The Woman Who Did by Grant Allen - Essay Example

?The Woman Who Did In the Woman Who Did by Grant Allen, the portrayal of women is different from Tess, Jane Eyre and Tenant. Whereas in Tess, the woman in question was perhaps more sexually free than other women of the age, and the women in Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfeld Hall defied the conventions of the age by leaving a husband (as in Tenant) or marrying on one’s own terms (as in Jane), the women in these novels still did, in their way, stay with the parameters set by society for them. After all, each of them did marry – Tess married Angel Claire, although this marriage did not last long. Jane married Rochester, and that union was a happy one. Helen leaves her husband, then ends up married to Gilbert Markham. Therefore, each of the novels does focus upon a conventional union, as each of the heroines are married at some point in these novels. However, these novels were either written towards the beginning of the Victoria Age or during the middle of the Victorian Age. Therefore, they cannot be too radical. However, towards the end of the Victorian Age, towards the end of the 19th Century, there was a dawning and awakening in the women. During this time, Victorian writers told the tales of the “new woman” – rebellious heroines who focused on new ethics regarding sexuality and gender relations (Larson, 2001). An example of this is Nora, the heroine in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House – Nora was patronized throughout the play by her husband, then breaks free from him in the end, leaving her own children behind in the process (Ibsen, 1965). Like Nora, these women, according to Devereux (1999), rebelled against the strictures in Victorian society regarding sex, gender and class distinctions and were criticized for being responsible for the “second fall of man” (Devereux, 1999, p. 175) Women during this age also pursued sporting activities, in marked contrast to women during the earlier Victorian Age. These sporting activities ranged from archery, tennis and swimming to hunting and water polo (Parratt, 1989). The New Woman also fought to for the woman’s right to attain higher education, was outspoken about intellectual and sexual matters, smoked cigarettes and sometimes eschewed marriage. This made the “new woman” a very controversial figure in late 19th Century Britain, according to Jusova (2005). This awakening would come to fruition some 20 years later, as, during the post World War I period, women started to make headway with suffrage, working status and birth control (Hemus, 2009, p. 6). This was the culmination of the “New Woman” era, and these women were women with a job outside the home (Lavin, 1993, p. 2). The heroine in The Woman Who Did reflected these changes, which is what made her different from the heroines in Jane Eyre, Tenant and Tess. As noted above, the heroines in the other novels did marry, even for a short period of time. This fulfills at least some of the edicts put forth by society in the Victorian Age. Herminia, however, in The Woman Who Did, has no interest in marriage, even if she does want to fall in love. She makes this clear towards the beginning of the novel, as she states that she never wants to be married, at least legally so. This is understandable, considering what marriage meant to women of this time – it meant that she became her husband’s property, and that whatever she earned became his. It meant the end of independence and emancipation. Herminia was having none of this, unlike the women in the earlier novels, and so she tells Alan that she can never marry him, although she did want to be with him. Herminia compares marriage to slavery, and she was not far wrong during this period of time. Moreover, she is doing it for her “sisters” – other women who desire to be free. Herminia feels that if she submits to marriage that she would be setting a bad example for other young feminists who desire emancipation, and she, and her principles, would not let her do this. Therefore, while Helen in Tenant had to worry about her artwork becoming the property of Gilbert, and Jane presumably had to worry that her inheritance that she received would become the sole property of Rochester, therefore both women’s ostensible positions of independence are undermined, Herminia had no such worry. Herminia was self-sufficient, for she had a job, and she was content to keep it that way. Nothing of hers would ever become the possession of Alan, and this how she wanted it. Moreover, just the fact that Herminia has her own money which was obtained by her own skills and ingenuity also set her apart from the earlier heroines. Jane and Helen in Jane Eyre and Tenant had their own money coming into their respective marriages with Rochester and Gilbert, respectively, but this money was obtained through inheriting from a man. Therefore, neither heroine could be said to be truly self-sufficient. Herminia was, however, truly self-sufficient, because she relied upon her own brains, skills and hard work for her money. This is another aspect that sets her apart from the earlier heroines. Another of the major changes experienced by the heroine in The Woman Who Did concerns the quality of the hero in the novel, Alan. Whereas the men in the earlier novels were condescending at best, and did not have any kind of sympathy for women’s issues, Alan, although a male, was actually a feminist. He believed, unlike the earlier men in the earlier novels, that women should be emancipated and equal to a man. He completely sympathized with Herminia’s point of view, which was that women were to be independent, self-sufficient and equal to men. This is obvious from the first – the woman who introduced Alan and Herminia stated that they were kindred spirits in their viewpoints, and Alan and Herminia begin by talking about how Herminia found university stifling – Alan and Herminia both agreed that women’s social statuses, even at university, is not that of a man, and both lament this fact. As Alan says during this first meeting – “It’s the emancipation, not the mere education, that appeals to me” (Allen, 1895). This was the first instance where the reader becomes aware that Alan is a feminist in a man’s body, and this makes him very different from Rochester, Gilbert and especially Angel Claire and Alec, all of whom were patronizing and patriarchal in their way. Herminia also differed from Tess, in that, in Tess, the heroine was very much ruled by her father. Her father was the person who forced Tess to make kin with the D’Urbeyvilles, and her drunken father was the reason why Tess was forced to work, because she had to support him. In other words, Tess was ruled by her father in Tess. In the other novels, Jane Eyre and Tenant, the father was not a prominent figure. By contrast to Tess, Herminia was not ruled by her father at all. When Alan asks her what her father thinks of her views, she replies, in so many words, that she doesn’t care what her father thinks, and neither should Alan. Thus, Herminia will not be ruled by a man in any way – not romantically, and not familially. There is also a contrast in the education of the women in these novels. Tess appears to not have had any formal education, and did not have a feminist outlook on life at any rate. Jane in Jane Eyre did have some degree of education, but her education did not extend to university. Helen in Wildfell, while a talented artist, did not have formal education at the university level either. This makes all of them conventional in the sense that women during the Victorian Age were not encouraged to pursue university education. After all, the women during this age were just expected to stay home and take care of children and their husbands – a university degree would be pointless to attain. However, this is how the heroine in the The Woman Who Did differed from the women in Jane Eyre, Tenant and Tess – Herminia did have a university education, even if she did not finish. In fact, Herminia expressed a distinctly feminist reason for attending university – she stated that she felt that, as a woman, that she could only be free if she had the same education as a man. That said, she indicated that she did not pursue her degree because she felt that the women who were at university with her did not share the same feminist sensibility, and that the overall education was not geared towards emancipating women. The problem with university, agreed both Herminia and Alan is that, for the men, college was a time of coming of age. As Alan states, the men at Oxford could behave wild and free – they drank, they played pool, they three oranges at one another’s head, and they went out on the town. They lived life as a young person should – a young person who is trying to find his way in the world. However, the women at university – Herminia went to Somerville – still had to act as ladies should in the Victorian Age. Therefore, the intellectual development was on par with the male intellectual development, but, socially, women were just as oppressed in university as they are in the world. Still, the mere fact that Herminia went to university shows how different she was from the other heroines mentioned in this paper, and shows how the lives of women did get better towards the end of the Victorian Age. Another way that Herminia differed from early heroines focuses, again, on the fact that Herminia would not marry. The other heroines did not have sexual relations with men who were not their husbands, except, perhaps, Tess, if one accepts that she was not raped but seduced by Alec. Therefore, the heroines in these novels cannot be said to induce scorn for taking a lover. Herminia, however, does “take a lover” when she and Alan enter into their unconventional relationship, so Herminia, unlike the earlier heroines, does endure the scorn of society. She is gossiped about on her street, and, in the end, feels the need to leave for Italy with Alan. The unconventional relationship also causes problems with Alan’s father, who, understandably, does not comprehend the relationship that Alan and Herminia are to have. Thus, Alan’s father disowns the Alan, so he suffers as well. However, although Herminia lives live by her own terms, she does suffer for her convictions as well. Alan dies, and Herminia is with his unborn child. Alan attempts to make a will, but does not execute it, therefore Herminia and her child, Dolores, do not inherit. Herminia returns to London with no position in society at all – in fact, she is a societal pariah. She only obtains room and board by lying about her marital status – she says that she is a widow. She is shunned by her father, and left out of his will. Worst of all, Herminia’s daughter Dolores – “Dolly” for short – grows up to disown her as well. As Dolly feels that she cannot marry the man she loves, as long as her mother is alive, Herminia kills herself so that Dolly will no longer have to carry around the stain of her “sin.” Thus, just like Tess, Herminia dies for her independent ways. Conclusion In The Woman Who Did, Herminian is a different kind of heroine. While prior heroines in Victorian novels still led conventional lives – they marry, they submit to patriarchy, they do not obtain university education, and they do not bear children out of wedlock – Herminian’s life is unconventional, indeed, for the times. Herminian refuses to marry both Alan, and, later, another suitor named Harvey, because, to her, marriage is equated with slavery. Considering the times – women are property of men, women could not own property of their own, and men were essentially allowed to beat their wives without compunction – Herminian was not far wrong. Women were essentially enslaved to their men. Had Herminian been born in a different era, an era when women were not property of their men, perhaps she would have thought differently. Or, at the very least, her position would not be understandable to the modern audience. As it was, her position was inexplicably not understandable to the Victorian audience. After all, women were put in the position of slaves, and one would think that other women, like Herminian, would chafe against this. That they did not, and women like Herminian were shunned from society, by men and women alike, instead of being cheered on, shows that women either accepted their inferior position or were too afraid to break free. In fact, Herminian was a fictional character – there might not have been even one woman like her. And certainly her story would dissuade any woman who had imaginings of being like her. Herminian did not get her happy ending – she did not raise a daughter who would bring the fight to a new generation, but, rather, a daughter whose sensibilities matched the era in every way. She was shunned by society and by her own parents. She had a difficult time finding a job or even room and board for herself and her daughter. In other words, Herminian was punished for her independence, just the same way that Tess was for hers. The author of this story was a man, and, although there was some indication that he was sympathetic to the feminists of the day (http://www.grantallen.org/), it seems doubtful that he actually was a feminist who wanted women to be gained greater rights in society. For his is a cautionary tale – the woman who was unconventional ends up suffering, broken and alone, and finally commits suicide so that her daughter may take her place in society. If Allen was a feminist, then he would have procured a better ending for Herminian. Then again, the novel shows Dolly to be a horrible person, and Dolly is the conventional character in the novel. She is snobbish, elitist and cruel. She cares only for money and material possessions and has no love for her mother, even before she found out the truth. Therefore, it is possible that Allen meant for Dolly to represent society at that time, and Herminian to represent the ideal. Indeed, the ideal that Herminian represented was only a generation away, although Allen probably did not know this. Therefore, it stands to reason that, during the period that Allen wrote this novel, there was already a nascent feeling among women that they were enslaved and that they needed to break free. Allen tapped into this and presented what society should be in the character of Herminian and what society presently was in the character of Dolly. Nevertheless, this novel marks an evolution of thought from the time of the Bronte sister and Thomas Hardy’s Tess. Whereas the heroines in those novels were never truly independent - they married, they did not earn their wealth, and they still submitted to patriarchy just in the act of being married – Herminian was truly independent, even if she suffered for it. And, in contrast to Tess, the heroine in this novel has no compunction about bringing a child into the world without marriage and having sex without being married. In other words, the earlier heroines still held on to conventions and the vestiges of their times, but Herminian did not . She was a truly independent woman, even if the world was not quite ready for her. This shows the evolution of thought, and the genesis of the woman’s movement which would eventually change the lives of women completely. Bibliography Allen, Grant. The Woman Who Did. Available at: http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1bjhFu8C7hcC&oi=fnd&pg=PA9&dq=woman+who+did&ots=b9LqDBAd8g&sig=okspnft7eYZVDh0p7ofrF-n33t8 Devereux, Cecily. “New Woman, New World.” Women’s Studies International Forum 22, no. 2 (1999): 175-184. “Evolutionist at Large: Grant Allen,” http://www.grantallen.org/. Hemus, Ruth. Dada's Women. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. Ibsen, Henrik. Four Major Plays, vol. 1: A Doll’s House, The Wild Duck; Hedda Gabler; The Master Builder. Ed. Rolf Fjelde. London: Signet Press, 1965. Jusova, Iveta. The New Woman and the Empire. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005. Larson, Jil. Ethics and Narrative in the English Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Lavin, Maud. Cut With the Kitchen Knife: the Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Hoch. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993. Parratt, Cartriona. “Athletic Womanhood: Exploring Sources for Female Sport in Victorian and Edwardian England,” Journal of Sport History 15, no. 2 (1989): 141-157. Read More