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Appropriate Fields of Action: Nineteenth-Century Representations of the Female Philanthropist and the Parochial Sphere by Gabrielle Mearns A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature University of Warwick, Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies November 2012 Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One 27 ‘We consider our own parish as our more appropriate field of action’: The Parochial Philanthropy of Hannah More Hannah More Coelebs in Search of a Wife (1808) Henry Thompson The Life of Hannah More, with notices of her sisters (1838) Chapter Two 84 ‘Extravagant Day-dreams’? Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell Charlotte Bronte Shirley (1849) Elizabeth Gaskell The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) Elizabeth Gaskell My Lady Ludlow (1859) Chapter Three 149 Expanding the Parochial Sphere: Charlotte Yonge’s The Clever Woman of the Family and George Eliot’s Middlemarch Charlotte Yonge The Clever Woman of the Family (1865) George Eliot Middlemarch (1871-2) Chapter Four 216 ‘Citizenship lies in the participation of each individual in effort for the good of the community’: Mrs. Humphry Ward’s Empowered Parochial Philanthropy Mrs. Humphry Ward: ‘An Appeal Against Female Suffrage’ (1889) Marcella (1894) Sir George Tressady (1896) Conclusion 269 Two Views of Shirley Bibliography 277 Acknowledgments This thesis is dedicated to my parents Brian and Tess Mearns, who nurtured my love of literature from an early age. Thank you for your constant love and generosity. The deepest thanks also go to Jason Ta. Your support has made an invaluable contribution to the completion of this work. Declaration This thesis is entirely the candidate’s own work and has not been submitted for a degree at another university. Word count: 76, 799. Abstract Literary representations of female philanthropy challenge the separate spheres dichotomy that we continue to associate with nineteenth-century literature and society, as the work of the philanthropic heroine instead depicts a diversity of social spaces located between the family home and the worlds of commerce and politics. These social spaces – one of the most important being the parish – are represented as highly receptive to the influence of middle- and upper-class women by the writers of my study, thereby demonstrating how female authors could formulate the geography of their fictions to support their participation in contemporary social debate. In this thesis I use the term ‘parochial spheres’ to describe these spaces, which include the landed estate, the village and the military regiment. My emphasis on parochial spheres calls attention to the gentlewoman’s relationships with rural and provincial environments. I use the concept of ‘borderline’ female citizenship to think about these relationships, as it indicates the potential power of the philanthropic heroine in her community, as well as the likelihood of power contests between the female philanthropist and her male contemporaries. The writers of my thesis are mainly drawn from the Victorian period. However, I also examine works by Hannah More, and the image of the philanthropist across the period. More is crucial to the representation of female philanthropy, as female authors interact with a tradition of conservative reform popularised by the Evangelical polymath at the beginning of the period. Embedded within this tradition is the narrative of maternalism, which enables women writers to depict their heroines as the protective conservers of the social order, but also as the generators of new, feminised solutions to public questions of reform. These fluctuations between conservation and reform reveal the significance of the parochial sphere to women’s writing during the Victorian period. 1 Introduction ‘We consider our own parish as our more appropriate field of action’ – Hannah More, Coelebs in Search of a Wife (1808) * ‘Only you, my lady, lead the thoughts of the parish’ – Elizabeth Gaskell, My Lady Ludlow (1859) * ‘Marcella walked as usual down to the village. She was teeming with plans for her new kingdom, and could not keep herself out of it’ – Mrs. Humphry Ward, Marcella (1894) * Hannah More’s claiming of the local parish as the gentlewoman’s ‘more appropriate field of action’ serves as the starting point of this study, which explores the representation of the socially genteel woman in rural and provincial space by a selection of nineteenth-century writers.1 With the notable exception of Henry Thompson, the biographer of Hannah More, all of these writers are female. As the power of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Lady Ludlow to lead her community and Marcella Boyce’s perception of the local village as her kingdom demonstrate, More’s argument for the significance of women to their surrounding communities endured and developed throughout the Victorian era.2 These images of local female power found in the works of More, Gaskell and Ward, are also evident in novels by Charlotte Brontë, Charlotte Yonge and George Eliot. When read together, these texts call for a re-nuancing of traditional understandings of women and space in nineteenth-century literature and culture, 1 Hannah More, Coelebs in Search of a Wife, (London: Cadell, 1808; repr. Ontario: Broadview Editions, 2007), p. 229. 2 See Elizabeth Gaskell, My Lady Ludlow, (first published in Round the Sofa, London: Sampson Lowe, 1859; repr. Gloucester: Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd, 1985); Mrs Humphry Ward, Marcella, (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1894; repr. Ontario: Broadview Press, 2002). 2 which typically focus on urban environments.3 Different to the streets of Manchester or London, parochial environments of the parish, the village or the market town are imagined by these nineteenth-century women writers as enabling their heroines to access unlimited and immediate forms of social power. As such, the parochial spaces of nineteenth-century women’s writing can be read as significant spaces of action for the heroine and her author. As will be shown, these images of the gentlewoman and the local community draw on the complex relationship between women and the nation throughout the nineteenth century. In Borderline Citizens, historian Kathryn Gleadle describes women’s rich and highly variable experience of the political process during the years 1815-1867. Despite being denied access to the franchise, women of the middle and gentry classes were able to express and explore an interest in the political affairs of the nation via ‘petitioning, publication, pressure groups, and patronage’. In conjunction with this multiplicity of options, the local community could also offer women a stage for their political identities. As the texts from this study (amongst others) reveal, some women oversaw the building and running of new schools and churches, while others campaigned for male relatives in local elections. Yet as Gleadle argues, even as women engaged in politics, their engagement was made fraught by their status as ‘borderline citizens’ – individuals neither wholly within nor apart from the British state. As such, female influence over politics – national and local - remained ‘fragile and contingent’. Women ‘might be conceptualised 3 See for example, Deborah Epstein Nord, Walking the Victorian Streets: Women, Representation and the City, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London, (London: Virago Press, 1992; repr. 2000), and the chapter ‘The Rape of the Glances’ in Lynda Nead, Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth-Century London, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). 3 (and feel) integral to the political process at one moment - but this could quickly evaporate in the face of other cultural pressures’.4 Nonetheless, if history reveals the inherent instability of nineteenth- century women’s status within the nation, women’s fiction from the period illustrates a more empowered interpretation of their ‘borderline citizenship’ than might reasonably be expected. Indeed, novels such as Hannah More’s Coelebs in Search of a Wife and Charlotte Yonge’s The Clever Woman of the Family celebrate the feminine identities and the power of their heroines. The texts provide an assured image of the gentlewoman in her neighbourhood, as Lucilla Stanley and Rachel Keith both use maternal philanthropy to successfully intervene in the systems of their communities.5 Rather than cancelling each out other out, feminine and political identities are depicted as intertwined by More and Yonge. This intertwining emphasises the significance of parochial space to nineteenth-century women writers’ visions of female power and female citizenship. Indeed, as Gleadle asserts, parochial space granted women ‘greater latitude to act as community figures, than they did in the public realm’. As the historian maintains, unlike wider public society, ‘in their vicinities there were at least multiple possibilities for female authority, and the constellation of particular circumstances could produce significant