The role of sexuality in Victorian society applied to A. S. Byatts Possession - Essay Example

Possession Fiction is often mistaken as being synonymous with fantasy, something that cannot, will notand has not been true. And in some respects, this assessment is true as the very definition of fiction indicates it is “an imaginative creation or a pretense that does not represent actuality but has been invented” or “a literary work whose content is produced by the imagination and is not necessarily based on fact” (“Fiction”, 2000). However, fiction can often illustrate truths better than fact and to a much greater degree. This is especially true when demonstrating various ways of life, or aspects of social culture, such as in A.S. Byatt’s novel Possession. Although the novel tells a fictional tale of two literary scholars tracking down evidence of a love affair between two Victorian era poets, episodes dedicated to the poets themselves reveal a great deal of information regarding the way of life of women during this period in history. Unlike much of the non-fiction articles that have been written about life in Victorian England and elsewhere, Byatt’s novel provides a glimpse of several different women during this period that held quite opposing views regarding their individual sexualities. By tracing through the novel Possession and comparing it with non-fictional accounts of this period and critical evaluation, one can begin to gain a sense of how women had been severely restricted in their options in Victorian society as well as how they rebelled or worked within it to achieve their own sense of sexuality. There are three principle female characters involved in the Victorian portion of the novel, each with her own strengths and weaknesses demonstrating how she has both conformed to and resisted the definitions placed upon her by the strict nature of Victorian England. Christabel LaMotte is a scholar and minor poetess who is the object of Randolph Henry Ash’s fascinated attention. Ellen Ash is the wife he waited 15 years to win and still acknowledges he loves dearly. Blanche Glover is the companion of Christabel, sharing her home and dream of independence but not able to retrieve the same sense of fulfillment as she does not receive recognition for her actions. A fourth woman, Sabine Kercoz, Christabel’s younger cousin, adds her own perspective regarding female sexuality during the Victorian age from the unique oblique of the French countryside. By studying how each of these women have both conformed and resisted the Victorian definition of the ideal woman specifically regarding her sexuality, one can begin to get a real sense of how women identified themselves during this era of history. Christabel LaMotte is portrayed as a fiercely independent woman, preferring to remove herself from society altogether rather than allow herself to be constantly subjugated under the stifling presence of a husband or within the patriarchal society. Unlike most women in Victorian society, Christabel was able to own her own house, thanks to an inheritance left to her by a maiden aunt, which she shared with Blanche Glover, providing them with a haven of femininity in which they could explore their own feelings and experiences free of any outside control. She is educated to an uncommon degree for a woman as her father agreed to teach her “because he was proud of the speed and economy with which I learned” (209) in direct opposition to the prevailing attitude regarding the education of women. She herself attributes her independence of spirit to her heritage, considering she is a Frenchwoman and therefore less “hedged about with virtuous prohibitions than English female gentility” (156). It angers her that the responses to her poetry, regardless of how good it might be, will only ever reach the level of “oh, it is excellently done – for a woman. And then there are subjects we may not treat – things we may not know … I do maintain … that the delimitations are at present, all wrongly drawn – We are not mere candle-holders to virtuous thoughts – mere chalices of Purity – we think and feel, aye and read” (217). In this statement, Christabel indicates that although women are ‘protected’ from certain knowledge, they are not completely free of it. She describes the life she shares with Blanche as one intelligently taken up as an experiment in female self-sufficiency – “we were to renounce the outside world – and the usual female hopes (and with them the usual female fears) in exchange for – dare I say art – a daily duty of crafting” (227) – that had made her, up to her meeting with Ash, very happy. Within this interior world of her home, Byatt shows how Christabel is able to be whole, complete and independent, the inner person completely at harmony with the outer expression as long as the idea of sexuality is confined to the world of the feminine with no outside influence from the male-dominated world. However she might have resisted the conventions and restrictions of Victorian society, Christabel LaMotte nevertheless epitomized the Victorian lady in her appearance and decorum when appearing in the outer world. In an early photograph “she was dressed in a large triangular mantle and a small bonnet, frilled inside its rim, tied with a large bow under her chin. Her clothes were more prominent than she was, she retreated into them, her head, perhaps quizzically, perhaps considering itself ‘birdlike,’ held on one side. She had pale, crimped hair over her temples, and her lips were parted to reveal large, even teeth. The picture was generic Victorian lady, specific shy poetess” (45). Although she is able to express her thoughts and ideas boldly in the letters she writes within the confines of her home, her presence in the outside world takes on the appearance and behavior of the virtuous sexless woman, heavily veiled under her voluminous clothes and hidden away within her bonnet. Her references within her letters to Ash reflect an acceptance of the status quo regarding the importance of the feminine gender, making reference to her “womanly reluctance to take life” (190) and her own unworthy comments regarding the greater poet’s work. In addition, she makes reference to the fact that her “honour was being guarded – and if I do not exactly share the conception of honour which prompted the zealous carefulness – I must be grateful, I must, I am” (230). In this respect, Byatt shows that even the innocent conversation, in written form, between a man and woman was seen as a threat to the feminine sexuality that had been established within the feminine world. Throughout the novel, Byatt paints an image of the Victorian woman, especially as she exists in this character, as an individual pulled in two opposing directions at once. This duality of character can be seen in several contexts as Christabel is perceived to be a closet lesbian in her relationship with Blanche, but is also definitively attracted to Randolph. Expressions of her own sexuality are couched instead in terms of her fictional characters within her poetry, particularly within the character of Melusina, who demonstrates both the feminine virtues of a loving mother and the masculine virtues of construction and progress even while she epitomizes the image of demon and lost soul, perhaps because of this very dichotomy in one skin. Although she has spent a lifetime denying the sexual side of her nature, Maud observes Christabel “doesn’t seem to have been hampered by respectability” (266) when it came to satisfying her curiosity. Despite this, Christabel both anticipates her liaison with Ash and is frightened of it, knowing the changes it will most likely bring about, but is unable to avoid it. “Randolph’s male gaze, precisely because it is directed at her ‘essentially,’ her ‘soul and with that [her] poetry’ and not just at her body, kindles a new kind of desire in her, and the space created by that desire, while allowing an awakening of new thoughts and self-knowledge, is painful” (Rose, 2004). This new expression of sexuality, as it is applied to the purely physical act that must be consummated with Randolph, demonstrates how Christabel has remained chaste even in her relationship with Blanche and how she is pulled in two directions – her genuine affections for Blanche and her burgeoning attraction to Randolph. “Sex threatens both the new and old self by collapsing the inner and outer worlds; Christabel, in giving in to her desire, is destroyed and remade into what ‘all men see women as’ – double, simultaneously a demon and an angel, unable to ever discover a unified self again (Rose, 2004). To justify this act of adultery, Byatt pulls from the Medieval tradition of courtly love, absolving both characters of violation of Victorian virtues by allowing them to draw on older traditions that might not condone, but at least painted the relationship in a more acceptable light. “That the relationship between the two poets develops by way of their written correspondence is one characteristic of the courtly love tradition. … A second characteristic … is the furtiveness of the relationship. … Third, Randolph’s imagining of LaMotte as the hidden princess connects Byatt’s description of their relationship with the courtly love tradition. … Byatt is clearly drawing from a pre-Victorian tradition in her description of the affair, since Victorian culture cannot give her the terms to discuss sexual intimacy in an affirming way.” (Farrell, 1997). Ellen Ash, the wife of Randolph, introduces the idea of courtly love that is so central to the story’s development. The long-term courtship of Ash and Ellen, lasting 15 years, is compared to the courtly passion of Petrarch, who “had lived in solitude for sixteen years, contemplating his ideal love for Laure de Sade” (128), an unavailable woman, in the area of the Ash’s honeymoon. She represents the ideal Victorian woman as she smiles “demurely under her bonnet, holding her skirts away from the wet” (129) on the honeymoon and displayed “a sweetness, a blanket dutiful pleasure in her responses to things” (136) in her journal even as she seemed to consider herself as unworthy of the attentions of her husband: “I can never say enough in praise of Randolph’s unvarying goodness and forbearance with my feebleness and inadequacies” (136). While he is traveling in Yorkshire with Christabel, Ellen writes in her journal about the many tasks she has instigated around the house “for improvements in his comfort to be effected whilst he is away” (272). The journal pages produced within the novel include notes regarding the various projects as they are undertaken and completed as well as the mention of a fiery confrontation with a mysterious woman who is believed to be the irate Blanche as she educates Ellen regarding Randolph’s affair. Despite this knowledge, Ellen’s journal reveals nothing about its nature, the information she has been given or indeed any expression of rage, despair or betrayal. Her placid acceptance of her husband’s actions as well as her seemingly unshakeable confidence in his commitment to her further demonstrates these courtly ideals. It is in this character that Byatt demonstrates the traditional, though erroneous, views of Victorian female sexuality as a dead and lifeless thing by indicating a complete separation of sex from the marriage of Ellen and Randolph Ash. “In her representation of Randolph Ash’s marriage to Ellen, Byatt follows the Victorian tradition of displacing the sexual act from the marriage relationship. We learn that Ellen Ash marries Randolph after she has already lost her youth, implying that she has also lost her sexual attractiveness. She thinks back on her life, ‘A young girl of twenty-four should not be made to wait for marriage until she is thirty-six and her flowering is over’” (Farrell, 1997). Their relationship, though always depicted as loving and fond, is never shown to be passionate or erotic in any way. They spend their evenings with Randolph reading to her rather than any mention of a shared bed. Ellen’s memory of her wedding night indicates the couple may be involved in a completely Platonic relationship. “She did not remember it in words. There were no words attached to it, that was part of the horror. … An attempt. A hand not pushed away. Tendons like steel, teeth in pain, clenched, clenched. The approach, the locked gateway, the panic, the wimpering flight. Not once, but over and over and over. When did he begin to know that however gentle he was, however patient, it was no good, it would never be any good? … The eagerness, the terrible love, with which she had made it up to him, his abstinence, making him a thousand small comforts, cakes and tidbits. She became his slave” (544-45). For Ellen, the social convention of marriage establishes not a partnership between two people in which each provides pleasure and assistance to the other, but rather a master-slave situation in which she must somehow ‘make-up’ for her revulsion concerning the sexual act. “By removing sexual intimacy from the marriage of Ellen and Randolph, Byatt is drawing on typical Victorian notions of female sexuality and marriage” (Farrell, 1997). This view was primarily fostered by an intense concentration of Victorian studies to focus on a restrictionist view on sexuality as being the central focus. “Often quoted in the medical literature of the time was the English restrictionist adviser, William Acton, who claimed that ‘the majority of women (happily for society) are not very much troubled with sexual feelings of any kind.’ Acton greatly admired W.R.Greg, a classic moralist, who stated that ‘sexual indulgence... is then, accompanied by love, a sin, according to nature …’” (Murphy, 2003). Blanche Glover is nearly invisible in the background of the Victorian lovers, but nevertheless serves as a focus point for an important aspect of sexuality in Victorian society, that of the unusual, “grotesque” or deviant sexual activity. Having worked as a governess in her life prior to moving in with Christabel due to a suggested preference for women rather than men, Blanche is profoundly hostile toward the outside world that has so limited her options in life. That she was profoundly appreciative of having a place to go in which she could be the person she was rather than the defined version of woman expected of her outside the front door is obvious in a journal entry presented early in the novel: “A home is a great thing … if it is certainly one’s own home, as our little house is. When I think of my previous existence – of all I thought I could reasonably expect of the rest of my life, an allowed place at the extreme corner of someone’s drawing-room carpet, a Servant’s garret or no better, I give thanks for every little thing, which is unspeakably dear to me” (53). This lesbian side to Blanche is suggested in greater detail in her jealous reaction to the growing relationship between Christabel and Ash, even though it is merely in polite written correspondence. She describes this male presence in their lives as a prowler, “something is ranging and snuffing round our small retreat, trying the shutters and huffing and puffing inside the door” (55). She sees him exactly as he is, a rival for Christabel’s affections. Christabel reports in letters to Randolph how Blanche tried to intervene in their correspondence, apparently appalled that Christabel would take up a discourse with a married man and how this action might look to anyone coming across these letters. Blanche’s anger is demonstrated through her tearing up of Ash’s letters sent to the house and making much “weeping and wailing” (230), displaying a masculine possessiveness over Christabel and her reputation. Her suicide, at Christobel’s disappearance, is the act of a desperate and severely depressed lover, jilted in the end by the supreme enemy, the male figure to whom she perceives she cannot hope to compete. In her suicide note, she indicates she is nothing but a “superfluous person” with no money, talent or anything else to offer the partner of her heart while she understands Randolph has been providing Christobel with the intellectual and sensual experiences she has been lacking. Other aspects of the unusual or not necessarily traditionally considered as Victorian, include the already discussed concept of adultery as well as the concepts of abortion, promiscuity and infanticide. The idea of abortion is strongly suggested, though not expressly stated, in the story of Gode during the Black Nights Christobel spent in France: “And after a time, the people saw that her beauty dimmed, and her step grew creeping, and she did not lift her head, and she grew heavy all over. … And after more time, when many ships had come and gone, and others had been wrecked, and their men swallowed, but his had not been seen or heard of, the miller thought he heard an owl cry or a cat miawl in his barn, but when he came there there was no one and nothing, only blood on the straw. So he called his daughter and she came, deathly-white, rubbing her eyes as if in sleep” (428). That abortions were available, had been heard of and did take place in the Victorian era has been documented. “From 1800 through 1825, approximately one in every twenty-five pregnancies was reportedly ended by abortive means. By the 1860s, the number soared to one in six births, and in some areas, even higher … Contrary to common belief, during the first half of the century, abortion was, for the most part, generally accepted by society as long as it was performed in the early months of pregnancy” (Aiello, 2006). This same story illustrates the concept of promiscuity in the character of the male figure and the general acceptance of such activity. Infanticide is suggested as the possible outcome for Christabel’s child as she returns to Sabine’s home no longer pregnant and without a child accompanying her. By introducing these concepts, Byatt is suggesting that the issues surrounding sexuality, and the control of any physical experimenting in that direction, during the Victorian era was not necessarily as rigid and uninformed as many have been led to believe in the decades following this period. Finally, the character Sabine offers a non-English view of the Victorian era, presenting a closer concept to the attitudes and beliefs that Christabel herself might have held that contrasted sharply with the more restricted view presented of English sexuality. This younger cousin immediately recognizes in Christabel “the romantic Jane Eyre, so powerful, so passionate, so observant beneath her sober exterior” (404), holding this impression up as a favorable assessment of her visiting relation. Although she relates some of the same frustrations as others of her gender in her discussion regarding the wolves versus the box-bed, comparing the relative safety yet closed off aspect of the bed to the freedom and challenge of the hunt, she seems to recognize her own involvement in her current situation, citing several women of importance from the past. It is in this character that Byatt demonstrates the ways in which a woman might find balance in her existence, by not fighting against society or for it, but rather existing for herself: “I would like to see silk floss and experience the atmosphere of a boudoir – but I do not want to be a relative and passive being, anywhere. I want to live and love and write” (409). Because of her experiences, Christabel herself warns Sabine that the “body and soul are not separable” (413) even as she provides her cousin with the sense of what it means to be taken seriously by reading through Sabine’s writings and making professional notes regarding the tales told. The prudery and ostracism associated with the unwed mother of the Victorian age are also disputed through the character of Sabine, demonstrating her sudden understanding of Christabel’s pregnancy and immediate wish to be of help (440-41). Thus, primarily through these four characters, Byatt demonstrates that while the Victorian era did have its share of the type of sexual repressiveness within the female gender, there were other attitudes prevalent at the time. By focusing the attention upon Christabel as the Victorian representation, Byatt highlights her support for the concept that attitudes toward feminine sexuality during this period were probably much more relaxed than twentieth century scholars have previously established. Her practical approach to her love affair with Randolph and strategic organization of her pregnancy and child’s future welfare portray an independent, intelligent individual who comes to an acceptance, if not a forgiveness, for her sexuality. Ellen is, of course, the stereotypical, as defined by subsequent ages, Victorian woman, fully sexually repressed and yet still caught within the male-dominated definition of her gender. Blanche steps away from the normal, paving the way for future concepts such as abortion and infanticide, in her lesbian-styled affection demonstrated for Christabel. Finally, Sabine demonstrates the caring affection and solicitude that was often shown to female members of the family who had become ‘in that way’ and provides Christabel with a voice to illustrate what she has learned regarding the fallacy of the male concept regarding the divided female, as “body and soul are not separable” (413). Despite this strong slant toward the Victorian woman as much less sexually repressed than has been previously understood, Byatt illustrates Christabel’s final subjugation of her independent female spirit in the ways in which she is remembered by her family. This concept is exemplified in the epitaph engraved upon Christabel’s tombstone. Although her father is mentioned as having been an important historian, her own profession is never mentioned. Even her sister’s name gains more weight on Christabel’s tombstone than her own because of its association with titled marriage like every good Victorian girl should do. The poem, though her own, remains un-ascribed (81). The current residents of the house in which she died refer to her continuously as the “poor little fairy poet.” While her work demonstrates her brilliance within literary circles, those who knew her and loved her are only able to view her as a failure by their standards. And only Ellen and Sabine, who both followed the early 1900s ideals of marriage and homelife, are seen to have lived relatively happy and satisfying lives and calling into question the role of the interpreter in the understanding of Victorian literature. Works Cited Aiello, Dawn. “Victorian Women’s Health Issues.” Victorian Era Health and Medicine. Ladies of Re-enacting, 2006. Byatt, A.S. Possession: A Romance. New York: The Modern Library, 2000. Farrell, Timothy. “A.S. Byatt’s Possession: A Critique of the Victorian Omission of Sexuality.” Postimperial and Postcolonial Literature in English. Singapore: University of Singapore University Scholars Programme, 1997. “Fiction.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. (4th Ed.). New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000. Murphy, Kim. “Frigid Victorian Women?” The Citizen’s Companion. December-January 2002-2003. Rose, Felicity. “Angel and Demon: Female Selfhood and the Male Gaze in Byatt and Bronte.” The Victorian Web. Brown University, 2004. Read More