R=
20;Salvation
in a False Direction”:
How = Domestic Materiality in two Literary Case Studies Reconfigures the Victorian Family<= o:p>
Laura
Defurio
Engl=
ish
Setting the Scene:
Marx and Engels explore the Family in a Capitali=
st
Economy
In
The Condition of the Working Class =
in
England, Friedrich Engels asserts that English industrialization has di=
srupted
a harmony that had previously occupied the homes of the peasants enmeshed
within feudal systems. Engels=
’
yearning for a peaceful home life imitates Rousseau’s desire to reins=
tate
the self-sufficiency and freedom that was present when men lived in the sta=
te
of nature. Engels demonstrate=
s his
affinity for principles articulated in The
Social Contract and the Discour=
se on
the Origin of Inequality when he observes that the members of these
agricultural households “were comfortable in their silent
vegetation”[1]
(17). Later[2],
Marx will dismiss the desire for “the isolated hunter or fisherman=
221;
and will argue that “Robinsonades”, amongst whom Engels must be
included, misinterpret the figure of the natural, solitary producer[3] (Introduction 124). Instead, Marx believes that Rousse=
au
anticipated the “ ‘bourgeois society’, which began to evo=
lve
in the sixteenth century and in the eighteenth century made giant strides
towards maturity”’ in the political theory that proposes an
alternative social order to combat the disruptive effects of competition (Introduction 124). Marx chides social historians of t=
he 18th
century who largely saw the individual “as an ideal whose existence b=
elongs
to the past” where Marx understands the individual as “a produc=
t of
the dissolution of feudal society” (Introduction
124).
Marx
believes that any idealization of an isolated family unit errs for a number=
of
reasons. First, isolation at =
this
stage of social development would only occur when a member of a civilizatio=
n is
cast out of their community. =
Second,
the romanticization of isolation violates the Aristotelian principle[4] that
man is by nature a social animal.
Finally, man can only “individualise himself only within
society” and, for that reason, he thrives in community (Introduction 125). In light of Marx’s criticism,=
Engels’
romanticization of the isolated family unit within the feudal system must be
reexamined to determine whether their “material position was far bett=
er
than that of their successors” (Engels 16). It will be the goal of this paper =
to
determine the degree to which shifting materiality in the market and in the
home governs the future of the Victorian family.
In his representation of the peaceful feudal
homestead, Engels idealizes the sedentary occupations of the women who work
within the home: “Befor=
e the
introduction of machinery, the spinning and weaving of raw materials was
carried on in the working man’ home.=
Wife and daughter spun the yarn that the father wove or that they
sold” (Engels 15). He a=
lso
claims that the men of this earlier age were entirely virtuous because there
were no temptations to lure them away from the household. Engels speculates that these ̶=
0;good
husbands and fathers…had no temptation to be immoral, there being no =
gin
palaces or low houses in their vicinity” (Engels 16). Engels attributes the harmony of t=
he
household to the fact that they “had their children the whole day at
home, and brought them up in obedience and the fear of God; the patriarchal
relationship remained undisturbed” (Engels 17). For Engels, familial dissonance is=
acted
out as members of household leave the enclosed unit.
Engels argues that the feudal system began the p=
rocess
of commodification by transforming members of the working class into transf=
erable
external objects devoid of independent facilities:
&nbs=
p; &=
nbsp; &nbs=
p;
Th=
ey
were not human being; they were merely toiling machines in the service of t=
he
few aristocrats who had guided history down to that time. The industrial revolution has simp=
ly
carried this out to its logical end by making the workers machines pure and
simple, taking from them the last trace of independent activity, and so for=
cing
them to think and demand a position worthy of men. (Engels 17)
Engels’ termino=
logy
that depicts the worker as a reified machine correlates with the theory of
working class commodification which Marx had formulated a year earlier. Pub=
lished
in The Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts of 1844, this theory would fundamentally alter the
eco-political landscape: “Production does not simply produce man as a
commodity, the human commodity, man in the role of commodity; it produces h=
im
in keeping with this role as a mentally and physically dehumanized being=
221;
(Economic 121). Departing from Engels, Marx claims=
that
the roots of commodification are located in the divisions of labor that
naturally manifest amongst the members of a family. Marx states:
Wi=
thin a
family and, after further development, within a tribe, there springs up
naturally a division of labour caused by differences of sex and age, and
therefore based on a purely physiological foundation. More material for this division of
labour is then provided by the expansion of the community, the increase of =
its
population and, in particular, conflicts between the different tribes and t=
he
subjugation of one tribe by another (Capital
471).
In this passage, Marx=
locates
the cause and order of a system of commodities not in the nascent forms of
capitalism, such as feudalism, but in the organic hierarchy of the family. =
For Marx, the “distribution of
labor within the family and the labor-time expended by the individual membe=
rs
of the family, are regulated by differences of sex and age” (Capital 171). For both Engels and Marx, it is bo=
th
natural and necessary for successful rural production to designate tasks as
masculine or feminine. Marx
describes the designation of gendered labor:
The
different kinds of labor which create these products – such as tilling
the fields, tending the cattle, spinning, weaving and making clothes –
are already in their natural form social functions; for they are functions =
of
the family, which, just as much as a society based on commodity production,
possess its own spontaneously developed division of labor. (Capital 171)
When the members of t=
he
family leave the self-contained unit and enter the production-based society,
the individuals suffer commodification and, as a result, the relations amon=
gst
family member are abnormally altered.
Marx suggests that this corruption is the result of the invasion of =
the
“fantastical forms” of labor and fictitious value allocation (Capital 165).
Marx
defines “fetishism” as the interjection of social relations, th=
e determining
factor in value appraisal, in a “world of commodities” (Capital 165). This formal transformation of
commodified bodies occurs when the value of the object is no longer material
but only a function of the social circumstance. Finally, social relations of mater=
ial
objects become the center of value determination instead of their physical
nature: “the commodity
reflects the social characteristics of men’s own labor as objective
characteristics of the products of labor themselves” and has
“absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the commodity a=
nd
the material relations arising out of this” (Capital 164-165).
In
the article “Reading Capital with Little Nell”, Matthew Rowlins=
on
notes that both Marx’s description of commodification and the easy
compliance of materiality in a market of exchange are plainly gendered. Row=
linson
suggests that Marx’s allegory for the exchange of commodities include=
s a
doubled passivity (375). Firs=
t, Marx
asserts that the commodity can offer no resistance to its owner and, second,
Marx likens this weakness of the commodity to a woman’s inability to
reject a man’s sexual advances.
Marx describes this gendered commodity:
Co=
mmodities
cannot themselves go to market and perform exchanges in their own right.
Marx’s footnote=
fully
explicates the gendered process of this exchange when he situates the liter=
al
market in a real location that the allegory takes as its model:
In=
the
twelfth century, so renowned for its piety, very delicate things often appe=
ar
among these commodities. A Fr=
ench
poet of the period enumerates among the commodities to be found in the fair=
of
Lendit, alongside clothing, shoes, leather, implements of cultivation, skin=
s,
etc., also “femmes folles de =
leur
corps” (Capital 178 n.
1).
If a commodified body=
entering
the market becomes essentially feminized by this exchange, then, by extensi=
on, the
working man will also suffer a feminization. Engels names the ‘unnatural
femininity’ of a commodified husband and the disruption of the
‘natural’ labor distribution as the cause of familial dissonanc=
e in
a capitalist system.
Not
only does the man suffer a castration in the market, the women finds herself
effectively ‘raped’ by the owner of her commodified body. Engels acknowledges these pseudo-se=
xual
violations when he describes the departure of the newly fetishized state of=
the
household from traditional gender roles: “This condition…unsexes
the man and takes from the woman all womanliness without being able to best=
ow
upon the man true womanliness, or the woman true manliness – this
condition […] degrades, in the most shameful way, both sexes, and, th=
rough
them, Humanity…” (155). After the husband and wife submit to ac=
ts
of economic and material violence (which, for Marx, are synonymous), the
unified household of the feudal system is replaced by a deviant familial
hierarchy.
Engels explicitly names English wom=
en as
the cause of the disruption within the domestic sphere because, once
commodified, they alter the configuration of the family unit. He claims that “the employme=
nt of
the wife dissolves the family utterly” (154). For Engels, the
estrangement of the wife from the family is the most damaging consequence of
industrialization because when “the wife supports the family, the hus=
band
sits at home, tends the children, sweeps the room and cooks” (Engels =
154). Engels invests all his sympathy wi=
th the
husband who “cannot escape from the family, must live in the family, =
and
the consequence is a perpetual succession of family troubles, domestic
quarrels, most demoralizing for parents and children alike” and, and =
in
the same breath, Engels chastises the Victorian wife for her absence.
After
repeatedly bolstering all the traditional notions of gender roles, Engels
unexpectedly overturns them.
Assuming that London is the culmination of any economic system and
culture because it is so ‘prosperous’[5],
Engels makes a reductio argumen=
t to
show that the family has been unnaturally unified since the advent of
feudalism. He suggests that, =
if the
family, the fundamental unit of a civilization, is corrupted in the height =
of
economic ‘prosperity’ then “we must admit that human soci=
ety
has hitherto sought salvation in a false direction; we must admit that so t=
otal
a reversal of the position of the sexes can have come to pass only because =
the
sexes have been placed in a false position from the beginning”
(156). Engels concludes=
that
the flaw in the earliest family hierarchy is the unifying principle of priv=
ate
interest. In other words, bec=
ause
the family comes together not out of an instinctive affection but simply as=
a
“community of possessions”, its flaws are most clearly evidenced
when the family is in its final state (Engels 156). It is important to note that this =
line
of reasoning does not necessarily expose the patriarch as a false sovereign=
. Engels
reasons:
If=
the
wife can now base her supremacy upon the fact that she supplies the greater
part, nay, the whole of the common possession, the necessary inference is t=
hat
this community of possession is no true and rational one, since one member =
of
the family boasts offensively of contributing the greater share (156).
Here, Engels simply a=
sserts
that the authority of the father must be based upon his masculine sovereign=
ty,
endowed to him by nature, and that the capitalist society mistakenly
understands the father’s authority in the family to derive from his r=
ole
as material provider. Then for
Engels, the peaceful familial hierarchy will be reinstated and the father w=
ill
resume his reign when the unnatural role of ‘the provider’ is r=
emoved.
Engels
suggests that the false premise of ‘the provider’ will be aband=
oned
after the government that subsidizes capitalism is overthrown. This paper will demonstrate from a=
brief
survey of Victorian social polemics and literary trends that the myth of the
masculine provider is overturned within a capitalist system as women enter =
the
workforce. Violence and turmoil in the home and in the market accompanied t=
his
transition. Engels relates the story of the fat=
her
who is forced to care for the household while his wife is in the workforce:=
&#=
8216;…there
sat poor Jack near the fire, and what did he, thing you? Why he sat and mended his wifeR=
17;s
stockings with the bodkin; and as soon as he saw his old friend at the
doorpost, he tried to hide them.
But Joe, that is my friend’s name, had seen it, and said:
‘Jack, what the devil art thou doing? Where is the missus? Why, is that thy work?’ and =
poor
Jack was ashamed… (Jack said) ‘now the world is upside down.
The worker attributes=
his
suffering to an ‘upside down world’ and reflects that his pain =
is
intensified because the familial hierarchy has been upended when he ‘=
was
used to different’. Jack
laments the gender reversal and the lack of employment for men but at no ti=
me
in this passage does he express indignation about being denied his ‘n=
atural’
right to provide. Engels wron=
gly credits
the notion of a provider as the cause of this epistemic despondency when
instead the disruption in the Victorian worker-family is caused by ideologi=
cal
violence that accompanies the death of the gendered
provider. The remainder o=
f this
paper will examine two literary representations of the newly forged female
provider and will also explore the tensions that developed as people were
forced to discredit gender-specific labor.=
I employ two literary case studies to document how two women, Charles
Dicken’s Nancy and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Margaret Hale, escape
commodification by asserting their materiality in a capitalist economy.
Dicken’s Nancy:
Materiality as a means of Emancipation in a
Commodified Market
During
the Industrial Revolution, tensions in the market and the family manifested
themselves in two distinct manners; they either encouraged a propensity for
violence or they idealized a return to the ‘natural’ order of t=
he
family. Dickens is a useful
representative of the times because he has made use of both stratagems in o=
rder
to discredit the altered domestic hierarchy. In Oliver
Twist, Dickens embodied the violence of familial disorder and romantici=
zation
of the ‘natural’ family within the figure of Nancy. Murder is one of the most extreme =
consequences
of domestic disorder but one example that is often cited by social reformers
during the Victorian period[6]. The figure of the sexually
indiscriminate woman who is violently murdered by her partner is the site o=
f a
great number of didactic appeals for chastity and temperance[7]. While this tragic figure is constr=
ucted
with the intention of instruction, the authors of fictional episodes feel c=
ompelled
to destroy these errant female characters (wives and single women alike) fo=
r many
reasons. A Victorian author
attempting to provide moral correction might be motivated to commit literary
murder because female characters have been sexually contaminated by their p=
rofessions
or living situations. Nancy&#=
8217;s
profession is never made explicit but is truly palpable within the force of=
the
narrative. She and her compan=
ion
Bet are initially described with language that falls just short of
unequivocally calling them painted prostitutes, and their physical descript=
ion
serves to make them a cipher for all women of their profession:
Th=
ey
wore a good deal of hair: not very neatly turned up behind; and were rather
untidy about the shoes and stockings.
They were not exactly pretty, perhaps; but they had a great deal of
colour in their faces; and looked quite stout and hearty. Being remarkably free and agreeabl=
e in
their manners, Oliver thought them very nice girls indeed. (Dickens 68)
Dickens reserves beau=
ty for
women of a certain class (his Rose Maylies) so that this aesthetic may be
fundamentally associated with sexual purity or women (like Agnes,
Oliver’s deceased mother) who repent of their sexual proclivities.
Because
Nancy’s mobility places her within the market of exchange, Dickens is=
further
compelled to destroy his construction of the licentious woman. Marlene Tromp, citing Rowlinson,
suggests that Nancy elicits the violence because she is a commodified body =
that
is excessively material: R=
20;we
must read Nancy’s excessive materiality and her role in a series of
economic exchanges as evidence of another form of the manifest historically
situated tensions Rowlinson sees…Nancy secures the economic exchange,
serving as the material conduit, the body that bears the violence of the
exchange” (43). The gre=
atest
piece of evidence Tromp offers for Nancy’s materiality and her
“capacity [for] physical damage that Rose transcends in her angelic
demeanor” is the graphic nature of Nancy’s murder (33). Following this argument, Dickens&#=
8217;
fascination with brutality that is injures his morally deficient characters=
seems
to assign these characters a weighty corporality associated with sinfulness=
and
corruption. Then, Nancy’=
;s
sinfulness and corporality make her body a fitting site for material exchan=
ge.
I
believe that an alternate account of Nancy’s physical person and grad=
ual materiality
may be offered that is more in keeping with Dickens’ narrative and wi=
ll
consistently position Nancy’s body within the market. Many critics[8] have
commented on the Victorian tendency to present women of the upper and
middle-class as disembodied occupants of the domestic realm. Engels and Marx, on the other hand,
would argue that all women of this period are essentially bodiless and, bec=
ause
of their status as commodities, they have been separated from their natural
materiality in order to function in markets of exchange. If it is true that women of all le=
vels
of society were similarly commodified, it matters little whether they opera=
ted
as commodities in the market of ‘dignified’ marriage or the mar=
ket
of prostitution. In both inst=
ances,
the presence of private property contaminates sexual and political unions.<=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> Turning back to Dickens, NancyR=
17;s
presence in the market compels her to submit to the disembodiment. As a commodity, Nancy cannot resis=
t the
whims of her owner and pimp, Bill Sikes, who forces her into the market of
sexual exchange. Tromp argues=
that
Nancy becomes a site of exchange in her meeting with Mr. Brownlow and Rose =
and,
further, her materiality is exaggerated when Bill Sikes physically restrains
her (35). Therefore, if Nancy=
has already
been introduced into the market of prostitution by Sikes, her meeting with
Brownlow and Rose only reiterates her disembodied condition.
It
seems more plausible that, in this episode, Nancy attempts to reclaim her
materiality and to embody herself with the market of her choice. While struggling with her decision=
to
help Oliver, Nancy’s body is alternately represented as diminished or
unnaturally robust because, attempting to leave the market of exchange that
Sikes’ governs, she oscillates between states of material presence and
disembodiment:
Sh=
e was
resolved. Though all her ment=
al
struggles terminated in this conclusion, they forced themselves upon her, a=
gain
and again, and left their traces too.
She grew pale and thin, even within a few days. At times she took no heed of what =
was
passing before her; or no part in the conversations where once she would ha=
ve
been the loudest. At other ti=
mes,
she laughed without merriment, and was noisy without cause or meaning. (Dickens 358)
When the time for the=
meeting
arrives, Nancy is initially incorporeal but, as she begins to act independe=
ntly
of Sikes, she asserts her material presence:
‘Hallo!’ cried Sikes. ‘Nance. Where’s the gal going to at =
this
time of night?’
‘Not far.’
‘What answer’s that?’ returned
Sikes. ‘Where are you
going?’
‘I say, not far.’
‘And I say where?’ retorted Sikes.
‘I don’t know where,’ replied =
the
girl.
‘Then I do,’ said Sikes, more in the
spirit obstinacy than because he had any real objection to the girl going w=
here
she listed. ‘Nowhere.
‘I’m not well. I told you that before,’ rej=
oined
the girl. ‘I want a bre=
ath of
air.’ (Dickens 359)
In this episode, one =
can
literally trace Nancy’s slow materialization as she resists SikesR=
17;
attempts to maintain her disembodied state. She begins as a disembodied voice =
whose
place and travels are vague and only negative (‘Not far.’). Next, she positions herself as a v=
oice
but is still only making statements of negation (‘I say, not far.R=
17;). Nancy is then presented by the nar=
rative
as an intellect and a ‘girl’ but, still, she can only allowed to
make negative observations and she is not capable of an authoritative voice
(‘I don’t know where,’ replied the girl). Finally, she achieves physicality =
when
she remarks that her body is ‘not well’. In her final response to SikesR=
17;
commands, Nancy possesses a voice that occupies time insofar as she refers =
to her
previous statements and, through this temporality, she establishes her
materiality. Most significant=
ly,
she voices desires that are in opposition to those of Sikes, who Marx would
metaphorically designate as ‘the bourgeois capitalist’.
Marx’s description of the process by which
private property is annulled is strikingly similar to the embodiment that
Nancy’s achieves through her power of speech: “The transcendence of private
property is therefore the complete emancipation of all human senses and
qualities, but it is this emancipation precisely because these senses and
attributes have become, subjectively and objectively, human. The eye has become a human eye, ju=
st as
its object has become a social, human object” (Economic 139). To
escape commodification, Marx suggests that the worker must make his senses
human and, in doing so, claim personhood by means of the body’s mater=
ial
functions. Because Nancy disc=
overs
that reclamation of her senses is the means to her independence, she is abl=
e to
assert her materiality. The q=
uestion
then arises: why does Nancy die such a violent death?
Nancy’s death is tragic precisely because =
it follows
her triumphant seizure of materiality.&nbs=
p;
After Nancy becomes the agent of her own fate and reacquires her mat=
erial
body, Nancy finds herself in danger of violent retribution because, by
controlling her capital, she threatens Sikes’ bourgeois economics.
The incredibly gruesome murder scene that follows
Nancy’s reunion with Sikes confirms his need to return Nancy to the s=
tate
of a disembodied commodity. T=
he violence
that results from Nancy’s newfound materiality offers one example of =
the disruption
that may be caused in a household after a woman independently enters the ma=
rket
and governs her own exchange. Dickens
pointedly denies Nancy the happy family reunion that he allows Olivier. While Dickens idealizes the
‘naturally’ ordered family when he leaves Oliver “truly
happy” surrounded by his family in prayer and “gratitude to that
Being whose code is Mercy, and whose great attribute is Benevolence”
(438-439), he punishes Nancy for upsetting the ‘natural order’ =
when
he leaves her “nearly blinded with the blood rained down from a deep =
gash
in her forehead”, clutching Rose Maylie’s handkerchief, praying
“for mercy to her Maker” (383).
&nbs=
p;
Marg=
aret
Hale as a Masculine Provider in Elizabeth Gaskell’s
North
and South
In many of her industrial novels, Elizabeth Gask=
ell demonstrates
how the “development of class antagonisms keeps even pace with the
development of industry” (Man=
ifesto
40) but, here ends Gaskell’s resemblance with Marx and Engels’
Communist reform. Vehemently
opposed to violence, in North and S=
outh,
Gaskell advocates sympathy and promotes “the transformative potential=
of
direct contact between members of different classes” (Anderson 108-10=
9). Turning now to a heroine of indust=
ry, I
argue that Margaret Hale asserts her material presence in the household and
reimagines the state of the commodified worker.
When Mr. Hale tells his daughter, Margaret, that=
he
has resigned from his ministerial and that their family’s social and
financial position is damaged, a notable reversal occurs. Margaret becomes =
the
head of household just as her father relinquishes his position as the leade=
r of
his parish. Mr. Hale surrende=
rs his
primacy in the home when asks his daughter to: “help me to tell your
mother. I think I could do an=
ything
but that: the idea of her stress turns me sick with dread” (36). The language that Mr. Hale employs=
contextually
unsexes him and, like the lamentations of Engel’s Jack, he speaks
“low words of self-reproach and humiliation” (35). Mr. Hale’s mental exertion i=
s so
extreme that it causes him to become ill.&=
nbsp;
A physical ailment that is the direct result of unsettling mental
exertion is a weakness predominantly exhibited by women in the novel. Both Mrs. Hale and Fanny Thorton s=
uffer
from fainting spells, combat the vulgarity of capitalism, and scorn the
appearance of the factories and workers that sustain their prosperity. In North
and South, physical weakness is presented as diametrically opposed to t=
he
pursuits of capitalism.
Margaret undermines her father’s ministeri=
al
authority a second time because she displays mental fortitude. Margaret assumes her father’=
s role
of provider when she dismisses the Mr. Hale’s blessings, the substanc=
e of
their former livelihood:
he said solemnly: ‘the blessing of God be =
upon
thee, my child!’ ‘And may he restore you to His Church,’
responded she, out of the fullness of her heart. The next moment she feared lest th=
is
answer to his blessing might be irreverent, wrong - might hurt him as coming
from his daughter. (38-39)
Margaret’s
newfound authority does not simply exhibit in communications with her father
but is frequently observed by others who interact with her. Mr. Thornton is taken aback by
Margaret’s demeanor: “instead of a quiet, middle-aged clergyman=
, a
young lady came forward with frank dignity, - a young lady of a different t=
ype
to most of those he was in the habit of seeing (57-58)”. By vocally and physically appropria=
ting
the place of her father in the domestic, Margaret asserts her materiality
because, like Nancy, she achieves the “complete emancipation of all h=
uman
senses and qualities”, a process that Marx contends is necessary to
‘transcend’ the limitations of private property.
Margaret’s materiality differs from
Nancy’s because Margaret appreciates the powerful agency that is
intrinsic to the role of the provider.&nbs=
p;
During a visit from a prominent factory owner, Mr. Hale suggests that
the worker should be dealt with as an adolescent. In opposition to her father, Marga=
ret
indicts the manufacturer for their doctrine of a necessary hierarchy of cla=
sses
and, in doing so, gestures to the feudal denial of a natural equality. Margaret’s complaints agains=
t the
‘manufacturer’ are similar to those that Marx and Engels’=
wield
against bourgeois capitalist and, in this episode, Margaret proves that she=
is
opposed to commodification of any form:
you are a man, dealing with a set of men over wh=
om you
have…immense power, just because your lives and welfare are so consta=
ntly
and intimately interwoven. Go=
d has
made us so that we must be mutually dependent. We may ignore our own dependence, =
or
refuse to acknowledge that others depend upon us in more respects than the
payment of weekly wages; but the thing must be, nevertheless. Neither you nor any master can help
yourselves. (112)
Gaskell,
by upsetting the hierarchy of father and daughter, masculine and feminine, =
in
favor of such a sympathetic character as Margaret, pleads for equality and
social justice in the Victorian workforce and demonstrates that the plight =
of
the worker in a capitalist economy is not so different from that of a woman=
in
any household.
Conclusion: “Salvation in a False
Direction”
&=
nbsp;
As women began to assert their material agency as
providers within the home and workers within market, the Victorian family w=
as
reconfigured and the role of husband and father changed. Social reformers no longer sought a=
means
for the working man to “escape from the family” in order to avo=
id a
“perpetual succession of family troubles” (Engels 140). Instead, reformers like William Bo=
oth
call for a shortening of the working day so that children do not grow up
fatherless: “A father who never dandles his child on his knee cannot =
have
a very keen sense of the responsibilities of paternity” (64). The revised notion of femininity g=
ave
way to a new sense of fatherhood; one that charged fathers to embody qualit=
ies of
compassion and mutual sympathy that had been exclusively attributed to the =
female
caregiver. Little by little, =
the plea
to reinstate a masculine provider (a role that Engels ascribes to the false=
sovereignty
of private interest) is replaced with the desire for natural affection amon=
gst
family members and, as women assert their materiality in the market, the fa=
mily
achieves their “salvation in a false direction” (Engels 156).
Work=
s Cited
Aristotle. “Politics.” The Basic =
Works
of Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon, New York: Random House, 1941.
Anderson, Amanda. Tainted Souls and Painted F=
aces:
The Rhetoric of Fallenness in Victorian Culture. Ithaca: Cornell U. P.
1993.
Arthur, C.J. “Editor’s Preface.̶=
1;
The German Ideology. New =
York:
International =
; Publishers,
1970, 1-3.
Booth, General William. In Darkest England and the Way =
Out.
New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1891.
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Oxford: O=
xford
University Press, 1966.
Engels, Friedrich. The Condition of the Worki=
ng
Class in England. Oxford: Oxford
University
Press, 1993.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. North and South. New =
York:
Norton & Company, 2005
Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political
Economy. Trans. Ben Fowkes, New York: Vintage Books, 1977.
Marx, Karl. The Communist Manifesto. New =
York:
International Publishers Co., 1948.
Marx, Karl. The Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts of 1844. Trans. Martin Milligan, Ed. Dirk J. Struik, New Yo=
rk:
International Publishers, 1964.
Marx, Karl. “Introduction to a Critique of
Political Economy.” The German Ideology. Ed. C.J. Arthur, New =
York:
International Publishers, 1970, 124-151.
Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London P=
oor.
Vol. 2. London: Griffen, Bohn and Company, Stationer's Hall Court. 1851.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. “Discourse on the Origin of
Inequality.” The Basic Political Writings. Trans. Donald A. Cr=
ess,
Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Co., 1987, 25-110.
Rowlinson, Matthew. “Reading Capital with =
Little
Nell.” The Yale Journal of
Criticism. New Haven: Yale University and The John Hopkins University
Press, 1996, 347-380.
Tromp, Marlene.=
The Private Rod: Marital Vio=
lence,
Sensation, and the Law in
Victorian Britain. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000.
[1] Rousseau asserts that in the ‘state of
nature’ men are “tranquil and innocent” (Inequality 45).
Engels’ reference to “silent vegetation” gestures =
to
Rousseau’s savage who “agitated by nothing, is given over to the
single feeling of his own present existence, without any idea of the future,
however, near it may be, and his projects, as limited as his views hardly
extend to he end of the day” (Inequality
46).
[2] Engels composed The
Condition of the Working Class in England from September 1844 to March 1845.=
Marx and Engels wrote The Ge=
rman
Ideology together between September 1845 and summer 1846 (Preface 1).
[3] The degree to which Rousseau proposes a return to ‘the state of nature= 217; is a controversial subject. F= or a full description of this critical landscape, see Allessandro Ferrara’= s Modernity and Authenticity: A Study of the Social and Ethical Thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. State University of New York Press, 1= 993, p. 30-39. For the purposes of= this paper, it is sufficient to understand that Marx is critical of those social theorists who idealize a ‘natural man’ functioning outside of competitive systems. Instead,= Marx contends that the purpose of Rousseau’s The Social Contract is to demonstrate how inequality amongst individuals in a social group arises out of methods of production and the security of property.
[4] See Aristotle’s Politics Book 1, Ch.2 (1253a2).
[5] Engels intends this statement to be taken ironi=
cally
insofar as capitalism evaluates its own success by fantastically artificial
systems of exchange
[6] In
his reform polemic, In Darkest Engl=
and:
The Way Out, General William Booth offers this report of a domestic mur=
der/suicide
to demonstrate the “social condition of the Sunken Millions”:
“But how =
much
more terrible must it be for the married man with his wife and children to =
be
turned out into the streets. […] now and then out of the depths there
sounds a bitter wail as of some strong swimmer in his agony as he is drawn
under by the current. A short time ago a respectable man, a chemist in
Holloway, fifty years of age, driven hard to the wall, tried to end it all =
by
cutting his throat. His wife also cut her throat, and at the same time they
gave strychnine to their only child. The effort failed, and they were place=
d on
trial for attempted murder” (41).
Henry Mayhew provides =
this
gruesome account of a homicidal wife and husband in his meticulously
transcribed encyclopedia of working-class occupations, London Labour and the London Poor, in order to demonstrate the
effects of dissolute living situations on the city’s working children=
:
“ ‘=
On
Friday, 31st May, 1816, William Moles and Sarah his wife, were tried at the=
Old
Bailey for the wilful murder of John Hewley, alias Haseley, a boy about six
years of age, in the month of April last, by cruelly beating him. Under the
direction of the learned judge, they were acquitted of the crime of murder,=
but
the husband was detained to take his trial as for a misdemeanor, of which he
was convicted upon the fullest evidence, and sentenced to two years’
imprisonment. The facts, as proved in this case, are too shocking in detail=
to
relate: the substance of them is, that he was forced up the chimney on the
shoulder of a bigger boy, and afterwards violently pulled down again by the=
leg
and dashed upon a marble hearth; his leg was thus broken, and death ensued =
in a
few hours, and on his body and knees were found scars arising from wounds o=
f a
much older date.’ This long-continued system of cruelties, of violati=
ons
of public and private duties, bore and ripened its natural fruits. The clim=
bing
boys grew up to be unhealthy, vicious, ignorant, and idle men…”
(398).
[7] Beth Kalikoff examines how street literature of=
the
period romanticized the gallows and exposed the ‘skeleton in every
house’ (78) which threatened political and domestic stability. For the intersections of sensation=
alism
and the yearning for public displays of justice, see Murder and Moral Decay in Victorian Popular Literature. Ann Ar=
bor,
Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1986, p 61-79.&=
nbsp;
Upending this gendered binary of aggressor and victim, Mary S.
Hartman’s offers a biographic report of ‘middleclass
murderesses’, the social triggers that motivated their acts of violen=
ce,
and the public response to their trials.&n=
bsp;
See Victorian Murderesses. <=
/i>New
York : Schocken Books, 1977.
[8] The term “angel in the house” was c=
oined
by Coventry Patmore with his 1855 lyric poem of the same name. For a descri=
ption
of the critical work that concerns the intersection of economy and the dome=
stic
angel, see Tromp 27-28 and 34-35.
Nina Auerbach convincingly demonstrates the difficulty that arises w=
hen
the gendered title of ‘domestic angel’ is applied to dramatical=
ly
different Victorian characters. See
p. 63-108 of Woman and the Demon.
Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1982.
[9] Brownlow’s offer contains marked similari=
ties
with Dickens’ “An Appeal to Fallen Women” such as the pro=
mise
of anonymity and domestic comfort and peace.
[10] I do not disagree with Tromp when she argues th=
at
Rose Maylie’s purity and incorporeal body protect her from physical
violence. See The Private Rod p. 26-28.
Laura Defurio
“Salvation in the Wrong
Direction”