Letteratura inglese - Corso monografico: Women

Novels were multi-plots.

- at the end of each chapter you can’t wait reading the following one. There’s

suspense that brought people to buy the following volume of the novel. 3

Letteratura inglese – esercitazioni

By 1890 a consumer literature developed (para-literature). It is characterized by religion,

reform and romance.

“romance” means that we not only have normal events but also something wonderful,

some uncommon, strange accidents. It can’t be considered as a genre but only an aspect of

the novel.

These novels have to be read by the greatest number of people. They have to attract the

attention of people. People want to escape from the reality but at the same time they also

want to read about religion and reform. This lead to a great amount of literature of no

quality. But some writers used these aspects to write good literature, as the Bronte sisters

(considered as the best female examples of Victorian Age. There’s an heroine struggling

for her ideals; domestic realities; autobiography; sensorial and gothic elements).

The condition of women

Upper- and middle-class women had nothing important and interesting to do: they had

servants, nurses, they just stay with their children to play and for them it was normal to be

bored. To be bored was a privilege for these upper and middle class women. For them

idleness was a treasure and it was a status symbol.

On the other hand the industrial revolution put pressure on poor women. Low-class

women instead worked from 10 to 16 hours a day in factories and mines, that have no

servants at home and they have to look after their children.

In the Victorian period a series of factory acts, laws, regulated the conditions of labor for

women: the working hours for women was reduced from 16 to 12 hours a day; women

were also banned from mines work. Nevertheless they kept on working in bad conditions

and many of them lost their jobs and became prostitutes. Prostitution became

professionalized, it became a kind of institution.

At that time, when 2.600.000 people lived in London, there were 8.600 prostitutes known

to the police (1867), but according to a journalist called Mayhew the real number might

have been around 80.000 (more that 3% of the total population of London were prostitutes,

that means that 6% of women in London were prostitutes.).

Women could be bought for one or two pennies, or for a piece of stale bread. They were

not beautiful, they were desperate and have all with them. The most fortunate prostitutes

were those who found someone who paid for them a room. Most prostitutes lived in

streets and many of them had escaped from violent husbands or fathers.

In the Victorian Age this situation couldn’t be accepted, it was considered aberrant for

women but men considered prostitution as a “necessity evil”: men could learn how to go

with women only with prostitutes.

Evangelicals opposed to the existence to these sex workers because they said that these

women had no choice and they were not willing to sell their bodies. They have been

enslaved. This was the first attempt to regulate prostitution. One of the other attempts

emphasized the ideas of the harm that prostitutes did to the society: the problem of

contagious venereal diseases, particularly to men. Many contagious diseases acts passed in

864, 1866, 1869. They should help prostitution, they allowed examination of women in

order to see if they were ill. “examination” means abuse and so the conditions of

prostitutes grow worse with these acts.

The Parliament passed in 1855 the “Criminal Law Amendment Act”: a law that forbid

brothels (=bordelli), pimping (=protettorato) and homosexuality. These three aspects were

very strong in Victorian life. It showed the hypocrisy of the Victorian morality (this idea is

very clear in The French Lieutenant’s Woman).

Prostitution were considered the solution only for low classes. Upper and middle class

women couldn’t become prostitutes.

Problem of the redundant middle-class women who remained unmarried, because there

were no balance between men and women (1851: 8.155.000 women vs. 7.600.000 men).

One of the solution to this problem was that some women emigrate and many others

became governesses (but their salaries were low and their status was ambiguous: they

were in the middle between servants and members of the family).

During the Victorian age the governess novel became very popular. In these novels the

authors explored the women’s role in the society: how women felt in the role of governess,

how they interact with men and society, there’s not only the description of their lives but

also a general description of the society around them, (see Jane Eyre: at the end she gains a

higher level).

These novels also dealt with women’s very nature. For the Victorians, women have a

special nature which was fit for domestic roles. Women were perfect in the house.

This idea is stressed also in “Angel in the house” by Coventry Patmore: idea of the women

purity and selflessness (=she does everything for the others). Women lived in the house

and they have to create there a place of peace. Men, who come back home from work,

could find refuge in the wife and in the home in which everything was perfect.

This idea obliged women at home and put pressure on women who must be “enduringly

good and instinctively wise” (typical of Victorian age and of the poem too) = women didn’t

have to think for themselves and for their self-development but they have to think of self-

renunciation. They have only have to give.

This domestic ideology, which considered the woman only as the angel of the house,

lasted many centuries. It was a term used even by feminists at the beginning in order to

justify the importance of women, because without them men couldn’t have the power they

have and wouldn’t be so important.

The basic problem of the women question also how women regarded themselves and how

they were regarded as members of the society (The French Lieutenant’s Woman is all about

the role of women in the society).

In the Victoria Age there was the idea that the women’s role was divinely willed = Queen

Victoria herself said that it was God who wanted women to be devoted to the husband

and to the children, to cultivate woman’s intelligence meant to go against God’s will.

Women were mostly valued for their tenderness, understanding, innocence, purity,

domestic affection, submissiveness and not because they were intelligent and creative. For

this reason they became perfect objects that had to be worshipped like an idol and couldn’t

even be touched, they were so perfect that you couldn’t get near them and they could not

bathe naked.

The Angel in the House – Coventry Patmore (p.1587) 5

Letteratura inglese – esercitazioni

This poem which best shows the situation of woman put on a pedestrian and worshipped

as idols of the house.

It is a very long poem. It is about courtship and marriage.

It was originally published between 1854 and 1862 (two editions. In 1854 the first volume,

the most common part, divided into two books, and the second in 1862, commonly called

“the victories of love”, and it is divided into two volumes). It was a bestseller first in the

USA and then in Great Britain.

The poem is dedicated to the artist’s first wife and it celebrated their XV anniversary of

marriage.

The first part of the poem focuses on the story of Felix and Honoria told by Felix, a very

young poet very similar to Patmore himself. This part is structured as a

Kunstlerroman/Bildungsroman in verses: it is a long narrative poem that shows the moral

and psychological developments of Felix. The poem follow the typical story with Felix

courtship with Honoria and ends with the union of the two trough marriage.

The second part is composed of many letters between many various different characters

and here there are different characters. There are also two relationships: Felix and

Honoria, Jane and Friedrich.

This poem was a centrepiece for the XX century feminist criticism and it perfectly

describes the Victorian woman. Although some positive criticism, it was criticized because

of the theme, the marriage: woman was idealised as a domestic goddess. It also represents

Victorian England’s limitation of women to the domestic sphere. It was because of poem

such as this that the idea of domestic goddess was so widespread in that period.

Usually love poems were about seduction and the marriage was only at the end of the

story. Here there is marriage (Patmore explores a new territory); it is the centre of the

poem and Patmore examines the way in which marriage transforms society and identity.

Throughout the poem there’s a progression of Felix attitudes toward women. He changes

attitude.

Norton p. 1599

There are quatrains with alternated rhyme.

The poet is like the singer who plays the lyre.

The images are quite rhetorical, banal.

In the second part there’s an hymn to the woman (line 16).

Classical poetry images.

Line 37: woman’s task. She is considered as a maid (=domestic idea) and wife.

For the poet, his wife is a “laureate”. He is worshipping his woman. She is an idol.

“The Angel in the house” is not considered a good poem because of the banal ideas. It is

remembered only because of the argument it arouses.

Virginia Woolf’s lecture Profession for women - Norton p. 1986

Strong influence of the idea of the Angel in the house in Victorian mind.

She is speaking to some young women who have just finished their apprenticeship and

are going to start their first profession (they’re not married yet).

She tells them about her personal experience as a worker. She was a “journalist”; she tells

them about her first article and her first experiences. She starts the essay narrating her

personal experience (typical of Virginia Woolf, who sometimes invented episodes as an

excuse to speak to the public). She tells about the first article she was paid for.

She says that it could be easier than to write articles and get money. But is it really easy.

Paragraph “What would be easier…”.

She says the “phantom of the Angel in the house” came between her and her paper and

tormented her. She killed her. Similar to what Futurists writers have done (uccidiamo il

chiaro di luna): killing the tradition (moonlight) to create a new poetry. She is trying to kill

the old idea of woman, to kill Romantic tradition.

She wants to create something new and, in order to do it, she has to kill the old.

She explains what “Angel in the house” is.

Less than a century after the poem was published (1862, she speaks in 1931) she says the

poem is maybe no more famous.

She describes the typical Victorian woman: she had to sacrifice herself for her family, she

lived for husband and children. She also had to be charming, and she had to have a

pureness of mind, in the se