View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by NORA - Norwegian Open Research Archives Shakespeare’s Heroines and the Construction of an Ideal Victorian Femaleness By Katrine Sæthre Njøten Master’s Thesis Department of Foreign Languages University of Bergen May 2010 Abstract Denne oppgaven omhandler et fenomen i Viktoriatiden da man på tross av modernisering og fremskritt lengtet tilbake til fortiden. Industrialiseringen hadde gjort samfunnet kaldt og konkurransepreget, og forandringene hadde kommet på bekostning av de dypere verdier. Man mente at menneskenes moraler hadde blitt ofret til fordel for deres ambisjoner og ønske om å skaffe seg høyere posisjoner i samfunnet. Dette var da særlig et tema i middelklassen da industrialiseringen åpnet for at de kunne klatre oppovert i hierarkiet. Det ble da kvinnenes ansvar å representere det moralske aspektet, og den perfekte Viktorianske kvinnen var hun som representerte de rene moraler og verdier. Idealiseringen av kvinnen og av fortiden skjedde på samme tid som Shakespeare ble ansett for å være selve symbolet på det engelske. Dermed ble hans kvinnelige figurer opphøyet, og brukt som rollemodeller for de Viktorianske kvinnene. Man mente at enkelte av Shakespeares kvinnelige figurer var symbolet på den ideelle kvinnen, og kvinner ble oppfordret til å følge deres eksempel. Denne oppgaven fokuserer hovedsakelig på fire bøker som brukte Shakespeares kvinnelige figurer som rollemodeller for de Viktorianske kvinnene. Mary Cowden Clarkes The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines, Anna Jamesons Shakespeare’s Heroines, Helena Faucit’s On Some of Shakespeare’s Female Characters og Ellen Terrys The Story of My Life er eksempler på hvordan Shakespeares kvinnelige figurer ble brukt som forbilder i konstruksjonen av den ideelle Viktorianske kvinnen. Acknowledgments I’d like to thank Professor Stuart Sillars for invaluable help and counseling, and for holding an inspiring course on the Victorians and Shakespeare two years ago, which is the origin of my interest in the matter of Shakespeare, womanhood and idealism. Much thanks is given to my friends who made the early mornings and late nights at the study hall bearable. It may not always have been a pleasure, but all’s well that ends well! I’d also like to thank my family for what can only be described as disinterested kindness in every meaning of the word. [A]ll that I had assimilated from the study of the best literature and of the best art within my reach, all that I had tried in a humble and devout spirit to learn and to practise of what was pure and unselfish, honourable and worthy in thought and in act, together with all that my own heart and experience of life had taught me, was turned to account in the endeavour to present a living picture of womanhood as divined by Shakespeare, and held up by him as an ideal for woman to aspire to, and for men to revere. Helena Faucit, On Some of Shakespeare’s Female Characters (1885) Contents Introduction: Shakespeare, Femaleness, Society, History and Idealism 1 Chapter One: The Construction of an Ideal Femaleness in the Works of Anna Jameson and Mary Cowden Clarke 19 Chapter Two: A Common Ideal? The Education of Victorian Women Through Conduct Books and Shakespeare 49 Chapter Three: Shakespeare’s Heroines on the Victorian Stage: Ellen Terry and Helena Faucit’s Accounts of Idealism, Womanhood and Shakespeare 71 Conclusion 103 Bibliography 109 Introduction: Shakespeare, Femaleness, Society, History and Idealism The Victorian Era stood for development and modernisation, and progress led to an overarching wave of change that affected everyone touched by it. The big cities grew as more people left the rural areas in hope of finding employment, where the opportunity for wealth and happiness was no longer reserved just for the nobility. One could work one’s way up the social hierarchy. The society changed, the economy changed, the living conditions changed, and the people changed. The new society and the new social settings that came with it required that the people had to reinvent themselves and adopt different modes of behaviour. The industrialised society opened the doors to the higher circles in society and the possibility to improve one’s social status, but that required a reinvention of the self. The changes that led to this happened so fast that it was hard to know how to react, and the need for role models arose. The old heroes and heroines were dusted off and re-represented to the Victorians as something they could grasp on to while the chaos grew around them. But this time it was more in the sense of models than as distant, fictional heroes who were only fit for admiration, and too good to be representative of a realistic and attainable goal that almost everyone could reach. The models, fictional and real, were reinvented, often with a look at their more human sides. While their excellence in being and achievements were emphasised, one made room for their flaws and errors to show that while the best of us may fail occasionally, like the heroes of fiction did, there was an innate grandeur that needed to be encouraged and developed, with the heroes as examples. The time the heroes came from seemed so perfect and simple compared to the present. Modernised society had come at a cost, and it was the morality, the values and the ideals that 1 had suffered the most. Society had become machinery where ambition and hard work were survival techniques. Industrialisation did lead to many positive changes, for example improved living conditions, but a strong feeling of inadequacy started to affect the Victorians and their sense of self. Everything seemed to be better in the past, and the change that was needed to regain the grandeur of old times had to start with the people. They had to become what their forefathers and foremothers had been to create a society like theirs. But the men could not free themselves from the mercantile machinery because they had to support the family, which, due to the improved living conditions and reduced infant mortality, became bigger. That meant that it was up to the women to attend to issues regarding morality and values. The focus of this thesis is the time when the idealisation of the past, which will be exemplified through among others Thomas Carlyle and A.W.N Pugin, met with the idealisation of Shakespeare and his characters, and created the foundation of the search for a new ideal in the new era. The focus will be on the creation of an ideal femaleness with Shakespeare’s heroines as models, which will inevitably lead us into a discussion of women’s education, both in school and in terms of upbringing and the inculcation of values. It also requires an investigation into the ideal represented by Shakespeare’s female characters and how this ideal was utilised and conveyed by the primary books this thesis is based on. What made these characters so suitable for the formation of an ideal Victorian femaleness? And was there an active attempt on the part of the writers I use in this thesis to inculcate their readers with these ideals to the extent that it can be called an educational intention? Among the heroes and heroines that the Victorians adopted as their ideals were kings and queens who had reigned a long time ago, great warriors responsible for England’s success and prosperity, and beloved figures of literature. They were all placed on pedestals and revered as symbols of greatness that were now lost. Shakespeare’s works had a unique 2 position as his characters were considered by many as the ultimate representatives of the grandeur represented by the past and the very finest examples of humankind that history had to offer. So when many Victorians started to look for an ideal and for a model to imitate, Shakespeare became a natural choice. This tendency coincided with an increased number of women writers who were now not only reading Shakespeare, but also interpreting his works. On one side they were actively interpreting him for their contemporaries as scholarly dissertations, meant to be read for entertainment and for the sake of educating one’s self. Most importantly, they were interpreting his female characters from a female point of view and released to a female readership that was now treated to thoughts on their favourite heroines that were not filtered through male perception first. That is, aside from Shakespeare. But that was not such a big issue as they felt that Shakespeare had a special insight into the female character, and described women better than any man, and perhaps woman, ever could. They believed that his heroines were the truest examples of the feminine ideal, and they were accordingly admired and imitated by Victorian women. Shakespeare’s heroines represented the values from the idealised past, and the hope was that Victorian women should adopt these values and bring them into their own time to counteract the greed, selfishness and heartless ambition that dominated industrialised society. This idea was largely aimed at middle class women. The women from the lower classes were, out of necessity, often a part of the workforce and thereby a part of the very tendencies that women were supposed to counteract. Women were supposed to be the remedy against competition, ambition and commercialism by virtue of their position as homemakers. There will, therefore, be focus on the middle class, but also on the people who were trying to get into the middle class. The following theories on womanhood, ideals and morality will be applied to a middle class environment because it allows us to look at the effects of the industrialisation in a social class where the consequences of this were most clearly seen.