w«. ft» / + AMBIVALENT VIEWS TOWARD WOMAN’S ROLE IN THE NOVELS OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE Shari Barefoot Eason A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 1977 visor ;lish ABSTRACT Several studies have explored feminism in Charlotte Bronte's fiction, but few have focused on the ambivalence of her views toward the "woman question." The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the attitudes expressed toward the role of women in her novels cannot be neatly categorized as either feminist or anti-feminist but, rather, should be recognized as ambivalent. The terms "feminism" and "anti-feminism" have acquired political connotations that have little to do with the problems encountered by Charlotte Bronte and her heroines. Therefore, one aim of this paper is to make a distinction between the views of the activists of today's women's liberation move­ ment and the perspectives of the early Victorian feminists. In the l8UO's and l85O's, the established view of the nature of woman and her proper sphere was the traditional one. It was held that the ideal lady should be intellectually and sexually passive; her behavior toward her male superior should be submissive; her sphere should not extend outside the home. The traditionalists far out­ numbered the feminists, whose views were largely unsanctioned by the respectable Victorian middle-classes. The heroines of Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette are all torn between the Imperatives of convention and the desire to fulfill individual needs. It is important to emphasize that the divisions and conflicts experienced by Charlotte Bronte's women characters are centered not so much around political or socio-economic matters as around, emotional or psychological ones. The Bronte heroines are not fighting to gain rights in the political sense, but struggling to become whole people in the face of the Victorian notions about womanhood, that they have assimilated.. Charlotte Bronte's attitudes toward her own role as a woman and the role of women generally were ambivalent. Although this is not a biography, some parallels are drawn between Charlotte's personal views and experience and those of her heroines. Hope­ fully, the correlations of the biographical and fictional materials demonstrates that her novels are not theoretical tracts on the "woman question" but honest testimonies of the inner strife of the Victorian woman. ii CONTENTS Introduction 1 Jane Eyre 21 Shirley 41 Villette 66 Conclusion 100 Bibliography 107 iii 1 Introduction In 1848, Charlotte Bronte wrote: "I often wish to say some­ thing about the 'condition of women' question, but it is one re­ specting which so much cant has been talked that one feels a sort of repugnance to approach it."''' Because feminism today has be­ come a bandwagon movement and feminist criticism has become a wholesale approach to literature by women, a student might well feel, with Charlotte Bronte, "a sort of repugnance" to pursue a topic that lends itself so readily to cant. Therefore, one of my primary goals is to avoid reducing a literary study to a forum of feminist opinion by detaching myself and my arguments from modern feminist assumptions. Several studies have explored the attitudes expressed to­ ward woman and her role in Charlotte Bronte's fiction, but few have focused on the ambivalence that pervades her works. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the views of Char­ lotte and her heroines on the "condition of women" question cannot be neatly categorized as either feminist or anti-feminist, but rather, should be recognized as ambivalent. In the context of our discussion, the term "ambivalence" will be used in two senses. The first type of ambivalence can be defined as simul­ taneous attraction toward and repulsion from an object, idea or 1 To W. S. Williams, May 12, 1848; quoted in The Brontes: their Lives, Friendships and Correspondence, eds. T. J. Wise and J. A. Symington (Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1932), Vol. II, pp. 215-16. 2 person, while the second type--which could be characterized as diachronic--denotes a continual oscillation between one thing and its opposite. In Charlotte's novels, for example, a heroine may be torn at a given moment between two sets of demands, de­ sires or principles or she may vacillate, over a span of time, between these two sets. In either case, contradictory emotional or psychological attitudes are involved. Charlotte's conflicting views on the position of women are in keeping with the character of the period in which she lived, for division and self-division on political, moral, theological and social issues typify the intellectual and emotional life of most of her contemporaries. That the Victorian age was characterized by dichotomy and paradox has become almost a critical dictum. One eminent com­ mentator has written: "Almost every Victorian thesis produced its own antithesis as a ceaseless dialectic worked out its de­ signs" and "Victorian society was forever subject to tensions 2 which militated against . singleness of purpose." Another scholar of the period observes: "The confusion, the perplexity, the deep unease of the English nineteenth century are impressed on all who study the period. Victorian men of letters ex­ perienced the self-division endemic to their times and gave ex- 2 Jerome Hamilton Buckley, The Victorian Temper: A Study in Literary Culture (New York: Random House, 1951), p. 6. 3 press ion to it in their writings." One very Important recent study analyzes the conflicting characteristics of optimism and dismay, hypocrisy and sincerity, intellectual rigidity and in-. tellectual flexibility, religious fervor and religious scepti­ cism. Within this tense environment the controversy on what came to be called "the woman question" developed. The conflicting Victorian attitudes toward the female and her role, in the home and in society, operated on two overlapping planes: the social and the individual. On the social level, two groups with oppos­ ing ideologies can be identified: the traditionalists and what I will designate (with qualifications that will be discussed later), the feminists. By surveying the views of these opposing camps, one can better understand how the conflicting attitudes which were rooted in the culture extended into and influenced the lives of individuals--in this case, Charlotte Bronte and her characters. Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette were written between 1846 and 1852. These dates are significant because in the first three decades of Victoria's reign, we stand at the threshold of the nineteenth century sexual revolution. One historian has com­ mented that there was "a breath of change in the air which called 3 Masao Miyoshi, The Divided Self: A Perspective on the Literature of the Victorians (New York: New York University Press, 1969), IX-X. In Walter E. Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1957), pp. 8-23. 4 forth just at this time a definite statement of the whole posi­ tion. It was as if it were felt necessary to put into words and to teach in the most deliberate manner the duty of female sub­ missiveness which before had been taken entirely for granted.""’ The years during which Charlotte wrote her novels are interest­ ing precisely because there was yet no self-conscious agitation for reform but rather what has been described as a "feeling of imminence," a sense that the old assumptions and values were about to be eroded. Feminism in Charlotte Bronte's day has little in common with the women's liberation movement of our time, for there were few established doctrines, almost no activists in the political sense and no central organization. J. A. and Olive Banks remark . that it was not until after 1850 that "the sporadic and largely isolated attempts of individual reformers showed consistent evi­ dence of becoming welded into an organized movement."? Through­ out our discussion of Charlotte's novels, it might be helpful to bear in mind Patricia Thomson's observation that it was more diffi- - cult for the early Victorians, than for those at the close of the century, "to decide on which side of the fence they .would sit, 5 Ray strachey, Struggle: The Stirring Story of Woman's Advance in.England (New York City: Duffield and Company, 1930), p. 46. 6 Patricia Thomson, The Victorian Heroine: A Changing Ideal, 1837-1873 (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 8. ? J. A. and Olive Banks;, Feminism and Family Planning in Victorian England (New York:' ; Schocken Books, 1964), p. 27. 5 for the fence was only in the process of construction."® Two concepts of woman, and her role were present during the Victorian era. Of these concepts, the traditional one had a strong foothold in the popular mind; the liberal or feminist or progressive concept of woman had not yet gained wide acceptance, but it was gradually drawing more support. The traditional concept defined woman as intellectually and constitutionally weak, sexually passive and naive, and inept at work of almost any kind. Martha Vicinus, in her introduction to an anthology of essays on the Victorian woman, explains that the popular Victorian model of femininity, the "perfect lady," "was most fully developed in the upper middle classes. Before marriage, a young girl was brought up to be perfectly innocent and sexually ignorant. The predominant ideology of the age in­ sisted that she have little sexual feeling at all, although fam­ ily affection and the desire for motherhood were considered in­ nate. Once married, the perfect lady did not work; she had servants. Her social and intellectual growth was con­ fined to the family and close friends. Her status was totally dependent upon the economic position of her father and then her husband.