Victorian Society: Why is the Figure of the Fallen Woman so Ubiquitous - Book Report/Review Example

 Having a much loved Queen Victoria as a long reining monarch, did not help British women in any way, in their quest of finding their voice. It was a rigid, patriarchal society, where women were not ignored or downtrodden, but were indulged and tolerated, and to some extent, venerated. When it came to morality and sexual matters, Victorian society was as prudish as the earlier medieval British societies. The social structure of Victorian society was like any other ancient society, evolving and trying hard to hesitatingly attain modern views, but not going further. Society was so cautious about giving sexual freedom to women, because it thought that the fundamentals of family life would crumble with female sexual freedom. Great stress was laid upon marriage and a woman without marriage was abhorred. “Taught that a husband was essential to their existence, and all their training directed to the art of catching one, they had the choice of being relegated to the ranks of abnormality if they did not marry, or being forced into what many regarded as degrading sexual competition, in which the losers faced economic hardship as well as social obliteration,” Foster (1985, p.7). Condition of women was difficult and constricted. Either they were idealised or discarded. There was never a middle path. It was an age of transition from medieval to modern times when the prudish society was at the throes of giving birth to a more modern social order. The Victorian society is described beautifully here: “Middle-class outlook: Protestant work ethic, pragmatism, respectability, sobriety, frugality, industry, chastity, honesty, independence, etc. Commitment to the idea of pursuing social duty instead of personal pleasure Struggle over role of women: icons of ideal English daughter, wife, & mother vs. fallen woman, spinster, New Woman, femme fatale” http://www.public.iastate.edu/~khickok/victoriannovel.html It is necessary to mention some of Thomas Hardy’s lines here: O ‘Melia, my dear, this does everything crown! Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town? And wear such fair garments? Such prosperity? ‘Oh, didn’t you know, I had been ruined?’ said she. Thomas Hardy, The Ruined Maid The sexual morality of the era was rooted in late 18th and early 19th century societies. As the literature of any period would reflect the society itself, Victorian literature too presents itself in the societal framework. Fallen woman and prostitution had often been subjects of Victorian literature. Fallen woman in those days was the woman who had, or presumed to have had sexual relationship outside marriage. Fallenness did not come only because of prostitution, but even the unmarried mothers, needlewomen, women without any means of living and earning, women coming from very low working class, demented women, alcoholics, childless, spinsters, slaves, anorexic and even the harem women were all treated by society as fallen women. “Generally the term ‘fallen woman’ is used indiscriminately by the Victorian middle classes to describe any woman who has lost her chastity: the common prostitute, the ‘kept’ woman, the woman whose prostitution supplemented an insufficient wage and the innocent victim of a single seduction – all were categorised under this single heading regardless of the finer identifiable personal and social differences between each group,” Morris (1993, p.49). The discrimination comes mainly because they could not reach the social and sexual standards set by the society of the day. Society had rigid norms and rules for its female population and some of the writers of both the sexes did try to make a difference. “When Jane Austen taught that sensibility without moral sense was dangerous, she was taking up a theme that was at the heart of a number of novelists. As later novelists would emphasize duty, writers of this earlier period were very much concerned with balance, a rational moderation that avoided extremes of action or feeling,” Calder (1976, p.18). . Victorian literature sometimes had been unkind to the women who could not meet the angelic purity that was imposed upon women by Victorian ideology and the circumstances under which such an ‘immortal act’ took place, were generally disregarded under the blanket rule that ‘woman had to be blamed’. It depended on the social deviance and period’s prevalent norms for women which was ‘Madonna-or-harlot’ polarity without any in-between role. Female characters that were suspected of having illicit affairs, usually died before the novel ended. These doomed characters make the critics say that Victorians were uncomfortable with ‘unreproductive sexuality’ and thought it corrupted the domestic norms and regulations in a way similar to what conventional societies are going through today. The point here is, it is not only the society, who thought that the entire life is blighted for a small ‘amiss’, but it is also the person herself, who is so deeply imbibed with the ‘Fallen woman’ has taken a sizeable part of Victorian literature claiming attention of readers, who must have contributed to the later societal shift. Initially fallen woman was introduced as a lesson to other woman, because the literature was very specific about the woman’s black deeds, her shame and her ultimate downfall or ignominious death. Later the same woman started gaining more and more compassion from the readers and writers both. During this period, these women were given an almost reluctant chance of living and rehabilitation in the fiction world. After decades, they could lift their heads slightly more and demand a right to live. The tendency of ‘fallen woman syndrome’ was connected with European middleclass understanding of sexuality, which received a jolt when psychologists appeared on the scene. Prostitution is depicted as part of fallen and unfortunate woman theme, though enters Victorian novels and poetry in a marginal way. Nancy in Oliver Twist, Alice in Dombey and Son, Martha and Emily in David Copperfield, Mercy in the New Magdalene all come under this category. Dickens was involved in the rehabilitation of prostitutes, just as he was involved in bettering the lot of orphans. He was not simply a passive writer, but was a kind of social worker as well. He rendered complete support to “Home for Homeless women” Victorian society had traditional views not only about female sexuality and modesty, but also about falling in love that was discouraged even though British had a tradition of going for love marriages. While men falling in love was appreciated as part of the ‘swashbuckling hero’ persona, but women falling in love was rather discouraged as frivolous. This gave fruitful subject for many important artists and poets of the era. “The Pre-Raphaelites depicted the woman destroyed by various forms of love, whether unrequited, tragic or adulterous, by highlighting not only her mental destruction but also focusing on her sexual frustration or punishment. The Victorians believed passion to be deviant; thoughts of sexuality would cause insanity and thus repression was necessary. With the strong societal enforcement of these beliefs, many Victorians lived with great shame, guilt, and fear of damnation (Walkowitz). http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/prb/hikim12.html Morris’s Guinevere refuses to remain ‘stone-cold forever’ and defends her sexuality, which out of wedlock, makes her the fallen women heading towards self-destruction. Passion and desire in females were considered to be the very theme towards self-ruination. Rosetti’s Jenny depicts her as a seduced, ruined woman who is rather unaware of her misfortune and perhaps even enjoys her sexual freedom. Lazy laughing languid Jenny, Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea . . . Fair Jenny mine, the thoughtless queen Of kisses which the blush between Could hardly make much daintier. Armstrong mentions the Victorian fascination while analysing Rossetti’s poems. “Rossetti’s poems are often associated with a neurosis which makes the agonistic moment of sexuality in which love and death are one the consuming moment of experience, figuring a Victorian fascination with the sexuality it so uneasily represses,” Armstrong (1993, p.455). Fallen woman is a pejorative term usually connected with loss of innocence and sexual chastity that was considered to be the highest norms upheld by womanhood. It is also connected with the Old Testament story of the Fall and Forbidden Fruit. There too most of the fault is laid at Eve’s door for having persuaded innocent Adam to eat the forbidden fruit and in the similar vein, fallen woman was the most used term in Victorian days without having a comparative term as ‘fallen man’. Unfortunately, these terms are gender based and in other cultures they still remain as powerful as in Victorian England and women are fighting against odds trying not to be stereotyped. It continues to have endured existence as the moralistic condemnatory term that brings social, physical and mental ruin. The fallen woman is always an outcast the moment her deed is discovered. She hardly has any place in the society any more. If the woman is married and commits adultery, that becomes an impossible crime of never-ending shame. Very few crimes could be compared to that. Despite the existence of a male partner in the crime, usually the fault is fixed on the female and the male remains only the seducer, never the sinner. Even though in Jenny male’s direct role is shown in the destruction of the female, his partnership in the sexual crime is usually overlooked. Man’s infidelity was a matter of indulgence and the same rule did not apply to woman’s adultery. Britain’s culture was patriarchal and women, though indulged, were on the periphery of the society. In spite of many set backs this was the period when women writers came into prominence. There is no doubt that Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen were already known in the field, but the success was rather limited. Victorian period saw a large number of them publishing their works and this was something new as opposed to the earlier days when learned women were called ‘blue stockings’ and were avoided to a very large extent. There were many restrictions laid on even the men writers dictated by prudery and censorship of the period an writers were not in a position to ignore the social and political condemnation and still remain saleable. Society was close-knitted and a rumour that a particular book was obscene would have killed all the chances of its being sold to general public even though most of them would not have read it at all. Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy and George Moor are the main literary giants who were continuously attacked for their ‘improper, profane and indelicate’ literature. Any further attempt to break down social barriers would have proved suicidal. Still it goes to the credit of both Dickens and Hardy that they tried their very best to do so without bringing an avalanche of protests upon themselves. After the public outcry over Jude the Obscure, where he depicted the fallibility of marriage, compelling Bishop of Wakefield to throw the book on the fire, being disgusted with the novel’s ‘insolence and indecency,’ Hardy turned towards poetry. Hence, the writers, at least the enlightened lot, were not for cultivating fallen woman’s image, but the society was. And the writers were simply forced to adhere to the public literary needs. In spite of the surrounding rigidity, Charles Dickens, Moore and Hardy questioned the social injustice with their individual criticisms and theories. As they became better known with every book of theirs, one could see them getting bolder as champions of socially marginalised women and in Dickens’ case, children too. But they had been unable to contribute much in the direction of improving the ‘fallen woman’. Critics said Dickens’ female characters fell into three categories of angels, fallen sisters and eccentrics and in his favourite David Copperfield, he had the fallen woman Martha, who was painted later by Brown. “Brown’s depiction of Martha reflects the cultural regard for the fallen woman. Billowing industrial smoke stacks form a fitting backdrop for the now sullied Martha, who contemplates taking her life by drowning herself in the polluted river,” Golden (2000, p.11). Art was not different from fiction or poetry, because sometimes artists took inspirational scenes from literature. Some of the paintings depicted these unfortunates so well (Abandoned daughters) that there was a surge of sympathy for the fallen woman and her children. But it took a long time for the fallen woman to become a modern one. Thomas Hardy is credited for creating the bridge for the change in his novels. “The major achievement of the female characters in the industrial novels can be defined as drawing attention to the need for more humanity in a society ruled by economic interests. The working-class women have the double function of illustrating social hardship and of creating a peaceful image of their class since they are generally described as politically non-committed,” Bergmann (1979, p.160). It took a very long time for the Victorian society to come out of the rigid mould. When it eventually did, society could not take the credit for it, because it was the First World War that had changed the world. War brought woman power to the forefront and psychologists, especially Sigmund Freud had revolutionalised the way of thinking. He could be abused and defied, but could never be ignored. First World War precipitated the need for immediate change and ignored what would have been a slow, painful and extremely difficult process. When the war ended, fallen woman had given way to a new, modern, useful working woman and the change, due to dire need, went unnoticed by the moral police of British society. Victorians had a double-standard for morality, especially on the theme of sexuality where the social purity was precariously balanced on the cult of pure womanhood. Good breeding was connected with the sex for mere reproduction within the framework of marriage and anything out of it was sheer prostitution for females. Wuthering Heights of 1847 was one of the exceptions to this rule. The figure of Fallen Woman had been central here in the form of Catherine who loved two men. Heathcliff remains an all-consuming pagan lover and the love between him and Catherine out of wedlock must have shocked the readers. It was Emily Bronte’s sense of adventure that prompted her to make the fallen woman her heroine. The name of the novel itself means ‘rejection of heaven’ and naturally this is the rejection of marital bliss, the heaven for female not only in Victorian days, even today, to some extent. Catherine’s thirst for freedom, and the way she humiliates her husband for the lover must have shocked the genteel society. But Emily Bronte makes Catherine to pay for her fallen-ness by dying for the pagan love that she could not extinguish. Catherine is so un-angelic, untamed in her love for a pitiless, boorish man who was not her husband. Her uninhibited behaviour in spite of being married, and her hold over her lover are very different from the usual Victorian characters. Heathcliff remains ‘unredeemed’ till the end and Catherine’s suspected return from the grave, the ghost consumed by her base desires for the lover too is an unorthodox approach. This fallen woman cannot be controlled by others, nor can control herself. She is devastated physically and mentally by her uncontrollable passions which cannot tolerate any opposition. Lady Audrey’s secret is another similar story where a fallen woman is the protagonist. Bigamy and murderous assaults combined with invention of her own death and abandoning the child are very different characteristics from the Victorian woman of purity Lady Audrey commits all the crimes and ends up in the madhouse. Characters like Lady Audrey and Catherine must have been unsettling to Victorian readers and to put things in their right perspective, both Catherine and Lady Audrey are punished for their ‘crimes’. Both of them disrupt the domestic sphere of Victorian woman and surprisingly both are elevated to the heroine status, which was rare in those days. Fallen woman was no doubt centre and could not be ignored, but they always came in a secondary role, almost as a lesson to society, because their introduction into the novel was surely followed by a disaster for themselves. Here, though they had been punished for their wrong decisions and behaviours, still it is significant to note that they have a very prominent place in these two books, more so in the case of Wuthering Heights. It is interesting to recognise the anonymity of the fallen woman in urban surroundings. Lucy, a woman of mysterious background as against a pure, well-bred, innocent Victorian heroine, does not resemble Catherine in any way. Catherine was never devious or cunning. She was extremely open in her decisions and behaviour. Desertion of George and Lucy’s difficulties were totally ignored and only her deceptions and later attempts to cover up remained in the minds of Victorian readers. In spite of the almost definite unpopularity of their heroines, it is extremely adventurous and bold of both the female writers to introduce Lucy and Catherine to the prudish Victorians, despite their being fallen women. These two writers showed another area where the fallen woman could dominate. They also showed that all the Victorian women did not think and behave in the same stereotyped way. Although unprecedented, both the books must have come as fresh air. The fallen woman after being relegated into the background for a long time, slowly evolved into an acceptable person whom the society could tolerate; but this change took years to appear. The fallen woman was also central because she provided an adventurous testing of readers, their moral rigidity and to what extent they could tolerate the so called ‘immorality’ in the society. Making women responsible for all the evils of society slowly hit a dead-end even before the First World War. Women started moving out of their houses seeking jobs and livelihood and this mobility provided them greater opportunities and decreased the harsh societal regulations. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Armstrong, Isobel (1993), Victorian Poetry, Poetry, Poetics and Politics, Routledge, London. 2. Calder, Jenni (1976), Women and Marriage in Victorian Fiction, Thames and Hudson, London. 3. Foster, Shirley (1985|), Victorian Women’s Fiction: Marriage, Freedom and the Individual, Croom Helm, London. 4. Golden, Catherin J., Late Twentieth Century readers in search of a Dickensian heroine: Angels, Fallen Sisters and Eccentric Women, Modern Language Studies, Volume 30, No. 2, Autumn 2000. 5. Morris, John (1993), Exploring Stereotyped Images in Victorian and Twentieth Century literature and society, E. Mellen Press, Lewiston. 6. ONLINE SOURCES: 1. http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/prb/hikim12.html 2. http://www.public.iastate.edu/~khickok/victoriannovel.html 3. Read More