1

Introduction
Nowadays, the phrase Victorian morality may trigger sneers from most contemporaries,
who, in the majority of cases, may be imbued with the same preconceptions as those expressed
by Virginia Woolf in her 1928 novel Orlando. The above-mentioned phrase has come to mean
rigidity, control, prudery, denial of sexuality and last but not least, annoying hypocrisy. In her
book, Virginia Woolf traces her characters development through various ages which Orlando
fortunately manages to cope with. It is precisely the Victorian one which causes Orlando the
most trouble. The Victorian spirit is presented as being particularly unmerciful, crushing those
who dare to oppose it.
For all her mastery in writing, Woolf focuses only on stereotypical features surrounding
the Victorian society, such as excessive prudery, womens focus only on marrying and
procreating, the sanctity of marriage. She gives the impression of indifference to the complexities
which can be found when one explores in depth the Victorian age, a fact which I have undertaken
to compensate to a certain extent in this work. I chose to put on the lenses of contemporary
thinkers who, unlike Virginia Woolf, do not ridicule the age but offer to anyone attracted by the
Victorian age a lot of information about what lies beyond the faade of Victorianism as it may be
construed today. The work produced here may even be considered as an attempt to take arms
against the ignorance and indifference surrounding the Victorian age nowadays; it might also be
a desperate call for not clinging to the usual clichs. I have sought to adopt an attitude which
combines detachment from these clichs with the striving to get under the Victorian skins (as
Helena Michie advises in Tucker 1999: 407). I intend to focus, rather on what is essential and
interesting in this historical period. This may be an utterly demanding task, yet one which hopes
for pertinent results (Tucker 1999). I have striven to let Victorians get under my skin with a view
to understanding their age, but also themselves, as human beings living in an age of paradoxes.
In A Social History of England 1851-1990, Franois Bdarida does a masterful job by
providing fascinating insights into Victorianism, which is why I have based much of my work
upon his valuable data. As for the authors whose works I used to argue my point, I have found
the women writers dexterous in their depiction of the conflict between the self and society or the
world. Thomas Hardys writings have also had a fascinating effect upon me through the poignant

manner in which they transpose the darkest human fears and through the impressive, powerful
characters they depict.
The first two chapters (The Victorian Double Standard and Resistance to Authority)
are meant as a blow dealt to any contemporary person ready to believe in the Victorians
excessive prudery (a combination of strict overall morality and decency) as well as their refusal
to question the imposed ideals and rules of conduct.
The first chapter, titled The Victorian Double Standard, stresses how Victorian people
were flesh and blood like any one of us and must have infringed their own principles and
accepted compromises. I highlighted the hypocrisy of the age and the compromises made by
Victorian men by focusing on male fictional characters with a questionable morality (Alec
dUrberville, Charles Smithson), but also on historical figures (William Acton, William Hartpole
Lecky). The latter engaged in a fight against the moral evils of their time (gentlemanly hypocrisy,
prostitution) and sympathized with the plight of the fallen woman. In the same chapter I made
use of female characters to prove the unfairness of the double standard. Women were treated with
fierce strictness both in the primary literary sources of the Victorian age and in twentieth century
(fictional) monographs such as John Fowless novel The French Lieutenants Woman. This is the
case of Sarah Woodruff, from Fowless The French Lieutenants Woman, Tess Durbeyfield, from
Hardys novel, the duchess from Brownings dramatic monologue My Last Duchess.
Resistance to Authority, the second chapter, is meant to do justice to all the women
who may have found themselves trapped in the web of an imposed conduct (marrying, bearing
children, thereby sacrificing ones life as a woman to ones husband and offspring). The female
writers - the Bronts, George Eliot- along with Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, as well as
the twentieth-century writer John Fowles aim to make the reader aware of certain women who
are strong and try to survive in a short-sighted society by the force of their independent will.
Even though their attempts are not always crowned with success, the impact of their thoughts
and assertions on the reader remains durable: I am a free human being with an independent
will (253) Jane Eyre passionately asserts.
The third chapter - The Relationship with the Landscape and Patterns of City- Life no longer presents the reader with the case of a Victorian generic person convinced of being part
of the greatest and most civilized nation (Zirra 2003), but with a Victorian individual who
takes off the mask of self-assurance and superiority. As the reader may become aware, while

reading George Eliots passages from Adam Bede, or Hardys from Tess or The Return of the
Native, this generic Victorian individual regrets the drastic transformations which threaten the
idyllic English landscapes in the nineteenth century. At the same time, I have added a more clearcut definition of nostalgia considered as a function of memory, being inspired by Christina
Gouldings article, Romancing the Past: Heritage Visiting and the Nostalgic Consumer, which
proves how typically human this feeling is in fact. I have also referred to Michel de Certeaus
chapter from The Practice of Everyday Life, Walking in the City, a text which explains how an
act of remembrance is crucial in reviving the past.
My purpose in the fourth and last chapter, titled Victorian Religious Life is to analyze
the overall Victorian attitude towards faith by applying the models provided in Furseth and
Repstads An Introduction to the Sociology of Religion. Furseth and Repstads book was
combined with social realities expressed in Sally Mitchells Daily Life in Victorian England ,
Franois Bdaridas A Social History of England 1851-1990 and J.F.C. Harrisons Early
Victorian Britain 1832-1851. I started from Woolfs idea, in the essay Modern Fiction,
according to which the English can never reach the level of religious depth existing in the
Russian soul. First I determined to what extent and how the models proposed by Furseth and
Repstads, Mitchells, Harrisons and Bdaridas books can apply to some relevant Victorian
texts dealing with religion. Lastly, I pursued the dimensions of belief which can be identified in
Victorian characters: Tess Durbeyfield, Jane Eyre, Brownings Fra Lippo Lippi. I laid emphasis
on the critique and mockery directed against the Church (in fiction, in Jane Eyre, Villette, Jude
the Obscure, The French Lieutenants Woman, Erewhon, Brownings poems and in Cloughs
satire The Latest Decalogue) as a sign for the emergence of new attitudes. I have also focused
on secularization as an inescapable process occurring in advanced societies.
To conclude, the subjects I approached in my study may point to the skeletons the
Victorians were hiding in their closets probably out of a fear of losing the powerful image they
had acquired as the first industrialized, leading nation, as a world empire, and a secure people
convinced of its prosperous future as a chosen people. Judging comparatively, the Victorians
were supposed (not unlike the American pilgrims) to show the world the right path towards both
material and spiritual improvement.
Chapter One: The Victorian Double Standard

What I have sought in the present chapter is to remove from the contemporary mind one
of the (unfortunately) deeply entrenched prejudices about the Victorians and to emphasize the
Victorians weakness and lack of firmness regarding their own principles. This encouraged the
social phenomenon known as the double standard, which Bdarida highlights in his Social
History of England 1851-1990. The double standard entails an irreproachable conduct when
under public scrutiny versus a completely different one when in the private sphere. What is more,
it entails rigidity imposed upon womens behaviour versus moral laxness in the case of men. I
derived my ideas from Franois Bdaridas sociological book and used the double standard as
basis for my chapter. I appealed to other authors as well, both from the nineteenth century
(William Hartpole Lecky and William Acton) and from the twentieth century (John Fowles). The
other literary works, apart from Fowless The French Lieutenants Woman, offered me instances
of the double standard. Although the Victorian age still retains its share of forcefully
implemented values, as opposed to contemporary times, human beings will be human beings at
every point in history. The Victorians compromised, allowing a shameful amount of libertinage
and gratification of the senses to be hidden under the surface of excessively prudish appearances.
Victorian values should be invoked first. As stated by John Fowles in The French
Lieutenant's Woman the Victorians were apparently subject to a kind of private commandment
(13). The infringement of taboos conjured the Erinyes which reminded the Victorians at every
moment of temptation (but also of awareness of ones body) of the fact that they must not; this
attitude did not help much, since the wolves were still howling in the darkness of ones soul
(although persistently kept outside ones mind, at ones door). This applies to Tess dUrbeyfields
struggles to cope with her sinful past and make a new beginning as a pure woman.
The unwritten rule of the Victorian social stage seems to have been duty, which
Victorians regarded with an amount of consideration inconceivable nowadays. In Women and
Marriage in Nineteenth Century England, Joan Perkin highlights the Victorian womens stoicism
by making it clear to the reader that, while self-indulgence was badly looked upon, duty and even
martyrdom were meaningful concepts. To contemporary women who invest much in self-respect,
it may come as a surprise that Victorian women thought giving up a bad marriage was a form of
cowardice, since it entailed giving up abnegation and ones sense of duty (Perkin 2003).
As John Fowles illustrates through his character, Ernestina Freeman, both Victorian
women and men regarded matrimonial relations as bearing the mark of an innocent longing

which, unfortunately, was spoilt by a bestial version of Duty (13). In The French Lieutenants
Woman, this twentieth-century Victorian monograph, no sooner does the thought of intimate
relations cross Ernestina Freemans mind than she tries to avert her thoughts. The same
autocratic I must not is uttered by Tina whenever thinking about Charles past affairs, and,
unbelievable for todays modern girls (32), his adventures do not seem to trouble her too
much, because she is interested primarily in his heart, an illustration of the Victorian focus on
love.
In The French Lieutenants Woman, in the chapters twenty and thirty-five, John Fowles
explains how in the relations between the sexes, love was foregrounded without considering the
possibility of a physical relationship. According to John Fowles, in chapter thirty-five, the
Victorians were not open about sexuality simply because they treated it more seriously, in the
perspective of love. In chapter twenty, we are told the desires banned by the social stage were so
deeply ingrained in their minds that the basic human drives are not regarded as healthy, but as
sinful yearnings, a challenge for the conscience. A clear example of this is the way Charles and
Tina hardly kiss at their engagement: their lips are as chastely asexual as childrens, this being
deemed a merciless imprisonment of all natural sexual instinct for twenty years (36). The two
young people were suddenly cast in the position of prisoners who, when finally awarded liberty,
behaved awkwardly. Similarly, the role Mary plays in Sams dreams is far from the sort of part
girls play in young mens dreams in our own unimaginative age (26), namely in the
twentieth century, as John Fowles rightfully calls it. An example of the rich Victorian
imagination is Sams dream, in chapter twenty-six, where the beautiful Mary greets gentlemen
customers behind the counter of a classy, successful shop.
The Victorian Age was thought of as an age of prudish conventions. For instance,
people talked neither about the body, nor about nakedness. One spoke about limbs, not legs,
and rather than go to bed, one retired to rest (Bdarida 160).
These prudish conventions were primarily linked to the claim of a spiritual sanction,
which was the glorification of asceticism and chastity (Bdarida 160). These elements of the
prudish mentality were clearly conjoined in the second book of Thomas Carlyles Past and
Present ; there Carlyle transports the reader to a former monastic location, nostalgically pointing
to the striving of the monks inhabiting the place and thereby illustrating one of his ideals
concerning society: the return to the spiritual, the focus on the soul as a way of redeeming ones

body. Thus, a certain degree of soul, as stated by Ben Jonson and cited by Carlyle, is necessary
for keeping the body away from temptation (Chapter 11-Labour). Spiritually, in Middlemarch,
the main female character, Dorothea, is compared to Saint Theresa. This is due to her religiouslike idealization of people (such as Casaubon, whom she perceives as the perfect husband for her
despite her sharp mind) and inclination towards helping the needy through practical means. Due
to her religious convictions and the brotherly love she believes in, she may even be comparable
to Dinah Morris from Adam Bede. But this up to a certain point, since Dinah has a strong belief
in the divinity while Dorotheas focus on spiritual matters remains the same, although her fiery
prayers decline.
Unfortunately, these norms often failed in practice. One of the negative outcomes is the
infringement of individual rights through bigotry and narrowness, as well as the lack of a proper
sex education.
The glorification of chastity may become dangerous when overstepping the mark, as
exemplified in Mrs Poulteneys habits, outlined in chapter four in The French Lieutenants
Woman. She establishes a reign of terror in her home, and is therefore described by the narrator
as fit for a position within the Gestapo; but what is truly unbearable is that she seeks to extend
her authority beyond the house. In her view, no decent maiden should have the right to have a
walk with a young man or any lover should try to approach his beloved. Along other respectable
townsfolk she considers a walk to the Dairy as an action with dreadful consequences, because
open nature provides many opportunities for cavorting. As a result, any boy or girl spoken of as
one of the Ware Commons kind is stigmatized: the former as a satyr, the latter as a hedgeprostitute (39). What is more, she is careful to point out to the vicar that the person appointed to
help her must be of irreproachable moral character (11) so as to be in tone with and maybe set
an example for the other servants.
Chastity being the standard, the success of the attempts of seduction illustrates the
mistake people made in not being more open about sexual matters. Hardy touches upon this
sensitive domain, namely the seduction of a working or lower-class girl by a male pertaining to a
higher class. As pointed out by Bdarida, most men were encouraged to delay marriage until they
could afford to sustain a family, meaning when they were financially stable. While they could

accept this, what they found difficult was to abstain until getting married. When considering the
value placed upon the family, these men had to find some subterfuge. Since the subterfuge could
not be found within the same class or higher on the scale, only the lower classes could provide it.
Thus, young men found a measure of relief in the extra-marital affairs they had with servants or
working-class women. Adding to this the ignorance of most girls or young women regarding the
physiology of sexuality, the results of an affair could be disastrous (Bdarida 1994). Hardy points
to the tragic effects this could have, as in Tesss example. No wonder that when returning home
to her family after having worked as a servant in the Stoke dUrbervilles house Tess exclaims
with utmost sorrow: Mother, why didnt you tell me there was danger in men-folk? Why didnt
you warn me?. She adds that ladies higher in rank have at least books which can inform them of
such realities: Ladies know what to fend hands against, because they read novels that tell them
of these tricks; but I never had the chance o' learning in that way, and you did not help me!
(131).
Tess was not alone in lamenting her mothers failure to explain things to her, since upper
class women were just as ignorant as the rest. In The French Lieutenants Woman, although
already reaching full maturity, Tina, who is nineteen years old, is completely ignorant in matters
of sexuality, which might constitute a problem in her future marriage with the far more
experienced Charles. No wonder this was the case, since Ernestina Freeman had been brought up
to avert her thoughts immediately from anything which may trigger eroticism. She ends up
frightened both by her ignorance about sexual relations and by her dangerous prejudices, and this
blurs her imagined happiness with the man she cherishes: (it) seemed to deny all that gentleness
of gesture and discreetness of permitted caress that so attracted her in Charles(13). Middle-class
mothers did indeed caution their daughters against the danger of going too far with a gentleman,
but they did not actually specify what this danger consisted of (Perkin 2003). More worrying is
that men themselves were rather left in the dark about sexuality. In chapter twenty-seven, Dr
Grogan is used to receiving visits from young male patients suffering either from unprotected
intercourse, which unfortunately results in diseases such as gonorrhea or syphilis, or from their
ignorance about intimate relations.
This ignorance was possible due to the Protestant religiosity, which rendered sexuality a
shamefaced affair, surrounded by inhibitions and disapproval (Bdarida 160). In chapter

twenty of The French Lieutenants Woman, John Fowles mentions the Victorian claustrophilia,
which makes the denizens of the epoch tend towards mummifying clothes and, along with it,
fear of the open and of the naked (75). Therefore the wisest thing to do was not to say anything
about sexuality (Bdarida 1994). Joan Beatrice Webb mentions that in respectable circles people
did not openly discuss their sexual passions (Webb 1948 qtd in Perkin 221), and later develops
this statement, presenting how deeply ingrained this fact was: sexuality was banned from
conversation, censored in books, distorted by doctors who militated against the evils of
transgressing the proper sexual behaviour and for the value of virginity (Perkin 2003).
The rare cases when sexuality happened to be mentioned were justified by the legally
sanctified production of children in the family setting. Since it was the family which provided
the best outlet for sexual impulses, it followed that it became the object of universal panegyric
(Bdarida 160). For example, in Adam Bede, family is viewed as the place of ones earthly
happiness (581). Adams family is one such place, as perceived by Lisbeth; there is nothing
more pleasant for Lisbeth than to see her two sons, the fruits of her and Matthias Bedes love.
She cherishes her husbands memory for the mans mild nature and kindness towards her and the
long-gone days when they were a happy family. The novel symmetrically ends with the portrayal
of another family: Adam, Dinah and their children. Another family brought into focus at various
points in the plot is the Poysers. Interestingly enough, in this family, man and woman contribute
equally to the decisions concerning the household, each turning to the other for help or advice.
In Women and Marriage in Nineteenth Century England, Perkin builds a contrast between
the way marriage was seen before the Victorian epoch a publicly accepted business contract
that neither husband nor wife was expected to honor much beyond its terms: money for rank and the one which took shape during the nineteenth century a chaste and sacred union, a
Christian ceremony for the creation of pure love, not pure convenience (Perkin, 237), even a
sentimental ideal of absolute union of heart, life (Perkin, 29). The Victorian view of marriage
may have been a Christian one: a mystical union (Perkin, 237) between man and woman, in
which each others identity was absorbed; yet, simple as it may sound, this view contained its
paradoxes. As pointed out by Perkin, in chapter eleven, the Christian views on marriage were
constantly questioned and flouted, despite the sanctity of marital relationships and of chastity
before marriage being thrown at Victorians in every possible way (Perkin 2003). The many

figures leading scandalous private lives mentioned by John Fowles in The French Lieutenants
Woman are a proof of this (114).
On the one hand, marriage was meant to achieve three aims at once: procreation, sexual
gratification and comfort, help both in prosperity and in adversity; on the other, there were two
perspectives regarding this mystical union of souls: profane love, based on the human
impulse for physical gratification (as described by Herbert Spencer in 1855) and sacred one,
which was analogous to the spiritual love one felt for God (Perkin 236-237). In The French
Lieutenants Woman, Charles Smithson wishes that his drives could be finally satisfied within a
stable relationship; at one point, in chapter forty-four, he impatiently whispers into Ernestinas
ear that he wishes their wedding was on the following day.
According to Perkin, in Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England, the moral
climate started to change in the early nineteenth century (Perkin 2003). John Fowles warns us not
to lazily apply the ideal of chastity from the middle-class ethos to all Victorian classes (115).
Sexual permissiveness abounded within the upper classes, under the condition of discreetness.
Quoting White, Perkin gives the example of a Miss Pamela Fitzgerald, who, in 1816, wrote to a
friend that the aristocracy are a free-spoken promiscuous lot whose daughters are comfortable
girls who like a dirty joke(White 1963, qtd in Perkin 90).
The middle class became the receptacle of the ideology of purity, thereby boasting several
typical values. The middle-class ideal entailed, for example, the blushing young maiden
(Bdarida 162). Virginity being the most prized virtue in a middle-class bride in nineteenthcentury England, mothers protected their daughters from unsuitable entanglements, teaching
them that proximity to men was dangerous and flirting an invitation to possible disaster, while
public writing maintained that overt sexuality was demeaning in nice middle-class women
(Perkin 276- 277).
This class is set in opposition with the lower ones, as suggested in The French
Lieutenants Woman by Mr Forsythe, the vicar who tries to convince Mrs Poulteney to receive
Sarah Woodruff in her service: The lower classes are not so scrupulous about appearances as
ourselves (15). The rigid code of chastity, so enforced among the middle classes, was absent in
some working-class circles and among countryfolk where a laxity of morals manifested itself;
this was due to a more natural and permissive view of relations between the sexes and their
biological functions(Bdarida 160). The example John Fowles provides is the custom of

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premarital intercourse among Dorset peasants and the inference he draws is that the phrase
innocent country virgin can only be a paradox (115). But, like any rule, this had its exceptions,
which Fowles includes in his book. Mary, Ernestinas housemaid, surprises Sam with her
innocence, because it is in stark contrast to the sordid love affairs the young man had
experienced beforehand. Sam is not only surprised to find such an example of purity after the list
of affairs which constitutes his sexual experience, but also charmed by the maid.
In the case of the aristocracy, most upper class denizens chose not to follow the middleclass ideals. Wives were required to be virgins on their wedding night, and were required to
produce heirs; yet as soon as these demands were fulfilled, a woman enjoyed as much liberty as a
man, provided she kept her amorous affairs far away from the public eye. The aristocratic good
breeding resided in pretending to lead a happy and chaste marital life, in guarding the outward
conventions of marriage; this same breeding required others not to ask indiscreet questions
(Perkin 90). As long as they maintained the image of a respectable family, without embroiling
their partner in scandals, spouses were free to entertain themselves with people of the opposite
sex (this entertainment did not necessarily imply intimate relations, but conversation and
friendship as well) (Perkin 2003).
Joan Perkin quotes the anonymous author of Society in London, by a Foreign Resident,
where the aristocratic womens art of never violating appearances or offending decorum (95) is
highly praised. There were however, clear limits to those with whom one could start a
relationship; for example unmarried girls and married childless women were definitely out of the
question. As the author shows on page 90, any presumptive lack of faithfulness was not
shocking, but making this fact publicly known, while on page 95 the rarity of faux pas among the
gentry is mentioned. Whoever would let affairs be known was an enemy and a traitor to
himself and in the eyes of Society. This (avoiding scandal at all costs) may be rendered more
understandable if one puts into balance the extreme sensitiveness of the ladies and gentlemen
prominent in London society to the public opinion of their inferiors (Perkin 95). To put it in
another way, the veneer most aristocrats assumed was meant not only for those of the same class;
the other social classes mattered as well (Perkin 2003).
These social milieus, the countryfolk, working-class circles, as well as the aristocracy,
prove the exceptions to Victorian prudery and provide a perfect example of an alliance between

11

strictness and hypocrisy which would bolster the emergence of the double standard (Bdarida
160).
This entailed a world bound up with the inheritance of property, marriage, family life
and the legitimization of offspring thus requiring chastity versus a world offering pleasure,
the gratification of the instincts, an even more permissive outlet for the sexual impulses
(Bdarida 160). In The French Lieutenants Woman, despite being only a servant, Sam enjoys the
various possibilities of taking profit from encounters with women. Yet, he is sufficiently
balanced to choose the right woman with a view to setting up a family of his own; in this way, he
is protected from the temptations outside the hearth.
If one detects hypocrisy in these two contrastive worlds, an even greater amount of
hypocrisy and ill-judgment entered into the creation of different set of morals for each sex
(Bdarida 160).
A man was in a far more privileged position being perfectly free to combine a happy
family life with the pursuit of outside pleasures in the company of women from different social
classes. Men could plunge into any number of marital affairs they wished so long as
inheritances were not endangered and could satisfy their impulses by seducing girls, mostly
servants, but working-class and farm girls, as well. Since men were obviously given an
unfettered freedom, whereas female chastity was enforced with the utmost strictness, the
double standard could also be linked to the basic demands of a patriarchal, bourgeois society
(Bdarida 160-161).
In Far from the Madding Crowd, the unmarried young male Troy is portrayed as sexually
active by Thomas Hardy; unlike his sexual partner, Fanny Robin, he is not silenced but
represented in all his impunity, wild passion and dishonest nature, as explained by Morgan in
Student Companion to Thomas Hardy (74). Whereas in The Return of the Native there is the
most significant of punitive symbols attached to a man-made structure, namely the inn sign of
the Quiet Woman showing a headless woman. This sign of a woman decapitated and rendered
forever mute appears at least nineteen times in the novel (Morgan 76). In The French
Lieutenants Woman, Charles Smithson is strictly forbidden by his fiance ever to look again
at any woman under the age of sixty, a proof of his promiscuous nature (12). In Hardys Tess of
the dUrbervilles, Alec dUrberville could be taken as the supreme example of male hypocrisy

12

and recklessness, since he even dares to shift the blame on Tess for their illicit affair, and makes
her promise not to seduce him with her charms in the future.
A woman was expected to adhere to a code of rigorous purity;chastity was considered to
be (her) natural attribute, so she had to be sheltered from anything that might impair or defile it
(Bdarida 160). In Middlemarch, Dorothea Casaubon is so sheltered in her safe home far away
from any place of moral decay and temptation, that, in spite of her sharp mind, she appears silly
at times. Still, it appears as though she were living in an enclosed world, surrounded only by
ladies and gentlemen ready to grant her their help. Dorothea clings to the hearth she is destined
for, which is obvious in her devotion to her husband and attempts to overlook his flaws.
In Under the Greenwood Tree, Fancy clearly forbids Richard to touch her and gives a
sudden start when spotting a wagon of carpenters behind them, whose chief aim in life is to
criticise to the very backbone and marrow every animate object that came within the compass of
their vision (96). She later explains to Dick that she has a good reputation to maintain,
especially as a schoolmistress, fact which excludes tte--ttes anywhere with anybody (99). In
The French Lieutenants Woman, Ernestina is excessively taken care of to the point of being
pampered, so that her breaking-up with Charles is treated as a tragedy. Her servant worries lest
Tina should die of a broken heart, whereas the doctor is convinced everything stems from
female fuss (167). In Silas Marner, the villagers in Raveloe strive to protect their women from
any undesirable realities, even distorting the truth to achieve their aims. When going to the Red
House to announce what has just befallen him, Silas Marner is immediately reprimanded by Mr
Crackenthorp for having reacted so rashly; namely, he should not speak of such a dreadful event
(the death of a vagabond, who happens to be Godfreys unfortunate wife) in the presence of such
sensitive ladies, who might easily get shocked. Instead, a lie is delivered to the women, since
Marner is advised to Just tell them a poor woman is ill from cold and hunger (140).
One shocking reality was that the double standard was accepted by many without any
disturbing feeling (Bdarida 1994). In The French Lieutenants Woman, despite Charles
Smithsons obvious cynicism, a sure symptom of an inherent moral decay, the protagonist is at
every time warmly received by all members of Society: being ogled by the mamas, clapped on
the back by the papas and simpered at by the girls (8). The reader himself may perceive this as
a very frustrating reality, when recalling Sarah being treated almost as a pariah. Sarah Woodruff

13

becomes a castaway because of the gossip surrounding her supposed affair with Varguennes.
Some pity her due to her fallen state (she is even called Tragedy), thinking of her as a soul
indulging in melancholy (Dr Grogan) or haunted by self-repentance (Charles). Others treat her
with contempt and refer to her in a less euphemistic manner, calling Sarah by a gross name (4)
as Ernestina tells Charles at the beginning of the novel: the French Lieutenants Whore. The
dairyman whom Charles comes across in chapter twelve belongs to the second category. He is
described as a bigot, very willing to call a spade a spade, especially concerning other peoples
wrongdoings. He throws Sarah a dooming stare ( 37) and castigates her (as not deserving to be
called a lady, but a whore). Charles is disgusted at the dairymans attitude and casts him an angry
look, for he believes him to be the embodiment of the hypocritical gossip in Lyme. Yet this
prompts the young man into proving his open-mindedness to Sarah, in chapter twelve showing
her not all the residents in Lyme are so limited (barbarian) in their approach to sinners.
Given the ideal of the blushing young maiden, an utter contempt ensued for the girl
who had been seduced, the fallen woman (Bdarida 162; 160). One notion firmly rooted in
the Victorian society was that a womans career who once quits the pinnacle of virtue involves a
very swift decline and ultimate loss of health, modesty, and temporal prosperity. In his
Prostitution considered in its Moral, Social and Sanitary Aspects, William Acton is shown to list
common prejudices which he regards as vulgar errors: 1. That once a harlot, always a harlot.
The French Lieutenants Woman provides an illustration of the first prejudice in chapter eighteen:
Sarah Woodroughs supposition about the evolution of the fallen woman in a big city. During
one of her discussions with Charles Smithson, Sarah does not wish to go to London, adding that,
just like many women who have already lost their honor, she would only collapse into moral
decay. 2. There is no possible advance, either moral or physical, in the condition of the actual
prostitute; 3. That the harlots progress is short and rapid (Acton 27).
This is obvious in the societys attitude in The French Lieutenants Woman towards Sarah
Woodruff, given that Mrs Poulteneys does not allow her to walk along the coast anymore
looking for Satans sails (40) (Varguennes promised return). Sarah Woodrough realizes that,
through her presumed sinning and lack of discreetness in her meeting with Varguennes, she has
married shame and the worlds contempt. She sees beyond the kindness and pity which some
show towards her, and compares herself to a thorn tree : No one reproaches it for growing here
in this solitude. It is when it walks down Broad Street that it offends society (77). She confesses

14

to have given herself to the French sailor well-aware of the consequences of such an act (in cold
blood), thinking her action stemmed from despair, and was analogous to suicide: It seemed to
me then as if I threw myself off a precipice or plunged a knife into my heart (75). She is aware
of her continuous suffering and lack of understanding from those around her, the impossibility to
lead a normal life, just like the other women who set up a family. Paradoxically, Sarah feels pity
for the others, not herself, simply because, once tainted, no insult, blame or gossip can bother her
as much as they do in the case of respectable people: Because I have set myself beyond the
pale. I am nothing, I am hardly human any more. I am the French Lieutenants Whore (75).
Thomas Hardy also provides a good example of societys disapproval of the sinful
woman. Tess of the dUrbervilles is rejected by her father (who although receiving her home,
does contribute indirectly to her baby dying unbaptized) and finds the gossip revolving around
her (even at church, during Sunday service) unbearable after a time. As if contempt were not
enough, she also has to withstand stoically the sneers directed at her (as in chapter fourteen,
when taking a break from her work in the field, she is about to feed her baby). While shopping
with Angel, she has to bear the patronizing attitude of someone who knows about her past.
Tesss revelation of her past misfortune destroys the aura of saintliness and asexuality
which Angel has built up in his mind concerning his bride. According to Morgan, this scene is
the climax of Hardys denunciation of a mythology which judged the fallen woman as sick and
sickening from the day of her fall (Morgan 78). What Angel does is to comply with the
philosophy of his forefathers: in casting a Last Day judgment upon Tess just as his father and
forefathers would have done before him, he does not fulfill his role of understanding lover and
shows both moral weakness and emotional immaturity (Morgan 77). His limited view cannot
conceive of a fallen woman as assertive or at peace with herself and is shocked that such a
woman can deliver her confession with self-control. It is only when Angel sees his wife
distraught and crushed that he becomes conciliatory, even reassured (Morgan 2006).
His views are certainly narrow because the fallen woman is neither a madwoman- Angel
supposes Tess has lost her mind in recounting such events- nor a monster. She remains a human
being in search for sympathy and affection. A disappointed and rather desperate Tess will try to
make him aware of this: I thought, Angel, that you loved meme, my very self! () Having
begun to love you, I love you foreverin all changes, in all disgraces, because you are yourself.
I ask no more. Then how can you, O my own husband, stop loving me?(298- 299). Morgan

15

provides a clever answer for Tesss question- it is by annihilating her: the woman I have been
loving is not you (299). Before, while courting her, Angel had given her all sorts of names but
Tess did not wish to be called otherwise than by the baptismal name (Morgan 2006).
Yet it is the same Hardy who fights against the myth of the fallen woman, which,
according to Morgan, had its roots in patriarchy. What the author did was actually to commit
himself wholeheartedly to her exemption, laying forth her attempts at triumphing over a
deterministic cultural prescription that would deny her ascendancy, both sexual and moral, after
her fall (Morgan 2006: 73).
In Student Companion to Thomas Hardy, Morgan claims Tess Durbeyfield cannot be
stained, since none of her acts are typical of a vile character. She does not do any of the
following: manipulate her abuser, play him for all she can get, plot to take revenge on him,
cheat, lie or () even use her sexual charms to win Angel back in the bridal night scene
(Morgan 2007: 103). All in all, any open-minded reader would agree with Hardy on the young
womans purity. One should bear in mind the way Tess abjures the father of her child simply
because she does not love him. Although that might save her reputation, she refuses to submit to
a conventional solution to her predicament (Morgan 2006: 68): I have never really and truly
loved you, and I think I never can () Perhaps, of all things a lie on this thing would do the most
good to me now; but I have honour enough left, little as tis, not to tell that lie (126). The critic
Rosemarie Morgan quotes Auerbach on Tess being vindicated by her narrator- her affinities
with burgeoning nature, her incorrigible will to renewal and joy seem to exempt her from the
fallen womans guilt and sorrow( Auerbach 1980, qtd in Morgan 2006: 73).
If the strict norms imposed upon women were not sufficient, society was also filled with
ridiculous prejudices directed against women. In chapter nineteen of The French Lieutenants
Woman, Mrs Poulteney firmly believes (as a sort of undeniable universal truth like the earth
being round) that women did not feel carnal pleasure. Womens delight at receiving (violent,
passionate) kisses, for example, results, in her limited view, from feminine vanity and feminine
weakness. She is aware of prostitutes, yet she explains their existence only through the lenses of
their depravity, their greed for money, which ultimately makes them overcome the supposedly
innate womans disgust at the carnal. Witnessing Mary enjoy a male caress (a monstrous
kiss) so enthusiastically (by giggling) Mrs Poulteney deems the maid a prostitute in the
making (67).

16

However, surprisingly enough, these prejudices also came from scientists. For instance,
Dr Acton states that the majority of women, be they mothers, spouses or housewives are not
much troubled by sexual desire, know little or nothing of the pleasures of the senses and
therefore their strongest feelings are devoted to home life, children and their domestic duties
(Acton 1858, qtd in Bdarida 162). This, while a learned doctor told his students at Oxford:
I can tell you that nine out of ten women are indifferent to sex or actively dislike it; the tenth,
who enjoys it, will always be a harlot(Jones 1956: 162-3, qtd in Bdarida 162).
In this manner was woman turned into a sexless figure, there being a lot of truth about
the jokes directed at Dickens heroines angels without legs (Bdarida 162). Beyond these
jokes, however, one must remember Estellas figure in Great Expectations. Just as her name
suggests, Estella is truly, a thing of beauty, but a distant star at the same time, an automaton
programmed by her tutor, Mrs Havisham, to bewitch mens hearts just to make them suffer
afterwards ( Zirra 2003).
She may be set in opposition to what the female characters end up enterprising in Hardys
and Eliots novels: namely, they defy the social conventions imposed upon them, are both
audacious and determined enough to assert their desires and pay for their non-conformist
behaviour. For example, Tess asserts her own sensuality (in her affairs with both Alec and Angel)
and her passionate spirit (she fulfills her revenge by murdering the man who deceived her twice)
and unfortunately ends up losing her life at the hands of justice. Hetty Sorel in Adam Bede shares
the same fate as Tess, yet this time the woman, having been seduced by a so-called gentleman, is
sentenced to death for having murdered her baby. Although less maternal in her feelings and
certainly less grateful to the people surrounding her, Hetty longs for the accomplishment of her
refined desires. In The Return of the Native Eustacia Vye does get what she wants (a great love)
but pays a heavy price for it, taking into consideration her inner turmoil and death, this time not
at the hands of society, but at those of the nature in Egdon Heath. Fowles Sarah Woodruff,
although somewhat innocent regarding physical love, does not share with her mistress (Mrs
Poulteney) a horror of the carnal (67), and knows or suspects that erotic love entails physical
pleasure.
The misunderstanding of carnality in the Victorian age is documented also through the
attitude of the husband delivering his confession in Brownings My Last Duchess. The

17

husband experiences a painful awareness of his wifes charms. Even if painted, his wifes portrait
seems to exude an air of liveliness, her eyes are full of depth and passion ( line 8). The
husband, driven by mad jealousy, resolves to murder the duchess because of her attractiveness
and friendly nature. The woman seemed to be conscious of the effect her magnetic personality
exerted on other men, not just her husband. Therefore, she is generous in her smiles and looks
towards her admirers as if encouraging further compliments (and probably even an adulterous
affair).
The Irish historian and political theorist William Edward Hartpole Lecky openly attacks
the hypocrisy of the age by mentioning that an appalling amount of moral evil is festering
uncontrolled, undiscussed and unalleviated, under the fair surface of a decorous society (Lecky
301). John Fowles has one of his main characters express his disgust at Victorian hypocrisy. In
The French Lieutenants Woman, when Grogan admonishes him for leaving his fiance,
Smithson makes it clear that he refuses to lead a life of pretense :Is our age not full enough as it
is of a mealy-mouthed hypocrisy, an adulation of all that is false in our natures? Would you have
had me add to that?(169). In George Bernard Shaws Mrs Warrens Profession, Vivie Warren,
an intellectual and independent young woman, is disgusted at hearing that her mother, in spite of
her amassed wealth, is still running brothels in Europe. She cannot understand that the society
she lives in does not actually cling firmly to the principles it generally asserts. George Bernard
Shaw brings into focus precisely the dark side of the Victorian Age, when women with limited
possibilities had to choose between being turned into work slaves or embarking on a career in
prostitution. Mrs Warren manages to survive in the tough jungle of the society and to offer her
daughter everything she needs by owning brothels in Europe.
Lecky admonishes the promiscuity prevalent among English men: an epidemic which
communicates itself from the guilty husband to the innocent wife, and even transmits its taint to
her offspring (Lecky 301). William Acton, both a doctor and a writer of books, goes as far as to
condemn men who resort to prostitutes, and thereby pronounces himself against the double
standard. He considers that a man visiting prostitutes suffers from a temporary weakness of
mind, since his mind values the permanent possession of a tainted woman worth the sacrifice
of home and social ties (Acton 41).

18

The very fact that prostitutes were called the great social evil denotes the dichotomy of
the Victorian thinking. Some, among whom Lecky, went so far as to sing the praise of the
prostitute with a frankness verging on cynicism (Bdarida 161) :Herself the supreme example
of vice, she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her the unchallenged
purity of countless happy homes would be polluted (Lecky 299-300, qtd in Bdarida161). Those
who regard sex workers with contempt and think of them with an indignant shudder do so in
the pride of their untempted chastity, without realizing that in their absence, they too, would
have known the agony of remorse and of despair (Lecky 299). The sex worker submits herself
as the passive instrument of lust in order to ensure an outlet for mans natural desire, for the
incursions of irregular passions, which, otherwise, due to their excessive force would be
frequent and inevitable, not to mention a cause for extreme suffering within the domestic
circle (Lecky 299-300). For him, the sex worker remains the eternal priestess of humanity,
blasted for the sins of the people (300).
In a similar vein, William Acton shows sympathy for sex workers, since he believes in the
universal repentance of sinners. He is certain of the fact that sex-workers rapidly comprehend the
seriousness of their situation, therefore they are ready to escape from their miserable condition in
case they get the chance (Acton 1870).
The seamy (and seedy) side of Victorian society therefore existed with a clear purpose,
namely that of offering ways of enjoying the pleasures of the flesh, and thus successfully
ministering to the needs of a few depraved and hypocritical characters (Bdarida 161). In The
French Lieutenants Woman, chapter thirty-nine, John Fowles provides a realistic description of
the seedy districts which Charles Smithson happens to pass through. In order to fulfill his
denunciation of the Victorian age for its social hypocrisy and promiscuousness, Fowles describes
such a district crowded with hansoms , carriages and prostitutes under each light, in every
doorway(131), and how Charles inevitably passes miserable streetwomen(124) who do not
approach him because he is a gentlemen and they offer their services to lower classes. Not to
mention the impression Charles receives from the performers he watches: he detects a certain
despair hidden beyond their smile and even spots a too young performer in which there is a
demure innocence and something genuinely virginal, which has not already been corrupted
by her unhappy profession (130).

19

During the Victorian Age London became a map of pleasures and was therefore given
the title of whoreshop of the world, modern Babylon; it even competed closely with Paris
in terms of its disreputable districts (Bdarida 161). Charles Smithson prides himself on having
seen better-things (130) there, meaning erotic performances. No wonder that, in the eyes of
every physician and continental writer, no other feature of English life appears as infamous as
prostitution and its terrible consequences (Lecky 301).
This map of pleasures included a plethora of casinos, which are defined as meeting
places rather than gaming rooms; assembly cafes; cigar divans; brothels. In The French
Lieutenants Woman prostitutes are described as the crowded daughters of folly, the great
whores in their carriages, the lesser ones in their sidewalk droves ... from demure little milkyfaced millinery girls to brandy-cheeked viragoes (128), dressed according to whatever fashion
they like, since the unimaginable can only become possible in modern Babylon. Last but not
least, pornography, as seen embroidered on the red curtains of the chandeliered room where
Charles Smithson and his companions enter or the sensual scenes acted by the performers.
Taking these into consideration, Charles is perfectly entitled to feel in London a certain perfume
of sin (124).
In the second chapter of his Prostitution in England, William Acton describes in a
gruesome manner the prostitutes residing in the lodging houses found dishevelled, dirty,
slipshod and dressing-gowned stupid from beer, or fractions from gin, they swear and chatter
brainless stuff all day... as a heap of rubbish will ferment, so surely will a number of unvirtuous
women thus collected deteriorate (Acton 11).
In The French Lieutenants Woman the narrator adopts Charless mask with a view to
reflect the gruesome reality of sexually transmitted diseases. In chapter thirty-nine, hearing about
the length of time since the street-walker has been in the profession (two years) Charles cannot
help making a horrid mathematical calculation: it was six hundred to one that she did not
have some disease (131). As a gentleman, he cannot bring himself to ask her directly whether
she has any disease, and in the end decides not to bring up the subject at all since he cannot find
any delicate manner in which to ask her. He knows it is foolish of him to take the girls
unblemished complexion as a sign of her being disease-free, and moreover, to choose, instead
of a more sophisticated courtesan, a mere Cockney street-walker (131). But, upon entering the

20

girls room, Charles notices with surprise that everything is spotlessly clean (132), though
shabby (except the bed). Also, the boy whom the sex worker sends to bring a tray of wine and
food is both quick and accustomed not to stare at the girls clients.
However, the town is not the only place where men are apt to keep mistresses. The
countryside provides the landlords with numerous opportunities for enjoying a female presence.
In The Importance of Being Earnest, while visiting his friend, Algernon Moncrieff discovers a
cigarette case with an engraving denoting affection : From little Cecily with her fondest love
(8); he immediately suspects that his friend may have a love affair with a woman whom the case
belongs to. In Hardys novel, Alec dUrberville sets his heart on Tess with the aim of turning her
into his mistress. The first time, his plan ends up badly, yet the second time he succeeds in
convincing Tess that Angel will never forgive her and return home.
All these examples illustrate that, far from being prudish and clinging firmly to moral
principles, the Victorians actually turned to compromises. In order to face the pressure coming
from a strict society, they gave their desires unfettered freedom in private life while guarding the
mask of respectable and moral citizens in public. Therefore they proved hypocritical in their
attitude, especially when it came to women. However, there were certain figures who chose to
call a spade a spade and denounced the dirt of society behind its pretense of morality. As a
result, both the pure woman and the fallen one could find understanding even among the
opposite sex: the former by receiving an aura of saintliness as priestess of the hearth (Bdarida
118), the latter by receiving understanding from certain social reformers.

Chapter Two: Resistance To Authority

In this chapter, I counteracted the commonly held assumption that Victorian women
always accepted the norms imposed by society. I pointed out several wrong views about women

21

from Joan Perkins Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England, Cynthia Russetts The
Victorian Construction of Womanhood and Sarah Dredges thesis Accommodating Feminism:
Victorian Fiction and the Nineteenth-Century Womens Movement. I counteracted these views by
focusing on the instances of rebellion against patriarchal order and highlighted the conduct and
mentality of women as portrayed by certain writers. Not only the Bront sisters- Charlotte and
Emily- but also male writers such as Thomas Hardy and the twentieth- century writer John
Fowles.
These illustrations dismantle prejudices and prove that the Victorian woman was not
necessarily any of the following: an angel without legs (Bdarida 162) (Tess Durbeyfield,
Sarah Woodruff), a vessel full of spluttering emotions, less intelligent than a man ( Eustacia Vye
and Bathsheba Everdene) a weak reed whose stubbornness might bring her end (Jane Eyre), a
being uninterested in higher thought whose beauty and not intellect is of primary value to a
future husband (Dorothea Casaubon), a being who blindly accepts the superiority of men
(Ernestina) or a powerless creature who is easily defeated by adversity (Jane Eyre, Bathsheba
Everdene, Sarah Woodruff, Tess Durbeyfield). These female characters seem to thrive especially
when it comes to winning back their composure in the face of adversity and eventually if not
always succeeding after a temporary defeat, then at least imposing themselves against hardships.
The new woman is shown by Franois Bdarida in A Social History of England to have
appeared, dominated, then consolidated towards the end of the Victorian Age the beginning of a
feminine revolt and of a long road to emancipation, the harbinger of the sexual revolution
that continued up to nowadays (116).
Inspired by this theme I noticed there were echoes of rebellion before, in the fiction of the
1880s, where female characters express their desires and frustrations. Bdarida has in view the
practical side of the matter, the overt revolt. Not the interiorized one, throwing sparkles in ones
work. The writers before the 1880s- Charlotte, Emily Bront and George Eliot, all of whom
wrote under a male pseudonym - were not alone in rendering their characters so rebellious.
Thomas Hardys heroines (among whom Eustacia Vye, for instance) deplore their fate of having
been condemned to live in an imperfect world where their grandiose dreams will never become
reality. Yet Thomas Hardy was not alone in rendering the Victorian womens frustrations from
the perspective of a male writer. John Fowless The French Lieutenants Woman deals precisely

22

with the same subject, yet in an overtly didactic manner. In chapter sixty, Sarah Woodrough may
serve as an epitome of the New Woman, especially as she astounds Charles through her
appearance and change at the end of the book. She flagrantly rejects all formal contemporary
notions of female fashion (189), which, in Charles view, endow her with freshness. The young
man perceives her as advocating a fashion present in more emancipated societies, but cannot
help blushing, though, at her new style of clothing. Upon meeting her after two years absence,
Charles finds it hard to recover from the shock of finding Sarah not in the position of a damsel in
distress, but in that of a woman demanding respect. Far from being the knight ready to slay the
dragon of Sarahs misfortunes, Charles feels intimidated, even ridiculous, as though he had
arrived at a formal soiree dressed for a fancy dress ball (190). His manly pride is terribly
hurt at this realization, perhaps a reflection of what nineteenth-century Victorian men must have
felt when confronted with the new woman, who used a direct language and evinced a
substance and purity of thought and judgment(192).
The traditional belief favouring man as the sole owner of productive capital and
strength, endowed with virile qualities (spirit of conquest and adventure, inclination
towards rationality) was deeply ingrained in the minds of most women (Bdarida 118). A woman
had to live under a mans protective wings, firstly, because in fairness if his family depended on
his earnings, it came only as natural that a man should dispose of his wifes property and
earnings (Perkin 30); secondly, because in a household man could rule the home and take
decisions thanks to his experience (Perkin 2003).
The social norms of the time presupposed that most women accepted their condition as
normal. There were instances of women who could not perceive themselves as victims, since
they were perfectly satisfied with their lives. An example from Victorian fiction is Mrs Poyser.
She seems to embody the woman who is perfectly satisfied with her status and who consequently
dedicates her time to her family and household in the manner of a sort of ardent devotee.
This does not entail that all women were content with what was being offered to them. Of
course there were cases where women were driven to frustration, despair, even insanity due to
their failure of holding a better position in society. For instance, Bathsheba Everdene feels so
tormented by the fact of having been born a woman that she even cries in front of her servant: I
shall never forgive God for making me a woman, and dearly am I beginning to pay for the

23

honour of owning a pretty face (254). Joan Perkin asserts how, despite not leading an agonizing
life, many married women could have become bored and dissatisfied with their lot (270)
simply because they had nurtured false, romantic hopes.
Added to this is the lack of occupation, which only meant more time to brood over their
discontent and maybe to escape into a fantasy world by reading books which questioned the
socially accepted behaviour (Perkin 270). There was a rare affinity between Victorian women
who lived under the imperative of suffer and be silent and those who showed their interest for
the womens cause through their writing, and thus gave a voice to their unspoken pain. To put it
in another way, feminist writers became the messengers of the fairer sex to the Victorian world.
In Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England, Joan Perkin underlines the affinity
between women writers and their female audiences, a feeling which illustrates the covert
solidarity which amounted to conspiracy (Perkin 270). Sarah Dredge explains how some
Victorian writers challenged orthodox truths in their works, since fiction offered a standpoint
outside the perimeters of authorized truth from which to consider anew dominant ideological
positions (Dredge 170).
This reality counteracts what was wrongly presumed about womens way of thinking, as
noted by Spurzheim in The Victorian Construction of Womanhood- "women do not () make
any great or daring excursions into the regions of fancy" ( Spurzheim 1837: 199 qtd in
Russet18). In the second act of Wildes A Woman of No Importance, while having coffee, the
ladies discuss how an ideal husband should be, along with the reward he is to receive for his
greatness. It should therefore come as no wonder that feminist writing enjoyed a bloom in the
nineteenth century. These writers were finally giving voice to female frustrations and desires.
Thomas Hardy and Charlotte Bront point to characters who can perceive human nature,
to the passionate and often tormented feminine temperament. Lucy Snowe in Villette is like Jane
Eyre: both these characters appear to see behind the masks which people usually put on and
enact their everyday rituals when coming into contact with others. These female characters
succeed in tracing peoples true intentions. This is a heavy blow and contradicted those who saw
women as having a poorer perception (according to Romanes, 1887, qtd in Russett 42). Besides
Bronts Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe, George Bernard Shaw also counteracts Romanes view
through his sharp and impetuous character, Blanche Sartorius. In his play Widowers Houses

24

Blanche is amazed at her father not realizing how good she is at guessing peoples intentions:
such as the mans plan to take his daughter abroad. She feels superior when wondering in his
presence about his inability to be a bit clever towards her (77).
This demonstrates that Victorian literature anticipated Goffmans observation about the
mask of social conformity. Every individual tries to conform to a type of socially accepted
behaviour but will also display rather different set of attitudes according to circumstance and
especially the people with whom he or she comes into contact (Goffman 1959). John Fowles
illustrates the same agenda in chapter eighteen of The French Lieutenants Woman as he is careful
to dissect his protagonist, Charles Smithson, revealing the different vocabularies (62) he uses
towards those around him, as if he were more than three men.
Victorians did not usually question the masks people assumed in their daily lives, but
took them for granted for reasons outlined in Matthew Arnolds poem The Buried Life;
namely, people usually conceal what lies in their innermost soul for fear of being treated either
with indifference or with reproof by their peers. Yet Sarah Woodrough has enough courage to do
so, and in her shy look Charles Smithson finds the dare to be sincere, and drop off his usual
mask. Other women accept and encourage the maintenance of the mask and the distance, and
thereby show themselves to be ridiculously fragile, as if habited in glass, such as Ernestina
Freeman. Sarah wears a mask as well, one composed of a timid look which evinces humility,
but her assertive attitude is rather manipulative and intimidating. So that, after unwillingly
consenting to meet her, Charles appears to be a good deal more like a startled roebuck than a
worldly English gentleman (62).
In Villette, Graham Brettons voice strikes a chord to Lucy Snowe - it seems to belong to
a nature chivalric to the needy and feeble, as well as the youthful and fair (55). However, she
becomes aware at a certain point that Graham does not think much of her: he () never
remembered that I had eyes in my head; much less a brain behind them (88). It is enough for her
to spot the young man once with a mischievous half-smile about his lips, and in his eyes a look
as of masculine vanity to realize that, for all his handsome features and kindness, he is far from
being perfect, even more so if he continues to aim at things which could not prove in the end
successful. She stresses the young mans actual betrayal of his imperfections, one of them being
selfishness, his masculine vanity (92). The young woman is rational enough to accept the real

25

(not idealized) Graham Bretton, who is composed of the mask shown to the world, abounding in
oblivion of self, modesty and earnestness and his other side of character, recklessness and vanity.
Lucy evinces the same sharpness at detecting hidden facts when being convinced that Graham is
possibly not in love with madame Beck; she then adds a sarcastic question, meant to strike at the
superficiality of marriages: how many people ever do love, or at least marry for love in this
world?(92).
The other two men in Villette belong to the class of gentlemen only through dress since
their behaviour is plebeian; in chapter seven , they address Lucy with insolence and even attempt
to follow her for a long way. Unjustly enough, it will be these fine, braided, mustachioed,
sneering personages who interrogate the young woman to get an idea of her faculties; the
narrating character explains how the so-called gentlemen come to examine her are dandy
professors of the college... a pair of cold-blooded fops and pedants, skeptics, and scoffers (374).
To Lucys disappointment, they are not the only ones whose distinction is conferred by their
appearance, since the Labassecouriennes show themselves to be hypocrites, behaving with
careless ease... untroubled by the rebuke of conscience when lying (73).
She guesses at once madame Becks intentions concerning Paul Emanuel : to marry him
and thus bind him to her very interests. It is in these moments alone that she feels her power
growing and extending over the matron who could have led a nation. Yet what could be indeed a
proof of greater strength than to spiritually tear the mask off someone so calculated as Madame
Beck: her habitual disguise, her mask and her domino, were to me a mere network reticulated
by holes; and I saw underneath a being heartless, self-indulgent, and ignoble (419). But Lucy
does not stop merely at looking into the womans hidden desires; she also speaks out her
findings: Under all your serenity, your peace, and your decorum, you are an undenied
sensualist... keep your hand off me.. in your hand there is both chill and poison. You envenom
and you paralyze (418). What is highly interesting is that Lucy arrives at this conclusion
without even knowing exactly how; an intuition or an aspiration simply endows her with a
keen eye (418-419).
The revolt identified by the reader of Victorian novels and by Victorianists is multifold.
The one depicted in Jane Eyre may stand for the revolts which women had attempted after
submitting themselves to a society which was callous precisely because it favoured men.

26

As a child, Jane Eyre throws a tantrum, frightening those around her who had been
accustomed to her enduring her unhappy position (as being lower than a servant, since she
cannot provide for her own sustenance). It is curious and surprising that, during her stay at
Gateshead, with all the injustice she had to endure, Jane had never before allowed her feelings to
overcome her. On the contrary, she was habitually obedient (10) to her older cousin, despite
him bullying and punishing her whenever he seized the opportunity. Janes outbreak of fury
against her presupposed benefactor may represent womens (very few) attempts to escape from
the position imposed upon them. Jane had invested a considerable effort in overcoming her fear :
every morsel of my flesh on my bones shrank when he came near (10).
Another character who is the product of the same implicit revolt against patriarchal norms
is Sue Bridehead. She does not seem to have been a demure child, since she rose against her
foster family. Upon visiting his aunt, Jude finds out about Sues tomboyish nature; the woman
calls the now grown-up woman a pert little thing with tight-strained nerves (133). Sue could
carry out things normally ascribed to boys, and moreover, she had the courage to stand up
against her male companions. Yet the aunt also remembers the moments she had to administer
Sue corporal punishment because of the girls impunity. The episode when the twelve-year-old
Sue moves in a pond in a disgraceful posture ( with her petticoats pulled above her knees)
might prefigure her open attitude towards sensuality and lack of prudery. She daringly tells her
aunt before the woman can even utter a cry: Move on, aunty! This is no sight for modest eyes!
(133).
In Jane Eyre, Bessie is shocked, for Jane Eyre had never before had such an outburst of
fury, but her colleague had long before penetrated Janes inclinations. It was always in her (11)
is the maids reply which proves that the girls reaction was only a natural response to everything
which had tried her patience and endurance for years. Likewise within the Victorian society there
were desperate attempts of women to emerge from obscurity. Bdarida highlights however, that
the tireless efforts of militant figures in social and political causes (such as Josephine Butler,
tireless in her fight against prostitution (119), Annie Besant and Eleanor Marx- Aveling, among
others) were unfortunately doomed to oblivion (Bdarida 1994).
An explanation for the failure of these attempts lies in the attitude usually displayed by
Victorian women. Most of them lived out their anonymous existence, as prisoners of a

27

universe dominated by man ( Bdarida 119). The Victorian woman was rendered a victim not
only by man, but also by her own self, through her refusal to fight against injustice. How can
she bear it so quietly, so firmly? (54) Jane wonders when seeing Helen carry out her punishment
with dignity. Had it been her punishment, Jane feels that she would have been overwhelmed with
disgrace, shame and revolt. Helen Burns may be good-tempered, thus not prone to distress or
fury, yet she is incredibly passive. She reacts positively to the criticism brought forth by her
teacher, yet somehow leaves one with the bitter impression of an unassertive behaviour verging
on masochism. Jane rightfully wonders why Helen does not answer back to those who wrong her
and sympathizes with the girls unjust punishment: my fingers quivered at this spectacle with a
sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger (54).
Helen may be right in asserting that life is too short to be spent only on pondering about
injustices, and that one must distinguish between a criminal and his crime, yet she is terribly
wrong in assuming Jane to be nave and that the girl will change her views in the course of time.
With all her saintly behaviour and heartbreaking stoicism, Helen Burns whom Jane meets during
her grim stay at Lowood may very well symbolize the acceptance of uneven norms typical of
many women of the age. In Hardys Jude the Obscure, Sue Bridehead runs against the
regulations imposed by the college where she resides in an atmosphere of austerity. This
atmosphere may be reminiscent to the one Jane Eyre has to face during her stay at Lowood, only
that in Susans case the circumstances allow the female character a physical escape, not just a
spiritual one (as expressed in Janes refusal of submission). Sue is punished for going out with
Jude; considering this so highly unjust, she runs away to her cousin. Being a strong woman, she
successfully crosses the nearby river without drowning in it and flees to Judes lodgings.
However, one look at the education normally received by Victorian women may disclose
the reasons for such unpleasant stays. Women were subjected to strict discipline and control
over behaviour and correspondence. They were trained in repression, concealment, and selfcensorship, which resulted in an evasion of true feelings and cunning methods to circumvent
authority. The concealment of emotions and the inward, yet firm revolt went hand in hand and
largely constituted a survival technique useful for the future woman (Perkin 262-263).
This was known under the name of husband management, since marriage was looked
upon as the natural course for a woman to take. In either case, women did not give up without a

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fight. Men might have thought that women were no less than subordinate beings, ministering to
their needs and wishes, but the fair sex, like any other oppressed group, came up with techniques
of cajolery and persuasion" which guaranteed their success because they were more subtle than
an open rebellion (Perkin 258). Joan Perkin described women as true fighters by not giving in to
the patriarchal society and using their mental faculties to make the best of their situation (Perkin
2003). The contest of wills, either at home or in other places, involved for example tricking a
man into believing that a plan was his and not the womans, or abstaining from contradiction,
especially in public. What was cultivated among the girls was the art of knowing when to ask
for something (Perkin 258), so that, despite sexual discrimination, women still found, or rather
built themselves a proper modus vivendi within the Victorian society. They either used the sheer
force of their personality, or appealed to mens emotions by manipulative charm or feigned
sickness (Perkin 290-291).
For instance, in Bronts Villette, prior to her elopement, Ginevra Fanshawe writes Lucy a
letter in which she confesses having used a little bit of the melodramatic (444) to convince her
uncle to grant her liberty in a relationship. By behaving hysterically and pretending to be highly
emotional, Blanche Sartorius from Shaws Widowers Houses makes her own father abandon
his self-control and give way recklessly to his affection for her: I only wish to do as my own
darling pleases (75).
By the end of the Victorian age, Bernard Shaw firmly believed in women who displayed
presumed male characteristics: strength, a down-to-earth view on life, lack of romanticism. It
may not be true that all women were under the surface realists, yet Shaw was a genius at
detecting the mechanics of deception which were a vital part of any girls upbringing; according
to him, it suited some women very well to look helpless and soft, to dupe manly males into
taking care of them (Wilson 41). At the end of the Shavian play The Philanderer, as the two
main female characters are required to shake hands in front of everyone as a proof of their
reconcilement, in a rather sisterly complicity they mock the gentlemens nave thinking- they
think this a happy ending?- and authority- these men: our lords and masters!(175).
Lady Cicely from Shaws Captain Brassbounds Conversion may be the best example
of cunning manipulation, which includes an underlying patronizing attitude towards men (whom
she most probably regards as grown-up children whose tantrums need to be subdued by a
motherly, yet firm and imposing figure) along with the faade of a nave, childish, angelic

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woman whose intentions can seldom be fathomed (Sir Howard advises her to restrict her
confidence in people). After all, she herself is well aware that women spend half their lives
telling lies for men, and sometimes big ones, and informs the captain of this truth : Were used
to it (333).
She combines a motherly attitude towards men: for instance, she worries about
Brassbounds men, stitches Marzos bandage and the captains coat. She responds to Brassbunds
rough manners and lack of gratefulness with statements concerning mens lack of care : I dont
suppose you even knew that it was torn. Some men are born untidy (298).
Both Sir Howard and Brassbound almost pierce through the mask she usually assumes
before the stronger sex, but this is in vain, for they also become victims of the sirens
manipulation. Funnily enough, one of Brassbounds men, Drinkwater, tells at a glance that Lady
Cicely will easily and rapidly manipulate those taking her as a prisoner: shell march them all
to church next Sunday like a blooming lot of charity kids (309). Brassbound himself feels
ashamed in front of her artfulness while his uncle confesses to have found in the ladys attitude at
the trial a singular example of the combination between unscrupulous witness and unscrupulous
counsel, which took away his breath (330).
Being even nearer to us, John Fowles expresses Joan Perkins point exactly, in chapter
thirty-four of The French Lieutenants Woman. He claims that men enjoyed being obeyed
without thinking that their victory was only an illusion. It was women who in the end laughed
last by having the true victory, which often occurred unperceived by males: female vanity
consists in faking obedience and manipulating men to impose their will. Charles Smithson gets
an inkling of this hidden truth when becoming aware that Sarahs maneuvers were simply a
part of her armory, mere instruments to a greater end (194). Charles Smithson finally identifies
the superiority he has over Sarah, yet it is not related to his gender or background. He is rather
intimidated to discover the woman he loves resembles a siren in her mad desire to possess: She
could give only to possess () and to possess him was not enough (199).
In her own unsuspecting manner even Ernestina revolts against male authority. However,
Ernestina is depicted as seen by a twentieth-century narrator, not as if she deliberated these
attitudes. Despite her respect for convention, she is said to have a much stronger will of her own
than anyone about her had ever allowed forand more than the age allowed for (12). The
manner in which she manifests her rebellion is not an overt, direct one, as in Janes case (and

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Sarahs), but a more subtle one, which may even be said to mock the gentlemens intelligence. In
their shallowness and sense of superiority, men fail to detect her shrewd tactics. She has the habit
of casting down her eyes very prettily so as to give the impression she might faint if a
gentleman addressed her. Yet the twentieth-century narrator shrewdly points to a minute tilt at
the corner of her eyelids, and a corresponding tilt at the corner of her lips both of which deny
very subtly but quite unmistakably her apparent total obeisance to the great god Man (11).
When disagreeing with Ernestina, Charles can hardly keep up his usual mask, because he does
not like to have her will imposed upon him. It seems the willingness she displays contrasts with
what Charles is used to: a decorous appearance, characteristic only of a person who does not
have the necessary skills to express opinions on serious matters.
Thomas Hardy went even further when he advanced the idea that womens authority was
preferable to that of men, as illustrated in Bathsheba Everdenes position. Such an assertion of
authority would have been inconceivable in earlier Victorian times. In The Return of the Native
the author even shrewdly notes how the only female superiority tolerable to the stronger sex has
to do with precisely the feelings of love a man harbours for a woman ( in this case, Gabriel Oak
falling in love with Bathsheba). This kind of superiority is an unconscious one, and may even
please a man by offering him the possibilities (or illusions) of capturing the desired woman.
Under the Greenwood Tree offers in chapter eight a glimpse into a kind of control and freedom
which even peasant women could enjoy. Old Michael is somehow pleased to hear Mrs Dewys
open criticism: his mouth betrays his inner pleasure at receiving a correction from a woman. Mrs
Dewy dares to speak her mind about the ordeals she faces in trying to educate her husband; it
seems that she comes from a respectable family, where the children were supposed to talk
correctly. Although she talks behind Mr Dewys back, this is only an illusion, since both spouses
understand that her critique is actually meant to be heard. Mrs Dewy is, therefore, a rough angel
in the house, who assumes the hard task of reforming her husbands deficient education.
In literature there were numerous other instances of characters defying the Victorian ideal
of the angel in the house. Helen Burns and Jane Eyre are obviously not the only female
characters so contrasting in their beliefs.
Jane Eyre is too passionate to accept the role prescribed to her by society. Although she is
not endowed with the beauty of other Victorian women (Catherine Earnshaw-Linton, Eustacia
Vye, Bathsheba Everdene), Jane is gifted with a sharp mind and an assertive nature. Far from

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being her weakness - as asserted by Mrs Reed, when the ten-year-old confronts her: But you
are passionate, Jane , that you must allow (37) - the passion endows her with the strength
needed in the tough struggle for existence. No wonder Helen is the one to perish at Lowood,
while Jane, in defiance of the deprivation she is subjected to, survives, hoping for a higher
destiny.
In Villette, Lucy Snowe is equally disgusted at the prejudices concerning womens roles
in society; she cannot contain her scathing remarks upon seeing some portraits which are meant
to summarize a womans life: the jeune fille coming out of a church is only the image of a
most villainous little precocious she-hypocrite. While praying in her chamber, the wedded
young woman (Marie) shows the whites of her eyes in a most exasperating manner. Maternity
is also flouted: the Jeune mre is hanging over a clayey and puffy baby with a face like an
unwholesome full moon. Together with the Widow, these Anges are grim and gray as
burglars, and cold and vapid as ghosts, insincere, ill-humoured, bloodless, brainless
nonentities! (188).
In Wuthering Heights Emily Bront brings into focus Catherine Earnshaws rebellious
spirit, so reflective of the wilderness where she usually wanders with Heathcliff, versus Nellys
shallowness. Catherine, as a nave young woman, seeks advice concerning the course of action
she is about to undertake by marriage. Emily Bronts character questions the institution of
marriage so praised during the Victorian period, which might entail that the author highlights the
sensuality and free choice which every woman should be free to assert.
In chapter nine, Catherine pours out her soul before her maid; she begins this by narrating
a dream in which she is cast away from heaven only to land on the Heights where she
experiences her true bliss. But Nelly is incapable of profounder thoughts and only reacts
according to her superstitious and conformist nature. Catherine asserts that she would be very
miserable in heaven, at which point Nelly brings forth her strong religious conviction; she
considers her mistress too passionate and revengeful to be allowed to enter such a sacred place,
which proves that Nelly Dean bases her knowledge on traditional convictions alone. Catherine,
by refusing in her heart of hearts to be in heaven (as well as marry Edgar Linton, whom she
clearly does not love) actually denies her role as prescribed by the Victorian society. She refuses
to be an angel in the house and she acknowledges the fact that she is not meant to be a
gentlemans wife, but one of a wild spirit, such as Heathcliff, towards whom she feels an

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inseparable connection. Catherine confesses her faults (you think me a selfish wretch) (81)
which make her unsuitable for the Victorian feminine ideal- a personification of innocence and
purity (Bdarida 118) - and to be the wife of a gentle and well-mannered man such as Edgar
Linton. Ive no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven (80) could be
read as I am no angel and no lady. Instead, she belongs outside the limits of convention and
society, not unlike Heathcliff, who is himself a denizen of those inhabiting the margins of
Victorian society. Nelly dismisses her mistresss troubling thoughts by attributing them to an
immaturity of the spirit, and thus fails to understand that the young woman will never be happy
within the space traditionally confined to a woman.
Catherine appears as a prisoner of the role she is supposed to perform as a woman.
Although Heathcliff is the one whom she truly loves, she ultimately decides to give up her
romantic dreams in the hope of obtaining, if not marital bliss, at least social and financial
stability. After all, a married womans fate lay entirely in her husbands hands, who was also her
sole provider (Perkin 2003). Catherines confession to Nelly only serves to reinforce the idea that
Cathy acknowledges the faultiness in the role of women, as well as her inability to fully conform
to it. The sad key in which the novel is written can also derive from Cathys foolish decision of
marrying the wrong person. This contains an indirect reflection of what most Victorian women
had to endure by fighting against their feelings. The fatalistic plots of the women writers might
be a silent revolt of the authors against the neglect of womens emotions in a society too centred
on appearance to be aware of true feelings. By contrast, in Villette, Madame Beck undertakes
frequent escapades from the pensionnate, for instance, when Lucy spies on her and remembers
the gossip concerning the lady; when she is thought to be sleeping, the woman indulges in the
pleasures of life: going to the operas, plays, or balls. Madame certainly does not wish to remain a
prisoner of her ascribed role as a woman, and clearly has no sort of taste for a monastic life
(429); as long as she seizes the right opportunity and as discreetly as possible, she adds some
relish into her drab existence.
If Russett mentions Spurzheims assumption about the sexes: Men will never feel like
women, () nor women like men ( Spurzheim, 1846 2:80, qtd in Russett 19), a look at
Victorian literature dismantles this view, because female characters are depicted as harbouring a
deep affinity with male ones. The rebellious attitude of the otherwise shy Charlotte Bront
encompasses instances of not at all typical gentlemen, as though to focus the readers attention

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on the fact that women are not the only ones who trespass against conventions. No wonder that,
in reviewing Jane Eyre, Lady Eastlake completely disapproves both of the protagonist and of her
future husband: the hero and the heroine are beings both so singularly unattractive that the
reader feels they can have no vocation in the novel but to be brought together (The Quarterly
Review 1849: 162). In this manner, Lady Eastlake proves to be among the shallow conformist
women.
If Jane is no typical lady (her sharpness of wit enables her to defy the conventions and the
faade of those around her), by the same token, Rochester is no typical gentleman. If Catherine
Earnshaw fully identifies herself with Heathcliff - I am Heathcliff! (81) - , Jane finds in
Edward Rochester a person whom she can finally mentally shake hands with (136).
In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront depicts a male character who visibly rebels against the
Victorian society. Ironically enough, no other feminine character in the novel proves so
unconventional in thinking as Jane, whereas Rochester evinces the same traits (impulsiveness,
toughness). Moreover, both of them need to pass a series of trials before being transfigured. A
Victorian reader feeling very bound to tradition would expect their rebellious natures to be
subdued by forces outside their control, so that, in the end, both characters may correspond to
Victorian ideals. Mr Brocklehurst considers that Jane should pray so that her wicked heart of
stone may be turned into one of flesh (33). Rochester also toys with the idea of a
transfiguration of his rugged nature: does that leave hope of my final re-transformation from
Indian-rubber back to flesh? (132). It is not only Jane who urges Rochester to consider their
relationship as one spirit addressing another one. The man also makes an appeal to the young
womans soul: Oh! Come, Jane, come!(318). In Middlemarch, the desperate Dorothea
Casaubon utters a cry towards Will Ladislaw which the latter will remember for years
afterwards. It is a cry from soul to soul which entails their moving with kindred natures in the
same embroiled medium, the same troublous fitfully-illuminated life (272).
Unlike Rochester, John Rivers is taken aback by Jane Eyres bluntness, since he had not
expected a woman to address a man in such a direct manner. Janes originality lies not only in
her defiant gaze, but also in her brave spirit (375), as Saint John Rivers himself affirms after
his initial surprise wears off. He could certainly not be a suitable match for the woman, since, by
contrast with Edward Rochester, he continues to be amazed at Janes unruly spirit. Her words

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sound violent, unfeminine, untrue (412) to him. Jane summons up the courage to refuse
another man, and for a second time, does that fiercely: you will kill me. You are killing me
now (412) in words which are hard to forget. To Rivers, this might be the last straw, but, in his
usual self-possessed manner, he resolves to forgive his neighbour and overlook such an
inconceivable behaviour. One interesting fact is that although Rivers identifies in his cousin a
womans heart, he sees her as possessing a mans vigorous brain, as well (414).
In a manner similar to St John Rivers, Charles Smithson tries to overlook Sarahs
defiance of the male position of authority, her attempt to assume ... (an) equality of intellect
with him. He therefore decides not to act like any other gentleman when baffled by a woman on
a serious matter: raise his hat with a cold finality and walk away (61).
In Villette, Paul Emanuel is convinced that, far from being a delicate creature, Lucy can
successfully stand roughness and adversity: one ought to be dur with you. While others in the
house look down upon Lucy as a colourless shadow, Paul has scrutinized her face thoughtfully,
especially during the vaudeville performance, and this enabled him to spot a passionate ardour
for triumph in the otherwise demure miss Lucy: What fire shot into the glance! Not mere light,
but flame; je me tins pour averti (142). Paul Emanuel will soon come in for a critique by Lucy:
men like him treat women with utmost indifference to their feelings, in contrast to women in her
situation, who seem doomed to be thrust like machines here and there. This prompts Emanuel
to call the young woman tough-skinned for all her neatness and sweetness (378). He rightfully
calls her a wild creature with a flame in (her) soul, and (her) eyes flashing, at which point Lucy
claims to have the right to be so (297).
In chapter eighteen from Villette, Graham Bretton is hurt at Lucys critique of his
tormenting passion for Ginevra, yet in the end he receives an apology. Lucy Snowe considers
them so alike in their mentality, that she wishes a mere contradiction should not cause them to
drift apart. The young man confesses to Lucy that, had she been a man, the two of them would
have become good friends, for they seldom disagree in their views and have the same observant
faculty (295): our opinions would have melted into each other (294).
The same holds true for the couple in The French Lieutenants Woman, which develops an
understanding reserved for kindred souls. In chapter fourteen, during a visit, Charles Smithson
becomes vaguely aware of the computer in (Sarahs) heart (44) who can immediately tell
fakery from earnestness. However, only towards the end of the visit does it dawn on Charles that

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Sarah is wearing a mask and playing a part, not perceived by the other women in her company.
As a shrewd observer, he identifies her innate directness and sense of injustice which run
contrary to the meekness she exhibits. While meeting her on the Undercliff, he senses an
intimacy of thought and feeling hitherto unimaginable to him in the context of a relationship with
a woman . He cannot resist categorizing Sarah as a remarkable woman, and does so not out of a
hurt male pride or envy, but of human loss (78).
Speaking freely is the attribute of strong willed women. Against Victorian conventions,
Jane Eyre can speak freely to her employer, and even disagree with him regarding matters of
importance. Janes blunt refusal to remain at Thornfield is inconceivable interpreted in the light
of Victorian conventions: I tell you I must go! (253). Jane allows her anger to get hold of her,
but also reproaches Rochester for having teasingly played with her emotions by pretending to
marry Blanche Ingram: Do you think I am an automaton? a machine without feelings? . Jane
reminds him that, however obscure and plain she is, as compared to the beautiful aristocratic
Blanche Ingram, she is nevertheless a human being, with as much soul and as much heart
(253). In her courageous outburst, the woman brings into discussion the equality in spirit
between man and woman and thereby dismisses customs, conventionalities, physical traits. If
Jane dismisses tradition, than it only naturally follows that she does not accept subordination to
anyone, considering herself a free human being with an independent will (253).
The same holds true for Villette. Lucy Snowe herself cannot contain her indignation any
longer when seeing Dr Johns navity regarding Ginevra: On all points but one you are a man
frank, healthful, right-thinking, clear-sighted; on this exceptional point you are but a slave(176).
However, one should put in balance the fact that, although Bront moulds strong-willed
female characters revolting against the injustices directed at women (Unjust!-Unjust! (15) is
what Janes soul seems to cry out throughout most of the novel), they reject an existence devoid
of principles.
From the standpoint of morality Jane Eyre does not completely reject Victorian
conventions, which is reflected in the young womans self-denying flight from temptation. Jane
is fully aware of Rochesters devouring passion, and her struggle may somewhat reflect that of
Sarah Woodruff when the latter pondered whether to become Varguenness mistress or not. She

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may be an ange farouche (Bront, 1999: 220), but she does give Rochester moral advice - to
live sinless (316) which could be linked to the Chastity for Men outcry, proclaimed in 1914,
urging men to lead a life free of promiscuity, since women were also asked to live in chastity
(Bdarida 124).
If in Charlotte Bronts novel it was the male protagonist who confessed his past affairs
to a young woman, in Jude the Obscure it is now Sues turn to confess her past experience to
Jude; namely, a friendship with a Christminster undergraduate. Sue shows herself to be a woman
with a mind of her own, self-respect and firmness in not yielding to the undergraduates wish to
become his lover. She heroically resists him, even though they are at close quarters, which might
have brought the mans downfall. As a result, the woman proudly claims to have never given
herself to any lover. More than a reflection of the movement called by Bdarida, chastity for
men (124), which asked men to abide by the same moral rules as women, this attitude suggests
the assertion of a womans right to choose her own lovers and not submit to the erotic male
desires. This is why Sue denies the common belief that women are supposed to be cold-natured
and sexless (179) and shows herself to be a woman with a mind of her own, self-respect and
firmness. She does not yield to the undergraduates lustful wish, so that she proudly claims to
have never given herself to any lover.
As a proto-feminist himself, Hardy opposed the angelic aura prescribed to women in
Victorian fiction. He can be seen as a titanic male writer, fighting the dominant clichs and
depicting females more like demons, but not in the purely religious sense. And this he did with a
lot of talent and subtlety, since the women in his fiction are charismatic, imposing, strong
characters, bent on not accepting their status and on achieving their aims by any means.
Bathsheba is no angel in the house, which is traceable in the beauty she exudes, beauty of
a demoniacal, not angelic type. As a result, she looks her best when infuriated and when this
effect is heightened by a beautiful dress. Such an instance of her non-angelic beauty occurs in
chapter twenty-one, right after Gabriels departure, when she is announced that her sheep are in
danger of dying after overeating clover. But even in her darkest moments, the woman wishes not
to abandon her dignity; so she summons Gabriel who seems to be the only one capable of
delivering her from such a misfortune. When first sending for Gabriel, Bathsheba retains her

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patronizing attitude which is why Gabriel refuses to help her, since she did not address him
civilly and in a proper manner as becomes any woman begging a favour (191). Initially, the
woman is revolted at Gabriels answer, at the necessity of asking for help from a man who has
once asked her a favour. Although looking full of gratitude at Gabriel after his return, she cannot
refrain from expressing her discontent at his attitude: how could you serve me so unkindly?
(192).
Bathsheba does not seem to have the typical maiden blush. The author points how rays
of male vision seem to have a tickling effect upon virgin faces in rural districts, but this only in
the usual, since now, paradoxically, it is not Bathsheba who blushes, but Gabriel Oak: Yet it was
the man who blushed, the maid not at all (67). Similarly, in The Return of the Native, Eustacia
Vye is no fragile maiden waiting for male help, but a strong-willed young woman, who uses the
charms she possesses to achieve her aims. For instance, in chapter six, when lighting a fire so as
to call her lover Damon Wildeve, she adopts the position of the Witch of Endor who called up
Samuel. Not receiving the answer she wished - the one concerning Thomasin, her lovers wife she rubs salt on the wound. As if it were not enough that Damon had to walk three miles in the
dark in order to reach their meeting place, the woman patronizingly tells him she had set the fire
only to prove her power over him. Even when sighing, her sigh is not characteristic of any fragile
maiden, but full of passion, and therefore shakes her like a shiver.( here there may be a
connection between the shiver Tess feels after hearing about the ill-omened stone pillar, which
may announce her untimely death, and Eustacias bodily reaction, the latter also being destined
to die young).
Another woman who rubs salt on the wound is Blanche Sartorius in the Shavian play
Widowers Houses. She astonishes her suitor, Trench, with her ferocity: she is provocative,
taunting, half-denying, half inviting him to advance, in a flush of undistinguished animal
excitement (92). She reminds him that he has returned to a house from where he has been
ordered out, and is smart enough to outline the business which he will take up: by rebuilding
some houses for the poor he might make a good profit, yet he has come to trick her into believing
that he is embarking on a philanthropic enterprise.
Moreover, in the Victorian Age, female authors punish male characters for not
appreciating a womans worth. These men equate a womans worth not with her mental faculties

38

or spiritual powers but physique. Womans status is thought of as only decorative (Bdarida
1994), a beautiful angel programmed to bring joy (to the eye) through her mere presence into a
mans life (and household). In Middlemarch, Tertius Lydgate chooses Rosamond Vincy, a
bewitching yet greedy puppet over Dorothea Brooke, a kind-hearted intellectual who never
ceases in questioning the world around her (Zirra 2003). Lydgate considers his choice of a future
wife an easy one, since Rosamond is clearly the more physically charming of the two. As
highlighted by Bonaparte in her Introduction to George Eliots Middlemarch, Lydgate resembles
the everyman who has the choice between two paths in life, the way of the spirit versus one of
the flesh, yet he fails in choosing the rose of the world (Rosamond) over the gift of the gods
(Dorothea). This should not puzzle anyone, since he is a biologist and can only focus on outside
tissues (9) instead of what lies beyond them. Eliot is against judging a book by its cover in what
regards the controversial Dorothea by stating at the beginning of the novel: a human mind is
much subtler than the outside tissues (9) (Bonaparte 16). In the end, Lydgate will discover with
bitterness that the charming young woman he married is selfish and narrow, a burden rather than
a mans help in life; he will acknowledge Dorotheas generosity and helpful nature. Eliot seems
to punish him with an unhappy marriage for his limited view of a woman in terms of her
appearance. It is as though the author were trying to convince the reader that a woman is much
more than physical beauty, through the portrayal of Dorothea, who seems tireless in her attempts
to support those around her at each opportunity (Bonaparte 1997). George Eliot manages to
convey the same message in Adam Bede, where Adam is obviously enchanted by the adorable
yet shallow Hetty Sorrel, ignoring for some time the latters wise and spiritual cousin, Dinah
Morris. He does suffer at the hands of the woman he loves because of her deceitfulness, only to
be healed through the union with Dinah at the end of the novel.
Another type of punishment takes the shape of the deprivation of manliness. The lack of
strength from the part of the female characters is compensated for with the feminization of the
strong and authoritative male ones. Emily Bronts Wuthering Heights provides instances during
which male characters seem to lose their power in front of the much less stronger females. In
Bronts novel, despite Heathcliffs power and the manner in which he intimidates those around
him, he is still defied by Cathy II. Not only that, but he is also in the end unable to fulfil his plan
of wreaking vengeance and destruction upon the descendents of the Earnshaws and Lintons. In

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the confrontation before Heathcliffs death, Cathy is alone in facing him, since Hareton
Earnshaw only acts a pacifying role between the parties (Watt 1971).
But he is not the only male to be defied by a female character. Edgar Linton is also defied
by his wife, Catherine Earnshaw, when he wishes to throw Heathcliff out of the house. Catherine
slams the door to the passage where Edgars servants are waiting to get hold of Heathcliff, takes
the key and threatens to swallow it. Edgar tries to get the key from her by force, but Cathy
throws it into the fire. At this moment, the man feels as though humiliated, defeated by his wifes
passionate actions. In the same manner, Catherine Earnshaws daughter, Cathy, will try to
deprive Hareton Earnshaw of his manliness by depriving him of his masculine sport: smoking.
If her mother had flung her fathers key into the fire, now Cathy flings Haretons pipe into the
fire in an effort to make him give up smoking. Yet Haretons deprivation of masculine
activities has already started, since he can no longer hunt because of an injured arm. Although
Hareton is oppossed to Cathys actions, his smoking is never mentioned in the novel, and the
young man may even be said to undergo a process of feminization: he begins to accept Cathy as
a teacher, agrees to aid her in planting a flower bed and accepts during mealtime her primroses in
his porridge (Watt 1971).
Perkin draws attention to the ultimate rebellion which a Victorian woman could perform:
that of choosing not to marry. If men who did not marry were somehow understood, unmarried
women confronted themselves with lack of sympathy: they were generally regarded as social
failures and treated with alternating pity and contempt (226). This may be understandable if one
takes into account that a woman was supposed to embody the ideal of home priestess
(Bdarida 1994), in becoming a wife and mother. Those who remained unmarried simply
challenged this commonly accepted notion. However, Charles Smithson does not see unmarried
women in this negative manner; when confronted by Sarah Woodroughs decision in favour of
celibate, the young man feels an inexorable admiration for the heretic expounding to him such
unusual views: She was like no other; more than ever like no other (193).
As stated by Perkin, some women were advanced enough to see marriage as
incompatible with a higher life and chose an alternative to it, becoming the mistress of a
fathers or a brothers house (226-227) just as Bathsheba Everdene assumes the great
responsibility of managing an uncles estate. This could be linked to female social power, and,

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seen from this perspective, Bathshebas attitude might even be admired by any ambitious
contemporary woman (Perkin 2003).
Perkin mentions Ann Richelieu Lamb, who wrote a courageous defense on behalf of
unmarried women; the following statement: The unmarried woman is somebody: the married,
nobody! The former shines in her own light; the latter is only the faint reflection of her
husbands brings to light the sad truth that a married womans identity was absorbed into her
husbands. The one flesh which man and woman became after marriage was after all, the
husbands (Lamb 1844: 109, qtd in Perkin 228-229).
In Jude the Obscure, the institution of marriage does not escape from Sue Brideheads
keen observation. Prior to her infelicitous marriage to Phillotson, Sue sends a letter to Jude in
which she asks him to accompany her and the scholar during the ceremony; yet in her letter, the
young woman proves critical of a womans position within the ceremony of marriage. In part
third of Jude the Obscure, Jude notices how marriage, wifedom (226) has not succeeded in
transforming Sue into a being devoid of individuality. Sue regards the tradition of giving a
woman away as humiliating, because the woman is simply given away in the same manner in
which any domestic animal would be given. She ironically dismisses the views concerning
women as espoused by the churchman, which require that a woman is chosen but not alleged to
choose and is also blunt concerning womens views on marriage in general. According to her, not
so many women like marriage in the way Jude believes they do, and accept it primarily for the
advantages it gives them: the dignity it is supposed to confer, the social advantages it offers
them. Yet Sue is quick to assert that she can give up such advantages. And it appears she is not
the only woman to think so.
In the Shavian play The Philanderer, Julia Craven regards marriage only as a
degrading bargain, by which a woman (sells) herself to a man for the social status of a wife and
the right to be supported and pensioned in old age out of his income (107). Grace, Julias rival,
explains that, as a New Woman, she will never marry a man she loves too dearly, since her
passionate love might cause a husband to exert his influence upon her. Grace clearly states that
no woman can ever become the property of man and strives to apply this credo in her life; she
confesses to have decided upon a revolutionary course of life (for Victorian England): that of not
giving herself to anyone whose opinion of women is still a conventional one.

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In Far from the Madding Crowd, Bathsheba Everdene initially rejects marriage as well,
since for her, the simplicity of a maiden existence should not be given up in favour of
becoming only the humbler half of an indifferent matrimonial whole (334) and thus clearly
expresses her refusal of being considered mens property; she even considers yielding to a man
in marriage as carrying with it a sort of degradation. Bathshebas favourite goddess is Diana, the
virgin goddess who accepted no male interference in her existence and therefore, acts according
to this ideal until she meets sergeant Troy. Regarding the possibility of marriage between her
and the farmer Oak, with luminous distinctness and common sense (81) Bathsheba presents
him her situation: her lack of financial support, her lack of love for him, the better education she
has received are incompatible with Gabriels need to find a wife better off than him and sharing
the same intellectual level. When confronted with Boldwood and his wish to extract a promise of
marriage from her, Bathsheba asserts that it is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in
language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs (412). After committing the great
mistake of marrying the womanizer Troy (whose heart actually already belonged to Fanny
Robin), Bathsheba warns other women against the perils of marriage. She advises her maid
Liddy that if already married and in a fearful situation, one should stoically accept ones fate
and not flinch in the face of adversity. Despite her shameful defeat in front of a manipulating
womanizer, she decides to fight back as much as it is possible in her condition. After a terrible
quarrel with her husband, Bathsheba runs away from their home, but afterwards emerges as a
woman determined to face her destiny, to stand (her) ground, even if that would mean getting
cut to pieces (366).
The Victorian female characters who prefigure the emancipated twentieth-century woman
are not bound only to their homes. The woman was indeed, supposed to be mistress of her
domain just like man should be an artful master in his business or profession (Perkin 2003).
However, these characters take interest in and extend their power over the outside world as well.
Bathsheba may be taken as the supreme example of a business-woman. When confronted
with Bathsheba a second time, while in desperate need of a source of income, Gabriel is
surprised at the transformation of the unpractised girl of Norcombe ... into (a) supervising and
cool woman (99) when faced with the responsibility of managing her uncles farm. Taken aback
by the coolness of her manner, Gabriel supposes it is simply the result of the rise on the social

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scale which she has experienced, and which had advanced her from a cottage to a large house
and fields (131).
Her uncle James Everdene leaves her a farm on account of her cleverness and vigorous
marshalling of the numerous flocks and herds, which win the confidence of the estate agent who
is at first baffled by the young womans sex, youth and beauty (385). It appears that her gender
is the main obstacle to securing herself a position. As Dredge explains in her thesis
Accommodating feminism: Victorian fiction and the nineteenth-century womens movement,
labouring women did not receive much sympathy in nineteenth-century England because they
were thought of as endangering the male-dominated working world. What was also threatened
was the so-called proper relation between the sexes, (169) which required that women should
be domestic and men should be workers; suddenly women were no longer only consumers of
goods, but also producers, thus competing with men (Dredge 2000).
Freedom from man, independence is the thing Bathsheba craves, just like Bronts Lucy
Snowe, who proudly refuses the offer to be a girls companion, even if she would thereby receive
a handsome sum (of money) thrice (her) present salary (278). In Villette, Lucy even asserts
that she would prefer a more gruesome prospect - such as toil and barely making ends meet- than
becoming a mere companion. Madame Beck is the one who gives Lucy what she truly wants:
freedom; and it is in leaving her alone with her liberty that Madame expresses her consideration
for the young woman.
Bathsheba takes on her role seriously and therefore, asserts her authority in front of her
employees, through her sometimes unladylike conduct: she insults the peasants working on her
farm, raises her voice at them, criticizes them for daring to interfere in her affairs. Due to her
new statute, but also out of vanity, she does not even accept as much as physical contact with
those labouring for her; when teaching her how to shear, Gabriel commits the impudence of
grasping her hand at which point the mistress snaps at the farmer, reminding him that she does
not accept such conduct. When the love-stricken Gabriel draws her attention on the fact that her
conduct is unworthy of any thoughtful, meek or comely woman (185), Bathsheba fails to
contain her revolt any longer, criticizing Gabriel fiercely and, in the end, dismissing him. But this
not before making it clear to him that she is not the type of woman to allow any man to criticize
(her) private conduct (186). Bathsheba is not alone in her patronizing attitude, since there are
other heroines who do much more than asserting their dominance over employees.

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In Villette, Madame Beck fulfils the position of a manly woman, since her nature deserves
more than the hybrid position between gouvernante and ladys maid (63). A mere school would
be a mockery for Madame, because of her great powers; these should instead be put in the
service of a nation, or a turbulent legislative assembly. The woman is endowed with such great
qualities self-possession, patience, coolness, astuteness- that she alone could make a successful
first minister and superintendent of police: Wise, firm, faithless; secret, crafty, passionless;
watchful and inscrutable; acute and insensate- withal perfectly decorous- what more could be
desired?(66). Prior to beginning her employment, Lucy herself is encouraged to accept it thanks
to Madames suggestive, manly countenance; it does not awake feelings such as sympathy,
congeniality, submission, but in exchange dares one to try his or her prowess by accepting a
challenge. Lucy will indeed be a fast learner and follows in Madame Becks footsteps: she feels
her improvement in constantly using her faculties; any other profession which would require
submission and passivity would mean becoming the stagnant prey of mould and rust (73).
As Bdarida remarks, the Victorian woman was largely thought of as a frail flower,
feeble creature (118), as opposed to the energetic and enduring man. This notion of feebleness is
questioned in Under the Greenwood Tree - Mr Day assures his love-stricken son that maidens
usually make promises greater than they can keep- she (a maiden) ll swear shes dying for thee,
and she is dying for thee, and she will die for thee () shell fling a look over tother shoulder at
another young feller, though never leaving off dying for thee just the same(87).
Even if lauded for the fullness of emotion which she was supposed to usually feel,
woman was also thought to be in danger of behaving too erratically; the reason behind this worry
was the presupposed lack of self-will, which sprung from a feebler intellect and could lead to
a generally unreasonable temper ( Romanes 1887: 657-658, qtd in Russett 42-43).
Jane Eyres temperament rejects this widespread conception. Her powerful gaze defies
Edward Rochester, yet not only him. When stumbling across her cousins, it is Saint John Rivers
turn to be affected by her penetrating glance. No matter how weak Jane may be from a physical
point of view and no matter how uninteresting and disrespected on the social scale (before
meeting her cousins), the will with which she is endowed is decidedly strong. Rochester feels

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defied, even threatened by Janes indomitable spirit and principles and realizes that, even if he
were to possess Jane by force, he still could not reach her soul.
Likewise, in Far from the Madding Crowd, both Gabriel and Troy are rather surprised at
Bathshebas temper. Troy detects that Bathsheba has a will, moreover, a fiery temper, which is
why he might be in danger of becoming her slave in the end. Unlike a woman who abounds in
feeling, Bathsheba in ashamed to display her emotions, and does so in the most extreme caseswhen her sheep are about to die and she must summon Gabriel, upon discovering a flock of hair
that is not hers in her husbands clock, when witnessing Troy kissing the late Fanny. She does not
shy away from praising her own intellect; when telling the sergeant that she cannot be fooled by
his lies, she denounces the wrong assumption according to which women are considered as
intellectually inferior to men: I am not a fool (...) although I am a woman, and have my
womans moments (333). Being faced with a tragedy right at Christmas (her husband, appeared
out of nowhere, is shot by Boldwood), Bathsheba recovers rapidly and goes in her room to get
Troys body ready for the funeral. The surgeon sent for, Mr Aldritch, is stunned to discover that
the mere girl had been capable of performing everything with due care. The surgeon even
exclaims She must have the nerve of a stoic!(443). The narrator highlights that Bathsheba is
made of the stuff of which great mens mothers are made (441), meaning that Bathsheba can
quickly recover her equanimity in the face of adversity.
What I have proved in this chapter is the lack of validity of certain nineteenth-century
assumptions about women. Bdaridas A Social History of England 1851-1990 offered me a
starting point by stressing the emergence of the New Woman, while fiction offered me a plethora
of counter-examples so as to combat the false assumptions. I appealed not only to womens
novels (the Bront sisters, George Eliot) but also to mens writings (Thomas Hardy), as well as to
John Fowles The French Lieutenants Woman. At the same time, with the aid of fiction, I
struggled to dismantle contemporary views according to which Victorian women were
completely subdued to the patriarchal order, and to highlight the uniqueness of the female
characters encountered in fiction.

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Chapter Three: The Relationship with the Landscape and Patterns of City- Life in the
Victorian Age and Today
My aim in this chapter is to highlight the nostalgia experienced by Victorians when
having to deal from a psychological point of view with the industrial and urban development.
This feeling manifested itself not only against the industrial development, but also in spite of the
gradual loss of tradition, which renders an aura of saintliness to the country artisans depicted in
some Victorian writings. I appealed to Christina Goulding and to the French sociologist De
Certeau for support; the former helped me grasp the universality of nostalgia, while the latter
offered, to my mind, the most fascinating perspective on the act of remembrance and places.
In her article Romancing the Past : Heritage Visiting and the Nostalgic Consumer,
Christina Goulding draws attention to the fact that over the past decade, there has been growing

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interest in nostalgia and consumption experiences which manifests itself in various ways
depending on the individuals experience of alienation in the present, and the extent and quality
of social contact(Goulding 565). Contemporary analysis indicates that everywhere we look the
past is in front of us (Walsh, 1992 qtd in Goulding 565). It isnt necessarily the distant past, but
also the recent one (Goulding 566).
At present, the nostalgia epidemic ... has hit most sectors of the leisure and
entertainment industries (Goulding 565). Turning to Great Britain, she describes the nostalgia
epidemic as rampant on the High Street, and even offers an example: the Dickensian dcor
being evident in a plethora of shops, public houses, and restaurants (Norman, 1990 qtd in
Goulding). Yet, it is nowhere near more prevalent than in the museum dedicated to Victorian and
post-Victorian societal and industrial recreations (Goulding 566).
Because nostalgia has become big business, and is no longer grounded in history or
social context, but also in the process of abstracting and rerouting meanings(Goulding 565),
the Victorians nostalgia for the past and for green England (Bdarida 26) appears more
understandable to us. Yet the definitions provided by Goulding also serve to clarify the concept
of nostalgia: an emotion induced by negative experiences of the present or negative perceptions
of the individuals life situation (Goulding 567). Just as the Squire in Silas Marner is convinced
that most things are gone backard in these last thirty years(119).
In the Victorian Age, these unpleasant repercussions would be the case for the rural
craftsmen (who) suffered severely from the competition of mechanized industry (Bdarida 31).
As a consequence the past is re-examined through rose-tinted spectacles, which in turn only
serves to increase discontentment when this past is contrasted with the present (Goulding 567).
During the Victorian Age, with the industrial civilization, an ardent quest for nature began to
develop, as a sort of defence reaction, since people felt a growing need for the country as an
antidote to the urban environment. This attitude also meant a resistance of the British
countryside to the spread of Black England, much more than nostalgia for the past (Bdarida
26). Returning to his newly industrialized home-town, Silas Marner discovers that even the
residents have been affected: here and there a sallow, begrimed face looked out from a gloomy
doorway; it is only with relief that he and Eppie get into a place where they can enjoy a
broader strip of sky (214). One should remember Fowles grim description of the River Thames,
so corrupted by the human presence (kept unclean) that on one occasion the stench was so

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unbearable that it drove the House of Lords out of their chamber; Charles Smithson can only
infer about the inhabitants of the houses near the river that they are perverse ... in their choice of
environment (188).
Another presence of black England is that of the railways which cut mercilessly into the
landscapes. Since the age entailed a lot of environmental change, a plain, for example would
be spectacularly transformed into a canyon by the sprouting railways which cut through
meadows in depth or cut tunnels through the mountains ( Zirra 2003). The place where the
rural, secluded world and the modern, urbanized one meet is the railway station, where, for
instance Angel and Tess go by carriage to deliver the milk in time. The fitful white streak of
stream (250) which manifests itself at intervals against the green countryside background marks
these, although frequent, short manifestations of the presence of machinery on the rest of land.
Tess, due to her lack of sophistication, would have been seen by the machinery as a completely
foreign being, different from the throngs of the town. In Hardys metaphor, Tess is perceived by
the machinery as exotic as a friendly leopard at pause (251) would seem to any town-dweller.
This offers the lovers - Tess and Angel- an opportunity to wonder if the London urban population
receiving the products is aware of the work taking place in the countryside. Townsfolk have no
notion whatsoever of the working class toiling for the dairy production, let alone from where the
milk comes.
In the twentieth century sociological text, The Practice of Everyday life, in the chapter
Walking in the City, de Certeau argues that the memorable is what can be dreamed about a
place, while the place is like a palimpsest (109). Just like a palimpsest, which, according to
Merriam-Webster online, is used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased and
thus changes in the course of time, in the same manner a part of the country is moulded by the
hand of nature then, moulded once or several times more as a consequence of mans actions. The
drastic change of the countryside might have been regarded as a loss which the Victorians had to
endure for the sake of development, which is expressed by means of nostalgia for a paradisiacal
nature.
Nature and man worked together so that what results is a uniform pattern of the
countryside (Bdarida 25), and whenever one went to England, one also found, besides
greenery, earth roads, small villages and thatched farms (Bdarida 25). In Adam Bede,

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Arthur Donnithorne admires the village of Hayslope during his journey, becoming aware of its
beauty in contrast to a market-town he had just gone through. Old Hayslope is nothing but a
quiet old place and seems as if it were sleeping on the hill in the late afternoon sunlight,
protected by the landforms surrounding it: the great shoulders of the Binton Hills, the
purplish black woods and the Abbey, all anxious for the landlords return (487). In the
twentieth century Victorian panorama of The French Lieutenants Woman, Charles Smithson
thoroughly enjoys the background of the Wiltshire downland during spring with scattered
households such as that belonging to his uncle: cream and gray, with its huge cedars, the famous
copper beech by the west wing, the almost hidden stable row behind, with its little wooden tower
and clock like a white exclamation mark between the intervening branches. This household
exudes a special atmosphere , since the only real hours were the solar hours, and especially a
sense of profound, undisturbed sense of order of which one could be sure to remain benevolent
and divine (83). However, this is pure enjoyment of the idyllic beauty preserved in genteel
country-house environments as opposed to the urban space.
In Notes sur lAngleterre, H. Taine (75) describes the countryside as nothing but green,
a land where nature provided, for instance, fields and pastures, peaceful flocks and large trees,
endless hedges. (Taine 1872: 75 qtd in Bdarida 25). Green certainly remains the colour which
astonishes town-dwellers: the landscape Charles Smithson passes through when visiting his
uncle is completely different from what the man had been used to at Winsyatt, since in the
countryside green todays flowed into green tomorrows (83). Not to mention the lane of the
Undercliff where he admires around him an infinity of greens, some almost black in the further
recesses of the foliage; from the most intense emerald to the palest pomona (102).
However, mans action upon the surrounding nature is not always felicitous, since nature
may as well be marked by the aggressive onset of black England (Bdarida 26), this time in the
sense of not being properly looked after. After making a stop at Oakbourne, where he eats his
breakfast, Adam Bede cannot help noticing the change in the landscape, and calls the tract of
country a hungry land; he finds it hard to understand how Dinah Morris can he happy in such a
place, asserting that he would rather go to live in the south, although there the land is as flat as a
table (438). The rolling woods, wide-branching trees near frequent homesteads and bushy
hedgerows are replaced by grey stone walls intersecting the meager pastures, dismal ... grey
stone-houses on broken lands where mines had been (438). In Tess of the d Urbervilles,

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together with the young women she had met at the dairy, the protagonist agrees to work on
Flintcomb-Ash, a desolate starve-acre place (360), not looked after by its owner. Yet, its
location is on a virgin landscape, unaffected by human intervention; no railway passes through it,
therefore any traveller has to set out on foot if wishing to leave it. In Under the Greenwood Tree,
through his own stubborn refusal, Farmer Shinar is completely disconnected from the customs
shared by the villagers. The farmer urges them not to make their blaring row (26) (carolsinging) in front of his house, but the crowd defies him by playing fortissimy at which the
farmer flings his arms and body in a terrific passion and utters enough invectives to consign the
whole parish to perdition (27). His refusal is even more disconcerting when taking into account
the description of the carol: an ancient and well-worn hymn, embodying Christianity in words
peculiarly befitting the simple and honest hearts of the quaint characters who sang them so
earnestly (23). His very own house seems to reflect his inhospitality: a queer lump of a house
() the upper windows were much wider than they were high and this feature, together with a
broad bay-window () gave it by day the aspect of a human countenance turned askance and
wearing a sly and wicked leer (26).
As detectable in Hardys Under the Greenwood Tree, new habits are spreading their
tentacles in the peaceful country life, shocking the denizens of a world that begins to be
threatened by outside influences. At the start of the novel, female voices singing in the church
had never happened before within the memory of man (33) causing one of the peasants to utter
full of indignation: Brazen-faced hussies (34). Although an apparently happy one, the ending
of the book announces the abrupt changes rural people will have to face. The protagonist, Fancy,
strictly forbids her father to use such ancient words as thee or thou in conversation; the
reason is they have become humiliating when addressing persons of decent taste. And this is
not all that Fancy attempts to change: the local English custom of extraordinary antiquity of
wiping ones mouth with the hand after drinking is already dying out among the upper classes
(155).
At a more intimate level, the Victorian nostalgia triggered by the countryside is analogous
to the nostalgia felt by single persons who find refuge in memory. According to de Certeau, in
Walking in the city, memories tie us to (a) place. Although an act of remembrance is
personal and not interesting to anyone else, this is what gives a neighbourhood its character, after
all. In the whole world there isnt any single place not haunted by many different spirits hidden

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there in silence, spirits one can invoke, or not (de Certeau 108). The countryside also has a
spirit of its own which hides from the urban development.
According to de Certeau, spirits offer a sort of knowledge that remains silent (108). Yet
what de Certeau means is not that it is not vocalized, since Victorians clearly expressed their
concern about the changes undergone by countryside life. As an example, a village carpenter,
victim of the slump, complained that, But for the coffins, he would starve!(Graham 1892: 38,
qtd in Bdarida

31). String players do not seem to have any better luck either, as Mail

contemplates in Under the Greenwood Tree regarding nobody can tell what interesting old
panoramas with an inward eye (22) realizing that barrel-organs have come into fashion, while
he and his companions risk being the last of the old string-players. Old Williams is overwhelmed
with woe when reflecting upon the future loss of the occupation which he has been practicing
ever since a chiel of eleven; while sharing his thoughts with the villagers some of the youthful
sparkle that used to reside there animated Williams eye. Moreover, Nature appears to confer
him an aura of saintliness, as though sympathizing with his situation, turning him into a martyr
of rural England: a certain nobility of aspect was also imparted to him by the setting sun, which
gave him a Titanic shadow at least thirty feet in length, stretching away to the east in outlines of
imposing magnitude, his head finally terminating upon the trunk of a grand old oak-tree (57).
The daily life in the British Isles before the advent of industrialism is also subtly dealt
with. Only hints of what is known but unrevealed (de Certeau 108) pass between Victorian
citizens, just as authors give their readers hints of what pre-industrialised life was like. This is
easily observable in George Eliots novel Adam Bede.
George Eliot depicts her main character as a successful artisan living in a picturesque,
idealized past. The grandson of the local landlord- Arthur Donnithorne- even regards Adam as
his future grand-vizier (147) because he becomes aware of the mans high qualities. Nothing
could be truer about Adams abilities, since he abounds in industriousness and for him, doing a
good job on every occasion is a pleasure, and a source of pride; for instance, refreshed by a long
rest, he sets out to work right away, because of his habitual impatience of mere passivity (160).
But of course, Adam Bede is set before the Victorian Age proper (it is in 1799 that the events
begin to be narrated) and the novel is a late fruit of the pre-Victorian life-style and has midVictorian nostalgia at its heart.

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As the reader himself can sense while detecting the characters numerous qualities, Adam
represents the response George Eliot gives to the industrialist workers, but also to those who are
attracted by the idea of industrialism. George Eliot manifests her nostalgia in that she brings into
focus - in the Victorian present- the artisan from the past, as in a sort of journey in time to the
period before the advent of industrialist England. A new days work entails for Adam the
possibility of using his strong arm and will in order to forget about his sorrows, for example,
subdue his sadness at his fathers loss. His credo is that man can bear anything as long as he is
still able to work, since the latter provides him with the gift of feeling as if in control of things.
This is why he believes that only people who perform no work of their own can forever be free
of that pride of asserting with self-confidence the completion of a task (chapter four). In Past
and Present, the chapter on Labour, Carlyle shares the same view on honest work as George
Eliot expresses through her main character: the sacredness of work ennobles the labourer and
endows him with hope. As Thomas Carlyle shows, it is only through labour that man can fight
against negative emotions which threaten to overcome ones future hopes.
Due to his virtuousness, Adam feels respect towards business peoples accomplishments:
he believes a mans business is similar to an acorn, which might be the mother of a great tree.
Any future plan proposed by a working man means a broadening path of prosperous work
(401). In Under the Greenwood Tree , Mrs Dewy contemplates a piece of clothing made into a
nice cut through her own strenuous efforts and a little trouble and refuses to rely on the
services of the rascally tailors (37). Because he deals with the gentry, in chapter forty-one of
The French Lieutenants Woman, John Fowles criticizes the rich as the ones who often forget the
value of money, the likes of Charles Smithson. He contrasts them with those toiling for a living
and experiencing the shock of receiving unearned money.
George Eliot stresses the role played by the country artisans in the small communities
where they live, as opposed to the industrial workers dwelling in towns and cities. She
foregrounds their accomplishments, idealizes them, since they too belong to the same class
Adam is a member of. Although their existence is not known outside the small neighbourhood
where they reside, such men live in the memory of the villagers for the contributions they
brought to a particular place. Whether they die poor or not in the end, with all their hard work
performed even on resting days, in old age they are nonetheless revered by the community, and

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after their passing away, their employers miss them terribly due to their unequalled skills. The
master who had employed them feels as though a main screw had got loose in a machine, and
consequently wonders Where shall I find their like?(259). Trying to maintain the healthy
connection with roots, the Utopian socialist Wilde defines his aesthetic movement as nothing
extravagant, since it must begin not in the scholars study or in the studio of the great artist,
but always with the handicraftsman; not surprisingly, for Wilde, such a person can only be
someone making wonders despite his mere simplicity :who works with his hands, head and
heart (Pearce 95).
In the idyllic pre-industrial world at the turn of the eighteenth century, women workers
also get their share of praise in Eliots novels: Mrs Poyser and Miss Nancy, later Mrs Godfrey,
prove to be true mistresses of the household. Likewise, in his Under the Greenwood Tree
Thomas Hardy also depicts Mrs Day as a hard-working matron.
In Adam Bede, Mrs Poyser, wife of a local farmer, takes pride in the fact that her oak
clock-case and her oak-table are polished by the hand; her genuine elbow-polish (117) is
deemed by the narrator as better than the current Victorian phrase: a varnished rubbish. Mrs
Poyser is another one of the characters in this novel by Eliot who are steeped in nostalgia. For
instance, she melancholically reflects on the days of her youth ; what springs to her memory is
her parents house, a little cottage, which did not get so easily dirty in one corner as fast as you
clean it in another, (121) as opposed to the big house in which she now resides.
With its cleanliness and beauty, Mrs Poysers farm exudes a paradisiacal atmosphere; the
chapter entitled The Dairy offers the reader a sort of oasis in which to indulge in his or her
imagination. The dairy has an incredible air of coolness, purity, a fresh fragrance of newpressed cheese, firm butter, wooden vessels perpetually bathed in pure water; one is enraptured
by the objects present in the dairy, as they appear to build a sort of painting: red, cream, brown,
grey and orange-red , all soft colouring of red earthenware and creamy surfaces, brown wood
and polished tin, grey limestone and rich orange-red rust on the iron weights and hooks and
hinges. As noted by the narrator, the scene is something to long for when considering the hot
and dusty streets (127) with which the typical Victorian must already be accustomed. The
French Lieutenants Woman also contributes with the description of Charles warm welcome at
the dairy where he stops to have a bowl of milk. The dairy is composed of a slant-roofed room

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that ran the length of the rear of the cottage which, though dark and shadowy, is very
cool and heavy with the smell of ripening cheese; the cheeses sit roundly, like squadrons of
reserve moons, on the open rafters; and what lies under them is a line of scalding bowls, great
copper pans on wooden trestles, each with its golden crust of cream. It is only when noticing the
objects inside the dairy that Charles actually remembers having heard of the place, for it has
established itself a reputation for its products. The milk glances at him with a smile from a
simple blue-and-white china bowl (36).
When she prepares supper, Mrs Poyser first decks the table with a proper cloth. Not one
with which the Victorian is so accustomed, a bleached shop-rag which, due to its poor quality,
will make holes in no time, but a cloth made of home-spun linen, with a shining checkered
pattern on it, and of an agreeable whitey- brown hue (270) which lasts even for two generations,
and which housewives are proud to use. When Adam goes to Bartle Massey, a teacher who keeps
evening classes for working-men, the latter offers his guest, who is by far the most conscientious
of his students, a home-baked loaf. This was actually an extravagance for the villagers who were
accustomed to eat oat-cake. Bartle Masseys home, just like the Poysers, reflects the
industriousness and aspiration for cleanliness of its inhabitants; everything is spotlessly cleanthe table on which the teacher places the loaf, cheese and jug, the quarry floor, and the same goes
for all the furniture- the oaken press, table, chairs. The objects Massey has are completely free of
dust, yet modest, since he had bought them at a small price. The author makes it clear that he
belongs to the age when spider-legs and inlaid cupids (285) were the norm, whereas in the
Victorian age they would mean a fortune.
In Under the Greenwood Tree, Mrs Day is a true matron of her house as well: at the
midday-meal, she shows up with a box of bright steel horn-handled knives, silver forks, carver,
all wiped of the preservative of oil which coated them. The used cutlery is immediately tossed
away, but the woman never seems to get tired of her duties: no sooner does she vanish with the
teapot, cups and saucers, than she re-appears with a tea-service in white china, and a packet
wrapped in brown paper; this is removed, together with folds of tissue-paper underneath, so that
a brilliant silver teapot can reappear (79). The Days are advanced in their housewifery (81):
they always use kettle-holders when removing kettles so as not to soil their hands. Fancy herself
teaches Dick the unwritten rules of her house: after a thorough wash in the basin to remove the

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soot off his hands, he must carefully take a towel from a box, without touching the towels on top
which are all Starched and Ironed (82).
In Silas Marner, although very young, Miss Nancy exudes an aura of purity around her,
which is reflected in her impeccable physical aspect: not a crease was where it had no business
to be, not a bit of her linen professed whiteness without fulfilling its profession; the very pins on
her pincushion were stuck in after a pattern from which she was careful to allow no aberration.
Not to mention the labour she fulfils in spite of being higher in rank than a farmers wife and
having the possibility to avoid activities that make her hands bear the traces of butter-making,
cheese-crushing, and even still coarser work (113). As revealed in chapter eleven, Miss Nancy
is utterly devoid of self-consciousness regarding her toil, and therefore, work seems to fill her
very discussions: she tells her aunt about the way she prepared their departure home by baking
meat pies and packing boxes. After becoming Mrs Godfrey, she does not allow any dust to settle
on the furniture in The Red House.
The Victorians were aware of the countryside, especially as it presented a stable and
rigid hierarchy with very little mobility indeed (Bdarida 27). Because the highly capitalist
agriculture (in the countryside) developed ... within the framework of an earlier structure,
(namely) the feudal and aristocratic system, the hierarchy was as follows: the landed
capitalists, the soil owners, at the top of the pyramid, the farmers in the centre of the hierarchy,
and the hired farm-workers at the bottom of the social scale (Bdarida 27-28). These three
levels of the social hierarchy faithfully reproduce the fundamental division of English society
into three classes: aristocracy, middle class and manual workers (Bdarida 29).
In Adam Bede, when receiving Captain Donnithorne and Mr Irwine, Mrs Poyser is torn
between anger towards Dinah for her preaching and the anxiety she feels towards her guests. She
knows that she should behave with utmost civility in the case of such a visit. The narrator adds
how the bucolic minds (124) were usually filled with respect at the sight of the gentry, in the
same manner as ancient people were filled with awe when beholding the gods carved in human
shape passing before them.
Having the blood of a peasant in his veins, and therefore a bucolic mind, Adam Bede still
has an impulse of respectful behaviour towards the gentlemen. Though he notices how badly the

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affairs are run by the landlord, he still feels towards the gentry a sort of respect that would
impede him from being impudent in his veracity. The narrator provides an excuse for Adams
obsolete demeanour, by reminding the reader that these events took place at the beginning of the
century.
For de Certeau, places are fragmentary and inward-turning histories, pasts that others are
not allowed to read, accumulated times that can be unfolded but like stories held in reserve
(108). The once unspoiled rural countryside is held in reserve and waiting an act of
remembrance on the part of the (either direct or indirect) observer, just to be brought again to
life. Concerning the effect wrought by ones imagination on a certain transformed place, ones
subjectivity is already linked to the absence that structures the countryside as existence and
thus makes it be there (de Certeau 109). Literature fulfils this role, of evoking what fills the
absence.
In chapter twenty-seven, Adam strides along to bring Seth his basket with tools and
enjoys the magnificent effect of light produced by the sun. It throws its crimson rays upon the
ground, making the bare patches appear like jewels. Although not watching how the rays change
their colour, Adam still feels their presence in an awe combined with the thoughts concerning his
work. Even the animals are not free from the power of this light, and are overwhelmed with
shyness upon sensing it. In the woods, Adam delights in looking at trees, just as a fisherman
would do when glancing at the sea. Being a carpenter, the man feels very connected with the
trees, and somehow manages to keep them in his memory, like a painter, registering their every
physical detail.
During harvesting time, Adam overhears the song typical of the season and admires the
shining sun which metamorphoses the landscape upon which it throws its rays: the sheep are
turned into bright spots of light, the windows of the cottage appear as though set on fire, shining
like precious stones. Adam feels as if in a great temple of nature, and as if the chant he hears in
the distance were a sacred song (559). This makes him think about the changes occurring in
mans life and the difficulty of accepting the evanescence of the human condition. In accordance
with his thoughts, the song seems to him a funeral-bell, which should come as no surprise, since
his past joys are already dead.

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Because de Certeau directs attention to the fact that this being there acts only in spatial
practices, in the ways of moving into something different (manires de passer lautre) and
focuses on remembrance (people start remembering places by thinking or speaking There used
to be), he initiates a process by which fragments of the past places come out in legends
(109). In chapter twenty-one, Silas Marner is so astonished at discovering how much his
hometown had changed in thirty years that he has to ask several people to know for sure whether
he has arrived at the right place.
De Certeau then provides an admirable description of places: they are where the past
sleeps, as in the everyday acts of walking, eating, going to bed, in which ancient revolutions
slumber. One of his striking observations is that the places people live in are like the presences
of diverse absences, since what can be seen designates what is no longer there: You see here
used to be a lovely (or uninteresting) plain, but it can no longer be seen (de Certeau, 108).
The same goes for Silas, who realizes that a factory had taken the place of a chapel he knew
well; the astonished man can only utter: its all gone! (214). Memory is compared to a Prince
Charming who stays just long enough to awaken the Sleeping Beauties of our wordless stories
(de Certeau, 108). In Silas Marner, Mr Dowlas is eager to keep the idea of a haunted place alive;
when the groups discussion is interrupted by Silas bad news, the others are well pleased that
the reality of ghosts remained still an open question (70).
Memory itself may be a ghost which people want to keep real in their (and others)
minds and imagination as much as they can. The fact that an object or region can be brought to
life through an act of remembrance as signalled by de Certeau can be clearly seen in Gerard
Manley Hopkinss poem Binsey Poplars. The trees are already felled by man, no longer
present in the landscape, and therefore those who arrive after the felling cannot possibly be
aware of their beauty. The only one aware of the beauty of a sweet especial rural scene (line
22) is the observer who had also been witness to the felling of the poplars. He is the most capable
to bemoan their loss, and at the same time to revive their being there in his own mind.
In The Return of the Native, Clym develops the habit of walking the heath alone, while
thinking heavily about his past. In those moments his imagination grows as wild as to imagine
the ancient inhabitants of the heath; the dead of the past are brought back to life due to the power

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of his imagination. What the tribes achieved in comparison to the present inhabitants of the heath
leads Clym to ponder, just as Adam, about the evanescence of the human condition.
However, an act of remembrance can be performed not only by a single individual, but
also by an entire community. In The Return of the Native, reminiscing is done collectively, by the
inhabitants of the heath. The custom of building bonfires is depicted in all its glory as a rural
unadulterated celebration. While the villagers busy themselves with building the bonfires on
Egdon Heath, they are not alone in their struggle, since other villagers also contribute so as to
make sure that the bonfires of other parishes and hamlets are engaged in the same sort of
commemoration. Some are distant, others very near, glowing scarlet-red ... like wounds in a
black hide (19), others glow as savagely as the ancient women venerating Dionysus, the
Maenades. The celebration seems as though it transports the participants into the past ages. The
villagers apply the same traditions laid down from father to son, so that the making of bonfires
has survived the battle against the passage of time. These bonfires were present at the festivals
dedicated to the pagan gods Thor or Woden to mark the onset of winter, in the case of AngloSaxons, but were also built up by the Celts. As for the Christians, they celebrate the Catholic
conspirator, Guy Fawkes, in remembrance of the Gunpowder Plot, yet their faith blends itself
with Pagan superstitions. Just as Guy Fawkes action was one of rebellion against the
discrimination of Roman Catholics in England, so are the villages revolting against the approach
of winter, which will bring with it foul times, cold darkness, misery, and death (21). In Under
the Greenwood Tree, the dancers greet the time of night which marks a further phrase of rural
revelry: when peoples nostrils, wrinkles, and crevices in general, seem to be getting
grotesque proportions; when both fiddlers and dancers enter the cadaverous phase, by
forgetting all about measure and bashfulness, lured by the vivacious music; the latter is assured
when the fiddlers no longer sit down, but kick back their chairs and saw madly at the strings,
with legs firmly spread and eyes closed, regardless of the visible world (42). This attitude
towards the past is so radically different from George Eliots precisely because it stems from
Hardys nostalgia which almost veers on masochism. In order to make his point clear and
provide shocking contrasts with the present, Hardy brings the past into focus. Thus, his writings
are dominated by the category of the grotesque rather than by the mildly nostalgic poetry and
sense of longing for the past in the mid-Victorian novels by George Eliot.

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And how could the English countryside not be brought back to life, as long as the ageold traditions of rural civilization were so solidly entrenched in habits of thought and in social
relations?. This can be seen in the prime source of authority, prestige and influence, which
remained, despite the powerful intrusion of commercial and manufacturing capitalism, the
ownership of land. The old idea, dating from the origins of agrarian society was still that land
was a fundamental asset (Bdarida 25-26). Not only was the concept of power strongly
correlated with land ownership, but also labour on the land was thought to be endowed with
virtues and continued to symbolize labour in its purest form (Bdarida, 26).
In chapter twenty, when paying a visit to the Poysers farm, Adam is offered a drink of
whey. Mrs Poyser tells him about the compliments paid to her by the gentry- Mrs Irwine-, who
admire the farmhouse without taking into account how much work is invested in it. Adam
confidently asserts that the woman would not choose any other place to live in except the
farmhouse she already inhabits; he reminds her how there cannot be anything pleasanter than to
see a cow giving milk, kneeling on the pasture while new milk froths in the pail and the fresh
butter is ready to be transported to the market for sail, not to mention the other animals on the
farm, such as the calves and the poultry. Adam blesses her, wishing that the woman should have
the strength to continue her toil and give a fine example for all the other farmers wives.
Although not the type of woman who smiles while receiving compliments, her blue-grey eyes
acquire a milder glance than usual as she watches her guest drink the whey offered to him.
In perfecting himself through work, man even establishes a connection to Nature, which
ultimately leads to truth. Given the archetypal link between man and nature, the latter bears an
undeniable connection to human emotions in both Silas Marner and Under the Greenwood Tree.
This connection is established when one organizes his activities according to the seasons of the
year. In Silas Marner the wedding in Raveloe only takes place when the great lilacs and
laburnums in the old-fashioned gardens showed their golden and purple wealth above the lichentinted walls, and when there were calves still young enough to want bucketfuls of fragrant milk
(219) so that the villagers are not so busy with their work and the bride can wear without
difficulty a light dress. In Under the Greenwood Tree, feeling happy because his feelings are
reciprocated and journeying with his mare, Dick watches the damp slopes of the hill-sides as
they steamed in the warmth of the sun, which at this unsettled season shone on the grass with the
freshness of an occasional inspector rather than as an accustomed proprietor (72). Fancy and

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Dick feel their love for one another has increased when flowers burdened with drops of water
either change their colour or hang like small silver fruit on twigs, the threads of garden spiders
are thick and polished, and dozens of long-legged crane-flies whizzed off the grass at every
step the passer took (102). Male passion has grown just as powerful and the female one just as
fresh. Moreover, Fancy is accompanied by the powers of Nature whenever in deep affliction:
when her father refuses to have her wedded with her sweetheart, and she is compelled to use the
services of the villages witch (Elizabeth Endorfield), a single vast cloud covers the country,
trees look like miserable men, their trunks are rocked in such a manner by the fiercer gusts
that they distress the mind by its painful unwontedness, as when a strong man is seen to shed
tears(124). When the vicar proposes to Fancy it is a foggy morning, the trees shed in noisy
water-drops the moisture they had collected from the thick air, while in the heath, sheets of
spiders-web, almost opaque with wet, hung in folds over the furze-bushes (139). This
demonstrates that the archetypal link, by synchronization between man and nature, is one
compound of nostalgia.
This does not mean, however, that nature is always perceptive at mans emotions. The
contrary attitude to nature is observable in Thomas Hardys pessimistic writing, for example. If
we continue along the archetypal line, we may apply an image of Biblical origin as suggested in
Professor Ioana Zirras undergraduate lectures introducing the Victorian age. Hardy, just as
Emily Bront, makes his characters fall from heaven, which means that they are turned out of
paradise and sent on a journey towards an undesirable end. This journey takes place more often
than not in hellish surroundings, where the darker side of nature is brought into focus.
Tess of the dUrbervilles is by far the most complex regarding natures response to human
suffering. While still a maiden and living with her family (one could say before the encounter
with the serpent in the person of Alec, a sham d Urberville), Tess admires the village of her
birth due to its paradisiacal beauty. The village of Marlott seems to reside in a fertile and
sheltered tract of the country, a paradisiacal space, since the fields are never brown and the
springs never dry ( 48). In the Vale of Blackmoor, the world seems to be constructed upon a
smaller scale; although the arable lands are few, any traveller cannot help noticing the greenness
of the landscape and the azure of the sky. Traces of the vales earlier condition - that of being
densely wooded - may still be noticed. The place which Tess reaches after her great misfortune

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because of Alec and after deciding upon a new course of life is the Valley of Great Dairies, where
milk and dairy are produced more profusely, if less delicately, than at her home (156).
Although the new place is not as luxuriantly beautiful as the Blackmoor Vale, lacking the
intensely blue atmosphere, its heavy soils and scents and the verdant plain are abundantly
watered by the river. But the new air is clear, ethereal, while the Fromm waters are so limpid
that they bear resemblance to the River of Life shown to the Evangelist (156-157). Tess cannot
help admiring the vivid green moss of the slopes, the eaves supported by wooden posts rubbed
to a glassy smoothness by the numberless flanks of cows and calves of the bygone years (159).
In The Return of the Native, the characters perceive the heath differently according to
their own life perceptions. For Eustacia, Egdon Heath is a cruel taskmaster, while for Clym it
remains the most exhilarating, strengthening and soothing (place in the world) (183). The
woman hardly manages to get used to life in the wilderness and seems uninterested in the
remnants left there by the ancient peoples; she is unaware of the Druidical stone nearby, but very
informed about what happens outside of the heath, in the towns (for example a parade at
Budsmouth). Clym remembers his own longing for the urban bustle, yet, from his own
experience, knows that five years spent in a European capital provide a cure for such a longing.
So Clym yields to nostalgia for the (remotest) past, while Eustacia is consumed and disturbed by
her longing for the future materialized as an opportunity and typified by the great cities of the
day (Paris, for instance). Upon leaving her home and also prior to her death, Eustacia encounters
a malevolent nature: the gloom of the night is funereal, nature seems to be completely covered in
crape, the points of the fir-trees rise in the sky like the turrets and pinnacles of an abbey (340).
The night appears to announce an imminent disaster, driving the viewers imagination towards
nocturnal scenes of disaster in the chronicles of the world on everything that is terrible and
dark in the history and legend of mankind: the last plague of Egypt, the destruction of
Sennacheribs host, the agony in Gethsemane (340). By contrast, Thomasin is more realistic in
her approach towards nature because she is integrated in the life on the heath. She does not regret
her decision of starting out with her baby-daughter on a pouring rain; her imagination does not
get hold of her: there are no demons in the air, nothing malevolent in every bush and bough
(349), the drops of rain lashing on her face are not scorpions. Finally, Egdon Heath is no
monster, just an open ground. The heath is simply wet and windy, and the only great discomfort
for a person would be getting lost and catching a cold.

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If the feelings towards nature depend on the perceptions of individual characters in

fiction, in Thomas Arnolds Dover Beach one encounters the forlornness of the modern human
race, as well as nostalgia for an age of innocence. This age of innocence concerns the presence of
a true and strong faith. The lyrical persona in Dover Beach remarks sadly how there was once
a sea of faith surrounding the earths shore, and therefore implies the universality of faith, the
sense of belonging among everyone on earth. Nature not only senses the human sadness
connected to the fate of humanity, but also reacts to it. The echo of human misery is brought to
the hearers ears with the help of nature. The only escape offered is a return to love and
truthfulness. Arnold points out that nature may be awaiting mans action, since in itself it is
devoid of feelings or convictions, just like, according to de Certeau (2002), any place awaits an
act of remembrance from the part of the observer: Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, /
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain (lines 33-34).
However, there is no room for nostalgia when great faith is invested in Victorian
progress. The speaker in Locksley Hall praises the achievements of the wondrous MotherAge, but is also looking forward to the developments occurring in the following years. The age
provides its denizens with heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, / Pilots of the
purple twilight dropping down with costly bales (121-122).
Victorian authors each react differently to the changes occurring in the society and the
environment. Thus, Eliot expresses nostalgia for pre-Victorian times, Hardy evinces a tragic
approach in making his characters encounter hellish surroundings, while Tennyson praises the
Victorian achievements and does not stress the negative impact on nature. Besides making his
characters fall from heaven, Hardy manifests an ethnographic interest, not only from a literary
point of view, but also as part of his mentality. In the twentieth century, John Fowles illustrates
through his depictions in The French Lieutenants Woman a pure enjoyment of idyllic
landscapes. Bdarida is concerned with the impact of machinery upon the countryside and its
residents, as well as in the few persisting traditions, while de Certeau offers a fascinating view on
the act of remembrance. In the present chapter the literary texts were crucial to my research,
since they provided in numerous scenes a return to the past through the characters acts of
remembrance as well as an enjoyment of nature as opposed to the urban space.

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According to George Eliot, in Adam Bede, the joyfulness of riding on our fathers back in
childhood is eventually forgotten, but still remains wrought up in our nature, just as the light of
long-past mornings is wrought up in the soft mellowness of the apricot (266). By the same
token, the nostalgia experienced by Victorians (and by us today, for that matter) seems to be
inexorably wrought up in our nature. The only remnant of the past ages lies in our capacity to
simply believe in a much better past as opposed to the present, but also in our desire to awaken
the Sleeping Beauty of the various places we encounter. During our daily habits, even without
realizing, we are summoning the spirits lying dormant in various places, which might help us in
picturing how the past might have been.

Chapter Four : Victorian Religious Life

In Modern Fiction, while focusing upon the fiction produced in England, Virginia
Woolf expresses her admiration for Russian writers, confessing that what she discerns in every
one of them are the features of a saint. Although a bit far-off at first sight, Woolfs assertion is
immediately explained; by saintliness, Woolf actually means the following characteristics which
she identifies in Russian writers: sympathy for the sufferings of others, love towards them,
endeavour to reach some goal, worthy of the most exciting demands of the spirit, while the
Russian mind succeeds in being comprehensive and compassionate. And it is precisely this
saintliness which presumably confounds English writers with the feeling of their own religious
triviality (McNeille 1984). These assumptions sparkled my interest in determining the function

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of religion in British society. This is why I will try to point out what the Victorian response to
religion was and try to identify its possible causes.
If in literature Woolf makes a distinction between Russian and British writers regarding
their interest in spirituality, in sociology and social history, there is a debate concerning the
power of religiousness in the Victorian Age. In the analysis of religion during the Victorian
period, I have grouped the Victorian literary documents which have connection with religion in
accordance with a number of models provided by twentieth-century theorists, namely Furseth &
Repstads An Introduction to the Sociology of Religion, along with Sally Mitchells Daily Life in
Victorian England, Franois Bdaridas A Social History of England 1851-1990 and J.F.C
Harrisons Early Victorian Britain 1832-1851. I have noticed what common points and what
differences there are between the literary sources, sermons, and theological debates of the
Victorian Age, on the one hand, and the twentieth-century meditations on the same subject. I will
present the prejudices about Victorians related to their religious life and counteract them with
evidence found in literary texts and in sociological sources. First I will present an outline of the
main religious groups in England, then explain the phenomenon of religion from a sociological
perspective, and illustrate the ideas at every pace with fiction.
In Early Victorian Britain 1832-1851, J.F.C Harrison expresses the opinion that the
Victorian Age was essentially a religious one, though he hesitates to compare it with the earlier
or succeeding ages (Harrison 1988). According to Bdarida, the nineteenth century is rendered
incomprehensible if one fails to take into consideration both the power and the presence of
the Bible and the respect enjoyed by certain religious communities (Bdarida 86).
As marked by Furseth & Repstad (2006), religious communities were regarded as carriers
of certain values, spiritual ones, yet still values, which were supposed to offer support in society,
and this especially during times of crisis. The English shared the conviction that Christianity
really built the moral cement of the country and this could be viewed in their general
acceptance of the idea of Gods will and the basic principles of Christian morality (Bdarida
87).
The supreme textbook of all education was Holy Writ, and its role was to initiate the
young both to culture and the Christian faith. Almost everything which was linked to the Bible,

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and, by implication, to religion, constituted, as Bdarida explains, a mental landscape in the

middle of which Bible characters walked about, as familiar as the inhabitants of the next street or
the next village. The ubiquity of religion was made visible not only through the established
Church and the sovereign (whose official person combined the functions of Head of the Church
of England and Defender of the Faith), but through a thousand details which constantly
reminded people of the Christian character of their country (Bdarida 86).
However, as stated by Bdarida, the problem about religion in the Victorian era lies in
establishing which religion one is talking about, and to what extent Christianity manifested itself
beyond mere appearances. Even though almost everything was connected to Holy Writ, it is
uncertain whether the Christian landscape existed at an individual level, as well (Bdarida
1994). In order to answer this question, I have chosen to take into consideration the organized
churches and personal religious feeling.
Mitchells Daily Life in Victorian England offers an overview of the main religious
denominations in the British Isles. According to Mitchell, the English generally professed some
variety of Protestant Christianity. The established Church was Anglican and all the Anglican
Churches throughout the Empire were members of the Anglican Communion. The Sovereign was
the Head of the Church while the Parliament had final authority in matters of doctrine. Mitchell
also explains that the Church was supported through a complicated system of tithes from the
produce of landed estates, with each parish having its own income. Financial support switched
from agriculture to congregations, because agriculture itself gradually lost its importance, with
the property owners paying a tax to keep up the parish church (Mitchell 2009).
The factions within the Church of England had differing approaches to theological and
social questions. While the evangelical party (often called the Low Church) stressed personal
piety, conversion, individual Bible reading and a serious Christian life, the High Church and its
Anglo-Catholic faction emphasized tradition, the sacraments and priestly authority. Mitchell also
explained that, as opposed to the evangelicals who stressed individual conversion and the high
churchmen who emphasized the sacraments, the third faction (namely the broad church) had no
religious center of belief. Evangelicals viewed Christianity as demanding personal morality,
social reform and charity. They laid a strong emphasis on private reading of the Scriptures than
on church attendance, and, as a consequence, aggressively promoted, among others, literacy and

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Sunday schools. Among the Victorians who came from Evangelical families were George Eliot,
the Bront sisters, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the Prime Minister Gladstone.
The broad church can be described as quite flexible. This feature is reflected in the
attitude manifested by its members, who tended to be fairly liberal, committed to social reform,
and interested in intellectual and scientific inquiry. One of its advantages is that its members
wanted to keep the Church of England open enough to appeal to anyone who accepted basic
Christian beliefs (Mitchell 2009). The flexibility of the broad church should come as no surprise,
since, as outlined by the German theologian Ernst Troeltsch, the Church both wants to control
the world and is controlled by the world (Furseth & Repstad, 134). In The Social Teachings of
the Christian Churches, Troeltsch highlights the paradox of the Church. He describes it as a
highly respected institution, which claims unconditional validity but which needs to perpetually
adapt so as to keep pace with the changes occurring in society; therefore it lacks the rigidity one
usually attributes to it. Since new generations are born into the church, it adapts to some extent to
the fact that it must embrace everyone, and becomes more tolerant. It may change its intention of
controlling society, ending up compromising with the prevailing culture and political sphere.
This might have occurred in the broad church during the Victorian Age.
As explained by Grace Davie, in Religion in modern Europe (2000), the position of the
church remained important. It counted as an asset in the eyes of Victorians, but avoided being
intrusive. It offered support to citizens in times of crisis, but this does not entail that the majority
of population had firm religious conviction (Furseth & Repstad 2006).
Besides the Church of England there were Protestants of other denominations who did
not assent to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Faith that formalized Englands separation from the
Church of Rome in 1562. This group was known under the umbrella term of Dissenters or
Nonconformists but actually comprised many denominations, primarily Methodists, Baptists,
Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Unitarians and Quakers. The Christians who shared this
attitude were very diverse, both from a social and a theological point of view. They were referred
to as either old dissent or new dissent; those belonging to the first group (old dissent) had roots
leading back to the Protestant Reformation, and included Congregationalists, Presbyterians,
Baptists and Quakers. As for the new dissent, it arose during the 18th century and its most
influential groups were the Methodists and the Unitarians. Bdarida registers their notable

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advance in the last years of the nineteenth century which prompted one to describe the second
half of the nineteenth century as the golden age of Nonconformism (87). Their struggle for
emancipation showed itself fruitful in the end, since they managed to control church rates, were
admitted to universities and granted the right to be buried in public cemeteries. An example of
the popularity which Methodism began to gain even before the Victorian Age is illustrated in
Adam Bede by Dinah Morris. She represents the fervent Christian who enchants people through
her preaching: she does not fulfil the typical Methodist traits as she is neither ecstatic nor
bilious, instead she behaves naturally, as if she were going to the market. Her overall
behaviour when about to preach reflects her maturity of spirit, her conscientious effort to fulfil
her duty as a preacher, despite her age and appearance: there was no blush, no tremulousness,
which said I know you think me a pretty woman, too young to preach(66).
Mitchell (2009) makes it clear that Christians were animated by a spirit of reform,
reflected in their wish to improve the Victorian society. This led to the social reforms triggered
by Evangelicals. They engaged themselves in various activities with the purpose of regenerating
society. They linked the decadence of the society with sin, which was regarded as a consequence
of harsh conditions which made people abandon the right path. In order to prevent people from
falling prey to despair and crime, Evangelicals thought they should improve the citizens living
conditions.
Since the high church needed to be reformed, a religious revival ensued, called the
Oxford Movement. It began by returning to some forgotten religious practices. For the first time
since the Protestant Reformation, daily services of morning and evening prayer returned to some
churches. Sally Mitchell mentions that in high church parishes, Sunday services grew more
solemn, altars were decorated, vestments richly embroidered and buildings restored to their
Gothic splendour. This movement was to be the last of the great religious awakenings, since no
revival after mid-century could equalize its rigor (Bdarida 1994). To improve the church
clergymen wrote a series of Tracts of the Times. The first Tract, written by John Henry Newman,
reaffirmed that the priests authority derived from his ordination by a bishop, and by that act each
clergyman took up his place in a direct line that could be traced back to the apostles. (Mitchell
2009).

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In Apologia pro Vita Sua, in the chapter Notes on Liberalism, Newman is passionate
about his faith and emphasizes the false conceptions surrounding liberalism. He openly criticizes
it as a false liberty of thought (288), which can obviously lead only to dreadful results.
Newman opposes the understanding of religion from an average, rationalistic point of view and
explains that if one believes only the understandable, there cannot be any mysteries in true
religion. He adds that if a theological doctrine only represents an opinion which happens to be
held by bodies of men, no creed can be necessary for salvation (294). Furthermore, if there
is no existing authority on earth competent to interfere with the liberty of individuals in
reasoning and judging for themselves about the Bible and its contents, the result is that all
religious establishments requiring subscription are anti-Christian. If every one may lawfully
advance a claim to profess and teach what is false and wrong () provided that to his private
conscience it seems absolutely true and right, then human beings may as well indulge in great
sins as well as good deeds (295). Newman deems the Civil Power as unjust in its influence upon
the Church: it has no ecclesiastical jurisdiction and administration or to manage the property of
the Church, and here the cardinal brings up Henry VIII as having sinned against the Church
through his spoliations. To such a statement as Virtue is the child of knowledge, and vice of
ignorance, Newman makes the inference that development (as viewed, for instance, in
education, periodical literature, railroad travelling, ventilation, drainage, and the arts of life) is
the key to assuring the morality and happiness of a nation (296). (2007, ch. 14)
In The Tamworth Reading Room, Newman pleads for including religious books in
libraries, along with scientific ones. He stresses that, for all their knowledge, books of science
will never provide the spiritual support needed by men in their lives. One of his most powerful
statements is that a broken heart can only be healed by religion, while everything else fails. The
objects of heathen beliefs (among which glory, science, knowledge) never healed a broken
heart, nor changed a sinful one; knowledge does not necessarily entail power and glory is
dismissed as being overrated. By contrast, the Divine Word, or Grace is a renovating principle,
since it brings about only positive changes: it creates the individuals anew, integrates them into
a social body, cleanses man of his moral diseases, endows him with hope and energy,
introduces a new force into the world by encouraging man to propagate brotherhood among his
fellows, found families or kingdoms of saint upon the earth (270-271). Glory and knowledge
are incapable of having such positive effects, let alone perform miracles. Another one of

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Newmans powerful statements in The Tamworth Reading Room is that a stream cannot rise
higher than its source (272), a fact which applies not only in physical laws, but also in morality.
Christianity raises men from earth because it comes from heaven, whereas the Knowledge
School does not envisage such a feat. Instead it focuses only on using mans powers, and leaves
him to creep, strut and fret on the earths surface (272). To put it in another way, if man is not
elevated to a higher level of existence, he retains his status of sinner, while he could just as well
be turned into an angel (2007, ch.3).
Moving on to a sociological perspective on religion, the key question is why people
become religious. In An Introduction to the Sociology of Religion, Furseth and Repstad focus
among others, on the deprivation theory, socialization theory and rational choice theory.
In the first case, religious commitment is seen as the result of the compensation that
religion provides in situations when individuals meet obstacles in life and search for alternative
goals. In this way, religion is seen as a source of comfort and is a reaction to injustice and
misery. A key notion of the deprivation theory is that people meeting obstacles in unsatisfactory
conditions will search for alternative goals as compensation and religion as a phenomenon does
offer such compensation. Yet this theory is not entirely reliable, since other issue might arise, for
example the lack of an adequate explanation why some deprived people turn to religion whereas
others fail to do so. Victorian fiction proves this, for example in Charlotte Bronts Jane Eyre.
Despite having experienced enough discontent in life to make other people turn to
religion as a way of consolation, Edward Rochester seems untroubled by religious thought. What
is more, he does not show respect to either religious ceremonies or religious institutions: he
swears at his own wedding, shocking the priest who performs the ceremony. However, he does
consider at one point a transformation of his rough character, as he confesses to Jane: Does that
leave hope of my final re-transformation from Indian-rubber back to flesh?(132). The one who
kindles these changes in his heart is Jane Eyre. The young woman acquires a special status for
Rochester, she becomes a sort of god for him.
Insofar as socialization theory is concerned, there is a higher tendency for people to get
religiously involved if they had a religious education. Socialization is a process by which any
individual commits himself or herself to specific norms and world-views, in this case religious

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ones. Furseth & Repstad further explain how socialization works. This process might be primary,
in which it occurs during the first years of a childs life; the child develops from an instinctual
being to a competent and disciplined social actor who has learnt to take the expectations of
others under consideration. In other words, he learns a relatively controlled behaviour, that of
giving and receiving trust. This phenomenon takes place in small groups where members know
each other well; at the same time, the relationships among them, however close, are not
necessarily free of conflicts. The most important vehicle of socialization which can stimulate a
religious attitude is the family. Therefore, religious parents present a far greater chance of having
religious children, yet even to this rule there are exceptions, since the human being is
unpredictable. There are children who, despite living in a religious family, refuse to accept their
parents views. For instance, Angel Clare in Thomas Hardys Tess of the dUrbervilles. Although
his parents are religious, he embraces a way of thinking devoid of religious affiliation. This may
also be a result of the strict religious upbringing he must have received. His father, although
kind-hearted, is something of a bigot, which suggests that Angel might have been subjected to
punishments as part of his upbringing.
Furseth and Repstad define these punishments as negative sanctions and warn against
their result. These sanctions may not lead to the desired behaviour (in Angels case, faith in God)
but to rebellion and defiance. A strict approach to religion also fails in case of people who tend to
disregard tradition in favour of a more liberal attitude. Angel is such a person, and in the end his
fathers teaching proves disastrous: Angel abandons religion. Nevertheless, he does prove to be
traditional and conformist in the manner he reacts to his wifes confession on their wedding
night. The young man idealizes Tess instead of perceiving her as nothing more than a human
being with both qualities and faults. Therefore he is shocked at hearing her past misfortune. He
complies with the same mentality of his forefathers and therefore can only see a fallen woman
as mad and sickening from the day of her fall ( Morgan 78).
Clergymen also commit the mistake of adopting a strict and fundamental approach.
Charlotte Bronts Jane Eyre offers such an example in the figure of Mr Brocklehurst. Upon
visiting the Reeds house, he fails to impress the small Jane due to his wrong approach. In his
narrow-mindedness he almost demonizes Jane: he considers her a child with a wicked ... heart
of stone (33) and takes for granted Mrs Reeds criticism concerning Jane. The strictness with

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which he applies his principles becomes even more relevant at Lowood; he is so scrupulous
about applying his orders, that even the staff working at the institution regard his claims as
ridiculous.
Returning to socialization theory, starting up a profession often means disrupting ones
religious life. Upon reaching adulthood, people tend to forget about their faith or lose
connections with their religious communities despite having been religious as children or
teenagers. In Early Victorian Britain 1832-1851, Horace Mann states how labouring men became
almost utter strangers to their own beliefs as though belonging to a heathen country (Mann,
qtd. in Harrisson 124). In Thomas Hardys Far from the Madding Crowd Bathsheba Everdene
fully dedicates her life to her business, in contrast with Gabriel Oak, who manages to
harmoniously combine his work with religious practice. After experiencing marital difficulties,
she is in a desperate state of mind and visits Gabriels cottage. There she is taken aback by the
mans tranquility of spirit. She is lulled and fascinated by the atmosphere of content which
seemed to spread from that little dwelling. The moment Gabriel kneels down to pray represents
a contrast with her rebellious and agitated existence (356). This pleasant atmosphere contrast
with her home, which cannot guarantee peacefulness despite its material richness.
Another theory is that of rational choice. As stated by Stark and Bainbridge (1987 in
Furseth & Repstad 2006), religious movements offering the most convincing promises of eternal
life will consequently win the greatest amount of adherents. Taken from this perspective, any
religious citizen reading Swinburnes "Hymn to Proserpine should not be shocked at the lyrical
personas denunciation of the pale Galilean (line 35). In Swinburnes poem the lyrical persona
does not rejoice at the spectacle of the new gods being reinstated, simply because it considers the
old gods as being truly worthy of praise. Although the new gods are merciful, clothed with pity
(line 16), their new device seems barren (17). This persona further draws a comparison
between Proserpine and the Virgin Mary: the heathen goddess is viewed as a blossom of
flowering seas, / Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and fair as the foam, /
And fleeter than kindled fire (78-80), who came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and
imperial, (86) while the Christian one is looked down upon as a sister to sorrow (81), who
was defeated and therefore came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected (85). It is only
understandable that one chooses to invest his faith in supernatural beings which are never

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humiliated or defeated, but instead retain an aura of might and indestructibility. By the same
token, in Hardys Jude the Obscure, Jude Fawley should not regard his cousins beliefs as
unacceptable, since human nature is prone to invest hope in anything reliable.
However, this theory has its drawbacks. Since it argues that the use and management of
resources by providers of religion makes a difference, the theory acquires a mercantile aura, and
hence becomes rather limited. It seems to apply better in relation to selling and buying than in
connection with individual religious life.
Other views about religion concentrate on the feelings of awe it triggers in people. British
anthropologist Edward Tylor (1903 in Furseth & Repstad 2006) conceives of religion as a result
of mans curiosity (an inquiry into what he cannot grasp). Hence, people may turn to religion
because they may attempt to explain the unexplainable in their lives, for instance, dreams,
visions, unconsciousness and death.
People may be attracted to religion because they are simply fascinated by what is little
known or what is not permitted to the layman. When providing a definition for religion, mile
Durkheim points out that the word religion implies things which stand apart from the rest of
objects and are unapproachable by the layman. He views it as a unified system of beliefs and
practices relative to sacred things which are set apart from believers and forbidden. What is
sacred is a powerful entity which compels respect and cannot be approached in an ordinary
way (Durkheim 1982/1912:47 qtd in Furseth & Repstad 2006).
God fulfils the conditions of being an omnipotent entity which indeed cannot be
approached in a usual manner. If we were to refer to Goffmans notion of roles which any
individual fulfils during various interactions in his life, then one cannot possibly approach God
in the same manner in which one has a conversation with a friend. From here, Charles
Smithsons desperate attempts in The French Lieutenants Woman to come into contact with a
being supposed to understand his sorrow. In chapter forty-eight, feeling betrayed by Sarah
Woodruff, he visits a church and vainly tries to pray so as to find his composure. He sees Sarahs
face instead of Christs, tear-stained, agonized, with all the features of a Mater Dolorosa by
Grunewald (153). After a few attempts to start his prayers all over again he realizes that nobody
is actually listening to them and even bursts out crying not because of Sarah, but because of his

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inability to have a conversation with the divinity. The narrator himself is uncertain about the
dialogue that ensues: it could take place between Charles better and his worse self or perhaps
between him and that spreadeagled figure in the shadows at the churchs end (154).
Another illustration of modern mans failed attempts to transcend the limits of his own
sphere is represented in Brownings Caliban Upon Setebos. Brownings Caliban becomes
aware of another god besides Setebos: the Quiet, yet fails to provide an accurate description of
him. The distance between them cannot even be grasped in human terms; not even Setebos can
soar so high as to reach the Quiet. Caliban endows the other, unknown god with a benevolent
aura, as being the creator of all things, in contrast with Setebos who only vexes (line 171) the
Quiets creation.
One interesting point in Furseth & Repstads Introduction to the Sociology of Religion
(2006) is explained by Thomas Luckmann. In The Invisible Religion (1907), he distinguishes
between religion in a broad sense and the social, institutionalized forms of church-related
religion. Religiosity is a search for meaning and interpretations of human existence beyond the
institutions which regulate religious practice, it is connected with a higher degree of freedom, not
only from institutions but also from established traditions. By contrast, religion is viewed
precisely in the light of conventions, of institutionalized traditions and is even negatively deemed
as a rigid phenomenon devoid of spirit.
Religiosity is a form of religious individualism which centers on individual experiences
of religion, separated from institutional belief and practice. Individualism, meaning that
individuals begin to shape their own religious convictions away from the influence of
institutions. In Thomas Hardys Tess of the d Urbervilles, Angel Clare is no regular churchgoer
and has created his own humanistic convictions unaltered by the religious upbringing he received
at home. In The French Lieutenants Woman, Charles Smithson does not object to attending
mass, yet he undertakes this much more frequently when in company; the narrator marks how he
rarely attends Church services while on his own.
With religiosity, religious commitment becomes inwardly focused, as in devotion to
purely spiritual matters. As a result, it ceases to be noticeable in ones social life. The tendency

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towards practicing ones own religious conviction outside the Church can be seen in works of
fiction, such as George Eliots Middlemarch or Charlotte Bronts Jane Eyre.
In Middlemarch, Dorothea Brookes spiritual development takes place outside the folds
of any religious institution. Her life is a path towards developing from a spiritual point of view.
She becomes less selfish in the course of time, despite not continuing her religious practices. As
she confesses to Ladislaw, she does not pray as much as she used to before, instead she struggles
to discard selfish desires. She even develops a personal belief which brings her comfort: desiring
what is perfectly good. Dorothea considers that the simple fact of wishing for good makes people
become part of the divine battle against evil and darkness. She refuses to call her conviction by
any name, not even beautiful mysticism (367). When she asks Ladislaw about his beliefs, she
quickly adds that she is not interested in finding out what the young man knows about religion,
but what kind of belief helps him in life.
In Jane Eyre, the female protagonist does not seem to believe in any conventional God.
She seems to be guided in her struggles by a Mighty Spirit, so that Jane is at the right place and
the right time in finding love (Rochester), help (the Rivers) and in the end, independence (the
discovery of the fortune she has inherited). A manifestation of this spirit occurs, for instance,
after Jane bravely resists Rochesters proposal. She experiences the vision of a lunar being which
identifies Jane as its daughter and advises her to flee temptation. This vision entails a female
goddess, no female saint, no Virgin Mary, no God. Later on, after asserting herself in front of
John Rivers (and refusing a loveless marriage), Jane is subjected to another vision which she
thinks of as belonging to a Mighty Spirit. Although her prayers are different from Saint John
Rivers, she feels they nevertheless grant her a state of peace. At one point, before departing to
find Rochester, she somehow transcends the physical realm by feeling closer to this Being.
Since individual religiosity is even more misleading when it exists independent of
established institutions, one should not rely too heavily upon statistics concerning church
attendance. Human knowledge is prone to error, so that people may either exaggerate or diminish
the importance of religion in their lives. Besides not offering very reliable data, statistics are
superficial, insofar as they vainly attempt to quantify the unquantifiable, namely human faith
(Furseth & Repstad 2006).

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Beyond what religion is, what should be considered is its consistence, as well. According
to Stark and Charles Glock (1968 in Furseth & Repstad 2006), religious commitment contains
five dimensions, namely the belief, practice, experience, knowledge and consequential
dimension; the last one is concerned with the effects brought by religion in anybodys individual
life.
Taking Tess Durbeyfields example, she appears to be faithful but without exceeding her
zeal. When it comes to practice, she relies on a priest to baptize her baby, and as she afterwards
proves in her discussion with him, a priest should both respect his position as saviour of souls but
also know how to approach those more sinful than him. When participating in a practice which is
formalized and public - attending church service- she tries to concentrate, yet at one point finds
the gossip unbearable and decides not to attend service anymore. The most touching act
connected to religion which she privately does is to baptize her baby Sorrow, in the presence of
her siblings, for whom their elder sister suddenly acquires the aura of a remarkable figure. As a
modest country girl, Tess does not have access to any complex theological knowledge, yet her
bright intellect allows her to pinpoint certain matters which are not far from truth: that a priest
has the duty to be sympathetic to his parishioners when the latter are facing difficulty. The effect
brought by religion in her existence is not relieving as one might expect it; rather, it makes one
be aware of the hypocrisy lurking beyond respectable faades, and even of the lack of mercy at
the hands of religious institutions.
Robert Brownings Fra Lippo Lippi provides another example worthy to be analyzed in
terms of religious dimensions. The monk Fra Lippo Lippi is a believer, and acts according to his
faith. He is grateful for the beauty created by God and tries, as an artist, to render it in paintings.
He knows the Bible, since he mentions the creation of Eve: I always see the garden and God
there / A-making man's wife (lines 266-267). He is prepared to act on his belief, and this
assertiveness is due to the strength of his faith. Most importantly, he knows himself, which
allows him to grasp the degree of his own belief. Therefore, he does not try to deceive himself
and others into believing he is other than a lover of art who enjoys life to the full (including
women, even if he belongs to holy orders).
Another character who follows the advice of Know thyself is Charlotte Bronts Jane
Eyre. The young woman has a belief, as seen in the Mighty Spirit which guides her steps in life

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and appears at crucial moments. Moreover, she has Christian values that she clings to, such as
chastity. She applies these principles by evincing firmness in moments of temptation: she resists
two proposals coming from two different men, the first because she refuses to be someones
mistress and the second because she does not approve of marriage devoid of love. She is aware
of her strengths and foibles and of being a free human being with an independent will (253).
She also knows about Christian principles, which should be applied even at the cost of ones life;
a result of her faith is that she nearly dies of exhaustion and hunger after leaving Rochesters
mansion. As for experience, during her life Jane Eyre has accumulated more and more arguments
about her own being in the numerous confrontations she experiences (against her foster family,
Mr Brocklehurst, Edward Rochester, Saint John Rivers) and contradictory discussions (with
Helen Burns). In the latter case, Jane confesses she is unable to understand Helens doctrine of
endurance, but also the girls self-possession in the presence of a chastiser (56). Jane has a
practical mind, for all her being a little untaught girl (57), and her words seem to echo those of
the Pagan believers who deemed Christianity as nave and dangerous, because: if people always
turned the other cheek towards those who hurt them, the wicked on earth will be encouraged in
their misdoings and degenerate even more. Janes credo, contrasting to Christs doctrine of
forgiveness, is the following: When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back so
hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again (57). This Jane has already proved
against her attacker at Gateshead, suddenly perceiving her cousin as similar in behaviour to the
Roman slave drivers, to Nero, Caligula and their like.
Regarding the view about the Church expressed in the Victorian Age, it seems there was
growing discontent about the manner in which religious institutions fulfilled their duties. The
discrepancies between ideology and practice, as noticed among members of the church proved
both frustrating and disappointing. Believers were affected by the failure of religious institutions
to guard their standards, and, as stated in Stark and Bainbridge (1987, in Furseth & Repstad
2006) to continue providing transcendent promises. In The French Lieutenants Woman, John
Fowles mentions the drawbacks of religious institutions: sectarian squabbles, luxurious bishops,
intriguing canons, absentee rectors and underpaid curates, antiquated theology (153). Apart
from this twentieth-century Victorian monograph, the nineteenth-century abounds in works of
fiction whose aim is to either satirize or criticize the Church.

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Charlotte Bronts Jane Eyre contains charges of hypocrisy directed at Mr Brocklehurst.

The gentleman implements harsh living conditions upon the pupils at Lowood, but does not
refrain from his extravagant, luxurious lifestyle. The pupils are not provided with the proper,
decent means worthy of a boarding school: their food is insufficient to satisfy their hunger, which
is distressing, since for their keen appetites of growing children they receive only what is
enough to keep alive a delicate invalid (59). Similarly, their clothes are insufficient to protect
them from the severe cold. Brocklehurst is even ridiculous enough to accept badly cooked food
to be served to the girls - better food would only feed the vile bodies of the pupils and starve
their immortal souls (63) - and to prohibit long and beautiful hair. Miss Temple can hardly
contain a smile upon hearing his far-fetched orders. Even though Brocklehurst throws fiery
sermons against the lusts of the flesh and costly apparel (64), his wife and daughters are
exquisitely attired according to the latest fashion and are almost shocked at the modesty shown
by the girls residing at Lowood. The gentleman is not in the least ashamed to confess this to Mrs
Reed, by mentioning his daughters impressions: Oh, dear papa, how quiet and plain all the girls
at Lowood look () they are almost like poor peoples children! (...) they looked at my dress and
mamas, as if they had never seen a silk gown before (34).
In Villette, Lucy Snowe complains about the religious book read every evening, which
contains legends of the saints. She introduces the custom of tude du Soir only to destroy the
aura of mysticism surrounding it. She achieves this by dissecting everything which has to do
with it. Namely, the saints are no more than gasconading rascals (who) boasted these exploits or
invented these miracles, the legends monkish extravagances, over which one laughed
inwardly, finally the stories are reduced to nightmares of oppression, privation and agony.
Not bearing any longer to hear about dreadful viciousness, sickening tyranny and black
impiety, Lucy resolves to steal away from the room as soon as the guilty old book is brought
about (106).
In Thomas Hardys Jude the Obscure Susan Bridehead is an agnostic angel. She cannot
get along with her very religious landlady and even defies the woman by purchasing two heathen
figures from the most Christian town (Christminster). Jude Fawley, her cousin, is shocked by
Susans daring actions (her attempt to rearrange the Gospels) and assertions. Susan questions the
validity of the Bible and denounces the ecclesiastical abstractions that tried to gloss over the

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passion evinced in the Song of Songs, a great and passionate song, exuding an ecstatic,
natural, human love (182).
In Robert Brownings The Bishop Orders his Tomb at Saint Praxeds Church, far from
leading a spiritual life, the bishop is concerned up to the last moment with worldly matters.
While dying by degrees (line 11), he does not lend a single thought to the afterlife. Instead, he
is highly preoccupied with his niche, which he wants exquisitely decorated, thus proving to be a
great admirer of artistic goods. What is more, his greed for material goods becomes grotesque as
he demands a stone to be dug out for him. Namely, a lapis lazuli, big as a Jews head cut off at
the nape (line 43). The following verse only illustrates his carnal desires: Blue as a vein oer
the Madonnas breast (line 44). The consequences of his debauched lifestyle are noticeable in
the first lines, where he mentions his sons, a proof of his numerous illicit affairs. He behaves like
a businessman, making sure his sons will rejoice over the plentiful fortune he has somehow
amassed during his lifetime. When he assures his sons of the prayers he will address to Saint
Praxed for their well-being, he wishes them, among others, to have a good love-life: mistresses
with great smooth marbly limbs (line 75).
Robert Brownings other poem, Fra Lippo Lippi, may be denouncing the hypocrisy as
prevalent among the members of the Church, yet it somehow does not appear so revolting. The
reason for this lies in the monks attitude. Upon being caught at an alley's end / Where sportive
ladies leave their doors ajar (lines 5-6), he does not invent stupid excuses for his conduct,
instead he acknowledges his deed (I'm a beast, I know, line 270) and even provides an account
of his life as a monk. He succeeds in winning the readers (and possibly the guards) sympathy
by acknowledging his weaknesses and in the end appears perfectly human. He tells the guards
about his agonizing life before entering holy orders, a fact which sharpened his senses and taught
him the harsh lesson of survival. When at the convent, a priest asks the boy whether he is
prepared to renounce all worldly goods. The priest is not only benevolent, but also fat, a sign of
well-being, and heartily eats his meal while talking with the child. The boy soon discovers the
pleasant side of a monks life, which means enjoying more food than enough (the good
bellyful, line 103), a warm serge (104) and spending ones days in blessed idleness (105).
The lesson guiding Fra Lippo Lippi is to put his talent into practice by painting things as they
truly are. He strongly believes in not distorting reality, in respecting Gods plan, since everything

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He created must be good and thus need not be changed. He is an admirer of beauty, including
female beauty as well. What prompts his admiration is his tendency to see Eves beauty in every
woman, as in the moment of creation: I always see the garden and God there / A-making man's
wife (lines 266-267). He mentions a womans face which immediately triggers his lust; he can
hardly contain his desires: flesh and blood, / That's all I'm made of! (60-61). Therefore, he
makes a rope out of his curtains and bedclothes so that he can use it as a ladder when going out
and into his chamber. His lifes credo - the value and significance of flesh(line 268) - is
obviously not that easy to discard: my lesson learned, (...) I can't unlearn ten minutes
afterwards (267; 269). This leads to arguments between him and his brethren. The prior and the
learned men object against his style of painting and advise the monk to not pay homage to the
perishable clay (line 180), but to ignore the flesh in favour of the soul. Maybe the flesh
represented in Fra Lippos paintings- Faces, arms, legs and bodies like the true (177) - remind
the other members of the holy orders of their own debauchery. The Priors niece is suddenly
characterized as that white smallish female with the breasts (195), which may indicate that she
is in fact his lover.
The chapter Musical Banks in Samuel Butlers Erewhon illustrates the measures by
which any religion institution can trigger something akin to contempt (178) from the vast
majority of the citizens. It highlights the materialism which spreads its tentacles even within the
Church. The narrator is startled by the contrast between the popularity of the institution
everybody in the city deals with this establishment- and the very few number of people who
frequent it: there was hardly anyone, this did not look as though the bank was doing a very
large business(178). The value of the coins is generally assumed to be nil, yet the citizens strive
to retain at least a few coins in their possession just to display them in front of others, as if their
whole value as human beings rested on the possession of those coins.
Mockery of the morality of society at large and of social conventions is to be seen in
Arthur Hugh Cloughs The Latest Decalogue. One should serve only one God not out of love
for the divinity, but because serving too many gods would be financially troubling. Gods image
is no longer present in the believers soul, but in the currency. Church attendance is no longer
meant to enrich ones spiritual life, but to strengthen ones social connection- to make the world
ones friend. Adultery is verbally castigated as a sin not to be committed by women, which is

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clear evidence for the double standard. When bearing false witness one is advised to be careful
about forgetting previous lies and contradicting oneself. The poem ends in a statement
expressing the realities of the times which force Victorians to compete in the struggle for a
proper life standard, which renders the citizens unable not to covet: tradition / Sanctions the
keenest competition (lines 19-20).
Besides criticism aimed at religious institutions, there is another phenomenon occurring
in the Victorian Age, namely loss of faith. As Mitchell points out in Daily Life in Victorian
England, there were several factors against which the Church found it increasingly difficult to
fight, among which discoveries that questioned the religious truths forming the basis of
Christianity. While at the beginning of the age most Victorians tended to regard the Bible as
expressing absolute truths, later on certain discoveries triggered new attitudes regarding the
validity of the Gospels. Mitchell refers to the archaeological investigations performed in Egypt
and Palestine as a proof of the scholars attempts to verify the facts expressed in the Bible. The
result was that the events described in the Gospels were no longer understood as literal
historical facts but as parables expressing philosophical truths about the relations between
humanity and the divine (Mitchell 250).
These new modes of thought could be linked to the development of the Victorian society
into a more and more tolerant one that guaranteed equality for its citizens. The ideas predominant
in the Victorian Age belong to the positive stage, namely when explanations become worldly
and therefore theologians must yield to men of science. This is the last stage in the development
of ideas. As explained by Comte, ideas usually pass through three stages: the theological,
metaphysical and positive one. During the first stage, ideas are explained as an influence from
supernatural beings, in the second one the purpose of nature prevails, while in the last stage
explanations become strictly scientific. Given that the Victorian Age allowed its traditional and
religious values to be replaced by attitudes informed by rationality and goal orientation, it
submitted to a process of secularization (Thompson 1976, qtd in Furseth & Repstad 2006). The
sacred canopy of Christianity was gradually being dismantled. In Bergers work The Sacred
Canopy (1967 in Furseth & Repstad 2006), the word canopy remains a symbol for the previous
holistic Christian culture, which enveloped people from the cradle to the grave. He explains that

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before one had to be inside a religious circle to also be a part of society, whereas secularization
entails freedom of religion.
When taken in the light of Ernst Troeltschs statement about religious institutions, the
retreat of the Church from the social stage appears inexorable. The Church has to adapt for the
sake of believers and therefore, it submits to the changes occurring in the world. Yet this means it
can no longer maintain the same transcendent promises alive for its believers. As explained by
Stark and Bainbridge (1987), if the Church does not maintain its role as a supplier of
transcendent promises, it runs the risk of losing its members. They argue that the mainstream
religious communities have lost members not because they have become old fashioned but on the
contrary, because they no longer provide transcendent promises. This fact will obviously lead to
overall discontent and eventually to a refusal of any connection with religious institutions
(Furseth & Repstad 2006).
In this chapter I provided a summary of the main confessions in the nineteenth-century
British Isles after which I analysed Victorian religion from a sociological perspective. I presented
several reasons why people become religious and considered religion in terms of its possible
dimensions, and illustrated them with the aid of Victorian fictive characters. The distinction
between religion and religiosity made me aware that the Victorians may have been more spiritual
than Virginia Woolf states. However, the incisive criticism directed at religious institutions
highlights the Victorian disappointment with the drawbacks of the Church. In the end I referred
to the secularization manifesting itself in the Victorian era and focused on the fascinating
perspective about the inexorability of this process.

Conclusion
In my paper I have attempted to render the Victorians as what they were- or at least, must
have been- and not the way nowadays culture distorts their lives. I tried to present them as
entirely human by bringing into view certain social realities of their times that are largely
disregarded nowadays, illustrating these with Victorian fiction. Assuming that I might be cast as
a photographer, my work could be viewed as a snapshot of those times. The tools I used in my
research are predominantly literary, since, as opposed to sociological works, they are the only

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ones to allow access to what has rarely been properly touched upon: the Victorian soul. These are
also the only instances which I can possibly rely on when exposing the skeleton hidden by
Victorians in their closets.
In the course of my writing I became aware of how comparable they are to the denizens
of the twentieth and twenty-first century. While Victorian fiction gave me access to a sort of
camera obscura, beyond nineteenth-century appearances, sociological books made me aware of
certain realities for which I afterwards looked in literary works. Franois Bdaridas A Social
History of England 1851-1990 and John Fowless The French Lieutenants Woman offered me
valuable help by dismantling the prejudices I previously had about Victorians.
The thing that radically differentiates between us and them is time. The Victorian Age
was complex and bore heavy consequences upon the English people, which is why my
perspective can only be a tiny part of the nineteenth-century reality. However, my work could be
regarded as one of the many attempts at refreshing the drab knowledge which is usually
transmitted nowadays from unreliable and biased sources.
One can say, to repeat a figure of speech from my introduction, that the Victorians
accepted a Sisyphean task by assuming to be a chosen people, just as the American people. They
assumed the responsibility of showing the path of progress to the world as the greatest and most
civilized people (Zirra, 2003). This high status they accepted must have been a considerable
burden for them at times. Against this disagreeable state of affairs they reacted as humanely as
possible: by repressing their fears and trying to maintain a confident stance, but also by secretly
giving vent to their most hidden desires and fears. As specified by Matthew Arnold in The
Buried Life, social customs seem to have demanded such a response.
No matter how much Victorians strove to guard appearances, they inevitably retained
certain beliefs of their own. These beliefs along with their repressed desires found an escape
hatch in fiction. As a result, the new woman who, as stated by Bdarida, prepared her advance
during the nineteenth century, is illustrated in numerous Victorian writings through powerful
female characters. Likewise, the double standard entailed that gentlemen satisfied the desires
normally banned by the public mind among women pertaining to lower classes or in the red-light
districts of modern Babylon (London) (Bdarida, 161). Victorian literature also provides

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instances of hypocritical gentlemen who displayed an honourable conduct in public while

privately indulging in debauchery (Charles Smithson, Alec dUrbervilles). The Victorians seem
to have been seriously confronted with feelings of nostalgia, as a reaction against the realities of
their time (the disruption of tradition, the radical changes in landscapes) but also as an entirely
human response when comparing their times with the preceding ones. Nineteenth-century
literature offers a plethora of descriptions that provide a clue of the authors responses to these
changes. Through her depictions of an idyllic past and attention given to country artisans and
labourers, George Eliot illustrates a deep nostalgia for the past. Thomas Hardy depicts pleasant
landscapes where his characters initially reside and then casts them into hellish surroundings, a
reflection of his own negative attitude towards the development registered in his time.
I managed to provide to a certain extent a connection between us and Victorians by
focusing on literary sources. I proved the lack of validity of certain contemporary prejudices by
uncovering the truths about Victorians. Namely, their lack of prudery, awareness of ones body
and satisfaction of desires when away from the public eye, a hypocritical attitude that has
prevailed until nowadays. The womens awareness of the injustice directed at them and the
measures taken against it are still attitudes found in our time. Added to these is the nostalgia
which, according to Goulding, has become big business nowadays (565): we are likely to
remember the lost Victorian times, just as Victorians themselves were prone to express regret for
pre-Victorian times.
Religion was the most demanding domain in which I tried to find similarities between the
contemporary

and

the

Victorian

attitude

towards

religion

and towards the

Church. Sally Mitchells Daily Life in Victorian England , Bdaridas A Social History of
England 1851-1990, Harrisons Early Victorian Britain 1832-1851, and especially Furseth and
Repstads An Introduction to the Sociology of Religion have helped me perceive the
phenomenon of religion in depth and offered me the possibility to analyze Victorian fictional
characters. Through its sociological approach to religion, Furseth and Repstads book made me
aware of how similar contemporary people are to Victorians when it comes to belief. I have
understood the inexorability of secularization, which was occurring in the Victorian age; because
of the shift towards rational approaches concerning the surrounding universe, the Victorian age
could obviously no longer accept explanations connected with the supernatural. In the words of

83

Auguste Comte (Thompson 1976, qtd in Furseth & Repstad 2006), it was already entering the
positive stage, when all explanations become worldly. It came only as natural that the Bible
should be dismissed in favour of more scientific explanations.
In the last part of my paper I have approached the paradoxes inherent in religious
institutions. Namely, in its effort to adapt for the sake of its members, the Church fails to take
into account its role of supplier of transcendent promises. Since this role is crucial in attracting
new members, the Church enters a vicious circle: disappointed by the failure of the Church to
keep its principles untouched by the passage of time, believers gradually lose their ties with
religious institutions. Moreover, as opposed to previous ages, people no longer have to be inside
religious communities in order to also be part of society. In other words, they can refuse to be
enveloped by the Christian culture. As stated by Peter Berger, the Victorian period allowed the
sacred canopy of Christianity to fall apart.
Reverting to a statement in the introduction, while exploring my secondary sources and
the literary works, I gradually allowed Victorians to get under my skin (in the words of Helena
Mitchie, quoted in Tucker 1999). Therefore, I fulfilled a condition which is paramount in order to
understand their age, but, most importantly, to sympathize with Victorians as human beings.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
I.

Victorian Historical Documents

1. Acton, William. Prostitution Considered in Its Moral, Social and Sanitary Aspects.
London: John Churchill and Sons, 1870. E-book.

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2. Lecky, William Edward Hartpole. History of European Morals from Augustus to

Charlemagne, second volume. New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1869. E-book.
3. The Quarterly Review. Volume 84. London: John Murray, 1849. E-book.
II.

Victorian Literature

a. Fiction:
1. Bront, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Print.
2. Bront, Charlotte. Villette. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, 1999. Print.
3. Bront, Emily. Wuthering Heights. London: Penguin Popular Classics, 1994. Print.
4. Butler, Samuel. Erewhon. The Floating Press, 2009. E-book.
5. Eliot, George. Adam Bede. London: Penguin Classics, 1985. Print.
6. Eliot, George. Middlemarch. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Print.
7. Eliot, George. Silas Marner. London: Penguin Popular Classics, 1994. Print.
8. Hardy, Thomas Far from the Madding Crowd. London: Penguin Classics, 1985. Print.
9. Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure. London: Penguin Classics, 1985. Print.
10. Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the dUrbervilles, A Pure Woman. London: Penguin Classics,
1985. Print.
11. Hardy, Thomas. The Return of the Native. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Print.
12. Hardy, Thomas. Under the Greenwood Tree. London: Penguin Classics, 2004. Print.
b. Poetry:
1. Arnold, Matthew. Dover Beach. The Victorian Web. The Victorian Web, n.d. Web. 23
Jan. 2014.
2. Arnold, Matthew. The Buried Life. The Victorian Web. The Victorian Web, n.d. Web.
23 Jan. 2014.
3. Browning, Robert. Caliban Upon Setebos. RPO Representative Poetry Online.
University of Toronto Libraries, n.d. Web. 23 Jan. 2014.
4. Browning, Robert. Fra Lippo Lippi. The Victorian Web. The Victorian Web, n.d. Web.
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5. Browning, Robert. My Last Duchess. The Victorian Web. The Victorian Web, n.d. Web.
23 Jan. 2014.

85

6. Browning, Robert. The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church. The
Victorian Web. The Victorian Web, n.d. Web. 23 Jan. 2014.
7. Clough, Arthur Hugh. The Latest Decalogue. PoetsCorner. PoetsCorner, n.d. Web. 23
Jan. 2014.
8. Hopkins, Gerard Manley. Binsey Poplars. The Poetry Foundation. The Poetry
Foundation, n.d. Web. 23 Jan. 2014.
9. Swinburne, Algernon Charles. Hymn to Proserpine. The Victorian Web. The Victorian
Web, n.d. Web. 23 Jan. 2014.
10. Tennyson, Alfred. Locksley Hall. The Poetry Foundation. The Poetry Foundation n.d.
Web. 23 Jan. 2014.
c. Drama:
1. Shaw, Bernard George. Plays Unpleasant. Suffolk: Penguin Classics, 2000. Print.
2. Shaw, Bernard George. Three Plays for Puritans. Suffolk: Penguin Classics, 2000.
Print.
3. Wilde, Oscar. A Woman of No Importance. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde.
Ed. Merlin Holland. HarperCollins, 2003. Print.
4. Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. The Pennsylvania State University:
Electronic Classics Series, 2012. E-book.
d. Essays:
1. Carlyle, Thomas. Past and Present. The Peel Web. Dr Marjorie Bloy. n.d. Web. 23
Jan. 2014. E-book.
2. Carlyle, Thomas. St Edmundsbury. The Peel Web. Dr Marjorie Bloy. n.d. Web. 23 Jan.
2014. E-book.
3. Newman, John Henry. Apologia pro Vita Sua. Newman Reader. The National Institute
for Newman Studies. 2007. n.d. Web. 23 Jan. 2014.
4. Newman, John Henry. The Tamworth Reading Room. Newman Reader. The National
Institute for Newman Studies. 2007. n.d. Web. 23 Jan. 2014.
e. Anthologies:
1. Cartianu, Ana, Stoenescu, Stefan. eds. Victorian Prose of Thinking, vol. 1, 2, 3.
Universitatea Bucureti, Facultatea de Limbi Germanice, Catedra de limb i literatur
englez Bucureti, 1969. Print.

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2. Greenblatt, Stephen (general editor). The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Volume
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Facultatea de Limbi si Literaturi Strine, Catedra de literatur englez, 1971. Print.
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Literature: The Victorian Age. Bucureti: Universitatea din Bucureti, Facultatea de
Limbi si Literaturi Strine, Catedra de limb si literatur englez, 1985. Print.

11. Twentieth-century Literature:

a. Fiction
1. Fowles, John. The French Lieutenants Woman. Signet Editions, 2012. E-book.
2. Woolf, Virginia. Orlando: A Biography. New York: RosettaBooks LLC, 2002. Ebook.
b. Sociology
1. Bdarida, Franois. A Social History of England 1851-1990. London and New York :
Routledge, 1994. Print.
2. de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley, Los
Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002. E-book.
3. Furseth, Inger, Repstad, Pal. An Introduction to the Sociology of Religion : Classical And
Contemporary Perspectives. Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006. E-book.
4. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books,
1959. Print.
5. Goulding, Christina. Romancing the Past: Heritage Visiting and the Nostalgic
Consumer. Psychology & Marketing. vol.18.6 (2001). John Wiley & Sons. E-book.
c. History
1. Dredge, Sarah. Accommodating Feminism: Victorian Fiction and the Nineteenth-Century
Womens Movement. PhD Thesis. McGi11 University, Montreal, 2000. Ann Arbor: UMI.
E-book.
2. Harrison, J.F.C. Early Victorian Britain 1832-1851. Glasgow: Fontana Press, 1988. Print.

87

3. Mitchell, Sally. Daily Life in Victorian England. Westport, Connecticut, London:

Greenwood Press, 2009. E-book.
4. Perkin, Joan. Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England. Taylor & Francis eLibrary, 2003. E-book.
5. Russett, E. Cynthia. Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood.
Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1991. E-book.
6. Tucker F. Herbert, ed. A Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture. Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers, 1999. Print.
d. Literary Criticism
1. Bonaparte, Felicia. Introduction to Middlemarch. By George Eliot. 1998. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997. xvi-xvii. Print.
2. Morgan, Rosemarie. Student Companion to Thomas Hardy. Westport, Connecticut,
London: Greenwood Press, 2007. E-book.
3. Morgan, Rosemarie. Women and Sexuality in the Novels of Thomas Hardy. London and
New York: Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. E-book.
4. Pearce, Joseph. The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000.
Print.
5. Surdulescu, Radu, Stefanescu, Bogdan, eds. Contemporary Critical Theories: A Reader.
Department of English, University of Bucharest, 1998. Print.
6. Watt, Ian. The Victorian Novel: Modern Essays in Criticism. Oxford University Press,
1971. Print.
7. Wilson, Colin. Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment. London and Basingsstoke : Macmillan.
1981. Print.
e. Handbooks
1. Zirra, Ioana. Contributions of the British Nineteenth Century the Victorian Age- to the
History of Literature and Ideas. Bucharest: University of Bucharest, 2003. E-book.
f. Online Encyclopedias
1. "palimpsest". Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster Online. Merriam-Webster, 2014. Web.
23 Jan. 2014.

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2. "William Edward Hartpole Lecky". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica

Online. Encyclopdia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 23 Jan. 2014.
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1. The Purdue OWL. Purdue U Writing Lab, 2010. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.