Emily Pfeiffer and Victorian Women’s Religious Poetry Prudence Brand Royal Holloway, University of London Ph.D 2012 Declaration of Authorship This is a statement to declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Signed:………………………….. Date: ……………………………. 2 Acknowledgements Special thanks go to Dr. Anne Varty for her patience, support and scholarly expertise. I would also like to thank Dr. Vicky Greenaway for her valuable advice and support. My thanks go to the many people who have helped me with my research. In Wales these include the librarians at Newtown Library, Richard Suggett and Hilary and Brian Malaws of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, and the librarians at Aberystwyth University. In England, my thanks go to Ann Kinsler and the librarians of Royal Holloway University of London, the British Library, the Wellcome Institute and the London Library. To my husband, Adam, I owe a huge debt of gratitude. Without his encouragement, and the support of my family, my research would not have been possible. 3 Style and Punctuation Throughout my thesis I adhere to the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) style for my footnote and bibliography references, with two exceptions: I use the abbreviated Latin terms ibid and op. cit. when referencing works previously cited, and I omit the abbreviations ‘p./pp.’ prior to page numbers in footnote references. In citations of poetry, numbers in parentheses refer to page references, while numbers in brackets refer to line references. There is no MHRA guidance for long poems without line numbers. In the final chapter of my thesis I therefore use an initial Roman numeral to denote the section of the poem, followed by the page number and a forward slash, and conclude with the line number counting down from the top of that page. 4 Abstract As a Christian, Emily Pfeiffer (1827-1890) saw women’s fight for emancipation as a crusade that transcends the earthly state. Yet, although her poetry was well-received during her life-time, Pfeiffer remains obscure. In order to challenge values that may have helped to perpetuate Pfeiffer’s non-canonical status, I examine Pfeiffer’s poetry against a broader definition of religious practice and worship than was traditionally applied to Victorian women’s poetry. Responding to a recent re-evaluation of the criteria for what constitutes nineteenth-century religious literature, I demonstrate that Pfeiffer’s poetry occupies a unique position in the canon of Victorian women’s religious poetry. To determine what made Pfeiffer such an original thinker, my research considers childhood experiences from which the psychological imprint never faded. In order to compensate for losses and disappointments, Pfeiffer learned to channel her frustrations into her poetry early in life. A Central Anglican, Pfeiffer belonged to a declining strand of the Established Church during a period when other branches of Christianity were expanding. Defending Christianity against elements of science and secularism, Pfeiffer repeatedly presented Victorian women as able to 5 overcome physical and spiritual gender discrimination. Attempts to compare her with other women poets underline the originality of her contribution to nineteenth-century religious poetry. Pfeiffer’s ability to reconcile her feminism with her Christianity became increasingly problematic for her as she grew older, driving her to re- imagine Christianity in ways that seem prescient. In her efforts to counteract the misogyny she saw as endemic to the Western tradition, Pfeiffer anticipated important religious trends and paved the way for key elements of radical feminist theology. 6 Table of Contents Declaration of Authorship 2 Acknowledgements 3 Style and Punctuation 4 Abstract 5 Table of Contents 7 Introduction 9 CHAPTER 1: EMILY PFEIFFER IN HER SETTING BIOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT 20 Emily Davis: 1827-1850 21 Emily Pfeiffer: 1850-1873 37 ‘Mrs. Pfeiffer’: 1873-1890 45 The Eighteen Seventies 46 The Eighteen Eighties 54 CHAPTER 2: EMILY PFEIFFER, RELIGIOUS POET I LYRIC POETRY 76 ‘The Crown of Song’ (1876) 81 ‘Hymn to the Dark Christmas of 1874’ 89 ‘He that is washed needs but to wash his feet’ (1873) 108 II SONNETS 116 Emily Pfeiffer versus Constance Naden 123 ‘The Chrysalis’ (1876) 135 ‘The Coming Day’ (1880) 138 7 CHAPTER 3: EMILY PFEIFFER’S SPIRITUAL ODYSSEY I WOMEN AND CHRISTIANITY 140 Women and Mother Nature 140 Women and the Virgin Mary 145 Fallen Women and Other Falls 155 II GLÂN-ALARCH, HIS SILENCE AND SONG (1877) 171 Gnosticism and The Gospel of Mary 171 History, Myth and Legend 174 Mona’s Fall 182 Mona as Bard 184 Mona and the Legend of Melangell 187 Mona’s Explanations 193 Mona as a ‘virgin mother’ 195 CHAPTER 4: EMILY PFEIFFER’S CHRISTIAN HEROINES THE RHYME OF THE LADY OF THE ROCK, AND HOW IT GREW (1884) 200 The Scottish Ballad Tradition 202 Transforming Legends 205 Feminist theology 208 The Mixed-genre Structure of The Lady of the Rock 215 Elizabeth Campbell’s Wedding Night 219 The Prose Narrative 228 Lachlan Maclean and the Swiss pedlar 239 Betrayal: Black Magic and a Wax-work Fetish 244 Elizabeth Campbell is Raped and Murdered 250 Aftermath 265 CONCLUSION 269 BIBLIOGRAPHY 272 8 Introduction Emily Pfeiffer (1827-1890) was a late-Victorian poet who saw women’s fight for emancipation as a mission extending beyond the temporal state. Yet, during the final years of her life, her ability to reconcile her Christian faith with her allegiance to the fast-growing women’s movement became increasingly problematic. Driven to re- imagine aspects of her faith in ways compatible with her feminist values, Pfeiffer wrote a number of unconventional, unorthodox and prescient poems. In my evaluation of poems published by Pfeiffer between 1873 and 1884, and following an overall progression from conventional to less conventional genres, I assess Pfeiffer’s poetry against a backdrop of religious poems published by selected female contemporaries. My objective is to demonstrate that Pfeiffer has a place in the canon of late-Victorian women’s religious poetry. In her day, Pfeiffer was known to be a prolific and versatile poet. Her lyric poems, ballads, dramatic monologues and blank verse novels were highly regarded. Her sonnets were particularly well-received. Yet, today, while many other Victorian women poets have gained places in the canon of women poets, Pfeiffer remains an outsider. Even previously neglected poets such as Amy Levy, Constance Naden and Michael Field now have places in the canon, while Pfeiffer has no place. Several attempts have been made to champion Pfeiffer’s poetry but, although the touch-paper has been lit, the expected explosion of critical interest has failed to ensue. In trying to account for Pfeiffer’s non-canonicity, I first consider anthologies of Victorian poetry published in recent years. In Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology 9 (1995), edited by Margaret Reynolds and Angela Leighton, a small, but representative, range of Pfeiffer’s poems is favourably received. Pfeiffer’s interest in gender issues and merit as a poet are recognised.1 Two years later, in The Penguin Book of Victorian Verse (1997), only one short poem by Pfeiffer is included.2 Only two female contributors – Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Brontë – are included in Bernard Richards’s anthology, English Verse 1830-1890 (1999), so that Pfeiffer’s absence from this publication is unremarkable. Much more conspicuous is the total absence of Pfeiffer’s poetry from Valentine Cunningham’s comprehensive anthology, The Victorians (2000).3 Cunningham’s omission of Pfeiffer’s poetry is ameliorated to some extent by Virginia Blain’s inclusion of twenty poems by Pfeiffer in her revised anthology, Victorian Women Poets (2009). Referring to Pfeiffer’s sense of humour, her love of nature, her interest in Darwinism and gender issues, Blain also takes Pfeiffer to task over her poem entitled ‘The Fight at Rorke’s Drift’. Blain writes: ‘It is perhaps not unlikely that for a woman of her social position, denied access to a life of physical adventure or heroism, a certain vicarious pleasure could be obtained by revelling in bloodthirsty scenes of battle set in exotic locations’.4 Blain’s evaluation fails to pay due attention to Pfeiffer’s political interests which will be elucidated in the course of my research. More recently, T. D. Olverson’s scholarly research in ‘Worlds without Women, Emily Pfeiffer’s Political Hellenism’ (2010) acknowledges Pfeiffer as a highly accomplished 1 Angela Leighton & Margaret Reynolds, eds., Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 338-343. 2 Daniel Karlin, ed., Penguin Book of Victorian Verse (London: Penguin Books, 1997), 184. 3 Valentine Cunningham, ed., The Victorians: An Anthology of Poetry & Poetics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) 4 Virginia Blain, ed., Victorian Women Poets: New Annotated Anthology, rev. edn (London: Pearson Longman, 2009), 87. Taken out of the context of Pfeiffer’s life and times, Blain’s comments regarding Pfeiffer’s ‘racist imperialism’ and ‘jingoistic’ support of ‘British (and particularly Welsh) valour in an imperialistic war’ seem unfair. Pfeiffer supported the Welsh against British imperialism. Familiar with financial hardship, she fought for women’s education, proper employment, and trades unions. 10 Victorian sonneteer. 5 Earlier efforts to champion Pfeiffer as a poet of high standing, however, include Kathleen Hickok’s article entitled: ‘Why is this Woman Still Missing? Emily Pfeiffer, Victorian Poet’ (1999) in which Hickok