The Fallen Woman and the Value of Virtue in the Victorian Novel - Term Paper Example

The Fallen Woman and the Value of Virtue within the Victorian Novel as Written by Female of the Period Introduction Three of literature, Christina Rossetti, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and Emily Bronte, produced work in the 19th century that was filled with running commentaries on society and more specifically, the space that women took within the society of their time period. The existing feminism that was beginning to rise during the time was revealed in feminine ways, but through clever conversation that discussed combined influences of morality and dignity in order to create a sense of the temptation to lose one’s self through a man in balance with the sense of identity that is difficult to attain in an oppressed state. The social construct of the time was tightly woven, providing a stiff framework within which women were to learn the many aspects of expected behavior. Within this framework, the voices of female authors discussed feminist issues in order to further the cause, through morality, dignity, and a sense of haunting melancholy. Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), sister to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, an English poet and the founder of the Brotherhood along with the other brother the critic, William Michael Rossetti, belonged to the inner circle of the group and her book, The Goblin Market, and other Poems (1862) was the first successful piece to be published from the poet group. Her work provides a discourse on the hauntingly poignant aspects of life, including discourse on devotional topics.1 During her lifetime she worked as a model for her brother’s painting as well as created a multitude of written work that emphasized the aesthetics of the Pre-Raphaelites such as an emphasis on morality and religious imagery.2 Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1837-1915) was only 23 when she had her first play, a comedietta, produced at the Royal Strand theatre. The piece titled The Loves of Arcadia was received well, launching her career into the public eye. A long contributor to periodicals of the time, she wrote a series of novels which included Lady Audley’s Secret. In 1901, the American Literary Society quoted a prominent critic of the period as saying of her novel Aurora Floyd that “There are few English novels that have reached more distant readers, or been translated into more foreign languages”.3 Emily Bronte (1818-1848) had the shortest life of these three authors, but has the highest level of notoriety. While the average person may not know the works of Rossetti aor Braddon, there is a good chance that they will recognize the title Wuthering Heights, if not the name of Bronte. Emily Bronte did not seek out having her works published, but through the influence of her sisters, her work gained recognition. According to Kavaler-Adler, ‘To picture Emily Bronte is to picture a being turned inward - away from the world - and toward the internal imaginings and sufferings that brought her close to nature and to the sibling symbiosis of her childhood’.4 As will Rossetti, the literary world of her family helped to bring her work to the forefront, giving her a voice among the many writers of the period. She was not one to seek out attention, but because of Charlotte and Anne Bronte, her work found a place in literary history, bringing forth the work Wuthering Heights. This paper will seek to examine the work of Christina Rossetti in The Goblin Market in balance against the novel Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Through an examination of the context of the works, the social impact, specifically the ways in which they express feminist details of the 19th century experience, will be evaluated and critically discussed. The paper will begin with a short synopsis of The Goblin Market and the some of the important passages and semiotic imagery that is evoked will be studied. After this discourse, passages from Lady Audley’s Secret and Wuthering Heights will be discussed for their similar and diverging themes and symbols. The Goblin Market The Goblin Market is a simple tale with a complexity of meaning. The concept of temptation and pleasure as something to be resisted is moralized with consequences for indulging in the forbidden desires as represented by the fruits of the goblin men. According to Kaveler-Adler, the story can be equated to that of Lewis Carols Alice in Wonderland, the intersecting of imperialist culture and consumer capitalism where ’an explicitly articulated image of a marketplace in which female ’appetite’ is at stake’ eludes overtly to sexuality where it is the intimacy of a female relationship that saves the afflicted female.5 The two sisters represent virtue, where the one sells aspects of her body, a lock of her hair and a precious tear, to enjoy the fruit of the goblin men. Therefore, the representation of the selling of her body becomes symbolic of the female sacrifice that is made when she gives her identity over to a mate. Despite its moralistic overtones, the sexuality of the piece is explicit, the metaphors almost without the need of deep and critical reading. Rossetti writes ‘Then sucked their fruit globes fair and red:/ Sweeter than honey from the rock,/ Stronger than man rejoicing wine/Clearer than water flowed that juice;/She never tasted such before,/ How should it cloy with length of use?/ She sucked and sucked and sucked the more’.6 With homoerotic undertones, the secret to the cure that Laura would experience was in experiencing the sensuality in the purity of the offering that her sister, Lizzie, makes to her when Lizzie comes back from the market covered in the juice of the goblin men who have attacked her and thrown their fruits at her leaving her covered with the ‘cure’ that would bring Laura back from the longing that is killing her. Rossetti writes ‘She cried ‘Laura!’ up the garden,/ ‘Did you miss me?’/ Come and kiss me,/Never mind my bruises,/Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices/Squeezed of goblin fruits for you,/ Goblin pulp and goblin dew,/Eat me, drink me, love me;/Laura make much of me:/For your sake I have braved the glen/And had to do with goblin merchant men!’.7 When Laura goes to take the juices from Lizzie, the poem says ‘She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth’, which leads into Laura no longer having any desire for the fruits of the men, her only desire being for that of the dignified company of her sister.8 While the eroticism is blatantly attended, the poem is considered one of devotion and morality, the evils of men supplanted by the action of one sister for another, the sacrifices of their virtue made to men, but their nobility intact and reinforced through each other. The tale is centered on the fallen woman, one who has been consumed by the temptation that comes from knowledge of the ‘fruit’, which can be associated to the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. However, in this tale, the serpent is in the form of a male figure, the goblin who holds the temptation out for the female to succumb. According to Barfoot, the presence of the fruit holds an additional connotation as it is suggestive of the testicles of men, thus creating the source of ‘evil’ within the source of virility.9 The Fallen Woman The representation of the fallen woman in Victorian literature is part of a strict order of social class from which the actions and reactions to others is designed by the limitations set upon that class. There are at least two kinds of disreputable women in Victorian literature; the fallen woman and the femme fatale. Later in the century, these two women would be joined by a third, the revolutionary woman. In comparison to the nature of Laura who has been victimized, creating her fall, the femme fatale, also is considered a fallen woman, who understands that ‘the social injustices suffered by fallen women are unfair and often iniquitous’.10 In Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, Lady Audley is a murderous woman who has changed her identity in order to climb the social ladder. She is not written as a sympathetic character, but as a villainous character who is locked away in a mental institution after having committed terrible transgressions, not only as a criminal, but through her behavior within polite society. The concept of the fallen woman, and especially the femme fatale, is that they threaten the peace of domestic life. The consequences of their transgressions reach deep into the privacy of the home, tearing out the heart and morality that was admired within the Victorian sensibilities. The Victorian era was fraught with worry about sanitation, the level of disease in the growing urban areas without appropriate levels of waste disposal creating illness and death. According to Nord, one of the more potent comparisons that can be made in examining the presence of the fallen woman in Victorian literature is in the symbolic infiltration of filth into the domestic sphere. Nord states that ‘the threat of disease from unsanitary conditions and spreading epidemics merges with the threat of disease and degeneration from exposure to infected female sexuality’.11 The distinction between the safety of the domesticity of life and the dangers that lurked outside the home created the tension as those dangers would come into the domestic sphere. The ‘fallen woman’ was not always one who had fallen to her shame through sexual exploits. Emily Bronte wrote about Catherine as the fallen woman in Wuthering Heights because she had not been true to her class, to her love, nor to her intentions. She had failed from every aspect to do right by the one that she loved. For Bronte, for ‘a ‘fallen woman’, (who is) trapped in the distorting mirrors of patriarchy, the journey into death is the only way out’.12 The social trap, as exampled by her discourse with the mirror through which represents the symbolism of her prison, the social space in which she cannot escape to be with the one that she loves, becomes the focal point of the work. Social Class and the Victorian Novel Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote ‘no light/Of teaching, liberal nations, for the poor/Who sit in darkness when it is not night?/No cure for wicked children? Christ!, - no cure!/No help for women sobbing out of sight/Because men made the laws?’.13 In these lines, Browning provides the core of social criticism as it is seen through the eyes of the Victorian woman, especially the characterization of the fallen woman, her reputation sullied because she does not uphold the impossible dehumanizing standards of the virtuous female. Thus she is looking out of her cell, into her life within which her participation is dependent upon the laws that men have made despite of the truth of her identity. The commoditizing affect on women was based upon her virtue, the retention of her virginity as a resource for trade and the foundation of the social and family values. The morality of her essence was determined by the physical presence of an intact hymen from which her value was determined. Leighton states that ‘If, on the one hand, woman represents a last remaining absolute good in the world of threatening expediency and enterprise, she also, on the other hand, represents a perishable good, the misuse of which diminishes her value’.14 According to Campbell, The Goblin Market is a direct discussion of the socioeconomic value of women. The beauty of the Laura is used in trade for the fruit she desires. She trades her value for this forbidden delight, her moral virtue spent and lost without the sacrifice of her sister.15 Once again, her only refuge is that of death. Furthermore, the concept of the ‘fallen woman’ was characterized, just not through sexual misconduct, but by social class as well. The working class woman was defined as a ‘fallen woman’ through blame for the financial state of her situations; she didn’t keep a clean enough house, she wasn’t thrifty, she had too many children, or maybe she was immoral, all adding up to the cause of her having to work and be within that lowered class.16 The concept of the fallen woman was that she had lost her value through a fault of her own, thus was in a social situation that was below acceptable standards. Rossetti created the classic fallen woman, the woman who had been lured into giving into sinful behavior, but redeemed by the sacrifice of another. The fallen woman of Braddon was morally corrupt, doing whatever it took to climb the social ladder and using her position as having social credit as being virtuous against to gain when her own nature did not have the value she presented. As Leighton expresses, ‘To fall, is simply to fall short’.17 Bronte’s Catherine falls short, her heart not fulfilling its own honest desires, her actions not resulting in the betterment of those she loves. Her death is the only salvation that she has, her tragic departure redeeming her to social sympathy. Campbell further asserts that this dichotomy of the inner life with its natural wants and desires creates a devaluation that cannot be overcome by women in order to reach the ‘value’ that is placed upon the commodity of their virtue. She states that “every woman was a ‘fallen woman’ according to the hidden assumptions of the age. By contrast, middle class men, through their socially sanctified work, were living in a state of secular grace, capable of making good and moving the world towards historical salvation’.18 According to Fletcher, the ‘fallen woman’ was a stereotype that had a common progression from seduction, to outcast, to suicide, the last often metaphorically rendered. This is often depicted as an ascension during the seduction where the emotional private life is elevated, then as a descent as she becomes outcast from social class status, and then eventually death is her only refuge.19 This is reflected in all three novels that are the primary focus of this paper. In The Goblin Market, this is shown through the euphoria that Laura experiences in eating the fruit, metaphorically through the illness she experiences, and then the consequences of the impending death would fulfill the triad, however she is redeemed, not by her own actions, but by those of her sister. In Lady Audley’s Secret, Braddon uses the ascent into society, followed by the discovery of her crime, then the metaphorical death of being put away in an insane asylum, thus ‘killing’ her in the eyes of society. Catherine in Wuthering Heights has the wild and euphoric experience of spending time with Heathcliff who can be seen for seducing her away from her proper station in life. She descends privately, ultimately falling ill, thus ending her turmoil in her own death. The basic concept is followed through each of these plots, developing the concept of moral consequences to giving into temptations. Public and Private Lives In discussing the balance between public and private lives, the ways in which it is discussed, either through metaphoric or traditional forms, creates for the Victorian writer the framework in which the social classes are defined, the moral female figure is elevated, and the tragic tension between the public desires and the public exhibitions are explored. For the two sisters within the poem The Goblin Market, their private history is revealed through a metaphoric journey that they describe to their children. Their external private lives are expressed through the use of sexual metaphors and metaphoric illness and cures that serve as consequences for immoral activity. In Wuthering Heights, by contrast, the inner world and the outer world is defined by the difference between what Catherine must do to satisfy the social expectations in contrast to what she wishes to do in order to satisfy her own emotional context. In this situation, the internal lives of the characters are not in harmony with the social rules in which they must navigate a path towards moralistic righteousness. As they do not manage to find this path, their end is tragic and death, just as Laura is sentenced to death for not staying on the straight path, it is the consequence of falling short of the social order requirements of defining one’s identity. Conclusion The structure of the Victorian class system created a socioeconomic valuation for women that dehumanized them to the point that they struggled to keep up with the appearances that gave them value. Within this struggle, commentary emerged from female writers who expressed the problem of female virtue and its value through discovering the core of the tension that placed that value at risk. The Goblin Market is filled with sexually charged discourse that is disguised as a fairytale of morality. While it can be interpreted for exalting the nature of virtue, it also appears to serve as a commentary on the evils of men, a turn from the belief of the natural sin of women to the concept that men are inherently evil and turn women from their natural virtue through their seduction. Through the use of the three step transition from seduction, to outcast, to suicide, all three authors create similar discourse on the nature of the female position in society. Bibliography Barfoot, C C. "and Never Know the Joy": Sex and the Erotic in English Poetry. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006) Bloom, Harold. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Blooms modern critical interpretations. (New York: Blooms Literary Criticism, 2007) Bronte, Emily, and Ian R. J. Jack. Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights. Worlds classics. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981) Campbell, Elizabeth. “Of Mothers and Merchants: Female Economics in Christina Rossetti’s The Goblin Market’. Victorian Studies. 33, 3 (Spring 1990), 393-410. Carpenter, Mary Wilson. ‘Eat me, Drink me, Love me’: The Consumable Female Body in Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’. Victorian Poetry. 29, 4 (Winter 1991), 415-434. Fletcher, Pamela M. Narrating Modernity: The British Problem Picture, 1895-1914. (Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2003) Hedgecock, Jennifer. The Femme Fatale in Victorian Literature: The Danger and the Sexual Threat. (London: Cambria Press, 2008) Kavaler-Adler, Susan. The Compulsion to Create: Women Writers and Their Demon Lovers. (New York: Other Press, 2000) Leighton, Angela. ‘Because Men Made the Laws’: The Fallen Woman and the Woman Poet’. Victorian Poetry. 27, 2 (Summer 1989), 109-127. Maxwell, M E. B. Lady Audleys Secret. (Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1862) Negri, Paul. Pre-Raphaelite Poetry: An Anthology. Dover thrift editions. (London: Dover, 2003) Nord, Deborah E. Walking the Victorian Streets: Women, Representation, and the City. (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1995) Peck, Harry T, Frank R. Stockton, Nathan H. Dole, Julian Hawthorne, and Caroline Ticknor. The Worlds Great Masterpieces: History, Biography, Science, Philosophy, Poetry, the Drama, Travel, Adventure, Fiction, Etc. (New York: American Literary Society, 1901) Reid, Robin A. Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy. (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2009) Rossetti, Christina G. Goblin Market: And Other Poems. (London: Macmillan, 1865) Sanger, Charles R. The Structure of Wuthering Heights. (London: Hogarth Pr, 1970) Valverde, Mariana. ‘The Love of Finery: Fashion and the Fallen Woman in Nineteenth Century Social Discourse. Victorian Studies. 32, 2 (Winter 1989), 168-188. Read More