THE ANGEL ROCKS THE HOUSE: AN UNSTABLE ICON A Dissertation Submitted to The Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSPHY By Bernadette T. Balcer January, 2012 Examining Committee Members: Daniel O’Hara, Committee Chair, English and American Studies, Temple University Katherine Henry, English, Temple University Shanyn Fiske, English, Rutgers University Eric Savoy, English, University of Montreal © Copyright 2011 by Bernadette T. Balcer All Rights Reserved ii ABSTRACT The Angel in the House: An Unstable Icon examines the ways in which the figure named in Coventry Patmore’s series of mid-nineteenth century poems provoked an anxiety that manifests itself consistently in British literature throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, where the family beacon, the one whose raison d’être was to guide her husband and children away from the immorality rife in the public sphere, instead actively interfered with the good instincts of her offspring, substituted her own wishes for theirs, and caused irreparable harm in the process. This dissertation analyzes the ways in which mother figures in mid-century novels interrogate the angel-mother in particular and suggest the destructive capability inherent in that figure. It argues that the literary questioning of the ideal supports what Poovey calls “uneven development” in the construction of a gender model. The Angel in the House: An Unstable Icon will demonstrate that at the hands of Thomas Hardy and Henry James in particular, the mother is reimagined into a figure bearing little resemblance to the Angel mother, except in her inheritance of a belief that the mother must remain her child’s guide, despite the inclinations of their adult children toward a new autonomy. While the Victorian consciousness seems to have experienced a splitting—women were either good or bad, mothers were either good or bad—Hardy and James resist such splitting, instead exploring the gaps and flaws in the Angel-in- the-House ideology, in the process establishing the prototype for mother figures who little resemble Angels, in other words, fully human mothers, that both British and American Modernists such as D. H. Lawrence, William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf would adapt as central figures in their major works. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In writing this dissertation I have had invaluable assistance from so many in terms of encouragement and direction. I thank all of them—the librarians, the friends, and those who have gone before me in the task of writing such a document. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to my committee chair, Daniel O’Hara, whose suggestions and recommendations, given with generosity and insight, never failed to make my work better. Likewise, to Katherine Henry, who questioned wisely and who spurred me to think in new ways, I extend my hand in thanks. To Shanyn Fiske, who welcomed me into her class as an auditor and proceeded to teach me so much about the Victorian woman and about possibilities, my deepest thanks as well. My outside reader, Eric Savoy, gave of his time and his Jamesian expertise; for that I am also grateful. Along the way, colleagues have read the work, poring over it to detect inconsistencies or to question. Margie, John, Kate, Karen, thank you. Finally, there are those whom I cannot thank adequately but who I hope have a sense of the value of their encouragement. Helen McGinley consistently celebrated my efforts. Jean Hantman Carveth engendered belief, responded to ideas with enthusiasm, and taught me much about angels and mothers. Pat Balcer, my husband, believed in and encouraged me through this entire journey; for his patience and support, I am deeply grateful. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………..iv INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………....vi CHAPTER 1. THE ANGEL APPEARS AND REAPPEARS………………………………....1 2. KILLER ANGELS: LUCY AUDLEY AND HETTY SORREL………..…….27 3. SHE MEANT WELL: THOMAS HARDY’S ANGELS IN MIDDLE AGE………….………………………………………………………………...53 4. HENRY JAMES WRESTLES THE ANGEL IN THE HOUSE……………....94 5. THE MODERNIST MOTHER: AN ANGEL NO MORE……………............148 REFERENCES CITED…………………………………………………………....177 v INTRODUCTION Judging by the literature of the late nineteenth century, the split in the Victorian consciousness that defined men and women as either good or bad, never both, was beginning to form a subtle scar. The dark side of the Victorian man, that bad boy who sneaked out and grew if one were not prudent, fascinated the public, who delighted in reading about the late night sinning of Dr. Jekyll and Dorian Gray. While no female character in fin-de-siècle literature enjoyed such late night romps without facing immediate punishment when she returned home, a close look at some of the era’s best-selling novels reveals that the concept of a divinely good woman was being interrogated almost from the moment she was named the Angel in the House. In fact, exploring the tension in that figure proved productive for some of the nineteenth century’s most respected novelists, who could not seem to leave the topic alone. What is it about that figure and her progeny that novelists kept returning to? This dissertation will investigate the answer to that question. More specifically, it will consider the way in which the Angel in the House as mother figure proved particularly unstable, often rocking the house she was supposed to support. The focal point of this dissertation, however, will be directed toward analyzing several works by late nineteenth-century novelists Thomas Hardy and Henry James, who began characterizing mothers as human beings with both good and bad qualities, mothers whose “badness” typically included destructive efforts to direct their children’s lives. In characterizing mothers as Angel descendants who extended their realm beyond the house, often with harmful results, Hardy and James established a prototype for mothers in the work of early twentieth-century Modernists such as D. H. Lawrence, vi William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf, who moved mothers from minor characters to protagonists or antagonists. This dissertation will explore reasons why the mother, so revered in nineteenth-century domestic novels, became a frightening force in late nineteenth-century fiction, arguing that the transformation in that fictional mother was initiated by the flaws in the Angel in the House ideal and the willingness of the culture to overlook those flaws. When Coventry Patmore named the perfect woman in his series of poems, The Angel in the House, he might not have imagined the chaos that imaginary figure could cause in literature and in life, but then again, he may have. In the first part of his tribute to his wife, Patmore extols the human angel’s virtues and attributes them to divine origins: Within her face Humility and dignity Were met in a most sweet embrace. She seem'd expressly sent below To teach our erring minds to see The rhythmic change of time's swift flow As part of still eternity. (Book I, Canto I) Not only is she “expressly sent below” to dissuade mankind from its erring ways, the Angel is also the source of approval and disapproval, the earthly judge of morality, the keeper of the Christian flame. This icon possessed all of the seven virtues (with particular emphasis on purity and humility), an infinite understanding of morality and the keen intelligence to guide husband and children on the path to righteousness, and knowledge of rules for social acceptance. Read on one level, Patmore’s poem presents woman as saint, but read on another level, the poem suggests other interpretations. For instance, in these lines from vii Book I, the convoluted syntax and choppy meter undermine the tribute they profess to offer. Such syntactical and metrical choices suggest parody more than ode. More importantly, the lines imply that the speaker is joined with other males in needing their “erring minds to see / the rhythmic change of time’s swift flow / As part of still eternity,” or, in other words, in needing their delusions about themselves as honorable men corrected by a woman. Sarah Eron notes a disparity in “theme, setting, and poetic format” between the first and second halves of the poem that “. never reconcile[s] on the surface of the text” (“Poet or Ventriloquist?”). Eron sees this lack of reconciliation as evidence that Patmore might not deserve his reputation as misogynist and determines the poem as “one exemplifying the subtle Victorian poetics of parody and paradox” (“Poet or Ventriloquist?”). The subtlety may not have been detected by most of the audience who devoured Patmore’s poems over the eight years in which they were printed and reprinted, but The Angel in the House viewed retrospectively evokes questions such as: Why is it that the Angel “seem’d expressly sent below”? Could the past tense in “seem’d” imply that the icon was already recognized as a fabrication? The Angel, as her resume suggests, was always a dreamy figure, a wish. Carol Christ asserts that the idealization reveals Victorian men’s ambivalence about their own sexual aggressiveness, and that the popularity of the figure resulted from national fears, “religious doubt and the viciously competitive atmosphere of business” (146). Pronouncing The Angel in the House “not a very good poem,” Christ finds Patmore’s work “culturally significant, not only for its definition of the Victorian sexual ideal, but also for the clarity with which it represents the male concerns that motivate viii fascination with that ideal” (147). While Christ makes a worthy argument about the genesis of the Angel in male anxiety, her argument does not explore why, by the close of the nineteenth century, the Angel mother, by virtue of the power she exercised over her family, became a daunting figure.