Some differing conceptions of the heroine in selected mid-Victorian novels
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Date
06/1981Embargo end date
31/12/2020Author
Badinjki, Taher
Metadata
Abstract
In their studies of the social and moral conventions
which appear to have governed Victorian attitudes to women,
some present-day critics have made various statements and
broad generalizations about such matters. For example,
Dr. William Acton's medical opinions are frequently cited.
Coventry Patmore's "Angel" is constantly referred to in
the arguments of those who emphasize the way in which they
believe all Victorians saw women as idealistically angelic
and saintly, whereas "Walter's" My Secret Life and other
stock anecdotes about Victorian sex-life and its underworld
pornography, are frequently quoted in favour of a very
different, but also somewhat extreme view. What this shows
is, rather, that if one's evidence is selected it can be
made to support almost any view; and it is, in fact, hard
to accept that a case can be made out for any really
effective generalization about women in Victorian literature.
Not less damaging and misleading are such conventional
images of the fallen woman as "an ostracized outcast" and
of the "passionate" woman as someone baffling and repellent.
The conventionality often lies in the writer's views as
well as in the literature he is criticizing. This is seen,
to some extent, in the image of the ostracized outcast in
such novels of the forties as Dickens's Oliver Twist (1838)
and Mrs Gaskell' s Mary Barton (1848). Yet, later in the
fifties, we find that society's treatment of its fallen
women differed considerably and the outcast of the previous
decades became the repentant Magdalen, there was apparently
great hope of her redemption, and consequently novelists
began to take different attitudes towards this subject as
can be seen in such tales or novels as David Copperfield
(1850) and Mrs Gaskell's Lizzie Leigh (1850) and Ruth
(1853). Society wavered between forgiveness and partial
reclamation. Then, a decade later, the fallen woman was
forgiven, taken back into society and to some extent
allowed to return to normal life; and this can be seen
in novels such as Anthony Trollope's The Vicar of
Bullhampton (1871) and Wilkie Collins's The New Magdalen
(1873) and The Fallen Leaves (1879).
The image of the "passionate" woman also underwent
a similar development from felt yet unpronounced sympathy
in David Copperfield to an overt fascination in Wilkie
Collins's Armadale (1866) and taken to an expression of
sympathy and admiration Trollope's The Way We Live Now
(1875).
We must all see that these images cannot be taken as
an innocent pictorial guide to reality, nor do they allow
easy generalizations about "the Victorians". If we seek
evidence about the period from fiction, novels must be
read with insight and understanding and common sense.
The frailties of such critics must alert us to the need
for guarding against making our own mis-readings.