny Price suffers miserably from inept parenting; she is given to the Bertrams and tormented by Mrs. Norris. Realistic to the time period, many of Austen’s primary characters have no mothers, some no fathers, and often suffer from parents with whom they live. Companionate marriages represent the only love most find, when they can find it. George and Cassandra Austen could not have missed their daughter’s depictions of poor parenting. All of the Austen children lived to adulthood, a distinct accomplishment for the late eighteenth century, but family money and support went most to favored sons, allowing them to marry and have families; no money was set aside for daughters’ dowries. Austen deeply resented these inequities, and that most of her sisters-in-law died in childbirth or due to its complications renewed her sense of injustice about women’s lives. Yet, Austen sons also

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suffered. James, the eldest, was fortunate to attend Oxford, join the clergy, and inherit under primogeniture, but lost his young first wife to childbirth; a second marriage was less fortunate (Tucker 99). George, disabled from birth, lived apart from the family for 72 years and was buried in an unmarked grave (116). Edward, adopted out to fortune, lost his wife to childbirth and never remarried, raising a large family alone (Shields 77). Henry, charming but the least stable of the Austen sons, was bankrupt and lost his wife and adopted son in close succession (Tucker 148). Francis and Charles both lost their first wives to childbirth. Austen family griefs intensified the realism of her fiction (165). Perhaps the brothers most present in Austen’s novels are those who most broadened her world: Francis and Charles, both officers of the Royal Navy. Joining at twelve and fifteen years of age, respectively, Frank died Sir Francis, Knight Commander of the Bath and Admiral of the Fleet at 91 years, and Charles, a Rear Admiral in Burma, succumbed to fever aged 73. Their long, impressive careers spanned some of the greatest naval conflicts of English history. That they survived and rose through the ranks taught Jane to value resilience, perseverance, self- discipline and courage, traits she emulated and passed on to her key characters, most directly in Captain Harville, Admiral Croft, Captain Wentworth, and William Price (Honan 223). Accomplished and respected by those who served with them, these brothers were also devoted family men, although their second marriages were, too, less fortunate than their first. The women closest to Austen were her sister Cassandra and their cousin Eliza. Less is written of Cassandra in Austen’s fiction, or in biographies or critical reviews, than might be expected given her proximity to, and influence on, Jane. They were close, exchanged letters, supported each other in grief, and acted variously as mother-daughter and sisters throughout their lives, but other than Elinor in Sense and Sensibility, possibly Jane Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, and the depictions of spinsters throughout, Cassandra is not readily apparent in the Austen novels. She seems to have been a sad and serious woman, the family caretaker, and a permanently disappointed spinster who preferred to live quietly. Cassandra’s loss of fiancé was traumatic; she immediately and permanently transitioned to middle age (Nokes 368). Since she decided what of Jane’s letters, creative works, and possessions would survive for posterity, much of what we know of Austen today is as Cassandra determined it to be. Eliza Hancock de Feuillide Austen was probably most instrumental in helping Jane mold her impressions of gender bias, evolving concepts of love, and expanding interpretations of

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marriage. Eliza was exotic. Possibly the natural daughter of Philadelphia Hancock and Warren Hastings, she was raised as the Hancocks’ child. When they returned to England, Hastings was with them (Tomalin 21). Eliza shared these circumstances with Jane, as well as her own history of marrying a man for fortune rather than love and bearing a disabled child, to whom she was devoted. Eliza’s experiences deeply affected Jane as she was becoming a novelist, and Henry and Eliza became fundamental support for her writing, particularly, in Eliza’s case, in the development of Northanger Abbey. Initially rivals for Henry’s affection, Jane and Eliza had become close long before Eliza’s death. Perhaps more than any other family member, Eliza significantly expanded Jane’s understanding of the realities of love and both contractual and companionate marriage in her own culture and on the wider world stage. Austen’s constructions of love and marriage, then, evolved with greater social exposure, increased personal experience, careful observation, exceptional insight, and determined wit. She knew far more about world events than she demonstrated in her novels, although this awareness was everywhere implied, and she was certainly never sheltered from the harsh realities of life. Clever and resourceful, Austen constructed interpretations of both love and marriage in her Juvenilia, the bedrock of her novels. Spontaneous, uninhibited, and precociously sophisticated, these early pieces identify her lifelong themes – the evil mother (Lady Susan), scandal and sin (Love and Freindship), marriage of convenience as a refuge from spinsterhood (Catherine, or The Bower), parody (The History of England), and gothic spoof (Lesley Castle) – even as she ridicules excessive emotion, which became the premise of Sense and Sensibility (Frantz, x). Yet, experience took its toll. Although Austen’s novels are rooted in the Juvenilia, they are so dissimilar in tone that only mature editing, the passage of fifteen years before publication, and a complete change of intended audience can account for such a marked difference. The Juvenilia are unfiltered and poignant, but hilarious; they entertain. The early novels are subdued and polished, but less entertaining; they instruct. Sense and Sensibility is didactic, resigned, and unresolved. Pride and Prejudice, tense and painful, champions love and companionate marriage, but often with harsh wit. Neither is a comedy. Mansfield Park is a sober work, with dark themes reminiscent of, but far removed from, the Juvenilia. With Emma, Austen has fun again, but Highbury is stifling, Emma is out of control, and there is little spontaneity. Not until Northanger Abbey is the reader both entertained and instructed. In Persuasion, Austen’s last completed

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novel, she returns to the candor of the Juvenilia, albeit with more maturity. Every Austen work is original, but her consistent themes are love and marriage. Austen’s novels remain relevant because they follow easily recognizable human emotions and challenges. Jane had begun “Elinor and Marianne”, later Sense and Sensibility, when she met Tom Lefroy. In England from Ireland to visit relatives, he had taken a degree in Dublin and was on holiday before studying law in London. They met during the Christmas season, were immediately and mutually attracted, enjoyed discussing novels, and Jane, according to a letter she sent to Cassandra, clearly expected more. What came was not a proposal but a swift removal of Lefroy to London. Most sources agree the startling final split was due to lack of fortune on both sides. Occurring at the beginning of her literary career, the disappointment was also fundamental to Austen’s views of love and marriage, the permanent foci of her novels. After their relationship ended, she began ‘First Impressions’, later to be retitled Pride and Prejudice. Lefroy completed his studies, returned to Ireland, married an heiress, fathered many children, and became Chief Justice. Jane was left with her thoughts. Hurt, embarrassed, and deserted, Austen wrote with acute poignancy of the real injustice of marriage based primarily on fortune. As sadness gradually turned to anger, Pride and Prejudice was given a decidedly lighter ending than Sense and Sensibility. Originally written during the bleakness of both Cassandra’s and Jane’s lost loves in that year, her second novel is a testament to Austen’s integrity as a writer: plausible plot, believable characters, lifelike social interactions, and a positive conclusion were Austen leitmotifs. Twenty years later, with Persuasion, Austen imagined a different outcome for this relationship. Tom Lefroy was there early and late in her life by choice. Before she was twenty-three, Austen had drafted Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey – the first a debate, the second a romance, and the third a satire. Novel writing, begun in emotional rebellion, became compensation for hard-won experience, which she could pass on to readers. Austen was a keenly perceptive, brutally honest, quietly courageous, and thoroughly modern woman who lived in a real world more dramatic and constricting than those she chose to create in fiction. Rigid class structures, constraining social mores, curtailed individual rights, scant social tolerance, and few opportunities for success restricted the daily lives of English women and men of the early nineteenth century. Unexpected death was a natural occurrence; war, childbirth, accidents, poverty, disease, and poor health care all contributed to shorter life

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expectancies. Long separations from loved ones was often a way of life. Lack of reliable birth control fostered vicious cycles of deprivation. Equality in every form was in its infancy; equality in education, livings, and relationships were not academic subjects to Austen and her contemporaries. Her novels remain pertinent because her characters’ challenges are those of an evolving, imperfect world. Since Jane Austen’s death in 1817, opinion has often been confused with fact. Cassandra burned much of her correspondence and Henry intentionally recreated her legacy. Tom Lefroy, at the end of his life, claimed he had once loved her, but with a boy’s love. Nieces and nephews, some as biographers, remembered their ‘favorite’ aunt from memories of youth. In the late 1800s, with Victorian mindsets, yet another generation of Austen-Leighs wrote of her only from what they had been told. Since then, literary critics and scholars have left no stone unturned to find new clues to the real Jane, and recent mass media has borrowed, adapted, and spun from her works. Jane Austen can only now be found in the remaining words she wrote, words that challenged the status quo of female/male relationships and initiated evolving constructions of love and marriage destined to reverberate throughout the long nineteenth century and beyond. Without benefit of her guidance, the Austen novels must defend her stance. Original as each is, collectively they share characteristics. Plots begin lightheartedly, but quickly become serious. At least one character must be weakened. Females wait – for diversion, invitations, love, security, fulfillment – a circumstance so consistent to the sex that any female character who acts to control her fate must be a heroine. Generally healthy and strong, Austen’s protagonist loves to walk, dance, and read, is more perceptive than others, and possesses a strong will and moral courage. Interaction between the sexes begins in clever repartee, then attraction and repulsion, and finally mutual determination that leads to companionate marriage. Austen’s hero is reserved, accomplished, effective, and necessary to social stability: any man who defies family and society to make the woman he loves his wife must be the hero. In the end, the heroine and hero marry for what, in each novel, is deemed love and enough money. Such is the modernity of Austen fiction. Works Jane Austen’s first major story, “Elinor and Marianne”, later more generically titled Sense and Sensibility, is a cautionary tale important to her constructions of love and marriage in its conflicts of reason and passion, fortune and feeling, and the timing in relation to what was

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occurring in her life as she wrote. Composed in heartbreak and bitterness, the novel, as published, is largely autobiographical, with nearly equal focus on marriage and money. It is no coincidence that, during its composition, Austen had experienced the very real ramifications on love of having no dowry. Sense and Sensibility is perhaps Austen’s most dated work due to the changes that have since occurred in social expectations and structuring of marriage; yet, the novel was and remains a sobering story of loss, disappointment, inequality, greed, and resignation that accurately reflected existing constructs of love and marriage. The original manuscript has not survived, but that Austen revised and published the novel many years later testifies to her belief in the premise that sense must triumph over sensibility. Or does it? With Austen’s ability to observe closely and think deeply, she must have pondered the meanings and contrasts of sense and sensibility as she was editing and retitling the novel for publication. Assuming an intended contrast of sense and sensibility and their effects, if Elinor stands, pragmatically, for sense, with its moderate expectations of love and marriage, acceptance of fate, and repression of feeling, and in doing so she is rewarded with love and companionate marriage, then Marianne, theoretically representing sensibility, with its high expectations of love and marriage, denial of fate, and expression of feeling, must be punished for her foolishness with a loveless contractual marriage. The logic is sound, but Austen could not do this. Marianne’s initial instincts had been true; she could not be punished with a total lack of feeling when circumstances had been beyond her control. Yet, Austen could soften an otherwise contractual marriage with a mutual sadder but wiser respect and regard; this was her compromise. In the end, the disappointed Marianne and Colonel Brandon bring understanding to their marriage, and Marianne is secure. Elinor also compromises by accepting a man less stalwart and ambitious than she. “Elinor and Marianne”, as revised, reflected both Austen’s early disappointments and midlife acceptance. Elinor rethinks sensibility; Marianne becomes more sensible. It must have been cathartic for a resentful twenty-year-old Austen, who admittedly identified with Marianne in the novel, to write about the vital effects of fortune on love and its role in securing marriage. Readers would have understood and related to the practical realism of the heroines’ situations. However, the novel hinges more on the varied approaches Elinor and Marianne adopt as they respond to their loss of fortune, and the effects of those responses on their loves and the marriages they both desire and realize, than about sense and sensibility per se. Elinor (Cassandra), submissive to a fault, is allowed to marry the man of her choice, who, in

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actuality, ends a clergyman on probation to his brother-in-law. Edward does not marry fortune because he is not concerned with fortune; he has lived that lifestyle and rejected it. It is Elinor who knows that some money is necessary to life, and love; she convinces Edward to appease his mother for reinstatement. Austen seems not to believe Elinor will be truly content with such a mild man, living in her sister’s shadow, any more than Marianne will be blissfully happy in her chastened regard for Colonel Brandon. Compromise is the uncomfortable but necessary crux of Sense and Sensibility, and, at best, it is less than satisfying, albeit highly realistic. What of the wicked Willoughby? By ruining Eliza, he fails them both and Marianne. Yet, even Austen, through Elinor, allows that he truly loves Marianne; he is not entirely corrupt. Neither he nor Marianne base their relationship on fortune; their love is genuine. He is sincerely charmed by her and her small cottage, despite knowing she is penniless, and values love over fortune until outside pressures endemic in English society force his hand. Although Willoughby denies love to gain fortune, the love is there. If either Willoughby or Marianne had inherited fortune, as have Colonel Brandon and Edward, Austen and Elinor both acknowledge the two would marry for love. Marianne’s influence would make Willoughby a better man and He would fulfill her sensibilities; together, they would mature. In this novel, however, Austen must heap Willoughby with evil to make him the villain she requires for contrast. He fathers an illegitimate child, abandons its mother, is disinherited by his aunt – a woman who controls his present living – and marries a woman who will provide his future fortune. In Sense and Sensibility, women control or are controlled by money and men control women. Colonel Brandon must be pitied to be acceptable as Marianne’s husband, for he is not made of typically heroic qualities; in fact, Sense and Sensibility is devoid of heroes. If, as he claims, Brandon loved his Eliza, he left her. More disturbingly, he continues to think of her as men’s property, to be coerced, robbed, abused, rejected, and passed from man to man: “Happy had it been if she had not lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me occasioned” (95). Brandon’s reaction to Eliza’s plight is weak and theatrical; Austen seems to pair him with Marianne based on mutual sentimentality, even when Marianne has moved beyond hers. Leaving his first love to a terrible fate, he assumes responsibility for her child, then fails her also. This cannot bode well for Marianne, left in his care by an angry, or clever, author specifically on the premise that he will protect her.

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In a quintessentially realistic novel about fortune and love, what was the winning bid for a chastened bride? While it seems Marianne marries for atonement and security, Austen demonstrates that fortune is relative. Mrs. Henry Dashwood, before her husband’s death, was mistress of a property worth £4000 to £5000 per annum; after his death, her income drops to £500 per annum (the Austen women’s actual inherited income), approximately $150,000 today. With the low rent on the cottage, this would necessitate an altered lifestyle but is not destitution or a valid reason to barter attractive, accomplished daughters, Austen’s argument. Brandon’s Delaford, now that his heinous father and brother are dead and he has restored much of its wealth, has an income of £2000 per annum. In accepting Brandon, Marianne marries up from Barton Cottage but decidedly down from Norland Park, fundamentally equalizing the marital dynamics; Brandon is not rescuing Marianne financially any more than she is rescuing him emotionally. Fortune is skewed, by mistake or design, in this novel. Allenham, the estate of Willoughby’s aunt, is worth £1300 per annum, enough for two, but, in disinheriting him, she forces Willoughby to marry for financial security rather than love. Elinor bemoans not being able to earn sugar, but not one primary character earns an income; all live on dividends, interest, mortgages, or rents. Even Edward enters the clergy secure in his fortune (MacDonagh 55-6). Such calculations negate the assumption that the Dashwood sisters had to marry, which Austen undoubtedly knew, and invalidate subjecting Marianne to a virtual marriage by contract. To challenge the reader to realize this is genius. The Colonel and Marianne may share regard and understanding from losing their first loves, but what brings them together is not Austenian love. With youth, beauty, and talent, Marianne could reasonably expect other opportunities to find and marry for love, possibly with fortune. Mrs. Dashwood rents; they might relocate. Yet, the Brandon-Marianne contractual marriage is accepted and provides respectability and financial security for both. The marriage of Elinor and Edward is also a compromise, companionate in their love for each other, but contractual for the financial security his mother will provide. Sense and Sensibility ends in ambiguity, a realistic draw. Love is defined ambivalently; fortune does not buy love but does provide security. A novel championing sense concludes in sensibility. Pride and Prejudice, published first, is decidedly more satisfying. Pride and Prejudice, originally titled “First Impressions”, was written at a time critical to Austen’s development as a writer and contains two key elements of her evolving constructions of love and marriage, the first in the initial paragraph:

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“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters.” (1)

While the first sentence is often quoted alone, assuming a wife is the goal of every single man with money, this misses Austen’s point entirely; marriage is about exchange of property, including identifying the man as community property before the woman can be his. As written, a (legal) wife is universally acknowledged (communally noted) as necessary (want as need, not desire) to the requirements (social expectations) of any single unknown man (unattached stranger) who has acquired (by unstated means) a good (sizeable) fortune; the implication is that money is not enough for the man (he needs a wife) but is enough for the woman (the fortune will ensure security), who is not, however, consulted. The only necessary information is whether he has money. This truth (assumption) is not universal, only widely (communally) acknowledged, and not assumed by the man but the neighborhood. Taken to its logical conclusion, the property (fortune) of any male stranger may override his autonomy and transfer his control (of himself, his money) to other (for he is a stranger) strangers (surrounding families) as potential property of interested females (any one of their daughters) in need of shelter. Strangers make assumptions about strangers, upon which marriage is based. Ultimately, the man has no control of his fortune or himself, moving from autonomy (as a stranger who has simply entered the neighborhood) to potential property to rightful property of any unmarried female (or her mother) who is interested in fortune. This deconstruction is extreme, but accurate. Austen uncovers the rationale for arranging marriages, stripping both men and women of personal dignity and depriving them both of companionate relationships based on feeling. Her novels are replete with examples of marriage bargains, here Mr. Collins and Charlotte Lucas. Although this practice is well fixed in the minds of those in the neighborhood as rightful, it is not. Marriage of convenience is as unemotionally satisfying as its objective: a financial bargain in which a male’s name and fortune are exchanged for a female’s body and sexual services. The first paragraph of her first published novel became Austen’s battle cry, a protest against the systematic approach to marriage that turned propertied men and women into pawns of authority, in this novel, women who had been scourged and embittered by the system: Mrs. Bennet, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, even Charlotte.

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As wit, this works. As reality, the premise fails spectacularly. The author had felt its sting. A direct reference to Austen’s relationship with Tom Lefroy, Elizabeth Bennet’s story is, again, wish fulfillment. Austen argues that her experience could have been resolved differently and offers a resolution. Heroine exemplifies author: intelligent, witty, fun-loving, independent, clever, proud. Both are hampered by parents, particularly mothers. In temperament a blend of selfless Jane (Cassandra) and self-obsessed Lydia (Mrs. Austen), Elizabeth (Jane), sans fortune, imagines companionate love and marriage or simply not marrying at all. Austen argues this as a right of all women. Elizabeth accepts responsibility for her future, triumphing because she refuses to settle and waits until she meets a man she can love and respect, who returns both. Pride and Prejudice emphasizes that appearances deceive and misjudgments are treacherous, wholly realistic and generally recognizable assessments, then and now. To become companionate partners, Elizabeth and Darcy must consciously bring out the best in themselves and each other. He overcomes his sense of superiority and learns to measure people by worth. In better understanding and accepting him, she acknowledges her own weaknesses. As they find equality, social differences become gender differences, then differences in thinking. Darcy personifies persistence because Jane Austen thought Tom Lefroy had given up too easily. She argues that they could have complemented each other: “[B]y her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved; and from his judgement, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance” (322). This is what Elizabeth and Darcy grow into. If Austen reversed roles in developing Elizabeth and Darcy, as some critics have speculated, this passage is even more enlightening. She believed marriage could be loving and respectful, a companionship that could equally value man and woman. Mr. Bennet speaks to and for Austen when he tells Elizabeth, “Your lively talents would place you in the greatest danger in an unequal marriage” (354). Yet, the most vital and chilling episode in Pride and Prejudice, the turning point of the novel, personifying the absolute need for like minds between loving and equal partners, is not between Elizabeth and Darcy but is Mr. Collins’ proposal to Elizabeth. Early on, these two share key traits – forceful personalities, determination to marry, pride – and certainly his intentions are more magnanimous than hers. Elizabeth is determined to find love; Mr. Collins does not expect it. She is focused on her own desires; he offers security the Bennets cannot provide for themselves. They are worlds apart. His proposal is impressive, appropriate, considerate, but he

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does not love her. Mr. Collins wants a wife for practical and social reasons, and offers Elizabeth shelter and respectability in return. Initially, he is less self-serving than Darcy, who lusts after Elizabeth; Mr. Collins genuinely wishes to save her family while Darcy is repulsed by them. Yet, for Elizabeth (Austen), there must be love. Near the end of her life, Austen wrote to a niece, “Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection” (352). Mr. Collins is exaggerated so that Elizabeth can put herself first; Darcy helps with Lydia to best Mr. Collins’ offer. The offer is presented as farce, but Mr. Collins is the first Austen character to propose companionate marriage: “Almost as soon as I entered the house I singled you out as the companion of my future life” (228). Mocking loveless marriage, Austen raises the specter of partner union without love if both partners agree to terms. This is the bargain Charlotte accepts. Mr. Collins argues for sense, which Elizabeth’s sensibilities cannot accept; companionship must be real, mutual, and loving. Ignoring her refusals, he concludes, “And now nothing remains for me but to assure you in the most animated language of the violence of my affection” (228-29), in the language of sex, not love; Mr. Collins’ bid for a wife is a contract for a body. Despite being ridiculous, even lecherous, his reasons for marrying are more representative of the time than Darcy’s second, genuinely loving offer of marriage. At the turn of the nineteenth century, women did not propose to men; they waited for proposals. If not asked, there were few socially acceptable ways to support themselves and they became financial burdens on typically large families. Rejecting an offer of marriage could mean servitude or deprivation; socially acceptable alternatives – serving as a governess or maid – were subject to their own abuses. Men hesitated to propose to a woman who had turned down other men for fear of being rejected themselves. After Elizabeth refuses him, Mr. Collins wants nothing to do with her. His choice having been made lightly, he can easily move on to other proposals, with only his ego bruised; indeed, he is relieved because he has done his duty and now can make an independent choice. Mr. Collins’ reaction does, however, indicate the humility required for Darcy’s second proposal. Great tension exists between the sexes in Austen novels; heroines are always at odds with heroes. The tempering required to bring Elizabeth and Darcy together is key. With Charlotte Lucas, Mr. Collins finds acceptance. Older and without alternatives, she acts. Where Marianne had been guilted into resigned acceptance, Charlotte determines her own fate. Keenly aware of her dependency and Mr. Collins’ faults and intentions, and with no

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illusions, she uses him as she will be used. Elizabeth is romantic, Charlotte is not; Elizabeth has time, Charlotte does not; Elizabeth is handsome, Charlotte is not. Elizabeth hopes for happiness in marriage; Charlotte questions the happiness of any marriage. Elizabeth’s goals are love and companionate marriage; Charlotte’s goals are respectability and survival, and her marriage will be a partnership, sans love. In marrying Mr. Collins, she turns her disadvantages to their advantages. Both aware of their lovelessness, they will present respectably. He bargains for a suitable wife, she bargains for a stable husband. He will use her as a placeholder in bed and pew; she will use him for a home and a room of her own. They will be a couple with prospects in yet another Austen-drawn marriage of realistic compromise. A key element of this novel representative of Austen’s philosophy of love and marriage is her contrast between Elizabeth’s determination for love and Charlotte’s bid for security, acknowledging both the sense of Charlotte’s practical approach and the sensibility of Elizabeth’s insistence on love. Austen was not against sensibility; she abhorred its excess. In ‘Elinor and Marianne’, she hinted at a blend; in Pride and Prejudice, she balanced the two. Charlotte, like Elizabeth, is from a large family whose parents have not sufficiently provided for their children (an Austen leitmotif); she must secure a stable future in which love may not be possible. Austen allows Charlotte to take her fate into her own hands and marry on agreed terms, not as an ideal but without censure, a significant evolving construction for her. There is a certain acknowledgement in the Collins’ arrangement that would have, perhaps, been more easily recognized during this time period than the loving companionship depicted between Elizabeth and Darcy. Both are realistic marital partnerships. Elizabeth finds love, but also acknowledges, only partly in jest, that Darcy’s fortune has convinced her to overlook his faults. Austen’s marital construction, then, in her second novel, is not that fortune or even love are unimportant in marriage – she repeatedly attests that both are essential – but that women and men must be allowed to marry on their own terms rather than against their will. Moving beyond her first debate of love or money, Austen argues for autonomy and choice. Rejecting forced contractual marriages for the purpose of transferring fortune to enrich families, such as that of Colonel Brandon’s brother and Eliza, and moving beyond Marianne’s resignation, Austen demonstrates a shift in philosophy by constructing a loving companionate marriage for Elizabeth and Darcy and fairly assessing the mutually constructed Collins marriage. Elizabeth waits and

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chooses love with Darcy; Charlotte acts and chooses respectability with Mr. Collins. Both choices are presented as valid, although Austen argues most for love in marriage. Strangely devalued among Austen novels, Northanger Abbey is the most misunderstood. Austen’s first completed novel is far more than a parody of gothic fiction; it distinguishes literature from sensationalism, realism from fantasy, love from lust, and presents two of Austen’s most believable protagonists: Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney. Catherine is refreshingly free from self-absorption, nor does a world of injustice influence her adversely. She challenges the status quo, learning to distinguish truth from falsehood, even her own. Catherine, far more than the sum of her suspicions, is not a silly mock heroine but a young woman eager to learn about the real world. Before, after, and even often during her visit to Northanger Abbey, she displays instinctive integrity and rational sense. Under great pressure from the General, a man of power and authority she has been taught to respect, Catherine is more mature and genuine than any other character in the novel. Guileless and unassuming, she has few prospects, yet no qualities that will hold her back. In growing past her fears and finding the strength to confront the real, she becomes a genuine heroine. Indeed, accepting reality over fantasy brings Catherine love and marriage with a man she can appreciate and respect, but does not need for fulfillment. Drafted at Steventon in 1798-99, during a series of family crises, Northanger Abbey was not published until 1818 when, jointly with Persuasion, it was released six months after Austen’s death. Without a doubt, this novel had the most tortuous history. In 1803, she sold the manuscript for £10, thinking it would be published immediately. Nothing happened. In 1809, she wrote to ask if the manuscript had been lost and offered a copy, informing the publisher that if he did not issue the book, she would feel free to take it elsewhere. The reply stipulated that no publication date had been agreed upon. In parodying the exaggerated plots and settings of gothic romance novels, Austen was spoofing current best sellers. It is possible that the publisher who bought her story did so to keep it off the market. Austen’s combined critiques of current popular fiction with constant reminders of the very real dangers of making poor choices would have made the release of Northanger Abbey a serious business. In 1816, after Emma was published, Henry was finally allowed to buy back the manuscript, for £10, noting his satisfaction in informing the publisher that it had been written by the author of Pride and Prejudice (Lefroy 101-102).

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Generally assumed to be a simple spoof of highly romanticized late eighteenth-century gothic fiction, Northanger Abbey was intentionally written in a lighter style harkening back to the Juvenilia. In one sense, the novel is gothic fun; under closer scrutiny, it is a profound critique of moral carelessness, exemplified by the graphically realistic characters of General and Captain Tilney and John and Isabella Thorpe. Austen warns against misleading appearances, false friends, and the resultant evils of chasing fortune at the expense of integrity: the unreal. Catherine, in her innocence, has little life experience, yet, with only the innate morality gained from a loving childhood, she wins the love of a moral man. With an instinct for sham, she navigates cultural traps to reach maturity. Northanger Abbey acknowledges as it mocks. The most sensational, egoistic characters – particularly General Tilney, Isabella and John Thorpe – talk about reading novels; those with sense – Catherine, Henry and Eleanor Tilney – actually read them, gaining greater understanding. Catherine rejects fantasy (John Thorpe) for reality (Henry Tilney), while Isabella rejects reality (James Morland’s proposal) for fantasy (Frederick Tilney’s dallying). Northanger Abbey’s warnings stem from Austen’s anger and pain, now more fully processed. Believing herself more sophisticated than she is, Isabella falls prey to a man she sought to manipulate, foreshadowing Eliot’s Gwendolyn Harleth. Austen had a dark side, undisguised in this novel. Isabella pursues Frederick for the same reason her brother John and General Tilney pursue Catherine: perceived fortune. Frederick is interested only in conquering bodies, as Isabella is interested only in acquiring fortune; in this negative way, their relationship is equal and viscerally real. Yet, his goal is met; hers is not, demonstrating that serious choices carry serious consequences. In Northanger Abbey, sensible morality (Catherine) is juxtaposed against forbidden sensibilities (Isabella). However, having progressed from Marianne’s lost love and resigned acceptance, and Elinor’s barely disguised marriage of compromise, Austen creates a loving partnership between Catherine and Henry Tilney. No other Austen novel contains more explicit or immediate threats of dire consequences resulting from poor personal choices. The Elizas in Sense and Sensibility are more distant; Lydia in Pride and Prejudice just doesn’t care. Even the slaves in Mansfield Park are further removed. Mrs. Tilney’s ghost haunts this novel and Isabella’s fate, although she courts disaster, casts a slow-moving pall over the action. When Catherine is cast out of the Abbey in the middle of the night, potential danger is palpably real. Before Northanger Abbey’s conception, Austen had

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learned cause and effect: Eliza’s husband had chosen to remain in France and had been guillotined; Tom Lefroy had chosen financial security over love and she had been summarily deserted; Cassandra’s fiancé had chosen to travel to a fever-infested island to earn money with which to marry but had died, and a young cousin’s sudden death had reminded Jane of the fragility of life. Nothing about the content of Northanger Abbey was a spoof except that she used the gothic framework to lighten the serious messages. James Morland offers Isabella sincere love with little fortune; Frederick has a fortune but offers her nothing. In the end, Isabella is left without husband, security, fortune, or reputation, having forfeited love and marriage by choosing poorly. Gothic novels generally featured the victimization of a pure and virtuous innocent in an ancient setting so far removed from reality that fantasy was less threatening. In Northanger Abbey, Austen removes the softening effect of the historical filter. When Catherine travels to the Abbey with Henry, she is startled to find it quite modern, a distinct touch of realism and ostentatiousness purchased by wealth, akin to Mansfield Park. As she searches for evidence that General Tilney has killed his wife, she realizes that what she has romanticized to add excitement to her life has become possible. Austen increases the gothic excitement of the story by referring to a very real and eerie family experience. On 7 November 1796, Eliza wrote to her mother to describe a visit to her doctor. Shown into a room in which she waited two hours, Eliza explored two large presses, expecting to find skeletons, but found only “crooked Scissors and other formidable Surgical instruments, and a few Embryos in Spirits” (Spence 121). In the early nineteenth century, gothic horror and daily life were thinly divided. If Gothic fiction provides “extravagant dramatization of… excess and transgression” and “unrestrained indulgence of the passions” (Chard ix-x), these qualities are exemplified by the images Catherine conjures about Northanger Abbey, from the connotation of its name to the characters of General Tilney and Frederick. Catherine is Austen’s innocent Adeline of Radcliffe’s Romance of the Forest: “Adeline already bespoke a good understanding and an amiable heart… She was now in her nineteenth year; her figure of the middling size, and turned to the most exquisite proportion; her hair was dark auburn, her eyes blue, and whether they sparkled with intelligence, or melted with tenderness, they were equally attractive” (Radcliffe 29). Radcliffe also foreshadows Henry’s protective attraction to Catherine: “A knowledge of her destitute condition, and of the dangers with which she was environed, had awakened in his heart

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the tenderest touch of pity, and assisted the change of admiration into love” (172-3). Although Austen parodied Radcliffe’s work, she respected the author. The truths of Northanger Abbey go beyond the fictional farces to very real issues of human coldness and cruelty, souls in distress, loveless sex and marriage, and evil preying on innocence. More modern in its parody than Pride and Prejudice and less ponderous than Sense and Sensibility in its treatment of evil – Mrs. Tilney has died from a natural illness and Isabella uses as she is used, Northanger Abbey combines the risks of love and realities of marriage with the stuff of romantic novels to warn against excess drama from the approach of innocence rather than hardened experience. Austen provides a bold defense of the novel in the first person, as if she trusts no one with her message and must communicate with the reader directly that novels are serious attempts to understand human interactions. She composed this literary philosophy in her early twenties, long before the novel was published. Northanger Abbey was meant as a sober commentary, albeit cloaked in satire, on the contributions a novel could make to furthering human understanding, another installment of Austen’s progressing reality of love and marriage. Despite its feigned aura of sensationalism, Northanger Abbey has one focus: Catherine. “No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine” (1), just as no one who had seen Jane Austen in her infancy would have supposed her born to become a published and widely read author. Behind the text, there is a definite authorial yearning. Austen wrote, “She had reached the age of seventeen, without having seen one amiable youth who could call forth her sensibility; without having inspired one real passion, and without having excited even any admiration” (819). That quest for realism changes in a new environment; Henry Tilney is the first man Catherine dances with and the one she marries. There is a bittersweet atmosphere about this story, as if Austen was remembering a better, more innocent time when she, too, found love, and it was possible for her to be hopeful. As the story progresses, Catherine acts and Henry speaks for Austen. Nearly all of the characters are young and there is a noticeable energy of people and place, of new beginnings and acquaintances, more sharply outlined in Northanger Abbey than in Austen’s other works, perhaps because she is again rewriting her own past, perhaps because the action of the novel begins in cosmopolitan Bath. Yet, in the harsh realism of Bath or Northanger Abbey, fashionable worldliness comes at a price. Northanger Abbey is an alarming novel to the extent that it… domesticates the gothic and brings its apparent excesses into the drawing rooms of ‘the midland countries of England’”

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(Johnson 47). That Catherine can become aware of the dark side of humanity without falling prey to it, as Isabella Thorpe does, speaks to her character, but Catherine doesn’t chase and taunt the dark side as Isabella does. Austen endows Catherine with a seemingly idealized loving family and country childhood that Henry openly envies, but she is intuitively aware and wary of the very real dangers that Isabella alternately courts and ignores, and must also accept the inescapable realities of the Tilney family before she and Henry can build a life together. Austen is everywhere in this novel. She is the young girl in a large country family, and the young woman at the ball. As Isabella says she has no notion of loving people by halves, that her attachments are always excessively strong, Austen is speaking of herself (Halperin 110). When Catherine is reading a novel by candlelight, exploring her room at the Abbey, or climbing to Mrs. Tilney’s room, she is doing what Austen would have done. When Henry is being his most ironic, Austen is projecting her thoughts through him. She speaks through the page, confessing that her feelings were always far stronger than the feelings of those around her, and that her curiosity and need for excitement and adventure were greater than her lifestyle allowed. Austen’s desire for love and companionate marriage is the spirit of Northanger Abbey, and she personally informs its realism. Henry Tilney seems to channel Austen’s wit and irony with his mockery of society and even, gently, of Catherine. Indeed, he threatens to snatch the spotlight from her as the most engaging Austen hero, kind but irreverent, witty but sarcastic, the endearing equal of the charming heroine. He brightens a very dark family, brings out the best in Catherine, increases the Morlands’ stature through his regard and respect for them and their ability to create a happy family, and can enjoy the Allens as peers, all while viewing the world and its inhabitants with a wise, sardonic eye. Henry has seen the dark side of humanity; Catherine’s innocence is balm to his soul. Still, he is not perfect. Henry’s asking Catherine, “Shall I tell you what you ought to say?” points to the danger of a female having no voice. Yet, behind the patronizing Henry Tilney is a confident Austen: Catherine unwittingly accomplishes “a brilliant satire on modern language” when she confesses, “I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible” (Auerbach 84). Creating a nearly perfect hero was genius, however, for what woman falls in love with a perfect man? Henry can be somewhat vain and clearly enjoys adoration. He and Eleanor are more world-wise than Catherine (anyone is), but this has disillusioned him and made him a little bitter. Choosing not to personally emulate his father or brother, he defends both to Catherine.

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Something of a philosopher, he can be self-righteous, and his teasing can have a cutting edge. Henry Tilney is both believable and irresistible. Identifying with Henry, Austen makes him her spokesperson (Halperin 103). If she wanted a voice that could ring true to the outside world, what better way than to create an intelligent and credible hero to speak for her? When Catherine says of Isabella Thorpe that she was never so deceived by anyone as Isabella, Henry teases her about her lack of experience in judging anyone at all. Catherine is an innocent, yet she is often tied more to reality than he is, for all his cynicism; he needs her more than she needs him to balance his jaded view of the world. Without her positive influence, his wit, informed by sad experience and knowledge of the vicissitudes of the real world, could easily become negative and harsh. In turn, he balances her naiveté with his worldliness; he is the most realistic and least pompous of Austen’s heroes, and by far the most open-minded of her clergymen. Austen suggests that men prefer trifling women so they can feel superior to them, but then gives Catherine an innate strength; she is not trifling. Unfailingly honest, secure in who she is and open about her lack of fortune, Catherine is intuitive and effective in a crisis, is naturally maternal, and demonstrates surprising self-sufficiency. They bring out the best in each other, not the least of which is that they are grounded in realism. Catherine acts for Austen; they share a need to be involved. “Catherine Morland is a plain child… But it is her very ordinariness [and naiveté] that is the point. Jane Austen makes her readers interested in a very unremarkable girl who grows up in the course of the novel” (Byrne 170-71). Both love to read, have active imaginations, enjoy dancing, are perceptive, acute judges of character, and quick learners. They are loyal and kind to those they love and have active, intelligent minds. Both speak their minds and dislike being bored. They tend to think the best of people prematurely and are surprised when they fall short of expectations. Yet, despite these many commonalities, Austen often allows Henry Tilney to speak for her in an authoritative voice that will command respect, bowing to the reality of a man’s greater credibility and to draw attention to the shallowness of that fact. Yet, Catherine is gaining agency. When John Thorpe coerces her into riding with him rather than keeping her appointment with Miss Tilney, she faults him like a man: “I cannot submit to this” (858). Her instinctive ethical sense increases her credibility as a heroine. With Catherine’s strong, spontaneous feelings, Austen introduces a new, more convincing heroine than can be found in gothic novels, a re-interpretation of her own and literary reality.

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Northanger Abbey was more to Jane Austen than a creative means of rallying from her disappointment with Tom Lefroy; this novel represented her resolve to develop a serious and legitimate voice with which she could socially critique and enjoy creativity. In the process, she also created a relationship, the first and only in her canon, that could have ended satisfyingly without a wedding. Henry and Catherine both would have survived if they had not married, Catherine with her natural happiness, loving family, and communal bonds, and Henry with his home and profession, his relationship with his sister, and his satirical watch on the world. This is the joy of Northanger Abbey: heroine and hero are complete within themselves. They redefine the terms of love and marriage for Austen; from this point on, all heroines and heroes in her fiction will choose to be with those they love but would be less whole alone. Catherine loves Henry and is not afraid to show it, but she does not need him, which of course makes her more attractive. She returns home alone with a new self-confidence and understanding. He comes to her because he wants to be with her and sees her truth, not because he cannot be without her. They choose each other and, although they ask their parents’ blessings, denial would not, does not, stop them from marrying. In Northanger Abbey, foreshadowing Mansfield Park, love can be troubled and marriage foreboding; both can punish. It is significant that these novels are titled for locations, allowing location to exemplify human interaction; both the abbey and mansion are cold, heartless places. As a guest in the Abbey, fresh from her secure and happy home life, and success in both. Catherine is introduced to the evils of withheld love and intentional cruelty. Northanger Abbey contrasts moral obedience with immoral tyranny, filial disobedience with parental control, property with people, fortune with love, and, above all, fantasy with reality. Women are used, abused, and tormented by unloving and unforgiving men, but just as surely, faithless and scheming women also use, abuse, and torment good men. Northanger Abbey indicts the early nineteenth-century English society that sanctions, even fosters, corruption in the love/money/marriage triangle that trains sons and daughters to play the game, but Austen rewards those who don’t. As a couple, Catherine and Henry grow by learning from each other, a key to Austen’s constructions of companionate marriage. Catherine realizes that Henry is not always right and develops her own opinions; he admits that she has a talent for intuitively understanding human

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motivations. Henry rebukes Catherine when her imagination leads her to think that General Tilney has murdered his wife: “Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you – Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing; where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open?’” (Austen 902)

Yet, Catherine is closer to the truth than is Henry: although the General has not literally murdered his wife, his coldness, by Henry’s own admission, contributed to her misery and early death. Catherine’s distrust of the General is justified when he turns her out, forcing her to endure a long and lonely return home, only because he has misjudged her fortune based on gossip. Without fortune, she is, in his mind, an adventuress, not a viable bride for his son. General Tilney is the villain of her gothic novels, and his anger exposes her to real danger, but she loses her fear of him in realizing he is only a bitter man. Catherine learns from the General through Henry, as Henry learns from the General through Catherine. As in all Austen novels, marriages in Northanger Abbey are flawed, but, in this novel, there are noticeably fewer of them, as there are also fewer characters. The Morland marriage is affectionate and secure, but the novel begins and ends with pointed barbs about the lack of livings, dowries, and opportunities for a large family of children. The parents have, however, bestowed a tremendous gift upon their children, the gift of a happy and secure childhood, with opportunity to develop love and self-esteem. What saves this family – although Mr. Morland may be bland and Mrs. Morland distracted, is their integrity, and a camaraderie that Henry Tilney, with all his fortune, cannot buy. He will, however, have it all through marriage. Northanger Abbey is a strong endorsement of the actual benefits companionate marriage. While heroine and hero become more self-actualized in Northanger Abbey than in Austen’s earlier novels, the dark side of matrimony is also more palpable, represented both by allusions to the marriage market and Mrs. Tilney’s absence. The loveless union between General Tilney and his late wife, or at least loveless for him, is a stark contrast to the Morland marriage, hinting darkly of emotional abuse and strongly indicting marriages of fortune. Although Henry is angry with Catherine for suspecting the General, he admits that his mother wasted away from lack of love. That Henry and Eleanor know the General married their mother for money, and

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that he allowed his wife to believe he married her for love, weighs on their own hopes to find real love, as evidenced by Frederick’s jaded attitude toward male/female relationships. Heir to the Tilney fortune, he knows he will be expected to marry well, which explains his angry, frantic need for unattached sex. Whatever this faceless wife and mother was to General Tilney, and her firstborn, she left a gentler impression on her daughter and younger son. Despite the novel’s entertainment value, Northanger Abbey, then, addresses a wealth of male/female dynamics principally between the Tilneys, Thorpes, and Morlands. In one of the most stunning scenes in Austen fiction, Catherine is evicted from the Abbey. The enormity of the General’s punishment of Catherine for her lack of fortune is easily underestimated by modern audiences, but it would have been inescapable for Austen contemporaries. A young girl riding public coaches alone through the night was no more socially acceptable than a woman proposing marriage, and far more treacherous. The General’s act of turning her out undefended was evil; that he would have become her father-in-law when she married Henry would have been seen by contemporary readers as a serious consideration, a reality the proposal reflects but Catherine’s acceptance overcomes. With General Tilney’s act, Austen was indicting blatant male disregard for women. Written almost as if she was reliving it, the scene conjures what would have been a very real threat of rape, but Austen chooses to allow Catherine to navigate the trip successfully. Such a vivid potentiality for a readership living under early nineteenth-century moral codes, and familiar with Richardson’s visceral threats and depictions of rape in Pamela and Clarissa, would have legitimized both novel and heroine, and Austen as a feminist writer. Yet, in her novels, love is (almost) enough only after it has been proven. That Catherine loves Henry is romantic, but inadequate; that she loves him after such treatment from his father proves her loyalty. That Henry loves Catherine for who she is even after she identifies the General’s cruelty, withstands his power, and is ruthlessly rejected, showing the family ethos for what it is, restores love to the rational place Austen believes it can hold: a companionate marriage. Henry’s marriage will be diametrically opposed to that of his parents; he tells Elinor to expect a sister-in-law who is open, candid, and artless, a fitting description of Catherine. The joy of the dance brings them together, representing to Henry the dance through life (marriage) that will sustain them, although he acknowledges that, in both, man chooses and woman can only refuse. This is the voice of Austen and a direct allusion to her own past. Henry loves

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Catherine’s genuineness and right instincts; she loves his understanding and kind intent. Austen could write this hero/heroine marriage to the end with confidence, based on their strong characters, confident sense of self, uncomplicated personalities, mutual admiration, healthy family relationships, and their reasonable hopes and goals as a couple. Yet, it was an authorial choice; they could have both successfully gone their independent ways. Henry and Catherine are young, well matched, and mutually attracted, however, and Henry is so thoroughly committed to Catherine that nothing the General does can change his feelings; in fact, his father’s negative opinions reinforce them. Another Austen wish fulfillment, yes; a plausible one. While Austen did not fully develop her primary characters’ married lives, she enjoyed imagining their futures, as evidenced by comments in her letters. Content in the rectory, Caroline and Henry will enjoy their own society in comfort and, in time, the General may re- evaluate. Austen provides a stunning ending for Northanger Abbey. Her message is clear: to live one’s own life, find love, defend it, marry, and enjoy companionship with the chosen partner. Or, bow to parental tyranny and become a puppet in a loveless marriage arranged only to increase family fortune. Eleanor and Henry marry for love. Frederick, as heir, may shadow his parents’ marriage of fortune, proving the initial paragraph of Pride and Prejudice to be true. In this novel, a male is subjected to the sins of contractual marriage for fortune. At the end of Northanger Abbey, only those breaking from tyrannical fathers can enjoy autonomy and marital happiness. Austen’s evolving constructions of love and marriage would have been incomplete without Northanger Abbey. Mansfield Park alone negates every argument that Jane Austen knew little of the world, that she wrote only for entertainment, or that she had not loved deeply. She could not have written this novel if any of those criticisms were true. Indeed, Mansfield Park is Austen’s greatest achievement in literary realism; attacked by modern critics for prudish values, it is a masterpiece of social realism, less about good and evil than negotiations. The quiet acquiescence and ironic propriety of Fanny Price is antithetical to Austen’s typically energetic and rebellious heroines, and her own nature, but Fanny possesses fundamental Austenian qualities: integrity, inner strength, and resolve. In Mansfield Park, reality becomes more tenuous, at once less certain increasingly undeniable, as the stark realism of enslavement, in all its forms, unfolds. This is Austenian maturity in the making, a new, more flexible and courageous awareness of the world and relationships within or without marriage. Making no pretense at comedy and containing no lighthearted romance, this novel both foreshadows George

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Eliot’s deepest works in scope and intention, particularly Daniel Deronda. Austen stated that Mansfield Park would not be half so entertaining as her previous novels. The work is a coming of age story, morality play, cautionary tale, indictment of moral decadence and slavery, and sober argument for steadfast love and companionate marriage. During its composition, she had reached total confidence in her philosophy of love and marriage, and made no apologies for insisting that the first was necessary to the fulfillment of the other. In Mansfield Park, Austen sorely tests and proves her philosophy. In no other novel does she ask her reader to participate on as many levels as in this, her greatest creative achievement. The reader’s first challenge is to admire Fanny; she is an Austen heroine and pity is not enough. The reader is asked to recognize her finest qualities and not only like but respect her for them: the ability to survive, her strength of character, the power of her love, and, foremost, Fanny’s unwavering belief in herself, all without external support. In recognizing and acknowledging that her goodness is of greater ultimate value than the more superficially interesting Bertram girls’ beauty, fortune, and marital machinations, Austen transforms the reader from a passive consumer into an active participant, who is challenged to allow that Fanny’s integrity and loving heart are able to compete successfully with Mary Crawford’s affectionate wit and irresistibility. Mansfield Park champions feeling over form, the emotional confusions that men and women are heir to by the very nature of their complexities and social interactions, the greatest reality of human relationships. By creating an early and intentional ambivalence about Fanny due to her tragic background, meek nature, helplessness in a strange environment, even her lack of humor, Austen forces the reader to acknowledge that the fine qualities Fanny possesses – kindness, loyalty, perceptiveness, intuitive fairness, moral fiber – though not immediately appealing, are lasting and vital in the pursuit of genuine happiness. In the end, Fanny must be believable as Edmund’s life partner. Austen took her time in writing this novel, more than two years when each of the others had been written in one. This is Fanny’s story; without her, it would be a grim tale of vanity, greed, enslavement, and loveless sex. Sober, complicated, money and travel centric, a stark contrast of good and evil, Mansfield Park pits individual integrity against all-pervasive depravity. Austen’s most uncharacteristic and reputedly least popular work, Mansfield Park is also her most accomplished and profound. For the first and only time, an Austen heroine begins as a study in repression, lacking in all overt qualities that make the other heroines so appealing.

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Yet, Fanny’s will to overcome a lifetime of injustice – a stark reality for many in nineteenth- century England – allows her, ultimately, to stand out from the others and join the man of her choice, as his equal (or better), in a partnership marriage without compromising her values. She is next in the line of Austen heroines who know themselves earlier and more completely. Fanny has known herself from the beginning and has not wavered. She ponders, resolves, and acts. Fanny also has a sense of the broader world through her brother; she “is perhaps the only woman to show any interest in a social or political issue with her questions to Sir Thomas about the slave trade” (Jenkyns 183). Fanny believes and trusts in herself, despite the machinations of those around her, as did Austen, which she encouraged in her readers. Mansfield Park was published in May 1814 from Chawton, three years before Austen died. Cassandra claimed that Jane had been planning this story for years; yet, a novel written at nearly forty years of age will be far different than one written at nineteen. Every Austen publication was nearly a miracle, but during the writing and release of this novel, Austen had accepted certain realities: she was nearly middle aged, would never marry, and would live out her life in her brother’s house with her mother and sister. She was a published author earning her way, and planned to continue, but her philosophies were changing with maturity, and it was becoming increasingly important to communicate honestly rather than simply to entertain. Each of her novels had been a conscious choice, a test of her understanding, a different book; Austen’s body of work had matured with Austen. She could not have written Mansfield Park earlier. This is an experimental novel from an experimental novelist. For the first time, Austen integrates a play, Lovers’ Vows, within her fiction to parallel art with life, anticipating Wilde, as she anticipates Eliot in depth of feeling. Austen develops a new sense of place within this novel, with international scope, linking the West Indies to the English countryside and locating the family seat in a new structure built with slave trade profits. Atmosphere is a palpable thing, almost another character, at Mansfield Park, which itself looms over the plot: “The author broke new ground in this work… [S]he had a remarkable faculty for creating an atmosphere…” (W. Austen-Leigh 235). The all-pervading isolation and dullness of its lifestyle negatively affects the morality and soundness of the characters. Into this atmosphere Austen drops an unusual heroine, a child whose only resource is inner strength. She is expected to accept a patriarch who trades in human flesh, matriarchs lacking in all maternal instincts, cousins acting as siblings who do not love. Her only friend is to

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be a cousin drawn eventually toward corruption. Meek Fanny, with a will of iron and infallible instincts, must detect falseness in people to protect herself, and continue to care, without falling into an all-pervasive bitterness. As Austen rejected cultural restrictions on a grand scale for this novel, she created a palpable realism and committed to a new level of evolving constructs of love and marriage. She creates and then virtually invades the creeping dullness of Mansfield Park, which Lady Bertram succumbs to and Maria flees, charging it not only with cruelty and blatant favoritism, drunkenness and debauchery, and public and private enslavement, but with lust over love and contractual over companionate marriage. Before Fanny can save the Park and realize her due, Austen must look squarely at the dark side of marriage, not as a broken-hearted girl but as an experienced woman. Lovelessness is everywhere in Mansfield Park, and everyone is attempting to escape: Sir Thomas to the islands, Mrs. Bertram to sleep, Maria to sex, Mrs. Norris into revenge, the Crawfords into fortune, Edmund into the clergy, Fanny and William into the future. Steadfast love and partnership marriage mock by omission, as if no meaningful feeling can survive such a place of degradation. Lust as a path to slow deterioration is transformed to love as a gateway to fulfilment through Fanny. Rarely has Mansfield Park been suggested as an autobiographical novel for Austen, but every Austen novel was autobiographical in varying degrees, this being no exception. William Price is a direct composite of Frank and Charles Austen, the Knights of Godmersham Park were models for the Bertrams, Edward Austen foreshadowed Fanny in adoption by wealth, and Henry’s dual personality informed both Edmund Bertram and Henry Crawford. The Austens enjoyed and staged amateur theatricals as the Bertrams do Lover’s Vows: “[F]or the theatre- loving Austen, the… private theatricals in Mansfield Park [were] an opportunity to give her fictional characters license to reveal their secret sexual desires through acting” (Byrne 147). The story of the three sisters of Jane Austen’s great grandfather, Theophilus Leigh, was transformed into the Ward sisters – Lady Bertram, Mrs. Norris, and Mrs. Price – in fiction nearly identical to historical fact. Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris expose the reclusive side of Mrs. Austen and her dominant, hypochondriacal, indolent, and ever more easily frightened nature as the years passed. Most important, however, are Austen’s feelings about her father’s involvement in the slave trade. Adamantly opposed to slavery in theory, in reality, the Austens were financially supported by family interests in West Indies plantations, which he administered from England.

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As significant as are the Austen family associations to Mansfield Park, however, are the all-pervasive dichotomies of this, yet another, Austen novel of contrasts: the ideal (what should be) versus the real (what is); luxury versus poverty; country manor versus Antigua plantation versus Portsmouth docks; the cold of England versus the heat of the tropics, integrity versus dishonesty, lovelessness versus love. Few allowances are made for intolerance and none for enslavement – adults of children, men of women, women of men, England of Others – but Austen demonstrates a deep fascination with what Carol Shields calls the “fine gradations of morality” (159), the messy ambiguities of life. If Mansfield Park is the least popular Austen work, as some critics have suggested, perhaps it is because she demands answers to uncomfortable questions, such as the harsh injustice of Fanny’s lot. In Culture and Criticism, Edward Said argues that Mansfield Park has generated more debate than any Austen novel: “The suggestion that poor children might be better off dead, well provided for in the after-life, provides the sharpest lines in a novel that is deeply observant of the attitudes of the times” (231). Injustices toward the child indict all human injustice. Austen viscerally attacks inhumanity in this novel: poverty, lechery, villainy, slavery, senseless cruelty in any form. Marriage is indicted by lack of love. Ambivalence is not an option. “Perhaps the most celebrated error about Mansfield Park is that Jane Austen meant its theme to be ordination” (MacDonagh 1). Beyond Edmund’s struggles and even the tragedies of the slave trade, in the final analysis, Mansfield Park is the story of Fanny Price’s self-discovery and fulfillment. Yet, rarely is she praised, surely due in part to ambivalent comparisons of Fanny and Mary Crawford, who is more superficially entertaining. Mary is the universal temptress: pretty, clever, wicked, and never without a quiet Fanny to serve as a moral compass. Marys promise a good time; Fannys are potential wives and mothers. Fannys are soft and pensive; Marys are alternately hard and poignant. Marys peak early; Fannys bloom late. Both are vital to the social structure. Each has been a known quantity since two women first squared off for one man. Both are realistic, and each is necessary to Mansfield Park as a reflection of the reader’s morality. Fanny is the heroine, Mary the anti-heroine, but in her own novel, Mary might be a heroine, as well. Fanny lives at Mansfield Park as a poor relation, Mary visits as a potential wealthy wife. Fanny will save the man she chooses, and the man she does not choose will not be saved. Mary will lose the man she chooses, and in not being chosen, will not be saved. Fanny has the moral fiber of a heroine that Mary is not interested in developing. Mary can be good

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(kind, giving, gentle) and Fanny can be bad (jealous, stubborn, disobedient), but there is no doubt where the true morality lies. This is Austen: “That Fanny rises to heroism and also hates Mary Crawford does not prevent Mary Crawford from being delightful and ready to like Fanny. There are different ways of being good and different degrees of bad behavior too” (Said 234). Mansfield Park itself becomes an ally for Fanny; she is suited to life in the country, prefers it, enjoys its beauty and open spaces for walking and riding, and its endless night skies. Mary is most decidedly a city girl who needs society; for her, the Park is an interlude. In a less romantic and more realistic, clear-sighted moment, Henry recognizes these differences; he is drawn to Mary, but rightly tells Fanny that she can save him from who and what he knows he is. Fanny loves home and hearth while Mary lusts after beautiful properties. Love, and even marriage, in this novel, cannot be separated from place and the meaning of home. Fanny, in her introspection, understands that while she had always called Portsmouth home, Mansfield has become home. This Fanny has in common with Ann Eliot. All other Austen heroines have identified with their birthplaces; in escaping their birth homes, Fanny and Ann realize that home is where the people they love reside. In many ways, Fanny is the strongest Austen heroine, besieged on all sides by superiors yet unyielding in her principles; Mary, without a doubt, is the strongest Austen anti-heroine. Fanny’s meekness belies an unshakable inner resolve that transforms others’ lives; no other Austen heroine has this quiet power. She is loyal to Sir Thomas in his absence, repulses Henry Crawford’s determined advances, refuses either to reveal or abandon her love for Edmund, and withstands the persuasions of her social superiors. Fanny’s struggles in childhood – abuse and rejection from an alcoholic father and defeated mother – have prepared her for the challenges of adulthood, not the least being a total lifestyle change at Mansfield Park. She is not prepared for her uncle expecting her to marry, without love, a man too like her father, or to be sent back to Portsmouth penniless when she refuses, but she does not give in. Fanny survives. The novel ends in a triumph of integrity and persistence. No saint, however, Fanny despises Mary, partly through blatant jealousy and partly because her instincts are true. She also enjoys humor at others’ (particularly Mrs. Norton’s) expense, can be envious, has a temper, can be tempted, and is often discontented, although this is alternately a fault and a survival mechanism. Fanny is ashamed of her Portsmouth home, and is proud enough to hope that Henry will pine for her. She also is embarrassed by the shallowness

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of the occupants of Mansfield Park, and is disappointed in both Henry’s and Edmund’s weaknesses. Austen creates a realistic, believable Fanny, knowing she would ask Sir Thomas questions about the slave trade, see through Tom’s binging to the pain beneath, know that Edmund was tempted, understand that Mrs. Bertram’s ennui was defense against an empty life, and even realize Maria’s desperation to break out of her marriage; but she would hold each responsible, and she would not forgive Mrs. Norton’s offences as she would not forgive her father’s, even as she understands them. With authorial respect, Austen endows Fanny with one of the most illuminating declarations in the Austen oeuvre: “Let him have all the perfections in the world, I think it ought not to be set down as certain, that a man must be acceptable to every woman he may happen to like himself” (525). Henry is decidedly imperfect, a cad and home wrecker. Yet, early in nineteenth-century England, this was a courageous statement for any woman to make. Having nothing to do with fortune, the man himself is judged, an exceptional leap forward in Austenian constructions of equality. Fanny must also stand her ground with female peers. When Mary eagerly participates in Lovers’ Vows, and uses the play to flirt with Edmund, she makes Fanny seem rigid and self-righteous as she honors Sir Thomas’s wishes. Yet, Mary and Fanny also have much in common. They are females in a male-centric world, outsiders at Mansfield Park, both from unstable backgrounds without parental direction or affection, each close to her brother, and both in need of financial security. As the only two who see the Rushworth/Maria/Henry triangle developing, they dread its effects. Indeed, they love the same man. Despite their rivalry, however, Fanny and Mary complement and learn from each other. Fanny finds her voice and vents righteous anger; Mary voices support of Henry and unleashes Edmund’s anger. When Fanny and Edmund finally acknowledge who they are, as much as how they feel about each other, they can begin their partnership in a companionate marriage. Also more complex than is immediately apparent, Edward, striving to be consistently moral in a quintessentially realistic inconsistent and immoral world, finds himself attracted to inconsistency and immorality. His choice of profession as a mark of character explains his early and continuing kindness to Fanny, his honest wish for her happiness in blindly encouraging a marriage to Henry, his patience with Mary’s faults, his loyalty to Tom despite his excesses, Sir Thomas’s faith in him when he leaves for Antigua, and Mrs. Bertram’s reliance on him when her husband is away. Edward’s ordination also draws attention to the immorality of his father’s

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profession. He is not weak, but is troublingly human, even lackluster since he is given no Austen wit. With few role models, Edmund has developed personal courage and is honest to a fault, challenging his own thinking and following his heart, but remaining true to his principles. Making but admitting mistakes, Edmund corrects them. He is one of the finest of Austen’s heroes, flawed but with a deep integrity necessary for Fanny to love him. Edmund and Fanny are the twin moral centers of Mansfield Park, sufficient unto themselves, but loving to all others – companions first. Still, Edmund falls in love with Mary; nothing could be more natural in a real world. This is not weakness; he still loves Fanny and he knows it. Mary is simply lovable. She is in many ways a vibrant and strong woman, and he brings out the best in her. Mutually attracted, they complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses; they are a believable couple. Austen acknowledges that a sound marriage between the two would be plausible. Edmund, based on Henry Austen, joins the clergy for philosophical reasons, not because he is the second son or because he falls into it when he needs an income, as does Edward Ferrars, with whom Edmund shares many character traits: mild disposition, sense of duty, kindness, tempered impetuosity, eagerness to please, quiet wit, hidden playfulness, resignation, steadfast feeling. Like Henry Tilney, Edmund represents the best of the profession because he has chosen it for philosophical reasons. Not the typical Austen caricature of a village parson, he is an accomplished and honorable man who displays normal male desires, curiosities, and responses. He is young and falls in love – twice, which could well strengthen a subsequent marriage. Mary is an anti-heroine with a heart; she loves Henry despite his faults and Edmund despite his profession. That both return her love shows her to be more than just a pretty face. Sometimes harsh and cynical, she can also be deeply caring and understanding. Mary’s tragedy is that no one has cared enough for her to reinforce her strengths. Without all of Fanny’s inner resources, she is still strong, capable, independent, and realistic. Protective of her brother, knowing that the Admiral will damage him and that marrying a good woman could save him, Mary encourages Henry to turn away from the fantastical appearances of the Bertram sisters toward the realistically grounded Fanny, whom Henry needs and Mary genuinely, if condescendingly, likes and respects. Henry’s corruption sincerely breaks her heart. Although she attracts a good man, Mary remains cynical about love and marriage: when Edmund offers her love, she toys with his affections and demands that he change for her. Remaining true to himself

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and expecting her support, Edmund forces Mary to choose and she does so superficially, losing her chance for a loving marriage. Henry, conversely, is a shape shifter, “ruined by early independence and bad domestic example” (580). While it is difficult to imagine his sincerely befriending William or being faithful to Fanny, it is easier to believe he wishes it could be so. Although Austen professes that he is “in love, very much in love” with Fanny, which would be unconvincing otherwise, it is a love that “made her affection appear of greater consequence, because it was withheld” (512). It is safer to want what he cannot have. Such is Henry’s tragedy; he can only love where he is not loved. Henry knows right from wrong, and seems to genuinely care for Fanny. He proposes with a wistful sincerity, knowing that her strength of character would make him a better man, but she rejects his offer in favor of hoped for love, as Austen had. Henry cannot sustain his intentions, even for what he believes would be his salvation; he acts impulsively, ruining a loveless arranged marriage, proving that Fanny’s instincts were right, despite her uncle’s pressure to accept him. Maria is an easy, corrupted conquest, as Henry believes any woman must be who could love him. Because he has never received reinforcement for good choices, he makes bad ones. Henry Crawford is, without doubt, one of Austen’s most realistically developed characters. Her deep understanding of both his charm and shortcomings gains realism and credence from his being modeled after her favored brother. Mary and Henry Crawford (Jane and Henry Austen) are, in many ways, the most poignant characters in a novel of poignant characters. Bringing energy and temptation to the novel, they are anti-heroine/hero for Edmund and Fanny, not because they have no heroic qualities, but because, having no opportunity, they have never developed integrity. With little more than a need to escape the corrupting influence of an unhappy home, and a nebulous intention to marry well, they enter Mansfield Park to foil others, only to be foiled themselves. In a twist of fate, they each fall into self-defined love, yet, their shared survival instincts prove stronger than their feelings for others. The Crawfords, sans personal responsibility, are allowed no redemption; “the selfishness and worldliness, the wit and sparkle, the pleasure in performance and the urge to conquer” (Jenkyns 75) do not protect them. Together, they presumably return to corrupting influences, having secured no love or fortune from the Bertrams or Fanny, but having served as catalysts for rekindling love in Fanny and Edmund, resulting in their companionate

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marriage. Mansfield Park explores the concept of outsiders being suitable marriage partners, allowing the Crawfords charisma, but, in the final analysis, preserving their status as strangers. Austen allows that excluding the Crawfords from Mansfield Park may be kinder than welcoming them in. The preservation of this great English country house, the Bertram family seat, depends on deeper corruption than the Crawfords know. Mary and Henry are agents of change; the more fundamental corruption lies with Sir Thomas, Lady Bertram, and Mrs. Norris. Sir Thomas himself is a study in contrasts, a ruthless slave holder and trader who sincerely cares and provides for his family; even critics have described him as a decent man. He is technically married, but has no companion. Lady Bertram consented to the arranged marriage and produced the requisite children, but has completely alienated herself from all of them. Sir Thomas loves his children but does not know them, and would be genuinely surprised to learn they are relieved when he is gone. The Bertram family dynamics could not be more valid, realistic, or timeless. While, or because, Sir Thomas is away, Tom, eldest son and heir, arranges amateur theatricals of Lovers’ Vows. Austen’s readers would have known this play; popular in London at the turn of the century, it addressed adultery, elopement, and wife abandonment. When Sir Thomas unexpectedly returns, he stops the play on moral grounds, but is oblivious to its deep effects on his children. Austen weaves the issues of Lover’s Vows with the exploitation of human misery that provides Sir Thomas’s wealth, juxtaposing Maria’s enslavement in a loveless contractual marriage with the Bertrams’ (Austen) involvement with the slave trade. The transport of slaves on English vessels was abolished in 1807, but continued illicitly until slavery was abolished in 1833, transports in which Francis Austen may have participated. Mansfield Park lacks a social life because of the Bertrams’ shame over the source of their wealth. For this reason, the Crawfords’ arrival is momentous, and the Bertrams’ decadence normalizes theirs. Still, Sir Thomas is created as a redeemable character, possibly to rationalize Mr. Austen’s overseeing of family slaveholdings. Of all father figures in the Austen canon, Sir Thomas is most willing to admit his mistakes. He accepts responsibility for his son’s breakdown – even though his wife (Mrs. Austen) is a far more alienated parent – and for his daughter’s adultery, although he exerts the same pressure on Fanny. He condones slave labor to secure the family fortune, but approves Edmund’s (James’) ordination. He provides a home for Fanny (Jane), yet seems unaware that Mrs. Norris (Mrs. Austen) abuses her and is ruining Maria (Cassandra). Sir Thomas is a deeply conflicted father who, in doing his duty to provide for his

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family, alienates himself from them. He has forgotten that marriage must be nurtured, and children need moral guidance as much as financial security. As the Bertram (Austen) patriarch, Sir Thomas (Mr. Austen) is needed at home to ward off immorality and lovelessness. In short, Austen has created a realistically timeless father figure. Lady Bertram’s preferences for physical beauty over inner strength and pets over children stereotype her as gentry and harm her family as significantly as Sir Thomas’s absences. He is often physically away; she is nearly always mentally absent. Tragedy brings her out of herself only long enough to reinstate the status quo. Lady Bertram responds to domestic emergencies in much the same way Sir Thomas attacks problems in Antigua: they present themselves, ask others what to do, leave it in their hands, and withdraw. Most readers would recognize the types. That Maria’s wedding is almost immediately followed by her adultery with Henry is a great crisis for Lady Bertram, even though she also entered an arranged marriage with disastrous results. She does not comprehend that Maria married with a “hatred of home… the misery of disappointed affection, and contempt of the man she was to marry” (455). Maria marries Rushworth, when even Sir Thomas questions it, to escape Mansfield Park, for fortune rather than feeling. Julia’s going to Brighton with the Rushworths immediately after their marriage leaves no doubt that this is a loveless arrangement. Austen does not develop the Bertram sisters because they are merely emblematic. Tom and Edmund, even the Crawfords, are allowed far more complexity. The character who overshadows Mansfield Park with the darkest intent, however, is not the slaveholding father but the slave-making Mrs. Norris. Only slightly less tragic than Henry Crawford, who professes to want to be redeemed, Mrs. Norris would be offended by any such suggestion. As Lady Bertram’s elder sister, she is “one of the great villains of literature… strengthened and confirmed… by the sufferings of others” (Said 231). Bitter and vindictive, she preys on younger and seemingly weaker women with vicious intent because she cannot torment Lady Bertram, her unconscious target, who self-protects with status and voluntary alienation. Austen gives Mrs. Norris tremendous power to obsessively bully Fanny and to psychologically damage the Bertram daughters. Deep jealously lies at the root of Mrs. Norris’s treatment, never more overt than when Fanny turns down Henry’s proposal, angrier that Fanny received the offer than that she refused it. Despite her story of disappointed love, arranged marriage to a clergyman, no children, and forced service to a sub-standard sister, Mrs. Norris chooses to destroy all good and decency around her. She exemplifies a very real evil. Yet, “As vilified as

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she is, Aunt Norris was the character most often praised and enjoyed by Jane Austen’s contemporaries, to the author’s delight” (Gilbert-Gubar 171-2). Austen ends Mansfield Park, a work that contains so much pain in which nearly every character could be a tragic hero or heroine, with “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can”, and proceeds to the marriage of Fanny and Edmund, who has conveniently ceased to love Mary Crawford (577). The switch is abrupt, given that Fanny has been unhappy and Edmund frustrated throughout the novel, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram still suffer, Mrs. Norris has spread endless misery for which she escapes punishment, Henry and Maria are thoroughly disgraced, Mary is summarily sent away, and Tom has nearly died. The abruptness, however, is plausible; in the face of such pervasive misery, any opportunity to ease unhappiness would be seized. If this Fanny/Edmund resolution is reminiscent of the Marianne/Brandon conclusion, it is because Austen better understands the reality of ambiguity but no longer needs to analyze happiness. Fanny and Edmund have long been friends; can they realistically be happy as lovers? Will he wonder what life would have been with Mary? Will Fanny know that he wonders? Austen assumes they were meant to be together and theirs will be a marriage of sensible love and solid partnership, based on long regard, respect, and like values. They have become equals and share a solid philosophy of life. Having received and rejected Henry’s proposal, and with the knowledge that Edmund chose her, Fanny has gained confidence and self-respect. With greater self-knowledge gained from loving Mary, Edmund can more fully appreciate Fanny. They are an Austen power couple, having proven themselves individually through personal suffering and increasing maturity, and together establishing a deep companionship that sets the tone of a marital partnership that will support an extended family, yet another Austen evolution in love and marriage that she developed throughout her fictional canon. Why, then, does Austen end the novel with a childlike impression of Fanny and Edmund? Such a spirit of chosen optimism will strengthen their bond to enable them to redeem the Park and right historic wrongs, as it allowed Catherine and Henry Tilney to change family dynamics, and will foster community strength with Emma and Mr. Knightly. In Persuasion, Anne and Frederick Wentworth will take that spirit into the wider world. Emma was a conscious Austenian switch to lighter, albeit important, fare. By Austen’s own admission, Emma was her favorite heroine, and, with the addition of fortune, therein lies the

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importance of this novel to the Austen body of literature. Superficially, the plot is all too familiar: a privileged girl with too much time meddles in others’ lives until, chastised by a wiser (single) man, insight sparks love and love breeds maturity. When Emma stops interfering, all is forgiven and love prevails. Less superficially, this heroine is distinctly more difficult to appreciate; a proud and self-righteous adolescent, she manipulates those who cannot escape her in the cloistered and rigidly stratified community of Highbury, where she wields great power and influence. Finally, at her most cruel, Emma is held accountable; in realizing what she has become, she understands that, rather than being manipulated or assumed, relationships are based on love and an equal meeting of minds. “Emma knows women do not have legal equality: ‘The world is not theirs, nor the world’s law,’ she says, applying a quotation about poor people from Romeo and Juliet to women in particular” (Auerbach 229). For the first time, an Austen heroine is wealthy, as the author herself enjoyed earning her way with the publication of three novels. Yet, with her newfound earnings, Austen learned not all is gained by fortune, and incorporated this experiential knowledge in her fiction. Emma takes her place in the line of protagonists who are, slowly but surely, becoming more whole; with every novel, the prototypical Austen heroine moves closer to the self-actualization of her creator, lending a greater sense of reality to characterization. Basic elements of Austenian philosophy again converge: a woman’s right to make choices, to escape restrictive society, change and grow, and find love in companionate marriage. To this, Emma adds a woman’s right to meaningful productivity, as well as exploring the role of the father’s influence in marital bargaining. As Emma becomes more real, her experiences gain credibility and depth, and readers can relate more closely to the realism in the novel, which becomes a potential for influencing their lives, as well. In message and essence, Austen’s Emma predates Virginia Woolf’s bid for female autonomy and the right to a woman’s space of her own by a century. In Emma’s logical mind, fortune releases her, as it does Mr. Knightley, from any inducement to marry, but others aren’t so fortunate. Emma’s double standard is not completely selfish: if marriage is optional for her, she believes others will benefit from its security, and Emma works toward what she considers their most advantageous connections. Arranged marriages continue to cause misery, but in Emma there is evolving intent. With this self- assigned task, she rises above her father’s belief that marriage is an abomination. Mr. Woodhouse, seemingly harmless but insidiously controlling, is a deadly adversary to Emma’s

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finding companionate marriage. In convincing her that marriage is not necessary in her case, Austen explores how fortune changes parental intentions. Mr. Woodhouse’s motives are self- sustaining and form dark questions about his own marriage, as well as his wife’s premature death. Emma comes to realize that her father has manipulated her, poignant for Austen, as well. In addition to their wealth, as social equals, Emma and Mr. Knightley have long shared an open, honest friendship based on respect and trust, a mutual understanding that allows for both their liberal and conservative viewpoints. Austen builds upon the friendship between Fanny and Edmund, and the respect and credibility Fanny earned, in developing this story. There is no need to outline Emma’s character; she and Mr. Knightley have known each other all her life. Like Austen, she is intelligent, strong, and artistic in a society that offers women little encouragement. This heroine, however, for all her wealth, is stifled: “Emma’s imprisonment is a recurrent theme… [She] is hardly ever more than two hours from Hartfield. She “has never seen the sea; she has never even been to Box Hill… Her father refuses to go to London” (Jenkyns 155). Emma is bored. Emma considers matchmaking a positive form of self-expression, almost a duty of privilege, that passes the time, keeps her mind active, and benefits the less fortunate. Matchmaking, then, like her painting, becomes Emma’s creative outlet, bolstered by a self- endorsed sense of civic responsibility. She is the first Austen heroine to have an occupation of sorts. As Emma’s position of privilege and power becomes secondary to realizing her selfhood, however, she progresses from affirming she will never marry, because she has no need of the fortune it will bring, to understanding that a true marriage is not about need but about shared love and voluntary partnership. Becoming Mrs. Knightley is not presented by Austen as a completion of Emma; she argues that the love and respect of a man with whom she can be herself will greatly enrich her life and contribute to her happiness. As with Catherine Morland, Emma could be contentedly and securely single, although she lacks Catherine’s stable and loving family circle, but marries Mr. Knightley simply because she loves and wants to be with him. Removing all need for marrying, Austen delights in a heroine who wants to marry her friend and companion, another major milestone in Austen’s evolving constructions of love and marriage. Mr. Knightley is the voice of reason Emma needs. Known for his integrity and kind heart, he brooks no false pretenses and is intensely loyal. Emma is his logical match, his soulmate: intelligent, strong, independent, light-hearted, quick-witted, thick-skinned. He

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understands that she needs to be challenged and is the only man who dares to point out her mistakes, but neither intimidates the other. They share an openness and equality that he insists upon, another advancement in the Austen endorsement of true companionship. Mr. Knightley is an autonomous hero. A man of few but effective words, he owns his faults and credits Emma with the strength to accept honest criticism of hers. She understands his intent. Even as he proposes, Mr. Knightley stresses love, truth, mutual understanding, communication, and equal voice between them, without assuming that Emma will love much less marry him – a stark contrast to Mr. Collins’ proposal but reminiscent of Darcy’s second offer. Austen understands a man is most vulnerable when he risks proposing. In Emma, the hero anticipates the heroine in acknowledging her needs. Marriage has come full circle from contractual to consensual. Conversely, where Mr. Knightley is insightful and considerate, Emma is logical and aggressive; she thinks like a man, perhaps the boldest Austenian heroine construct. She identifies three marriageable women – Emma, Harriet Smith, and Jane Fairfax – and three marriageable men – Mr. Knightley, Mr. Elton, and Frank Churchill – who serve as principal players in the marital games she initiates. Rather than waiting for men to propose, Emma orchestrates proposals. Although she is unsuccessful, she has single-handedly challenged the rigid, male-dominated marital system. When Mr. Elton’s search for a wife outside of Highbury creates a matrimonial inequation, another man must be found to restore equilibrium. She arbitrarily dismisses Robert Martin as unsuitable for Harriet because he is on a lower social level than Emma. Harriet must remain a suitable friend for her; losing friends to matrimony is a serious social consequence. Whatever he is to Harriet, Robert Martin is not Emma’s peer. Harriet Smith must be acknowledged for her strong contribution to this novel; like Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park, Harriet could well join the ranks of Austen heroines. Despite her lack of status, birthright, family, education, or fortune, with a sweet nature and instinctual goodness her only resources, Harriet is never subservient, and helps to humanize Emma, who manipulates her without shame. Surprised when Emma first notices her, Harriet is grateful but does not grovel; indeed, she has sufficient self-worth to be convinced Mr. Knightley is interested in her. Although she accepts Emma’s attentions and is open to new possibilities, Harriet loves Robert Martin and finally accepts him without Emma’s approval, willing to lose the friendship. Harriet does not marry for security, because she is asked, or even because Mr. Martin loves her; she sincerely cares for him and believes in her inherent right to love and find happiness, an

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evolution in crossing class. Harriet arguably demonstrates character more often than Emma, and knows herself far better. Emma accepts society’s dictum that marriage is the only hope for a woman of little means. Insisting on love, Harriet influences Emma’s approach to marriage. John Halperin has called Emma “a great book – psychologically deep, full of humour and suspense, beautifully written” (275). Yet, Emma is not Austen’s greatest heroine, and this is not Austen’s greatest novel. While Emma causes an interlude of manipulation, embarrassment, and pain, Harriet saves herself and helps to save a friend for all time. In this novel, fortune takes its rightful lesser place in love and marriage. Love becomes as, or more important than, marriage. Need becomes a priority in male/female relationships: Emma does not need fortune, but companionship; Harriet does not need Robert Martin, but she loves him. These are significant philosophical evolutions for Austen. Choice is also worth fighting for, not only whom to marry but whether to marry. Rather than a goal, marriage becomes a framework for companionate love, regardless of social place. Spinsters’ social and financial struggles are sympathetically acknowledged, while the Eltons’ arranged marriage for fortune and status is blatantly mocked. Marriage agreements may end in realistic contentment, as with the Westons, or in a draw, as with the Frank Churchills. Marriage for love, as for the Knightleys and Martins, provide solid partnerships. Emma, begun as a novel about a single, financially secure woman, proves Austen’s marital assessments not only valid, but as realistic as if she had married herself. Persuasion was Jane Austen’s final completed work. She had been ill as she wrote, and a great deal of speculation has focused on what influence that may have had on the novel’s origin and composition, whether it was intentionally autobiographical, a final statement of marital philosophy, the result of a premonition of early death, a last message to her readers or even to a former love. Short of Jane Austen walking into the room to provide clarity, her exact intent must remain unknown. Given what is evident, however, it is reasonable to suppose that, since Austen’s personal experiences and relationships informed every novel she had previously written, Persuasion was no exception. She wrote that her health was improving, and after she completed this novel, she began and completed a fair portion of another, Sanditon. What is relevant here is that Austen directed Anne Elliot, Persuasion’s heroine, in learning from previous decisions, evolving into a mature, self-actualized woman, choosing to act in her own best interests, abandons family and wealth, and realizing sincere love and partnership marriage with a self-actualized man who chooses her in return in so realistic a way that it seems to be a wishful

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rewriting of Jane Austen’s own story. “Persuasion is an extraordinary book… a remarkable leap into a new mood and a new way of looking at England… a society in which merit can rise” (Tomalin 259). With Persuasion, Austen drops all pretense and personal defenses to argue that, to realize companionate marriage, one must first be true to self. This novel meant a great deal to her, evidenced by her the addition of several sections just months before her death, increasing its complexity. Austen clearly wanted Persuasion to fully express her philosophies of love and marriage. If Emma is a portrait of the strong young woman Austen might have been with fortune, Persuasion develops the future Austen might have enjoyed, the mature woman she had become, the marital happiness she might have realized with an equal loving partner. As the heroine of Austen’s last completed novel, and the culmination of her progressively developed female protagonists, Anne Elliot combines their best qualities of each of Austen’s heroines. With imagination tempered by hard-won reality, Austen created the mature woman of sense, who realistically reassesses an immature decision to finally accept the companionship of a mature and loving partner. She is also the yearning woman of feeling whose emotional intensity and vulnerability allow her to risk social and familial disapproval to marry a romantic sea captain against all prudence. In Persuasion, realism of thought and feeling reside within the heroine. A deliberate work of hope and second chances realized, Persuasion differs from Austen’s earlier works. The theme of this final novel is love, its strength and what role prudence should play in mate choice. Anne’s past error had been in misjudging Wentworth and surrendering to outside advice; she had not trusted her instincts: “She should have realized that his moral and mental qualities were such that it would not have been imprudent, in any good sense of the word, for her to have married him” (Cecil 187). More than a tale of what might have been, Persuasion is a paean to mature love and union, to constructive waiting for equal partnership rather than eager exchange of body for security or passive resignation. This novel could only have been written in Austen’s maturity; her art required her life. Anne Elliot is the senior Austen heroine, yet still in her twenties, who, after succumbing to persuasion and learning the pointlessness of self-sacrifice, realizes the greatest fulfillment of love founded in self-understanding. Anne becomes a model of self-determination, exemplifying the power of experience to initiate change and bring inner peace. Like Fanny, she comes to know herself well and finds the courage, and voice, to make her own decisions about what love and marriage mean to her. In the early

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nineteenth century, only a woman of great courage made autonomous decisions at any age, as only a brave novelist would have published such marital constructions. Anne seizes a second chance to defy family and social expectations as she and Frederick Wentworth create their own rules for a loving relationship. Persuasion offers Austen’s most advanced construction of mutual love and partnership based on respect and like minds, as well as the consequences of marrying without these qualities or not marrying at all. As in Emma, it is respectable for women to remain single, but at the risk of losing love and understanding; Elizabeth Eliot is single at 30 because she can find no husband she believes is worthy of her. Earlier forms of courtship – clever repartee, dancing, formal engagement, dowries – have become largely outdated formalities. The novel does not argue for love in marriage; at this point, both are assumed and non-negotiable in Austenian marital partnerships. Social expectations do not apply; mature interactions are honest and mutual. Fortune is earned, not inherited or bargained for. In Persuasion, Austen finally speaks without reserve through Anne, Captain Wentworth, Captain Harville, the Crofts, and Mrs. Smith, who is perhaps Austen’s most reasonable and credible representative of marriage gone wrong. Because of this openness, the atmosphere of the novel is fresh and vital; there is a new urgency in Austen’s realism. Anne’s years of silence make it imperative that she speaks her truth, with no attempt to please. Persuasion is Austen’s magnum opus, Jane Austen unleashed, a culmination of all she had written during her lifetime. The second chance for love in Persuasion becomes an unexpected opportunity for hero and heroine to reevaluate themselves, their past, and their future. Anne acknowledges that, in her youth, she should have trusted Captain Wentworth more and allowed Lady Russell to influence her less, that she should have decided whether or not to marry based on his qualities rather than others’ manipulations. As only Charlotte Lucas does before her, Anne acts, meeting Wentworth half way. He, in turn, admits he should have understood her early concerns and not have left her. When they commit to each other the second time, asking for permission to marry becomes a formality. Like Henry and Catherine of Northanger Abbey, they will now marry with or without permission. Mature love, then, as defined in Austen’s Persuasion, is earned, acknowledged, accepted, and acted upon by both partners, and has a greater chance of succeeding because it is equally decided with mutual love and respect. Anne and Wentworth enter marriage and face their future together as equals.

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The principle moral of Austen’s final completed novel is the opposite of her first; the second chance of Persuasion vindicates the paucity of choices available to Marianne in Sense and Sensibility. Of all her published novels, Austen seems to have written Persuasion for herself, as if she no longer had anything to lose in telling the story exactly as she meant it. Between Anne and Wentworth, there is a new and real tenderness, an intimacy that begins when he first returns, and they barely speak. Austen seems to both revisit and re-evaluate the love(s) of her own past. The most striking quality of Persuasion is its integrity, of author, heroine, hero, and feeling. What is best for hero and heroine becomes what is best for England and, by inference, the world: re-thinking human relations (love, war, slavery), outdated social practices (primogeniture, male centric education, contractual marriage), the merits and needs of the individual. Persuasion is written to inspire hope for the future, greater personal happiness, and increased understanding between the sexes. In this novel of second chances, which Austen was not allowed, she challenges the status quo of female/male relationships – indeed, the realities of accepted English marital and familial structures – by rewriting her story and sharing hard-won insights: first loyalty to partner, the falling away of siblings, finding one’s place in the world. Due to Austen’s progressing understanding of love and marriage, and the timespan between their creations, Anne Elliot is an interesting contrast to Catherine Morland. At Catherine’s age, Anne is misled by prudent guidance that Catherine did not receive but seemingly needed. Yet, that guidance is suspect, as is the imagination with which Catherine overcompensates. Austen seems to care less about others’ meddling than the power of maturity that allows men and women to make sound decisions for themselves. If so, this would evidence a monumental shift in her philosophy of love and marriage, as well as a new understanding of her own past relationships. Northanger Abbey validates Catherine’s innocent instinctive feeling. Persuasion validates Anne’s mature self-understanding. Both paths lead to loving partnerships because both heroines identify the socially accepted and reject it for the individually real. Yet, the Wentworths move beyond the Tilneys in the sense that they share “a desire to be useful, an awareness of other worlds and an openness to change” (Auerbach 263), creating what Eric Walker calls “the striking roominess of this marriage” (Walker 132). Anne, an intelligent single woman, has made life-altering decisions – not to marry (twice), to remain in a loveless family, to focus on duty – and has spent years committing to these decisions, settling into what she assumes will be a solitary life as an unappreciated

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daughter and sister. Austen was a romantic in the sense that she believed in marrying for love. “entirely explicit in Persuasion” (Jenkyns 196). As there was no need to address lack of fortune and the ethics of marrying for it in Emma, in Persuasion, there is no need to boost a young heroine through adolescence, social introduction, or the pain of first love. Building on the earlier novels, Austen is free to address female agency, the constancy of love, irrelevance of time and place, the power of like minds, and the understanding that is possible between a man and a woman who know each other well and have reached a level of maturity in which they know themselves and each other well. Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth are Austen’s most convincingly autonomous heroine and hero. Fully aware of their individual needs, they plan a joint future that will satisfy them both, knowing and accepting sacrifices necessary to realize their goals. “Persuasion is full of damaged characters, and deeply mired in family relations; in fact, family connections were key to ending the relationship years before (Byrne 320). The ineffectual Elliot family provides no moral support or individual financial security for Anne (Jane); Sir Walter Elliot hardly takes notice of this daughter, and does not even remember Frederick Wentworth, nor does he attempt to secure Anne’s future happiness by supporting her chance for a fulfilling marriage. Sir Elliot and his eldest daughter Elizabeth personify the shallowness and obsessive vanity that Austen observed in society. The stark difference between Anne and her father and sisters emphasizes the palpable loneliness of her position; presumably, she shares her dead mother’s nature. By contrast, Wentworth’s friends and family are real, without affectation, as warm and loving as Anne’s are cold and distant. The role Lady Russell plays in Anne’s life is Austen’s argument against interference by family members in male/female relationships and the damage they can cause. It is no coincidence that Lady Russell closely resembles Mrs. Lefroy, who, by all accounts, worked to end the relationship between Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy. Anne’s suffering is depicted with such realism that her pain must have informed by Austen’s personal experience. An atypical Austen hero, Captain Wentworth has experienced the maturing effects of travel, exposure to other cultures and ideas, and the very real possibility of death in war. He has also lost Anne, who watched him go, imagined him in other parts of the world, and faced the probability of his never returning. No other Austen heroine could begin to understand the reasons for Wentworth’s intensity or weaknesses; Elizabeth, Catherine, or Emma would not be

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impressed. Anne and Frederick are simply well matched. He is a man who can control a ship full of men under attack, but loses his wits when a young girl falls from a wall. His capacity to take command rests on the same courage required to sustain a deep but unacknowledged love for nearly a decade. Wentworth is steadfast, proficient in commanding major events and meeting great challenges, but he needs a partner who is patient and accomplished in nuance; for him, the devil is in the details. Anne excels at details, caring for others, attending to practicalities, and remaining focused when others are not. While each is independent and brings individual strengths to their union, they complement and support each other. In Persuasion, “the most proximate rival pairing at the end of the novel is not with a sibling but with a friend” (Walker 110). Friendship is key to the strength of the Elliot / Wentworth love and partnership. This equal but complementary match is what Austen came to consider the ultimate marital partnership, the model of love and marriage she desired for herself and developed in a natural progression within her novels. In Frederick Wentworth, Austen creates a new type of hero, a fine and charismatic man of intelligence and spirit who has earned his fortune. In this, he is more like Willoughby than the more sober heroes, but a Willoughby with integrity. Good with children and empathetic with others, Wentworth is fiercely loyal and generous. He is also artistic, fond of music, and a fine letter writer. He is a culmination of the best of the Austenian heroes without their defects; his experiences have ameliorated his imperfections and increased his self-respect. Anne loves his romantic temperament, as did Austen. Frederick Wentworth is her final complete portrait of what a man should be, a flawed but fine and credible partner. What saves Wentworth from caricature is that he does not take Anne for granted, nor does he offer to become someone he is not to secure her love. Throughout her life, Austen knew her brothers might not return from the sea; this is a significant factor in the Eliot-Wentworth relationship. Wentworth’s ability to identify what he wants and needs, and his determination to act on those realizations, distinguishes him from other Austen heroes, yet aligns him most with Darcy and Knightley. Yet, Wentworth alone ushers in a new era of meritocracy. He seeks a wife who can match his free thinking and lifestyle: “A strong man himself, Wentworth… wants the same qualities in a woman… ‘A strong mind, with sweetness of manner’” (Johnson 150). Inheritance ceases to be a factor when fortune can be earned; no longer must women be bartered for. Anne and Frederick share the responsibility for their future success.

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Austen speculates that the Wentworth marriage and their subsequent lives will be much like that of the Crofts, and projects further into the construction of their marriage than those of previous novels. Sophie Croft, however, is not Anne Wentworth; the Crofts are close but childless. Their marriage is a success because they share adventures on land and sea. The Crofts have a remarkably open, honest, close, and modern relationship, founded in mutual respect, which requires only their being together to be successful. “[T]his is Jane Austen’s most whole- hearted picture of married love enduring with full success in an older couple. Her ideal seems to be one of complementarity… [T]he absence of the maternal theme… enable[s] her to present an idea of good marriage simply in terms of the relationship between man and woman… It is an idea of full partnership” (Jenkyns 193-94). The Wentworths may want a family, a prospect Austen speculates. Mrs. Croft is a remarkable portrait of a distinctly new woman, but Ann, in her caring softness, may expand that role; if Austen had lived to write other novels, she may have come to revise her constructions of motherhood. Persuasion hints at breaking many obsolete literary molds, another bid for increased realism in this late novel. One of Austen’s most intriguing fictional marriages is that of Captain and Mrs. Harville, whose warm and loving home is a welcoming place for all. The Harvilles personify a strong argument for marriage founded in love, regardless of fortune, particularly when contrasted with the loveless unions of the wealthy Elliots. The Harvilles’ marital harmony and economy, even the handiness of Captain Harville, was an acknowledged reference to Francis Austen, the patriarch of a large family, who, when ashore, turned his considerable skills to being useful at home. Captain Harville is the quintessential sailor and family man, as well as Anne’s equal in debate about the fundamental differences between the way men and women view the world: “I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married lives… so long as … the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex… is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone” (1039).

When Captain Harville argues that his deceased sister, Phoebe, would not have forgotten her intended as soon as Captain Benwick seems to have replaced her because “It was not in her nature,” Anne responds, “It would not be in the nature of any woman who truly loved” (1038), both an Austenian nod to faithful women and an indictment of those who enter lightly into relationships and hurt men out of insensitivity or for their own purposes. Harville’s insistence that it is not “any more man’s nature than women’s to be inconstant or to forget those they love

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or have loved” creates an equality between men and women not found in the earliest novels. Yet, when he says, “I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which did not have something to say on women's fickleness,” Anne ends the argument: “But they were all written by men” (1038). Thus, does Austen use realism to equalize the power of men and women. In one of the most realistic depictions of Austen’s long-term marriages, the elder Musgroves represent an established companionate marriage whose partners have come to a mutual understanding over time. They have found happiness by working as a unit to establish a warm and loving home free from selfish ambitions; they are “‘totally free from all those ambitious feelings which have led to so much misconduct and misery,’ possessing ‘true parental hearts’ and a sense of honor and kindness toward others” (Auerbach 246). In contrast, their son’s marriage to Anne’s younger sister Mary is miserable; he is an unpretentious country gentleman and she is a selfish, hypochondrial, and elitist Elliot daughter. The young Musgroves are alienated from family and each other because they are so drastically mismatched. That Charles once proposed to Anne, before he married Mary, both negates and encourages sympathy; he may have sought the family connection for fortune, but he recognized Anne as the better choice, establishing that she had turned down valid proposals after her relationship with Wentworth, an indication of constancy. Charles Musgrove is hardly a villain, but villains abound in this novel: all Elliots but Anne, Mrs. Clay, Mrs. Smith’s husband. Yet, Lady Russell creates the most emotional damage. She is a destroyer of love and marriage, in general, and is the chief architect of the early separation of Anne and Frederick, in particular. Persuasion is replete with angry women and men, but Lady Russell is without a doubt the angriest and most dangerous; she has very real power over the nineteen-year-old Anne, as a mother surrogate, trusted friend of the family, person of wealth, and pillar of society. She is as equally blind to the merits of Frederick Wentworth as she is to the falseness and greed of William Elliot. Only in the end does she admit that her misjudged persuasion cost Anne years of unhappiness. Lady Russell is a bitter personage of an earlier age, psychologically akin to Mrs. Ferrars, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, General Tilney, Mrs. Norris, and Henry Woodhouse, who resent the freedom and happiness sought and found in loving, companionate marriages because they were forced into contractual marriages, resentment that continues to punish generations no longer subject to such abuses.

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Persuasion is a culmination of Jane Austen’s lifelong observations of, and experiences within, an England constrained by a dying aristocracy, outmoded social structures, obsession with fortune, enslavement of fellow humans, contractual marriages sans feeling, and general disregard of individual rights, all contrasting sharply with a new emphasis on individual rights in England, America, and on the Continent due to the effects of the Industrial Revolution. Persuasion contains great anger and sorrow, but also hope and triumph. Austen had told her story, as her life should have been played, and her heroine and hero, finally beyond the reach of social restrictions, are freed in the end. Written over just one year, between August 1815 and August 1816, Persuasion was published with Northanger Abbey at the turn of 1818, a few months after Austen’s death (Lefroy 102). Jane Austen would have appreciated the irony that Northanger Abbey, the earlier novel of an innocent heroine chasing imaginary fears but finding love and happiness, would be published with Persuasion, about her most mature heroine conquering more tangible fears to find love and contentment. Whatever else she meant the novel to be, Persuasion was Jane Austen’s love letter to life, an accumulation of all that was important to her: self, partner, love, marriage. This was her last and truest complete statement, and should be read exactly as Austen wrote it, without embellishment or editorializing. Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth personified Jane Austen’s most evolved construction of marital partnership, a man and woman free within marriage, rather than sheltered by marriage. Nancy Armstrong once wrote that, in the novel, “through marriage to someone of a lower station, the male but not the female of the upper gentry can be redeemed” (Armstrong 113). Persuasion is the exception to that rule. Summation Before her death, Austen proposed, created, presented, and defended a new blueprint for mutual love and marital companionship within six novels, all of which, after two centuries, continue to be read and adapted. Through these works, generations of thinking readers have absorbed her constructions of love and marriage as they form their own. When written, Austen’s novels were so modern, her words so clear, her truths so evident that even most modern adaptations tend to hold to her philosophies. With insight, sincerity, and wit, she dared her own society, as she dares ours, to question common assumptions of what human relationships can be. Austen encouraged contemporary readers to defy established social mores that love was an enviable but quixotic goal, not to be expected, and that the purpose of marriage was security

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rather than fulfillment. In her novels, both males and females sacrifice love and happiness in the chase for social acceptance and fortune, as some do today. She did not wholly blame individuals (or characters) for choosing security over love; she blamed society for necessitating or sanctioning such choices. Austen knew what it was to lose love for want of fortune. She openly challenged marriage as a bargain of freedom for protection. Indeed, in Emma she challenged the very necessity of marriage if financial security could be otherwise achieved. Austen believed if men and women knew themselves, and were allowed to choose whom to love, consensual marriages would become partnerships that strengthened social constructs, rather than shams to satisfy false society with a thin veneer of respectability. Initiating an increasingly frank discussion about love and marriage that eventually spanned the nineteenth century in England, Austen did not shy away from the realism of sex in relationships. Sex before marriage and/or adultery are implied or explored in each novel. In Sense and Sensibility, Eliza, Brandon’s first love, is forced to marry his brother to keep her fortune in the family; abused and abandoned by both, she dies and leaves a daughter who is also seduced and left pregnant by Willoughby, a condition to which Marianne is not immune. Sex appeal initially draws Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet, and Elizabeth to Wickham, in Pride and Prejudice, and Mr. Collins’ obsession with sex makes him repulsive. Lydia Bennet’s elopement with Wickham is unabashed lust and a blatant display of premarital sex, with no concern for social consequences. Frederick Tilney and Isabella Thorpe use sex against each other, one for lust and the other for fortune. Mary Crawford tempts Edmund Bertram with sex, just as her brother Henry is sexually attracted to Fanny. His spectacular post honeymoon adultery with Maria Bertram is shared as a matter of fact; indeed, Fanny and Mary see it coming. Emma is forever referring to sex appeal in her attempt to marry her to the most socially acceptable suitor, particularly wishing to match pretty Harriet with handsome Mr. Elton. An argument could be made against the propriety of Mr. Knightley loving Emma since she was thirteen, or of Frank Churchill conducting a secret affair with Jane Fairfax. There is certainly sexual attraction between Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth. Sex is all-pervasive in Austen’s works, from first to last, as it was in every level of early nineteenth-century English society, as it has always been. Many reach adulthood, even today, believing that engagements and weddings are synonymous with safety and security, socially and financially. The myth continues. In Austenland, a 2013 spoof of Austen’s life and works, the heroine flatly states, “I am single

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because apparently the only good men are fictional!” For all of the feminist advancements since Austen’s time, misconceptions linger. Solid partnerships can be developed, but engagements and weddings are not companionate marriages. Austen knew this long ago. Two years after her death, a female was born in the midlands of England, a very different social environment from her own, who, armed with a formal education Austen was denied, would praise and test Austenian constructions of love and marriage. Armed with her own personal experience in love and a unique interpretation of marriage, encouraged by a man she loved and lived with but could not marry, this woman would write deeply about male/female relationships in novels considered among the greatest in the English language. Christened Mary Anne Evans, the world would know her as George Eliot, and the conversation would continue.

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CHAPTER 2 DEEPENING THE CONVERSATION, CHALLENGING THE VICTORIAN IDEAL: GEORGE ELIOT

Historical Overview: Mid-Nineteenth Century Increased cries for a reform bill, passage of Catholic Emancipation, attacks on the Anglican Church, and revolutions abroad were all part of the radical changes of the mid- nineteenth century. After the abolition of slavery in 1833, women remained the tentative human property of England, with official curtailment of rights of dower (Poovey 75). A graphic comparison between slavery and marriage was that, in England, wives could still be sold at public auction. The abolition of slavery did not abolish the trade of wives. Much less expensive than slaves – or, in fact, cadavers purchased for medical research – wives stood on the block with halters around their necks, sometimes decorated with ribbon, and went to the highest bidders. Wife sales were thought to alleviate domestic and communal friction. The law still classed a wife as property; in addition to selling her body, a husband could sue for damages if she had committed adultery. The last case of a husband successfully suing for such damages was brought to the Court in Dublin in 1979 (Pateman 122). With few ways for women to earn their own bread, eventually, because fiction had become feminized, they were allowed to write and publish literature, but were generally denied access to practicing medicine, law, or theology (Poovey 81). Constructions of mid-nineteenth century love and marriage also evolved, within novels and in English society. By the 1830s, the middle class had begun to establish what would become known as the Victorian family, the first family type in history that was long-lasting and intimate (Stone 423). Borrowing from the eighteenth-century mother-centric family model, the nineteenth-century middle-class version of domestic felicity placed the immediate family first, with children at its core. Yet, history also took a step back; the mother-centric middle and upper-class family model of the previous century had transferred love and learning directly between mother and child, due, in part, to less than rewarding relationships between man and wife in the male-centric marriage model. The Victorian family model, while presenting a united front, tended to keep parents a step removed from their children, with boarding schools, tutors, and nannies between. Father might have a

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second life, even a mistress, and Mother might spend much of her time on causes, but the Victorian family was, by social appearance, an inviolate and respectable unit with one last name. Despite this separation of marital partners, the center of Victorian life remained the family, with its domestic rituals and supposedly ideal home life, where a man expected to recover from the intense pressures of competitive life. In the early 1840s, the English marriage rate rose to nearly the highest eighteenth-century levels (Mason 50). Yet, there was a more realistic side to Victorian ideal of the companionate marriage: sex education for children, urban night life and courtship, alienating marriages of commuting husband and home-based wife, extramarital sex for pleasure versus married sex for procreation, wife assault, divorce (6). In conjunction with such change in male/female relationships, a sexual double standard developed; guaranteed to produce endless discussion and countless objections were increasing suggestions that married men and women should have equal rights (Poovey 62). The notorious divorce case of George and Caroline Norton – filed when he attempted to raise money on her trust and she left him for physical and mental brutality, and contended from 1836 to 1854 – is succinctly outlined in a summary she went so far as to publish: [T]he grotesque anomaly… ordains that married women shall be ‘non-existent’ in a country governed by a female Sovereign… As her husband, he has a right to all that is hers: as his wife, she has no right to anything that is his. As her husband, he may divorce her…: as his wife, the utmost ‘divorce’ she could obtain is permission to reside alone, married to his name. The marriage ceremony is a civil bond for him and an indissoluble sacrament for her; and the rights of mutual property which that ceremony is ignorantly supposed to confer, are made absolute for him, and null for her. (qtd. in Poovey 64)

After eighteen years, the jury found for George Norton on a technicality. The wife-assault debates of the late 1840s pitted self-sacrifice and guilt against self- preservation, foreshadowing the 1850s debates on women’s roles in marriage. A Times editorial reported, “If a ruffian has drunk to excess and fails to pick a quarrel with any of his boon companions, his natural impulse on his return home is to beat, to cut, to stab, or to mutilate his wife” (Times, 20 August 1852, 4e). Natural impulse. George Eliot’s story, “Janet’s Repentance,” depicting with grim realism Janet’s alcoholism and the Dempster’s abusive marriage, was serialized in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in late 1857 during social upheaval on the marriage question (Surridge 110). Those who read the story first did so in a highly politicized climate when coverture, wife assault, and marital cruelty were becoming national issues. The story depicts domestic abuse as being about a man controlling a woman’s

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body and mind, and a woman allowing it. Eliot wrote about middle-class marital violence as “sorrow such as may live next door to you” (105). The townspeople are aware of Robert Dempster’s abuse but unwilling to stop it, and Janet is too proud to seek help. Depicting such abuse as common, middle-class, and nonstereotyped, Eliot challenged contemporary depictions of wife assault with a stark realism that was undeniable. “Janet’s Repentance” helped to publicize domestic abuse. To maintain the Victorian façade of domestic felicity required a myriad of social rules, regulations, laws, and moral codes that themselves initiated social change. As the reality of Victorian marriages slipped, in effect, into marriages of convenience while purporting to be companionate, with men supporting families and women ignoring abuse and infidelities to maintain the appearance of domestic felicity, Victorian social concerns slowly forged a more enlightened future. Biological family bonds were strong, but so were challenges to marriage. In Victorian homes full of children, sex was an unmentionable. This was the age of the stork; questions were answered with lies, rebukes, or fantasies. Wives generally associated sex with duty, husbands with a necessary yielding to the baser male nature. Procreation was tantamount; there is little mention of pleasure. Even so, artificial contraceptive methods were adopted at all levels of society as early as the 1860s (Mason 7). Still, family sizes were typically large, and neither family planning nor modern medicine kept pace. Particularly in the middle class, maternal replacements were often needed for wives and mothers who died before their children were grown, creating a controversy over marriage with dead wives’ sisters: MDWS (Corbett x). Although biological brothers and sisters claimed the strongest ties of birth and blood, followed by cousins, even during Austen’s time, brothers- and sisters-in-law were considered primary family members and so were suspect as second spouses. In 1820, Jane Austen’s brother Charles had married his late wife’s sister, Harriet, and together they had four children; he and Frances, his first wife, had been married seven years and had three children when she died (Corbett 58). When a woman married, the husband gained a sister of sorts. If the sisters were close, when a wife died (a frequent occurrence), the sister came in to help with the children. Sharing their care, it was not uncommon for the husband and dead wife’s sister to contemplate marriage. This had been Charles Austen’s situation. There were few comments from the Austen family, but in the public debate about MDWS, there were barriers. The Church proclaimed that holy marriage made man and wife one flesh, making a

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wife’s sister taboo to a brother-in-law by dint of also, effectively, being his sister; her flesh was his flesh. Anthropologists, such as Francoise Heritier, considered, for grieving widowers, “two sisters are essentially the same thing… replacing one sister with another amounts to the same” (63). The medical and legal professions argued that “sexual intercourse causes an actual physiological change in the marriage partners that makes them blood relations” (65), which only put MDWS on the same footing with legal cousin marriage. No one seemed to argue for the sister’s autonomy, even the sister. Two issues were at the heart of the debate: the legal interpretation of the term sister and the nature of the attraction between husband and wife’s sister, natural or incestual. Marriages between first cousins had long been practiced, negating the argument of proximity since blood ties were indisputably closest, but during the 1860s, this association too became suspect: It is a curious idea of incest to call it incest to marry an alien in blood when it is not incest to marry a first cousin’, a member of the House of Lords argued in the 1870s, ‘but are sisters-in-law sisters? This is just what they are not,’ he declared, enumerating legal status distinctions between siblings and in-laws from inheritance of property. (Corbett 67)

While middle class males were arguing for MDWS (which may have been a third issue since the aristocracy had fought for cousin marriage), this was a common practice among the lower classes, a matter of practicality. Defining MDWS as incest, an often-redefined concept the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 had failed to address, was hardly effective when a man could legally have sex with his sister or child but not marry his dead wife’s sister (4). Social sanctions highlighted the immorality of unmarried persons living under the same roof, but that would have easily been resolved by a legal marriage denied by society. Victorians generally favored the familiar, but decidedly denied the familiar sister-in-law as wife in favor of an unfamiliar stranger. Rather than allowing a woman in place to ease disruption in a grieving family, society considered women who lived with widowed brothers-in-law “cohabitant prostitutes” – so listed in the 1861 study “Prostitution in London” – who, upon repeal of the ban, would be legitimate wives (Corbett 9). MDWS became a largely male debate to broaden or restrict middle-class male prerogative to permit or prohibit a ready choice. Pragmatism debated Control. Both in-law and cousin marriages remained controversial throughout the latter nineteenth century, changing only with anthropological, scientific, and medical developments. Divorce – the legal dissolution of marriage – which the Matrimonial Causes Act did address mid-century, and to which Lawrence Stone has referred as “little more than a functional

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substitute for death,” was instigated by an early eighteenth-century decline in the adult mortality rate (46). Mid-nineteenth-century loveless marriages, whether from individual choice or parental pressure, were depicted with increasing realism in period novels, as exemplified by Eliot’s Dempsters, Lydgates, and Grandcourts. Since marriages of convenience were now generally regarded as legal arrangements, contracted to maintain or secure power and financial control which generally produced misery for both parties, marrying without love was increasingly seen as foolish, and, not surprisingly, often ended in divorce. To curb domestic violence, it was imperative to establish more accessible legal releases from such misery. Initially, however, divorce was brought to Parliament’s attention midcentury by social and economic factors, such as the strain placed on working-class families by the factory system, rapid population growth, and urbanization. Advocates and opponents agreed that divorce laws should be consistent. A Royal Commission on the Law of Divorce was charged with considering what kinds of divorce or separation should be allowed, what courts should adjudicate, and what grounds should justify divorce or separation. Its report, issued in 1853, provided the basis for the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Bill introduced to the House of Lords in June 1854 (Corbett 51). Acknowledging and debating the issues of marital discord, separation, and divorce exposed both the limitations of the domestic ideal and the paradox that when a woman legally married, she became legally nonexistent (Poovey 52). The Matrimonial Causes Act became law on 1 January 1858, more than three years after the bill was introduced (51). It did not address women’s relation to property. It did not give all married women equity property rights. It did not address the sexual double standard. It addressed only the separated wife with no defense under common law (83). Divorce a mensa et thoro, today considered legal separation, was initiated by petition from either party. Three grounds were recognized: adultery, sodomy, and (physical) cruelty. If granted, the parties no longer had to cohabitate but were forbidden to remarry. Divorce a mensa did not end the husband’s rights to the wife’s property. The number of divorces remained low; expense limited divorce to wealthy men. Women could petition for divorce a vincula only on grounds of aggravated adultery (usually incest). Social ostracism for a divorced or separated woman made legal recourse unattractive; only four women successfully petitioned before 1857. Legislatures feared a more liberal law would precipitate a run on the courts and undermine marriage. They were reluctant to tamper with the institution, to involve the law in marital

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disputes, or to threaten the domestic ideal (Poovey 55). Divorce was an instrument of failure. Even given the shorter lifespans of the Early Modern period, seventeen to twenty years of marriage, most of which was spent birthing, raising, and supporting children, was an entirely different construct than thirty or forty years of marriage injected with leisure after children moved on roughly half way through. Today, with average Western lifespans allowing for a half century or more of marriage, the divorce rate has increased exponentially, particularly since few divorces were granted in the early years, with most of those favoring men. Charles Darwin – who married a first cousin and initiated his studies of the human species, in part, through concern over hereditary effects of cousin marriage on his children – came to describe the complex exchange between males and females as a dual “sexual struggle”: “[I]n the one it is between individuals of the same sex, generally the males, in order to drive away or kill their rivals, the females remaining passive; whilst in the other, the struggle is likewise between individuals of the same sex, in order to excite or charm those of the opposite sex, generally the females, which no longer remain passive but select the more agreeable partners” (qtd. in Armstrong 40). This is not a sexual struggle, or sexual exchange; more than male protecting female and female choosing male, it is interchangeable sexual dominance. As the basis for exemption of women from political relations – the active killing of rivals – and relegation to the domestic – the choosing of mates as he phrased it, Darwin’s logic is faulty; beyond his own admission that these roles are general and not exclusive, the female simply allows the male to expend physical energy while she expends mental energy. This is not a sexual struggle; it is an interchangeable power solution that has helped, and continues, to shape evolving constructions of love and marriage (40). Conceptions of the Victorian woman included the submissive wife who loved, honored, and obeyed her husband, managing his household and raising his children; the New Woman who revolted against legal and social bondage and boredom, and a middle position embodied by the Woman Question (Houghton 349). After marriage, “the Victorian ethic made marital fidelity the supreme virtue and sexual irregularity the blackest sin. A moral man was ‘not impure in conduct’. Adultery, especially of a wife, was spoken of with horror” (358). In 1870, the Married Woman's Property Act became the first breach of coverture, the legal contention that a married woman, under her husband’s protection and categorized with children and lunatics, was without legal existence. The Act gave women the right to keep their earnings after marriage. Much

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social change had been accomplished in a few brief decades. Collectively, this change was impressive, but would not be enough to end marital inequalities, establish equality between the sexes, or satisfy those who sought no less than both. George Eliot would address such change. Introduction Into this Victorian mindset of anti-intellectualism came George Eliot, neé Marian Evans, a young, single, female writer who lived an alternate lifestyle of love and marriage and insisted on a personally defined realism in fiction. To write as a woman requires self-consciously not writing like a man, consciously rejecting the historically assumed norm of men’s writing, guarding against writing as sentimentally as men expect a woman to write, and subconsciously not writing for other women. To write with legitimacy, an author must write what is individually real. George Eliot understood this and made it her creative goal; such literary realism forced her to define and clarify, helping her to understand her own life experiences and relationships. In this way, writing novels in which she explored love and marriage were occupational therapy; she reinvented reality as she reinvented herself – in stages. Eliot’s authorial philosophy is best comprehended, then, by understanding that, as in her approach to every facet of her life, Eliot was compelled to own her reality as she wrote, whether it aligned with her reality of yesterday or social constructions of her today, particularly as it related to morality. She wrote her reality because she could not openly live it. Eliot’s genius had to be coaxed into the light. George Henry Lewes, as her life partner, understood this and often pandered to it. She aspired to her best in all things intellectual, identified professionally with men more than women, and knew her equality. Yet, Eliot’s conflictions and successes often frightened her back into insecurity, where the slow rebuilding began again. Science was Eliot’s litmus test for proving her philosophic and religious opinions, but science did not apply to the ethics of feeling and commitment, of love and marriage. In philosophy and religion, she could, in part, both confirm and deny; she could imply religion everywhere in her work and yet reject a belief in God and immortality. She could philosophize in her novels without having to make decisions. She could even live and write conflicting philosophies of love and marriage, but in her fiction, she could not equivocate reality; the necessity to direct her characters’ actions forced her to choose. This can be illustrated in comparing the Eliot and Lewes interpretations of Jane Austen’s art. Both considered Austen the master of fiction: “the greatest artist that has ever written

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[signifying] the most perfect mastery over the means to her end” (Eliot) and “an artist of the highest rank” [who] “has carried the [representation of human life] to a point of excellence surpassing that reached by any of her rivals.” Lewes was most concerned with Austen’s literary reputation, by her “quiet truthfulness”, and that she “survives writers who were very popular; and forty years after her death, gains more recognition than she gained when alive” (Lewes). Eliot was most impressed with Austen’s realism: “To read one of her books is like an actual experience of life; you know the people as if you had lived with them, and you feel something of personal affection towards them… Of all imaginative writers, she is the most real.” Eliot admires that “Never does she transcend her own actual experience… they are novels written by a woman… as the most truthful, charming, humorous, pure-minded, quick-witted and unexaggerated of writers” (qtd. in Cooke 40). Yet, while Eliot honors Austen as an early champion of woman’s experience, she both affirms and attempts to better her. Although her praise of Austen’s realistic style is genuine, Eliot seems to find a spiritual sense lacking, and would intensify Austen’s sense of realism, but makes no direct reference to her own writing. Lewes is not so subtle; he balances Austen’s art with Eliot’s, as the true promoter he was: “George Eliot [is] a writer who seems to us inferior to Miss Austen in the art of telling a story, and generally in what we have called the ‘economy of art’; but equal in truthfulness, dramatic ventriloquism, and humor, and greatly superior in culture, in reach of mind, and depth of emotional sensibility” (Lewes). He did not, because he could not, account for the temper of audiences, but Lewes perfectly understood the tortuous process of Eliot’s art, the absolute necessity of loving support for her to write the novels, and that what they called their marriage, what she sacrificed for it, she was reliving in her works. “‘Eliot and Lewes contracted with the kind of relationship many people were trapped into: a marriage the bond of which is merely an external restriction, not the voluntary, content self-restriction of love’” (Spittles 13). Eliot’s attitudes to marriage were consistent throughout her life, although circumstances forced her to adapt to reality (13). “Misconceived liaisons” were what bothered her (14). In the decades between Jane Austen and George Eliot, novels written by women increased in what may be referred to as female realism, exploring women’s daily lives and values within family and community settings. During Eliot’s lifetime, feminism was not as openly confrontational as it would be by the end of the century. Critics who charge Eliot for not being

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feminist enough seem to miss that she was not, by nature, openly confrontational, nor for most of her adult life did she have the social credibility to support a higher level of feminism, even if it had suited her personality to do so. That, however, does not mean George Eliot did not advocate for women, just that she took a different approach. Many of her works are arguments for female autonomy; none of them argue against it. If she was honestly ambivalent, she was also adamant that women earn their freedom and rights, as she had. Eliot respected women enough to expect them to respect themselves. She, like Austen, was not impressed by those she considered silly women, although for Austen these were usually mothers and for Eliot they were often would-be protagonists. Eliot’s contribution to feminism can be found in her written words and in the act of writing them, which she referred to as “fasting and scourging oneself” (Showalter 46). She “never wrote against marriage, and in her novels seems to deny the ideal of female independence,” yet in life she lived as an independent woman, feminist but not militantly so (Spittles 8). In this, she was widely considered effective: The Saturday Review confessed, “[T]o speak the simple truth… [Adam Bede] was thought to be too good for a woman’s story” (94). Eliot demonstrated her penchant for realism and philosophy of love in her choice of George Henry Lewes as a partner, as well as in the compromises she was willing to make to her deepest marital beliefs to hold him for nearly a quarter of a century, sans legal bonds. He was a quixotic creature, not altogether surprising given her predilection for contrasts. Romantic, unrealistic, even utopian, Lewes came from pedigreed theater stock with an abiding love for the stage. Instead of attending a university, he traveled abroad, toyed with becoming a doctor, haunted Bloomsbury’s Red Lion Square in search of unorthodox thinkers, and married a beautiful girl with whom he had three natural sons and assumed parentage for more (Williams 7- 8). He was impractical; Eliot’s money made his children’s educations possible. When she first met him, Eliot thought him a slight, ugly little man. Still, he made her laugh, was extremely bright, a loyal friend, loving and lovable, and massively self-confident, all of which would inform her fiction and approach to male protagonists (Williams 18-19). In 1851, when they met, Lewes was accepted and respected by Victorian intelligentsia, was a noted expert in philosophy and philosophers, a columnist of current affairs, a drama critic, a novelist, and biographer of Goethe (Cooke 13). In 1854, when they lived together, Lewes was a far weightier figure than Marian (Williams 99). He understood women and was seemingly free of envy. That neither was physically attractive might have been a relief; both had loved

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attractive people who had hurt them. Lewes was a masculine man, Marian a feminine woman, according to prevailing definitions of the times. Theirs was a loving and enduring partnership that she described as profoundly serious; she had had enough light and easily broken ties. Undeniably, Lewes’ lifestyle changed less than Marian’s when they made the decision to live together sans marriage. Both realistically acknowledged that their adultery weighed far heavier on her than on Lewes. He retained an active social life; she was shunned by society (5). For years, she waited at home for his return, a blatant example of the Victorian double standard, which she combatted by writing novels, becoming known and respected, and finally exonerated socially. Still, they were the literary dream team, supporting each other into success and back into society, and sharing a commitment to literary realism; towards the end of his life, in On Actors and the Art of Acting, Lewes argued for more realism in the contemporary theatre as Eliot was struggling to perfect her realistic style in her final novel (Williams 74). Adam Bede and Daniel Deronda most represent George Eliot’s philosophical and artistic development from 1857 through 1876. Eliot began what became her career as a novelist by writing about what she knew intimately, what she had lived as a child: rural life in the English midlands. Adam Bede, Eliot’s first major novel, explores established social codes of love and marriage, long accepted but increasingly challenged, in stratified rural English society at the turn of the nineteenth century. Daniel Deronda, Eliot’s last major work, explores love on many levels, individual to spiritual, addressing varied interpretations of marital commitment, including the spiritual, within two distinct cultures, navigating new territory, internally and externally, as characters attempt to locate themselves in an ever-evolving world. Biography George Eliot’s life – through its many incarnations – spanned the heart of the long nineteenth century, from her birth at South Farm, Arbury, Warwickshire on November 22, 1819 to her death at 4 Cheyne Walk, London on December 22, 1880 (Cooke 4). During her sixty-one years, Mary Ann(e) Evans transformed herself from the fifth living child of a land manager of the Midlands to a world-renowned English author. Along the way, she survived and thrived in school, lost most of her family to death or separation, converted from strict English Anglican faith to atheism, was a self-taught philosopher and journalistic editor of note, suffered many disappointments in love, and became the self-described “wife” of a married man with whom she

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lived illegally for 25 years. After his death, and at the age of sixty, she legally married for the first time, becoming the wealthy Mrs. John Cross, twenty years her husband’s senior. Suffering long and lonely years of exclusion from proper Victorian society during much of her adult life, she was finally accepted by the international literati. Yet, this woman, so adept at renaming and reinventing herself, who accomplished so much, never found peace. She was a woman of contrasts who died in conflict, after defying and complying with society, and gifting the world with works of fiction closely intertwined with her life experiences. Mary Anne Evans, a deeply introspective child, who, in progressive life stages was known as Mary Anne Evans, Marian Evans, Mrs. Lewes, Polly, Mutter, and Mrs. John Cross, became known as George Eliot, a pseudonym she adopted until her fiction was successful. Eliot was a voracious seeker in religion, ethics, history, philosophy, science, and psychology, and the dynamics of love and marriage. A true Victorian, she believed in duty, self-denial, and honesty; yet she chose individual happiness over duty to society and family, and created social illusions to be able to publicly live a lie as Lewes’ wife, philosophically true but technically illegal. A professional translator and intellectual, unusual preparation for novel writers, Eliot came to fiction rather late, publishing her first novel at thirty-seven. It proved to be perfect timing, however; serialized fiction and circulating libraries were strengthening the market, increasing paying venues for authors, but also encouraging them to experiment. For Eliot, this meant transitioning from novels of personal responsibility to the psychological novel, in which morality was ambiguous. Whereas Austen created challenges in which her heroines could individually grow and succeed, Eliot developed scenarios that often did not allow success, particularly for attractive or privileged female characters. She shows no mercy for Hetty or Gwendolen, but is lenient with Dinah and Mirah, in novels titled for males: Adam Bede and Daniel Deronda. Critical of Rosamund, she is over-indulgent with Dorothea in Middlemarch. Distracting and forced, this seemingly arbitrary difference in approaches to her fictional heroines was nevertheless part of Eliot’s moral ambivalence. Early in her career as an author of fiction, she virtually crucified the female protagonist in “Janet’s Repentance,” who is held accountable for her own, her husband’s, and society’s shortcomings. If Eliot was demonstrating a prejudice against attractive and/or privileged women, forcing a pretty face to prove a keen mind and justify her fortune, in the final

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analysis, those characters Eliot tormented were often more impressive in their struggles than the author’s more favored female protagonists were in the lack of theirs. Closely identifying with her characters and the relationships in which she placed them, Eliot constructed protagonists as she constructed herself. From the start, life and work were irrevocably intertwined for George Eliot, her life informing her work and her work taking her out of the distresses of her life, something she shared with Oscar Wilde. Every new novel was a struggle and every published novel drove her to a new authorial challenge for the next; only Silas Marner seemed to come to her with little effort. Every gain required a sacrifice. Weak and fearful one moment, Eliot was strong and resolute the next. Shy yet bold, eager to please but willing to offend, she could be both passionately loving and coldly excluding. Famous and infamous, almost morbidly private but seeking public fame, Eliot was conflicted throughout her life; her studies, novels, and relationships all served her quest to find herself, from the beginning to the end. When her father, Robert Evans, died after a protracted illness during which Marianne cared for him, Nina Auerbach notes she did not wonder or concern herself over what she would do or where she would live, but asked “What shall I be?” (118). This question became the theme of Eliot’s life. She had not married and knew she must support herself; she also knew she would have to leave the Midlands, that her greatest chance of surviving was in London, a city in which she was never comfortable but where she lived for much of her adult life. London was good to her; there, she fell in love more than once, met a life partner, and found the power to write compelling fiction. As Willis Cooke has stated, “[W]e must know the nineteenth century in its scientific attainments, agnostic philosophy, realistic spirit and humanitarian aims, in order to know George Eliot. She is a product of her time” (3). From early childhood, this brilliant but conflicted daughter and sister wondered how she could be so radically different from her biological family, why her talents and interests contrasted so sharply with theirs, how her values could vary so much from those with whom she shared nature and nurture. Much of Eliot’s later intellectual search was an effort to understand these early questions. She loved her family intensely, particularly the brother who shunned her for her choices, and never lost a fundamental feeling of connectedness, despite decades of silence: “I cling strongly to kith and kin… even though they reject me” (qtd. in Corbett 117). She knew their minds were cast in a different mold from hers, but she continued to mourn their

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loss. Eliot managed to escape a restrictive community, but at a terrible cost; never again did she as completely identify with her surroundings. Nor did she recover from her brother’s almost lifelong, disapproving silence about her liaison with the married George Lewes. Like many of her contemporaries, including Charles Darwin, Eliot studied the meaning of family, cultural and biological difference, origin, and descent to better understand her relation to, and place in, the world. In the process, she redefined the Victorian image of womanhood and women writers, who, as Elaine Showalter has written, were generally acknowledged for their “sentiment, refinement, tact, observation, domestic expertise, high moral tone, and knowledge of female character; [but] thought to lack originality, intellectual training, abstract intelligence, humor, self-control, and knowledge of male character” (90). Eliot sought to confound that definition with originality, intense intellectual training, a focus on both realism and abstract philosophy, and writing from both the male and female perspectives. Humor, admittedly, was not her strength. Realism in fiction became her professed goal. George Eliot exemplified the mid-nineteenth century fascination for scientific advancements, yet struggled with philosophical and doctrinal challenges and conflicted realisms all of her life. Although she was born and raised in a Midland home, closely surrounded by the village life and working country folk of Griff, Mary Anne Evans passed her formative years in Griff House, decidedly not a peasant dwelling, between Bedworth, a mining village, and the manufacturing town of Nuneaton. The pastoral she created in Adam Bede was romantic reminiscence of the countryside she knew so well, with young Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss a fair representation of a young Mary Anne (Cooke 4). Her father had risen from master carpenter to forester, and finally to land agent; her mother was from a prominent local family, the Pearsons, and was by all accounts a woman who aspired to better. Mary Anne was educated well for a girl of the time, learned easily, read avidly, excelled at music, possessed a beautiful voice and was considered an excellent conversationalist, but made few close friends and was keenly aware that she lacked physical beauty. At fifteen, she left school; a year later, her mother died. Soon after, her sister and brother both married and left home, leaving her to care for her father for another decade. During these years, she studied and read widely, and began the translations that would include David Strauss’s Leben-Jesu, Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity, and the De Deo and Ethica of Spinoza (9).

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Leaving the Midlands, changing her name to Marian Evans, and relocating to London to become editor for the Westminster Review, she honed her writing and editing skills and eventually began contributing articles by researching extensively and writing slowly and meticulously, a style that, later as George Eliot, she would continue in fiction. Before and during these years, she fell in and out of love, often with married or otherwise unavailable men. By 1853, when she began a relationship with the married George Henry Lewes, whose legal wife was having children with his business partner, their situation could not have been as shocking to those who knew her as history has claimed (Cooke 14). Lewes and his wife had favored open relationships from the first years of their marriage, and even the legal Mrs. Lewes came to address Eliot as Mrs. Lewes. Marian Evans did not break up the Lewes’ marriage; she simply adapted to it to be with the man she loved. She felt “no levity… about ‘marriage and the relation of the sexes’… Her relationship with Lewes ‘is and always has been profoundly serious… Light and easily broken ties are what I neither desire theoretically nor could live for practically. Women who are satisfied with such ties do not as I have done – they obtain what they desire and are still invited to dinner’” (qtd. in Williams 133). In the years before she partnered with Lewes, Marian Evans had shown no strict preference for single men. Her early views on divorce were liberal. Again, however, she was conflicted, for, philosophically, she not only believed in the sanctity of marital partnerships, but a part of her longed for traditional love, marriage, home, and family. Her conception of marriage was certainly affected by Feuerbach, who believed the only true marriage was a religious marriage based in love, that marriage was sacred, with or without legalities, “in compliance with deep moral and social responsibilities”; yet, she and Lewes came to consider marriage a “fulfillment of human, not of legal, requirements” (Cooke 16). Realistically, forced to choose between love and living with a partner she could not marry or living without him, Eliot chose to construct a marriage in all but law. At thirty-five, with nearly everyone they knew against their decision, Marian Evans eloped with George Henry Lewes to Weimar, staying abroad for months until the scandal lessened. The price they paid was years of social ostracism, particularly for her. Even family and friends, some in unhappy marriages, turned against them: “This marriage presents one of the curious ethical problems of literature… Her own teaching condemns it; her own life approves it” (16).

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As Gertrude Himmelfarb has written, “If there is any message to be found in [the Victorian ‘marriage’ of George Eliot and George Henry Lewes] it is not in the realm of ‘sexual politics,’ in the struggle for domination or liberation, equality or individuality, but in the realm of morality, the struggle to preserve the sanctity of marriage… even when the form and substance were wanting” (22). Evans used these years to reinvent herself, once more, as George Eliot, novel writer. Toward the mid-nineteenth century, the novel was surpassing Romantic poetry in popularity, and Charles Dickens emerged as the greatest Victorian novelist and social critic of his time, known most for his supposedly realistic and decidedly unforgettable characters. William Makepeace Thackeray was his chief rival for the loyalty of fiction readers, practicing even greater sentimentality. These strong personalities and their works may have influenced Eliot toward the pastoral in her early novels, but she realized that it was imperative that she begin with what she knew to gain creative confidence. Only after Eliot had written Scenes from Clerical Life, and enjoyed success with Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner did she begin to expand on condition of England novels and broaden her fictional settings and topics, creating more complex renderings of love and marriage. In Adam Bede, Eliot argued her concept of companionate love: two human souls, joined for life, strengthening each other in labor, sharing in sorrow. This was the relationship George Eliot and George Henry Lewes shared until the end of his life. Even in Eliot’s Romola, a novel that caused some dissention between them because Lewes believed she should expand her literary scope and Eliot was uncomfortable in doing so, marriage is based on more than affection or love but an obligation that holds when all love is gone. In this, Eliot echoed Austen’s Anne Elliot in Persuasion, which argues that a woman loves longest when all hope is gone. Eliot took Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity philosophy to heart: “As a moral and social obligation, marriage is… sacred… It does not consist in any legal form, but in compliance with deep moral and social responsibilities” (Cooke 16). The Evans-Lewes partnership saved them both, emotionally, professionally, and finally even socially, providing mutual love, respect, structure, and encouragement for their lives and works; theirs was a true meeting of the minds. Where he was flighty, she was calm. When she was uncertain, he was encouraging. The arrangement forced Eliot to reevaluate her conventional beliefs of love and marriage and required Lewes to value and openly acknowledge commitment. Both found a sense of security in their satisfying, yet technically illicit, relationship. Eliot,

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whose desire for traditional love and marriage was unattainable because of her love for a married man (what was), lived a pragmatic philosophy (what is), but created a third philosophy in her fiction (what should be), just as Austen wrote of what might have been. These years she was “married” to Lewes were rich in research that informed her novels; “she read, in Greek, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Ajax, the Oedipus trilogy, the Electra, the Philoctetes, and the Aeschylus trilogy; and in Latin, Horace, Virgin, Cicero, Persius, Livy, Tacitus, Plautus, Quintilian, and Pliny” (Showalter 43). Not without reason was she referred to as the Victorian Sage. There is a sense, in remembrances of the George Eliot of later years, that the young and eager Marian Evans had slipped permanently away long before, never to return. Toward the end of her life, people remembered her as dressed all in black, always under a large hat, often with a feather, riding through the streets in a coach or in a box at the opera, very grand for a carpenter’s daughter but in keeping with her innate femininity. She had never been beautiful by the standards of the day, and by all accounts was less so as the years passed, but Eliot was regal and honored for her legitimate accomplishments. She had been a companion of Herbert Spencer, assistant editor of the Westminster Review, and was, perhaps, England’s most famous and revered living author. Having found the love of her life, Eliot had become wealthy, enjoyed a small circle of enduring friendships, and had seemingly achieved her goals. Still, having paid heavily for her successes, her quest for realism turned George Eliot quiet and grave. Eliot’s mind, however, remained active to the end. Her philosophy of love expanded from Austen’s mutual love in companionate marriage to a loving and committed partnership, with or without legalities, encompassing a spiritual component that enhances the marriage of Adam and Dinah in Adam Bede and forms the foundation of the love and marriage between Daniel and Mirah in Daniel Deronda. Lewes had a versatile mind that ran to the literary; Eliot had a disciplined mind that was decidedly philosophical, which challenged her penchant for increasing realism. The creative combination inspired literary genius. That literature died with Lewes on 30 November 1878; “Marian was numb, even suicidal” (Williams 277). Months later, going through Lewes’s papers, Eliot found something that seems to have changed her outlook on life and moved her to write the word “Crisis” in her journal (Williams 281). Some critics have speculated that Lewes had conducted an affair and Marian had found the evidence. Whatever she found changed her loyalty. The brief, and legal, Cross marriage legitimized Eliot socially and Cross literarily as her executor and biographer, but the closest

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Marian Evans came to true love and companionate marriage was within her creative, if technically illegal, partnership with George Henry Lewes. From Austen to Eliot, the novel had incorporated female realism that explored the daily lives and values of women, including its authors. Compulsory education, for boys and girls, was finally achieved the year Eliot died with Mundella’s Education Act (Spittles 42), and Feminist novels began to challenge male/female stereotypes and restrictions, but with “oversimplification, emotionalism, and fantasy” (Showalter 29). There was still much to achieve before society could claim equality of the sexes. Works England’s nineteenth century ushered in the “economy of the crowd”: landowners claimed a right to labor necessary to maintain their estates; laborers claimed a right to a subsistence living. The government-induced casualties of the 1819 march to Manchester, in which eleven workers died and approximately five hundred were wounded, brought the liberal press to the workers’ side, and government was perceived as a threat to family culture (Armstrong 168). The Industrial Revolution had been affected, its evidence seen in the railroads crisscrossing the landscape. Enter Adam Bede, in the novel by that title, whose world would change fundamentally. Although less focused and satisfying than her subsequent novels, Eliot, living in London with Lewes, enjoyed returning to her roots with this work in an attempt to understand her background. Eliot’s novels are uncompromising, often brutal, and frequently obtuse; she spoke of the act of writing as “‘fasting and scourging oneself’” (qtd. in Showalter 46). She resisted what she considered to be unrealistic optimism in her fiction as she had learned to do in life; literary realism was a sober choice, a way of mitigating pain through expectation. Lewes had been skeptical of Marian’s writing ability, even as he encouraged her to write. His relief is palpable in a letter written to Mr. Blackwood, her publisher, who tempered objective and practical criticism with the praise Marian Evans required to write: “I confess that before reading the Ms I had considerable doubts of my friend’s power as a writer of fiction: but after reading it those doubts were changed into very high admiration” (Williams 171). Together, they decided the novel would be published under the name George Eliot; a man’s name would lend credibility and the name Marian Evans was associated with scandal. Yet, released on February 1, 1858, Adam Bede was dedicated to her “husband” without whom, she wrote, it never would have been published (Williams 182). More Eliot conflict; clearly, she was not concerned about this confusing

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admission as long as she was protected with anonymity, at least until the first reviews were written. The stated goal of Adam Bede was to take realism to the page, to create credible characters based on actual people and fictionally recreate an historical setting as factually as possible: “the faithful representing of commonplace things… as if I were in the witness-box narrating my experience on oath” (115). To do this, Eliot virtually became her characters: Hetty used and misunderstood, Adam wrestling with right and wrong, Seth suffering rejection, Dinah clinging to independence, the rector pontificating, and even Arthur denying his arrogance and selfish lust in the name of immaturity, ignoring the pain it caused others. In this first novel, Eliot was only partially successful in creating reality, although the novel’s pastoral setting and the searing circumstances of Hetty’s story distracted readers from its weaknesses. Eliot’s own conflicted feelings about love and the importance of marriage, which tormented but drove her, help to explain her hostility toward Hetty and leniency toward Arthur. Set in the English Midlands of Eliot’s youth roughly twenty years before her birth, at the turn of the century, from 1799 to 1807, Adam Bede was written as a literary tribute to her father, Robert Evans, who began his career as a carpenter and became a widely respected land manager in the area (Spittles 21). The prison cell scene was an adaptation of a personal experience shared by a paternal aunt, who, as a preacher, had visited a young woman jailed and hung for the murder of her child. Secondary characters were developed with distinct references to, and traits of, people Eliot had known. Yet, although factually based, Eliot’s fictional characters and circumstances in this novel are often unconvincing in their extremes, created in angst and frustration: Hetty abandoned by all, Adam inordinately proud, Arthur completely shielded, Rector Irwine so morally lax, Dinah too stereotypically good. Eliot used this first novel as she would all her fiction, to understand herself, but Adam Bede was also a reflective look at family members, particularly her father, in his stoicism, choice of mates, and relation to the community. As the male protagonist, Adam symbolizes Robert Evans. A dutiful son and hard- working carpenter, with a goal of supporting his father’s family and eventually his own, Adam’s personal, social, and political relationships belie the apparent peace of his insular world. His father succumbs to drink, and Adam becomes the patriarch of the family. He virtually ignores the “rigid narrowness” of the poor treatment of Hetty, Adam’s intended, by the Poysers “who have from the beginning been implicated in Hetty’s fate” (Armitt 31), calling into question his

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assumption that he and Hetty will marry, or that he would be a good husband. Adam assumes Hetty is agreeable to his courting, despite her lack of enthusiasm for him, his plans, and his respectable but unexciting position in society. Hetty is ambitious; what everyone judges will be enough for her, marriage and family with Adam, bores her as much as her dairy work. Adam is stalwart but dull; he has no imagination. For much of the novel, he seems witless; he completely misjudges Hetty, Arthur, Dinah, and Seth; sees only his own reality, and shares Arthur’s hubris and ambition. Hetty is far more engaging, alive, and real, despite her shortcomings or because of them, a character that exposes Adam’s lack of what Eliot represents as true feeling and even integrity. Adam follows the old ways; Hetty follows her dreams. Displaying her sensibilities, she highlights the lack of his. Adam is blind to anyone and anything outside of his focus. When Arthur, heir to the Donnithorne estate, pursues Hetty, Adam remains oblivious to these intentions, and does not fathom that Hetty imagines marrying well would be the answer to her narrow life. At this point, Hetty’s judgment, sense of self, and determination to change her future through the alliance with Arthur are not unlike those of an Austen heroine, but the Eliot difference is that there is little, if any, love at all in the Hetty/Arthur equation. Adam is an upstanding and respected man of the working class who believes he loves Hetty, ergo she must have worth and be interested in him. In misjudging Arthur and disregarding the realities of class distinctions, however, both Adam and Hetty make fatal errors. Adam is wronged by Arthur as a man in a class hierarchy that equates wealth with morality, but he survives; Hetty is wronged by Arthur in that same hierarchy as a woman in a way she cannot survive. These three represent three classes delineated by their resources, or lack of them. Yet, the chasm between Adam and Hetty is not created so much from their social differences as from their similarities. Austen would have reformed Adam or recognized Seth as the hero, allowing Hetty to learn from her mistakes before the fall; Dinah would have been the wise but lackluster sister. Eliot preferred moral ambiguity over Austen’s desire for growth, complicating her depiction of reality, particularly her approach to love and marriage, with arbitrary favoritism and stern judgment. Adam would lose ground as male protagonist of this novel if there was anyone to take his place. Adam Bede, as Eliot’s first halting step into major fiction, was a novel of yearning for her beloved Midlands, more personally revealing than she may have intended; her alienation from home and loved ones, ironically, fostered a deepening lack of empathy for those who suffered. It

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is a cautionary tale of the dangers of self-delusion in love and the necessity of integrity in marriage. Misdirected passion and unrestrained lust destroy lives, marriage for fortune across class is inconceivable, and companionate partnerships are rewarded only after experiencing loss to appreciate gain. In striving for her interpretation of realism, however, Eliot goes almost too far, robbing the story of all but the most stark humanity and unforgiving inhumanity. Adam Bede, who, like Marian Evans, seeks love in those who feel little for him, slowly and passively learns to identify and value true feeling in a very slow and passive way. Even Lewes insisted Eliot was making Adam’s role too passive, in response to which she wrote the confrontation between Adam and Arthur. Seth, Adam’s sensitive and philosophical younger brother, is the only character in this novel who acts with selfless love, stepping aside as Dinah’s suitor when he is convinced it is best for her. For this selfless act of compassion, he receives no recognition, virtually disappearing from the story. Dinah claims to value independence and does not expect to marry, yet instantly forfeits a higher calling when Adam proposes. Every primary character is inexperienced and immature, and all make self-deluding assumptions about love and marriage, some sacrificed, some pardoned, and some rewarded, almost arbitrarily. Hetty becomes the novel’s true protagonist. Dinah is too self-effacing to be the central female character; when Hetty is gone, Adam assumes precedence. Rather than Hetty being unconditionally condemned in the end, however, an almost total lack of love, education, and resources nearly martyr her: “George Eliot seems to condemn Hetty Sorrel’s ambitious sexuality with an unyielding austerity, though Hetty is a more challengingly complex figure than the narrator wants her to be” (Auerbach, N. 168). Ignored, she creates a fantasy world. Misunderstood, with no one to encourage her ambition into constructive channels, she hides that ambition and her best qualities: optimism, vision, initiative, determination, ingenuity, persistence, stamina, tentative self-confidence, and, ultimately, compassion. Despite naïve hope, she knows she must ensure her own survival. For all her dreaming, Hetty is a realist, as Eliot personifies realism; Dinah, despite professed independence, is an idealistic minister to the masses. Both seek love, although neither quite thinks it possible, and each has steeled herself for life without it. Hetty’s dream world is a conscious escape from Mrs. Poyser’s dull content and harassment and Adam’s sexist assumptions. As she is used, so Hetty uses, just as Adam uses his business sense to rise in his profession, Dinah uses factory work to support her preaching, and Arthur uses the military for an income until he inherits. Success is a goal all principle characters

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but Hetty are allowed to achieve; she is not encouraged to be a seamstress or to marry well. With no experience or understanding to expand her tiny world of dairy work and sewing lessons, her improvement plan, Hetty uses her only asset, sex, as pragmatically as she makes butter. Hetty’s greatest misfortune in Eliot’s constructions of love and marriage is not having been born male, her greatest power is sexual attraction, her greatest sin is against society, and her greatest act of compassion ends in the death of her child. For if Hetty had been male, sex as power would have been the norm; if she had pandered to society and Adam, she would have ended her days a comfortable and sanctioned matron, like Mrs. Poyser, and had she had not felt the first stirrings of maternal love, she would not have returned to her child, to be seized, tried, and deported, which becomes her death sentence. Hetty is a child who has a child, alone, and acts in desperation. As she begins to mature, she is sacrificed. That Hetty is not completely irredeemable lends credibility to the otherwise unconvincing last-minute reprieve. No principal characters act constructively in this novel except Hetty; all are passive witnesses to her struggles; Adam and Dinah benefit by them. As Hetty is the tragic heroine of Adam Bede, Dinah is the convenient savior of Adam’s story. Hetty receives the harshest of all punishments not because she becomes pregnant – she is intentionally seduced and abandoned – or because she murders her child – she does not. Hetty is punished because she defies society, which defines morality and passes laws, and is punished yet again because, in spite of Eliot’s efforts to construct Hetty as a deservedly “fallen” woman, she remains a sympathetic character; “In her solitary suffering Hetty achieves a connection to divine humanity that the nobler characters fail to reach” (Auerbach, N. 177). She is punished for crimes against the status quo. Guilty of the self-absorption and vanity of the young, for she is all of seventeen, Hetty shares much with Adam – youth, ambition, pride, will, ego, untapped potential – but Adam is male, and he is not original enough to challenge society’s rules. With a naturally playful and inquisitive nature, but no outlet for it, Hetty is stifled by her environment and knows that Adam will never take her from it. With maturity and change of environment, even with some encouragement, Hetty might become a self-sufficient seamstress or marry well. In Adam Bede, she is doomed, virtually forced to become a fallen woman, although “Hetty is oddly devoid of erotic life. George Eliot reminds us constantly that she is ambitious, not passionate” (Auerbach, N. 178). Eliot was also an ambitious “fallen” woman. Her characters and plots were viscerally real to her; she often wrote in tears and became jealous of her heroines. In this first

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novel, Eliot’s resentment of Hetty is palpable; she had not yet learned to separate herself from her fiction. This realization became a key reason for her struggle toward realism. Arthur is adventure personified, a dashing seducer with rank, uniform, horse, and mansion that he knowingly uses to dazzle Hetty. His notice and attentions are real; Hetty can see Arthur’s attractions. She falls into what she assumes to be love and allows herself to be seduced by the only man who can fulfill her search for security and status. That she is left alone in the end with her fear and decision-making is Arthur’s doing, not Hetty’s, who follows him to uphold her part of the marriage bargain she thought had been offered. Even Adam, after his outburst, believes Arthur must marry her, then bows to his superior to retain his position. Although Hetty is keenly aware of the class distinctions between her and Arthur, instead of groveling as Adam does, she acts. Hetty is only defeated because circumstances are against her, not for lack of trying. Yet, in the end, she pays for everyone’s crimes and shortcomings; Arthur and Adam are spared, and Adam and Dinah can marry because Hetty pays the collective debt, mocking justice and social constructs of love and marriage. With Adam Bede, Elliot had moved only slightly beyond the judgments of “Janet’s Repentance”. Not until her later novels would she allow a measure of male/female equality. What is most startling about Hetty, the character closest to Eliot’s early definition of realism as the depiction of life as unforgiving and of love as costly, is not that she succumbs to wishful thinking – hope is a foundation of love and marriage – or even that she is ultimately sacrificed to social hypocrisy despite her desperate efforts, but that she has – is given – the inner fortitude to survive the torments Eliot also imposes on her. Neglected and abandoned but with a will to survive, she is reminiscent of Fanny Price. In Hetty’s experience, if love exists, it is conditional; it is, in fact, not real love at all. Adam’s role is to find and rescue her, but he is ineffectual in both. Dinah’s attempt at spiritual support comes too late, as pity, when Hetty is beyond moralizing and has learned what Dinah never will. The Poysers, concerned first and last with their own fate, without the creative imagination Eliot has bestowed on Hetty, resent her. Saving the woman, he has wronged from one death, Arthur sentences her to another, more terrifying and prolonged. Hetty is banished, to die alone as she has lived, conveniently removed to spare her moral inferiors the reminder of their contributions to her ruin. The empathy Eliot deprives Hetty of she shows to Adam. Yet, even absent, Hetty claims the heart of Adam Bede.

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Dinah’s role in the novel is unconvincing, ironic since she is fashioned after a real woman, Elizabeth Evans, Marian’s aunt (Cooke 86); in writing this novel, she referred to it as “my aunt’s story” (Beer 62). Still, Dinah lacks a heroine’s energy; what is meant to be depth of spirit becomes resignation, and no sense of kinship is developed. Although Dinah and Hetty, both nieces, live with the Poysers, Dinah is treated well, almost as a guest, while Hetty is regarded as a servant. Love is favoritism in the Poyser household; even Hetty, who has been given no love, displays more sincere emotion than Mrs. Poyser. Dinah is the only character directly involved with industry, supporting herself by working at a cotton mill to practice as an itinerant preacher. The pay she receives is “enough and to spare” (83). Her life exemplifies the individualism and autonomy of working women at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Dinah is stubborn, opinionated, sanctimonious, and adamant about her autonomy. Yet, without hesitation (or realism), she turns her back on this independent life to marry and become a shadow of her former self. What is touted as good for Dinah is not allowed for Hetty, but even Dinah rejects it. Eliot’s message is not female equality, self-actualization, or even that charity begins at home. These qualities were not priorities for her personally or as an author. Dinah reaches Hetty too late, when she can only preach. Mrs. Poyser, always harsh with Hetty, feigns unconvincing pity. Arthur and Adam desert her. Hetty is fooled by no one; her last words are that she will try to forgive “for else God won’t forgive me” (298), a quintessentially honest statement of realistic idealism. Only when speech will no longer help Hetty is she allowed to present her view of life: “[H]etty [is] never herself articulate and given remarkably little direct speech until her scene of absolute declaration in prison” (Beer 64). Hetty “is left ‘dreading nothing except falsity’, urged on by the need to tell all truth… the major story that the book must tell” (68). Eliot is not concerned, in Adam Bede, with fairness or equity, only her version of harsh justice as true realism. Indeed, Arthur Donnithorne’s fanaticizing of Hetty is more realistically portrayed than is Hetty’s true character (66). As Adam and Mrs. Poyser continue to make false assumptions about Hetty, Eliot presents her sacrifice as the legitimization of Dinah’s rescue marriage to a devastated Adam. Quite the opposite. This also does not convince, particularly when sex is suddenly interjected: “[Dinah] heard Seth’s step just outside the open door, towards which her back was turned, and said… ‘Seth, is your brother wrathful when his papers are stirred?’ ‘Yes, very, when they are not put

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back in the right places,’ said a deep strong voice, not Seth’s… Dinah… was shaken with an intense thrill’” (320). For Dinah, this will be no marriage of convenience or mercy; indeed, she has hidden her feelings, calling her integrity, and lack of any real help for Hetty, into question. Dinah’s role as the paragon of female autonomy in this novel must be doubted. All is not what it seems to be in Adam Bede. Adam is not quite as devastated, Dinah not quite as innocent, and Hetty not quite as guilty. Only Arthur, with whom Eliot seems to identify most strongly and certainly forgives most readily, is also most realistically drawn, as nobles oblige. Adam is lacking; Hetty has always known that. Yet Dinah, of whom Hetty has been suspicious, is hypocritical, for even Lisbeth can see her true feelings for Adam long before she makes them known, when marrying Hetty is Adam’s only goal. Dinah the meek, who refuses Seth because she loves only God, is a flesh and blood woman distinguished from Hetty only in the traits and opportunities Eliot affords her, time and good fortune. With such authorial contrivances and inequities, Hetty’s fate and the novel’s conclusion lose credibility. Even the harsh indictment of an antiquated justice system lacks realism. No mercy is shown, nor is there a request for mercy. Adam and Dinah only accept, in a novel in which Christian understanding is preached nearly as much as sex is practiced. After serving a full sentence of hard labor, Hetty dies according to Eliot’s Old Law judgment, casting lengthening shadows on Adam, Arthur, Dinah, the Poysers, and Eliot herself. If Hetty is so conveniently expendable, what moral code allows the others – who fall far short of Hetty’s zest for life, willingness to accept responsibility for her actions, integrity – a total escape from retribution? If there is no forgiveness for Hetty, what justifies forgiveness of the rest? For Hetty’s child died as a direct consequence of the combined actions and inaction of all as surely as Hetty was doomed by the effects of being unloved, from which the novel cannot recover. In an attempt to philosophically mitigate Arthur’s heinous acts, Aldophous Irwine (Eliot), the rector of Broxton and Arthur’s confidante, excuses his relentless, self-serving seduction of Hetty on the grounds of immaturity, an unthinking natural by-product of youth, even privilege of rank and social status. This rector and Dinah, even Adam, can enter Hetty’s cell, see her in her misery, and philosophize. Few areas of her fiction can begin to approach this revelation of the Eliot mind; even didactically, her determinations are shocking. In this early novel, Eliot has posed the question and outlined the conundrums, but she has not yet come to terms with her own concept of reality. While she can snub society and question herself, Eliot is not yet prepared to

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challenge philosophy or religion, not even the will of a God who allows such so-called justice. For Eliot, it is less threatening to philosophize away youth, to forgive Arthur for his immaturity, and to banish Hetty for evidently the sin only she has committed, an immaculate conception, than to identify and express either her own sense of reality or her construction of the love and marriage she will allow Adam and Dinah. Love and marriage, in fact, become moot points on an arbitration scale. After this authorial decision, Hetty’s reprieve is meaningless. As Eliot superficially critiqued Arthur’s actions and categorically condemned Hetty’s behavior, she reveals deeply personal prejudices and resentments in the developments of her characters. In moral ambiguity, Eliot allows Arthur to punish himself. Justice is a caricature, as are Eliot’s depictions of love and marriage, and realism, by association. Weak, glib, pathologically shallow, emotionally underdeveloped, instinctively manipulative and self-aggrandizing, Arthur (Eliot seems to be admitting) is not worth the trouble it would take to reform him. Yet, reformation alone would not merit his forgiveness. As written, Arthur knew he was trapping Hetty; the curtsy clarified their differences in rank and experience. If Hetty was unaware, Arthur knew he had no intention of marrying her across class lines. He waited in the forest for her, lying to himself about his intent: “‘There she comes [a] bright- smiling girl… Poor things! It was a pity they were not in that golden age of childhood when they would have stood face to face, eyeing each other with timid liking… Arthur would have gone home to his silk-curtained cot, and Hetty to her home-spun pillow.’ The sensuality and idealization [are] evident in the language” (Armitt 44). Eliot refers to them as peers, but even in childhood they were not equals, and Hetty certainly has no equal status or protection. Eliot gives Arthur power and traps Hetty; in this novel, she has no empathy for what she has created; Adam Bede is more akin to “Janet’s Repentance” than to her later novels. Excusing Arthur so lightly, for his self-flagellation and death do not atone for the lives of Hetty or his child, cannot be excused with a handshake from Adam. The introductory chapters can be better understood, by contrast, after the novel’s action has played out. Early on, when Hetty gazes at herself in the mirror, she is assessing her assets; when Adam watches her in the garden, where she reflects a natural beauty, he is assessing Hetty’s physical beauty as the beauty of “his bride’s character” that will be passed on to their children (99), reflecting Adam’s shallowness, not Hetty’s. As Arthur lusts for Hetty in the dairy and on the lane, he is assessing her ability to please him. Treated as a nonperson, a sexual

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commodity with no one to encourage her individuality, she looks into the mirror to reassure herself that she has qualities she can trade for a better life. Rather than Hetty being vainly obsessed with her own beauty, she becomes the mirror, reflecting the other characters’, author’s, and reader’s individual moralities. Ironically, despite Eliot’s emphasis on Hetty’s sexuality, she is not a passionate being; sex is a performance of exchange, the most effective means of using her only marketable asset to realize normal, even admirable, ambitions: security, ease, survival. Having written that Hetty could have “cast all her past life behind her, and never cared to be reminded of it again” (132), Eliot offers no viable reason why Hetty should appreciate her life as a bullied servant expected to marry a man she does not love. Being with Arthur is her own act; being with Adam has been prescribed by others. She loves neither; not being loved by any character, as Eliot makes clear, she has not learned to love. Dinah senses that Hetty needs protection but does not provide it; indeed, she leaves to return to the factory and to preach to strangers. Adam completely misunderstands his assumed bride-to-be. Arthur pays her attention, and a life with him would presumably give her ease. Hetty has no other options; she is not even allowed to work as a maid. Without alternatives, her choice of Arthur and her means of winning him are meant to be shown as logical to Hetty in her inexperience. At no time is there a sincere attempt to understand the causes of Hetty’s emptiness or to soften the effect of her environment on her thought or actions, by Eliot or any character; Adam stifles, Dinah moralizes, Arthur uses. Such complete lack of affection and understanding can only have been intended. Arthur Donnithorne, despite his cultural advantages and authorial favoritism, does not completely escape, however. Although he (Eliot) is extremely proficient in justifying his indiscretions, it is clear from his cavalier acts and responses that he has long practiced them. Left to his own devices, with the unearned elitism of the privileged, he credits himself with redeeming qualities he does not possess, obviously studied for the benefit of their impressions on the people who allow him to believe they serve him as a future pillar of society. This is believable, for Arthur wants all in his small world to look up to him as a benevolent ruler. When he is in control, Adam will manage his lands, he will know his people by name, and they will tip their hats to him when he goes by. The sun will shine and the crops will grow; there will be peace and prosperity in his land, an ideal, he believes, that can accommodate a brief satisfaction of lust, and help his people understand that marriage into a lower station is irresponsible for him. This combination of realism (privileges of his station) and idealism (his perception that all

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believe him to be a benevolent ruler) informs Arthur’s approach to marriage as a mating within class to meet his civic duty rather than for loving companionship. Arthur’s act of reprieve, meant to publicly demonstrate that he is a benevolent master rather than the penitent instigator of Hetty’s misery, is a sham; he shows no sympathy for her, professes no feeling for the woman he has ruined. Hetty shows greater consideration for him in not pointing out his guilt. In an unconvincingly dramatic gesture, he banishes himself, only returning when he is racked with fever; in Eliot’s effort to make Arthur seem empathetic rather than to squarely address his integral role in Hetty’s downfall, she sabotages her intent by inadvertently drawing Hetty as a woman too genuinely loving, mature, and good for Arthur. Realistically, his illness is totally pointless to Hetty, having nothing to do with her conviction or fate, and not alleviating her situation in any way. Banished, she will never return. Arthur’s martyrdom is a false display for his people. If Eliot meant to involve readers in his condemnation, her methods were ineffectual; in this early stage of her development as a novelist, Eliot has not yet fully conceptualized her philosophy of love and marriage or her definition of realism, both of which seem to be defined by their absence. Remaining conflicted in her basic philosophies and reflecting this ambiguity in her fiction, and reminiscent of Mrs. Norris’ abuse of Fanny in Austen’s Mansfield Park, Eliot vilifies her youngest, most vulnerable female character with a viciousness as tormenting as her treatment of the earlier Janet in “Janet’s Repentance” or even Gwendolen Harleth later in Daniel Deronda. Eliot did not gradually relent with her female protagonists; she progressively scrutinized them. There is no way out for Hetty, no possibilities, no redemption; once she has committed the ultimate sin, for there is no sense of Arthur’s equal responsibility in this novel, her tormentor is somehow less accountable than she, as is Janet’s husband free of equal responsibility. This was not simply dramatic effect; this was Eliot philosophy. Again, George Eliot became hyper- involved in her story and characters. Despite her sorrow for being socially shunned for her illicit partnership with George Henry Lewes, which should have deepened her empathy for her female characters, Eliot was inexplicably harsh and exacting in her life and art. She condemns Hetty’s ambition and use of sexuality to marry for security and social acceptance with unyielding intensity, yet Eliot had attempted the same. Hetty becomes a highly complex figure, perhaps more revealing than Eliot intends, because the character shares and reflects authorial traits.

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Blending fiction with a real need to rationalize her own socially unaccepted choices, Eliot forced primary female characters, particularly Hetty, into exaggerated condemnation and misery. Rather than showing empathetic understanding from her life experiences, Eliot abandons Hetty to a fictional dire distress. In search of shelter for the night, Hetty finds, at “a break in the hedges, [that] the land seemed to dip down a little, and two trees leaned towards each other across the opening’ (366). That she considers this least of assets a distinct comfort underscores the tragic enormity of her utter aloneness and destitution. Added to the shame of her pregnancy was the fear that she would have to ask for charity from the parish, a disgrace of common beggary (Armitt 53). The extent to which she dreads charity demonstrates an admirable independence and work ethic, but is disproportionate to her situation, a reminder of her youth and naivete. Eliot, alone in the world as a young woman, had the same fear of destitution, which might have fostered empathy and understanding but seems only to have intensified her bitterness. Ironically, against Eliot’s intent, every authorial effort to vilify Hetty increases the reader’s empathy toward, yet lessens the realism of, this character, a contradiction in George Eliot’s definition realism as exact depiction that ultimately sabotaged her ability to write novels after Daniel Deronda. Rather than willfully tempting fate, Hetty crumbles under an avalanche of unbelievably unrelenting circumstances. Her plight is realistic; the intensity of her continuing defeats, however, strains credibility to the breaking point. That, in hope and naivete, even cunning, she would allow Arthur to seduce her is believable, as is the resultant pregnancy. That Hetty would attempt to find Arthur is also plausible. The intensity of her struggles goes beyond the pale, though, particularly in the lack of support she receives from Adam and Dinah, when they profess caring and morality but do not demonstrate them. Although Hetty does not intentionally kill her child, and even returns to it as she begins to feel maternal compassion and empathy, it is interesting to note that some critics insist her actions constitute deliberate murder: “No doubt this addition of murder to sexuality eased Eliot[‘s] … final conformity to Victorian conventions: the execution of a killer was not yet revolting to society’s liberal guilts and fears” (Auerbach 170). Such an assumption is startling, for, as written, Hetty did not murder her child, key to her sentencing by author, reader, and critic. In solitary suffering, Hetty becomes real, achieving a humanity the other characters do not. Perceived by Adam as an earth mother, she becomes one. She is fertile and creates life, yet, like nature, she is unemotional. Not until she is drawn by cries of need does she begin to

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understand a compassion she has never received. Hetty, as Eliot develops her, has not been truly loved – even by Adam – and has had little time and less encouragement or opportunity to learn to love. For this among many reasons, marriage could hardly be a loving, mutual companionship for her. In several relationships before she met and settled into a partnership with Lewes, Eliot had experienced lack of love or love with conditions, which had made her wary. In this first novel, she incorporated the pain of rejection and lovelessness with a harshness that was so real to her that she exaggerated its intensity, weakening the work’s realism. In her later novels, female protagonists are allowed to love and build companionate marriages or to find happiness independently; Dorothea finally finds happiness with the man she chooses, Will Ladislaw, as does Mirah in Daniel Deronda. In life and art, Eliot believed reality was harsh and punishing. Time and Lewes’ love and understanding coaxed her to think otherwise. Eliot also seemed to show the least compassion for female protagonists who, like Hetty, are beautiful and attract men easily. Lewes’ first wife was, by all accounts, particularly attractive. To be denied children of her own, an agreement with the man she loved because they could not marry, while being expected to be an attentive stepmother, when the beautiful wife of Eliot’s husband in all but law was having children by another man must have seemed a great collective injustice. This arrangement was sanctioned by society when she was being ostracized. Eliot built up a store of resentment, which she worked through by writing her novels. The bitterness with which she drew some of her female characters reflect her personal evolving constructions of love and marriage. Only attractive female protagonists who were serious thinkers, such as Dorothea in Middlemarch, were treated with respect in Eliot’s fiction, yet they were also punished for willfulness. This bitter perception of reality would lead Eliot, in desperation, to the spiritual aspect of male/female relationships in Daniel Deronda. In Adam Bede, Eliot explores the nature of love and the individual and social ramifications of the lack of it, before and outside of marriage, far more intensely than love within marriage. After marriage, the Bedes are inexplicably content. Dinah is “entirely domesticated” and awaits Adam’s return from his visiting Arthur, who has returned a broken man (Armitt 102. Hetty gone and Arthur diminished, the prosperous Bedes fulfill Eliot’s perception of realistic rural life, yet it is the height of idealism. Adam is in control, but has he matured? Dinah is content, another Lisbeth, nothing like her former self. They have a family never clearly delineated, much less humanized. These images are supposedly enough to provide the sense that

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all is well in the Adam-and-Dinah Bede world. Seth has vanished, Hetty is dead, Arthur will never recover, and Dinah waits for her man to return so that all can be well again. If Eliot wished Dinah to be a better woman than Hetty, she should have further developed her capacity for real feeling, her empathy and ability to demonstrate love rather than preach it. Dinah falls short of Hetty’s ability to experience hope and suffering, empathy and delight, because she is depicted with little realism, a stick figure the reader is told to care about but is not allowed to know. Hetty, for all her shortcomings, steps from the page as a flawed but realistic creature, brimming with life and sensibility to whom the reader can relate. Despite its title and Adam’s implied presence throughout, this novel is not the story of Adam Bede. As Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles was about Tess, this novel would have more correctly been titled Hetty, Of the Midlands. Hetty is the focus; she represents life as no other character does, although Mrs. Poyser, Dinah, and even Lisbeth Bede are more compelling than Eliot’s male characters. In her quest for realism, despite the work’s being a tribute to her father, she created strong female protagonists that are far more compelling than the male characters. Adam is not the paragon of strength he was meant to be; he is passive, ineffectual, dramatic, unsure, and perpetually hesitant because Eliot fails to humanize him. His sense of justice is aligned to the old ways; preferring the status quo, he forgives Arthur Donnithorne as if Hetty had never been wronged, or even existed. Indeed, she no longer does exist when Adam welcomes Arthur home, setting the tone of forgiveness for males but not their female counterparts. The conclusion of this novel is anything but satisfying: “Did George Eliot feel uneasy with her conclusion? Is that why she said that conclusions are at best negations? Certainly, the ending of Adam Bede diminishes energies and seals the picture with a layer of varnish” (Beer 73). Adam Bede demonstrates little of the sophistication of subsequent Eliot fiction, but as a first novel, it was a worthy beginning. “[B]y the time of the publication of Middlemarch, Eliot was acclaimed throughout England as a writer who could honestly confront the realistic doubts and despair of her generation and still leave her readers with a heartening sense that profound values of humor, love, and duty would prevail” (Gilbert 468). The novel transitions Eliot’s skill with her fictional characters and the evolving maturity of her constructions of love and marriage. This is also a more realistic novel in scope and detail than Adam Bede. Again, set in Eliot’s Midlands prior to the 1832 Reform Bill, the plot spans the marriages of several couples, young and older, with and

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without love. Dorothea Brooke’s marriage to Reverend Casaubon, whose intellect she reveres, is juxtaposed with Tertius Lydgate’s marriage to Rosamond Vincy, his ideal woman who sabotages his medical career. Virginia Woolf referred to Middlemarch as “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people”, although that assessment would later apply to Daniel Deronda, as well (Woolf). While Eliot traits can be found in all of her female protagonists, in Dorothea, she explores more fully the intellectual and philosophical facets of her character in relation to love and the pursuit of marriage. Middlemarch bridged the polarized time periods (early and late), settings (rural and urban), thematic development (simple and complex), maturing style between Eliot’s first and last novels, and deepening realism. As Eliot’s fiction became more complex and her commitment to realism intensified, she became increasingly vindictive, verbose, and didactic in literary style, but generally more tolerant with the development of her characters. This seems to have been a response to her evolving understanding of love and marriage and a growing faithfulness to realism. Her protagonists, male and female, led Eliot into difficult situations, frustrating her literary efforts and causing her to doubt, even more than usual, her ability to write progressively realistic fiction. Because of this angst and ambivalence, her characters’ struggles intensified, leading them to either compromise or tragedy. Although Dorothea finds love and companionate marriage in the end, she must first forfeit her humanitarian goals, suffer a loveless marriage to a cold man, and experience the effects of his manipulation, even after death. To gain the true, she must experience the false. Her desire to be a helpmate in Casaubon’s work foreshadows the Daniel- Mirah marital partnership in Daniel Deronda, for which Mirah will end a singing career she has never enjoyed, while Dorothea must sacrifice a dream in which she deeply believes. Eliot is still punishing female protagonists in Middlemarch. Dorothea, however, does benefit from what might have saved Hetty: freedom of choice, resources necessary to her goals, and an opportunity to learn from a self-chosen marriage that promises a rewarding occupation and wealth. She is disappointed by her own unrealistic expectations for loving companionship, not sacrificed to a lack of options as is Hetty. Dorothea believes the best marriages are those in which the husband is a sort of father figure who can teach her what she wants to learn. She writes to Casaubon, after his proposal, that she is grateful for his love and his thinking her “worthy” to be his wife (861). Theoretically, she and Casaubon marry for all the right reasons, which, in practice, become all wrong for both. Casaubon has long

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had unrealistic professional goals. Under the pressure of their combined idealism about marriage, he cannot complete his work and she cannot respect his reasons for not doing so. Even in her humility, she causes them both pain by stripping away old illusions and insisting on her own interpretation of realism. Eliot uncharacteristically allows Dorothea to escape from a loveless marriage, and even lets her love and marry again, but realistically, forfeiting her idealistic dreams, all breathtaking evolutions in Eliot’s constructions of love and marriage. In marrying Casaubon, Dorothea’s hope of helping him with his work, and her illusion of companionate marriage are tragically disappointed. Later, to marry Will, she forfeits fortune and, again, her dream of helping others, but gains love, companionate marriage, and family. Eliot was deeply invested in the Casaubon character; in a letter to Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1872, she admitted, “[T]he Casaubon-tints are not quite foreign to my own mental complexion” (Williams 118). Casaubon is a man of profound learning, widely understood to have been engaged for many years on a great work of religious history and socially secure enough to make his work seem plausible. Eliot had done the same without the credibility and security of wealth. Casaubon believes a man of good position, in taking a wife, should choose an attractive young woman (the younger the better) of equal rank so she will be easily educable and submissive; in fact, Eliot writes that Miss Brooke shows “an ardent submissive affection” (872). He also expects a handsome settlement and arrangements for her happiness to bring him “family pleasures” (1012). Despite the polite prose, this is pure marriage bargaining. Dorothea thinks only of making him happy; Casaubon considers an equal effort to ensure her happiness “preposterous” (1013). It is no surprise, with this attitude, that as the wedding draws near, he does “not find his spirits rising” (886), or afterward, that marriage is not “a rapturous state” (962). He refers to Dorothea as his love only in bitter sarcasm. As they continued to live together, Lewes in society and Eliot in virtual isolation, she increasingly identified with Casaubon. Rather than marrying men with whom they share love and dreams of the future, both Dorothea and Rosamond Vincy attempt to fulfill their dreams, and reinforce their self-worth, through marriage to men who are virtual strangers, knowing nothing of their worlds: Dorothea by serving what she considers a great cause, Rosamond by securing a high position in society. Dorothea believes marrying Casaubon will be intellectually fulfilling and assumes love will follow. Rosamond marries Lydgate for position and fortune, afterward finding he has little of

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either to offer. Each expects marriage to magically give life meaning, and both are forced to atone for their false assumptions. Conversely, Lydgate and Casaubon condescendingly marry young, attractive women they expect to control, whom they assume will be content with supplying domestic needs and supporting their careers. They are as deluded and self-focused as their wives, each professing love but not feeling it. The Casaubons and Lydgates exemplify misdirected love and mismatched marriage in Eliot’s fiction. Even mid-century, the most common way for a physically attractive woman to achieve class mobility was by marrying well. Rosamond knows this: “A stranger was absolutely necessary to Rosamond’s social romance” (106). Her perception of the new doctor is astute: “Here was Mr. Lydgate suddenly corresponding to her ideal, being altogether foreign to Middlemarch, carrying a certain air of distinction congruous with good family, and possessing connections which offered vistas of that middle-class heaven, rank” (106). Professing not to be looking for a wife, Lydgate sees in Rosamund a beautiful, accomplished, and adoring woman who, if he wished to marry, would be the woman he would seek. He has rank; she has polish. Each believes the other ideal, but they know nothing of the other’s world. Rosamond believes herself in love; Lydgate thinks he has found “perfect womanhood” (1060), Eliot’s intentionally mocking phrase for unrealistic male expectations. Realism descends on the Lydgates only after marriage arrangements are complete; they base surface reality on creating surroundings that hide the dearth of understanding in their sham marriage: Tertius hopes to bring advanced knowledge and high ethical and professional standards to Middlemarch, an ambition wrecked by marriage to Rosamond, who cares only about social success (Robson 187-88). When Lydgate is nearly bankrupt and Rosamund loses a child, he runs from reality into drugs, she escapes into romance; the marriage survives only because they have nothing but each other until Lydgate dies relatively young and Rosamond finds a dignified replacement. The Lydgates’ marriage is a study in realism; fantasy, assumptions, disillusionment, and despair destroy marriage. Perhaps the most compelling scene in Middlemarch is that of Dorothea idealistically going to see Rosamund to intercede for Tertius because she believes not only in his goodness but, most of all, the sanctity of marriage and the sacrifice required to maintain companionship: “Marriage is so unlike everything else. There is something even awful in the nearness it brings. Even if we loved someone else better… it murders our marriage – and then the marriage stays with us like a murder” (1346). Eliot depicts Dorothea saintliness as unrealistic until she shows

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that “saintly tendencies are… probable obstacles to her making a good marriage” (Cooke 98), as deadly as the Lydgates’ divided purpose. Tertius’ fall is greater than Dorothea’s because he has knowingly denied his own nature; Dorothea’s errors have been made unconsciously in attempting to satisfy hers. Eliot used Tertius’s story to demonstrate the power of society to control an individual’s thought of what love and marriage should be, and Dorothea’s to show that only a stand against society and for autonomy brings love and lasting marital companionship. Rosamund becomes a “a tragic satire on the ideal woman as described in much Victorian writing” just as Hetty a tragic symbol of the fallen woman (Beer 153) In Eliot – and Austen – novels, only love fulfills; neither inherited nor bargained fortune guarantee independence or even security. For Dorothea, money brings nothing but strife: frustration in using her own fortune for good and control from and denial of Casaubon’s fortune. Only Mary Garth gains independence from the manipulation of money by refusing to connive with Featherstone. She approaches life with far more realism than either Dorothea or Rosamund, and has no illusions about how her husband will transform her life (Armitt 37). Gwendolen enters marriage to provide for her family but pays dearly. In both authors’ works, education and money also highlight many women’s lack of preparation for independent economic life – as applicable to Rosamund as to Dorothea and, later, Gwendolen – while Lydgate, representative of many of their male characters, are unprepared for emotional life (Beer 170-71). In Middlemarch, Dorothea educates herself by learning to distinguish between knowledge and understanding, adoration and love, martyrdom and happiness. Eliot recognizes the vital importance of individual agency and self-reliance even as she arranges increasingly loving, equal, and companionate marriages. Eliot’s message in Middlemarch, then, is that loveless marriages, for whatever superficial or even psychological reasons – high ideals, materialism, physical beauty, even parental attachment – are not fulfilling or sustainable, and fortune cannot replace love. Companionate marriages that survive do so because husband and wife have like standards and goals. Dorothea longs for a protective father figure she can respect. Freud was professing this theory at the time, and Eliot was a follower of science: “Psychically… so great was the deference for the figure of the authoritarian father that the young daughter often formed a neurotic attachment to her father and transferred the feeling to her husband. ‘The really delightful marriage must be where your husband was a sort of father,’ remarked Dorothea in Middlemarch. That suited her, for she did

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not wish to marry a husband very near her own age. Casaubon, himself, was pleased with her ‘ardent submissive affection’” (Vicinus 170). The marriage between Dorothea’s sister Celia and Sir James Chettam satisfies both not because it is deeply loving, tried, or even true, but because they share the same marital philosophy: “men know best about everything, except what women know better” (1309). The lasting marriages within this novel – of the Garths, the Vincys, even the Bulstrodes – survive because husband and wife are partners who work together toward the same ends. Eliot argues not simply for love in marriage, but for loving commitment, loyalty, common goals, and like satisfactions. Legalities alone are meaningless. Eliot’s strongest example of loving partnership in Middlemarch is not that between Dorothea and Will Ladislaw, but between Mary Garth and Fred Vincy. They appear to be opposites: she is stable and thrifty, he is reckless and a spendthrift; she has direction, he is directionless; his upper middle-class family has position and wealth, while her lower-middle class family is known for integrity and hard work. Yet, Mary and Fred are alike in the qualities that create lifelong companionship: they love and are committed to each other; they have an open, balanced, and respectful relationship, and both are willing to work hard to be together and to build a future. Above all, they are honest with each other, in fact, often brutally so; they know themselves and each other, and keep all aspects of their relationship real. The challenges they face are temporary and they meet them together. Their love is unwavering. They need each other rather than intellectual pursuits or material possessions. Mary is a different female prototype than Dorothea or Rosamond, whose aristocratic and upper middle-class backgrounds and expectations work against them. Because she has always had to struggle, Mary has learned to compromise, with integrity intact. She serves as nurse to Featherstone to avoid being a governess; when he dies, she chooses to teach. When Mr. Farebrother proposes, although she admires him and despite Fred having no prospects, Mary vows to remain single. She is not a woman to have “the nonsensical vanity” of believing every man who admires her is in love with her (922), as Rosamond does, but she loves Fred. Mary requires him to be constant; Fred requires her to admit his constancy. They achieve “a solid mutual happiness” that no other young couple in the novel can match (1369). Their partnership is a meeting of mind and heart. They are as happy and contented in old age as they were in their youth. Fred and Mary build a solid marriage, a loving family, and a shared future on love that stand the ravages of time and a realism that sustains and nurtures them. They exemplify the

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benefits of basing male/female relationships on sound foundations of what is rather than what might be. With this novel, Eliot offered several prototypes of loving relationships, including the realism of this marriage. Middlemarch ends on a bittersweet – but realistic – note of compromise. Eliot has been criticized for concluding the novel with Dorothea’s marriage to Will Ladislaw, particularly after Dorothea has been shocked by what she interprets as Will Ladislaw’s betrayal, apparently flirting with Rosamond Vincy, but this causes her to look “out onto the world past ‘the narrow cell of her calamity’… confirm[ing] the impulse to be in, engage with, the world” (Said 143). Once again, she has made faulty assumptions. They meet halfway and become equal loving partners; he loves her, is a respectable husband and father, and is the man she loves, who allows her to be herself. Dorothea has learned she is not obligated to live up to standards of perfection; she can love her husband and family, and make the world a better place through everyday acts rather than grand humanitarian gestures. Dorothea defies society to secure love; Mary and Fred secure their future by securing their love within themselves; Rosamond settles for socially acceptable security without love. Clearly, “There are many wonderful mixtures… called love” (1026) evolving in Middlemarch marriages, a fundamental evolution from Eliot’s earlier depictions of the lack of love and less complex marriage in Adam Bede. In Middlemarch, to be real, marriage is validated by a meeting of minds. In Daniel Deronda, love satisfies the soul. When Eliot began writing her last novel, she was flush with the monumental success of Middlemarch and concerned that her next effort would not be as well received (Booth 244). With each work, she had attempted to reach a new level of realism, first in the rural communities of Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner that she knew so well; tortuously researching and writing Romola, an historical novel set in fifteenth century Florence; addressing politics in a small 1830s English town with Felix Holt, the Radical, and exploring the nature of marriage, the status of women, political reform, and education in Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life. Unlike the earlier works, Daniel Deronda is set only years before its publication in 1876, addressing the international impact of such contemporary events as the America Civil War and Franco-Prussian War and preparing for the restoration of a Jewish homeland (Booth 239). Ironically, this final novel was her most original, reaching beyond Middlemarch in psychological depth and literary experimentation, with a wider scope, an approach both worldly and spiritual, and a quest for realism that took her into fascinating and repelling areas. In this

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darkest, most unresolved, yet refreshingly experimental novel, Eliot redefines love and reexamines marriage from the complex perspectives of two couples in divergent social and cultural circles: Daniel Deronda and Mirah Lapidoth, and Gwendolen Harleth and Henleigh Grandcourt. This story of an Anglicized Jew, deprived of historical reference until he finds and affirms it himself, is Eliot’s finest fictional achievement. In part, Daniel Deronda contrasts social individualism with social tradition (Cooke 100), and chastises English society for its spiritual and moral deficiencies and lack of higher feeling. Arguing in Middlemarch that society can paralyze and betray the individual, with marriage providing only as much protection as it is companionable, in Daniel Deronda Eliot admits that society can also inspire, particularly a man and woman in a loving marital partnership bonded in spirit. Transferring her own quest for literary realism to Daniel and Gwendolen Harleth, Eliot explores the idealistically presented stability of tradition in the Daniel/Mirah/Mordecai plot, in which “Mordecai lives in his race, Deronda gives his life constantly away for others, and Mirah is unselfishness and simplicity itself” (Cooke 104), with the realistic instability of modernism in the Harleth/Grandcourt/Glasher plot. Daniel Deronda is a romance of realism, joining the real and ideal, knowledge and feeling, self and other. Eliot takes the meaning of love and the bonds of marriage to unprecedented heights, exploring the physical and spiritual aspects of love and marriage, shades of morality and immorality in male-female relationships, the salvation of love and destruction of lust, and the bonding power of spirituality. Initially, Daniel, with his English upbringing, is a confusing choice as Eliot’s Jewish ideal, but it is this cultural ambivalence that lends realism to his assistance to and support of Gwendolen’s struggles, as well as his tentative interest in, and initial wariness of, Mordecai’s traditional philosophies. Daniel is a rescuer: “Persons attracted him, as Hans Meyrick had done, in proportion to the possibility of his defending them, rescuing them, telling upon their lives with some sort of redeeming influence” (292). Before he unveils his birthright, Daniel rescues and then befriends Gwendolyn Harleth, whose family’s financial reverses lead her to marry a brute who views the marital contract as a license to control and abuse a wife. Gwendolyn’s self- discovery and the dynamics of her relationships with husband, mistress, and friend juxtapose with Daniel’s emerging sense of self and choice of partner. Daniel, who has always been unsure about his place and purpose in life, ultimately faces the unknown with a partner he freely chooses for her own, but similar, challenges; Gwendolen, initially posing as certain about her

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purpose in the world and what it holds, after being forced by circumstances into an abusive marriage, ultimately faces the unknown alone. For Eliot, the reality after Daniel Deronda was that there would be no more novels; she had reached her capacity to explain and depict realism. Daniel Deronda is more convincingly written and argued than Adam Bede, in large part, because the characters are less certain about their positions and purposes in life. While Adam does not question the reality of his past and present until his future demands it, Daniel questions everything about his past, is uncomfortable in his present, and finds meaning only in a hopeful future. Like Will Ladislaw, he is often paralyzed by realities, known and unknown, and both define themselves through loving partnerships with women with whom they can envision and share a brighter future. By the time Eliot wrote Daniel Deronda in the last years of her life, she had so redefined her definition of realism that she seriously questioned whether a successful life could be lived within contemporary English society. Eliot struggled to realistically define love and to identify her most evolved concept of marriage, to live and write according to the reality she explained as like testimony from a witness box, and to depict in her fiction an increasing realism that men and women could emulate in their loving and marital relationships. The result was this final novel. Eliot’s goal, then, with Daniel Deronda – to fictionally reflect English society with realism and integrity – became increasingly difficult to meet as she wrote. When words failed her, Daniel had to be sent away to create a new and undefined community – outside of England, English society, and the novel – because she could not create such a community realistically in fiction. Eliot had reached the limits of her ability to depict realism within fiction. Grandcourt’s death is obtuse and Gwendolen’s reaction to it is obscure because Eliot had no words to make them more real. She did not know how to clarify the realism of the future; she had not yet been a legal wife, had lost her faith, and was no longer young. To continue the narrative of Daniel and Mirah, she wrote of a religious concept unknown to her in a place she had never been, and the depiction of realism became impossible. Daniel could not answer whether Gwendolen had been an accomplice in Grandcourt’s death because Eliot could not clarify, further than she had, what passed between them in those last seconds. Mirah fades into compliance and background because Eliot could not write her future. Reality had become indescribable. Yet, she remained a realist to the end; when she could no longer write progressively realistic fiction about

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philosophies of the human condition, science reassured her that reality did exist and could be quantified through the analytical process. A key theme of Daniel Deronda is the search for spiritual place: “A human life should be well rooted in some spot of a native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship… whatever will give that home a familiar, unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge” (18). Deronda strives for a sense of belonging in England and within his class, finding it instead in himself and the land of his heritage, with Mirah. Gwendolen, initially rootless, seeks shelter in marriage, but matures toward an inward search for peace of mind and soul, without Grandcourt. In plumbing the depths of love and marriage, and attempting to garner interest in time-honored spiritual beliefs, Eliot argues that ultimate belonging begins and ends in self, supported by a personal sense of place. Expecting Daniel Deronda to attract public resistance because of the exotic Jewish theme and harshness of the depiction of the Grandcourts’ marriage, Eliot encouraged readers to imagine a future of tolerance and enlightenment, a satisfying resolution of social and cultural differences in personal and cultural relationships, with more hopeful idealism than strict realism. When the novel was released, English critics and religious leaders were positive, sales in England and America were encouraging, and Eliot took this combined response to mean that at least some readers “had been touched” (GE Letters 6). Daniel Deronda is a young man who suspects himself of “loving too well the losing causes of the world” (330), who is searching for, and unsatisfied with anything less than, the real. He accepts people and situations for who and what they are. Everything that can be said about Eliot’s final, and perhaps finest, male protagonist leads back to this key character trait. Daniel is described with great care and more clarity than is typical of Eliot. She imbues him with a unique warmth. He is a good man, albeit flawed, who, unlike Adam, must find his place in the universe with no idea of his parentage, heritage, or how he should add meaning to his life. He is sensitive, has a keenly developed sense of the real, observable world around him and an acute conscience, he is not fooled by appearances, cares deeply for human suffering, and is a quiet but effective leader. He has ambition but no outlet for it; his natural interests lie in people and ideas. Above all, Daniel has an innate hatred of injustice and is instinctively drawn to those who need protection. He cares nothing for English materialism and is bored by the English elite. What drives Daniel, and matters to him above all else, is his fundamental need to identify his parentage and background, the basis of knowing himself, what Alison Booth describes as “an

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archaeology of the self” (254). With no knowledge of his mother, calling no man his father, and without even a birthplace as a center, Daniel is convinced this lack of information is keeping him from moving forward. He is nearly convinced he is an Englishman and that his father may be his uncle, Sir Hugo Mallinger, but they never speak of such things and Daniel is afraid to ask. His relationship with Sir Hugo, based on mutual respect and gratitude, is loving but complex. In love with Daniel’s mother long before, Sir Hugo is a kind man, a conscientious and loving husband and father, who has raised Daniel as an Englishman and as he would a son. Yet, Daniel’s appearance is atypical of the English; with pale-brown skin, high forehead, and dark eyes, he has often wondered who he resembles. Beyond their dispositions, the two men share a fascination for womanhood, that complex combination of individual and collective traits and qualities women share. In fact, Sir Hugo charges Daniel with being dangerous to women by treating them with tenderness and sincerely seeking to understand them. For Daniel, this endless interest, almost compulsion, stems from curiosity about his mother. Two young women particularly interest him, neither romantically. Both come into his life as self-destructive women – Gwendolen determined to gamble away what little she has and Mirah intent on ending her life. During the interactions between Daniel and the women he rescues, love and constructions of marriage become key to Eliot’s final novel. Gwendolen Harleth is first seen at the roulette table, risking and losing passionately, professing that to lose strikingly is the next best thing to winning strikingly. She is running from boredom toward any sensation that will cloud her fear of the future and help her feel alive and free. Later, she will gamble on marriage for the same reasons. Realism, for Gwendolen, is boredom invaded by periodic panic about her future security. From the first, Deronda is captivated by Gwendolen, but captivation is not love. She catches his attention as one who might be “looked at without admiration, but could hardly be passed with indifference” (7). Gwendolen is not beautiful; she is interesting, and holds men’s attention with a haughty indifference tinged with vulnerability and fear. Although she feigns independence, men know she is unsure of herself, and their responses reflect their own characters. Daniel recognizes Gwendolen’s inner conflict and is instinctively protective; Grandcourt also identifies her insecurities but is interested only in possessing and controlling. Gwendolen misinterprets the reactions of both: she believes Deronda judges her inferior and becomes defensive with him;

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Grandcourt she is certain she can manipulate, and she lowers her guard with disastrous results. In reality, he is the universal tyrant, and she transforms “from huntress to victim” (Booth 256). Terrified of deep feeling and determined not to forfeit control, Gwendolen participates in relationships tentatively, out of necessity or curiosity. She and Daniel relate to each other instinctively, as men and women do who know each other deeply once in their lives. Their conversations are brief, but profound. When Gwendolen asks Daniel why he regrets her gambling more because she is a woman, he explains, “Perhaps because we need that you should be better than we are.” Gwendolen counters, “But suppose we need that men should be better than we are?” (304). She feels free to question and expects fair response, which he offers with respect, establishing a sense of equality and meeting of the minds that forms the solid foundation of their friendship. Gwendolen’s relationship with Grandcourt is the polar opposite. Resigning herself to marry, Gwendolen accepts Grandcourt’s proposal because she believes he is controllable, more reasonable than passionate. Ironically, he believes the same of her. Despite their separate paths and goals, their joint lives bring them much the same misery and sham. Each has an individual reality until they choose to marry. Both are startled by what they create. When Gwendolen admits to her mother that she is aware girls marry to escape pleasing everybody but themselves, she unwittingly describes Grandcourt. Gwendolen convinces herself that she will do as she likes after marriage, that she will be as free as before, or more. No assessment of marriage could be more false or unreal. This invincible self-possession of youth masks deep pain and personal emptiness, resulting in and exacerbated by marriage to an unfeeling man. Like Rex, her first suitor, Gwendolen has fine qualities. She assumes responsibility in attempting to remedy her family’s financial reverses, and, positive by nature, she wills herself to endure what she cannot change. She loves her mother, sincerely wants justice for the Glasher children, and absorbs Deronda’s duplicity and desertion without recriminations. Lacking effective parenting (as Austen depicted in her novels), she explores her limited options, attempts to marry well, but does not expect marriage to bring her happiness. She hopes for adoration without dreary domesticity, excessive maternity, or boredom. Marriage will promote her socially, saving her from spinsterhood and starvation. Yet, where Austen grants a companionate marriage after allowances for immaturity, Eliot instigates marital games and leaves her female protagonists to struggle alone; indeed, Gwendolen receives tortuous treatment, seemingly because she is favored and beautiful:

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“Always she was the princess in exile... The answer may seem to lie quite on the surface – in her beauty” (37). The parallel with the Princess, Daniel’s mother, is obvious; the old jealousy that Eliot’s female protagonists suffered for had not been exorcised before she wrote this final novel. There are few surprises in Eliot’s depictions of Henleigh Grandcourt, for she does not develop his character or explore the foundations of his attitudes or behavior. He defines reality alone and forces all to bend to his definition. In Henleigh, Arthur’s self-obsession has come of age. The slight sense of dis-ease Arthur feels about his role in Hetty’s end is absent in Henleigh. From his introduction until the moment of his death, Grandcourt’s predictability is as relentless as his cruelty. Gwendolen’s early misjudgments of him are based on what he willfully wants her to believe, and what she hopefully wants to believe, underscoring both her youthful naivete and emotional distance as well as his unethical use of both. Revolted by the sincerity of Rex’s love, she takes refuge in Grandcourt’s cool reserve, attributing qualities to him that he does not have, just as Mirah does for Daniel. Reading people accurately and without emotion, Grandcourt knows he has only to wait; he offers Gwendolen what she desires (a horse), needs (money for her mother), and requires (time to convince herself), all the while maintaining an unrelenting pressure. He is accustomed to getting what he wants. Grandcourt enjoys tormenting the trusting and less powerful – dogs, women, Lush – with their own vulnerabilities, mainly by omission – withholding what they want when it could be easily given. Not concerned with increasing others’ happiness, he is a master manipulator who brings the worst out in people, making it appear that the fault is theirs and instilling self-doubt. Henleigh Grandcourt is rich, powerful, clever, fertile, unconscionable, and evil, with something of the exaggerated villain about him. By contrast, two relatively undeveloped but key characters, fundamental to the themes of love and marriage in Daniel Deronda, are Catherine Arrowpoint and Herr Klesmer. Together, they set the theme of the novel and demonstrate a loving companionate relationship and marriage based on mutual respect, against which Eliot contrasts all other male/female relationships. Catherine expresses one sentiment that sets the tone for all that is to come: “I will not give up the happiness of my life to ideas that I don’t believe in and customs I have no respect for” (224). Every character directly relates in some way to this succinctly written, but comprehensively explored, argument; indeed, this is Eliot’s code for living, her lived reality. That she gives the line to a young woman determined to marry an artist with whom she shares that art is intentional; Catherine and Klesmer reflect Marian Evans and George Henry Lewes, as writers. When

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Klesmer hesitates in marrying, Catherine asks, “Is it the accusations you are afraid of? I am afraid of nothing but that we should miss the passing of our lives together” (222). When Mrs. Arrowpoint questions her daughter’s sanity in deciding to marry a man socially below her, since Catherine’s wealthy and powerful family, and proper society, expect her to marry well, she assures her mother of her sanity and seriousness, refusing to allow Herr Klesmer to be blamed. He had not thought of marrying, but, realizing their mutual love, she agreed to become his wife. Catherine knows her mind; her assurance and assertiveness bring her what she seeks. Marian Evans was also determined to love the man she chose (224). The Arrowpoints forbid the marriage, relenting only when it is clear they will lose their daughter if they don’t. Herr Klesmer demonstrates that he seeks only Catherine’s companionship, is not marrying her for fortune, and can care for her very well; they live “rather magnificently” in Grosvenor Place, he a “prince among musical professors” (553). This interlude not only introduces Herr Klesmer as a significant influence in both Gwendolen’s and Mirah’s approach to art and life, but also establishes Eliot’s core philosophy, reflecting the Lewes’ rise in society despite public sanctions, and strongly champions loving companionate marriage. Eliot was adept at developing minor characters that made sharp impressions with little literary play, due, in part, to her insistence on recognizable realism in each. Anna and Rex Gascoignes are two of these, representing young male and female integrity and insight, as well as demonstrating what Gwendolen rejects when she marries Grandcourt. Anna hints of the waste of unacknowledged female lives. Rex represents male understanding, “for some of the goodness which Rex believed in was there” (61). He is truly interested in Gwendolen’s opinions and what she wants to do with her life, the only male who asks. Rex is also sensitive to being treated with indifference and demands respect, important to the dynamics of love, but Gwendolen refuses him for Grandcourt; meeting his ethical standards, she believes in her naivete, would be more exacting for her than controlling the supposedly easy to manage Grandcourt. Rex and Anna have developed fine qualities, despite their parents’ interests in fortune, rank, and suitable marriage. Eliot studied Darwin’s theories of evolution in an attempt to imbue her novels with scientific theories, making them more realistic, and enjoyed creating minor characters that tested them. In an Austen novel, the elder Gascoignes would be well intentioned but meddling matchmakers, she scolding about gratitude and responsibility, he calculating estate values at so many thousands a

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year, for the rector believes marriage is the only true and satisfactory sphere for a woman. In this final Eliot novel, children develop past their parents. While Eliot bestows Mirah with a natural talent, professional support, and loving assistance in establishing a means of providing for herself, she denies Gwendolen with all of these. In art and life, Eliot could give to only one at a time, excluding all others. Grandcourt is cold, but she receives warmth from few others. Even Deronda, after he retrieves her necklace, offers only sympathy. Before she marries, Gwendolen makes an honest attempt to find other ways to support herself and her family, hoping to gratify her ambitions with a singing or acting career, “without bondage” (229). Openly explaining the family loss of fortune to Herr Klesmer, she is harshly disabused about her talent, but again forces herself to accept reality – that her mother and sisters will live at Sawyer’s Cottage and she will be a governess. When Gwendolen feels her misfortunes have “all been caused by other people’s disagreeable or wicked conduct,” Eliot has planned it that way (248). The “poor spoiled child, with the lovely lips and eyes and majestic figure” is punished for being so (263). This arbitrary singling out, this bullying of the beautiful or talented, is unrealistic only in excess. Meek and uncomplaining, Mrs. Davilow is a poignant character who plays a significant part in Gwendolen’s challenges. Rather than providing support for her daughter, she is a burden, much as Mrs. Dashwood is to her daughters. Her misery is all-pervasive; Mrs. Davilow is a tightly reined voice of desperation. Twice disappointed in marriage, with five daughters, she is in a position to do great harm in her compliance, in stark contrast to the Alcharisi. She and her sister, Mrs. Gascoigne, share a “nonresistant disposition” (26). She has raised a daughter afraid to sleep alone, totally unprepared for marriage. Mrs. Davilow wonders if Grandcourt will be a husband Gwendolen can be happy with, then reverts to her defeatist coping mechanism: “Well, perhaps as happy as… most other women are” (119). Her other daughters, as “the sad faces of the four superfluous girls,” are assumed to be of no importance (207), presumably because they lack beauty. Yet, beauty does not bring Gwendolen love or happiness. All are the direct product of poor Mrs. Davilow, who preaches an insidious and destructive resignation to Providence and does nothing to help herself or her children. She protests taking money from Grandcourt, yet suffers his ostracism and takes no active steps to be free of him. It is Gwendolen who must fill that role and save her family

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Sketching a miserable single future in which Gwendolen watches her mother grow “quite old and white, and herself no longer young but faded,” Eliot offers a reprieve: Grandcourt’s second offer (263). Gwendolen feels both triumph and terror. She considers rejecting him, then begins more realistically to rationalize acceptance: that her mother had been unhappily married because she managed badly, that Gwendolen is not responsible for Mrs. Glasher or her children by Grandcourt, that marriage had always seemed desirable for other reasons than love, that Grandcourt’s way of courting had been entirely acceptable to her before she had known about his mistress, and, above all, that she could make things better for Mama. This is a turning point for Gwendolen, offering no real choice. The gravity of her acceptance of Grandcourt falls like a death sentence; even Marianne’s acquiescence to Colonel Brandon was not so grave. “‘You shall have whatever you like,’ said Grandcourt. ‘And nothing that I don’t like?’” (275). Gwendolen’s tentative hopefulness is wretched. Mama will not go to Sawyer’s Cottage, Mrs. Mompert will not be inspecting Gwendolen as a candidate for governess, but everything will not be as she likes. The bargain is made, the trap set. She cannot go back; there is nothing there. She meant to say no. Eliot knew that if the Deronda characters were to be her most realistic, they must be a viable blend of good and evil, love and lovelessness. Grandcourt’s intent is evil, his actions diabolical, but the greatest pain he instigates on a victim is most often self-inflicted. He insists that they choose their fates and allows them to escape before the bargain is made if they will, but when the bargain is complete, he expects fulfillment. Grandcourt orchestrates Gwendolen’s perceptions of him, but he does not force her to marry. He waits until she succumbs to her weaknesses. Neither has he forced Lydia Glasher to be with him; she chose to leave her husband and child without promise of marriage. Grandcourt offers to pay for a divorce, which the husband refuses; he has no plans to remarry and with every passing day, Lydia’s desertion is more apparent. Grandcourt is also realistically unmovable and cold with Lydia, in person, about their changing relationship and waits for acceptance of the inevitable. He is cold and relentless, but he gives every sign of that before a woman commits to him, allowing her to believe she can change him. Both Gwendolen and Lydia understand his offers; each has mistreated others. Grandcourt chooses his targets for their flaws. Excuses that Lydia falls in love and Gwendolen’s family is destitute ring hollow when Lydia has abandoned a husband and child and Gwendolen has rejected offers of marriage and employment. Gwendolen marries Grandcourt knowing of

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Lydia, and Lydia accepts Grandcourt without marrying. Moral ambiguity is rampant not only in Grandcourt but in all participants of this tragic triangle. To this paragon of degraded English aristocracy, Eliot gives young and vulnerable Gwendolen Harleth, with only her thin veneer of bravado to shield her. With no father figure except an ineffectual social climbing uncle to serve as a male role model, she is inordinately grateful to the tentative kindness of Deronda. Under the burden of her family’s fall from grace, it is no surprise that, after being disabused of her chances of a singing career, and her disgust at the thought of being a governess, Gwendolen should consider an offer of marriage to a wealthy man. Gwendolen is offered realistic options to marrying Grandcourt, but sees them as unrealistic or less viable than a marriage from which she professes to have no expectations, and so does not pursue them. This scenario was quintessentially real; many Victorian women faced the same narrow choices. For Gwendolen, love is a luxury; she has never loved a man and does not expect to. In fact, she has never loved anyone but her mother. What she feels for Daniel is respect and friendship, which she understands no more than marriage. Gwendolen and Grandcourt marry without love or understanding, he to dominate her and she for financial protection, becoming partners only in disillusionment. They believe they are being realistic. Ironically, their marriage could not be less real. She underestimates the degeneracy of Grandcourt’s intentions and control; he underestimates Gwendolen’s need for self-preservation and her feeling for family. Lush, who knows Grandcourt better than any woman, considers these matters of the heart as amateur theatrics. Although he occasionally feels the lash as all in Grandcourt’s circle do, he maintains perspective to line his pockets. With no illusions about his master, whom he knows can be manipulated, he sees Grandcourt as a man of peculiar character whose word cannot be trusted because his actions are unpredictable. Grandcourt keeps his own counsel; it is one of his greatest strengths. Deeming everyone else beneath him, there is no point in confiding. Whatever he does, there is logic in hindsight. Marrying either Gwendolen, sans fortune, or Lydia, for heirs, would appear to be gentlemanly rescue. Lush, himself, could honor either, for both would elicit gratitude; he could also understand Grandcourt’s not marrying at all, keeping his present arrangement. Yet, Lush feels it is his duty to do what he can, in collusion with Lydia, to save Grandcourt from marrying a young woman who will likely bring nothing but trouble to her husband, a new slant in the evolution of Eliot’s constructions of love and marriage.

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All proceeds as Grandcourt plans; his pleasure in mastering requires a woman with spirit. Lydia has provided an heir, albeit illegitimate, but she is aging and threatening to become troublesome under the threat of a legitimate son. Grandcourt needs a naïve young thing to flatter his ego and demonstrate fear. Gwendolen’s initial repugnance to Lydia and her children excites Grandcourt and increases his desire to triumph over her weak attempts to be equal after she accepts his proposal. He seals the marital deal with less an offer to financially assist his future mother-in-law than with a bribe to mitigate Mrs. Davilow’s loss of fortune, an unnecessary and cruel reminder, in return for Gwendolen’s submission: “You accept what will make such things a matter of course? You consent to become my wife?” (274). Gwendolen fights for a semblance of control in refusing to answer immediately, but they both know the bargain has been made. As a final affront, Grandcourt mocks feeling by telling her that she is what no other woman is to him: “You are the woman I love” (284). Grandcourt’s unrelenting need to overpower her has brought them together; however, Gwendolen’s relentless need to resist will drive them apart. They come to understand what the Alcharisi has learned: “When a woman’s will is as strong as the man’s who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment” (575). Grandcourt is more pleased with Gwendolen in resistance than if she had gone to him in love. That she would not have married him except in financial duress makes her purchase more exciting. Their marriage is carried out in well-bred silence. Grandcourt tracks her actions and behavior, requiring that she be guided by his opinions. He approaches his domestic relations as matter-of-factly as he does his business and social relations. Grandcourt is relieved that all is settled. He has property, a wife, a mistress, and an heir as a spare. Marriage has brought a reassuring routine into his life. He has kept his part of the bargain, even to the jewels Lydia relinquishes and he requires Gwendolen to wear. He knows how to torment and she determines to resist, giving each a sense of power. Both are attractive; each has a secret life. They have come to an agreement. But Grandcourt misjudges Gwendolen; he has made her succumb, and her misery turns to hatred, the total absence of love. While he enjoys thinking of her as his future wife, she finds mental refuge. She does not play him for a fool; she simply disregards him. While Grandcourt wishes her to understand that he is not threatened by her relations with Deronda, Gwendolen does not think of Grandcourt at all when she interacts with Daniel. “Men who have seen a good deal of life don’t always end by choosing their wives well” (369) is an Eliot leitmotif, from Adam’s choice of Hetty through Casaubon’s and Lydgate’s choices of

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Dorothea and Rosamund, and finally Grandcourt’s pursuit of Gwendolen, for that choice will be the death of him. In Eliot novels, love is not always disappointing; sometimes it is deadly. Daniel’s search for selfhood is as dramatic as Gwendolen’s; it takes him through a series of fateful coincidences to Mirah, and an action that is immediately problematic. In a novel that raises countless questions, three are pivotal. Does Daniel rescue Mirah or meddle in the destiny he claims in his letter to Sir Hugo? Does he have a right to alter her future? In choosing to do so, is he morally responsible for her? Eliot must have realized the Daniel/Mirah/Mordecai Jewish premise of this work rested not on reality but moral ambiguity. Upon Daniel’s decision to alter destiny rests his future, the Daniel / Mirah relationship, fully half of the action of the novel, and Eliot’s message of tolerance and equality: “If I had not found Mirah, it is probable that I should not have begun to be specially interested in the Jews, and certainly I should not have gone on that loitering search after an Ezra Cohen” (468). As the progression of the concept of realism in the novels demonstrate, Eliot wrestles with the realities of chance and moral responsibility, love and marriage, throughout her canon, particularly in Daniel Deronda. The story of Daniel and Mirah begins and ends as romantic fable, in stark contrast to the graphic realism of the relationship between Gwendolen and Grandcourt, which is perhaps Eliot’s point; a modicum of fantasy is necessary to maintain successful realism in marriage. To instigate the meeting, Eliot creates a scenario that stretches credulity, basing her protagonist’s tale on chance. This seems nonsensical and contrary to her stated purpose of developing until Eliot complicates to clarify: in Daniel Deronda, her most profound fictional search for reality, paradoxically, Mordecai imagines, Mirah believes, Grandcourt and the Princess assume, and Sir Hugo and Gwendolen trust, none of which are akin to quintessential truth from the witness box. All of Eliot’s characters gamble, like Gwendolen, on ephemera outside their control, particularly in love. When Daniel finds Mirah, he also finds his Jewishness, a heritage they share and solidify within their marriage, based partly in reality and partly in fantasy. Eliot once likened her own suffering to those who, like Mary Wollstonecraft, “wetted their garments well in the rain hoping to sink the better when they plunged” (Letters, 55: 160). Losing her faith in God and humanity, Mirah wets her garments to sink. Resigning herself again to life and fate, appearing in the form of Daniel, she is the opposite of the ambitious Princess, which Mirah must be as Daniel’s partner. Eliot naturalizes Mirah, likening her to a tentative fawn, shy and distrustful of people. Daniel’s first feeling toward her is an outpouring of

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compassion, his second an acknowledgement of her attractiveness. As with any woman he meets, Daniel compares Mirah to the image of his mother, the crux of his interest in women and their fates. Mirah takes Daniel’s appearance as God’s command to live. Assuming he is good, she tells him she is an English-born Jewess and asks if he despises her for it, but despising is a foreign concept to Daniel. Thus begins the bonding and multifaceted love between two seekers who perceive each other, idealistically, as the best of men and the image of womanhood. The idealism of this meeting becomes more realistic as coincidences happen. When Daniel wants Mirah to “understand herself to be entirely independent of him” (187), their bond grows out of a mutual need that lends credibility to their eventual love and marriage. Mirah, however, has her own, more realistic, story, and it is not a tale of meekness: “For Mirah was not childlike from ignorance: her experience of evil and trouble was deeper and stranger than his own” (204). Mirah suffers as all Eliot female protagonists must suffer; pain is the price they pay for release or redemption, and this pain is viscerally real, both within the story for the character and without for the reader. None escape; some are rewarded, usually with survival, sometimes with love. As a follower of the scientific and philosophical, Eliot knew the species demanded it. Surviving kidnapping, paternal abuse, and exploitation of her singing talent, then being sold in marriage, Mirah escapes and makes her way alone to London in search of her family. When Daniel pulls her from the water in her desperation, she considers him her rescuing angel and defers to him out of gratitude. No one thinks of Daniel as her possible lover; he is a rescuer of women and does not take advantage of them. Yet, she draws him as his mother once drew his father. Mirah becomes both rescued and rescuer, solving Eliot’s moral dilemma, in part, by Mirah’s theoretically saving Daniel’s life in giving him purpose. Reciprocity is Eliot’s resolution to love, marriage, and reality: Daniel, in rescuing Mirah, is himself rescued, and they share a mutual responsibility for their destiny. If Daniel and Mirah are Eliot’s most self-actualized male and female protagonists, Gwendolen Harleth is Eliot’s alter ego and Henleigh Grandcourt is a composite of the men who hurt or denied Eliot as she lived her own reality of love and marriage before meeting Lewes, as her biographies demonstrate. Despite Eliot’s attempts to find love and companionship with single and married men, and her loving and long creative partnership with George Henry Lewes, Marian Evans longed to be a Mirah to a Daniel. She was, however, a Gwendolen, who bargained with herself over marriage. As Jane Austen pondered what her life might have been in

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her last novel, so too did Eliot with Daniel Deronda. In searching for real love and yearning for traditional marriage, Eliot arrived at romance. As plot device, Hetty had disproportionately suffered from Arthur’s thoughtless lust to allow Dinah’s (questionable) spiritual bond with Adam, so Eliot continues Gwendolen’s from Grandcourt’s oppression to allow Mirah to share ideally in Daniel’s spiritual quest. Eliot had thoroughly absorbed the concept of sacrifice for love; someone had to suffer for someone else to gain. It was the way of the real world. While Mirah reacts submissively and displays unquestioning faith in and gratitude toward Daniel after her rescue, Gwendolen reacts defensively, with embarrassment and proud suspicion, when Daniel rescues her from her own recklessness at the roulette table. In returning a necklace Gwendolen has pawned, Daniel acts out of compassion, asking no return but affecting her life. Mitigating unrealistic adoration, Mirah and Gwendolen must learn from Daniel and he from them, allowing Daniel to approach Mirah as a lover and Gwendolen as a friend. Three women are essential to Daniel’s quest for self, all of whom possess great strength: Mirah, Gwendolen, and the Princess Halm-Ebstein, his mother. Mirah, a gifted professional singer, hates public life and will find fulfillment in marriage. Gwendolen, an ambitious amateur singer, hates married life and will find her fulfillment in independence. The once fiercely independent Leonora Alcharisi, combining Mirah’s gift and Gwendolen’s will to power, in the end, takes refuge in marriage and motherhood, with no love for either, after experiencing a fulfilling career. Far from coincidental, Eliot develops Daniel’s character through interaction with these women who give him life, love, and friendship. Every one of these women is strong, tested, and has been hurt by love, beginning with their fathers’ virtual or real abandonments, as Daniel has been abandoned by his mother. All seek replacements for their losses. Daniel’s decision to search for Mirah’s family is a second rescue of her. Correctly believing her mother dead, Mirah longs to know where she is buried and whether her brother is alive. Daniel and Mirah share a need for mothers and ambivalence about fathers. Both Mr. Lapidoth and the Princess are monstrous, but not alike. Mirah, taken by her father, sees him as her executioner and escapes him in terror and distrust. Daniel, summoned by his mother, considers her a self-appointed judge of his destiny and leaves her with reluctance and sadness. Daniel and Mirah are pitilessly demeaned and cruelly rejected by their parents, both for expediency. In finding Mordecai, Mirah’s brother, however, Daniel recognizes a fellow seeker. Eliot obviously struggled with the dichotomy of reality and romance. The novel slips further

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into philosophy as Eliot slips into purple prose in explaining that one of the greatest blessings of love is marrying to protect: “…uniting the beloved life to ours so we can watch over its happiness, bring comfort where hardship was, and over memories of privation and suffering open the sweetest fountains of joy. Deronda’s love for Mirah was strongly imbued with that blessed protectiveness” (735). While the sentiment may be true, Eliot’s approach is disproportionate and idealistic. Eliot’s frustrated wrestling to convey precise meaning, to remain faithful to realism, is palpable in Mordecai’s theological conversations with Daniel. Modeled, in part, after a man named Kohn, a reader of Spinoza who met with a group of seekers in a pub frequented by Lewes in the mid-1830s, Mordecai is a great thinker who has long dreamed of going East to help establish a Jewish homeland. After his father and sister disappear, he remains with his mother until she dies and he is too weak to travel. He compensates for lost love by turning to his faith and sharing with others, as when the father returns and Mordecai offers him shelter. After Daniel’s search for Mirah leads him to Mordecai, their sharing of Jewish theology acts as a catalyst for both bringing Mirah and Daniel together and making it possible for them to marry and fulfill what Mordecai considers Daniel’s calling. These philosophical conversations, and their ultimate support of the spiritual Deronda marriage and calling, although ideal in content, are real in context for Eliot; they constitute an open sharing of her most fundamental philosophies of faith, love, hope, and marriage. Daniel argues against Mordecai’s romantic hopes and dreams until he turns them into reality. Mordecai’s persistent theological exchanges with Daniel, who had not otherwise been drawn towards Jews or Jewish history, solidify the Daniel/Mirah relationship and form a moral backdrop and progressively real bond for both the mutual love and spiritual marriage of Daniel and Mirah and, by contrast, the loveless, materialistic bonds constraining the Grandcourt marriage. Mordecai’s insistence of a marriage of souls between himself and Daniel, and a Kabbalistic transference of his thought to Daniel at the moment of Mordecai’s death, foreshadows and lends spirituality, or highlights the lack of it, in the Deronda and Grandcourt marriages. Although Daniel argues for autonomous choice against Mordecai’s traditional transference, a philosophy he will take into marriage, Mordecai does not ask for promises; his assumptions that it will be so are reflected in Grandcourt’s oppression of Gwendolen and the cultural smothering of Leonora by her father. Daniel determines, as he tells Joseph Kalonymos,

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that he will call himself a Jew but not promise to believe as his father has. The autonomy he claims culturally he will practice in marriage. Eliot’s personal philosophies also feed Mordecai’s theological exchanges with Daniel as they inform the marital exchanges between Gwendolen and Grandcourt. Before they marry, Gwendolen misinterprets Grandcourt’s signs of hostility as a calmness of manner, attributing his not placing the engagement ring on her finger as prideful but thinks her pride will match his. That he is emotionless she considers a credit to him; she hates fawning (a subtle comparison to Eliot’s describing Mirah as fawn-like). That the best she can say of Grandcourt is that he is not disgusting gives even Mrs. Davilow pause. Promising herself she will urge her husband to be liberal with Mrs. Glasher’s children, a generous intention, she convinces herself to believe he will do her bidding. As Austen’s Charlotte Lucas did long before in Pride and Prejudice, Eliot’s Gwendolen approaches marriage as a business arrangement and doubts Henleigh Grandcourt will be different from other men. The day they become husband and wife, the only sad faces are of those who love her and realize her unhappiness: Mrs. Davilow and Anna. Although exchanges between the Grandcourts seem more realistic than those between Daniel and Mordecai, Gwendolen, too, is dealing in fantasy, convincing herself that what she believes will be so, as Mordecai does. Gwendolen is wrong; delusion is not faith. Having irretrievably married a man who proves himself a monster, Gwendolen is immediately and brutally disenchanted. Her shock and shame, palpable abject misery, surround her. Gwendolen’s desperation spreads out like rings in a pond to her mother and to Deronda, the people she cares for. She stops smiling, pretends nonchalance, and radiates unhappiness through sad eyes. When she most needs understanding, Daniel moralizes and pulls away. Eliot is as vitriolic with Gwendolen as she is forgiving with Daniel, as she was with Hetty and Arthur, even as she argues that Gwendolen is no coquette. Gwendolen, in contrast, maintains faith in Deronda, crediting him with being unique among men because he is not her admirer but her conscience. Grandcourt is being savage because he has legal license to be; he has married Gwendolen and can do with his wife what he likes. Trapped, Gwendolen wishes only for the hardening effect that will make her indifferent to her miseries. It doesn’t come. That Eliot knew about this hardening and could depict its effects so convincingly is virtual proof that she had experienced it herself. Victorian marriages were rife with spousal abuse. Yet, “if slaughter bores Grandcourt, Gwendolen has a zest for the kill” Booth 258). She will hold her own.

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In seven weeks, marriage transforms Gwendolen into a fearful, bitter, hopeless woman. There is no Austen softening effect here, no love, only physical, emotional, and legal bondage. Her husband has mastered her. Dreading pity, Gwendolen proudly conceals her misery. Grandcourt controls Gwendolen through fear and blackmail; she hates him and dreads a sign that he hates her in return. Grandcourt has become her enemy. Wishing to become something better, Gwendolen asks Daniel for help. His advice is sound when he advises her to think of others besides herself, which may help her grow but cannot change her situation. With Daniel moralizing and Grandcourt determined to avoid Mrs. Davilow, Gwendolen has no one to talk to; her husband’s control, her own guilt, and a desire to protect those she loves by not sharing her truth isolate Gwendolen. Eliot delves into love and marriage with more complexity than Austen, albeit with less empathy, because she is striving for great realism. Gwendolen’s awareness of Lydia Glasher and her children, having read her letter and accepted her jewels, allows Grandcourt to psychologically and socially humiliate his wife. Gwendolen comes to believe that she is as evil as those who torment her, despite Grandcourt and Lydia having created their situation long before she was involved. Even Lush pities her situation and admires her stoicism. A loveless marriage, far from being security and shelter, is in reality a psychological torment Gwendolen cannot escape. Leonora Alcharisi, the Princess Halm-Eberstein, would understand Gwendolen’s sense of entrapment. One of the most carefully drawn characters of the novel, Leonora Alcharisi escaped marriage to Daniel’s father only when he died, and still cannot escape the judgment of her dead father. The Princess reveals Eliot’s continuing tensions over the lingering judgments of her own long-dead father, conflicts of faith, and lifelong ambiguities of love and marriage. Despite the Princess’s Victorian otherworldliness as a disillusioned and bitter woman trapped in a male world, she is highly believable. Eliot presents Leonora Alcharisi’s ambition to realize her potentialities as her right, even ground-breaking. Her vanity, self-obsession, even cruelty, are explainable and too common to shock. Her use of men, and by extension women, is typical of such a personality. Even her summons and denial of Daniel and her claim to have done what was best for him are self-serving, but may hold some truth. What is unforgivable is her absolute lack of repentance and shame for the damage she has caused him. Her passion for autonomy would not have had to be so self-servingly brutal. In this way, she has become her father.

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Daniel sees in his mother an empty soul, all life long ago extinguished under the double burden of enforced conformity and fierce hatred of it. The Princess had nothing to give Daniel at his birth; she has nothing to give him before her death. That she continues to harm him is unconscionable. Yet, Eliot was not scourging the mother as much as she was displaying the consequences of the mother’s choices. However unapologetic, the mother, in summoning the son, has a moral obligation to inflict no more harm. Remorse does not atone and absence of shame reinforces her guilt. Daniel’s disbelief in the face of this proud void of maternal feeling – the disintegration of his years of yearning after a mother who might need him, her confirmation that she had not wanted him during the years he compared all women to her, hearing that even now he will not be a part of her life, that his existence is unknown to her family – is a searing second rejection far more painful than the first, or that her death would bring. In securing her own life, the Princess has attempted to rob Daniel of his. He is spared nothing. Absorbing also that Sir Hugo is not his father, and he has been keeping Daniel’s identity from him at the request of this mother, makes his life, in a very real sense, a lie. That he is a Jew is all that is left; Jewishness is his only identity. That his mother does not understand his grasping at that identity robs her of humanity. Rebelling against “the secrecy that looked like shame”, the shame she does not have, Daniel rises to another level of feeling in asking if she loves her children and they love her; still, he protects her. Professing herself not to be a loving woman, the Princess stumbles: “It is a talent to love… it is subjection” (606). This is the most real the mother is with the son. In attempting to secure autonomy, she has forfeited love, even for herself, a fate that Gwendolen only avoids through confusion, determination, guilt; even negative feelings are more life-sustaining than emotional void. Insisting she has not deprived Daniel of anything worth having, the Princess unwittingly reveals the dearth of love she experienced in her own childhood, why she has no love to give Daniel. Love as stifling or undesirable is a major evolution in Eliot’s philosophy of love. The Alcharisi’s passionate self-defense, which belies her emptiness, reflects Gwendolen’s efforts to sing or act before she retreats into marriage, as the Princess has. Both consider marriage the path to freedom, but neither find it there. In contrast, Mirah hates performing and runs from arranged marriage with the Count, as she would from prison, and as the Alcharisi ran from her bondage: “And the bondage I hated for myself I wanted to keep you from. What better could the most loving mother have done? I relieved you from the bondage of having been born a Jew” (570). In

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professing to have done well by Daniel, she does not claim self-sacrifice; indeed, just the opposite: “I am not a monster, but I have not felt exactly what other women feel… I was glad to be freed from you. But I did well for you” (572). Yet, making the argument, she proves the charge. All three women have observed or experienced marriage as a form of bondage because none of the unions have been loving. Eliot’s search for the reality of love and marriage, then, culminates in an equal companionate partnership founded in a shared higher purpose, and love between any two people, such as mother and son, must be freely exchanged. The Princess claims to not love Daniel, or have ever loved him. Shamelessly, she seeks absolution from the son she denied. She believes Daniel cannot understand because he is male: “You can never imagine what it is to have a man’s force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl” (574). She is caught between father and son, and ends by warding off the retribution of a dead man, her other reason for seeing Daniel, reflecting the intense fear she felt her father imposed upon her. Eliot, exorcising her own ghosts, allows the reader to judge; she has presented the argument between mother and son with visceral realism, although the circumstances and surroundings are surreal. The mother is old and bitter, the son young and hopeful. She was rejected as a daughter and compelled to be Jewish; he was rejected as a son and compelled to be English. As reactionary adults, they each choose what they were not given. The Princess has not damned Judaism; she has scourged Jewish patriarchy. Daniel and his mother will never agree about his heritage or her decision to send him away, and he will never fully understand her actions or feelings, but because her grievances are so specific, he is free to marry a Jewess and become his grandfather’s inheritor. Daniel has been proven correct: “Some minds naturally rebel against whatever they were brought up in, and like the opposite: they see the faults in what is nearest to them” (340). Leonora’s conversion to Christianity in her second marriage, her preference for cosmopolitanism over traditionalism, her liberalism against Mordecai’s conservatism, will balance and support Daniel, with Mirah, in his attempt to help establish a Jewish nationalism through open dialogue that bridges modernity and traditionalism. A significant element of Eliot’s realism in the novel Daniel Deronda is her attention to detail in dialogue philosophy, often tedious but effectively real, yet often to the detriment of realistic plot resolutions. Gwendolen’s discussion of her part in Grandcourt’s death is far more developed that the death itself.

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Daniel’s parentage and doubts are laid to rest. Sir Hugo, like Daniel, has kept his own counsel, yet he has furnished this son surrogate with the only affection and sense of rootedness he has known. When Daniel learns the truth about his parentage, there is a sense that their close relationship will not change. Daniel, in not being given an identity, is free to create one of his own and to love whom he wishes, a freedom Eliot deeply understood and claimed for herself. Sir Hugo asks Daniel’s forgiveness for any pain he has caused, but also reminds him that, whatever else has changed, he is Daniel’s oldest and best friend, who has loved him like a son from the beginning. Love in Eliot’s last novel is multi-faceted. Eliot portrays Daniel as deserving to lead since, unlike Grandcourt, Daniel cares for others’ suffering based on the empathy he has learned from his own suffering; “he is not the English Philistine, xenophobe, and misogynist” of “the Grandcourts’ malingering British materialism” (Booth 260), but possesses a more realistic humanity than the emotionally void Grandcourt, who, ironically, is Sir Hugo’s blood kin. With this distinction of allowing a filial love between men who are not genetically related, and a lack of love between those who are, Eliot makes yet another strong argument about the nature and reality of sincere love, in whatever form. This lack of feeling in Henleigh Grandcourt, whatever its cause, is felt by and affects all who should be close to him. As real as is Gwendolen’s marital plight, she is not the only woman who suffers by Grandcourt’s hand. His life is complicated by his relationship with Lydia Glasher, a marriage in all but name, as his will attests. At first, an arrangement of lust that flattered both, aging and heirs have changed the dynamics. Lydia is far more Grandcourt’s equal than Gwendolen. Cold, self-obsessed, determined, ambitious, she pleases herself, abandoning a marriage and child, disregarding self-respect, reputation, social acceptance and appearances, and in consummate self-will, propagates a new brood who will forever be marked by her choices. The lifestyle she despised and rejected she now seeks for less than noble reasons: she is growing older and may be dismissed at Grandcourt’s whim. Sex is no longer effective for Lydia in getting what she wants from Grandcourt, and pleading disgusts him. She has always accepted his voluntary support and has never insisted on security. His demand for the return of her jewels is a shock, a clear sign that she has lost favor. Lydia’s treatment of Gwendolen is as ruthless, possibly more so, than Grandcourt’s; it is pure projection. Grandcourt has every right to marry and Gwendolen is a third party. Lydia is a woman who has managed poorly.

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Mrs. Glasher’s complaint that she should be Grandcourt’s wife, when she is legally the wife of another man is ludicrous. Only Gwendolen’s immaturity and guilty conscience would lend credence to such an exorbitant claim; it is outside the bounds of reality, and the interpretation “I am a woman’s life” is pure romantic sentimentality (190). Lydia Glasher’s situation is self-imposed. Eliot moves further from reality when she alludes to Lydia’s power over Grandcourt – that he cannot shake her, touch her hostilely, that he shrinks from the only threat that would frighten her, that she might not believe him, and that there is nothing he hates more than violence. Lydia annoys Grandcourt because she is direct. Eliot has little pity for Lydia Glasher; certainly, this worldly and calculating woman is more responsible for her sufferings than Hetty, or any other Eliot female characters. Grandcourt is immovable; Lydia takes the lash. By acting the monster, Grandcourt is creating resistance in Gwendolen. Mr. Vandernoodt presciently speaks of Grandcourt being between two dangerous women, Gwendolen being possibly the most dangerous. Eliot’s moral authority and commitment to realism in fiction (and beyond) will not rest with Gwendolen riding out her marriage in English reserve and quiet misery under Grandcourt’s mastery. Grandcourt uses Lush to deliver the ultimate offense, yet her response even Lush can respect. The yachting expedition is one more way to assert absolute control; Grandcourt won her by rank and luxury and she owes him marital obeisance. This male attitude of absolute authority was not uncommon Victorian marital philosophy in mid-century England. What was not as common was Eliot’s brutally realistic fictional depiction of marital abuse; only Dickens came close. Grandcourt displays Gwendolen, particularly to Deronda; although he is a brute, Grandcourt is careful not to harm his wife so that he cannot parade her to the world; the deepest torment is psychological. Providence, however, as Eliot, knocks him from the boat to drown and Gwendolen does not interfere. Not an author to rescue female protagonists before Gwendolen, in this novel Eliot, at long last, brings herself to abandon a male protagonist. As Sir Hugo attests after Grandcourt’s death, “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it” (651); Gwendolen gains a protector in Sir Hugo. In consummate misery, Gwendolen had begun to fight back, in small ways, long before. Grandcourt’s changing of his will, recognizing his son as heir, pleases her; she sees it as her atonement, and hopes she bears no child of her own. She becomes more open about her friendship with Deronda and attempts to understand her suffering, as well as the larger justice

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and suffering of the world. With Grandcourt’s death, Gwendolen accepts that she sold herself to a man for maintenance money at far too high a price, but she is determined to honor her bargain. As her hatred for Grandcourt grows, however, she begins to fantasize his death, feeling less guilty even as she fights against becoming evil herself. Eliot suggests that this fight against evil will save Gwendolen. Grandcourt’s drowning is more realistic than Mirah’s attempt, but his end and Gwendolen’s reaction to it also borders on the romantic as Eliot struggles to keep her plot and characters’ actions legitimate. The contrived relief for Gwendolen is less than convincing, but satisfying nonetheless, as one of Eliot’s rare allowances for a female protagonist. Gwendolen irrationally associates Grandcourt’s death with her guilt for marrying him despite his heirs. She also convinces herself that imagining is the equivalent of doing, the sign of a conscience that will eventually recover. As Gwendolen confesses her sins, intentions, and imaginings, she realizes that Daniel pities rather than loves her, and she accepts this as part of her penance. She has come through the fire, still caring about those she loved before but now wanting their respect and appreciating their presence. Daniel, explaining that he is going to the East to learn about his race, tells Gwendolen that, in spirit, he will be more with her than before. Yet, confessing that throughout their friendship he has been emotionally bound to Mirah, he realizes he has been cruel, and Gwendolen has become the victim of his happiness; his gain is her loss. With “I mean to live,” the novel ends, estranging the reader from Gwendolen’s uncharted future, her possibilities (Beer 223). Moving away from being dependent on a man who is distant but oppresses her sadistically, and a man who leaves her, albeit in pity (Daniel), Gwendolen is determined to become her own person, albeit sadder but wiser. In creating Gwendolen and saving her, Eliot makes restitution to Hetty and Rosamond, who also sympathized with others – Hetty with her baby, Rosamond with Dorothea and Will. Gwendolen dislikes love-making and the thought of childbearing, and wishes for an independent and creative life. She needs more than love. Gwendolen asks for ordinary freedoms but works extraordinarily hard to receive them, as Eliot did herself. She is Eliot’s most realist and radical symbol of women’s oppression in marriage, supported by the Princess’ radical realism as a woman oppressed by religious doctrine, who believes love subjugates men and women. Gwendolen survives, as Hetty did not, and is given an opportunity to make her own way, as Rosamund was not. She makes a choice to live, and since it does not matter how so long as she

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survives on her own, the novel leaves Gwendolen to an uncharted future, stronger for having known Daniel Deronda and wiser from having married Henleigh Grandcourt. Gwendolen’s survival is not enviable or as strictly promised as Daniel’s may seem to be. She will live with her mother and sisters. There is no indication of a companionate love for her or any of the Davilow women, despite, or perhaps because of, their newfound financial security. Gwendolen’s past remark to her then future husband has proven true: “We women can’t go in search of adventures… We must stay where we grow… We are brought up like the flowers, to look as pretty as we can, and be dull without complaining,” to which Grandcourt had replied, “But a woman can be married” (122). Gwendolen married him believing a strong woman could be reasonably happy as his wife, not out of feeling but because he suited her purpose. Having experienced the reality of marriage with a man who, within weeks, could assume complete control over her, she may or may not be able to trust again. Gwendolen, a fun loving young woman of playful talk and outward assurance is, in less than a year, a shell of her former self, but she has survived. Eliot treated male and female characters differently because they were treated differently in Victorian life, and because, “As Woolf observed, Eliot’s heroines present ‘the incomplete version of the story of George Eliot herself’” (Booth 275). Writing Daniel Deronda in her late fifties, Eliot excused Deronda for his shortcomings and the pain he caused Gwendolen, just as she had allowed Robert Dempster (Janet’s husband), Adam Bede, Arthur Donnithorne, Tertius Lydgate, Will Ladislaw, and Edward Causabon their faults. Even Henleigh Grandcourt, her most destructive male protagonist, was allowed a modicum of humanity. Undeniably, Eliot subscribed to a double standard, with her female characters suffering inordinately – not to make them stronger, some did not survive – but because they were female. Gwendolen Harleth is the tortured victim of a sadistic man who escapes through a death that, in itself, haunts her, instilling guilt even about her will to survive. Eliot favors Daniel and Mirah, who also have been tormented, with companionate love, a shared spirituality, and a promised future together. Love is the key. The Grandcourts’ loveless marriage alienates and weakens them. The Derondas’ loving companionship bonds and strengthens them, creating an abundance of love they will share with others. Gwendolen, in learning to love herself, will love her family and thrive. Grandcourt dies for the lack of love. The novel’s ambiguous ending is a testament to the invalidity of accepting moral assumptions about “the ‘nature of woman’ or the ‘descent of man’” (Beer 227).

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Summation At the end of her career, following Daniel Deronda, George Eliot could look back with pride and a deep sense of literary accomplishment. She had done well in a journalistic career, completed major translations, written and published several works of poetry, essays, and short stories, and, after Scenes from Clerical Life, which included “Janet’s Repentance,” had begun writing novels. Adam Bede was the first, Daniel Deronda the last. Only two had given her significant difficulty, both set outside her early nineteenth century Midlands: Romola and Daniel Deronda. The body of Eliot’s fiction had dealt, in varying degrees, with the realities of love and marriage, often harshly, rarely with gentleness, but as realistically as she knew how. With the Derondas, it all came to an end. What had begun in ambiguity ended in ambiguity because Eliot could not achieve perfection in depicting reality. Contrasts between Adam Bede and Daniel Deronda demonstrate most strikingly Eliot’s personal, professional, and philosophical development during her career as a novelist. Eliot’s first and last novels focused on love and marriage in strikingly different ways: she had brought them from settings of the past to the present, increased both realism and spirituality, and had left their futures open to interpretation. The setting of Adam Bede had been rural and local; that of Daniel Deronda was global. Daniel had rescued Gwendolen and Mirah; Adam had failed to rescue Hetty. Adam used his hands to work; Daniel used his mind. Adam held no one accountable for sins against those he loved; Daniel had a deep sense of injustice and actively favored the oppressed. Adam bonded with men; Daniel bonded with women. Daniel sought the ways and people of the world; Adam was content to stay in his own world with his own people. Eliot had expanded the thinking, interests, philosophies, and scope and views of her world. Eliot dared mid-nineteenth century readers to defy established social mores, that with love and marriage in Victorian England came the obligation to suffer in silence, to accept extramarital affairs in an effort to maintain family, to bow to the male/female double standard, and to accept domesticity in lieu of personal fulfillment. Eliot knew these difficult choices could be made; she had made them herself. In a sense, marriage for fortune had become marriage for security, again often putting feeling last. The social acceptance of Austen’s time had been replaced by social propriety, what was proper rather than what was expected. Eliot had not been proper, but the loyalty between her and Lewes, their literary partnership, and the sheer length and success of their personal association forced society to reconsider its definition of commitment.

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When George Eliot died in 1880, she was properly and legally married, but many knew that the relationship, while a partnership of sorts – particularly financially – was not comparable to the companionate marriage she had shared with George Henry Lewes. George Eliot knew this very brief marriage was a marriage in name only, undertaken for all the wrong reasons, finalizing the lie that marriage required law to legitimize it. Eliot blamed society for making such choices necessary, inadvertently living her argument. She was not alone; John Cross would be her companion until her death, but she paid a price for fulfilling conventional expectations, and must have been disappointed that marriage, when it finally came, was so empty. She had married for convenience; her first relationship had been far more meaningful. Austen had challenged the very necessity of marriage in Emma, if there was fortune; Eliot challenged the need for marriage if there was love. Wilde would challenge the need for marriage altogether. Austen believed if men and women were allowed to choose whom they loved, companionate marriages would strengthen society rather than veneer it with false respectability. Eliot believed that companionate partnerships based on love would legitimize society with genuine feeling and respectability more than Victorian marriages that had become convenient fronts for troubled relationships and families. In this, she foreshadowed Wilde’s philosophy. Marianne Evans began life very conservatively, just wanting to be loved; George Eliot ended life as a marital radical, having been loved most outside of marriage. The harshness and heartlessness of sex without love is an Eliot leitmotif, and she was not afraid to depict sex realistically. In Adam Bede, the lusting and stalking take place outside of marriage, in Daniel Deronda the cruelty of both is sharpest within marriage. Women are unprotected, men fully protected. Hetty is more loving than Gwendolen, yet Hetty is persecuted and Gwendolen is not, although Hetty does not contemplate murder and Gwendolen does. For Austen, marriage can be shelter from destitution and spinsterhood; for Eliot, shelter from loneliness and the law; for Wilde, shelter from public ostracism and ruin. As George Eliot left the human stage, Oscar Wilde was literally courting it. He would give new meaning to the courage the three authors shared in living their lives outside the status quo, redefining love and challenging marriage in unique and prescient ways. Like Jane Austen, George Eliot was fascinated with the way men and women interacted. Unlike Austen, she became increasingly interested in the dynamics of marriage before and after, with and without, the legalities; the politics of the marital triangle; the effects of the industrial

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revolution in changing the face of the community and those stresses on marriage, and the interplay of power in sexual roles between males and females. Oscar Wilde, coming into his own as a writer and playwright while Eliot most enjoyed popularity, would take these evolving roles into unexpected but inevitable areas in the final decade of the nineteenth century. As Eliot bridged the gap between Austen’s love and companionate marriage of men and women and Wilde’s loving partnerships between and within the sexes, her own courageous questioning of mid-century sanctioned love, marriage, and partnerships would support Wilde in going further.

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CHAPTER 3 EXPANDING THE CONVERSATION, CHALLENGING THE SEXUAL NORM: OSCAR WILDE

Historical Overview: Late Nineteenth Century From the perspective of more than a century since Oscar Wilde’s death, the most shocking aspect of the latter years of Queen Victoria’s reign may be the depth of discrepancy, on a grand scale, between the real and the ideal, what was and what seemed to be. This was particularly true in late Victorian love and marriage. Contrary to the myth of their sexual repression, Victorians were obsessed with sex, increasingly so as the age moved to its close. As a duplicitous personality, a public man of secrets, a wearer of masks, even as a lover of both women and men, Oscar Wilde was the quintessential representative of his age; indeed, he differed most from his peers in his openness. As a wit, a playwright, a larger than life harbinger of things to come, he was not only vital to the times, he was both necessary to social change and a victim of its growing pains. Perhaps at no other time and place in history could he have more deeply affected a standing culture by being himself. In his intrinsic strengths lay his genius, as in his inherent weaknesses lay his ruin. This was Wilde’s reality. The English people of the late nineteenth century benefited from both. By challenging his social façade, the Victorians were forced to face their own; in defending what he was, the poser became the man. As Wilde himself knew and confessed, in the end, it could have been no other way. English society needed Oscar Wilde, and it seems that England had been unwittingly preparing for this Irish poet of many colors from its Early Modern history. Victorians agonized over values: social, marital, sexual, family. Although Wilde was convicted, by questionable means, of gross indecency at the height of an illustrious literary and dramatic career, his refusal to deny, indeed his decision to publicly defend, same-sex love has forever made him a champion or a pariah of its legacy, but not its instigator. Sodomy had been illegal in England since the seventh century, yet, until the reign of Henry VIII, cases had always been dealt with by the ecclesiastical courts, the usual punishment for conviction being death by live burial, burning, hanging, or drowning. Then, in 1533, “the detestable and abominable Vice of Buggery” was codified into secular law and became a felony, also punishable by death (McKenna 78). That year, as part of a fundamental renegotiation of boundaries between church and state, the English

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parliament passed the first civil injunction in English history against “Buggery committed with Mankind or with Beast”. The Church had identified sodomy as a transgressive act practiced by men or women, one of the greatest sins committed against divine law, so grave, in fact, that it was referred to as “the unnameable”. The state would punish such acts from an ever-evolving perspective (Cohen 104). Yet, the practice, infrequently punished, did not cease. Throughout the seventeenth century, a man could enjoy sex with either a woman or a man, if he was the aggressor, without fear of stigma, but the woman was key; he was a fop if he could not win her and a cuckold if he could not keep her (Sinfield 33). Late in this century, the bisexual, pressured by the lusty, lower- to middle-class cross-dressing men of the molly houses, was expected to choose. In the 1690s, Societies for the Reformation of Manners were formed by men who deeply believed that England was degenerating both morally and spiritually (Cohen 110). By the eighteenth century, sodomites were generally same-sex, effeminate, and passive, while libertines were interested only in women. Men of the privileged classes, however, widely associated with effeminacy, often remained bisexual and did as they wished: an aristocratic male might “address any subordinate creature” for sex (43). Then, quite suddenly, genuine feelings between men and women came to be considered a mark of high civilization. Men were expected to be manly and women, domestic. Family, inheritance, male bonding, apparent monogamy, and traditional male privilege were all important to this social structure. Fine feeling was thought to be a requisite for fine living; men produced wealth and women consumed it elegantly, producing more effective citizens in the process. Few secular punishments of buggery took place in the eighteenth century, whether because it was not as frequently practiced or because it was better hidden. In direct contrast to this code of individual refinement, however, the Roman church was castigated as a “hotbed of sodomy,” the “New Sodom” (Cohen 106). Toward the end of the century, tensions grew between church and state, as well as liberal and conservative views of the expressions of love and mechanics of marriage. Rousseau’s premise that girls “must be trained to bear the yoke from the first, so that they may not feel it,” and Mary Wollstonecraft’s argument that girls should be educated and must be equal to men to achieve their full humanity, had transformed masculinity and femininity into a battleground for radical change (Sinfield 56-7). As a reaction to these tensions, in the first three decades of the nineteenth century, arrests and executions for buggery rose dramatically, “from less than one a decade to an average of one

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a year” (Cohen 115). In 1828, when Parliament moved to combine fifty-seven criminal legislations under one bill, “Offenses Against the Person,” they added buggery to the list of capital offenses and public executions continued until 1836 (117). By then, the middle-class public-school system had come under scrutiny. Immorality, vice, and sin – terms used by schools like those Wilde and his brother attended, that earlier had been taken to mean student lying, cheating, stealing, bullying, or drunkenness – were, by mid-century, understood as code for same-sex acts. Even then, schools charged with instilling manliness in boys, known to allow cruelty and violence, were tolerated by fathers who deemed it best for their sons to learn to endure physical and psychological hardship. Taking boys from mothers who had dominated their childhoods and subjecting them to the hard reality of systematic brutalization was considered a good education that fostered male bonding, a healthy insensitivity to cross-sex relations, and service to country or the professions. Schools meant to protect young men from effeminacy, however, subjected young boys to years of same-sex practices, glorified in Greek and Roman texts that formed the core of the curriculum. Older boys practiced such acts with new recruits that, when they left school, could consign them to hard labour. “If all persons guilty of Oscar Wilde’s offences were to be clapped in gaol, there would be a very surprising exodus from Eton and Harrow, Rugby and Winchester, to Pentonville and Holloway,” W. F. Stead remarked after the Wilde trials (Sinfield 65-6). Public schools, by providing a framework within which same-sex acts could be conducted, were key to the introduction of such practices to generations of male Victorians. In 1857, William Acton, a well-known physician who later supported the Contagious Disease Acts of the 1860s and ‘70s, wrote The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs to counteract texts written without mention of sex. Acton believed manliness had always been fragile. “Its existence seems necessary to give a man that consciousness of his dignity, of his character as head and ruler, and of his importance, which is absolutely essential to the wellbeing of the family, and through it, of society itself” (Sinfield 63). As a positive outlet for their sexual urges, he advised young men in good health to marry, “the legitimated access to heterosexual intercourse” (Cohen 48). Arguing for male sexual satisfaction within marriage, Acton was challenging the Victorian double standard that respectable married men could have extramarital intercourse, typically across social classes with servants or prostitutes, while

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married women were restricted to premarital virginity and marital chastity. The solution to this dichotomy was prostitution, “fallen women who kept the rest of the world pure” (69). The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 had enhanced legal reform, but the reality in England was that men and women were still treated differently under the law. Population demographics, however, were changing, which, in turn, influenced marital dynamics. At the turn of the century, 20 percent of the population lived in towns; by late century, 20 percent were rural (Gagnier 171). The final decades became an age of bachelors, or husbands who acted like bachelors. Men spent much of their free time in pubs and clubs, not with wives and families; in fact, this old school tie network functioned until the late twentieth century. Such a regular separation of husbands and wives reinforced a separation of authority, as Oscar and Constance Wilde experienced in their marriage. To a late Victorian couple, this marital dynamic was the norm. It was not unusual for husbands and wives to lead quite separate lives. Concurrently, an expanding group of Victorian feminists rejected the concept that men were martyrs to involuntary sexual impulses and charged males with degrading poor women who were twice victims – of exploitive males and a society that denied adequate wages, shifting responsibility for vice away from the women who practiced it to the men who sought it. Male pretension and opportunity provoked feminists, which, in a vicious circle, increased male insistence on male power. In the 1860s, the concept of women owning property continued to be resisted by Parliament: “The authority of husbands would be diminished by the fact that they did not possess absolutely both their own property and the property of their wives. Authority and property overlap and reinforce each other to the point where the authority of the husband over his wife amounts to a demand that she be his property” (Sinfield 64). Feminists were also outraged by the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864-69, which brutally shamed and punished female prostitutes for what was considered males’ inevitable sexuality. Eventually, however, where feminist arguments had been ineffective, middle-class males began adopting work and purity ethics as a way of distinguishing themselves from effeminate upper-class philanderers. Once middle-class males fully subscribed to these new ethics, the wealthy, and those who wished to appear wealthy, could only collaborate with them or become conspicuously idle, morally lax, and effeminate dandies by contrast (Sinfield 68). Marriage was also proving challenging. In 1879, five years before Oscar Wilde married Constance Lloyd, John Stuart Mill wrote a chilling synopsis of matrimony:

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By the old laws of England, the husband was… the lord of the wife… the murder of a man by his wife was called treason [and] the penalty was burning to death… The two are [now] called ‘one person in law’… whatever is hers is his, but the parallel inference is never drawn… [T]he children... are by law his… If she leaves her husband, she can take… neither her children nor anything… her own… [H]e can compel her to return, by law, or by physical force. (Mill)

Gender relations, then, were transforming in fundamental and varied ways. By the late 1800s, there was much more than a war of the sexes taking place between men and women; there was a sexual revolution. Although the belief that a woman had to experience orgasm to conceive was still widespread well into the last decades (Mason 8), married couples were marrying later and having fewer children (Mason 53). Throughout the 1880s, the social dominance of men weakened, and feminism gained strength. High-profile women joined the suffrage movement and led demonstrations for the right to vote. Women could also practice medicine and, in 1880, Eliza Orme became the first woman to obtain a law degree. Yet, until 1882, married women remained legally subordinate to their husbands and their property rights were surrendered upon marriage. Newspapers reported horrible injustices, with husbands squandering their wives’ fortunes. Then, in 1882, the Married Women’s Property Act gave wives legal autonomy and control of their own wealth, with all the privileges and responsibilities this entailed. Constance enjoyed this liberty and bore this responsibility (Moyle 62-3). Concurrently, men continued same-sex practices. Variously interpreted versions of Henry VIII’s Statute of 1533 were cited to regulate same-sex acts in England until the summer of 1885, when Parliament enacted the Criminal Law Amendment Act to provide for “the Protection of Women and Girls; the suppression of brothels, and other purposes.” These purposes were to more effectively suppress prostitution recruitment and brothels, and to stop the white slave trade into which English females were sold into sexual slavery abroad, a prevalent practice. It also raised the age of consent from thirteen to sixteen (McKenna 78). During the last stages of the Bill’s passing into law, Henry Labouchère, the Liberal MP of Northampton, had been so affected by W.T. Stead’s report on the prevalence of male prostitution in England that he attached an amendment criminalizing male same-sex acts in private, allegedly targeting procurers of prostitution (Sinfield 13). From medieval times, sex between men had been considered, beyond a sin or a crime, a contagion that could be spread by sexual contact. Labouchère and others were also determined to stamp this out. Although the

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death penalty for sodomy had been eliminated in 1861, the definition, with or by a male or female, had remained. While the Statute of 1533 had been equal (male and female) and specific (sodomy), allowing sodomy a potential sin of all, the Amendment targeted a specific group (men) and criminalized non-specific acts, in private. This vague, invasive, and prejudicial legislation, which should have been acknowledged legally indefensible, a decade later condemned Oscar Wilde to a maximum penalty of two years solitary confinement and hard labor for practices then being committed by countless men at all levels of English society (Cohen 93). In 1885, a conviction for sodomy carried a maximum life sentence, but required a heavy burden of proof. Before the Labouchère Amendment, non-penetrative sex between men was technically legal. Labouchère explained his reasoning for writing the amendment: the public’s perception was that sex between men was on the increase. Sir Howard Vincent, Director of Criminal Investigations at Scotland Yard, had called men soliciting sex with other men “an increasing scourge.” The 1884 Dublin Castle Scandal had also brought to public attention the sexual contacts between highly placed English officials and local men (McKenna 79). In a fundamental change of law, Section 11 prohibited unspecific acts of gross indecency between males in public or private rather than male or female commission of a specifically defined act, as the Statute of 1533 had. The Amendment read, in part, “Any male person who, in public or private commits or is a party to the commission of, or procures the commission by any male person, of any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and being convicted hereof shall be liable at the discretion of the Court to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour” (McKenna 80). John Addington Symonds, author of A Problem in Greek Ethics, called Section 11 “a disgrace to legislation, by its vagueness of diction and the obvious incitement to false accusation” (80). Little or no proof was required. What happened in private could neither be proven nor disproven. Section 11 invited blackmail – an allegation of gross indecency was sufficient to arrest, judge, and ruin a man – and, again vaguely, criminalized anyone who was a party to a sexual act between men. The clause allowed prosecution of any man for gross indecency, and was used as such until 1967 (81). The Cleveland Street Affair of 1889-90, the first prosecution under Section 11 to elicit extensive media attention, involved a male brothel of young postal employees offered to an elite

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and often titled clientele, but Wilde’s three trials in 1895 were by far the most sensational, and solidified the concept of male homosexuality. The Marquis of Queensbury’s infamous taunt did not technically accuse Wilde of sodomy, but of posing as a sodomite. Although Wilde sued, he ultimately withdrew the charge. In a second trial, against Wilde, the prosecution argued that he was the kind of person who would be inclined to commit sodomy, brought in paid witnesses to testify against him, and held Wilde responsible for supposed intimations of same-sex references in his written works. Although the jury for this trial remained undecided and Wilde was acquitted, a third trial was called in which the Court convicted him of gross indecency rather than sodomy, since the latter required proof they did not have. Paradoxically, Wilde had committed the legally greater crime, but not being proven, he was convicted of the lesser. Not, however, before he used the Court as a public platform from which to defend love between men. In the first trial, Wilde’s counsel withdrew to protect him from mounting incriminations, and the Court was forced to find in Queensberry’s favor. The second trial ended inconclusively. The third was a sham, a determined effort to convict and make an example of Wilde. Since the acts he was accused of had occurred in private, the judge allowed witness testimony as sufficient substantiation of truth. Wilde was convicted on hearsay for acts he did not deny, although he denied their criminality, under an indefensibly vague law by a Court so determined to win that proof was deemed inconsequential. Newspapers vilified him, as he had projected in An Ideal Husband, and many who had idolized Wilde turned against him. In the days before his arrest, he was publicly, albeit vaguely, redefined from a popular playwright and author to the type of man who tended toward same-sex acts, disturbingly deemed grossly indecent only between men; had those same acts taken place between a man and woman in 1895, they would have been lawful, forever identifying the law and Court as gender biased. Long before Oscar Wilde’s conviction for gross indecency in the commission of same- sex acts, same-sex passion had been considered quintessentially masculine, even an advantageous alternative to potential diseases, costs of prostitution, or the birth of illegitimate children to a mistress. The public nature and legal outcomes of the Wilde trials, reminders of the dangers of blackmail, and negative public reaction to Wilde’s perceived personal effeminacy reestablished widespread fears of both opponents and proponents of same-sex practices, but also helped to draw Victorians into a more progressive age. The extraordinary applause in the Old Bailey after Wilde’s heartfelt defense of same-sex love and relationships, a public support he

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could not have anticipated, signaled an increasingly open approach to same-sex love that would transcend the homophobia of the late Victorian period and point the way to decriminalization and full homosexual rights in the next century. Oscar Wilde’s evolving philosophies, artistic constructions, and personal preferences in love and marriage were socially precocious. During the Victorian sexual revolution, as feminists worked for equal rights for women and middle-class men were charged with sexual oppression, same-sex men were caught up in this wide pattern of social change. “The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species” (Sinfield 12). After 1895, the term “homosexual”, first used by Hungarian writer Karoly Maria Benkert, was individualized. Homosexual identity, as opposed to homosexual practice, was an impossibility before 1890s England: “Wilde did not, properly speaking, enjoy a gay identity” (Gagnier 140). What fathers and brothers and husbands might have done suddenly became what they might be. Wilde’s trials made public what had formerly been, privately, de rigueur. In Shakespeare’s time, same-sex passion was an aspect of life in which anyone might participate. During Wilde’s lifetime, such passion was considered common yet debauched, practiced by respectable men but still a crime, a sin, an open but stifled secret. In declaring for the Crown against Wilde, Sir Alfred Wills pronounced that it was “impossible to doubt” he had been “the center of a circle of extensive corruption of the most hideous kind among young men”, although the Court had failed to prove so (Belford 263). Wilde’s disproportionate treatment and the severity of his sentence shamed the Court. Yet, not allowed to speak, he was not silenced; Wilde would write his greatest work of realism from a prison cell. Victorian masculinity rejected the aestheticism Wilde championed in the 1870s, yet, he continued to claim a dignity for the Hellenistic model of male friendship even as its perceived attachment to femininity, and by extension effeminacy, caused increasing confusion and anxiety about same-sex identity. Wilde was a public target of anxious interpretations of masculinity as the fields of psychology and medicine addressed sexuality. By the 1890s, same-sex desire had come to be represented and perceived as especially degenerate and dangerous. Wilde’s court appearances increased fears of men with perceived abnormal and ungovernable sexual preferences who might corrupt the nation’s youth. As a celebrity, Oscar Wilde was the most notorious target of the Labouchère Amendment. After he was imprisoned for gross indecency, effeminate behavior and same-sex desire were linked in public perception. When Wilde died in France in December 1900, only months before Queen Victoria, he seemed to close the nineteenth

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century, usher out Victorian concepts of love and marriage, and leave behind a legacy of literary wit and wisdom destined to long survive him. Introduction Nothing that anyone has ever said or written about Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde has been more brilliant, or often more accurate, than what he stated in his lifetime about himself. While Jane Austen, early in the nineteenth century, used personal experience and observation to construct her innovative and ever-evolving philosophies of love and companionate marriage, and George Eliot, mid-century, reconceived herself and both her own and her fictional constructions of loving male/female marital partnerships, Wilde, in the increasingly critical final decades of the 1800s, fundamentally challenged restrictive Victorian concepts of love and partnership dynamics, even to gender. Defining aestheticism as “a search for the beautiful, the secret of life” (qtd. in Hofer 14), teasing the English public into accepting his artistically altered constructs with paradox and humor, and reflecting their socially sanctioned mores and hypocrisies back to them, Wilde came to reject Victorian normative constructions, which he himself had earlier attempted to follow, in favor of an individual moral code. Unable to forgive him for exposing their moral pretenses while acknowledging and defending his alternate identity, the English society that had helped to create Oscar Wilde ultimately destroyed him. Wilde’s personal and literary constructions of love, marriage, and companionate partnerships were as fluid and evolving as his ever-changing definitions of reality, yet these concepts, particularly of love, have since come to define him. While it would be unusual for most biographers and critics to begin a comprehensive interpretation of the literary works of Jane Austen or George Eliot by first analyzing their loving relationships or sexual preferences, many have led with this approach to Wilde and his works. Despite many, if not most, young Victorian boys having been dressed in girls’ clothing during their first years, Victorian mothers widely influencing male children due to family structure, respectable Victorian men long practicing extramarital and same-sex lifestyles, and nineteenth-century boarding schools being known as breeding grounds of same-sex experimentation for generations of boys, rarely are Wilde’s literary peers defined by such facts as he often is. A mere mention of Oscar Wilde too often brings to mind his trials, his bisexuality, his effeminate manner, all before his work and wit. While Wilde promoted himself with studied effect, that effect was not the whole of the man. Artistically, first and foremost, Wilde considered himself a poet; he believed poetry to be

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the highest form of literary art. Personally, he was a lover, of women and men surely, but also of art, culture, history, nature, knowledge, people, places, beauty, youth. He had a sensitive soul, but could be cruel in its protection. Professionally, Wilde was ambitious for recognition, but also realistic in his pursuit of money; his successful plays were written as much to provide for those he loved as to support the lifestyle he chose for himself. Socially, Wilde believed himself, as he wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray, to be “in the native land of the hypocrite,” yet he contributed much – artistically, economically, philosophically – to the English society whose acceptance he craved (118). Wishing to be famous for all the right reasons, most notably his art, he was forced to settle for being notorious for all the wrong reasons, and being misjudged. Characterizing this multifaceted individual, particularly through his sexuality, while many of his contemporaries lived similar lives without sensation and were judged by any other criteria, is yet another injustice against a complex man who was son, brother, husband, father, lover, friend, poet, author, essayist, editor, and playwright. Paradoxically, however, to understanding Wilde’s evolving constructions of love and marriage, the sensationalism of his life and art are integral. Oscar Wilde knew himself well. As early as his days at Magdalen, after losing a scholarship on a whim, he admitted to being “ridiculously easily led astray” (Ellmann 69). At Oxford, he confessed to a friend, “My weakness is that I do what I will and get what I want” (65). This was true throughout his life, and there were consequences. Working both within and against the society on which he based his career, he satirized Victorian double standards while requiring and thriving on the support of the English society that established and practiced them. With formidable tools of his trade – intelligence, insight, irony, paradox, cynicism, satire, wordplay – Wilde created both realistic and idealistic fiction and nonfiction from male and female points of view. Despite his love of play, his indisputable dark side displayed a fatalism that more than a few critics have taken to be a prescient awareness of his end, particularly the tragic foreshadowing of his relationship with Alfred Lord Douglas with the writing of The Picture of Dorian Gray before they had met. Wilde had a penchant for love but a predilection for friendship, yet few deserted him when he made the switch: his wife, family, and friends were constant; mentors and lovers forgave; readers continued to read, and audiences returned play after play. Even the press attacked but did not ignore him. Wilde’s style has been accepted as intrinsic to the man, and, today, many of his works are considered classics.

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When Wilde professed that art was a consolation amid the harshness of life – “Work never seems to me a reality, but a way of getting rid of reality” – wisdom mingled with wit, as was often the case when he expressed his philosophies. Anyone searching for the real Oscar Wilde will find him most honestly in his art. Indeed, he was the personification of the English Aesthetic movement, which ended when he settled in Paris after his release from prison; he never returned to England and the movement died with him. Wilde was an aficionado of Greek art because of its classicism and seeming permanence, but his tastes were varied. Art was many things to him beyond a means of adorning his world and linking fantasy with reality, not the least of which was a way to retain individuality while making it pay, an approach he shared with Austen and Eliot. In Dorian Gray, he concludes, “All art is quite useless,” and in that way both champions art for art’s (beauty’s) sake and states the cold reality that it cannot be used, but only enjoyed. Art as a commodity was not a contradiction for Wilde; he believed that art and ethics were distinct and separate, that artists had a right to profit from their creations, and that borrowing from other artists was ethical because new and original works were created in the process. During creation, art was unformed and fantastic; only after creation did art become real. In Wilde’s world, as the ultimate means of self-expression, art might be useless practicability, but it could be found in the joy of life, while he arranged flowers, positioned blue china, composed a poem, chose a dress for his wife, reinvented his style, decorated their Tite Street home, composed a story for his children, or wrote a book, essay, or play. This active element of Astheticism allowed him to better understand himself, beyond and despite intrusions of sordid realism. Wilde revered aestheticism because he had known such harsh reality. He pitied those who did not understand, ignoring ridicule in an attempt to share: “Man is hungry for beauty… The ridicule which aesthetics have been subjected to is only the envy of blind, unhappy souls who cannot find the path to beauty” (qtd. in Hofer 16). As his aestheticism evolved, he became a proponent of realism, albeit intermittently. Wilde often posed, more to realistically protect than idealistically pretend, but he was not, at heart, a poseur; he wanted to be the artist and to create the art; such creations validated him. Since the acts for which he was imprisoned are no longer crimes, the art for which he must be remembered can now be enjoyed on its merits. Oscar Wilde had style. He was an Irishman by birth and an Englishman by choice, facts often misconstrued. “It must not be forgotten,” wrote fellow Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, who knew him well, “that though by culture Wilde was a citizen of all civilized capitals,

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he was at root a very Irish Irishman, and as such, a foreigner everywhere but in Ireland” (Pearce 33). Yet, after he settled in London, Wilde seldom returned to his homeland and rarely referred to his nationality except in reference to his mother’s reputation as a poet. Only on his American tour, when he spoke to Irish-American audiences, did he seem to relate to his Irish roots. With growing interests in art, literature, travel, new cultures, and Catholicism, he chose to move on from his Irish beginnings: “Wilde was a foreigner everywhere, even in Ireland” (Pearce 34). Wilde’s adopted aesthete attitude and persona must, in some sense, have been supported by his Irish otherness, as were his natural abilities to tell and write children’s folk stories, create the fantasy that underlies The Picture of Dorian Gray, develop a love of all things classical, and develop a solid individuality with which to survive the Englishness he loved and hated. If his Irish heritage had given him an appreciation of the past, Wilde also kept a clear eye fixed on the future. His deliberately staged personal styles were designed to impress and be remembered, just as his decorative style was meant to impress, his literary works were written to be quoted, and his plays meant to be experienced. Early on, when Punch created the Unnamed Poet, Wilde built upon the stereotype by growing his hair longer, wearing leg breeches and flowing upper garments, adopting Byronesque soft collars and loose scarves, and swooning over flowers. A man who championed the individual above all else and felt that any attention was preferred to obscurity would have understood that even the sex scandals would ensure his name and art would endure. Few moments could have been dull in Oscar Wilde’s life; he would not have allowed it. At successive periods in his life, he was excelling at high-level curriculum, publishing a sensational book or producing popular plays, expounding on philosophy or dazzling contemporaries with conversation, espousing the aesthete or promoting the dandy, creating the perfect family, declining a seat in Parliament, or being praised by Shaw for his journalism. Oscar Wilde was the quintessentially conflicted man, particularly in his evolving constructions of loving commitments; in this, his art most certainly imitated his life. As son and brother, then husband and father, and, ultimately, lover and friend, he cared deeply but not faithfully or always with consideration. A respectful yet often neglectful son, he distanced himself from a living brother but grieved lifelong for a dead sister. Marrying for love and a doting father, Wilde was serially unfaithful to a woman he never divorced, dying an affectionate widower who desperately missed his children. A trusting friend and lover of men, he sacrificed his family, fortune, home, and professional reputation to a tragic, delusional obsession. He had,

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like his peers, been taught to respect men and stand in awe of good women: sister, mother, future bride. He could romantically court women, bond with peers, explore love and lust from both male and female perspectives, haunt London streets and the Continent for Hellenic boys, and eloquently defend Uranian love in the Courts because, like Austen and Eliot, he allowed the reality of his constructions of love and commitment to evolve and grow. Women, from first to last, fascinated Wilde and he knew them well, as many of his works attest. He idealized women in his poetry, they haunted his novel, and finally became real in his plays. Wilde was fascinated by the differences between women and men; Mrs. Cheveley remarks in An Ideal Husband that “Women are never disarmed by compliments; men always are. This is the difference between the sexes” (Act III). The nuances of male/female relationships, in love and particularly in marriage, had interested him from childhood as he observed the marital dynamics between his parents. His plays all focus on interactions between the sexes, overt and covert, in evolving constructions of love and marriage. Yet, when a friend told Wilde he was considering marriage, Wilde advised him to “Act dishonourably… It’s what sooner or later she’ll certainly do to you” (Ellmann 217). Although she briefly loved another man after Wilde had virtually ended their marriage, and had been repeatedly unfaithful, Constance Wilde’s devotion to her husband is legendary. His ambivalence toward her was disproportionate to both the reality of their relationship and the marital standards of fidelity even in Victorian England. A key to Wilde’s final attitude toward marriage and married women is hidden within one of his apocryphal comments about his evolving interest in his own marriage: “Why should we not joyfully admit that there are some people we do not want to see again? It is not ingratitude, it is not indifference. They have simply given us all they have to give” (Ellmann 250). Other than with his mother, Wilde did not sustain close relationships with women, and few with men. For all his writing about marriage, he was not strongly committed to it, either in theory or practice. He deeper commitment was to same-sex relationships, but rather than sustain those, he turned them into friendships. If Wilde had lived a longer life, it likely would have been a lonely one: “Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever” (402). Late in life, Wilde told an acquaintance, “Women aren’t beautiful at all. They are… magnificent, when dressed in taste and covered with jewels, but beautiful, no. Beauty reflects the soul” (342). He believed women to be “spreaders of havoc” (115). Yet, Wilde’s views on women included their greater

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inclusion into society, particularly when he was editor of The Woman’s World, and later blatant misogyny, as his constructions of love and marriage, like his reality, evolved. When Wilde traveled to America to present a series of lectures in the States and Canada in January 1882, he was twenty-seven years old (Hofer 2). His impressions were astute. Landing in New York from the steamer Arizona, he was already internationally known as an Aesthete and the reporters were waiting for him. In addition to giving lectures on The English Renaissance, The Decorative Arts, The House Beautiful, and Irish Poets and Poetry of the Nineteenth Century, Wilde had come to America to gain fame. Celebrity interviews had only begun to appear in American newspapers a few years before, but Wilde embraced the concept; he hoped to promote aestheticism at a time when lecturers were expected to entertain more than enlighten. Charming most reporters, Wilde knew they were helping him create a public persona. Traveling the Eastern seaboard, visiting the South, and going West, he gave interviews in major cities and smaller towns, earning $5,600 in the process (3). Originally scheduled to tour for only a few weeks, Wilde remained for more than a year. The experience changed him. During the tour, Wilde’s gender-bending performances were sometimes scorned (Hofer 5). He was mocked as a degenerate in satirical cartoons, often as a monkey holding a flower, in Harper’s Weekly, the Washington Post, and other influential papers (6). Yet, rather than learn from this humiliation, he treated his valet condescendingly, exoticized African Americans in the South, ignored Native Americans, and pointedly visited Jefferson Davis at his Mississippi estate (8). Conversely, he pronounced Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter to be “the greatest work of fiction ever written in the English tongue” and said parts of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass reminded him of Homeric epic (4). Wilde also endlessly defined aestheticism. Above all, Wilde wished to be taken seriously, and confessed to a reporter of the Halifax Morning Herald, “I came out here, never having spoken in public, in earnest about my message, strongly feeling what I was saying, and I talked seriously to those people. They heard me and went away, and talked about my necktie and the way I wore my hair” (168). Like others before him, Wilde professed, practiced, and glorified Aesthetic and Hellenistic ideals but injected them with an individual realism. Through his study, apparel, mannerisms, home, lecturing, writing, partner choices, philosophies, and even testimony in the Old Bailey witness box, he made a sincere attempt to explain and defend his reality. When he might have quietly followed apposite lifestyles and sexual preferences, including those many late

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Victorians practiced but others criminalized, Wilde became increasingly more open about who he had discovered himself to be, not only hinting at his Uranian proclivities artistically in his novel and plays, but publicly displaying and defending what he considered his right of moral conscience. Through a dawning personal evolution of love and partnering that seemed to surprise even him, a more fundamentally real Wilde began to reveal his individual truth. Wilde’s quotable wit and popular comedic plays, for which he is perhaps best known, were the antithesis of his earliest works. In the early plays, Vera; or the Nihilists (1881) and The Duchess of Padua (1883), Wilde was “naively sincere” and both failed (Gagnier 129). After his American tour and while he was working as a journalist in London, between 1885 and 1891, he composed theoretical works. Intentions (1891), a volume of four essays revised from previous publications, were favorably reviewed in London and the United States as a serious contribution to the debate of modern, or realist, art. Two essays published as articles, “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” (1889) and “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” (1891), addressed literary criticism and social theory. “Mr. W. H.” championed the same-sex cause, creating ill will against Wilde. “The Soul of Man” was extremely popular in America and on the Continent. Both offended the English elite and neither served him well during his trials. Collectively, they represented years of artistic attempts to be recognized as a serious author. Despite his superb irony, love of paradox, and ready humor, Wilde was far more earnest than most believed and sincere in most of what he said or did. His feelings and opinions were stronger and deeper than generally believed. Yet, undeniably, there were two sides to Oscar Wilde. He was incurably irresponsible, and possessed an insensitivity that hurt others deeply and repeatedly. Professing to be a liberal, he would unexpectedly display distinct conservative streaks, then mock both Liberals and Tories. At the height of an artistic career constructed from talent and bluff, he chose to stand as a same-sex supporter, later surprised that his status as an intellectual had not saved him. After his release from prison, in a letter to an editor protesting prison conditions for children, it did not seem to dawn on him that he had misused street boys or neglected his sons. Wilde was a talented and clever man, a philosopher capable of deep analysis and a genius wit, who wished to be a true artist above the common fray. He loved deeply, if briefly, but was also capable of negligence and cruelty against others and himself, which might have been avoided if he had loved differently or not at all. These personal traits emerged as evolving constructions of love and marriage in his only novel and popular social plays.

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In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde created an allegorical fable with Gothic overtones in which the obvious dandy, Lord Henry Wooton, a wealthy man seemingly devoted to style and degeneracy, is a personification of evil rivaling Dorian himself. Only after Wilde’s trials was the dandy perceived as homosexual. The artist Hallward is an atypically hardworking aesthete who falls ideally in love with Dorian and wishes to protect him from Wooten’s cynicism. He is too moral and industrious to be a stereotypical dandy and seems as disturbed by his feeling for Dorian as Dorian becomes himself; Hallward is more attached than attracted, worshipping the ideal he believes Dorian represents more than the young man himself. For Hallward, art represents feeling rather than practice. If Wilde had not referred to the Labouchère Amendment by addressing the laws that made same-sex love seemingly monstrous and illegal, a Uranian subtext might have been missed in this work. Love in several forms is key, but Wilde was more fascinated, as Ellmann has argued, with the sale and repurchase of souls (55). This theme, rather than any suggested same-sex subtext, is the primary focus of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wilde was clear about telling his own story through his three primary characters as aspects of himself. Before Wilde, the English theatre offered little social comedy beyond Gilbert & Sullivan farce. He had long been interested in the genre and was a regular theatergoer. As early as the late 1870s, Wilde had seriously considered writing a play for an actress he was half in love with. After the failures of Vera and The Duchess of Padua, however, he abandoned the idea to focus on essays and a novel. When Wilde returned to the theatre, he wrote comedies his audiences could enjoy without realizing the seriousness of his intended social messages. He also, like Austen and Eliot, wrote for income to support his family and personally expensive lifestyle. Without relatable content, his themes and wit would not have attracted contemporary audiences, but he wrote from personal experience and observation, and his plays gained in popularity. Reminiscent of what Gagnier identifies as Austen’s “cynical-gentle characters” (76) or Eliot’s jaded Henleigh Grandcourt, Wilde’s mature dandies – Lords Darlington, Augustus, Illingworth, and Goring – are heterosexual upper-class philanderers, as were many in his audiences. As part of his increasing realism, in life and art, Wilde’s goal of mirroring social truths enriched his plays and increased his audiences. He understood and was comfortable writing on the realities of love, marriage, and partnerships from both male and female viewpoints, and even a blending of the two. Some of his strongest female characters – Mrs. Erlynne, Mrs. Arbuthnot, Mrs. Cheveley, Lady Bracknell – are women who have learned to think and act like men,

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according to Victorian stereotypes. By incorporating orphans and foundlings in his characters, with whom he had been fascinated since childhood, Wilde also appealed to the sympathetic in his audiences. As he demonstrated in his plays, interesting personalities are flawed personalities, and even good people can be attracted by evil, which he developed as characters in love in his major works. Despite intended social critiques, Wilde’s audiences could both realistically and sentimentally identify with such characters. He had a working knowledge of English men and women, and a keen wit with which to make his characters appealing, drawing them into his constructions of love and marriage which evolved in each successive work. As long as his messages passed the censors’ blue pencils in the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, his popularity and monetary momentum would depend only on his continued creative output. After publishing The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde wrote four successful comedies between 1891 and 1895 that established him as one of the foremost playwrights of his time and rewarded him financially, as well. They were written from various locations that reflected his unsettled personal life: his Tite Street library and rented houses in the Lake District, Norfolk, Goring-on-Thames (from which he borrowed the name), and Worthington. Sometimes his family joined him, often lovers. Three managers produced the plays, demonstrating their marketability: George Alexander at the St. James Theatre for Lady Windermere’s Fan, and Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Lewis Waller of the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, for the others (Raby 143). Wilde’s plays were popular because his characters were realistic, even when situations were surreal, and he made his audiences laugh, often at themselves. When his career ended abruptly with the trials, An Ideal Husband, about contemporary politics, and The Importance of Being Earnest, a farce of aristocratic life, were both playing in the West End to packed houses. English society hurt itself as much as it hurt Wilde in ending his creativity. The London press exhaustively reviewed Wilde’s plays, and provincial papers reported on first night London performances, an impressive feat since there were few critics and approximately 300 new productions in London alone per year (Powell 121). Some of the best reviewers provided Wilde with excellent feedback on how to strengthen his plays; others identified Wilde’s characters with the upper classes they detested and attacked them. Regardless, he made audiences laugh, buffering his social messages. There is no reason to doubt that Wilde would have kept writing plays had there been no trials and he had lived a longer life; they had gained in popularity and he had trained himself to write through personal adversity. He

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often said, when he was having a good time, “I ought to be putting black on white” (Ellmann 21). Yet, more Wildean plays were not meant to be. At the height of his success, his life changed permanently with what have become known as the Wilde trials. “The two great turning points in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison,” he wrote from solitary confinement at Reading Gaol (Hyde 17). Finally allowed paper, he wished, in part, to clarify and defend the most elemental concepts of love he had experienced from a perspective far removed from his early life and art. Aptly titled and posthumously published in 1905 by Robert Ross, Wilde’s friend, executor, and first same-sex lover, De Profundis can be read as an accusation of Lord Alfred Douglas, the love and nemesis of Wilde’s life, or as an acceptance of guilt and attempt at vindication. Indisputably, it is a plea for understanding. Written with startling insight, brutal honesty, and perhaps the greatest individual realism he was capable of, De Profundis shares what was and what might have been as he made choices and lived the consequences. Far more than a scourging love/hate letter to Bosie Douglas, Wilde’s letter was an epistle of sustained rage against social prejudice and faithless love, a roar of shock and pain that he could so thoroughly be rejected by all he had loved and thought loved him. Writing De Profundis in a cell, Wilde dropped his mask. In isolation, he bared his soul. Between January and March 1897, Wilde wrote what he had been pondering for nearly two years, much of that time in solitary confinement. Every page of this viscerally personal communication was submitted to a stranger to be arbitrarily read and censored: blame, suffering, analysis, bids for understanding. Joseph Pearce is correct in arguing, “Nowhere in its pages is there the barest hint of the disingenuous” (160). Wilde’s post-prison revelation to Vincent O’Sullivan, Irish- American poet and novelist, that “I died in prison” was truth if not fact, as he realized that the sincerest effort he had ever made to explain himself would not vindicate him, and that there was no one left to comprehend his reality. Even Constance, caring beyond rejection, was gone. Wilde spent the remainder of his life courting death. His last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, published after he had left prison, protested an utter lack of love toward the forgotten condemned and helpless there. Then, he wrote no more, professing, “I wrote when I did not know life. Now that I know life, I have no more to write” (Ellmann 8). Oscar Wilde had, in written and spoken word, shared all he had to say, and had lost his audience, as well. As greater public tolerance of homosexuality has become a social reality, Wilde’s reputation has

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taken on new meaning and gained new followers: “His bonhomie has a new attractiveness… Wilde, besides being witty, is right” (8). The Irish poet, who aspired to be an English aesthete but ended an exiled playwright in France, helped to significantly redefine the ever-expanding potential of loving relationships, a contribution that would not be fully recognized until the world was ready to accept it in a more enlightened future. After his death, two of the most poignant accounts of Wilde’s life were written by men who had known him well: Frank Harris, in 1910, and Martin Birnbaum in 1920. Birnbaum openly reminisced in “fragments and memories” which lent humanity to the man and icon: the revealing changes in Wilde’s handwriting from “large, clear, and youthful” to “the neat, tidy hand of his middle period” and “almost illegible, flowing scrawl of his last letters” (12); the “strange confusion of ideas which already attach to his name” (18); his brilliant reaction to the Harvard students who meant to taunt him as he lectured in Boston – “As a college man, I greet you” (21); Wilde’s joy in mingling with miners in Leadville, “the great mining city in the Rocky Mountains” on his American tour (23); “Toulouse-Lautrec’s extraordinary sketch of Wilde on trial” (26); “Oscar’s clever posing when interviewed by American reporters” and “his genuine grief over the failure of Vera” (27); his pleasure in the “many noble natures” who treated him “like a great personality” in America (29); the return to Paris after prison “to seek among its social outcasts a merciful oblivion, near the salons where he once reveled in the joy of life” (31), and finally “living under an assumed name in the Parisian mire, among soiled lives” before his death (32). Birnbaum’s brief account sheds much light on the real Oscar Wilde. Frank Harris, Irish writer, editor, publisher, and Wilde’s friend, who once urged him to fight his accusers because he believed Wilde innocent of all charges, was more comprehensive in his account of the facts of Wilde’s life: “The whole story is charged with tragic pathos and unforgettable lessons… He was hounded out of life because his sins were not the sins of the English middle class” (8-9). Although Harris provides detail and quotes Wilde extensively, his account is less believable than Birnbaum’s because it is less spontaneous; the long verbatim Wildean responses could not have been memorized so precisely. Even after a decade, Harris is angry about Wilde’s treatment during his trial and imprisonment, and his life after the release. Still, truth can be found between the lines and we can hear Wilde’s saying, “When I was fifteen or sixteen… the life of books had begun to interest me more than real life” (26); in relating the story of his first kiss at sixteen from a young male student, “This is love, this is what he meant –

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love” (29); “Sexual vice is even coarser and more loathsome in Ireland than it is in England” (32), and “Oxford is the capital of romance” (34). It is also shocking, knowing his fate, that a fellow student remembered, “he always shrank from any gross or crude expression” (31). Harris makes sweeping but insightful statements about Wilde based on his understanding of his friend, such as: “No one will understand Oscar Wilde who for a moment loses sight of the fact that he was a pagan born” (38), who also had “the born dramatist’s love for the varied life of the stage” (39). Harris shares that the “smallness of [Wilde’s] patrimony had been a heavy blow to him” (43); that Morris and Whistler were more original teachers than those Wilde found at Oxford (44); that to the “very end of his life, he believed himself a poet” (47). There is no hesitation to show another side of Wilde: he was “colossally vain” and “pleasure-loving” (59) and “constantly in dire need of cash” (58). Yet, Harris admits that “He had his own philosophy, and held to it for long years with astonishing tenacity” (63); for Wilde, “life itself was merely material for art” (64). Harris also argues that “It was not his views on art… which recommended him to the aristocratic set in London but his contempt for social reform, or rather his utter indifference to it, and his English love of inequality” (64). Contending that the middle class feared and hated Wilde because of his contempt of conventionality and light-hearted self- indulgence, Harris intriguingly speculates that “if he had loved athletic sports… instead of art and letters, he might have been the selected representative of aristocratic England” (65). Adamant that “the evil reputation which attached to Oscar Wilde in those early years in London was completely undeserved,” Harris also admits that “from about 1886-7 on… there was a notable change in [his] manners and mode of life” (72). He contends that “Dorian Gray was the first piece of work which proved that Oscar Wilde had at length found his true vein” (79); that although Lady Windermere’s Fan was a success and “Oscar Wilde rapidly became the idol of smart London… nearly all the journalist-critics were against him… but thinking people came over to his side in a body” (91). With respect to Wilde’s relationship with Alfred Lord Douglas, Harris argues that “their mutual attraction had countless hooks,” and that “they were an extraordinary pair and were complimentary in a hundred ways… in mind… and character,” but that Douglas sought Wilde out “again and again and I couldn’t resist… That’s what ruined me” (94-5). Because Douglas’ aristocratic demands were so extravagant, however, Wilde wrote “without intermission” (96), thereby creating a literary legacy.

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Many sources corroborate the insights Birnbaum and Harris share in their works, but none other are as intimate and immediate, which, of course, is the primary value of each. Oscar Wilde comes alive on the pages of their accounts in all his pathos and glory. He is vulnerable and demanding, at the height of his career and utterly destitute and alone after his release from prison. Birnbaum prefers to remember the best of Wilde, his finest moments, although he shares a hint of his end to lend credibility to the whole. Harris demands a balanced and factual account, yet interjects opinions and personal emotional responses. Collectively, their contrasting styles of relating truth is a reminder that, within the paradox Wilde loved, reality is relative and individual, for self and in relationships, not only in retrospect but in the moment. To the extent that facts can be believed, they are helpful; speculation can lead to new understanding. Yet, the search for truth always leads back to the author’s works and words, a particular challenge in the case of Oscar Wilde, who did not hesitate to combine realism with fantasy in the interest of writing an entertaining story or play. Biography When Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland on October 16, 1854, he had an older brother and four siblings, three born illegitimately (Ellmann 16). This was not uncommon for the time and place, but it did create certain realities. His father, Sir William Wilde, physician, author, archaeologist, and noted conversationalist, was a man of impressive abilities, varied talents, and widely remarked personal habits, professionally respected and widely accepted in all levels of society. Jane Elgee, whom he married on 12 November 1851 in St. Peter’s Church, Dublin, shared her husband’s nationalism and was a poet and essayist of considerable reputation. Often improving upon reality, she, like Eliot, reinvented her persona at will, revising her birth date and creating a personal background above the facts (6, 10). Oscar Wilde’s parents were unconventional, even eccentric, and many unanswered questions remain about their pasts. Before their marriage, Jane had refashioned herself as Speranza, hope in Italian, a culture from which she claimed family roots, and with her poetry began calling for Irish armed rebellion against England (Morris 8). The Wildes’ firstborn, William, or Willy, loved games and sports, the outdoors, and generally masculine interests and pursuits. Lady Wilde, by all accounts wishing for a girl and disappointed when Oscar was born, treated him as a daughter, according to Victorian standards, for the first years of his life in both dress and manner. Her husband had already fathered two

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girls. Some biographers, perhaps in an apocryphal attempt to explain Oscar’s later bisexuality, have stressed this point, yet, it was common practice for Victorian boys to wore dresses in early childhood. What is certain is that Oscar and his parents, particularly his mother, remained close throughout their lives. The sibling relationship between Oscar and his brother was, however, strained from birth to death, although they shared a talent for writing; Willie was a journalist and poet. Speranza realized her dream when a daughter was born on 23 February 1867, but all too briefly. Isola died before her tenth birthday, from which the family never fully recovered. Oscar was devastated. The doctor who attended Isola during her final illness thought Oscar “an affectionate, gentle, retiring, dreamy boy,” more pensive than Willie. He paid regular visits to his sister’s grave and later wrote a poem, “Requiescat,” about her (Pearce 42). An envelope containing locks of her hair was found with him after his death. Shaw, many years later, called Oscar “the Dublin snob,” an attitude which may have begun when he first understood the sources of his given names (Ellmann 97). James Joyce explained, “Oscar, nephew of King Fingal and the only son of Ossian in the amorphous Celtic Odyssey, who was treacherously killed by the hand of his host as he sat at table. O’Flahertie, a savage Irish tribe… a name that incited terror in peaceful men… The child of two such parents, burdened with the names of kings, second to the masculine model of an older brother and followed by a long-awaited and very feminine sister, Oscar developed in an atmosphere of insecurity and prodigality” (56-7). As Wilde’s grandson has argued, “It is simply not a life which can tolerate an either/or approach with logical conclusions, but demands the flexibility of a both/and treatment, often raising questions for which there are no answers” (Holland 4). To claim Dante as a forbearer, as Speranza did, may have been wishful thinking, but her supposedly documented ancestors included the Reverend Charles Maturin, who died in 1824 a noted novelist and playwright most remembered for a series of macabre novels that included Melmoth the Wanderer, published to critical acclaim in 1820 (Pearce 23). Sir William’s ancestry on his father’s side, fully documented, was a political embarrassment. Lady Wilde and Oscar were Irish nationalists, which made Sir William’s link to Colonel de Wilde, a Dutch officer of the invading army of William of Orange, to defeat the Catholic King James II at the Boyne, a serious faux pas. Colonel de Wilde had been granted lands in Connaught for his services, property the Wildes used as a country home and that was the basis of their wealth and social position. In attempting to conceal this history, Speranza professed that the Wildes were

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descended from a northern English family (25). As Oscar had absorbed the art of conversation from his parents’ open intellectual soirees, he learned the art of deception at their knees. In retrospect, young Oscar seems to have observed and gathered all qualities of those he loved and incorporated aspects of each into himself, including the father with whom he shared a troubled relationship. “It is said that Sir William wanted to marry the actress Helen Faucit… who played Shakespearean and classical roles and had achieved a remarkable success with her Antigone. In April 1851, Helen married another, and he turned to Speranza, equally tall and distinguished, and endowed in real life with the qualities of a tragedy queen. Although the marriage lasted until his death, and Speranza was exceedingly loyal, it was not all that she had hoped. Sir William, before and after, was a philanderer, and had a strange hypochondriacal nature which, she said, he revealed only to her. As a romantic poet, marital reality was unexpectedly harsh: “My great soul is prisoned within a woman’s destiny” (Amor 23). Her marital destiny was trying: among her many challenges, Sir William was accused of molesting a patient, a case in which she became involved and was forced to defend herself in court. Little is known of Oscar’s schooldays; he didn’t discuss them. When pressed, he lied, stating that he had spent a year at Portora Royal School near Enniskillen and otherwise was privately tutored. In fact, he attended Portora with Willy for seven years, from ages nine to sixteen (Pearce 40). Toward the end of his life, Oscar told Frank Harris, the journalist and writer, that his sex-awakening took place when he was sixteen and about to leave Portora (McKenna 5). During Oscar’s attendance at Trinity College, Dublin, between 1871 and 1874, a contemporary, Horace Wilkins, provided an intriguing glimpse of Wilde as “a queer, awkward lad… big, ungainly and clumsy… a laughing stock… a big-hearted, liberal fellow who never did a mean, underhanded thing, and his last shilling was at anybody’s disposal” (49). However, at a class symposium, after reading one of his poems, a class bully laughed. Wilde’s face a savagery of hate, he strode across the room, demanded what right he had to sneer and, when the man laughed again, struck him across the face. Soon, a crowd gathered behind the school. Per Wilkins, Wilde led with a right – “a piledriver” – and followed with half a dozen “crushers”; the bully cowered (49). Soon after Oscar began at Trinity, his half-sisters, Emily and Mary, died tragically in their early twenties, Mary in early November and Emily two weeks later. They had attended a party on October 31st and, while dancing, Emily’s crinoline caught fire. Mary had tried to save

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her. Sir William’s grief was intense; he had lost all three daughters. Another also suffered deeply. For twenty years, a woman in black made an annual pilgrimage to the graves, the sexton never discovering her identity. Sir William, never fully recovering from his daughters’ deaths, and professionally damaged by the patient scandal, gave his medical practice to Henry Wilson, his illegitimate son, and retired to the country. Oscar remained at Trinity until 1874, when his father sent him to Magdalen College, Oxford, partly as the natural extension of his obvious intelligence and partly to separate him from the distraction of his fascination with the Catholic Church and the beauty of its ritual (Pearce 43). In 1875, Oscar took a brief but life-altering trip to Italy. Upon returning to Oxford, he replaced the engravings of naked young women on his walls with photographs of Catholic dignitaries. Flush with the glories of Rome, and returning late for the term, he lost his scholarship for a half year, and was forced to work with a tutor he despised. What he considered an academic irrationality, the valuing of punctuality over experience, drove him further into aesthetics. As a Greek scholar, he knew of the tradition of impassioned friendship between men and boys, considered a natural inclination in ancient Greece, and began a lifelong contemplation of the conflict between Papal Rome and Pagan Greece. Wilde’s study of aesthetics and emergence as a dandy gained mixed response from his fellow Classics students, but Speranza’s son was determined to create a sensation. This was the time of Ruskin and Pater. Ruskin taught the history of art and architecture, the soullessness of machinery, and the dignity of creative art. Pater turned the worship of beauty into an aesthetic cult. Wilde became a willing member, seeking a philosophy that offered the simple, natural beauty of thought and ideas, poetry and prose, arts and crafts. He considered this a healthy choice, a group concept to which he could individually contribute. Oscar escaped into the beauty of aestheticism, away from the sadness and ugliness of the real world, which he knew well. Early in 1876, Sir William began to grow visibly frail. On 19 April, with no identified ailment, he died. During his final days, Speranza allowed, and Oscar witnessed, the daily visits of a woman veiled in black. He later said of his mother, “She was a wonderful woman, and such a feeling as vulgar jealousy could take no hold on her. She was well aware of my father’s constant infidelities, but simply ignored them. I am sure my father understood… that it was not because she did not love him that she permitted her rival’s presence, but because she loved him very much, and died with his heart full of gratitude and affection for her” (Amor 28). Due to the

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many relational idiosyncrasies of the adult Wildes, Oscar was never certain about his parentage: was he his father’s son or his mother’s bastard? Speranza deliberately created mystery about her background; recent evidence has questioned the legitimacy of her claimed parentage. Lady Wilde wore masks. More importantly, Oscar was never certain about his parentage or birthright, and believed a wife could prove her love by allowing infidelity. Throughout 1876 and 1877, Oscar successfully published his poems in several journals, including Catholic magazines. Yet, what impressed priests deeply displeased his half-brother Henry. Following his early death from pneumonia on 13 June 1877, Oscar learned he had left £8000 to St. Mark’s Hospital, £2000 to Willie and £100 to Oscar. These funds, and his half- share of Illaunroe, a Connemara fishing lodge they owned jointly, would only be Oscar’s if he did not convert to Catholicism within the next five years. Failure to comply would give Wilson’s half share to Willie. Oscar supposedly bought this half share from his brother for £10 (Pearce 99). Before his own death, Sir William had threatened disinheritance if Oscar joined the Catholic Church. Henry’s will could not have been a surprise. For affection, Oscar could always count on women. During the summer of 1876, from Dublin, Oscar had written of a young girl “with the most perfectly beautiful face I ever saw and not a sixpence of money,” Florence Balcombe (McKenna 10). Oscar’s love for Florrie was heartfelt and passionate. Their courtship continued into 1878, then faded into friendship, initiating a lifelong behavioral pattern. Oscar returned to Oxford to accept his Bachelor of Arts degree on 28 November and in December, Florrie married Bram Stoker, a young Irish civil servant who went on to write Dracula (10). On 3 January 1881, after Florrie had become an actress, Oscar sent flowers to her through Ellen Terry when they were appearing together in Tennyson’s The Cup with the note: “She thinks I never loved her, thinks I forget. My God, how could I?” (Pearce 123). Yet, during his courtship of Florrie, Oscar had also been involved in a same-sex relationship with Frank Miles. Women, for Wilde only half the love equation, symbolized purity and freshness, safety and security: boys and young men “were the dark side of the erotic moon” (McKenna 10). Other than for two brief lectures and to become engaged to another young Irish woman, Wilde never returned to Ireland (Hyde 37). After Oxford, Oscar moved to London and in with Frank, with whom he shared “a richly impassioned friendship” (McKenna 12). While he was involved with Frank and two other men, Oscar also began to more seriously pursue marriage. This was not unusual for the times;

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marriage was considered a cure for same-sex practice. He had proposed to at least two young women since he had left Oxford – Charlotte Montefiore and Violet Hunt, daughter of the Pre- Raphaelite landscape painter Alfred, but had been rejected. The emotional stability and sexual expression he found in same-sex passion was often interrupted by self-loathing and remorse. On 15 April 1878, he met with Father Sebastian Bowden, who described the visit as a confession, and counseled him that by becoming a Catholic, Oscar would enter a state of spiritual grace, throw off his unnatural sexual desires, and take his place in the natural order as a normal man who loved women. Oscar never returned, but sent the priest a lily (15). As a novice poet and aesthete in London, Oscar began to self-advertise, realizing early that talent was one thing and being known for it was another. Wilde’s method of recreating himself was far more public than was George Eliot’s. He deliberately sought attention with exaggerated dress and behavior. Soon, his name was widely known and Punch, a comic weekly with a large circulation, began satirizing him. In 1881, Wilde published his Poems, but the volume was poorly received (McKenna 18). As he saw himself, beyond being a poet, he was an accomplished conversationalist, loved the theatre, felt competent to critique poetry and prose, and had definite philosophical ideas. Being a realist, he knew he would have to find employment or marry into fortune; as a Victorian romantic, he wished to marry for love. Faced with two alternatives, he chose both. He met Constance Lloyd while in Dublin and accepted an offer to lecture in America. In the years that followed, he also became a critic, journalist, author, and playwright who loved both women and men. Serendipitously, he had set his life course. Oscar Wilde had certain inalienable qualities and traits. He was first, last, and always an individual. An Irishman by birth, he became an Englishman by choice. His height and appearance at every stage of life were striking. Wilde was bisexual for most of his life. A strong thread of fatality ran through his psyche, yet youth and beauty were fundamental to his soul. Seemingly shallow, he was unfathomably deep. Apparently joyful, he was often sorrowful. Appearing insincere, Wilde was usually sincere. Women liked him, males were often hostile to him. Wilde admired beautiful women, respected male friends, and particularly loved male poets and strong, accomplished women. He consistently confused lust with love, and sought always to turn both to friendship. Wilde was rarely faithful, and absence did not make his heart grow fonder. Flippancy masked his social unease and epigrams displayed his emotions. Metaphysics and religion, purity and degradation, art and farce, all fascinated him, but none more than human

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relationships. Loving many but not himself, he married Constance Lloyd and fathered sons. In the end, Oscar Wilde became The Other, alienated and apart from most of the social and physical world he had so long flirted with and courted. Oscar knew that marriage would silence gossip about his sexual orientation, quiet the moneylenders, and provide him with respectability and loving companionship. He also intended “to set an example of the pervading influence of art on matrimony” (Ellman 251). For this, he must have an exceptional wife. John Horatio Lloyd, Constance’s grandfather, was a Queen’s Counsel who owned a mansion in Lancaster Gate, London. The couple had met in Dublin, but it was here that their relationship developed late in 1881, interrupted by Oscar’s American tour and three months in Paris early in 1883. While Oscar was away, Constance attended art school. When Oscar proposed to her, he was obviously in love; Oscar told Bosie that the marriage was a love match. Yet, his letters to Constance before their marriage were written in purple prose, as he seemed to believe proper, while those to his lovers were light and spontaneous, and hers in return were happy and devoted. Despite these indications of conflicts to come, Oscar Wilde and Constance Lloyd were married on 29 May 1884 at St. James’s Church, Sussex Gardens. Their Paris honeymoon, rather than being a time of intimacy and bonding, was dominated by an endless round of social gatherings and friends who often took Oscar away from his bride. She seems to have noticed. During a discussion with Oscar’s friends, Constance surprised them all by saying she thought trial marriages would be an excellent thing, that it should be free to either party to go off at the end of the first year. Oscar himself leaned toward “a Contract for seven years, to be renewed or not as either party saw fit” (McKenna 63). From the first, Oscar loved Constance as his ideal. In January 1884, he wrote to Waldo Story, an American sculptor: “Her name is Constance and she is quite young, very grave, and mystical, with wonderful eyes, and dark brown coils of hair: quite perfect… I am perfectly happy, and… cannot imagine anyone seeing her and not loving her” (Holland 81). As years passed and sons were born, lust vanished; Oscar became bored with marital commitment and began loving Constance as a steadfast friend, as was his pattern in all adult relationships. In a play he left unfinished, A Wife’s Tragedy, poet Gerald Lovel attempts to explain why his marriage endures: “Life is a wide stormy sea. My wife is my harbor of refuge” (McKenna 173). Oscar trusted Constance’s loyalty and motives; she honored his art and understood his limitations. As there was painful accommodation in the Lewes’ version of marriage, there was

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painful compromise in the Wilde marriage. He deeply cared for her, but lusted after young men. When Constance realized both, she chose not to divorce him. Affection lasted; lust did not. The Wilde marriage began in fantasy, turned virtual, and ended in realism. The Wildes shared a love for their children, Speranza, a varied respect, intelligence, talent, and an abiding admiration for Keats. The marriage held, despite dire challenges, to the ends of both of their lives. Constance Lloyd Wilde has rarely received her due. Typified as a mindlessly adoring martyr, she certainly was not. Constance was an almost incomprehensibly strong woman, with a force and depth of character that allowed her to withstand childhood abuse, a decidedly less than ideal philandering husband, scandal, public shame, debilitating illness, heartache, years of virtual single parenthood, and, perhaps as painfully, a myriad of restrictions – personal and social – to fulfilling her innate and learned abilities. Soon after marriage, she had wanted to celebrate what she considered her freedom by finding work, but immediately became pregnant and bore two children in close succession. Still, she raised her children, managed her finances, established an individual public persona, wrote and published articles and stories, became an astute art critic, spoke and read in several languages, joined the fight for social equality and political enfranchisement, and developed a true friendship with her mother-in-law. Soon after their marriage, Mrs. Oscar Wilde became widely respected in women’s political circles. She was kind and compassionate, a woman to fall in love with, and as Oscar turned to young men for love and companionship, she returned another young man’s love and companionship, as well. Late in 1887, Oscar wrote “Un Amant de Nos Jours” in which he admitted guilt about marrying Constance. No woman could have overcome his homoeroticism; Constance was the wrong gender and Oscar no longer wanted long-term relationships: “How much more poetic it is to marry one and love many!” He would reject traditional concepts of love, monogamy, and fidelity, and explore his sexuality. Oscar had married Constance, in part, because she had been safe and predictable; same-sex love was becoming dangerous under a new wave of English public morality. Men who continued to have sex with men into adulthood could pretend it was a habit formed at school, to be broken when they found the right woman. Oscar had found that woman; the habit continued. He had been well aware of the dangers of practicing same-sex love when, the year before, he had met Robert Baldwin Ross, the son of a distinguished Canadian politician who had died when his son was two. To Oscar, desire was everything; romance and love were transitory, but such faulty logic was self-defeating. Love and friendship could coexist;

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desire realized obliterated desire. This philosophy doomed him to shallow, short-lived sexual relationships that required new partners who offered short-term desire, a vicious cycle. Only loving, committed fulfillment, to which he could not commit, would have satisfied him. The only way to prove love to Oscar Wilde was to stop loving him and become friends, of whom very few remained loyal. Loneliness was a self-fulfilling prophecy. As Wilde obsessed about his sexuality, he also philosophized in essays about the nature of man and his habits, edited a woman’s magazine favoring a larger role in society for women, completed a novel, and wrote highly cynical and successful society plays. His marriage atrophied, and he neglected his sons as he trolled for boys in dark London streets and across continents, searching for sensations that faded into friendship or deteriorated into sordidness. Rejecting love but exploring sexuality, Wilde aligned himself with Lord Alfred Douglas, a young man unable to love but eager to drag Oscar into sexual depths Douglas knew so well. Eventually, Wilde sacrificed all that had mattered to him over this long and sordid affair. The Marquis of Queensberry’s challenge, the trials, the press, the sensationalism, the conviction, the prison sentence, Lord Alfred Douglas’s depravity, Wilde’s final fall, and the brief exile before his death are the stuff of legend. Those who have never enjoyed Wilde’s works know of his public and private humiliations, which sold newspapers, but no longer matter. Even the tragic, abusive Oscar-Bosie relationship is now only a sad commentary to Wilde’s ambiguity. What continues to be relevant are the literary works of Oscar Wilde, particularly his novel and society plays, which have taught audiences about themselves for more than a century. His evolving constructions of realism in love and marriage, captured within these works, enlightened a decayed and dying Victorian society, as they have changed minds and enlightened so many societies since. The viscerally real-life experiences that inspired these fictional constructions, like those of Austen and Eliot, were personal and hard fought. At the peak of his career, Wilde wrote of virtually nothing but love and commitment. Behind the Wildean cynicism lurked a man who wanted to love and be loved, but could commit to neither. Yet, he passed on what he had learned, as did Austen and Eliot. Love and marriage will never be perfect, but both have become more real and equal for many because he lived and wrote. Works Few works of classic fiction can claim more inspirational sources than The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s only novel. Widely considered a developmental flaw, even a cheat,

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such referencing of other works may be seen instead as a strength, even necessary research, to his artistic project. Wilde was a creative borrower who gathered from previous works to write his classic myth. In 1887, while Frances Richards was painting his portrait, Wilde mused, “What a tragic thing it is this portrait will never grow old and I shall,” an idea that may have been the genesis of his only novel. The legends of Tir na nOg, with motifs from Celtic mythology, were sources his parents hoped, as they wrote in their own anthologies, would inspire a work of genius from a novelist with “the power of fusing ancient legend with the drama of modern life” (Wright 25). The Reverend Maturin, Speranza’s uncle by marriage and author of Melmoth the Wanderer, had written a series of gothic novels with a satanic character and similar story lines. Wilde was personally involved, during the writing of The Picture of Dorian Gray, with John Gray, a young poet, translator, and later priest, from whom he borrowed the last name of his character. Wilde’s lifestyle choices and sexual proclivities played a fundamental part in plot formation. Whatever the novel’s sources, The Picture of Dorian Gray was heir to a rich legacy of Celtic myth, which Wilde believed more enduring than history, family lore and history, authorial experience and philosophy, and intermittent references to Uranian love (McCormack 111). For all of Wilde’s sources of outside inspiration for this novel, in the end, it is pure author, particularly in the details and personal nature of its darker reality. Where Melmoth convinces no one to trade souls, Dorian, through increasing debauchery, actively destroys others and eventually himself. Creatively, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an original work in the sense that Wilde brought together many ideas from several sources to make something new. Technically, the novel is faulty; the storyline is often interrupted by aesthetic moralizing, philosophical rambling, descriptions of art, and extraneous chatter, as if Wilde was telling the tale after a dinner party. Beyond a folk style, this is distracting but imbues the work with a real immediacy. Even the elements of fantasy allow the reader to enter the confusion of Dorian’s mind, his desperate lunacy, that begins in innocence but ends in an overwhelming and tragic evil. The story is mesmerizing in its mystery, lack of substance, vague illusions, and palpable macabre atmosphere; indeed, the essence of the eerie temper of The Picture of Dorian Gray is what is missing rather than what is there. Characters come to stay and haunt, or go, never to return. The realistic is mundane, the fantastic is unexplained, and the chasm between is incomprehensible. Yet, life, and certainly motives, are often obtuse. As entertainment, The Picture of Dorian Gray is timeless. As a parable of love and its absence, the tale is diabolical; love is destructive,

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marriage is unfulfilled, and partnership cannot be trusted. As a warning, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an inexplicable masterpiece of the fantastically real and a classically realistic fantasy. The Picture of Dorian Gray was constructed as a commentary on art and morality, a product of social tensions compounded over decades. Yet, Wilde’s single novel also represents his individual conflict over, and choice of, sexual preference and lifestyle, a choice that determined who and what he became. The novel was an attempt to clarify his personal path, and show others the way, as well. When Wilde married conventionally, he had been certain it was the right thing for him to do, and he loved Constance, but he was bisexual and had been for years. Reading A Rebours on his honeymoon was a turning point for him, a revelation that contrasted the comfort of safe sex with Constance in marriage and the exciting unpredictability of sex with men on the street. The socially acceptable partner choice he had been certain of when he married eventually expanded into a love of women and men, and then a same-sex lifestyle he could and would not deny. This struggle was his reality and he began to profess it, even before he fully understood, in this novel. The fantasy surrounding the emergence of the real Dorian is Oscar Wilde’s sincere attempt to share the awakening of his truest self, and the process was haunting. Wilde publicly professed that The Picture of Dorian Gray was an essay on decorative art, a reaction to “the crude brutality of plain realism” (Amor 101), intentional and artistically created fantasy, but he loved to toy with his public if only to study their reactions. The novel is more clearly a chronicle of the corruption of a soul, with the moral that vice and crime make people coarse and ugly, as happened to its author. Wilde split himself into his male protagonists: “he is the witty cynic, Lord Henry Wooton, but his desire for a continued youth and his own attempts to gain the essence of all experience form the two essential elements of the character of The Picture of Dorian Gray” (Woodcock 4). He is also the artist Hallward, who ideally lusts after Dorian. The Picture of Dorian Gray is also one of the first literary attempts to bring homosexuality into the English novel; Wilde’s praise of the Hellenic ideal, however, exists only in theory. Lord Henry does not practice what he preaches and Basil Hallward only loves from afar. Wotton, a “lord of language’ who challenges the British hierarchies of truth” (McCormack 112), finds in Dorian a young man on which “to conduct a practical experiment, to see if the beautiful boy will become either ‘a Titan or a toy’” (Bristow 37). Lord Henry is feebly married; his wife leaves him. Dorian ruins men and women alike; Hallward is murdered by the man he

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loves. Contemporary critics complained that the novel was immoral (Ellmann 320), chastising what they did not understand or would not admit to. The Picture of Dorian Gray is, in part, an exploration of the nature of sexual desire and sexual pleasure between men, far removed from Greek love, which emphasized a higher love over base sex. Like all of Wilde’s work, the novel is highly autobiographical, both psychologically and physically. In a sense, all of Wilde’s works portray souls in varying stages of decay, some irretrievably and others salvageable. Foremost among each of these were The Picture of Dorian Gray and De Profundis. He considered the self an entity with varied possibilities and life as the opportunity to manifest each. When he met John Gray, the young poet was charming, intelligent, elegant, and classically beautiful. A civil servant, Gray frequented the Independent Theatre for its censored plays, and the Rhymers Club where Wilde heard him read his decadent mystical verses, a mysticism he was drawn to by nature and nurture and with which he imbued his novel. Wilde and Constance, by this time, shared only their children; the sexual side of their marriage had ended. He began writing The Picture of Dorian Gray in late 1889 while he was in a relationship with Gray, and used the poet’s surname for the novel’s protagonist in artistic tribute. Dorian was meant to represent an ancient Greek tribe that occupied countries in which Greek love, paiderastia, was practiced (McKenna 122), an allusion for all to see but which few understood. Heredity as a controlling force in shaping same-sex desire appears briefly when Dorian walks through a family gallery, one portrait depicting “the macaroni as a man of excessive effeminacy” (Bristow 41). As Wilde worked on the novel, he was living, at least superficially, as a husband and father, but continued his love affairs with men. His family required a steady income; his same- sex lifestyle required more. The Picture of Dorian Gray caused a scandal, but sold well. During the writing of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde had not yet met Lord Alfred Douglas, yet, in retrospect, it is nearly impossible not to read Douglas almost as a premonition of the novel and relationship to come, regardless of the reality of Wilde’s sexual and artistic involvement with John Gray, the actual model for the protagonist. The physical description of the fictional Dorian is that of the flesh-and-blood Bosie: handsome, finely-curved lips, blue eyes, gold hair; the psychological description would prove even more premonitory. Basil Hallward’s relationship with Dorian, an artistic mentor who cares deeply for him but with whom he is cool and impatient, was Bosie’s relationship with Wilde from first to last. Finally, there is Lord Henry’s

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complaint that “I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing,” surely a reference to Wilde’s relationship with Constance (20). Though the romance had gone for Oscar, the marriage was convenient, and the family sometimes satisfied his need for acceptance and understanding. The Picture of Dorian Gray has atmosphere only an artistically adept author could create. Bright art studios, dark sordid streets, perfumed dens of iniquity, stifling theatres, shoddy housing, damp and salty wharves all set Wilde’s various dramatic tones. Because he never reveals the specific nature of Dorian’s evil influence on his many acquaintances, readers and audiences are forced to fill in the details, revealing themselves in the process. As Lord Henry Wotton attempts to influence and corrupt Dorian with clever words and decadent philosophies, Basil Hallward captures the innocence that begets corruption in his portrait of Dorian. The dire effects Dorian fosters on those whose lives are irretrievably destroyed by their associations with him are as tangible yet indescribable as are the gradual changes in his portrait. Even his actions – the rejection of Sybil Vane, the struggle with her brother, the instructions Dorian hands to Alan and his destruction of the corpse – are never revealed. Whether this is artful design to increase suspense and force a reader into imaginative speculation, or an authorial disinterest in or distaste for detail is unanswerable. Wilde seems almost afraid of himself and his creation, as if he distrusts both and dreads what will happen if he goes too far, reminiscent of Frankenstein or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but the vital difference is that Dorian has free will and chooses his fate. Yet, nowhere in the novel is Wilde more hesitant, or ultimately crueler, than in determining Dorian’s use and abuse of Sybil Vane. Wilde and Dorian share the love of the pursuit and the boredom of the catch: “Wilde also holds a notion of seduction as sinister, surreptitious influence, especially of one personality by a powerful other, but there is a zone of freedom associated with… flirtation and repartee” (Anderson 164). They also share the unconscionable character flaw of a need to inflict senseless cruelty, as evidenced in Lord Henry Wotton’s dandified misogynistic philosophy that “Women appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than anything else”, have wonderfully primitive instincts, and “remain slaves looking for their masters” (qtd. in McKenna 65). Lord Henry, like Wilde, can sympathize with everything but suffering, and believes pity has nothing to do with love. Wotton is credibly married; Dorian, in contemplating marriage, is counseled by this pseudo mentor, “What nonsense people talk about happy marriages! A man can be happy with

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any woman, as long as he does not love her” (60). Wotton systematically implants a misogyny in Dorian that destroys any possibility of his finding happiness with Sybil Vane or any other woman. Her pleading for love and reason, even for explanation, only makes Dorian despise her more. In this, he is Oscar Wilde, unable to love any real woman, or man, who loves him in return. Aware now of Dorian’s lack of love for her, and no longer protected by the fantasy of the pretended love of her acting, Sybil takes her life. Even this, Dorian resents. Fantasy has failed him as reality has failed her. This cautionary tale of a soul’s betrayal of itself and others had an obvious moral. To the charge of immorality, Wilde responded that The Picture of Dorian Gray was too moral. At no point does the novel specifically reference same-sex practices, but its focus on male beauty and his insistence on indulgence of the senses raised eyebrows. The novel proved a success, however, and the controversy over what many saw as either excessive reality or moribund fantasy provided free publicity. Constance remained willfully immune to the insinuations that were being made about her husband’s art and proclivities, and continued to admire his work. To late Victorians, a reference to gay people meant prostitutes, mostly female, and their pimps, in London’s West End. Wilde did not need to make his characters overtly homosexual; Basil Hallward loves Dorian but not sensually, and Dorian kills Hallward when he is idealistic and moralizing. Yet, the inferences were clear for those who would see and understand. Wilde saw his three principal male characters as reflections of himself, and explained to a reporter, “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry is what the world thinks me: Dorian is what I would like to be” (Ellmann 319). The relationship between Oscar and Constance was constant in the sense that they never divorced and retained a regard for each other for life, yet his perception of their ongoing relationship is also reflected in the marriage and misogyny of Lord Henry Wotton, a marital disparity he modeled in art and life. The novel drips contempt for women and their sensibilities. Lord Henry Wotton, the only married man, is the most misogynistic character. Wilde’s misogyny, like Lord Henry’s, was selective, targeted at wives and specifically Constance, because he felt trapped in their marriage. The novel anticipates, and attempts to condone, a projected inevitability of Wilde’s greatest sexual exploration. Dorian is sexually driven, as Wilde, and later Bosie, were; the more sex Dorian has, the more he wants, and he begins to haunt London streets looking for it, an exact reflection of Wildean reality. As fascinated as Wilde was by sexual deviancy, however, he also feared it, as does Dorian. The

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writing and publishing of The Picture of Dorian Gray proved dangerous for Wilde. The Uranian proclivities of Lord Henry and Dorian were widely interpreted as Wilde’s, and intense speculation about his sexuality, despite his marriage, was revived. It is plausible that Lord Henry is modeled on Pater, whose influence on Wilde he himself claimed was poisonous. Yet, Wilde also knew himself to be a seducer of impressionable young men. If Wilde is both mentor and student in the novel, Basil Hallward’s rebuke to Lord Henry, after the latter had expresses a desire to see Dorian’s descent into decadence, is even more poignant: “You don’t mean a single word of all that, Harry; you know you don’t. If The Picture of Dorian Gray’s life were spoiled, no one would be sorrier than yourself. You are much better than you pretend to be” (qtd. in Pearce 231). Wilde knew that despite what he said about the novel, everyone would see it in his or her own way. He wrote to the editor of the St. James’s Gazette that the moral of The Picture of Dorian Gray was that the unyielding perspectives of the three major characters reduced them to incomplete human beings, almost caricatures. Artist Basil Hallward excessively worshipped physical beauty. Dorian abandoned himself to sensation and pleasure. Wotton sought only to be a spectator of life (Gagnier 58). Wilde knew realism was at risk in this novel. From the naturally lit West End art studio of Basil Hallward, Dorian is drawn to the dark East End theatre in which he finds Sybil, acting Shakespearean leads with a mesmerizing talent. Devoid of any real and natural outlet for her love and passions, she pours both into her art. Acting takes her out of the sordid reality of poverty and lack of opportunity, allowing her to transcend a wretched life in a stultifying place for a young girl of feeling and talent. The love between Sybil and her brother James, protective and strong, sustains her when he is present, but he often is not; his contribution to family existence is founded in decidedly unglamorous physical labor. Sybil’s mother, resigned to abject poverty, is a pariah who takes advantage of her talented daughter and abuses her through intimidation; there is no love there. Sybil is an artistic soul, accomplished and trusting, finer than her surroundings can accommodate. She has never known unbidden love from a stranger, so when Dorian, to whom she is at first oblivious and would remain so if not for his insistence, shows interest and then professes to love her, she feels secure in leaving her shallow fantasy world to trust in becoming his wife. This real, natural, and healthy reaction is her undoing; Dorian, like Wilde, requires fantasy in love and marriage.

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Because there is no real love between these two, there is no companionship or marriage, which requires the commitment of two; Sybil cannot complete the relationship alone. Wilde was shocked by the almost universally hostile critical reviews when The Picture of Dorian Gray was released in the July 1890 issue of Lippincott’s Magazine. His cavalier approach to love and marriage, the novel’s obvious support of decadence, and his toying with realism did not endear him to his audience. Punch described Dorian as “Ganymede-like”, while the Daily Chronicle wrote “Dullness and dirt are the chief feature of Lippincott’s this month,” and described The Picture of Dorian Gray as “a tale spawned from the leprous literature of the French Décadents” (McKenna 138). Samuel Jeyes of the St. James’s Gazette challenged Wilde’s argument that The Picture of Dorian Gray was a moral parable about the dangers of sexual indulgence. Either he was writing about sex between men or he was not. Wilde lost his temper. Professing the bedrock realism of his novel, he wrote, “I mean every word I have said, and everything at which I have hinted in The Picture of Dorian Gray” (138). With this, The Scots Observer connected Wilde and the Cleveland Street Scandal. The Picture of Dorian Gray is about a self-obsessed young man who, in his narcissism, allows himself to be corrupted, blaming all but himself for his eventual decadence and depravity, a fallen dandy who corrupts all in his path. Dorian’s life of pleasure and sensation reflects Wilde’s defiant fall. The opening chapters of the novel introduce Hallward’s adoration and Lord Henry’s intentional corruption of Dorian, resulting in his loss of Sybil, whose love is painfully real. The later chapters continue Dorian’s deepening decadence through a book Wotton presents to him, representing Huysman’s A Rebours, the novel that so influenced Wilde’s sexual choices. Wotton denies that a book – art – cannot influence action, and that books the world calls immoral are simply reflections of its own shame, a direct reference to Dorian’s self-responsibility. But Wotton’s judgment is negated by his having also been deeply influenced by a book in his youth, implied to be Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance. This reality, based on Wildean experience, is undeniable, and lends immeasurable credibility to this theme of the novel. Basil Hallward exemplifies the author’s longing for beauty, youth, and immortality, the real artist and spiritual lover he wished to be. In his long-suffering platonic love, Hallward characterizes Victorian sexual literature. He falls in love with Dorian, as Wilde fell in love with Gray, at first sight. Possession, for Hallward, would be Dorian’s destruction; he is created to be worshipped. Not so for Wilde. Hallward is presented neither as a dandy or effeminate; he is the

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moral center of the novel, earnest about art and life, devastated when he cannot influence Dorian for the better or save his soul in the end. Wilde’s ideal was a combination of Hallward’s art and Wotton’s leisure-class insouciance, but he does not combine the two in Dorian. Hallward, pouring his lifeblood into the resemblance of The Picture of Dorian Gray, dies for his misguided desires under a premonition that Fate would bring him exquisite joys and sorrows, an unrealistic premonition Wilde shared that came to pass in a very real way. The ideal Platonic love personified by Hallward is pushed aside when Dorian is seduced away, spiritually and sexually, by Lord Henry Wotton. With the crushing realism of evil overcoming good, Dorian’s body and soul, sex and love, fight for control in an unbalanced struggle, just as Sybil’s pure love was no match for Wotton’s jaded possession. Morality has been eclipsed, reality is suspect, and the future is uncertain. With the portrait locked away, the body is free. Dorian’s association with young men proves as deadly as his love for Sybil; Alan destroys himself against the terrifying heartlessness of Dorian’s moral disintegration. John Gray experienced a similar moral struggle as he left his public Uranian lifestyle to enter the priesthood. Only in prison and after would Wilde regret his careless use of people he had hurt, yet, he would continue his chase after decadence to the end of his life. Wotton, a dandy of the new aristocracy, loves only himself and sees in Dorian his own desire for continued youth, a realistic and enduring personality type. Denying the soul, considering art a malady and love an illusion, Wotton tells Dorian women serve only as decoration. Wilde and Lord Henry share a belief that marriage is a farce and a form of bondage. Wotton assumes Dorian has treated Sybil kindly, as Wilde treated Constance on a surface level, because it is easy to treat kindly those who mean nothing. Friendships, infatuations, and affairs with young men constitute the true reality for Wotton and Wilde, with no change to husband and wife status quo. While Basil loves Dorian, Wotton pursues him sensually. Briefly, Dorian believes in the soul as he believes he loves Sybil; she represents his own lost innocence, which he longs for. Yet, Dorian’s self-corruption has reached a point of no return. After the murder of Basil, even Wotton finally draws the line and ceases associating with Dorian, who, as a practical experiment, he lightly discards. Through the act of self-destruction, Wilde provides Dorian an excuse for his rejection of Basil Hallward’s life-affirming art by instilling Lord Henry Wotton’s decadence and cynicism with a superficial but convincing power. Dorian is not the ideal young man Hallward, Sybil, or

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his young male followers have imagined. Neither, in the end, is he the New Hedonist Wotton attempts to mold. He is simply the picture of Dorian Gray, subject to the wounds of the flesh and abuses of the soul, instilled from largely self-inflicted torments. Sentimental self-indulgence and lack of self-control, rather than amorality or aestheticism, destroy the picture; that inanimate representation of the torment of Dorian’s mind does not change. Dorian changes, fundamentally and irretrievably, a permanent deterioration only Basil Hallward realizes in his selfless love for him. Wotton does not realize, and so cannot admit, Dorian’s corruption because he has no love for him from which to understand. He only gazes and does not see, presumably never to change but to continue to corrupt other Dorians, an enduring social reality. Dorian realizes Wotton’s lack of love for him, which drives him deeper into decadence. When he asks, “Dorian, what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”, Dorian stares at him in horror. “Why do you ask me that, Harry?” “My dear fellow, I asked you because I thought you might be able to give me an answer.” This clever pragmatism typifies Wilde’s personal style with young men, the insidious and mesmerizing wit they later credited for their being in his company. Dorian (Wilde) knows he has “tarnished himself, filled his mind with corruption, and given horror to his fancy; that he had been an evil influence on others, and had experienced a terrible joy in being so; and that, of the lives that had crossed his own, it had been the fairest and the most full of promise that he had brought to shame. But was it all irretrievable? Was there no hope for him?” (Pearce 235). Wilde’s reality becomes Dorian’s reality; there is no greater blending of, or testament to, realism in fiction than that author and character become one. As did many Victorians in their love of theatre, Wilde contrasted actresses with all other women, whose lives seemed, in reality, superficial and dull. Sybil, by virtue of being a Shakespearean actress, is mysterious and exciting, something above the common female fray, and in Dorian’s self-delusion of Sybil’s illusory art, instead of representing her reality of independence, professionalism, and hard work, Sybil becomes a fantasy with whom he falls into what he wishes to believe is love. He allows her to transport him out of time and place without acknowledging that her feet are firmly planted on the stage floor in a desperate effort to survive poverty and squalor. She does for Dorian, a male spectator who gazes at her depiction of feeling, the only thing he believes she is worth loving for; taking him out of a painful demanding reality into a non-judging fantasy that requires nothing of Dorian but his gaze. Never does he consider

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what he can do for Sybil. Victorian women, whether or not they were on the stage, saw the acting profession as one in which females were necessary and could excel, and appreciated but never romanticized the effort as many men did, particularly Oscar Wilde. Sybil is beautiful; Dorian convinces himself that he loves her based first on her appearance, the embodiment of fantasy, as Wilde was known to do. From such superficial first impressions, Dorian becomes mesmerized by an expression of her inner self, her voice, making his later rejection all the more poignant. While the emotion expressed in that voice could be a valid assessment of the woman, Wotton immediately destroys such potential intimacy by impersonally typing her as representative of all stage heroines, casually dehumanizing her. Dorian attempts half-heartedly to dispute this, but succumbs to the cynical logic, initiating his disillusionment and fall into decadence. As Sybil learns to trust and love, in hopeful innocence, she admits to Dorian that she hates the falseness and playacting of the stage. This realism destroys Dorian’s fantasy; her discovery of love buries his fantasy and he is again left with what he considers to be bitter reality. In a more romantic authorial response than he would later allow in A Woman of No Importance or any other play, Wilde dramatizes Sybil’s response – suicide – literally removing her from the fictional stage. From Wilde’s perspective, having inspired Dorian’s love of the ideal, Sybil cheats Dorian as he, in turn, cheats Sybil in playing at love. Wotton, untouched by Sybil’s suicide, encourages Dorian to think of her as a dream and move on with his life. Dorian struggles to retain the numbness of an object; only much later will he rediscover the power to feel when he slashes the portrait and kills himself (McCormack 114). Lord Henry has no soul, and disregards Sybil as he later disregards Dorian when he proves tedious by committing murder. Wotten rationalizes that, in taking her own life, Sybil did not really die, but the reality is that there is a body and an inquest, and the lingering thought of Sybil in Dorian’s mind. This injection of visceral realism was constructed and intentional, creating a palpable reminder of Dorian’s lovelessness and its consequences. Sybil, in life or death, refuses to be superficial and so must be removed, yet Dorian will come to understand his guilt before he takes his own life. Such a highly nuanced fictional relationship underscores Wilde’s personal experiences and depth of feeling. In attempting to aestheticize himself against his thoughts of Sybil, Dorian loses all sense of emotion. In this way, Wilde fictionalized his relationship with Constance, who loved as innocently and faithfully as her fictional counterpart. As Dorian’s sudden, mad love for Sibyl denies his true sexual nature, Oscar’s love for Constance denied his.

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In a frenzy of passionate self-love, and a desperate attempt at self-preservation, Dorian corrupts all in his path: principally, Sybil, whom he professes to love but coldly rejects; Basil, whose art shows him the deterioration of his own soul, and himself. Only Wotton remains, too depraved to be touched by it all. Dorian destroys the only woman who has loved him and is fatal to male friends, a fictional self-indictment of the author. Dorian’s sin against love ends in deep corruption. When Hallward realizes his portrait’s power, he encourages Dorian to admit his sins and accept their consequences. For acknowledging Dorian’s immoral actions, Hallward, his conscience, must die. “Each of us has Heaven and Hell in him, Basil,” Dorian cries, in a despair he can still feel, and burdens his soul with yet another sin against the loving (122). For all its fantasy, The Picture of Dorian Gray fearlessly explores the deep complexity of Wildean realism. Perhaps the most realistic allusions in The Picture of Dorian Gray are to the highly fantastic yet inescapably scientific disposal of Hallward’s body, the suicide of the coerced and guilt-ridden friend who accomplishes it, and Dorian’s calm and methodical reaction to what he has done. Compounding his decadence, he escapes to the opium den, rejects the harlot’s sneering disgust in calling him “the devil’s bargain,” and survives James Vane’s attack. Self- contemplation briefly brings Dorian to the brink of repentance, but he cannot confess his sins because he cannot face their consequences. Unable to cleanse his soul, he destroys the painting that symbolizes his sins. Dorian destroys himself not by rejecting conventional moral principles but in agreeing with them. It can be no other way, although for the innocence he has destroyed, it is not enough. Wilde leaves the reader in his own limbo of corruption and depravity. After completing his only novel, Wilde turned again to the stage. Lady Windermere’s Fan, his first successful society play, introduced his philosophies of love and marriage to the English theatre-going public. As he mentally transitioned from poet and novelist to playwright, Wilde was somewhat apologetic about writing a comedy for the stage. That he chose to contrast a stereotypically fallen woman with a good woman, supporting their roles with respectable men and dandies, reflects both the mode of late nineteenth-century theatre and Wilde’s conflicting ideas of women and marital commitment. Strong females dominate the play, as Wilde felt they dominated men. Speranza had been an almost overwhelming maternal and literary force in his life. Constance was an educated, accomplished, and propertied woman who, despite (or because of) her long-suffering loyalty to Oscar and calm approach to life, was a strong moral presence. He respected and resented both, and modeled characters after both.

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Mrs. Erlynne is a controlling and unrepentant female character in the mode of Mrs. Cheveley and Lady Bracknell. Although she does not reveal the fact, she is the long-lost mother of Lady Windermere and has returned to reestablish a place for herself in polite society. A seemingly hard and cynical dandified woman, the shock of meeting her daughter and experiencing a cold reception as a fallen woman has supposedly reawakened feelings. Mrs. Erlynne has learned to live by her wits, to face derision with cold cynicism, and to grow a hard shell. Yet, when her unacknowledged daughter, who, through misunderstanding, contemplates making the same mistake she had made long ago, Mrs. Erlynne opens her heart long enough to pull her daughter from the brink of public and personal shame. That late-Victorian audiences found this situation plausible is revealing. Not every woman was as moral and long-suffering as Constance, not even always Constance. In total fantasy, Mrs. Erlynne develops instant maternal love; the dramatic reality is that she wills it away almost as quickly to follow her own path rather than attempt to establish any real and meaningful relationship with her daughter. Motherhood is under the scope here, not Mrs. Erlynne, and there is little of the maternal in either character, reminiscent of the Princess’ lack of maternal instincts in Eliot’s Daniel Deronda. Love is not a necessary emotion in this play, marriage is not companionate, and maternal feeling is not inherent. Lord Darlington is, without question, the most openly loving, albeit jaded, character, by far a warmer man than Lord Windermere, and he ends alone, in self-exile. Wilde explained his own and Lord Darlington’s intent: “Darlington is not a villain, but a man who really believes that Windermere is treating his wife badly, and wishes to save her. His appeal is not to the weakness but to the strength of her character (Act II): in Act III, his words show he really loves her. It is because of her that he is leaving England for many years; he is a better man than Windermere” (qtd. in Ellmann 364). This, then, is moral retribution for Lady Windermere in leaving her to a cold, judgmental husband, who is more her type. Mrs. Erlynne is castigated for abandoning her child, but Lady Windermere forgets she has one. Allowing for the good woman / bad woman dichotomy, this cast of fragilely married characters is more tragic than comic. The opening scene is a blatant seduction; if Lady Windermere had assented to Darlington’s advances, they would have fled to the Continent, he appeased, she disgraced. This is not trivial flirtation, but an artful rendition of a not uncommon Victorian reality. The Duchess of Berwick, who warns Lady Windermere about her husband’s supposed affair with Mrs. Erlynne, is pragmatic. Speaking from experience, she counsels turning a blind

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eye and taking him to the Continent, the socially accepted method of dealing with philandering husbands. Lady Windermere knows infidelity (still unsubstantiated) happens, but is incensed that it would happen to her; wounded pride and moral indignation consume her, convincing Lady Windermere to distrust her husband without grounds. To verify this fabricated affair, she breaks into her husband’s account book. Wilde’s premise is that thoughtless goodness is as self- destructive as evil. This supposedly good woman has entertained the attentions of another man, believed gossip without reason, invaded her husband’s privacy, and imagined her escape. Her reactions are as immoral as the actions for which she suspects her husband. Making potentially unredeemable hasty decisions to desert her husband, abandon her child, run to an admirer, and elope, she is stopped by Mrs. Erlynne, who argues to save her from herself. Wilde’s realism in this play argues in favor of forgiving and benefitting from experience. George Alexander convinced Wilde to increase the comedy and lessen the suspense throughout this serious play. Yet, even he could not save audiences from youthful overreaction, Lady Windermere’s overdramatized soliloquy, the stiffness of the respectable English husband, or the pomposity of Cecil’s boasting. That Wilde originally wrote the end of Act II to be Mrs. Erlynne’s strong and sober lecture, and the play to end with the revelations of her past sins, underscores his serious intent. At the final curtain, every major character still holds a significant secret: Mrs. Erlynne’s motherhood; Lady Windermere’s moral weakness; Lord Windermere’s bow to extortion, Lord Darlington’s unrequited love, Lord Loring’s cuckolding. All will live in ignorance, believing they alone have secrets. Their masks become a part of English social life, an uncontestable reality. Evident in the play is Wilde’s deep ambivalence about sin and puritanism in women. In his portrayal of Mrs. Erlynne, he seems to resist her rise in society, yet deeply relates to the mask of detachment with which she covers great pain. She has survived by being canny; announcing a self-exile to impress the Windermeres, she immediately snares Lord Augustus. Most of all, Wilde resents Lady Windermere’s mask of moral superiority, what he thought he saw in Constance, which increasingly galled him. At the same time, he was intensely aware of the effect of his public lifestyle and hidden proclivities on his wife. In Lord Darlington’s speech anticipating what Lady Windermere’s life will be like if she stays with her husband, Wilde outlines his own effect on Constance: his lies, his falseness, his return to and use of her when others have failed or bored him, her role as the mask of his life. Exploring the dichotomies of

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truth and falsehood, love and lust, appearance and reality seem to have been key factors in, or results of, his reasons for writing Lady Windermere’s Fan. In this his first successful society play, Wilde mocks but also values conventional marriage, holding the Windermeres’ marriage together, albeit by deception and in part for the sake of the child. The adventuress is tamed, the play opens with one marriage and ends with two, and society can once again present a calm and unified façade. Moral self-righteousness has softened, sins have been forgiven or avoided, and the status quo is restored. The six-month-old child, still forgotten, has ensured his mother remains faithful and his father ignorant. When Lady Windermere gives her fan to Mrs. Erlynne – who, to retain her goodness, stays mum – the women bond, exclusive of men. Therein, infers Wilde, lies female strength and potential male weakness. Audiences thoroughly enjoyed Lady Windermere’s Fan; the play ran for 156 performances and was published in book form by Elkin Mathews and John Lane (Hyde 139). The cynical and sentimental would not always be so compatible in Wildean plays. Wilde began work on a play provisionally titled Mrs. Arbuthnot, to be known as A Woman of No Importance, during a family holiday on the Norfolk coast. His works were always influenced by his surroundings, the people and places most real to him as he wrote. When he grew bored with domesticity, which he often did during his playwriting years, he invited Edward Shelley to spend a week, but Shelley declined; he was with John Gray. This invitation and rejection are significant since it has long been speculated that Shelley was the model for the character Gerald Arbuthnot, and that in his place Bosie was invited, who spent a week with the family before Constance and the boys left. Given this creative atmosphere, it is no surprise that many critics have believed the play reflects an unresolved struggle in Wilde’s personality and sexual persuasion. Certainly, his character types were familiar to him; they peopled his social life and conversation. I would argue, however, that Lord Illingworth, as the witty, self-obsessed, superficial dandy critic, and Mrs. Arbuthnot, the artistic, secretive, religiously minded, protective parent, both with a worldly past, represent Wilde’s dual persona. This would explain his intimate perceptions and understandings of both the male and female character. A Woman of No Importance opened on 19 April 1893 at the Haymarket Theatre. Wilde watched from his box at stage left. “People love a wicked aristocrat who seduces a virtuous maiden… and they love a virtuous maiden for being seduced by a wicked aristocrat. I have given them what they like, so that they may learn to appreciate what I like to give them’”

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(Belford 210). Wilde molded his audiences to crave his dramatic style. Lady Windermere’s Fan had centered on a woman who left her husband and lost her child. A Woman of No Importance focuses on a father who seduces and abandons a young girl and loses a son. Wilde was obsessed with the circumstances of parentage and birth; there are two orphans in this play, Gerald Arbuthnot and Hester Worsley. The play exposes the immorality and hypocrisy, the immense self-satisfaction, of the English elite, yet also allows glimpses of the charm and elegance of a dying way of life. As the press widely reported, the opening night was conspicuously well attended, and the audience applauded the play, but this time there were hisses when, clad in a white waistcoat with lilies in his buttonhole, Wilde came out to enjoy the praise; the audience had heard rumors of his double lifestyle. As he did with all his works, consistent with his bisexuality, Wilde wove himself into this play from both male and female viewpoints. He admitted to Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the actor- manager who played Lord Illingworth, that the dandy was not to be trusted: “He is certainly not natural. He is a figure of art. Indeed, if you can bear the truth, he is MYSELF” (McKenna 191). Taking him literally, Tree played Illingworth as Wilde, adopting his voice, intonations, and mannerisms (McKenna 191). Tree was reportedly excellent in the part of Lord Illingworth, a character into which Wilde had put much of himself and his hedonist outlook. Yet, while Wilde shared qualities with Illingworth, Mrs. Arbuthnot was, in many ways, the more psychologically developed of the two principal characters. Lord Illingworth’s contemporary cynicism, and the feminism shared by Mrs. Arbuthnot and Hester, lend modern and original tones to the play. The plot, however, revolves on the unimposing young Gerald Arbuthnot, an underpaid bank clerk in a small English town, who lives with his widowed mother and has, as Austen would say, few prospects. He has been asked by the brilliant epigrammatist and dandy, Lord Illingworth, to become his personal secretary, an intensely flattering offer that Gerald believes is due to his clerical skills, and which he believes will be his only opportunity to make something of himself. Illingworth tells Gerald repeatedly that he has taken a fancy to him and that Illingworth wants him near because he likes him so well. In his innocence, Gerald sees only that he must accept the offer of a position. To this point in the play, males and females could relate, on many levels of realism, to this solution, personally and professionally: weak versus strong, vulnerable versus powerful. That Gerald Arbuthnot is Lord Illingworth’s illegitimate son is made known early in the second act. Mrs. Arbuthnot had hoped to be able to persuade him to

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reject the offer without revealing Gerald’s identity or her past, but the secret is revealed, the parents clash on whether their past should affect their son’s future, and Gerald remains loyal to his mother. Illingworth’s second abandonment proves his lack of real love for Gerald and that his interest had been only lustful. Wilde makes clear that Lord Illingworth moves through life gaily, untouched by his long ago callous and cruel refusal to marry and protect the mother of his child from a hostile conventional society. Mrs. Arbuthnot, who loves her son deeply, is forced for his sake to live under an assumed identity and endures a lonely life of hidden guilt and bitterness, only to experience fear and humiliation when she realizes Gerald wishes to follow the man who has caused them both deprivation and misery. Yet, she has gained the dignity and self-respect to refuse to marry without love, even her son’s father. Both parents voice Wilde’s opinions on love, marriage, and the double standard. Lord Illingworth articulates many of Wilde’s social and personal beliefs and attitudes: “It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true,” referred to increasing gossip about Wilde’s sexual proclivities. Sexual desire is paramount for Lord Illingworth, a bisexual, as it was for Wilde. Mr. Kelvil, the MP, complains that Lord Illingworth treats women as toys. A Woman of No Importance contains two dandies, however, one female. The world- wise, witty, amoral Mrs. Allonby, who, like Mrs. Arbuthnot, realizes the nature of Illingworth’s true interest in Gerald, is the female dandy who spars equally with Lord Illingworth. Mrs. Allonby is a conscious wit, who ingeniously explains that women have a better time than men because so much more is forbidden them. Wilde enjoyed validating his knowing, feminine dandies with truth, and allows Mrs. Allonby to initiate Lord Illingworth’s downfall. The contrast between the epigrams used in the serious conversations of Lord Illingworth and Mrs. Arbuthnot, and the witty repartee between Lord Illingworth and Mrs. Allonby, becomes Wilde’s social criticism. The key to their relationship is that they do not take each other seriously; they immensely enjoy their bantering and guard their peer status to maintain it. When Mrs. Allonby says she will always like him because he has never made love to her, Lord Illingworth objects, but they both know if he had, they would each have survived. Mrs. Allonby, much in the manner of Mrs. Cheveley, is vital to the balance of this play. Indeed, she serves as the unmasking of Wilde’s third personality: artist, dandy, entertainer.

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An atmosphere of social protest pervades the play, in its satirical bitterness toward the upper classes but also in the duality of the main plot, the inequality of male and female power and values in Victorian society and the individual’s struggle against a conventional social code and its arbitrary laws. Wildean wit lightens the sentimentality that underlies an all-pervasive cynical atmosphere of cultural decay. Yet, there is also a promise of modernity in this play, which contains sincere Wildean realism: a deteriorating English aristocracy, competing definitions of love, the sanctity of marriage and family, and changing male/female sexual standards, defending feminism over same-sex practices. Wilde presents the play conventionally, creating stark contrasts between male and female perceptions, a strong assist for audience interpretation of his messages and understanding of his intentions. Lord Illingworth, a successful but ruthless public figure and witty conversationalist, models the self-focused social Wilde; Mrs. Arbuthnot, a quietly accomplished, well-intentioned and loving fallen woman, who protectively hides the truth from her son, represents the private and giving Wilde. Mrs. Arbuthnot is too proud and independent not to work for her son’s support; life’s inequities have revealed her strengths. Mrs. Allonby observes both with a jaded worldly wisdom. The fictional relationship between Lord Illingworth, Mrs. Arbuthnot, and Gerald may have been influenced by the tensions between Sir William, Speranza, and Oscar, but more likely were loosely based on the strained dynamics between Wilde, Bosie Douglas, and Sybil Queensberry, his mother. Sybil was as concerned about Wilde’s intentions toward Bosie as was Mrs. Arbuthnot about Illingworth’s initial intentions toward Gerald. Also, as Illingworth encouraged Gerald to do, Drumlanrig Queensberry, Bosie’s brother, served as personal secretary to Archibald Rosebery, Prime Minister from March 1894 to June 1895, and was rumored to be his lover. Although there are no explicit references to Uranian love between Illingworth and Gerald before the father is aware of the son, Illingworth’s initial offer, repetitive references to Gerald’s company, and insistent pursuit clarify his intentions. Unlike Lord Darlington in Lady Windermere’s Fan, Lord Illingworth has no deep feeling for anyone. Yet, Wilde develops this male protagonist as a complex character; Illingworth’s acts are heinous, but his interpretations are not always misguided. At times, his perceptions are more real than those of Mrs. Arbuthnot. Wilde protested one law for men and one for women; he most preferred no laws for anyone. The feminist plot of A Woman of No Importance is presented with great wit, reason, and understanding of feminine insight. A major tension of the play stems from the language Wilde

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gives to Mrs. Arbuthnot and Hester Worsley. Rachel Arbuthnot, the provocatively referenced woman of no importance, was a naive victim who became a woman with a past, the moral center of goodness and truth in the play against which all others are compared and found wanting. Wilde’s choice to raise his female protagonist from fallen woman to moral arbiter, and give her a new name with which to begin a new life, was as daring a speculation of his audiences’ responses as he would give to Mrs. Cheveley in his next play as she attempted blackmail for personal gain. Classically beautiful, Mrs. Arbuthnot also appears at the Chase in a black velvet gown with a close-fitting bodice and low neckline, a decidedly ambivalent image of English womanhood. Rachel is a strong woman of deep disappointments. Hester is her antithesis, young, untested, dressed in white and named for New England puritan Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter (Raby 151). Each represents a stage of moral experience and understanding. Wilde’s treatments of Victorian social and moral values become increasingly complex and more specific as the play progresses. Act I opens on the terrace of a great English country house, with guests sitting under a large yew tree, an image of tranquility, wealth, and permanence, the height of realism in English aristocracy. Footmen move about, serving guests. As conversation proceeds, the calm is ruffled; the dandies have arrived. Lord Illingworth is a man of distinction but Mrs. Allonby is hardly suitable as a guest at an English country home. In the first two acts, Wilde challenges the audience to integrate them into the highest society, while they dominate the scene with wit and assurance, manipulating and defining the others, and showing themselves to be distinctly decadent. In the conservatory, Mrs. Allonby fends off Illingworth’s advances and challenges him to kiss Hester, the pretty Puritan, striking to the core – and initiating the action – of the play. Significantly, only one married couple is present, Lady Caroline Pontefract and her fourth husband, Sir John. Mrs. Allonby mocks her absent husband, Ernest. Mr. Kelvil, a Member of Parliament, talks about English home life but is glad to have briefly escaped his wife and eight children. Then, Lord Illingworth recognizes the handwriting on an envelope, written he says by “A woman of no importance” (443). Wilde slowly but relentlessly implants first impressions. In Act II, the most effective and relatable wit is contributed by and for women, who discuss love, marriage, and husbands with timeless realism founded in female marital experience, regardless of class. Ladies Caroline, Hunstanton, and Stutfield – and Mrs. Allonby – provide as much or more marital philosophy in this play as Hester and Mrs. Arbuthnot. On this

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universal topic, the aristocrats and the dandy communicate with photographic realism. Mrs. Allonby wickedly instigates the conversation that Lady Hunstanton’s droll humor, perennially incredulous but all-knowing, enriches, and the other two women keep the wit moving. When Mrs. Allonby complains, “Men always want to be a woman’s first love… What we like is to be a man’s last romance,” Lady Stutfield plays the romantic, Lady Hunstanton acts the fool – feigning surprise that she would not forgive her husband because he had never loved before – and Lady Caroline delivers the punch line: “Nothing should surprise us nowadays, except happy marriages. They apparently are getting remarkably rare” (446). All know the truth Mrs. Allonby speaks: “The annoying thing is that the wretches can be perfectly happy without us” (443). These characters are integral to maintaining levity in an otherwise sober play that, without them, could not credibly claim to be comedy. Katherine Worth argues that A Woman of No Importance is “one of Wilde’s most original and interesting achievements” (Powell 67), and is correct that form and content are modern and the conversation of the first acts creates dramatic tension. Wilde’s possibly most scathing condemnation of the English upper-class takes place in this same act, also voiced by a woman, the young American Hester Worsley, a New Woman with democratic opinions who seeks equality of the sexes. While Wilde seems unsympathetic toward her militant puritanism, Hester’s shocking yet exciting tirade represents his true feelings about the English, who both attracted and repelled him. Among a group of superficial upper- class women, Hester (Wilde) speaks her (his)mind, without reservation, which Wilde had learned Americans could do during his tour of the States: You rich people in England… shut out from your society the gentle and the good… laugh at the simple and the pure. Living, as you all do, on others and by them, you sneer at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season. With all your pomp and wealth and art you don’t know how to live … You have the beauty that you can see and handle, the beauty that you can… and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of… a higher life, you know nothing. You have lost life’s secret… You are unjust to women in England. And till you count what is a shame in a woman to be an infamy in a man, you will always be unjust. (449-50)

Here, Wilde uses a clarifying tactic, allowing an American to critique English social life and mores with a perspective and freshness they do not have, aware that Hester, because of her youth, personality, culture, and even wealth, will state truths with courage and at no risk. This utilization of her character is one of Wilde’s most genius characterizations and serves his purpose of reflecting his audience in an entertaining but impactful way.

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Act III might have been titled Revelations; it is Gerald’s. Beyond the birthright reveal, his relationships with both parents change fundamentally, forcing him to become the man who can successfully love Hester. Lord Illingworth morphs from dandy to father figure and back again. Hester turns to Gerald from her pillar of feminism. Mrs. Arbuthnot momentarily becomes young Rachel, tricked by a youthful but worldly George Hartford. Critics have disapproved of the intensely dramatic reactions to the events of this act, but it could have been written no other way. Sudden revelations or fundamental reversals in close relations can be traumatic. Such scenes would be highly unrealistic if depicted with little emotion. Parentage, intent, even loyalty and desertion were highly personal issues for Wilde and must have affected many in his audiences the same way. Gerald is forced to reconceive his closest and most distant relationships, his very place in the world, almost spontaneously, which allows him to quickly but realistically develop a close connection with Hester. Illingworth is incapable of comprehending the lasting harm he has created and continues to create. Wilde’s ability to create relational dynamics attests to his capability to understand and imaging the complex emotions of both the male and female. He also must resist deep cynicism. In an iconic man-to-man exchange, Gerald asks “How then can women have so much power as you say they have?” and Lord Illingworth replies sardonically, “The history of women is the history of the worst form of tyranny the world has ever known. The tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts” (460). Illingworth is breathtakingly self-absorbed; he has never fully developed emotionally or psychologically. This forces Gerald’s maturity, from prospective personal secretary to dubious son to angry autonomous man, almost immediately. Wilde believed this to be the realism of male/female dynamics in love and marriage; he had observed much the same between his parents. Being bisexual, his defined realism seems to have created an agony of conflict: he needed the security and confidence he took from Constance’s lasting regard, even the respectability and financial support of marriage, but autonomy was also vital to his self-image and the life he chose with same-sex men. Act IV brings the wit, innuendo, philosophy, and emotion together in a rising crescendo. Mrs. Allonby and Lady Hunstanton visit Mrs. Arbuthnot’s Wildean defined happy English home, with its comforting fresh flowers, books, and wholesome art, a clear contrast to the stilted and cold luxury of Hunstanton Chase, but their visit is refused: Mrs. Arbuthnot has a convenient headache, a whimsical touch of realism that men and women of Wilde’s audiences could both

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recognize and enjoy. The home Mrs. Arbuthnot has created is not false, as some critics have judged; it is a private sanctuary. She is an unmarried mother living under an assumed name, with a son whose father would not claim him, an unrepentant seducer who, now, many years later, when Rachel is self-sufficient and no longer loves him, is willing to bargain for his son with an offer of marriage. Yet, Mrs. Arbuthnot is no martyr; she puts up with suffering and self- sacrifice because she must to raise her son respectably and to create a welcoming home for him. In that she is vindicated. The conflicts between Lord Illingworth and Mrs. Arbuthnot are clear, succinct, and masterfully executed, with displays of anger, logic, and even cruelty on both sides. In Act II, Illingworth attempts to free Gerald from Mrs. Arbuthnot’s moral logic, initially with some credibility: “My dear Rachel, I must candidly say that I think Gerald’s future considerably more important than your past… I want you to look at this matter from the common-sense point of view… what is best for our son” (456). However, against Mrs. Arbuthnot’s strength, skepticism, and own moral logic, he fails. She has considered Gerald’s fate, his soul rather than his professional life. By Act IV, when Gerald begs her to marry his father, her answer is immediate: “I will not… Men don’t understand what mothers are… When they find life bitter, they blame us for it” Gerald: “What mother has ever refused to marry the father of her own child? None.” Mrs. Arbuthnot: “Let me be the first, then. I will not do it” (474). In 1895, this was a fiercely feminist stance, particularly to be written by a male playwright, presaging the future. Rebelling against a system that punishes the fallen, Mrs. Arbuthnot will not repent. When she refuses Illingworth’s pragmatic proposal, he is condescendingly cruel: “You women live by your emotions and for them. You have no philosophy of life… It’s been an amusing experience to have met amongst people of one’s own rank, and treated quite seriously too, one’s mistress, and one’s –” (479-80). At long last, it is Rachel who snatches up one of Illingworth’s gloves and strikes his face to prevent the final word. In so doing, she has reclaimed herself and established a new, bolder and more just philosophy of life. After Illingworth leaves, Gerald returns. “Whose glove is this?’ Turning around, his mother replies: “Oh! No one… A man of no importance” (481). Wilde’s message is undeniable. His art, yet again, had contradicted social criticism. Hester, who has overheard the quarrel, is inspired to abandon her rigid moral code. They will all three go to America and Rachel will find contentment denied most women with a

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past. What man or woman, Wilde would ask, has no past? Rachel Arbuthnot will be rewarded for loyalty to her moral code. Audiences were forced to react to this play with some sophistication. Caught in a conundrum of expected sympathy for the moral heroine and vicarious delight in the witty but villainous dandy, many openly championed the traditional moral values of Mrs. Arbuthnot and Hester Prynne, despite or because of their modern insistence on greater equality between the sexes, yet were irresistibly drawn to Lord Illingworth’s nontraditional wit, cynicism, and intermittent practical arguments. Some, like Wilde, endorsed both. Generally, critics championed the steadfast mother and new (American) woman, at least in theory. Still, while Mrs. Arbuthnot’s was the more socially acceptable Victorian morality, even near the end of the nineteenth century, Lord Illingworth’s stance and lifestyle were common, if unspoken, practice. While Mrs. Arbuthnot and Hester Prynne were considered true heroines, Illingworth mirrored elements of the covert lifestyles of many males who attended the play. Although he gave the heroine the last word, and Mrs. Arbuthnot neither loved or would marry Lord Illingworth, Wilde believed that women often love men for, rather than despite, their defects, and forgive men they love almost anything, a philosophy he would develop in An Ideal Husband. A Woman of No Importance was another popular success and brought Wilde £100 a week. Though reviews were mixed, the Times wrote, “The play is fresh in ideas and execution and is written moreover with a literary polish too rare on the English stage” (Ellmann 383). William Archer, who even today is credited by critics and biographers to have reviewed Wilde’s art most accurately, wrote that the play depended for its success not upon wit or paradox “but upon the keenness of its author’s intellect, the individuality of his point of view, the excellence of his verbal style, and the genuine dramatic quality of his inspiration” (383). He praised the scene between Lord Illingworth and Mrs. Arbuthnot at the end of Act II as “the most virile and intelligent piece of English playwriting of our day” (383) The use of virility as a criterion suggests that the more usual charge against Wilde was aesthetic effeminacy (383). Since then, A Woman of No Importance has been the least commercially successful of Wilde’s plays, with 113 performances and few revivals, although it is regarded as one of the significant dramas of the nineteenth century (Powell 55). Even critics who have found fault with the play have argued that the message transcends its weaknesses.

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Of An Ideal Husband, Constance wrote, “Oscar’s play was the most tremendous success… and is, I think, the most beautiful play that he has written” (Moyle 8), a revealing appraisal by a wife who cared. The play, which opened at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, on 3 January 1895 to an audience that included the Prince of Wales, statesmen Joseph Chamberlain and A. J. Balfour, and other English ministers (Ellmann 428), was an immediate success. George Bernard Shaw confessed in The Sketch, “In a certain sense, Mr. Wilde is to me our only thorough playwright” (Hyde 172). Shaw had also written on the theme of the ideal husband, as had several others whose plays were running in London at the time, but Wilde’s “ideal” husband was the sole unrepentant. A reviewer for the Era wrote of the Chiltern character, “This kind of thing happens every day… But we are not asked to cultivate a fellow feeling with the sordid rogue, to listen to his cowardly and contemptible excuses, and to… witness the drugging of… his conscience… and in that of his wife” (Powell 104). Wilde was aware that controversy often bred success and always publicity. So it was with this play. An Ideal Husband, arguably Wilde’s most underrated work for the stage, is challenging. Exposing a dated conservatism for the 1890s, Wilde not only allows his protagonist to profit unapologetically from a high criminal act, but portrays politics as beyond women yet in need of their support. This was a decidedly unrealistic stance for the female half of his audience involved in, or at least aware of, the late Victorian political push for equal rights and the vote for women. Sir Robert Chiltern commits, hides, justifies, and even attempts to normalize his treason – the selling of a state secret – while refusing either to admit responsibility or to be contrite, a more realistic premise. Further, Lady Gertrude Chiltern is counseled to forgive her husband not only to deserve and retain his love, but to ensure tranquility and protect the social and cultural status quo, shocking in its premise but all too often the reality of public service, even today. Wilde understood that to maintain their security, political wives often stood by their men, against their personal moral codes. In a transparent attempt to absolve himself of all crime, Chiltern sets Victorian constructs of love and marriage back a half century or more as Wilde reverses his former stated hope that women might rise to a higher level of political conscience and, instead, reverts to making the moral wife share responsibility for the husband’s crime, leaving audiences no legitimate recourse but to resist, even as his characters capitulate. Wilde, then, saw theatre as staged masquerade, a venue from which to reflect the strengths and weaknesses, facts and foibles of English life back to his audiences for their

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interpretation as he remained masked. Plays provided this reflection more immediately and directly than had public reactions to his novel or other works, indeed, as he sat in his theater box and watched. In An Ideal Husband, this concept of theatre as real life, and vice versa, is more daring and powerful than in his other plays, with individual scenes acted out in places men and women paraded themselves daily: at home, the park, a reception, an art exhibit, even the balcony of the House of Commons. In this play, as in life, Wilde effectively blended the serious with the farcical, the known with the less known, targeting very real late-Victorian hypocrisies in which hard-won love in marriage had deteriorated to valuing appearances and platitudes over commitment. As he completed the play, Wilde complained that the critics would say, “‘Ah, here is Oscar unlike himself!’ – though in reality I became engrossed in writing it, and it contains a great deal of the real Oscar” (Pearce 308). Critics did make these complaints, and the play did contain Wildean realities of personality and experience. Written under threat of blackmail, six months before he was sent to prison, Wilde’s concerns with critics’ impressions seems strange, but as he strove for realism in his art, Wilde also used this art to escape from the harsh realities of life. He understood public opinion could damn even the most innocent, and knew he was not. Speaking through his most pragmatic and charming dandy, Lord Arthur Goring, Wilde opposes both Lord Chiltern’s defense of the philosophy of power and Lady Chiltern’s puritanical attitude toward her husband’s crime. Although, with Goring’s support, Sir Robert is seemingly allowed to profit from and avoid punishment for treason while Lady Chiltern is harshly punished for blind loyalty and rigid idealism, Wilde attacks the concept of perfection in love and marriage while promoting a realistic acceptance of imperfection in both. His mockery of Gertrude’s total adoration of a supposedly ideal husband, her faithful assumption of his incorruptibility, and her unquestioned moral puritanism are developed so disproportionately against the illegality of her husband’s treason and his lack of remorse go beyond the didactic to Wildean cynicism and rage. Lady Chiltern’s strict moral stance becomes dead weight to Sir Robert’s ongoing success due to the seriousness of his crime; had Chiltern not committed treason, or admitted to poor judgment, Gertrude’s moral rectitude would have been a personal and professional boon for him. Instead, her strict morality is an ever-present reminder of his fall. Lady Chiltern’s moralizing must vanish in forgiveness and love, for the preservation of her husband’s career, their established way of life, and English society as a whole.

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Wilde’s grudging allowance of Lord Chiltern’s rationalization for a “fault done in one’s boyhood almost” (504) is no forgiveness; while dandy and author adamantly condemn Chiltern’s act, Wilde tricks the audience into taking a stand. In this sense, the play subverts act (political deception), actor (Lord Chiltern), and private (Lady Chiltern) and public (audience) reaction to both. Yet, the intent of the play is far more complex than the playwright forcing his audience to judge Sir Robert; his guilt is undisputed. An Ideal Husband demonstrates the impossibility of moral perfection, the debilitating harm of seeking it, the prevalence of personal and social immorality, and the vital importance of love and marriage to the survival of the individual and of society. Mrs. Cheveley, a female dandy, blackmailer, and thief, threatens Sir Robert with public and private ruin in career, love, and marriage, yet often speaks wisely and honors her bets. Lord Goring, with his charge that Gertrude is taking up Mrs. Cheveley’s torment of Robert (548), and Mabel Chiltern, with her “tyranny of youth” and “courage of innocence” (483), for all their clever banter, are far more caring and realistically effective than the Chilterns, he who will not admit his crime and she who condemns it but complies. Wilde forces the audience to arbitrate the characters’ moral behavior and their own. More than with any of his plays, Wilde’s own reality must be considered when searching out the intent of An Ideal Husband. He was intimately aware of, and currently experiencing, the deadly potentialities of blackmail and public exposure, which carried not only a potential prison sentence for him but also the loss of his family, profession, and property. Indeed, he had been introduced to Alfred, Lord Douglas when he sought Wilde’s help against a threat of blackmail. Wilde, for all his public swagger, was not so deluded that he believed himself to be above the law, although he assumed certain privileges of social rank (such as time to leave the country before arrest) based on others’ experiences. Knowing his lifestyle might soon have to be defended, in defiance, he flaunted rather than hid what Victorian society considered a crime. The events of this play were painfully real to him; the text is replete with personal references: posing (495), the great price of success (505), the strength of yielding to temptation (506), the terror of secret scandal (508), strife between fathers and sons and the true art of living (517), even the immorality of audiences (507). Mrs. Cheveley’s attempt to blackmail Sir Robert Chiltern is the pivotal event of the play, driving the action. She presages the consequences of Chiltern’s (Wilde’s) past when she speculates, “Think of their loathsome joy, of the delight they would have in dragging you down, of the mud and mire they would plunge you in” (496), which

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soon came to pass for the author. Rather than acknowledging Chiltern’s (Wilde’s) act for what it is – a crime rather than an indiscretion – in a Wildean paradox, Gertrude (Constance) is indicted for blind loyalty and expected to assume blame to restore order. Wilde wrote his visceral reality. Realism failed such fictional and flesh-and-blood comparisons, however. Oscar Wilde had long and repeatedly dallied with the criminal, defended his repeated acts, and had married a woman he wanted to believe was as rigidly puritanical as Lady Chiltern, which was untrue. Constance’s very analysis of this play would have irked him, Wilde taking her assessment as evidence that she had entirely misinterpreted his meaning, for his intent was to irrationally blame her for the necessity of his crimes. Wilde self-identified as Lord Goring, while Constance saw him as Lord Chiltern, and, by extension, herself as Lady Chiltern, loving and forgiving. He knew what Constance gave no sign of comprehending; if she left him, he would be free, but if he left her, he would be considered a pariah. Constance considered the play a plea for forgiveness, as Lord Chiltern wished from his wife. Yet, as Chiltern, when Gertrude releases him, has nowhere to go, Wilde realized Constance was his only link to a respectability he would find nowhere else, as later, she would be his financial support. His sons must also be considered. In composing An Ideal Husband, Wilde reached back to The Picture of Dorian Gray and previous plays to perfect his concept of the dandy in Lord Goring, an imperfect but loyal and caring man, who recognizes in Mildred his female counterpart, despite her protestations. Rejecting Chiltern’s false defense of youthful frailty, yet sufficiently philosophical to be loyal to his imperfect friend, Goring, who is no puritan himself, realistically judges Chiltern’s act for what it was but brings him through the maze for the good of all. The audience must determine whether Goring is a foolish fop or a clever dandy, just as they must judge whether Chiltern is a man of value, to be forgiven with or without a confession. To Goring’s suggestion to confess to Gertrude, Chiltern replies, “Whom did I wrong by what I did? No One.” Goring’s reply: “Except yourself, Robert” (504). That Chiltern (Wilde) had to be told this confirms a realization of deep corruption, garnered in the pursuit of political (social) power as Dorian’s was in the pursuit of everlasting youth, as well as Chiltern’s (Wilde’s) disregard of his moral deviancy. Yet, Sir Robert (Oscar) asks to be forgiven for a crime he will not admit to by Gertrude (Constance), a wife he will indict in order to lend realism to the play (life). For English politics (society) are corrupt, and moral authority is suspect; to otherwise depict them would turn the

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play into a fantasy. In An Ideal Husband, only a moral wife’s unconditional love, however unrealistic, can right a husband’s wrongs. An Ideal Husband argues a dual reality: the deep political corruption of what appears to be a morally ideal politician and the deeper marital corruption of what appears to be a morally ideal husband. Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs Lord Robert Chiltern, who as a young and unworldly clerk sold a state secret to a foreign stockbroker for a percentage of profits, has yet gone on to amass a personal fortune and buy his way into Parliament, garnering a professional reputation as a man of integrity and respectability. He has also based a marriage on lies. Far from ideal, Lord Chiltern is a sham who has successfully played the political and personal game by convincing himself that he is no more corrupt than others. Still, he deeply fears losing his career and the love of his wife if his secret is revealed. Lord Goring must keep the truth from Parliament and convince Gertrude that her inherent sense of justice is faulty. Chiltern cannot face his wife because he knows he is wrong. Beyond all reason, Lady Chiltern is expected, by her husband and best friend, to ignore her own principles and blindly accept his corruption. In a classic marital exchange, erring husband must be forgiven by a moral wife who, in her grief, is reduced to begging: “Lie to me! Lie to me! Tell me it is not true” (520). More subtle but fundamental issues revolve on the definitions of love and companionate marriage in An Ideal Husband, a moral fable that argues for realistic expectations of husbands and, with less integrity, of wives. This intent takes the concept of imperfect humanity to incredulous, confusing, and even unethical dimensions, and threatens the play’s realism. If Wilde skewed reality with the intent to sabotage his wife to cover his own crimes, as, by reflection, Sir Robert sabotaged Gertrude to cover his, the play becomes invalid because its premise is untrue and unreal. Also, every principal character is a poser. Lord Goring is clever, effective, and eminently realistic, but intentionally plays the fool. Sir Robert, a criminal, presents himself as the quintessentially upright man who has gained his position fairly and responsibly. Lady Chiltern, touted as an unshakably moral woman, succumbs too readily to corruption. Mabel Chiltern, characterized as a playful and pretty young thing, expounds profound philosophies throughout the play. Mrs. Cheveley projects sophistication and insight, but is thoroughly base. Lady Markby acts the effete aristocrat, yet acknowledges class bias. All wear masks to hide their true selves and none of their relationships are what they seem to be.

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The Ideal Husband plays of the 1890s were typed byproducts of heated debates in late- Victorian literature and the press that signaled a serious challenge of long-held ideals in love and marriage. The traditional double standard, that women must maintain purity while men did not, prompted some to argue for lower female standards of behavior to match those of men, and others to call for higher standards of behavior for men to match feminine standards. Wilde believed that Victorian puritanism was highly unrealistic in its rigid, unattainable ideals of human behavior. Instead, he proposed a more realistic and attainable concept of the imperfect, arguing that love was the basis of forgiveness and that women should neither expect ideals nor make idols of men, exemplified in Mabel Chiltern’s not expecting Lord Goring to be an ideal husband, yet wanting to be a real wife to a real husband in a companionate marriage. However, to make his play work and to exonerate his own behavior, Wilde resurrected an old stereotype of separate roles and domains for men and women, using this outmoded model of male/female relationships to divert attention from a guilty politician (author) to a fiercely moral wife who could, by outdated methods of coercion, be convinced to forgive and hide her husband’s crimes. The notion of the perfect man or ideal husband, reflecting an unrealistic, even irrational, utopian streak in Victorian feminist thinking, was as impossible a concept as the perfect woman, which men had long expected of their wives, mothers, and sisters. A major Victorian conundrum was “What constituted an ideal husband, and what was an ideal wife?” (Moyle 8). A common theme of Victorian comedy was the ideal wife who was totally devoted to husband and children. Over decades, the Victorian domestic ideal of a wife bound to a code of perfection, with a husband allowed repeated lapses before being reclaimed by a good wife, had caused deep marital and social discontent. In the final analysis, artistically and in life, the issue was less an unrealistic standard of perfection, which was impossible to maintain, as an unrealistic level of imperfection. Husbands, like Wilde, wanted to be forgiven for intentional imperfection when wives, like Constance, were not allowed even unintentional slips. Conversely, with women seeking perfection in men, wives ensured their own disappointment in husbands. As a New Woman, Lady Chiltern’s demand that her ambitious husband be “pure” and “without stain, her ideal” is not only an impossibility but a complete reversal of Victorian tradition (qtd. in Powell 89). It was, however, the code of The New Women, who expected more from men than their mothers had. They challenged men’s dominance in society and argued that husbands should be held to the same moral rules as their wives (Moyle 8). Lord Chiltern,

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however, is corrupt, in many ways no more moral than the blackmailing Mrs. Cheveley: “It is because your husband is himself dishonest and fraudulent that we pair so well together… The same sin binds us” (519). He compounds his corruption with lies, in part to maintain his wife’s expectation of perfection, which makes their marriage a lie. Gertrude’s sacrifice of ideals to protect her marriage and lifestyle may be compared to Mrs. Cheveley’s blackmail to maintain her security; both do what they must to have what they want. The Chilterns are as flawed as their tormentor; he has a past and her demand for perfection is as destructive as Mrs. Cheveley’s blackmail. Only Mabel Chiltern, in not seeking a perfect husband, may avoid disappointment. The Wildean realism of An Ideal Husband champions imperfection, yet its fatal flaw was inequality. The widely shared contemporary view of An Ideal Husband, the only play of its kind in which the husband was not an ideal, was that Gertrude Chiltern learned to ameliorate her too rigid morality, justifiably forgiving her husband and sanctioning his acceptance of a Cabinet position with a clear conscience and a good heart because it was for the greater good, with Mrs. Cheveley rightfully punished for her immorality. Yet, Sir Robert’s political power being purchased with Gertrude’s self-effacement was deeply disturbing. That Constance felt this was her husband’s best work, and that H. G. Wells commented that Wilde was “discovering to an appreciative world, beneath the attenuated veil of his wit, that he too has a heart,” spoke to the prevailing temper of the late Victorian mind: a desire for perfection in women, acceptance of imperfection in men, and appreciation for any positivity that bettered the double standard (Gagnier 130). Wilde did not, however, hold such idealistic views, or feel his audiences should. Lord Goring, as the representative dandy, is the most highly developed, perceptive, and satisfying character in the play. The wit and profundity that Wilde creates for this character are the best in his canon. He is idle but clever, insightful yet loyal, self-focused but caring. A realist, he never appears to act against conventional Victorian ethics, thus retaining contemporary credibility. His insistence on staying out of politics is vindicated when Lord Chiltern’s corruption and hypocrisy are exposed; Sir Robert’s unethical luxuriousness and hypocritical idealism pale beside Goring’s honest individuality. Although he often plays the dupe, Goring is keenly aware of people and events, and holds more progressive ideas than his Whig father, Lord Caversham, who continues to believe that marriage is best arranged by parents: “There is property at stake… Affection comes later on in married life” (527). Goring relates credibly to every principle character, as the Chilterns’ friend, Mabel’s love interest, Lord Caversham’s son,

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Mrs. Cheveley’s former lover, and Phipps’ employer, attesting to Wilde’s understanding of human nature. He is the only character not described as art, because he is art itself. His dress, mannerisms, attitude, nuanced choices, and general approach to life evidence an artistic mentality, yet he is free of illusions even as he lives and mocks English upper class hypocrisy, suggesting a schism between art and artifice, yet another possible layer of Wildean paradox. For all its many and diverse themes, An Ideal Husband does not revolve on art, irony, or hypocrisy, but on tested and deepening love and its power to resist greed and avarice. Women, in addition to marrying for money or security, may now blackmail for it, but the only true way to establish a fulfilling companionate marriage is to base it on a realistically flawed but enduring love that accepts and forgives. The fundamental early nineteenth-century struggle between marrying for contractual fortune or companionate love has morphed, finally, into a more intimate and nuanced late-century conversation about the finer points of love and morality in marriage. Lord Goring learned to heed these finer points – appearances versus intentions, corruption versus morality – during his former brief engagement to Mrs. Cheveley and has been reminded of their importance with her return. He and Mabel Chiltern may now enjoy a marital partnership founded in a mature love of realistic expectations and equal companionship. Wilde, despite his misogynistic treatment of Lady Chiltern, demonstrates more warmth than usual in the development of these characters, written with such realism that they seem to step from the page. The brilliant Mrs. Cheveley, the catalyst of the play, seeks, by manipulating Sir Robert and the Argentine scheme, to exercise power not only for personal profit but to directly affect English politics. She is witty, wealthy, moves in the best European circles, and has a suspect past, which includes illicit connections to the international stockbroker Baron Arnheim. Her previous engagement to Lord Goring questions his judgment until Wilde shares that Goring ended the affair after three days. For three acts, Mrs. Cheveley is devious, heartless, amoral, and mesmerizingly unprincipled, reminiscent of Mrs. Erlynne but without her emotion, and enjoys inflicting misery on Chiltern for crimes he has committed. Other than a loss of ill-gotten gains, she also goes unpunished, although the audience is meant to understand that her loveless life is punishment enough and she regrets losing Lord Goring. Wilde believed that sin could stimulate essential goodness. He enjoys Mrs. Cheveley and gives her every opportunity to perform, particularly as a foil to Lady Chiltern, but does not allow her to reform.

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Mrs. Cheveley’s most disquieting trait is that she is often correct in her judgments of others, assessments which drive her actions and, often, her success. In blackmailing Chiltern, she is tormenting a guilty man, for which she has written proof in Chiltern’s handwriting. She also enjoys bringing down the prideful Lady Chiltern. They are both punished, but Lady Chiltern comes out of the drama with a husband who professes to love her, however imperfectly; Mrs. Cheveley loses a bid to win the man she professes has been her only love, if she has ever loved a man. Before the Chiltern’s happy resolution, or truce, there is the matter of Lady Chiltern’s letter on pink paper, a classic male/female miscommunication, and Mrs. Cheveley’s final evil attempt. Shaw particularly enjoyed this subtle realism. The farcical bell ringing and misidentifications only serve to focus more intently on the ruinous possibilities of the misunderstood letter, a direct reference to the Hyacinth letter that spelled impending doom for Wilde. Despite Mrs. Cheveley’s evil machinations, however, she leaves the stage alone. Lord Goring, Mrs. Cheveley’s dandy counterpart, is a shape shifter, all things to all people. His charm and wit, ability to blend, to chuckle at people’s foibles and the unavoidable realities of life, mark him as a thoroughly modern man. He is a chronicler of the past and harbinger of the future. Lord Goring gets things done. Only he could credibly use his worldly charm to seduce and outwit Mrs. Cheveley to obtain the blackmail letter. There is no love in this for either, in the conventional sense, but there is a grudging mutual respect for innate cleverness and survival; she almost trusts him. They are cynics and risk takers, each a member of polite society familiar with its dark side. Mystery surrounds both, principally because they slip in and out of masks and keep their own council. Their frank and insightful conversation about the nature of love and lovers is fascinating and astute, since both are students of human nature. Of all principal characters, in An Ideal Husband and possibly in all of Wilde’s fictional works, Lord Goring and Mrs. Cheveley are most realistically and believably drawn. The dandies drive An Ideal Husband. Wilde enjoyed holding court, but was not one to preach, and would not have written a play without a representation of himself, male or female. As moral arbiter, Lord Goring mocks Sir Chiltern’s temporary assumption of morality, recognizing his hypocrisy for what it is and knowing Chiltern’s ambition will not allow him to permanently retire from public life. Averting Mrs. Cheveley’s blackmail scheme, Goring directly prevents his friend’s exposure and ruin. Gertrude, devastated by the loss of her ideal and, as importantly, her idealism, insists that resignation from public life is her husband’s moral

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obligation. It is this wasteful insistence on pointless self-exile that provokes Goring’s pompous but well-meaning attack on Gertrude’s unattainable ethics, delivered with conviction, flawed and slanted as it is: “Women are not meant to judge us, but to forgive us… A man’s life is of more value than a woman’s. It has larger… greater ambitions. A woman’s life revolves in curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that a man’s life progresses… A woman who can keep a man’s love, and love him in return, has done all the world wants of women, or should want of them” (548). Wilde effectively clarifies the gender imbalance of his evolving philosophy of love, marriage, and partnerships, unfairly and unequally placing a heavy responsibility on women to hold relationships together, yet obliging women to stabilize male public life. The dandy and the New Woman struggled for control and recognition in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The friendship between Goring and Lady Chiltern is credible; she is a childless feminist agitator for woman’s right to vote, he is a prime example of struggling aristocracy. What is less believable is the spontaneous exchange of her radically feminist insistence on male purity for a total acceptance of compliant and dull domesticity, as well as his decidedly non-dandy argument for an antiquated sexual standard. Goring defends the power of love as Chiltern defends the love of power; both are misused. As the character who most resembles Wilde as he believed himself to be, Lord Goring harks back to Lord Illingworth: wit, dandy, anti-puritan. Goring, however, befriends Gertrude and is earnest in his efforts to save the Chiltern marriage and to keep a much-needed politician at his post. Illingworth’s intent, like Lord Wotton’s, is decadent and malevolent; Goring’s intent is altruistic, more in line with Lord Darlington’s. Both dandy types are credible. As Goring says, “Nobody is incapable of doing a foolish thing… a wrong thing… [Love] is the true explanation of this world” (511). As difficult as it is to believe that any New Woman of 1895 would believe Goring’s argument, Constance took it seriously, a woman whose own moral code was daily challenged by the reality of a responsibility to her children. Gertrude allows herself to be persuaded that, for the greater good, her husband should stay in office. This personal sacrifice for the greater good, rather than a blind capitulation to her husband’s wish, is a more realistic and credible explanation of her sudden moral reversal, although even this martyrdom would be untenable for modern feminists. Her repetition of Goring’s argument back to Sir Robert nearly word for word (549) shames his concealment of his past, as well as his hypocritical stance on Goring’s supposed liaison with Mrs. Cheveley. Act IV highlights the chasm between Chiltern’s false moral

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posturing and Goring’s acceptance of reality, contrasting the outwardly stable Chilterns with the well-balanced Gorings-to-be, a savvy, loving, companionable couple for a new age. If Sir Robert’s manly public-spiritedness rests on a financial swindle, and New Woman rights depend on Gertrude, the future of England can be more safely entrusted to an idle but morally flexible Arthur Goring and Mabel, his socially and politically savvy wife. Lady Chiltern judges her husband from his past acts; Constance forgave Oscar’s past when she married him, and repeatedly forgave his transgressions during their marriage. Interestingly, Wilde did not give Lady Chiltern his own wife’s tendency to love her husband more in adversity than in success. That his crime has enabled Sir Robert to have a useful career in public life underscores Wilde’s defense of sin on philosophical grounds, yet Sir Robert, to the end, admits to no sin. He paradoxically rationalizes his acceptance of a bribe as working within the expectations of his time with shifting realities. His treason leads to good, but only by concealment (Belford 233). Instead of converting the fallen husband into an ideal man, against Wilde’s instincts, he softens the wife’s unforgiving morality, bringing Gertrude down to Sir Robert’s moral level rather than raising him to hers. Wilde politically proposed this to society in life and condones Chiltern’s actions in his art, but makes no effort to render plausible Lady Chiltern’s sudden and complete change of morality. He seems to take it for granted. Lord Goring’s hypocritical and misogynistic philosophy somehow, albeit unrealistically, leads Gertrude to tear up the letter of resignation after the incriminating letter of treason has been destroyed; if Wilde had more realistically written the scene, Gertrude would have rejected his faulty logic and the British Empire might have lost one of its supposedly less corrupted members. Surely, as emotional as this scene is, few Victorian women could have been personally satisfied. Not only is Sir Robert’s self-vindication shocking; Lord Goring’s misogynistic fall from grace is somehow even more disappointing. The only possible conclusion is that neither Chiltern possesses integrity and, although Lord Goring is quintessentially a realistic man, he too falls short of the ideal if his only alternative is to intimidate Gertrude by asserting that men are more valuable than women and threatening that, if she does not encourage him to remain in politics, she may lose his love. As the Chilterns meet in a corrupt middle ground seemingly intended to form the basis of their now more partnership (in crime) marriage, Wilde shows the marital foundation crumbling into unsustainable self-defeat. Lady Chiltern, forsaking her moral code, forgives her husband for

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a crime he will not take responsibility for and refuses even to name. She will no longer idolize but simply love him. The question is whether Gertrude’s giving Lord Chiltern what he asks for will satisfy him after he has enjoyed years of her idolization. Will loving him in all his imperfection condone and reinforce those imperfections? He now knows she can be coerced and she knows he can be bought, mutual realizations that would more realistically lead to regret than happiness. Even after her sacrifice, Chiltern feels the need to ask his wife whether she feels love or pity for him, and with the final words of the play, she professes, “It is love, Robert. Love, and only love. For both of us a new life is beginning” (551). This need was Wilde’s reality. In a jaded political environment in which all are assumed guilty, Lord Chiltern gains from unrepentant criminality and escapes punishment. Wilde was, and has been, widely criticized for not bringing the corrupted and corruptible Chiltern to justice, yet he stops short of pardoning his weakness and crime, or condoning his benefiting from the corrupt act. He simply admits that the reality of English political life is that, often, hypocrisy wins and crime pays (Woodcock 164). Intentions matter far more than actions in An Ideal Husband. Reality, always individual, is pragmatic for the minority and standardized by the majority. Mrs. Cheveley, who attempts to sacrifice Chiltern for her own ends, although he also put himself first, loses by speaking truth while the Chilterns win with lies. Lord Goring saves Robert Chiltern for the good of the whole, at play’s end unrealized. Wilde emphasizes the stability of women even as he subjects them to the instability of a male-dominated world. As Lord Goring says, “Life is never fair, Robert. And perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not” (504). Like Austen and Eliot before him, Wilde never promised – or constructed – fairness in life, love, or marriage. Much in the manner of Austen’s novels, the end of Wilde’s An Ideal Husband comes before the new lives of the Chilterns and Gorings are acted out. Proposed marriage schemes of the late nineteenth century were doomed before they could take effect due to the impossibility of raising standards for both men and women to unrealistically high levels or the indignities of lowering those standards for all. Within this hotly contested political debate, Wilde proposed doing away with ethical constraints for men and relaxing them for women, virtually fostering sin with no remorse. Years before, as the editor of Woman’s World, he had proposed empowering women politically, infusing the family ideal into the state and moralizing politics. By the time of his writing An Ideal Husband, his philosophies and personal lifestyle had changed so drastically

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that he feared what he had earlier championed. Rather than proposing to feminize men, as he saw the debate, he argued for the re-feminizing of women, reflected in this and his final play. Chiltern’s cavalier attitude toward his crime has remained ambiguous, continuing to disturb contemporary and modern audiences and critics. Rather than becoming real, Chiltern continues to live a lie. Not only does he hide a past crime, he contemplates committing another by endorsing the corrupt Argentine Canal scheme to save himself public embarrassment, shirking responsibility by complaining that others are also guilty. In this way, the play demeans love and marriage by championing a sharing of false reality in marital relationships, yet rescues itself, in part, with Chiltern’s insistence on Mabel marrying for love: “Loveless marriages are horrible” (549). Wilde’s increasing corruption and his need to blame Constance’s moral code for his boredom with marriage were poisoning his work. Ironically, An Ideal Husband was completed when Wilde had resolved to begin a new life with his family. Despite his neglect of them, he loved his children and was still fond of Constance. Yet it was too little, too late. The reality was that Oscar Wilde would never be free of conflict, often self-imposed. The Importance of Being Earnest was Oscar Wilde’s last play. Far from being his finest dramatic work, as is nearly universally acclaimed, Earnest was popular, a deliberate farcical reflection of Wilde’s audiences, written in resigned answer to what a shallow society expected and would pay for, allowing him to finance a now thoroughly decadent lifestyle. He had always been earnest: in classical study, in sharing his aesthete appreciation of nature and beauty, in encouraging self-reinvention, in linking England and America, in love and in marriage, and in creating serious journalism, literary criticism, social theory, and philosophical plays. This earnestness that had been so important to him, to which he had sincerely given half his life, had culminated, figuratively and literally, in farce. Earnest was not the beginning of an ever more brilliant career as a playwright; even without the trials, the play and any that came after would have financed an increasingly decadent life, cloaked in glamour but seething in self-reproach. Success, including the final triumph of Earnest, was Wilde’s destruction; absolute success would have destroyed him absolutely. When he admitted at Constance’s grave that it could have been no other way, he was confessing the deepest truth of Wildean realism. The term ‘earnest’ was code for homosexual among the Uranian subculture in which Wilde moved. Touted as a masterpiece, the play was titled deliberately as a confession of Wilde’s lifestyle and catch-all of his personal and professional bitterness. Love, marriage,

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individuality, responsibility, control, autonomy, school, church, birth and death are treated with intentional mockery and contempt. Wilde was paid handsomely for prostituting his art. Yet, he must be credited for serious effort. Something must have died in him when he first witnessed the audience’s blind reception. He had pandered to them and they had not understood. The Importance of Being Earnest is the most original of Wilde’s plays, yet the most disappointing. Rather than rejecting tradition or evolving a new dramatic art form, Wilde was attempting to be fair: “Why should there be one law for men, and another for women!” Audiences enjoyed the play, but misunderstand its message. This mockery of love opened on St. Valentine’s Day 1895 at George Alexander’s St. James’s Theatre. Despite a raging snowstorm, it drew a crowd. One of the actors admitted, “In my fifty-three years of acting, I never remember a greater triumph.” Over time, Earnest has demonstrated staying power; a revival in 1909 earned a profit for Vyvyan Holland of more than £21,000 and it was produced again in 1911 and 1913 (Gagnier 133). Critics have absurdly argued that Earnest stands alone among Wilde’s plays in having no social theme, yet it is replete with themes, overt and covert: the final degradation of Victorian society; the meaningless of birth, lineage, integrity, love and marriage; buggery and bankruptcy, responsibility (and a lack of responsibility) for others, baseless snobbery; the loss of children by English schools; the sterility of the Church, all are themes. Wilde was correct in believing that Earnest’s perceived lack of seriousness would ensure its box office success, but such false reception increased his angry, jaded thoughts and practices. Same-sex hints were ignored before the trials because the practice was so widespread in London; during the 1890s, no less than 20,000 same-sex practitioners were known to the police, who prosecuted only for flagrant and public indiscretions (Hyde 160). Many in Wilde’s audiences were same-sex practitioners, often while married and happy in both. The marriage theme dominates The Importance of Being Earnest, although love seems to have little to do with it. In the proposal scenes, Wilde satirizes the idea that men choose who they will marry, since his premise is that women make the decision to coerce men into matrimony. Gwendolen, Cecily, Lady Bracknell, and Miss Prism are shallow, scheming, manipulative, and jealous beings, all pretending to be what they are not, revealing Wilde’s distrust of women and their motives for love and marriage. Lady Bracknell, once a dowerless woman who married for fortune, has become a formidable symbol of power and privilege. Algernon, her nephew, has nothing but looks, yet acts as if he has everything a man could want. His friend Jack, a

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foundling, is revealed as a highborn aristocrat; Cecily, Jack’s ward, is an orphan. Gwendolen, engaged to Jack, is constant in everything but her affections. To escape the constant care of Cecily, Jack pretends to have a younger brother named Ernest, whom he must periodically visit in London. Algernon has fantasized an ill Bunbury whom he often pretends to visit to in the country. Reality is fantasized, and life is a puzzle. Englishmen hid their philandering, and few said what they meant. When Algernon states that divorces are made in heaven, he is arguing for the dissolution of marriage and criticizing the Anglican Church’s stance on divorce. In Earnest, Wilde’s messages are serious; audience perceptions rarely have been. Despite its popularity with the public, Earnest aroused critical controversy from the beginning. Shaw, who liked Wilde’s earlier plays, saw a decline in this last: “Clever as it was, it was his first really heartless play. In the others, the chivalry of the eighteenth-century Irishman… gave a certain kindness and gallantry to the serious passages and to the handling of the women... In The Importance of Being Earnest this had vanished; and the play, though extremely funny, was essentially hateful” (qtd. in Ellmann 95-6). Modern critics have objected to the high level of farce, the overworked jokes, the attack on moral foibles that pretends no attack, and, above all, Wilde’s continuing creative borrowing, here from The Foundling. Endless speculation breeds endless speculation, yet, the play continues to be touted as his best and most successful. Presumably, writing this farce, in the topsy-turvy world of Earnest Bunburying and marriage bashing, lightened Wilde’s own very real cares, marital and otherwise. Yet, although reality is earnestly trivialized in this play, its realism cannot be obliterated. Jack ends by paradoxically praising the supreme Victorian virtue of being earnest – of effort, sincerity, seriousness, honesty, and all other solid virtues – in uttering the exact opposite of what he means, in true Wildean acrimony a fitting end to Wilde’s social plays. Summation The life and art of Oscar Wilde had everything to do with his constructions of love, marriage, and partnerships; with his artistic temperament, marrying may have been his most immoral and heartless act. Knowing his sexual proclivities, Wilde believed, as did many Victorian same-sex men, that marriage would either be a cure or a cover for his bisexuality. Yet, he was neither altruistic in love nor self-sacrificing; after two years of loving and loyal marital behavior, the marriage virtually ended and became a friendship, according to his pattern for

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relationships, with Wilde returning to his same-sex inclinations. There was never an appreciable division between Oscar Wilde and his art. Virtually his entire canon is autobiographical. Yet, unlike many same-sex men who longed for the security and respectability of home and hearth, either for genuine feeling or social cover, Wilde destroyed the domestic peace of his family in a decision to find himself. What he might have done with no recrimination, even from Victorians, if he had remained single or married but reasonably discreet, became a sensation largely because he created the sensationalism. With such an accommodating wife, the responsibility for the Wilde’s marital discord must be recognized as primarily his, although if Constance had been more demanding of social appearances, there may have been less sensationalism. As it was, Wilde revealed himself in his work until finally there was no mask, personally or professionally. Oscar Wilde was too modern for Victorian England, but his works were vital to its evolving constructions of love and marriage. With the imminence of the twentieth century and increasing strength of feminism, without Wilde, change would have come, but with less wit or lasting social impact. The realities of love and marriage, and the legalities of the institutions in which they preside, continue to evolve much as they did in the late nineteenth century. Whom to love, partner choices, and sexual preferences must always be individual. In that, Wilde was correct. Yet, he also came to understand the consequences of such choices and actions. In De Profundis, from his prison cell, he wrote to Alfred Lord Douglas, “Do you think I am here on account of my relations with the witnesses on my trial? My relations, real or supposed, with people of that kind were matters of no interest to either the Government or Society. They knew nothing of them, and cared less. I am here for having tried to put your father into prison” (Auden 123). He was also there for other reasons, including his rejection of a society attempting to clarify male and female roles in love and marriage as he was attempting to strengthen his own. Oscar Wilde loved men and women, ideally and realistically. He had been bisexual, heterosexual, and, in the end, was homosexual. In the unedited version of De Profundis, however, Wilde shows his love – infatuation, obsession – for Alfred Lord Douglas to be more than sexual or simply about youth and beauty. Bosie had been promiscuous long before he met Wilde, and Wilde had never felt jealousy with a love interest, even Constance. Companionship was a matter of allegiance for him, intellectual equality, mutual respect and support. He loved, but not in the traditional way or for long. Wilde expected others to follow his lead, to somehow

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intuit that he cared. Friendship was the highest ideal to him; he experienced what he could of sexual love, then morphed a mutual understanding and affection into a higher ideal. Real feeling was, he believed, the ultimate human experience. Unfortunately, practice fell short of his ideal. Wilde’s literary career, founded on art, was, at base, an attempt to understand human relationships, particularly interpersonal actions that demystified love. Reading Gaol did not defeat him; loneliness did: “The Cloister or the Café are my future. I tried the Hearth, but it was a failure” (qtd. in Auden 132). The Ballad of Reading Gaol makes clear that Oscar the actor had replaced Oscar the playwright. His popular plays took him to the height of social acceptance; loss of an audience from the discovery of his Uranian lifestyle brought him to the depths of despair. Even after his death, the scandal hurt his causes, artistic and sexual. However, as the Victorian moral duality gradually passed, and the aristocracy faded away as the middle-class strengthened, Wildean wit and wisdom regained respect. When Wilde’s sexual choices were no longer anathema, his wit and concepts gained credibility, followers, and even reverence. As middle-class values have further come into their own, sexuality in all its forms has also come into the light. No longer is the prevailing social attitude to pretend that sexual preferences do not exist. Challenges remain, particularly for the perception and acceptance of effeminacy, but, as Alan Sinfield has noted, “Because Wilde and others were as they were, we are as we are” (viii). The Wilde trials fundamentally altered lives beyond his, causing doubt in the status quo of love and marriage and a major shift in public perception of socially acceptable sexual practices that has come far from Victorian mores and continues to evolve. Most tend to perceive their expectations. Wilde understood males and females, although not always equally, because both perceptions lay deeply buried in his psyche. “When a part of our worldview threatens disruption by manifestly failing to cohere with the rest, then we reorganize and retell its story… back into the old shape if we are conservative-minded, or into a new shape if we are more adventurous… This is spectacularly true of Wilde’s person and writings; he is a cultural token around which contest and change occurred, and still occur” (Sinfield 4-5).

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CONCLUSION When Jane Austen began writing her Juvenilia in the last years of the eighteenth century, Romanticism was at its height, and the prevailing literary vogue was for highly emotional, imaginary, and unrealistic fiction, exemplified by Ann Radcliffe’s pioneering sensational and very popular Gothic novels. Contractual marriages, arranged by figures of authority and designed for legal retention of family fortune, had long been socially sanctioned as the most viable means of socially joining man and woman in matrimony for life, primarily to ensure heirs to secure family lineage. The concept of companionate marriage based on love and marital partnership, marriages of feeling, became increasingly popular over time, but resistance was powerful and political. As a single woman who had loved, Austen joined the fray, writing in anonymity and using wit and wisdom to even the debate and make palatable her insistence on love and companionate marriage to a reading public living on the cusp of a century of great social change. Austen’s Juvenilia, seemingly light and clever and designed to entertain, was often startlingly insightful and caustic, despite her youth. Harsh judgment lurked behind the wit. The style of this Juvenilia bears little resemblance to her later novels, but key Austenian themes were identified from the beginning: female voice and agency, gender equality, friendship, love, marriage, partnership. As she matured and experienced the emotions and circumstances she wrote about, Austen’s works developed with her greater personal understanding. Characters and scenarios became more realistic, and what she had earlier written for shock value was increasingly addressed toward rebellion against constricting social codes and restrictions on female autonomy. Jane Austen was a consummate observer of humanity and its often habitual but nonsensical ideas and actions, which she argued against in her art. Her fictions depicted life’s realities with an easy style her readers could relate to and enjoy. This combination of an unblinking gaze, direct experience, and rebellious insistence on constructive realism informed the Austenian philosophy of love and marriage, rendered with great psychological understanding and literary skill in what have since become classic English novels. With Sense and Sensibility, first titled “Elinor and Marianne,” Austen drew from raw personal experience and emotion, and the style and atmosphere, character actions and feelings, and conclusion testify to her intentions as she wrote, remembered when the original manuscript was retitled and published many years later. In this first novel, sense is championed and

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excessive emotion, or sensibility, is cautioned against. Love is a right but is not guaranteed, nor, realistically, does it always bring happiness. For Austen, female security remains the ultimate goal, and though not as harshly purchased as in a contractual marriage, must be bargained for in early companionate marriage. With security primary, love is a pleasant secondary byproduct. After exhausting social and emotional machinations, Elinor and Marianne secure their futures with varying levels of affection and realism. Sensibility and sense are juxtaposed, as they often are in life, with a conventional but less than satisfying conclusion. Pride and Prejudice, originally “First Impressions” composed in defiance of a painful personal reality, is a thoughtful and highly hopeful fiction sobered by the Bennett daughters’ insecure futures set in stark relief to Mr. Collins’ baldly pragmatic, and imminently realistic, proposal to Elizabeth. Offered financial security in what amounts to a contractual marriage bargain, Elizabeth consciously risks her own and her sisters’ futures on the hope of finding love and companionate marriage. Rather than bargaining with Mr. Collins, Elizabeth hones her marital philosophy by squarely facing the possible consequences of her decision: spinsterhood, reconsidering a second proposal, reevaluating a man she has believed despicable, honestly reevaluating herself. While the Dashwood marital decisions were largely outer-centric and shared, Elizabeth’s decision is inner-centric and individual. In Austen’s pragmatic philosophy of love and marriage, more may be gained with greater risk. Charlotte Lucas secures her future by accepting what Elizabeth has rejected, a contractual marriage that suits her needs and unromantic nature. In this novel, Austen champions love and companionate marriage, but acknowledges the need for a sensible, individually contracted marital arrangement, as well, a major shift in her marital philosophy. Northanger Abbey also incorporated fundamental evolutions in Austenian constructions of marriage. Fortune is an issue and continues to be sought by others, but Catherine Morland cannot be bought; indeed, she has no need for it. She is independent by nature, secure in herself and her situation, considers love the only requirement for marriage, or can live contentedly without. Henry Tilney, also with an independent and satisfying life of his own, rejects inheritance for love. Gone is assumed influence and reliance on fortune. Honesty, autonomy, integrity, love, and marital partnership are the goals. This evolving construction of companionate marriage supersedes siblings and friends, personal interests and goals in securing the loving support of husband and wife. Self-determination is as important as finding a life

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partner, which leads to committed partnership. Joy and friendship are the hallmarks of the relationship between Catherine and Henry, which expands to include all who wish them well. Austen’s evolutions of love and marriage matured in key ways with every novel, perhaps most strikingly in Mansfield Park, the first work of her second writing phase. Both issues and horizons expand, even as primary setting becomes more insular and there are fewer principal characters. Fanny Price, a ward of no fortune or position, supported only by her inner resources, acknowledges an inviolate love for Edmund, the second son, for who he is rather than for what he can provide. In this hopeless situation, she retains her integrity by remaining true to herself and her feelings. With solitary dignity, Fanny withstands outside threats by relying on innate self-worth. Faith in herself and what is right are rewarded with returned respect and love. In Austen’s developing philosophy of love, companionate marriage saves not only Fanny and Edmund, but also a ravaged family, mitigating the effects of a cruel system on those it has sustained. Ultimately, Mansfield Park expands the meaning and effect of love on a couple from a family to a nation and beyond. Those who accept contractual marriage are severely punished; those who enter marriage as partners have a responsibility to share their love for the greater good. Love of place falls to love of humanity, and marriage encompasses all to whom the couple has a moral obligation. Mansfield Park exemplifies Austen’s penchant for realism in fiction. Within Emma, Austen indulged her wicked sense of fun by imagining the effect fortune might realistically have on a young woman with no need of either love or marriage. Emma’s physical world is very small, and she reigns supreme within it. Yet, while her financial security ensures she has no need for love, Emma is profoundly alone, the classic case of owning everything and having nothing. Love, as defined in Emma, begins with self, at first superficially and then in depth, before loving relationships with family, friends, and partners can be understood and appreciated. Love rescues Emma and marriage grows from friendship. For the first time in Austen’s oeuvre, financial security plays no significant part in love or marriage; emotional security is paramount. In learning basic truths about herself, Emma realizes the elemental love she has for Mr. Knightley, who, in changing roles from protector to lover, also realizes basic truths about himself and his own feelings. In this sense, love changes not only the marital, but the economic, status quo. Emma and Mr. Knightley are equals who come together for no other reason than that they want to be together. In turn, the emotional stability of their love and chosen marriage will stabilize the social structure of their small community.

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As the culmination of her novelistic career, Persuasion is Austen’s most personal and mature work, closest to her nature and situation, and led by her most self-actualized heroine, Anne Elliot, a composite of the best of the Austen heroines and a reflection of the novelist and her dreams. The title identifies a key factor of Austen’s life and, with this final work, she re- envisioned her own past. Persuasion is a novel of second chances. Anne actively determines her own fate, virtually ignoring family and friends when she is given an opportunity to secure meaningful love and partnership. Realizing Frederick Wentworth’s enduring love for her, she allows nothing to stand in the way of a meaningful companionate marriage: family, friends, society, herself. Growing from total resignation to determined autonomy, Anne entirely rethinks her past and present actions and goals in order to secure her future, regardless of outside opinions. Having once lost love and marriage, she now knows her mind and determines not to let love slip away again. As a self-testament and a message for others to love and live fully, Persuasion is an affirmation that loving partnership is worth struggle. Through her fiction, Austen matured in marital philosophy from resigned waiting to active agency (Spence 106). Collectively, then, Jane Austen initiated the long nineteenth-century literary approach to constructions of love and marriage by allowing her philosophical and creative perceptions to evolve from the necessity of bargaining for love and companionate marriages that were often more contractual, through increasing autonomy in companionate relationships based on love and ending in marriage, to individual self-actualization in mutually loving and committed marital partnerships. Austen was ahead of her time philosophically, but when she loved, neither she nor the men she cared for had benefitted by the maturity or experience vital to what she increasingly considered successfully choosing a life partner. In Persuasion, she bestowed that benefit onto Anne Elliot, as she would have appreciated experiencing for herself. Contemporary critics were reserved or flattering about her novels; many were family who skewed her intentions, talent, and individual representations. As time passed and those who reviewed her works had not known her personally, their critiques became more specific, technical, and psychological, less idealistic and more realistic. Finally, when her works had been exhaustively analyzed, some critical reviews became fantastic in their analyses in an effort to gain recognition. None of these interpretations have altered the works; Jane Austen’s constructions of love and marriage are best understood by reading the enduring novels that continue to resonate with generations of readers.

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Mid-century, Marian Evans, writing under the pen name George Eliot in a realistic nod to misogynistic Victorian culture, intentionally followed Austen’s lead in creating her own fictional realism in love and marriage. She and her partner sans marriage, George Henry Lewes, were appreciative followers of Austen’s literary philosophies and works. Eliot, honoring her chosen mentor, consciously expanded on Austen’s constructs of love and marriage, deepening and broadening them with a defined realism more appropriate to her fictional style and the marital concepts of the mid-nineteenth century. Eliot’s literary vision, based on her own personal experiences and observations, was darker and more visceral than Austen’s, and less forgiving. Where Austen had insisted on love and a meeting of the minds from a broad perspective, Eliot was satisfied with no less than depicting the psychology of male/female relationships, exploring what constituted love and companionship within her own brand of realism, the value of legalities in relation to both, and questioning the necessity of the institution of marriage itself. For Eliot, love and commitment were synonymous; serious intent, loyalty, and steadfastness were more vital to a loving relationship than social acceptance or legalities. Longing for traditional marriage but allowed only a loving partnership, Eliot tested the strength of both in her novels. Loving relationships were as laboriously constructed in Eliot’s novels, and her characters were as wary of love and marriage, as the author experienced in reality. In contrast to Austen’s generally resolved endings, Eliot felt no compulsion to conclude her fictional relationships in loving resolution; to do so she considered unrealistic. Nor did she alter her perceived reality in conflicts depicted in her novels. Eliot envisioned herself to be the relater of actuality, writing down the interactions of her characters as they played out in her mind. Any interference on her part would lessen realism. Eliot’s displays of emotion as she wrote testify to her genuine involvement in her fiction; she was adamant in relaying the truth of human events as soberly as if she were relating realism under oath. Her artistic approach was particularly brutal on female characters, especially those allowed to marry, but Eliot knew the world to be harsh and sought to depict reality as if she were testifying to facts in a court of law even as she romanticized feeling. This dichotomous, visceral approach to fiction resulted in frequent prejudicial stereotyping. In the context of mid-Victorian ideals, Eliot’s brand of realism was jarring, perhaps unintentionally, for she wrote her mind and did not pander to social values. Her style forced readers to identify and reevaluate their own standards of morality. In Adam Bede, Eliot brutalizes Hetty and idealizes Dinah with no apparent justification except that Dinah must be

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better than Hetty to be the eventual partner of the favored Adam, whose actions are disappointingly weak and whose credibility as male protagonist is questionable throughout. Adam’s character was based on Eliot’s father and only this representation explains his primacy, although in this uneven novel, Adam is the best of the male characters who do not disappear mid-story. In her first attempt of a full-length work, Eliot creates one character who seems to live and breathe (Hetty) and crucifies her, one lightly developed character (Arthur) who is categorically forgiven for credible sins, and two shallowly idealized characters (Adam and Dinah). In Adam Bede, there is strength only in numbers. With Middlemarch, Eliot evolves creatively and philosophically far beyond Adam Bede to construct more nuanced and credible approaches to love and marriage. Yet, love is more a word than a feeling in the marriages explored in this novel. All males and females profess to love their spouses in each of the several marriages, but, in reality, do not. The Casaubon and Lydgate husbands and wives interpret and practice love so differently that their marriages do not thrive or even survive for social appearances. Neither philosophy and intellect nor altruism and social respectability are solid foundations for the two principle marital partnerships, and neither are strengthened by love; a lack of love destroys them. These unions are cold and corrupt cautionary tales against following mid-century social sanctions of marriages that have slipped back into contractual agreements. Only Fred and Mary Vincy, Mary’s parents, and, ironically, the beleaguered Bulstrodes can rightfully and realistically claim love in companionate marriage. Their relationships have been sorely tested and have survived, drawing the partners ever closer. Eliot brooks no false matrimonial goals or panaceas, such as fortune, in Middlemarch. Within Daniel Deronda, Eliot, with deliberate serious intent, presented her most evolved constructions of love and marriage in both positive and negative extremes. The Grandcourts’ contractual marriage, founded in fortune and power rather than love and morality, come at the highest prices for both in Gwendolen’s psychological degradation and Grandcourt’s actual death. The Derondas’ companionate marriage, founded in love and heritage, begins almost platonically but ultimately gains an inner strength based on mutual love and a greater purpose that takes them out of themselves to serve a larger community. Daniel and Mirah, in Eliot’s realism, have found the ultimate meeting of minds and hearts. The Grandcourts fail not only because they marry for superficial reasons but because they begin as superficial people. Still, Eliot recognizes that a man can be evil and punished, and a woman can be misguided but redeemable, fundamentally

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shifting her constructions of love and marriage that favored in reverse. No longer is Eliot punishing and discriminating by gender; she evaluates individually and has learned to be just. Beginning her novels in anger and retribution, Eliot ended the most developed and complex of her fictional works, as well as her most highly evolved and realistic philosophy and constructions of love and marriage, in understanding and justice. For this fiercely exacting woman and author, this was a major philosophical change. In Adam Bede, Eliot excoriated a female character with no opportunity, understanding, maturity, or resources, deserted by a man who knew his intent, finally exacting her death. Hiding behind Arthur’s self-destruction, Eliot allowed Adam to do nothing. In Middlemarch, Dorothea is given agency, but is punished for her choices, first by being forced to sacrifice her hopes, then her dreams. Neither she nor Lydgate are allowed to realize their noble ambitions. In Daniel Deronda, Eliot finally allows both male and female protagonists, separately, to survive and put a second chance to better use. Despite the phenomenal amount of suffering required, Eliot’s marital philosophies do evolve in constructive and realistic ways, fostering forgiveness in male/female relationships through her readers. Victorian critics were effusive about Eliot’s Adam Bede; Charles Dickens wrote to congratulate her sense of place and characterization and believed from the first that a woman had written the novel. With his lead, reviews were generally favorable. Middlemarch was an unqualified hit with contemporary readers and reviewers. Daniel Deronda, with its challenging subject matter, drew praise from religious scholars; the reading public and social critics were less impressed. For Eliot’s works, critical reviews were astute and culturally sophisticated. She was known as a scholar and much was expected of her. Yet, she became the darling of mid-century literature and, during the last years of her life, was held in high esteem both socially and in literary circles. Despite an obtuse and verbose writing style, George Eliot rose to become the foremost philosophical novelist of her time, and although she was not a strict feminist, did much to expand social consideration of equality in relationships. Her novels are read and critiqued today as they were by Victorians for their honest and enduring insight into male and female roles in loving relationships, with or without benefit of marriage. Oscar Wilde, at the end of the long nineteenth century, shared many artistic philosophies of love and marriage with Jane Austen and George Eliot, which he expanded from relationships between men and women to include partnerships between men. All three authors were interested in the intricacies and evolutions of loving and inferred sexual interactions in marriage; Wilde

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added those dynamics in same-sex relations, as well. All chose to share their philosophies with public audiences, all took their art and messages seriously, and all were satirized or idolized in turn. Each was personally and repeatedly disappointed in love and marriage, and attempted to bury their pain by understanding the causes. All wrestled with contemporary social and political challenges, particularly evolutions in feeling and the institutions that legislated the most personal aspects of life. All loved men, and Oscar, women, as well. Austen, Eliot, and Wilde were challenged, in life and art, by restrictions that no longer exist because they helped to influence change in, and contributed to the destruction of, marital restrictions for future generations. Wilde, in particular, helped to establish and legitimize a new acceptance of men loving men. The Picture of Dorian Gray, in style reminiscent of the fantastic Gothic novels of nearly a century before, was in content and message the vehicle of Wilde’s ultimate freedom and final defeat. Superficially, his only novel was a thriller in the manner of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and could have received similar reactions. More comprehensively and intentionally, this work of fantastical prose was meant to debate Uranian love, shocking in its intense and inexorable pursuit of a soul, and received sensational attention from readers and critics. The relentlessness of evil would have been equally as disturbing a concept if the victim had been a young man or young woman, but Wilde’s outing of a well-ignored Victorian-bred crime was particularly disturbing. Similar to the public and suspect methods employed to indict him at his trials, every charge leveled at the novel was speculative, despite Wilde’s clarifications. In the final analysis, The Picture of Dorian Gray allows and then fosters Dorian’s corruption, intentionally deepening his self-deterioration through sheer fascination with the process. By victimizing himself, he victimizes others, as did Wilde. Evil begets evil. In the perverse and paranoid spirit of late nineteenth-century London, Wilde chose to create and display his art as a reflection of himself, aware that he could not control the novel’s reception. The Picture of Dorian Gray reflects both author and reader as the portrait reflects Dorian. Art is interpretation of artist and audience; Wilde went most sincerely to his art and can best be found there today. The social plays, touted as comedy, are more accurately drama injected with sporadic wit and lightheartedness. Despite Wilde’s love of clever repartee, tabletalk, and stage-speak, his themes are serious explorations of human strengths and frailties. A Woman of No Importance is a prime example. This so-called comedy addresses, in part, premarital sex, illegitimacy, desertion, abuse, same-sex predation, social ostracism, feminism, misogyny, and socially

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prescribed expectations and consequences of love and marriage. Lady Windermere’s Fan had introduced many of these themes, also through the eyes of a female dandy, who had abandoned a husband and daughter. In A Woman of No Importance, mother and son are abandoned by a male dandy, who is far less contrite. Where Mrs. Erlynne had shown empathy, Lord Illingworth feels none. Because of this spark of humanity, she is allowed a partial redemption, where he, displaying no humanity, is summarily exorcised from his son’s life. Wilde’s life experiences became increasingly real and bitter, albeit played out fantastically. A Woman of No Importance is his most realistic depiction of an endlessly repeated scenario of disparate visions between man and woman, in this case with the female given the final word of truth. An Ideal Husband couldn’t have been a greater contrast. Wilde completed four plays in four years, from widely divergent viewpoints but all on themes of love and marriage. While The Trouble with Being Earnest, his last play, became most popular through its sheer nonsensical entertainment, this play has substance and was eminently timely. Writing and producing An Ideal Husband during such hostile and politicized times as the last decade of the nineteenth century, and incorporating so many illusions to real events and people, was a terrible gamble for a highly publicized practicing Uranian. Central to the play is the Chiltern marriage between a corrupted politician and his moralistic wife, with Wilde taking on every aspect of public and private life in debating corruptibility. Chiltern was a husband and public figure who had committed high crimes that he had kept hidden. Wilde was a husband, father, and public figure who had committed perceived crimes that, so far, remained hidden. Toying with secrets, past indiscretions, current marital problems, and personal vice was an open invitation to publicly humiliate and punish him. Despite his growing cynicism about women and life, in general, with An Ideal Husband, Wilde pleaded for admitted his crimes and pleaded for understanding and acceptance. Male and female views of marriage are voiced, but human frailty is championed. Although Wilde seemed to fall back in his evolving constructions of love and marriage, he actually began in The Picture of Dorian Gray by focusing on the (young male) individual’s moral choices; expanded to the moral decisions of several (adult) individuals, male and particularly female, in Lady Windermere’s Fan; supported the moral credibility of the woman and mother in A Woman of No Importance; argued for the fallibility of all, particularly male, in An Ideal Husband, and ended with the farce of The Importance of Being Earnest, in which no one is what they seem to be. Wilde’s artistic evolution in love and marriage moved from self-

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and idyllic love through parental love and into married love, ending with the hilarity and impossibility of attempting to wrest earnestness from it all. Wilde, in his love, marriage, and partnerships with women and men, through a deepening understanding of himself and his art, tempered the reality of evolving relationships with the farce that these dynamics generated, a concept we can more fully understand with the clarity of retrospect than the Victorians could have hoped to understand during their time of great social change in human relationships. Contemporary literary and journalistic critics both loved and hated Oscar Wilde. Early in his writing career, he worked long and hard for scant recognition. With the publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray, reviews were pointedly negative and harsh; Wilde himself was astonished at their intense condemnation and misinterpretation. His later social plays were nearly universally adored by audiences and critics. After the reveal of his lifestyle and his trials, Wilde was again vilified. Not until after his death, when his friends began to reminisce in print, did Oscar Wilde again become an honored name in the literary world. Today, with increasing acceptance of same-sex love and partnership, Wilde’s ground-breaking philosophies are valued by modern critics for their prescience, depth, and astute and empathetic approach to love and commitment within and between the sexes, unsurprising from a man who practiced what he proposed. The legendary Wildean wit has become iconic, and his views on male and female relationships has become increasingly apropos to twenty-first century social and sexual mores. Early in the nineteenth century, Jane Austen initiated a literary conversation about love and marriage that challenged the status quo of Romanticism and championed a more realistic and rewarding construction of progressively open, equal, meaningful, and caring relationships between women and men. George Eliot deepened this conversation, mid-century, by challenging the Victorian ideal with her own interpretation of meaningful male/female love and commitment, delving ever more deeply and with increasing realism into the dynamics of individual, couple, and cultural evolutions of loving marital partnerships. On the cusp of the twentieth century, amid a dying Victorianism, Wilde expanded even that complex conversation by challenging social taboos of love, marriage, and partnerships between and within the sexes, exploring existing relational dynamics and proposing more tolerant constructs of loving relationships. Today, sexual tolerance, although not yet wholly accepted, is on the rise. Individually and collectively, Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Oscar Wilde must be credited for significantly helping to shape such fundamental change in companionate relationships, both through the

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choices they made in their personal lives and the creative decisions that drove their artistic philosophies, a vital collective contribution to our understanding of ever-evolving constructions of love within and without marriage. If only, in the twenty-first century, we could fully and finally adopt the realism of their nineteenth-century ideals.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Paula Jean Anderson completed her coursework for a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English with the University of Wisconsin and a Master of Arts Degree in English Literature from Florida State University. While maintaining a professional career in Emergency Preparedness and Response at state and national levels as a Public Information Officer, Statewide Communications Trainer, Preparedness Planner, and Emergency Responder, she also served for nearly a decade as an Adjunct English Instructor at Tallahassee Community College. Previously, Ms. Anderson held a position as Director of Publications at Florida State University, conducted a successful freelance writing and editing business for more than twenty years, and served in both teaching and administrative positions in secondary education, including instruction for Children with Special Needs and in Library Science. Ms. Anderson is a published author in literary and journalistic genres, and is the recipient of professional and academic honors and certifications.

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