Ghent University Faculty of Arts and Philosophy George Meredith: Woman’s Champion? Supervisor: Paper submitted in partial Prof. Dr. Marysa Demoor fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of “Master in de Taal- en Letterkunde: English-Dutch” by Marie Spruyt May 2016 George Meredith: Woman’s Champion? Marie Spruyt TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 1 1. MEREDITH’S FICTION ................................................................................................ 6 a. THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL (1859) ................................................... 9 b. THE EGOIST (1879) ............................................................................................. 13 c. DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS (1885) .................................................................. 16 d. LORD ORMONT AND HIS AMINTA (1894) ........................................................ 19 2. MEREDITH’S IDEAS .................................................................................................. 23 a. MARRIAGE AS AN INSTITUTION ................................................................... 24 b. THE DEVELOPING WOMAN ............................................................................ 28 c. THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN ........................................................................ 32 d. SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS ................................................................................ 35 3. VICTORIAN SOCIETY ............................................................................................... 41 4. MEREDITH’S IMPACT ............................................................................................... 49 a. MEREDITH’S STYLE .......................................................................................... 50 b. MEREDITH’S READERS .................................................................................... 53 c. MEREDITH’S ACTIONS ..................................................................................... 58 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................ 62 WORKS CITED ....................................................................................................................... 67 ( 28.458 words) Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Marysa Demoor George Meredith: Woman’s Champion? Marie Spruyt ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all I would like to thank prof. dr. Philippe Codde, for sparking my interest in Meredith by having us examine parts of his Modern Love. Equally deserving of my gratitude are Dr. Marianne Van Remoortel, allowing me to delve deeper into this subject last year, and Elizabeth Adams Daniels, the author of George Meredith’s Women: a Study of Changing Attitudes in Victorian England. (1954), who made me first realise and then question the importance Meredith’s writings had for acquiring women’s rights. Obviously I would also like to thank the person making it possible for me to indulge in Meredith this year, my promotor, Prof. Dr. Marysa Demoor. Thank you for handing me this interesting subject and, most of all, for giving me free reign to discover and explore Meredith all by myself. Finding a promotor who trusted me enough to allow me to run free with it was a true blessing. Finally, thank you, Anthony, for dealing with my mood swings when the progress of this paper seemed to dictate my days. I am afraid you have George Meredith to blame – not only because his work is the subject of my paper but also for the fact that he is partly the reason that I, as a girl, am allowed to study as well as speak my mind towards a man. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Marysa Demoor George Meredith: Woman’s Champion? Marie Spruyt 1 INTRODUCTION In this day and age where gender equality is once again a hot topic, it might be interesting to look back at early defenders of women’s rights and honour how they managed to procure what we take benefit from. One of the people reportedly taking an early stand for feminism was George Meredith. From a contemporary view Meredith’s take on women does not seem to be very liberal. The pressure of Victorian society is still very much tangible and although his heroines, especially the ones from the later novels, do eventually stand up to the Victorian ideals, the present-day reader may still feel like they attach too much importance to what the world expects of them. This raises the question on what level Meredith was viewed as a defender of the woman cause in his own time. While feminism now, according to the Oxford Dictionaries, points to “the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes”, feminism in the Victorian age may not have had such an extensive explanation1. The Woman Cause, as it was then called, mainly strived to improve the daily lives of the everyday woman. Advocates of female rights were not yet bothered with things like equality on the work floor or voting rights. Those things only came later on. The Victorians still had to fight for minor accomplishments - we now take for granted - such as the right to own something and the right to leave an abusive husband. When looking for signs of suffrage we thus need to look at different, more subtle signs than we would look for in a contemporary text that would be labelled progressive. Multiple sources indeed exist that place Meredith in a tradition of revolutionary writers who raised arms for the rights of women in a time when suppression was the norm. Le Gallienne even declared that “there can be no doubt that woman has yet had no such ally in her battle against masculinity as he” (Cunningham 119) and Meredith himself stated in 1908 “I am, as I have long been, in favour of the suffrage for women.” (Mannheimer 125). This paper will try to delve deeper in the reasons why Meredith should or should not deserve credit as a feminist writer. As easy as it would be to depend on this earlier research, I would like to start fresh from a close reading and analysis of four of his novels and their respective female characters. While these previous researches will not be my main focus point, it is important 1 Dyhouse (“Girls Growing up” 142-143) also remarks that it is hard to make a black and white distinction in who was and was not a feminist. However, she discerns several issues as central such as an “attack on the sexual division of labour or the notion of separate spheres” and claims that “We can still legitimately judge feminists bend on securing autonomy for women as more or less radical according to the extent to which they perceived this.” Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Marysa Demoor George Meredith: Woman’s Champion? Marie Spruyt 2 that they are still taken into account since they function as an important background and inspiration for this research. However, I expect to see Meredith in a different, more nuanced light than the usual projection of Meredith as the stout advocate for women’s rights. Where the characters in Meredith’s novels are indeed used as a way to express the idea that women should be more free to have a mind of their own and pursue an active role than the usual Victorian prototype, I will try to be critical of Meredith’s place in the Woman Cause movement by situating his work against feminist epitomes. The important question throughout this work will thus not be whether Meredith is in favour of women’s rights, because earlier papers and Meredith’s own quotes have definitely proved this to be the case, but whether Meredith deserves praise for his influence in the woman’s cause. The question this paper will try to answer will thus consist of two parts. The first part will look at the question if Meredith was revolutionary in his writing or if he just followed an academic trail of his time? The second part will try and figure out whether or not his writing had an impact on the Victorian world and if he was one of the causes for the changes that have shaped life as we know it? In the first chapter of this paper I will deal more closely with George Meredith’s novels, of which I picked four, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), The Egoist (1879), Diana of the Crossways (1885), and Lord Ormont and his Aminta (1894), for a closer examination. Since Meredith was a very prolific writer and has produced an extensive list of works and this research is rather small, I will limit myself to these four works, picked on account of the fact that they are each divided by a considerable time-lapse, making them an excellent device to track the evolution in the ways his novels deal with the position of women in society in the early, middle and later years of his career. Meredith’s works cover half a century2, so one is bound to expect a certain evolution. Since this paper covers these four novels only, and does not look any closer at Meredith’s other novels, poems and so on I would like to stress that this research is non-conclusive and can possibly be (partly) contradicted by further examination of other sources. As an introduction to these four works, important features of Meredith’s fiction as a whole will be briefly discussed before I turn to the novels. The first part of this second chapter will deal with The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), not Meredith’s first novel but the novel which critics later referred to when 2 Meredith almost covered the entire reign of queen Victoria, who ruled from 1837 until 1901. Between Meredith’s first novel The Shaving of Shagpat in 1856, and the last