Thesis

G.E.
MUDA

The Mirror Image

THE MIRROR IMAGE

2

Front cover illustration: Albert Roelofs, Toekomstdromen, [Future Dreams], 1906
Cover Design: Dr. J. B. Hemel
Printed by: GrafiMedia, Groningen
ISBN: 978-90-367-4648-9 (printed version)
ISBN: 978-90-367-4647-2 (electronic version)

Copyright: G.E. Muda (2011)
Niets uit deze uitgave mag worden vermenigvuldigd zonder schriftelijke
toestemming van de auteur.

RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN

The Mirror Image

The Representation of Social Roles for Women in Novels
by Charlotte Bront, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Jean Rhys

Proefschrift

ter verkrijging van het doctoraat in de
Letteren
aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
op gezag van de
Rector Magnificus, dr. E. Sterken,
in het openbaar te verdedigen op
donderdag 19 mei 2011
om 16.15 uur

door

Geertruida Elisabeth Muda
geboren op 20 mei 1963
te Bergh

Promotores : Prof. dr. H. E. Wilcox
Prof. dr. E. J. Korthals Altes

Beoordelingscommissie: Prof. dr. C. Ayers
Prof. dr. M. G. Kemperink
Prof. dr. S. Sobecki

5

Contents
PREFACE..............................................................................................................................7
INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................9
CHAPTER 1 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK ..................................................................22
1.1: The possible functions of narrative texts................................................................22
1.2: Norms, social roles and mirror images as elements of a text .................................23
1.3: Text perspectives ...................................................................................................27
1.4: Text side and reader side........................................................................................29
1.5: The reading process ...............................................................................................31
1.6: Textual strategies: ..................................................................................................35
1.6.1: Thematization ..............................................................................................35
1.6.2: Stabilization .................................................................................................36
1.6.3: Problematization ..........................................................................................37
1.6.4: Anticipation .................................................................................................39
CHAPTER 2 THE CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL CONTEXT...........................................42
2.0: Introduction............................................................................................................42
2.1: The socialization process of girls ...........................................................................43
2.2: Contemporary thoughts on the education of girls ..................................................46
2.3: Class-specific and gender-specific socialization....................................................48
2.4: Daily practice .........................................................................................................53
2.4.1: The socialization of the girl in the family....................................................54
2.4.2: The education of the girl in school...............................................................55
2.5: Womens participation in the workforce and in politics ........................................62
2.6: The achievements of the British and American womens rights movements ........64
2.7: Raising an awareness through novels.....................................................................68
CHAPTER 3 SHIRLEY OR THE CONDITION OF WOMEN IN THE ENGLISH
MIDDLE-CLASS .........................................................................................................72
3.0: Introduction............................................................................................................72
3.1: The parish school or the private schoolroom.........................................................74
3.2: Bird of paradise vs snow-white dove .....................................................................79
3.3: Wherein matters make some progress, but not much.............................................84
3.4: The moral ...............................................................................................................97
3.5: God deliver me from my friends ........................................................................99
CHAPTER 4 THE AWAKENING: PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG
WOMAN.....................................................................................................................113
4.0: Introduction..........................................................................................................113
4.1: Psychomachy .......................................................................................................115
4.2: To dress or not to dress? ......................................................................................122
4.3: Nine months .........................................................................................................127
4.4: In perspective.......................................................................................................135
4.5: Mixed emotions ...................................................................................................136

6

THE MIRROR IMAGE

CHAPTER 5 THE AGE OF INNOCENCE: EDITH WHARTONS TRIUMPH..............151
5.0: Introduction..........................................................................................................151
5.1: Innocence vs experience ......................................................................................153
5.2: Blue satin or red velvet ........................................................................................161
5.3: Marriage...............................................................................................................167
5.4: The woman question ............................................................................................174
5.5: Telling it slant ......................................................................................................177
CHAPTER 6 LIFE AFTER LEAVING MR MACKENZIE.................................................190
6.0: Introduction..........................................................................................................190
6.1: The reproduction of power systems .....................................................................192
6.2: Make-up and Clothes ...........................................................................................200
6.3: Angry young women............................................................................................208
6.4: The mirror image .................................................................................................214
6.5: Praise....................................................................................................................216
CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION............................................................................................228
BIBLIOGRAPHY..............................................................................................................236
Primary literature ........................................................................................................236
Secondary literature ....................................................................................................237
APPENDIX........................................................................................................................250
Reviews.......................................................................................................................250
On Shirley (1849) by Charlotte Bront ................................................................250
On The Awakening (1899) by Kate Chopin .........................................................251
On The Age of Innocence (1920) by Edith Wharton............................................252
On After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1930) by Jean Rhys ........................................254
NEDERLANDSE SAMENVATTING..............................................................................255

7

Preface
This book, the result of research carried out during my years as a Ph.D. candidate at the
University of Groningen, aims to examine the use of the Mirror Image, a motif frequently
employed by British and American women writers during the period 1849-1930. This motif
seems to have been applied especially to describe and question the social roles for women
at that time.
I would like to express my gratitude to several people for their involvement and interest in
my research project. First of all, I would like to thank my two supervisors, Prof. dr. H. E.
Wilcox (University of Bangor, Wales) and Prof. dr. E. J. Korthals Altes (University of
Groningen) for inspiring and encouraging me, for reading my work critically, and for
showing their confidence in the progress of the project. Special thanks are due to Prof. dr.
H. W. van Essen (University of Groningen). Her support of my project during my stay at
the PPC is highly appreciated. For their comments on the manuscript, I am further indebted
to the members of the examination board: Prof. dr. C. Ayers (St. Marys University of
Minnesota), Prof. dr. M. G. Kemperink (University of Groningen) and Prof. dr. S. Sobecki
(University of Groningen).
As all these people greatly helped me, any remaining errors in this book are mine alone.
I am also grateful for the seminars given by the ICOG, and for the practical and moral
support given by my colleagues at the English department of the University of Groningen.
Furthermore, I would like to thank my fellow researchers for the interest they have shown
in my research: Els van der Werf, Dirk Visser, Heidi van den Heuvel-Disler and Lenny
Vos.
I owe particular thanks to the Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences of the University
of Groningen for their willingness to give me a sabbatical at the beginning and a holiday at
the end of my research project. This greatly helped me to finish my work. No less important
was the financial assistance I received from both the Stichting Fonds Doctor Catharine van
Tussenbroek and the Nell Ongeboerfonds. Their travel grant made it possible for me to
visit both my promotor, Prof. dr. H. E. Wilcox, and the British Library in London. My visit
to Colindale, the newspaper section of the British Library, enabled me to collect copies of
most of the contemporary reviews of the novels I examine. The staff at Colindale were very
cooperative, as were the staff of the UB, the University Library of the University of
Groningen, in helping me to find information.
Many people contributed to this project on the home front. I would like to thank all my
relatives and friends for their continual confidence in me. Particular thanks are due to my
sisters, Margreeth and Anneke, both for their support and for being my paranimfen.

8

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Notes on the text
Spelling and punctuation
I have used American English spelling in this thesis. However, since many of my citations
were taken from sources, primary and secondary, which were written in British English,
this has resulted in a seemingly inconsistent spelling pattern. I have accepted this as
unfortunate, but inevitable.
I have used double apostrophes for quotations and single apostrophes to indicate that a
word or phrase has been used in a special way and to indicate a quotation within a
quotation.

List of abbreviations
ALMM Jean Rhys, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie
AOI Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
AW Kate Chopin, The Awakening
S Charlotte Bront, Shirley

Notes on the illustrations
The Kyoto Costume Institute has kindly allowed me to use some of their fashion
illustrations. All of these pictures can be found on their website: www.kci.or.jp/archives in
the Archive section.
The archive number of each item is indicated with the individual fashion illustration.

9

Introduction
The Mirror Image
Throughout history women have been depicted in literary works in certain standard ways.
Some examples of such stereotypical images, used in Western literature, are the Madonna,
Eve, the Virgin, the Angel in the House, the Femme Fatale, the Monster and the
Whore. The use of specific images varied with the historical context and setting. In the
nineteenth century, the images of the Angel in the House and the Monster became
popular. The Angel in the House depicted the ideal nineteenth-century woman, a
beautiful, selfless and nurturing being, perfect according to nineteenth-century Victorian
standards.
1
Alongside this stereotype of women, a more disturbing image appeared,
representing the negative side of woman; this came to be referred to as the Monster and it
evolved under the influence of Gothic literature.
2

These images appeared in writings by both male and female authors. Yet, in the work of
several women writers during the period 1849-1930 these representations come to depict
more than just stereotypes. Four female authors stand out in particular: Charlotte Bront,
Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Jean Rhys. On the one hand, their stories present a
narrative that seems to confirm traditional role stereotypes in relation to women, but on the
other hand their stories also question these roles and put forward alternatives.
What struck me was that all four writers applied a mirroring technique of the images of
women as the angel and the monster, which confers a certain ambiguity on their novels.
How these mirroring techniques work in the novels of the aforementioned authors will be
examined in this dissertation. By representing and comparing both socially acceptable and
deviant behavior, these women writers were able to depict the impact of patriarchy on the
lives of individual women. I argue that through the use of this technique these writers thus
contributed to the contemporary debate on social roles for women. Contemporary readers
could obtain a clear picture of the norms and social roles compulsory for women, but they
were also presented with other options.
I have selected four novels by these authors as case studies. These novels are: Shirley by
Charlotte Bront, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
and After Leaving Mr Mackenzie by Jean Rhys. Throughout my examination of these four
novels, I will use a theoretical framework by Annelie Hegenbarth-Rsgen as a tool.
3
A
close look at the contemporary social context will provide a second frame of reference.

1
The phrase The Angel in the House originates from a sequence of poems by Coventry Patmore
(1823-1896). Patmore wrote these poems in praise of his first wife Emily. To him she represented the
ideal Victorian woman: the perfect wife, housewife and mother. The idea, however, is much older and
it was Virginia Woolf who developed the modern understanding of the concept in the essay
Professions for Women, a talk given to the National Society for Womens Service on 21 January
1931. It was then that it acquired a less idealistic connotation and came to criticize the patriarchal
construct of the ideal woman.
2
Catherine Spooner and Emma Mc Evoy (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Gothic (London:
Routledge, 2007).
3
Annelie Hegenbarth-Rsgen, Soziale Normen und Rollen im Roman (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag,
1982).

10

THE MIRROR IMAGE

The idea of doubleness is everywhere in feminist critics commentaries upon British and
American women writers of the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth
century. Ideas about doubleness find their way into feminist theory through sources varying
from Elaine Showalters belief that the literature by women of this time can be read as a
double-voiced discourse, containing a dominant and a muted story, to Sandra M.
Gilbert and Susan Gubars discussion of the Victorian woman writer who seems to conform
to conventional expectations, but simultaneously subverts them by rewriting the traditional
images of women inherited from male fiction.
4
Noteworthy, too, are Barbara Hill Rigneys
linkage of female madness with the use of the Doppelgnger and Joanne Blums theory of
the male/female double which seems to reflect an attempt to transcend traditional gender
roles, but these last studies are of less immediate importance to this examination.
5

Doubleness, on the whole, is considered to be a strategy for investigating the differences
between and within the male and the female of the patriarchal society of the nineteenth and
twentieth century.
My own adoption of the term Mirror Image rather than double results from both the
historical uses of notions of the double and Doppelgnger and the more specific feminine
connotations that the Mirror Image has.
6
The traditional function of the double has been
mainly linked to the use of the motif in literature by men and often focuses on
psychological aspects, as I will explain in more detail later on. In this dissertation, I argue
that in literature by women the double motif has a more social function. In the work by the
women writers examined here it is especially the social aspects related to both female
protagonists that are represented and compared. The phrase the Mirror Image is a very
suitable phrase to stress this social function. If something is a mirror image of something
else, it is like a reflection of it, either because it is exactly the same or because it is the same
but reversed or perhaps even distorted; and there is always a link to a larger and different
context. Mirror images are not isolated representations, they could not function in that way.
In general, the female main characters who are mirrored are not exact replicas; they
resemble each other, but they are also significantly different, if not opposed.
Noteworthy, too, in relation to the mirror or looking-glass is that it is a very feminine
attribute and seems to be linked to women more than men, as so much emphasis is always
placed on womens appearances. This is especially true during the timespan examined here

4
Elaine Showalter, Introduction to A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from
Bront to Lessing (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977); Sandra M. Gilbert, and Susan Gubar,
The Madwoman in the Attic (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979) 73-76.
5
Barbara Hill Rigney, Madness and Sexual Politics in the Feminist Novel (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1978); Joanne Blum, Transcending Gender:The Male/Female Double in Womens
Fiction. (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988).
6
I do realize that there might be a drawback in using this term as it closely resembles the mirror
stage and the mirror image used by Lacan. In Lacans theory the mirror stage indicates the phase
in the childs growing up (between the ages of 6 18 months) in which it begins to recognize its
reflection in the mirror as being him-/herself and becomes aware of the I. It also initiates the use and
understanding of language. I can even see an analogy with The Mirror Image in literature by women
in that the confrontation with the other female protagonist makes the main character become aware of
who she is and what her position in society is. At the same time the female main character seems to
develop a language to speak out for herself. Yet, because the doubling I study overall seemed to relate
more to the social context, I do not develop this more psychological aspect further. Kay Stockholder,
Lacan versus Freud: Subverting the Enlightenment American Imago 55:3 (1998) 361-422.

11

Introduction

in which womens looks were heavily prescribed by rules and regulations concerning
outward appearances, fashion and hairstyles. In addition to comparing and contrasting both
protagonists, the authors also held up a mirror to the reader. Rather than telling the reader
what the contemporary social context was like, they showed it through the (opposed)
images they used.
Throughout history, the mirror theme has played an important role in literature. Its use has
varied from the self-loving Narcissus of Greek mythology to the Biblical reference to
seeing through a glass darkly, to the evil queen in the European fairy-tale of Snow White
who asked Mirror, mirror, on the wall who is the fairest of them all?
7
Some of the
most popular uses of mirrors in literature range from Shakespeares introduction of the
motif in Hamlet where the play staged within the play is presented as holding a mirror up
to nature, to Lewis Carolls Through the Looking Glass and The Mirror of Erised in the
Harry Potter series.
8

The use of the aforementioned motif of the double and the representation of doubleness
were especially popular during the Victorian period. The overall socio-historical context of
the Victorian period is also important in other ways. Both this period and the decades after
it showed significant changes for women. In retrospect, we can say that this timespan
supplied the first wave of womens liberation. This motivated my choice for the period
1849-1930. The overall timespan, almost a century, comprises important subperiods. It
might therefore seem inappropriate to refer to it as one period. But as it was the first
timespan in which a great many changes for women occurred in rapid succession, I prefer
to link the period together for this investigation. It was only in the 1960s and the 1970s that
we again saw such a liberating tendency for women in history.
Among examples of the changes between 1849 and 1930 is the fact that womens access to
many types of education improved, inheritance laws were changed and women were given
the vote in both Great Britain and the United States in 1918. More and more women
entered the labor force and some even entered the professions. Such liberating changes
were reflected in womens appearances in a more simple and practical style of fashion and
less complicated hairstyles. In the domestic sphere many labor saving devices were
introduced that allowed middle class women more leisure time. And, in spite of all of the
limitations sometimes still present, the overall developments were never reversed again in
the Western world. In both England and the United States the suffragettes also gained quite

7
Narcissus was a hero from the territory of Thespiae in Boeotia who was renowned for his beauty. In
the stories he is cruel, in that he disdains those who love him. As divine punishment he falls in love
with a reflection in a pool, not realizing it is his own, and perishes there, not being able to leave the
beauty of his own reflection. Through a glass darkly is an abbreviated form of a much quoted
phrase from 1 Corinthians 13 in the Christian New Testament, meaning that earthly views of the
divine are often obscured, like looking at something with a darkened mirror. Mirror, mirror on the
Wall is a famous phrase uttered by the wicked queen in Snow White, a fairy tale by the German
brothers Grimm.
8
Shakespeare Hamlet. Prince of Denmark 3.2.21-22. In the play Hamlet stages a play, re-enacting his
fathers murder; with this he wants to determine Claudius guilt or innocence by studying his reaction.
Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) is a work of childrens literature by
Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgen). The Mirror of Erised is a magic mirror which shows the
deepest and most desperate desire of our hearts. It appears various times in the Harry Potter series
by J. K. Rowling.

12

THE MIRROR IMAGE

a lot of followers and influence; far more than in The Netherlands, for example.
9
These
factors greatly influenced my choice of both the period and the writers. How exactly these
points, together with the presence of the images and innovative narrative techniques,
contributed to my choice of these four novels by Bront, Chopin, Wharton and Rhys I will
explain in more detail later on.
My research defends the thesis that in the novels under investigation the mirroring of the
traditional images of the angel and the monster is used to both represent and question
social roles for women. By thematizing the available social roles for women in this way, the
novels raise the norms and values of contemporary patriarchal society to a more conscious
level of understanding for the reader. The techniques used can thus aid contemporary
readers to get a different view of society and can also contribute to the contemporary debate
on social roles for women. That the novels succeeded in doing this can be demonstrated by
means of an investigation of contemporary reader reports and reviews.
I chose novels by Bront, Chopin, Wharton and Rhys also because all of these female
authors were relatively well-known and respected in their own time. In spite of the different
countries, time-frames, or social levels, these women writers used strikingly similar
techniques and images. Because of the popularity of these writers, the wide availability of
their work, and the accepted habit of women to read novels, these writers could and did
reach large groups of women. These authors were, on the whole, not considered subversive
writers, but each author was very much concerned with and about the role of the woman in
contemporary society. This tendency can be seen in all of their work. However, I argue that,
in the novels selected, they used the traditional stereotype opposition of the Angel in the
House and the monster to enquire further into the influence of contemporary society on
the lives of women. Without explicitly stating that the norms and values were still
oppressive for women, they show it to the reader through their use of the stereotype
opposition, which I rephrase as the Mirror Image.
The reason I focus on Shirley by Charlotte Bront, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, The
Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, and After Leaving Mr Mackenzie by Jean Rhys is that
all of these novels do indeed center around two female main characters, that the images
used do resemble an angel and a more rebellious character, and that the rewriting
strategies formulated by Gilbert and Gubar are present in these novels.
10
At the same time,
the application of the techniques is sufficiently different to make each novel an interesting
case study.
The first novel to be examined is Shirley (1849) by Charlotte Bront. This less well-known
work by Bront was praised for its social aspects even at the time of its publication. In this
realist novel, attention is paid to both the position of the woman and the plight of the
worker. In my analysis, I focus on the way in which both female main characters, Shirley

9
John Markoff, Margins, Centers, and Democracy: The Paradigmatic History of Womens
Suffrage, Signs 29:1 (2003): 85-117.
10
Gilbert and Gubars study The Madwoman in the Attic is a thematic analysis of nineteenth century
literature by women with a very strong feminist approach. It is sometimes considered too biased and
focuses on the mental aspects of the depicted female characters. By using their study here, I do not
mean to indicate that I support all of their ideas. Yet, their examination of both the history and
development of the use of female images by both male and female authors is helpful for my
investigation of the mirror image.

13

Introduction

Keeldar and Caroline Helstone, are being portrayed and compared. My analysis of this
British novel focuses on the opposition of the good woman and the bad woman. I
examine whether the images of the angel and the monster can be directly linked to the
labels good and bad or whether there is a more subtle subdivision. And, if there is, what
is the role of the mirroring technique and how does it function? The novel Shirley takes
place in the Yorkshire of 1811, but the book itself was written a little later, namely in 1849.
At the beginning of the novel both female main characters are still quite different from one
another. In the course of the story, however, things begin to change and the novel ends with
the marriage of both women. Throughout the novel, contemporary readers were presented
with a good example of both traditional and alternative behavioral patterns for women; and
they were made aware of the fact that there were indeed more options available to women.
Yet, they could take notice of these options without running the risk of being criticized
themselves. That they did take heed of these options becomes apparent from an
examination of the reception of the novel in 1849.
11

In the second novel I analyze, The Awakening (1899) by Kate Chopin, the two female main
characters are mirrored again. The style of this novel can be referred to as emotional
realism. This time Edna Pontellier and Adle Ratignolle are being compared. During a
period of nine months both women undergo an intense process of personal change. For the
year 1899, when this American novel was published, the narrative was quite unusual.
Points I will examine in relation to this realist novel again focus on the mirroring technique:
both women are structurally compared and contrasted here as well. But the period and the
setting are quite different. In my analysis I investigate the differences in relation to the
earlier novel, and test the hypothesis whether there is a development in the use of the
mirroring technique. The tragic consequence for the writer of this quite controversial novel
was that its publication almost turned out to be the end of her literary career. An
investigation of the reception of this novel in 1899 will further clarify this point.
The third novel I examine is The Age of Innocence (1920) by Edith Wharton. The style of
this novel is realist as well, but with a strong focus on society, so much so that it is often
referred to as a novel of manners. The two female protagonists in this novel are from the
upper middle classes. The story takes place in the New York of the 1870s and this time
May Welland and Ellen Olenska are mirrored. In the course of the story the division
between good and bad seems to become blurred. Edith Whartons subtle and intelligent
use of the mirroring technique creates distinctions that cannot simply be labelled with these
opposites. How Wharton applies the mirroring technique and introduces subtle changes will
be discussed in the chapter on The Age of Innocence. Whether her techniques were
appreciated and understood by contemporary readers is shown by my investigation of the
novels reception in 1920.
In the last novel I discuss, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1930) by Jean Rhys, the two main
female characters are the sisters Julia Martin and Norah Griffiths. Rhys depiction of both
characters is again quite different from the earlier novels. The images of both the angel
and the monster are present in this story, but it is especially the contemporary patriarchal
context and its influence on the lives of both female main characters that receives a lot of
attention and criticism. Rhys novel was published in 1930. It is the last and most modern
novel that will be discussed. Rhys writing style is very different from the earlier novels

11
See Chapter 3.5 of this dissertation.

14

THE MIRROR IMAGE

and approaches modernism. How this influences her use of the mirroring technique and the
depiction of the stereotypic images are important points of investigation. Whether and how
contemporary readers appreciated her modernistic and sometimes even impressionistic
application of the technique is studied in my investigation of the reception of the novel in
1930-1931.
Many other women writers wrote novels with two female main characters or doubles. But
very often the double would assume a particular shape, like the mad(wo)man. Examples
of this use can be found in The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Bront, and Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf. The
male/female double was popular as well. Mrs. Dalloway has already been mentioned, but
another example would be The Mill on the Floss (1860) by George Eliot. Yet, rather than
just focus on one mental element of a female protagonist, I was interested in all aspects of
femininity, so neither of the other models was so apt or relevant.
By means of the examination of the mirror image, my research illuminates the techniques
used by Bront, Chopin, Wharton and Rhys to raise awareness of the contemporary system
of norms and values. The methodological framework for this investigation is, in part,
offered by Hegenbarth-Rsgen whose approach blends an interpretative and a
sociologically-based analysis of the ways literature can be a vehicle for social norms. The
other part is an examination of the contemporary social context. The period 1849-1930
seems to have been a transitional period in which a great many changes in the social
context for women followed each other in rapid succession. How women writers have
represented these changes and perhaps even encouraged some of them are important focus
points in this research project. A close look at the employment of the angel and the
monster substantiates the claim that women writers have often succeeded in reversing the
implied meaning of the original images through the mirroring technique.
Through two sections, an examination of the images and representation techniques first,
and the subsequent study of reader-reports, this study suggests ways in which the novels by
these women writers functioned in the contemporary negotiation of social roles for women.
Because of the complexity of the phenomenon that is being investigated - novels at the
intersection of the literary and the social the theoretical framework of my research project
is interdisciplinary, including womens studies, narratology, history and sociology.
Framework
Gilbert and Gubars thematic study of the traditional images used by both men and women
to represent women in their work provides a useful starting point for my investigation. In
their feminist study they examine the origin and the history of the images of the angel in
the house and the monster (Gilbert & Gubar, 73-76). They indicate that related motifs
have their roots in the way women are portrayed in literature by men. They notice that
throughout literary history men have used specific images to depict women in their work.
These images, especially the angel in the house and its necessary opposite and double,
the monster, have taken on authority (Gilbert & Gubar, 17):
As a creation penned by man woman has been penned up or
penned in. As a sort of sentence man has spoken, she has herself been
sentenced: fated, jailed, for he has both indited her and indicted her.
As a thought he has framed, she has been both framed (enclosed) in

15

Introduction

his texts, glyphs, graphics, and framed up (found guilty, found wanting)
in his cosmologies. (Gilbert & Gubar, 13)
Gilbert and Gubar also point out that the impact of these images of the angel in the house
and the monster has been devastating on both womens understanding of themselves and
on their creative writing. Just as the passivity of the image of the angel discourages
women from writing, so, too, the image of the monster backs up the idea that creativity is
the domain of men, because any woman who tries to assert herself through writing is
considered unnatural and dangerous, and looked upon as an abnormality.
Gilbert and Gubar believe that before any woman can write, she first has to deal with these
male images of her self. At the same time, Gilbert and Gubar indicate that women often
use and misuse male literary traditions (Gilbert & Gubar, 80). Instead of destroying the
male images of women (the images of angels and monsters), these images abound in
writing by women, too. The most important difference lies in how these images function.
Gilbert and Gubar claim that:
women from Jane Austen and Mary Shelley to Emily Bront and Emily
Dickinson produced literary works that are in some sense palimpsestic,
works whose surface designs conceal or obscure deeper, less accessible
(and less socially acceptable) levels of meaning. Thus these authors
managed the difficult task of achieving true female literary authority by
simultaneously conforming to and subverting patriarchal literary
standards. (Gilbert & Gubar, 73)
Most womens writing contains a hidden story according to Gilbert and Gubar, who
observe that:
in publicly presenting acceptable facades for private and dangerous
visions women writers have long used a wide range of tactics to obscure
but not obliterate their most subversive impulses. (Gilbert & Gubar, 74)
They note that, in doing this, women writers have been especially concerned with
assaulting and revising, deconstructing and reconstructing those images of women inherited
from male literature (Gilbert & Gubar, 76). The opposed images of the angel and the
monster, and the mirroring of them, become important as an equivalent for the opposition
between the publicly acceptable facades and womens private and dangerous
visions. By rewriting the monstrous image(s) of themselves, as created by their male
precursors, women seem to give expression to their feelings of frustration and anger,
according to Gilbert and Gubar. The analysis in The Madwoman in the Attic expounds that
in literature by women the use of the images of the angel in the house and the monster,
and the use of these images as doubles, mainly concerns the representation of the struggle
of the female protagonists with patriarchal society.
Another useful basis was an examination of the tradition of the motif of the Doppelgnger
or double. In critical tradition, basically two types of double have been distinguished. The
first type, usually referred to as the objective double, possesses external reality, clearly
independent of the original self, but lacks any kind of inward linkage or continuity with the
latter; it is similar, but not self, and an example of this external type would be the
allegorical double. The second type is referred to as the subjective double. This double

16

THE MIRROR IMAGE

shares a basic psychic identity with the original self, but lacks external reality and thus any
convincing simultaneous identity of its own; it is self, but not other; an example of this
type would be the psychological double.
12

As we will see, the type of double present in the literature by women during the period
1849-1930 seems to belong to the objective type. Aspects of the subjective double are
present, though, and to be able later on to describe more exactly what the character of the
double in literature by women is like, what form the motif may assume, how it is presented,
and what the meaning of the motif is, I turned to the main traditional studies of the motif.
13

In spite of their different approaches and terminologies, the explanations that these studies
offer are quite similar. In their investigations of mainly the same (male) writers, they all
state that the figure of the double is created by the author, either consciously or
unconsciously, to express in fiction the division within the authors own mind. According
to these studies the motif of the double represents the authors shortcomings, his darker
side, the self which he really is, as opposed to the good self that he would like to be, or at
least would like to be thought to be. As a result the double seems to be a figure of threat
and hatred, who stirs up fear, loathing, and shame in his better self with whom the writer
tends to identify himself. According to these views, the double never seems to be just a
technical device; instead the motif appears to be a symptom of the writers own mental
disorder.
14

By contrast with these masculine examples, the double in the work of women authors
seems to be more of an independent phenomenon, representing the comparison between
the two female main characters in the book. It also appears to have a more social function
rather than a psychological one. This supported my decision not to use the term double for
the motif I investigate. As indicated before, the term Mirror Image will be used. This
seems a more suitable phrase for a motif that is used to compare and contrast the female
protagonists in the social world of the novel. Throughout my examination of such a
comparison, the focus is on womens social roles, and in this investigation the mirroring of
the two female protagonists will be studied concerning their relation to accepted roles.

12
This distinction is made by many critics of the Doppelgnger or Double, but the division mentioned
here is taken from the notions C. F. Keppler expounds in Chapter 1 of his study The Literature of the
Second Self. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1972) 9-10.
13
In brief, these were: Max Dessoir, Das Doppel-Ich (1890); Emil Lucka, Verdoppelungen des Ich
(1904); Otto Rank, The Double (1925) and The Double as Immortal Self (1958); Wilhelmine
Krauss, Das Doppelgngermotiv in der Romantik (1930); Stanley M. Coleman, The Phantom
Double (1934); Ralph Tymms, Doubles in Literary Psychology (1949); Marianne Wain, The
Double in Romantic Narrative: a Preliminary Study (1961); Claire Rosenfield, The Shadow Within:
the Conscious and Unconscious Use of the Double (1963); Masao Miyoshi, The Theme of the
Divided Self in Victorian Literature (1963) and The Divided Self (1969); Robert Rogers, A
Psychoanalytic Study of the Double in Literature (1970); C. F. Keppler, The Literature of the Second
Self (1972); H. M. Daleski, The Divided Heroine (1984); Karl Miller, Doubles: Studies in Literary
History (1985); Paul Coates, The Double and the Other (1988); John Herdman, The Double in
Nineteenth-Century Fiction (1990); Sandro M. Moraldo, Wandlungen des Doppelgngers (1996);
Andrew J. Webber, The Doppelgnger (1996); John Pizer, Ego-Alter Ego (1998); Christof Forderer,
Ich-Eklipsen: Doppelgnger in der Literatur seit 1800 (1999).
14
Examples of books by British male writers which seem to substantiate these theories are: R. L.
Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), and Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891).

17

Introduction

My examination thus differs from the existing studies. With its focus on the use of the
mirror image in literature by women, and in particular its social connotations, this study
introduces a new angle on the doubling or mirroring technique. I will not just discuss the
motifs, but I will also investigate how the various cultural roles and values are represented.
This requires an approach that seeks to connect a literary text and the social context.
Although her work is not very well known, a study by the aforementioned Annelie
Hegenbarth-Rsgen proved very useful. In her study, Soziale Normen und Rollen im Roman
(1982), she presents a theoretical framework to examine the representation of social norms
and roles in the novel.
I examine Hegenbarth-Rsgens approach in the first chapter of this dissertation. Overall,
her method can be divided into three main points of interest in relation to my study. First, it
contains some suggestions for the analysis of texts with regard to the representation of
norms and social roles. I will add an examination of the way in which mirror images are
used to portray social roles for women. Her second point of interest is the organization of
the elements of a text through the different perspectives represented in a text. In this context
she refers to the distinctions made by Wolfgang Iser in his study The Act of Reading.
15
Her
last point is a study of the text side and the reader side as the two complements of the
communication frame of texts. I will examine all of these points to inquire further into the
application of the mirror image, and I will concentrate on its use in the novels under
investigation.
In this sociological approach, Hegenbarth-Rsgen importantly distinguishes four functions
that literature can have in relation to social norms and roles. She assumes that all literature
reflects social norms and values, even if it is in an indirect way. The first function in this
context she calls thematization. This idea offers insight into how novels may raise an
awareness of norms and roles by thematizing them. By giving the readers of their novels an
interpretation of the social context, and a shared experience of both conformist and deviant
behavior of the female protagonists, Bront, Chopin, Wharton and Rhys raise the values of
the social context for women to a higher and more conscious level of understanding. The
second function is called stabilization by Hegenbarth-Rsgen. This is a technique that can
be used to stabilize norms and roles in both real life and in literature. It is in relation to this
process that the mirror image has an important function. Stabilization of norms and roles
can be achieved through a de-legitimization or problematization of the undesirable role or
inadequate norm. The mirror image introduces the possibility of comparing and
contrasting the social roles represented by the two main characters. The comment or
criticism, which in this case implies de-legitimization of the undesirable role or norm,
devaluates one character and the social role connected with her, and thus also stabilizes
the desired alternative. The mirror image thus introduces the possibility of a sanction.
Hegenbarth-Rsgens third function is called problematization. This technique describes
the process of how readers (and characters) become aware of certain norms and roles, and
the way they function through a critical approach. The fourth function Hegenbarth-Rsgen
distinguishes is anticipation. This concept indicates how readers can become acquainted
with alternative conventions or codes of living through literature. All four concepts and the
method are dealt with more extensively in Chapter One of this dissertation.

15
Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (London and Henley:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978).

18

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Such a focus on the representation of social norms and roles requires an examination of the
contemporary social context.
16
As the timespan 1849-1930 was a transitional period that
has produced the first feminist wave with a great many changes in the social context for
women, a close look at the actual social context seems necessary. Within eighty years,
Western society developed from a traditional, mostly rural and quite religious type of
society to a modern, urban and industrial society in which women did seem to have more
freedom in spite of the still restrictive legislation. The Victorian Era gradually gave way to
the Jazz Age. The whole of Chapter Two, therefore, presents a brief social history of the
education of girls and the role of the woman in England and the United States during the
period of the four chosen novels, drawing on various socio-historical works focusing on the
circumstances for women at the time, in particular, to get a better understanding of the
workings of socialization processes, I briefly discuss a study by George Herbert Mead who
gives a clear picture of these processes in an examination written towards the end of the
period under investigation here (1934).
17
A more general reflection on the function of
education in reproducing social norms and distinctions will be discussed as well. The
sociological perspective of Bourdieu and Passeron offers a good basis for the understanding
of the working and reproduction of power systems in education, culture and society.
18
In
spite of the improving possibilities for education, the type of education girls received would
still focus on the social roles they were assumed to adopt later on in life. A noteworthy
aspect of the socialization of girls, at the time, was the important role fulfilled by the
family. It was especially the mother who served not only as a guide and teacher, but also as
a role-model for the girl. Compulsory primary education gradually came into being, but
secondary and higher education for girls developed much more slowly and most girls
received such training in a domestic context.
Alongside the issues of socialization and education, other points of interest gain attention.
Practical changes in daily life are important. The introduction of new household appliances
made life easier for some women at the beginning of the twentieth century. So did the
introduction of new fashions and different hairstyles in the 1920s. Certain groups of women
also gained more leisure time which they could use studying or working. And some women
became involved in the campaign for women to be given the right to vote. Yet, even with
more spare time, and more job opportunities, womens participation in the workforce
hardly increased until the 1930s. Individual women and organized groups did strive for the
liberation of women, and though both British and American womens movements were
successful in getting women the vote and in realizing more extensive possibilities for
education, they never became mass movements, and they did not succeed in changing the
traditional gender-role divisions. In general, womens political power remained negligible
during the entire timespan investigated. Perhaps more important was the way society

16
A similar concern for the link between literary works by women and the interaction with and
influence of the contemporary social context is investigated in Women and Literature in Britain,
1500-1700 edited by Helen Wilcox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Even though
this study concerns quite a different timespan, it was still very useful to me, as it provided a good
example of how to approach such a topic.
17
George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviourist (1934;
Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, eighteenth imression, 1972).
18
Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Culture and Society, Trans. R.
Nice (London & Beverly Hills: Sage, 1977).

19

Introduction

gradually got used to the everyday reality of girls studying and women participating in the
labor force.
All of these trends can be noticed in the individual novels, and an examination of the
mirror image helps to illuminate these processes. Within each novel the behavior of the
female main characters and the narrative strategies underlying this representation reveal
both the limitations and the gradual changes in the immediate social context. It is especially
the opposition between the traditional and accepted pattern of behavior with the changing
context and ideas that is stressed. This comparison is graphically depicted through the
contrasting images of the angel and the monster. In general, creative literature during
this time seemed to encourage cultural reflection and social change.
19
The writing by
women was no exception, and each individual woman writer discussed here contributed to
the changing social context in her own way.
The focus throughout this dissertation is on how female authors represented the feminine
condition in novels and the narrative techniques they used to do this. This practice will be
explored in Chapters Three-Seven, the main bulk of this dissertation. In these chapters the
novels by Bront, Chopin, Wharton and Rhys are discussed by means of the theoretical
studies on social norms and roles, drawing also on the social and historical context. In
relation to the theoretical framework, it is the use of the mirror image and the
representation of norms and social roles that gains special attention, though I would like to
stress that it is especially the creative and imaginative side of such representation in
literature that will be focused on. I hope that my account of some representation techniques
illuminates these creative processes. A similar approach is adhered to in relation to the
study of the use of perspectives in the various texts and an examination of the text side
and the reader side, to borrow Hegenbarth-Rsgens phrases.
In the chapters on Bront, Chopin, Wharton and Rhys I concentrate on three aspects in
relation to the use of the mirror image. The first context in which the mirroring of the
female main characters is studied concerns the depiction of the primary and secondary
socialization of the two females. It focuses on the upbringing and education of the two
women in as much as the text formulates any details about this. The second context
concerns the class-specific socialization. In relation to this aspect, I examine the depicted
use of role-attributes by both protagonists. Such role attributes may be the use of clothes or
accessories, or the make-up used. The third context concerns more generally the portrayed
behavior of both women. In how far are they shown to be influenced by the social
environment in which they live?
In all four novels, one of the female main characters sticks more to the traditional role
assigned to the woman, while her mirror image seems to be more of a rebel. The often
critical attitude of the minor characters and sometimes of the other female character are an
important aspect of the social context, and a pointer for both the rebel and the reader about
what is considered acceptable and what is unacceptable behavior in the world evoked in the
text. At the same time, the very introduction of a certain type of apparently deviant
behavior may have made readers question the standards imposed on a womans conduct:
are they really so appropriate, logical, or just? It is this questioning of the imposed types of

19
Andrew and Judith Hook, Introduction (1974) to Shirley by Charlotte Bront (1849;
Harmondsworth, [etc.]: Penguin Classics, 1985) 8.

20

THE MIRROR IMAGE

behavior that may contribute to the emancipation process. Responses by contemporary
readers show that such reflections on norms and values in the texts were indeed continued
by and within the reader.
Reception
To investigate further the effects of the techniques used by these women writers, I finally
examine the reception of these novels by contemporary readers. A useful study in this
context is an article by the American sociologists Sarah Corse and Saundra Davis
Westervelt.
20
Corse and Westervelt offer an interesting framework for understanding and
interpreting reader reviews from contemporary readers. They take as their point of
departure the idea that the value of literature differs as evaluation systems change. The
interpretive and material resources available within social systems influence both works
and the judgments attached to them. In particular, they demonstrate the varying
appreciations of texts under different interpretive strategies. They stress that the dominant
interpretive strategy of readers during the period 1849-1930 was built on assumptions of
reading as moral instruction. Such interpretive strategies would evaluate the novels under
investigation differently than late-twentieth-century feminist interpretive strategies would.
My research suggests that the representation of the Angel in the House seems to make
these novels socially acceptable reading at the time; the rebel image introduces the
subversive aspect, and it is the mirroring of these images that permits the questioning of the
good and bad aspects of each side and introduces the possibility of ambiguity. Such
questioning contributes to the raising of an awareness about social norms, roles, and images
and thus helps to clarify and even expose the social context to the contemporary reader.
Overall, Corse and Westervelts approach to the reception of literature focuses on the
reception of a novel in relation to the appreciation of the work by groups of readers at
various points in history. Wolfgang Isers theories concentrate on the reception of a work
by an individual, less historicised, reader and the processes that take place in a readers
mind whilst reading a text.
21
Iser has developed a reception theory that is based on
phenomenology. In his view the literary text, as a product of the writers imaginative acts,
in part controls the readers responses, but always also contains a number of gaps or
indeterminate elements. These the reader must fill in by a creative participation with what
is given in the text. The experience of reading is an evolving process of anticipation,
frustration, retrospection, and reconstruction. This involvement of the readers
consciousness brings together both the more objective features of a literary work and the
coherence, or unity of a text as an interpretive construct. The authors imaginative and
inventive acts create both limits and incentives. It is the readers involvement with the text
and their creative additions to a text that make a text come alive and develop into a kind of
virtual reality to the reader. Because of readers participation in the text in this way, the
reading of a literary text may have a great influence on an individual readers mind; and the
ideas contained in a text may thus contribute to a consciousness raising activity.

20
Sarah M. Corse and Saundra Davis Westervelt, Gender and Literary Valorization: The Awakening
of a Canonical Novel in Sociological Perspectives 45.2 (Summer, 2002) 139-161.
21
See note 8; in addition to that study Isers theoretical work Prospecting: From Reader Response to
Literary Athropology (1990) has also been consulted.

21

Introduction

Both Corse and Westervelts and Isers approach are considered as a basis for the study of
the reception of Shirley, The Awakening, The Age of Innocence and After Leaving Mr
Mackenzie. I argue that the techniques used in these novels at least created more openness
about the position of the woman during the timespan 1849-1930. Whether the narrative
strategies used also really contributed to the emancipation of women seems harder to
confirm, but the large amount of evidence, some previously unstudied, of reader response
provides fascinating proof in this context, as we will see later on.

22

Chapter 1

Conceptual framework
Reality is much too complicated for a beginner.
In [novels], however, students will find a model of
reality in which all the relevant features are
combined into a unified whole.
Derek Russell Davis
1

1.1: THE POSSIBLE FUNCTIONS OF NARRATIVE TEXTS
Readers have read literature not only to be entertained but also, though not always, to learn
something. This fact has been stressed in poetics from Aristotle and Horace to Schiller.
2
In
a similar way this aspect plays an important role in reflections on novels. Many aspects of
novels have gained attention in this context. In this study the focus will be on the
representation of norms, values and social roles for women.
Several literary theorists have suggested techniques for examining norms and values in
novels. For this examination, I have selected a study by Annelie Hegenbarth-Rsgen.
Hegenbarth-Rsgen assumes that if literature has an influence on social change, then it
must be through the way literature represents social norms and values. In her study, she
examines how this process works, and develops a method for a reconstruction of the
possible functions of narrative texts. Within this method she has three main points of
interest, namely norms and social roles as elements of a text, the organization of the
elements of a text through textual perspectives, and the text side and the reader side as
complements of the communication frame of texts. I believe that in literature by women the
use of mirror images in relation to the representation of norms and social roles plays an
important part and I have introduced this as the main focus in relation to which the other
aspects are examined. In more detail Hegenbarth-Rsgen also distinguishes four possible
functions of literary texts with respect to social norms and roles: thematization,
stabilization, problematization and anticipation (Hegenbarth-Rsgen, 15-26). In the context
of the investigation of the motif of the mirror image these functions seem to be especially
relevant, because they all use the mirroring process as a basis. Let me summarize
Hegenbarth-Rsgens approach first, as my analysis will be partly based on her framework.
I will complement this overview with other theories of sociology, social psychology and
phenomenology because they can give a more nuanced interpretation of Hegenbarth-
Rsgens sometimes rigid categorizations which focus on the text and also seem to ignore

1
An observation made by the English psychiatrist Derek Russell Davis. It is his argument for why he
makes his students watch the staging of Hedda Gabler every year. Told as an anecdote by Jostein
Bortness in his Introduction to Aristotles Poetics (Oslo: Solum, 1980) 27; adaptation to novels by
me.
2
The following works by these authors deal with this issue: Aristotle (384-322 BC): Poetics, Horace
(65-8 BC): Ars Poetica, and Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1795-1805): some of his poetry
and many of his essays on aesthetics.

23

the role that imagination plays in both the creation of literature and the reading of it.
Through an investigation of all of these points, I hope to make clear how mirror images
are used to represent, challenge or subvert norms and social roles for women in the novels
by Bront, Chopin, Wharton and Rhys.
1.2: NORMS, SOCIAL ROLES AND MIRROR IMAGES AS ELEMENTS
OF A TEXT
Writers of fictional texts select much of their material from earlier literature as well as from
real life or their own experience.
3
The intertextuality on the one hand, and the reference to
everyday life on the other, vary with regard to the suggested working of the text, and are
also dependent on genre conventions and traditions for their influence. It is typical for the
genre of the novel that it achieves a very high degree of incorporation of extra-textual and
real-life norms. In this dissertation, the focus adopted in the analysis of the selected texts is
more on social pressures and less on intertextuality. Rather, the central question is which
social roles for women it represented and how these were related to the actual roles of
women in the nineteenth century. The investigation of norms, social roles and mirror
images in literary texts needs some introductory explanation to serve as a basis. First of all,
I will examine the central concepts of norm, social role and mirror image; after this, I
will briefly present and comment on Hegenbarth-Rsgens method for the identification
and reconstruction of these elements from narrative texts.
Norm
The concept of norm has become an important notion in todays social sciences.
According to various scientific disciplines, norm signifies either a judgment about what you
are or implies an obligation about what you should do.
Of the following three most important ways to explain norm in the context of sociology,
only one approach seems theoretically applicable and useful for the collection of empirical
proof. To define norm as similarity of behavior is of little analytical value since all research
presupposes the availability of regularities of social behavior. Because of this, within
sociology an agreement has been reached to call such similarities of behavior, social
custom, habit or tradition. To define norm as judgment of behavior, and to base it on the
moral or ethical status of the behavior does not seem particularly useful either because
isolated judgments of behavior seldom occur. Its current use in sociology goes so far as to
define norm as a demand for behavior (Hegenbarth-Rsgen, 28). This is therefore also the
definition I will use.

3
Though referring to literature in a wider sense, Jorgen Dines Johansen confirms this in his study
Literary Discourse: A Semiotic-Pragmatic Approach to Literature. Johansen has an interesting
chapter on the function of literature in history and society, Chapter 6 The Interpreters. In this
chapter the author goes back to antiquity and in generalizing about the goals of literature, he states
literature is, and has always been, an important instrument for revealing the interests, norms and
values that characterize a community. Second, in contradistinction to psychology and practical
philosophy, literature proves, as it were, by means of rhetorical induction, that is, by example. The
strength of literature consists, among other things, in that it stays very close to the level of lived
experience even if this experience is imagined (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002) 289-
346; 299-300.

24

THE MIRROR IMAGE

How do norms work in practice? A sanction or correction occurs when a norm sender
expects a certain behavior from a norm addressee; in fact a deviation from this demand for
a social behavior often causes a reaction against the violator of the norm.
4
The sanction or
correction can be used as a starting point for further research. If a certain type of behavior
is punished, then the assumption arises that it may prove to have been a deviation from
another, expected, type of behavior and that, because of the punishment, the acting person
must have deviated from a norm. In the imposition of a punishment or obviously
condemnatory expressions it is not so much the harm done by someone that is important,
but rather the intention from the sanction imposer. The deliberateness of the action
distinguishes the sanction from purely reactive types of behavior. And only obvious
condemnations, whether they affect offenders of norms directly or indirectly, can be looked
upon as a sanction. Finally it is the damage caused to the offender that seems to be the most
important aspect. This can usually be described as an impediment to the individual acting
with regard to social participation or social appreciation.
An actual example of the imposition of a norm that we will meet with later on is the
criticism Kate Chopin met with after her novel The Awakening was published in 1899. The
behavior of one of the female protagonists in the novel deviated so much from the
Louisiana norm- and value system of 1899 that the reviews, mainly in the local press,
heavily condemned the novel, no matter what its merits were. The depiction of the
characters behavior was not to the liking of the local Louisiana press and both the novel
and the writer were blackened, mainly to set an example.
Sanctions can be both verbal and non-verbal. Verbal sanctions have, in addition to their
actual function, an informative function for violators as well. It can provide norm
addressees with a reference point for all future situations in which the same behavior will
be demanded of them and it can also be used to make clear that the demand for a certain
type of behavior will be adhered to in spite of the deviation. Social control in the shape of
sanctions or corrections is not the only important factor in the maintenance of social norms.
Members of a group also learn in the process of socialization, through acceptance of
examples of behavior supported by social control, to internalize them as subjective truths
and, through these means, to build up a system of inner social control. But the
internalization of ordering principles alone does not seem to be enough to guard any social
system from being subverted, if it is not additionally supported by external control
measures.
Social Role
Social norms are not isolated concepts; they can be collected to form bundles of norms or
role norms. A social role is a complex of role norms attached to a social position. A social
position means a place in the organized system of social relations. Such a position or

4
In his study Outsiders, Howard S. Becker points out that deviant behavior is not intrinsically
aberrant or wrong: social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes
deviance, and by applying these rules to particular people and labelling them as outsiders. From this
point of view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the
application by others of rules and sanctions to an offender. The deviant is one to whom that label
has successfully been applied; deviant behavior is behavior that people so label (New York: Free
Press, 1963) 9.

25

place always revolves around an idealization, however, when all of the characteristics of a
position in society are equated and hypothetically treated as the same. Holders of a social
position are part of a group that they belong to because of this position and in which they
have interaction with groups with which they necessarily become involved as a result of
their position. Norm senders are those who address compulsory demands for behavior to
the holder of a social position, as their norm addressee. Every role is part of a collection of
roles and, therefore, a group or sequence of partial roles focused on each other. The role of
the mature woman in the nineteenth century, for example, contains at least the three partial
roles of wife, housewife and mother.
Mirror Image
The third notion that is important in the framework for this study is that of the mirror
image. Very briefly the motif of the mirror image can be described as a device consisting
of the opposition of two characters. My hypothesis is that one of the main characters
portrays and, in this way, conveys the accepted social role(s) for women to the other main
character, who appears to be deviating from the norm. Though the twin character usually
succeeds very well in portraying the perfect woman, who faithfully follows and executes
the norms and roles allotted to her, she is less successful in conveying these norms and
roles to her alter ego who often seems to prefer to stick to her own deviating patterns of
behavior.
A brief detour into the possible origin of the mirror image may help to clarify its function.
In general, the motif of the mirror image resembles the motif of the Double as it is
discussed by Gilbert and Gubar in The Madwoman in the Attic. In their examination of the
history of the motif, Gilbert and Gubar explain that the Double as it is used in womens
fiction has its roots in the way women are portrayed in literature by men (Gilbert & Gubar,
17). But they add that women writers have adapted the images of the angel and the
monster and have used them with a twist. Instead of destroying the male images of
themselves, these images abound in the writing by women as well (Gilbert & Gubar, 80).
The important difference lies in their true significance, since most womens writing
contains a hidden story (Gilbert & Gubar,76). The images of the angel and the
monster, and the use of them as doubles, become important as a parallel for the opposition
between the publicly acceptable facades and womens private and dangerous
visions.
5

The angel in the house and the more rebellious character depict exactly the two sides of
the mirror image that I am concerned with here. The rebel coincides with the deviating
character of one of the female protagonists, while the angel in the house coincides with
her more socially acceptable alter ego. With regard to the function of the mirror image, the
following can be noted. It is the angel image that seems to be used as the so-called
sanction in order to correct the deviating behavior of the rebel character. In fact, not only is
this protagonist made aware of her own aberrant behavior, the mirroring with her angel
also shows her what her behavior should be like. Linking the mirror image with

5
Gilbert and Gubar are not the only literary theorists to notice such a tendency. Susan Suleiman also
examines the use of oppositional structures and characters in literature to convey a message. In her
study she focuses on the roman thse, but the effect is quite similar. Authoritarian Fictions: The
Ideological Novel as a Literary Genre (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).

26

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Hegenbarth-Rsgens analysis of norms and social roles as elements of narrative texts has
proved to be a very revealing method of analysis.
Method
Hegenbarth-Rsgen argues that norms and social roles as elements of narrative texts can be
analyzed in more detail by means of two procedures. According to the explanations
formulated earlier, one can speak of a social norm when a norm sender regularly demands a
certain type of behavior in certain situations and remedies a deviation from this behavior
with a sanctioning or correction of the offender. This forms the basis of the first procedure I
will use in my analysis. All of the constituents mentioned behavior regularity, deviating
behavior and the sanction - can be used as evidence to reconstruct the social norms at stake
in the world evoked by the literary work which itself in turn mirrors the contemporary
social world.
In all four novels the deviating behavior of the rebel character is occasionally corrected.
Sometimes it is the immediate social context that criticizes the aberrant behavior of the
monster. Sometimes the other minor characters comment on her digression. Very often it
is the angel in the house who not only says something about the protagonists mistake, but
who also shows her the right type of conduct. All of these reactions clearly reveal which
social norm has been violated.
The more deficient a norm presentation is and the less easily the central constituents can be
reconstructed from the text, the more a researcher has to be able to fall back on well-
founded socio-historical knowledge about social conventions in order to be able to fill in
the missing information. This means, in the context of the present study, that knowledge
concerning the position of women in the nineteenth century and the norms and roles
applying to her is a prerequisite for the inference of norms. Chapter Two, therefore, will
contain an investigation of the role of women in British and American society of the
nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.
Besides investigating the implication of norms, research can also focus on roles. Social
roles or partial roles can be examined without mentioning the norms that apply to them. In
literary texts, they can be determined by means of two aspects. The text can, first of all,
mention the social position with which a certain role is connected. The text can also be
examined in terms of its mention of role-attributes. By role-attributes are meant the
properties of a person in relation to a certain role. Whereas norms prescribe what people
must do in certain social roles, role-attributes determine how they should appear. Clothes
are a good example of attributes, and so are other possessions. When a holder of a social
role seems to have certain attributes, then hypotheses can be formulated about which role a
person with certain attributes or characteristics plays.
Throughout the time-span 1849-1930 the conventions of dress were quite strict, especially
for women. All female main characters representing the angel faithfully adhere to the
codes of dress of the time. The rebel character sometimes does this, but more often she is
depicted as having an attitude to clothes that says something more about her character.
Shirley, for example, is described in Bronts novel as having expensive taste; she dresses
flamboyantly but nonchalantly. This coincides with her social role of lady of the manor;
though it also suggests a great deal about her personality. Edna Pontellier in The Awakening
ignores the codes of dress, just as she ignores the prevalent norm and value system in

27

Louisiana, in general. She remains an outsider and solitary soul. Ellen Olenskas style of
dress as described by Wharton in The Age of Innocence is very tasteful and highly
individualized. Her use of clothes is so personal that it seems hard to link her with a social
role. But this is extremely fitting; the representation of her use of clothes does not indicate a
fixed social role, it underlines her individuality. In Rhys novel After Leaving Mr
Mackenzie, Julia Martins style of dress does seem to confirm the stereotype she represents,
sometimes to an extremity. It is Rhys modernistic writing style that introduces this almost
grotesque application of the significance of role attributes, but this representation is very
effective.
I will proceed in two ways throughout this study. On the one hand, I will try to reconstruct
the norm from the text through the use of the mirror image and starting from this norm
reconstruction, attempt to discover the social role. On the other hand, I will attach the
fitting social norms to the roles characterized by means of their attributes or position in the
text. Both of these methodological procedures will be further examined in the investigation
of the four novels.
6

1.3: TEXT PERSPECTIVES
Norms and roles form elements in a novel which resemble procedures in real life as well as
in other literary forms. They do not stand in isolation from each other, nor is their use free
from preconceptions. In fact, norms and roles as elements of texts are organized through
perspectives that form the interrelations in the text, and can through their reciprocity
suggest an opinion for the reader.
7
Text perspectives clarify the various ideas in a text and,
together, form a system of perspectivity. In the examination of the perspectives in actual
extracts from novels one is confronted with two problems, however. First of all, the
organization of the perspectives in a text is never complete. This means that the
reconstruction of the system of perspectivity inevitably shows a certain degree of
subjectivity. Secondly, perspectives in a text do not appear separately or follow each other
in strict succession; instead they are so intertwined that, even for analytical purposes, they
cannot really be isolated.
According to Wolfgang Iser, the perspective in narrative texts is usually realized through
four viewpoints: that of the narrator, the acting characters, the plot and the personal
perspective of the individual reader. I will discuss the role of the reader more extensively at
a later stage as part of the investigation of the comparison of the text side and the reader
side, and as part of the socio-historical study of the role of women in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries.
8
I will here focus on the three most important holders of
perspectives within a novel: the narrator, the acting characters and the plot.

6
See Chapters 3-6.
7
The terms perspectives and strategies in this sub-section will be used in accordance with the use
of these terms by Wolfgang Iser in his study The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response.
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978) 86-103. In her discussion of text perspectives, Hegenbarth-
Rsgen mainly refers to Wolfgang Iser. In my own overview, I have therefore chosen to refer to him
directly.
8
See Chapters 1.4 and 2, respectively.

28

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Generally speaking, Iser distinguishes between three main kinds of organization of
perspectives.
9
One characteristic of the counterbalance arrangement is a strictly pre-
determined structure of the perspectives. This arrangement is realized when one central
perspective - for example, that of the main character - divides or subdivides all other
perspectives in a prearranged way. It can, however, also occur when all of the perspectives
in a text consider one element in a novel in a coherent and, with respect to the content, non-
contradictory way. A counterbalancing division of the perspectives of the narrator, the
protagonist, the other acting characters and the plot is characteristic of edifying, didactic
and propagandistic literature, because this type of literature needs to be unambiguous as a
decisive condition for the fulfilment of its intended function. Iser presents Bunyans
Pilgrims Progress as a good example of this type:
The hero represents the principal perspective; through him a catalogue of
norms is unfolded, and these must be conformed to if the goal of
salvation is to be reached. The norms represented by the central
perspective are therefore affirmed, and any violation of them is punished.
The perspective of the minor characters is clearly subordinate to that of
the hero; those who conform most closely to the norms represented
remain longest in the pilgrims company. (Iser, 100)
Iser stresses that the goal of the counterbalancing arrangement of perspectives is to produce
a text that will not rival the thought system of the depicted social world.
10

With the oppositional arrangement, the consistency implied in the counterbalancing
arrangement is much less present. The perspectives which consider one element in a novel
have now been arranged in such a way that one of the aspects of the central element, for
example, a norm or a role, is accentuated in both a positive and a negative way. The
oppositional arrangements that prevail in literature are the contrasting of the perspectives of
two acting characters, or of the protagonist and the narrator. These arrangements may result
in a possible denial of all or some perspectives and elements in the novel. With the
oppositional arrangement the univocality of the perspectives is eliminated, but there is still
a steering of the influence of the elements of the novel on each other.
11
All four novels
under investigation here fall into this category, though fragments of the stories may
sometimes lean towards the other divisions.
The variant, which is the echelon or serial arrangement of the perspectives no longer has
such a suggestive effect. The various perspectives of the protagonist, of the dominant and
less important characters, of the narrator and of the plot produce multiple reference systems

9
Iser, 100-103. In his study Iser actually distinguishes four central classifications: counterbalance,
oppositional, echelon and serial. However, since the echelon and serial arrangement are so similar, I
agree with Hegenbarth-Rsgens decision to combine them; Hegenbarth-Rsgen, 48.
10
For a more detailed analysis, see Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose
Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974).
In this study Iser devotes a whole chapter to this novel (1-29).
11
Iser, 101. In this context Iser gives Smolletts Humphry Clinker as an example where it serves to
present topographical as well as everyday realities. As an epistolary novel, Humphry Clinker offers a
whole range of highly individual perspectives, frequently directed toward the same phenomena, and
yet frequently presenting totally opposing views.

29

that prevent any fixed reader orientation. The echelon or step-by-step arrangement finds its
ultimate form in the nouveau roman.
12

In this exposition of the possible perspectives in a text, it is especially the formal and
quantitative aspects of a point of view that have been stressed. At this point, however,
some considerations concerning the qualitative aspects of the perspectives deserve
attention. The qualification of a perspective results from the fact that the holder of the
perspectives (the narrator, the protagonist, the other acting characters or the plot) not only
organizes the elements of a novel, but is at the same time itself the object of multiple
perspectives. The separate perspectives not only suggest a certain interpretation of the
developments in a story; they also open up a viewpoint on each other. This can be clarified
by the following example. In a certain novel, the assessing point of view of the protagonist
on a social norm is being described. However, the main character herself is also
characterized in various ways by the other holders of perspectives. The presentation of their
opinions in the novel, the evaluation of their views and deeds by the narrator, and the
judgment of their personality by the other characters may qualify the protagonist in a way
that can reach from stereotyping to decided individuality. Similar to such a qualification of
the main character, the plot, the other characters and the narrator can also, as object of the
perspectives, gain a special quality that predetermines the point of view towards that
particular element in a text and that can then influence the assessment of this element by the
reader.
1.4: TEXT SIDE AND READER SIDE
According to Iser, narrative texts are rhetorically designed by the writer, with the goal of
guiding the reader in the act of reading (Iser, 86). In this way, textual structures can
influence the understanding of the reader and give clues to the construction of meaning
without, however, fully predetermining and controlling the interpretation of the reader. The
reconstruction of the possible effects of texts that stem from a different historical period on
the contemporary reader is difficult to reproduce, however. We cannot read with the eyes of
contemporary readers because the social knowledge necessary for it can only be partially
reconstructed and with only a varying degree of certainty. In addition, it is good to realize
that different readings were possible, in the past, as well. Literary scholars, therefore, have
to rely on their actual and socio-historical knowledge to discover the pre-designed function
of the text as a macrostructure, and to correlate the possible working of it with the usual
orientations of historical reader groups.
In Isers view, the text side, as one of the two sides of the communication frame, is based
on at least four important aspects. The first aspect is the selection by the writer of elements
from the real world or literary examples that together constitute the repertoire of a text. It is
important for the function of literary texts which conventional historical, contextual and
gender-conventional elements of the repertoire belong to the thematic material and which
remain in the background as a field of reference for the thematized element (Iser, 96). The

12
Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922-2008) Pour un nouveau roman (1963; Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1975).
In this study, Robbe-Grillet argues for a neutral registering of sensations and things rather than an
interpretation of events or a study of characters. He put all his principles into practice in the novel La
Jalousie (1957).

30

THE MIRROR IMAGE

second aspect concerns the perspectives foregrounded in the text. In general, the
organization of the relationships in a text is dependent on the writers selection of the
perspectives. This selection can differ both quantitatively and qualitatively. It happens, for
example, that one element of the repertoire of a text may be focused on by various and, in
the most extreme case, by all of the holders of the perspectives, while another element may
only be assigned one single perspective. Qualitative differences in the selection may reveal
themselves in the fact that a certain element is put into perspective by the main character or
a minor character, by the main action or by a secondary, less important action, or by
positively or negatively qualified characters. The third aspect that is important for the effect
of the text consists of the technique of the division of perspectives. A text has
distinguishable functions, depending on whether its perspectives are characterized by
completeness or deficiency, by a dominant or less important position, by whether it shows a
coherent or divergent organization, or by whether it has, respectively, a counterbalancing,
oppositional, or echelon serial arrangement (Iser,100-103). The last aspect that is important
for the function of fictional texts, according to Iser, is negation.
Elaborating on his theory, we can distinguish between various observable phenomena of
norm negation in the text (Iser, 212). Negation of social norms and roles can occur in the
narrative text by means of at least three procedures that can be linked to the analysis of the
repertoire of texts and textual perspectives. The negation of a norm can take place, for
example, when, contrary to the expectation of the readers, characters do not stick to the
norm. The concept of deviating behavior then becomes thematized. Another possibility
for negation may be realized through a denying perspective of the main character, less
important characters, or the narrator with regard to a norm or a role. It is especially in
reflections, observations, opinions, discussions, explanations, statements and comments
that rejecting, criticizing or questioning positions with regard to the validity or non-
adherence of norms may occur. Finally, the plot can be interpreted as perspective and may
depict the negation of norms, when the negative consequences of non-conformity are being
presented.
The influence of negation on readers and their understanding of it can be related to the text
and can, in the case of the denial of the norm or role, assume two shapes. Whilst referring
back to the real world the reader can reconstruct the negated norm or role and, in this way,
restore to the work of literature the acceptable, but now disrupted, social ordering. But the
reader can also (in a fictional medium more easily than in social reality) take the negation
as a chance to imagine a new social role or several norms, in which case the range of
alternatives for real or desired possibilities opens up.
The working of a literary text takes place in the perception of the readers, affecting them
cognitively and emotionally, without this having to result in acts. Readers contribute
personal ideas and opinions whilst interpreting fictional texts. Ideas about the real world are
something that the human being develops through the social knowledge acquired during
primary and secondary socialization
13
. Such knowledge is internalized as everyday routine-
knowledge or as specialist-knowledge (Mead, 256-257). Although this knowledge, along
with the process of its distribution and acquisition is of a common kind, at the same time,
from the perspective of the individual, this is always a biographically determined, unique

13
I will discuss this in more detail in Chapter 2, where I discuss the work of the social psychologist
George Herbert Mead.

31

gathering of knowledge. The reconstruction of this personal aspect of the readers position
belongs to the domain of analyses that examine the reception of texts by an individual
reader.
When the reception disposition of a group of readers in relation to a certain theme is being
investigated, then a methodology is needed that can reconstruct the characteristics of such
reader groups. The aspects that are selected for the differentiation of reader groups depend
on the type of investigation. When, as in the present study, it is the possible contribution of
literature to the changing complex of norms and roles with regard to the role of women that
is being examined, then it is necessary to classify groups of readers according to their
routine knowledge and their attitudes with regard to that gender role (along with the sub-
roles of wife, housewife and mother and in addition to possible alternatives such as that of
the lady or the New Woman). This aspect will be further examined in Chapter 2, where
the contemporary social context and the reading habits of women at the time will be briefly
investigated.
1.5: THE READING PROCESS
Another important aspect in relation to the understanding of a literary text is the reading
process involved.
14
One of the main elements that seems to be lacking in Hegenbarth-
Rsgens theory is an examination of the interactive nature of the reading process.
Hegenbarth-Rsgen is not alone in neglecting the dynamic processes involved in reading;
many narratological studies seem to overlook this aspect. Iser does pay attention to this
aspect, expounding how new ideas might be picked up by contemporary readers whilst
reading novels. Through the reading of the novels under examination here, readers at the
time not only noticed the different behavioral patterns for women, but the reading process
also made them part of the world evoked in the text. This is how the novels may have had
a more intense influence on the readers than one might suspect. It is difficult to establish
exactly how an individual literary work may affect a reader, but various theories have been
advanced concerning the possible workings of a fictional text on the consciousness of a
reader. A summary of Isers phenomenological approach is inserted here to suggest how
these novels by Bront, Chopin, Wharton and Rhys may have affected contemporary
readers.
15

Iser believes that in studying the effect of a literary text one should not only analyse the
actual text, but also the processes that are involved in responding to a text. Iser
subsequently divides a literary work into two poles, the text created by the writer, on the

14
Ralf Schneider underlines this in his article Toward a Cognitive Theory of Literary Character: The
Dynamics of Mental-Model Construction. Schneider approaches literature from the viewpoint of
cognitive narratology, using many of Isers ideas. Style 35:4 (2001) 607, 628.
15
Iser is not the only theorist applying a phenomenological approach to the process of reading. There
are many others who have developed ideas within the context of phenomenological criticism, such as
Ingarden and the members of the Geneva School (including Georges Poulet and Jean-Pierre Richard;
see also note 15). Isers ideas, however, seemed to connect better to the notions expounded by
Hegenbarth-Rsgen. Hegenbarth-Rsgen herself also extensively refers to his work in the context of
text perspectives and the distinction between the text side and the reader side. In spite of some
possible points of criticism, I have therefore decided to maintain Isers approach.

32

THE MIRROR IMAGE

one hand, and the realization by the reader, on the other.
16
A literary work is not completely
identical with the text, nor with the realization of the text. It is located halfway between
these two sides. As readers re-enact the various perspectives offered by the text and begin
to relate the patterns and the perspectives to one another, they make the work come alive
through their own responses.
In Isers view, important aspects within a literary text that may incite readers interest are
the following. A text should be constructed in such a way that it will engage the readers
imagination. For bringing the underlying structures of a literary work to fruition, the
literary text needs the readers imagination to give shape to the interplay of aspects
foreshadowed in structure by the presented sequence of sentences. Within a text each
sentence sequence opens up a certain horizon of expectation which is modified, if not
completely changed, by succeeding sentences. While the expectations arouse interest in
what is to come, the subsequent modification of them will also have a retrospective effect
on what has already been read. This may now take on a different significance from that
which it had at the moment of reading.
The reader thus establishes interrelations between the past, present and future of the reading
experience and allows the text to reveal its potential multiplicity of connections.
17
These
connections are the product of the readers mind working on the raw material of the text,
but they are not simply the text itself, for this consists of sentences, statements, and
information. In this way, a reader often feels involved in events which, at the time of
reading, seem real even though they are very far from the readers own reality. The fact that
completely different readers can be differently affected by the reality of a particular text is
evidence of the degree to which reading literary texts is a creative process that is far above
mere perception of what is written. The literary text activates a readers own faculties,
enabling the reader to recreate the world it presents. This virtual dimension is not the text
itself, nor is it the imagination of the reader: it is the interplay between text and
imagination.
The involvement of the readers imagination is achieved by the text as follows. The
sentence sequence of a text is not a continual flow, and it is mainly through omissions that a
story will gain its dynamism. Whenever the flow is interrupted the reader is led off in
unexpected directions and stimulated to introduce personal ideas for establishing
connections. Because of this, one text is capable of different realizations, as each reader
will fill in the gaps in an individual way. In this way, a text also refers back to the readers
preconceptions which are revealed by the act of interpretation that is a basic element of the
reading process. The manner in which readers experience the text will reflect their own
disposition, and in this respect the literary text acts as a kind of mirror of the readers own
values and preconceptions. But at the same time, the reality which this process helps to
create is one that will be different from the readers own. The impact the new reality makes

16
The summary provided here is based on The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach,
New Literary History 3 (1972). For a fuller exposition of Isers theories see The Act of Reading: A
Theory of Aesthetic Response (1978) and Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary
Anthropology (1990).
17
This phenomenological description of the reading process as a sequence of hypotheses, confirmed
or connected by subsequent information, underlines the cognitive approach as expounded by
Schneider.

33

on readers will depend largely on the extent to which they actively supply the unwritten
part of the text. Yet, in providing all the missing links, readers must think in terms of
experiences different from their own.
The picturing that is done by the imagination is only one of the activities through which we
form the reality of a literary text in our minds. Other important aspects are the process of
anticipation and retrospection a text may evoke. A last one is the process of grouping
together all the different aspects of a text to form the consistency of which the reader will
be in search.
It is necessary for a text to present a consistent configurative meaning, if it wants to
introduce an unfamiliar experience. By means of the creation of illusions readers can
subsequently incorporate such experiences into their own imaginative world. Since readers
create the illusions themselves, readers thus oscillate between involvement in and
observation of those illusions; readers open themselves to the unfamiliar world without
being imprisoned in it. In the fluctuation between consistency and new associations,
between involvement in and observation of the illusion, readers will conduct their own
balancing operation, and it is this that forms the aesthetic experience offered by the literary
text. Whilst reading a text, for example, a reader may find that characters, events, and
backgrounds seem to change their significance. Other possibilities or story levels begin to
emerge more strongly, so that the reader becomes more directly aware of them. It is this
shifting of perspectives that makes the reader feel a text is true-to-life. Since it is the
reader who realizes the levels of interpretation and switches from one to another, readers
impart to the text the dynamic lifelikeness which, in turn, enables them to absorb an
unfamiliar experience into the personal world.
This process of creative reading is guided by two main structural components within the
text: first, a repertoire of familiar literary patterns and recurrent literary themes, together
with allusions to familiar social and historical contexts; second, techniques or strategies
used to set the familiar against the unfamiliar. The effectiveness of a literary text is realized
by the evocation and subsequent negation of the familiar. What at first seemed to be an
affirmation of readers assumptions leads to a rejection of them, thus tending to prepare
readers for a re-orientation. This is what Bront, Chopin, Wharton and Rhys have
consistently done in their novels with the introduction of the mirror image. The
comparing and contrasting of both familiar and new behavioral patterns for women, allows
a rethinking of the possibilities for women.
18
Iser believes that it is only when we have
outstripped our preconceptions and left the shelter of the familiar that we are in a position
to gather new experiences. As the literary text involves the reader in the formation of
illusion and the simultaneous formation of the means by which the illusion is punctured,

18
In relation to reading a literary text and the understanding of the various levels of the text by the
reader, Johansen makes the following relevant remark: According to Althusser what literature and
art make us see is precisely ideology in the sense of the lived experience. Literature make[s] us
perceive (but not know) in some sense from the inside, by an internal distance, the very ideology
that dominates the readers (223). Although this potential double nature of real literature, as
simultaneously ideological and a critique of ideology, has to be scrutinized in each and every case, it
may also be helpful in understanding the ambivalent reactions of readers (Johansen, 312). In this
quotation he cites Louis Althusser, A Letter on Art in Reply to Andr Daspre, Lenin and
Philosophy and Other Essays (New York, London: Monthly Review Press, 1971) 221-227.

34

THE MIRROR IMAGE

reading reflects the process by which we gain experience. Once the reader is entangled,
individual preconceptions are continually overtaken, so that the text becomes the readers
present whilst personal ideas fade into the past. Through this entanglement with the text
readers are bound to open themselves up to the workings of the text, and so leave behind
their own ideas. With a literary work an author can convey a new experience, and, in this
way, an attitude towards that experience. The identification of the reader with what happens
in the novel is not an end in itself, but a stratagem by means of which the author can
stimulate attitudes in the reader.
19

In the reading process readers will be occupied by the thoughts laid before them by the
author. In thinking the thoughts of another, the readers own individuality temporarily
recedes into the background since it is supplanted by these new ideas. As readers read, there
occurs a temporary transformation of their personality, because they experience an event
that is not part of their actual life. When reading, readers operate on different levels. For,
although we may be thinking the thoughts of someone else, what we are ourselves will not
disappear. In the act of reading, having to think something that we have not yet experienced
does not mean only being in a position to conceive or even understand it; it also means that
such acts of conception are possible and successful to the degree that they lead to
something being formulated in us. For someone elses thoughts can only take a form in our
consciousness if our faculty for deciphering those thoughts is brought into play. This
process is carried out on terms set by someone else, whose thoughts are the subject of our
reading. The realization of the readers means of deciphering is not solely along the
readers own lines of orientation. It is exactly the involvement in the train of thought of the
author that allows the reader to not just pick up new ideas, but to be part of them already.
The text and the new experience become part of the readers themselves.
The use of the mirror image in the novels by the women writers studied here allowed
contemporary readers to become acquainted with different, more liberated behavioral
patterns for women. Not all readers agreed with these new options, and few female readers
would have adopted such behavioral patterns themselves. But as Isers phenomenological
approach suggests, the seed was planted. The writers had been able to pass on their world
view to individual readers in a very private and intense way. By temporarily evoking a
different world for their readers, these readers also became part of that world.

19
Similar ideas were already expounded by another theorist, George Poulet, who believed that literary
texts take on their full existence in the reader. According to him, texts consist of ideas thought out by
someone else, but in the reading process the reader becomes the subject who does the thinking. This
puts reading in a unique position with regard to the possible absorption of new experiences. Through
a literary text the reader thinks thoughts that belong to anothers mental world, but which are now
being thought in the reader. Since every thought must have a subject to think it, this thought (which is
alien to the reader and yet part of the reader) must also have in the reader a subject which is alien to
the reader. The strange subject that thinks the strange thought in the reader indicates the potential
presence of the author, whose ideas are internalized by the reader. This would mean that
consciousness forms the point at which author and reader converge. At the same time, this process
will result in the cessation of the temporary self-alienation that occurs to readers when their
consciousness brings to life the ideas formulated by the author. Phenomenology of Reading, New
Literary History 1 (1969): 54.

35

1.6: TEXTUAL STRATEGIES:
1.6.1: Thematization
Returning now to some of the ideas advanced by Hegenbarth-Rsgen, it is interesting to
notice what she states in relation to textual strategies. Literature, according to Hegenbarth-
Rsgen, has the potential to teach people about or make them experience social norms and
roles (Hegenbarth-Rsgen, 15-18). In life, knowledge about norms and roles is part of the
everyday knowledge of a society. Contrary to theorized, specialized knowledge, everyday
knowledge is shared by most members of a society. Such knowledge is picked up by each
new generation in the process of socialization. Learned in routine situations, everyday
knowledge helps the members of a society to deal with regularly recurring situations, and it
also gives people directions about how to behave.
Because individuals can readily apply such knowledge in routine situations, it has to
comply with two presuppositions. First of all, it should be strongly standardized, and as
formula knowledge, it should present acting- and problem-solving concepts.
20
Secondly, it
should, as internalized knowledge of the everyday, have the status of certainty for the
individual. This means that individuals automatically introduce their routine knowledge
into communication and interaction processes, without realizing that they are doing this.
Habitually learned knowledge for acceptable behavioral patterns gives the individual
guidance and an orientation example for coping with daily life.
Practical, everyday knowledge can become conscious knowledge under certain conditions.
As long as common knowledge can steer the outcome of daily actions successfully, it
remains simply reactive. But when situations occur in which routinely applied formula
knowledge suddenly fails in bringing about the expected result, then the individual is
forced to notice this disturbance, to think about it and to look for its causes. And the
usually normal situation then becomes a crisis. This process may help to explain the
thematizing function of literary texts (Hegenbarth-Rsgen, 16).
The crisis experiments of the American sociologist Garfinkel may further clarify this
process. His research offers interesting insights into the results of disturbances in familiar
rituals of behavior. Through his experiments he tries to raise general knowledge concerning
procedures of the everyday to a higher level of consciousness. He does this by means of the
provocation of crises; these more extreme situations lead to a more conscious reflection on
behavioral patterns.
21
The reaction of the tested persons to his crisis experiments consisted,
first of all, of confusion and dismay, but then changed into a discussion about the
experiment and into a process of reflection on routine knowledge. While most people
reacted in this way, some did terminate the experiment in the first stage of confusion, or
even left the crisis experiment entirely, because they anticipated that they would be hurt.
Apparently crises in daily life (at least in non-life-threatening situations of direct
communication) usually lead to reflection about routinely applied behavioral patterns, but
in some cases they also lead to avoidance.

20
In cognitive sciences, this is also described as frames, schematas and scripts. Scott Thornbury,
Lesson Art and Design, ELT Journal: English Language Teachers Journal 53:1 (1999): 4-12; 4.
21
Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974) 35-37.

36

THE MIRROR IMAGE

In daily life, the possible number of crisis situations is theoretically unlimited; in practice,
however, it is dependent on the coincidence of biographical, social and historical
circumstances. Literature, on the other hand, offers readers the possibility of experiencing
crises that do not exist in their own world through the medium of literary texts and can thus
provide knowledge about daily life to readers, which would otherwise not reach their level
of conscious reflection. If individuals react to a crisis by avoidance, then this occurs
because they assume, on the basis of anticipated confusion, that they cannot react in a
suitable way. It is exactly this necessity that is cancelled out when reading literary texts.
The reading individual may confront situations that they would otherwise have avoided
without this leading to actual consequences.
In the case of my corpus of works, it is the use of the mirror image in the novels under
investigation that leads to the emergence of one or more crises. In this way, the acceptable
and unacceptable behavioral patterns for women are thematized and raised to a more
conscious level of understanding. The motif can thus help the reader to gain new
knowledge about the social context.
1.6.2: Stabilization
The second textual strategy introduced by Hegenbarth-Rsgen is the stabilization of norms
and roles (Hegenbarth-Rsgen, 18-21). Knowledge about the organization of society (to
which central elements like norms and roles belong) needs to be explicitly stabilized, and
brought to consciousness, because it has to be passed on to the next generation, and its
constancy is not simply assured through habit formation and memory of the individuals
involved. How permanence of social ordering can be achieved and change prevented will
be described in what follows.
Social norms and roles are, depending on their distribution and interdependence, stabilized
in various ways in everyday life. In general, universal norms and roles are presented and
claimed as valid for all groups in a society at a specific historical period. An example of an
important social role for women, involving (culturally specific) norms, in the nineteenth
century would be that of the mother. The most important characteristics of this role, such as
conceptions about nursing behavior, care for the immediate needs of the child and
elementary pedagogical skills, can be demonstrated in all social groups, though with some
variations. Such a universal role can be stabilized in daily life through the distribution and
conscious preservation of role-specific knowledge or through focused criticism of deviant
types of behavior. Hegenbarth-Rsgen argues that a similar process can be found in
literature and that, analogous to the procedures in daily life, behavioral patterns in literature
are judged, criticized and corrected.
Norms and roles tend to be legitimized. Such legitimization can be noticed in various
contexts. Legitimization of the organization of society that is based on symbolic
signification (such as, for example, religion or the invocation of the natural order of
things) usually specifies norms and roles, and presents them as if they are natural qualities
or even revelations of the will of God, instead of products of a specific culture. According
to Hegenbarth-Rsgen, the most successful strategies for stabilizing social values can be
realized through types of legitimization such as these because, on the one hand, such
appeals are barely or not at all transparent for the individual, and, on the other hand,

37

because any possible criticism or alternative acting, would mean a deviation from all
acceptable behavioral patterns.
Besides the universal norms and roles, there are partial or separate norms and roles that are
only valid for certain groups in a society. Such norms and roles can be classified according
to their interrelationships. Stabilization follows in these cases by means of legitimization,
through the spread and preservation of the social knowledge that such roles are functionally
necessary for the existence of a society, or through the blackening of its opposite.
In the context of this present study it is the stabilization of female roles that find themselves
in competition with one another that is important. The representation of the role of women
in literary texts will be examined in relation to the change or strengthening of their role(s)
in the nineteenth century. The various social roles for women are topical, because there are
a few sub-roles that are opposed. The roles of wife, housewife and mother, for example,
contrast with the class specific role of the lady, along with the more daring roles of
mistress, businesswoman and New Woman. Opposite roles can, for example, be stabilized
by de-legitimizing an undesirable role. A deviating role can also be stabilized by
problematizing such a role (for example, the role of mistress) and the norms attributed to it,
in such a way that the preferred role (that of the married woman) gains more objective
plausibility and subjective desirability.
The stabilization of norms and roles in literary texts can be suggested by means of similar
methods. Texts can both present and confirm knowledge about the general validity of
universal roles or the specific necessity of certain roles. Literature can also de-legitimize
and problematize unacceptable norms and thus stabilize the desired alternatives. In the
literature I investigate, the use of the mirror image contributes to the stabilization process.
Different or alternative roles for women are compared in the text by mirroring the main
characters. Such writers strategies clarify which alternative role seemed to be preferred by
the society of that time. It thus sometimes appeared as if these writers adhered to the
expected norm and value system. However, I will interpret that as part of their strategy.
They could at the same time introduce the individual reader to challenging alternatives. The
psychology of reading assured the involvement of the contemporary reader in all levels of
the story. And contemporary reader reports show that many of them were intrigued by the
presented alternatives.
1.6.3: Problematization
The third strategy Hegenbarth-Rsgen expounds is that of problematization of norms and
roles. This function is not as clear-cut as the other concepts; other social and psychological
theories are helpful in this context. One of these is the theory of cognitive dissonance
(Hegenbarth-Rsgen, 21-23).
22
Its central thesis states that individuals used to a consonant
relationship between their mental frame of reference and their knowledge of daily life,
experience dissonance or disharmony as unpleasant, leading to psychic pressure and
tension.

22
Hegenbarth-Rsgen refers to Leon Festinger, An Introduction to the Theory of Dissonance,
Classic Contributions to Social Psychology. Eds. E. P. Hollander and R. G. Hunt ( Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1972) 209-210.

38

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Dissonance arises in situations in which an individual becomes aware of the inconsistencies
among convictions, the contrast between individual behavior and social norms, between
earlier and later experiences, or the irreconcilability of specific with more general
knowledge. Individuals usually react to this with an attempt to restore consonance, or at
least to reduce or eliminate the existing tension, or to avoid information that supports the
dissonance or strengthens it. Reduction or elimination of dissonance can be realized using
various methods. Individuals can change their own dissonance-causing behavior or attempt
to arrive at a different perception of this behavior. At the same time, disharmony can also
lead to a different interpretation of the surrounding reality, or to an acceptance of
completely new knowledge. Dissonances sometimes resist their reduction or elimination.
This may happen when the element of cognition that needs to be changed is not dependent
on the control of the will, but is rooted in physical or social reality, or is part of an
unchangeable system of cognitive elements.
23
The process of dissonance reduction can
influence the communication strategies of an individual in various ways. People may ignore
dissonance-strengthening information and prefer to observe consonance-supporting
information, or they may anticipate dissonance-generating communication situations and
circumvent them in time. Yet, as long as the element that causes dissonance and tension has
not been reduced or eliminated, it remains problematic for the individual.
Since the problematizing of social norms and roles by means of novels will be described in
the following chapters, the focus here will be on the representation of the workings of
cognitive dissonance in and through literary texts. Dissonance can be caused by various
textual means. The text can present everyday situations like marriage in which deviant
behavioral patterns prove problematic for one of the characters (double standards), or from
which it becomes obvious that the consequences implicated in the non-conformity are
unacceptable for a society (divorce). In the same way, a role such as that of the mistress can
be presented as clearly undesirable within the fictional world.
If a character acts with avoidance in dissonance-causing situations, then the reader becomes
more alert and also willing to notice deviating experiences in fictive situations. It is
assumed that the readers reaction to the disharmony does not differ from that of behavioral
patterns in the everyday world. The problematization presented in literary contexts often
encourages reduction and elimination of dissonance in which the reader, empathizing with
the character, is involved. Yet, the reader may also reduce the dissonance by reverting to
more worldly experience or through the addition of new cognitive elements. It is
especially when the dissonance-reducing arguments stem from the problematizing aspect of
the text that aesthetic experience may contribute to the change in disposition of the reader.
However, even when the individual reader accepts the examples for the reduction or
elimination of the dissonance described in the text, this does not mean that the critical norm
or role is questioned in real life or that a change of attitude on the part of the reader will
be achieved. There can even be an opposite effect, as has been explained through reference
to the theory of inoculation as formulated by the American social psychologist
McGuire.
24
This theory claims that the elements of everyday knowledge called truisms

23
Festinger defines the term cognition as: any knowledge, opinion, or belief about the environment,
about oneself or about ones behavior, 210-211.
24
W. J. McGuire, Inducing Resistance to Persuasion, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology.
Ed. L. Berkowitz Vol. 1 (New York : Academic Press, 1964) 200 ff.

39

are generally accepted in a community or in social groups, but are also very susceptible to
attacks, because the individuals who accept these truisms without question are neither
motivated, nor trained, to defend them. Through inoculation, however, individuals are
first of all made aware of the danger of the truism and then motivated to defend it.
Secondly, they learn through the refutation of arguments, and with the help of the
arguments supplied in its favor, to protect the truism. In this sense, one can speak of
inoculation through fictive texts when a text contains arguments against a truism as well
as arguments that support it.
25

Such arguments can, in fact, be represented by both sides of the mirror image. The reader
learns through the reflected situations in literary texts to recognize attacks on the
unquestioned procedures of the everyday and to negate them with the aid of counter-
arguments. If, in a later real-life situation, readers experience criticism of such an aspect of
everyday knowledge - for example, of certain social norms and roles - then they will be
motivated and armed to refute them. For this purpose they can use the arguments learned,
consciously or sub-consciously, through literature.
1.6.4: Anticipation
Hegenbarth-Rsgen defines the fourth textual function, anticipation, as the recognition of
the potential that different or new behavioral patterns may have for the future (Hegenbarth-
Rsgen, 23-25). The anticipation of similar experiences accepts the idea of the
intersubjectivity of members of a society as a given; it is assumed that everybody can share
the same attitude and can experience events identically. Because of this, individuals know
that ego can act the same as alter, if they were to assume either viewpoint. This general
idea about reciprocal perspectives is an idealization of the exchange of perspectives and the
correspondence of systems of meaning. In reality, the experiences of no two members of a
society are ever identical. Still, it is assumed that the members of a society may have
similar powers of observation and procedures of thinking, an identical organization of the
mind and a comparable degree of socialization, all of which may differ, of course, as
between adults and children.
26

In sociology, the notion of anticipation is usually used in the analysis of anticipatory
adaptation to various social groups. Anticipatory adaptation means the assumption of the
attitudes, norms and values of a group by an individual who would like to become a
member of this group, but is not one yet. Sociology calls such a non-membership group a
reference group.
27
A reference group is a group whose values form the norm for an
individual. For some aspiring members it has a higher identification value than it even has

25
Hegenbarth-Rsgen transfers the findings of Mc Guires inoculation theory from social
psychology to literary texts. The actual validity of this theory for literature will still need further
testing, but it does offer intriguing points of departure for literature.
26
What Hegenbarth-Rsgen refers to is currently investigated as Theory of Mind. A Theory of
Mind is the ability to attribute mental states (thoughts, knowledge, beliefs, emotions, desires) to
oneself and others. This common-sense mentalism is a powerful tool in our everyday predictions and
explanations of human action. Britt M. Glatzeder, Vinod Goel and Albrecht Mller, eds. Towards a
Theory of Thinking: Building Blocks for a Conceptual Framework. Berlin: Springer, 2010.
27
Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (London: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964) 234,
238-244, 281-359.

40

THE MIRROR IMAGE

for its actual members. The perspectives of the group can be transmitted to the individual in
the process of socialization in such a way that they assume for someone the shape of the
generalized other, who is an abstraction from the norms, roles, values and attitudes of an
actual significant other (Mead, 196-205).
28
The reference group can, therefore, be viewed
as a specific, though not the only possible, development of the generalized other.
29

Members of a society anticipating the behavioral patterns of a different context usually get
norms and values imposed upon them from above, or through voluntarily chosen reference
groups. The simulation space of literature offers an interesting alternative for anticipation.
The examples of such alternative thinking and acting are of an imaginary nature, but in
realist fiction they resemble present-day or historical social-ordering structures. In addition
to the perspectives that are, for example, depicted in utopian literature or fairy-tales, texts
can also represent or offer a supply of perspectives for the anticipation of norms: these can
be roles, attitudes and values of societies from different historical periods or from other
cultures, from different social levels and reference groups, and even from the milieu of
social outsiders. Similar to the anticipation practices possible in the world of the
everyday, fictional texts can offer options for anticipation through the process of reading.
Anticipation in this context requires the identification of the reader with a main character or
another acting character who incarnates the norms and roles that are anticipated. Through
such sympathizing identification with a protagonist, the solidarity of the reader with the
main character can lead to a willingness to accept a different social system. The main
character has to be an average person, that is to say, imperfect and ordinary, so that readers
(also imperfect and everyday) can identify with their fictive alter ego. Sociologically
speaking, this means that the average protagonist should not show too great a social
distance from the readers, and that this protagonist should share the everyday world and
interpretation structure of readers.
Literature offering this possibility of anticipation may have a special function in social
change. On the basis of an actual, societal status quo, it is difficult for the reading
individual to anticipate the thought and behavioral patterns of other social aggregations in
the real world, or to anticipate becoming a different person physically or in terms of social
position. It is assumed that a literary text may realize the anticipation of such a situation
and, in this way, generate a process of individual, and ultimately social change. In the
context of this investigation it is especially the more liberated behavioral patterns of one of
the female protagonists that may encourage a new way of thinking for the contemporary
reader.
In spite of the somewhat mechanistic tendencies of some of Hegenbarth-Rsgens ideas
about the possible working of literature, there is also so much originality in both her

28
According to George Herbert Mead, the child has the most immediate contact and the strongest
emotional relationship with its parents and siblings and possibly also with other close relatives and
friends of the family. They constitute the important or significant others. During the socialization
process, the child learns that these attitudes and roles, just like the norms and values connected with
them, are not only represented by those closest but also exist in a much larger social reality than the
family, and the child discovers the generalized other, the representative of society. In Chapter 2 of
this dissertation I will have a more detailed look at Meads theories.
29
Meads theory is supported by Peter Hamilton, George Herbert Mead: Critical Assessment
(London: Routledge, 1992) 11-30.

41

method and strategies that a more detailed examination of the usefulness of her ideas in the
investigation of actual texts seems justified.
30
Hegenbarth-Rsgen tested her own ideas on
the writings of nineteenth century French male novelists. My own selection of texts
concerns female authors writing in English towards the end of the nineteenth and the
beginning of the twentieth century. It will be interesting to test the effects and usefulness of
her theories in relation to this group of texts.

30
All of the assumptions made by Hegenbarth-Rsgen need more testing to prove their viability. An
interesting current work on empathy by Susanne Keen provides a good overview of further research
on these issues: Empathy and the Novel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

42

Chapter 2

The contemporary social context
2.0: INTRODUCTION
In order better to understand the relation of Bront, Chopin, Wharton and Rhys to their
immediate social context and their views on the position of women, I will examine various
developments in the social history of women during the time of the publication of their
books. I will focus on the education of girls and the socialization of women, beginning with
a quotation from the famous late-eighteenth century woman writer, Mary Wollstonecraft:
After considering the historic page, and viewing the living world with
anxious solicitude, the most melancholy emotions of sorrowful
indignation have depressed my spirits, and I have sighed when obliged to
confess that either Nature has made a great difference between man and
man, or the civilization which has hitherto taken place in the world has
been very partial. I have turned over various books written on the subject
of education, and patiently observed the conduct of parents and the
management of schools; but what has been the result? a profound
conviction that the neglected education of my fellow-creatures is the
grand source of the misery I deplore, and that women, in particular, are
rendered weak and wretched by a variety of concurring causes,
originating from one hasty conclusion.
1

Wollstonecraft wrote this passage almost sixty years before the period under investigation
here. I quote the passage, firstly, because I will refer to some of the ideas of Wollstonecraft,
and, secondly because it shows what an intelligent woman thought of the state of education
for girls at that time. It will be useful to see whether the level of education for girls
improved or changed during the century after the publication of Wollstonecrafts book.
I begin with some general remarks concerning the importance of the social context. Both
the subject of this dissertation and its methodological approach demand an investigation of
the socio-historical conditions. Some knowledge of the existing systems of education for
girls as well as the social roles for women is necessary to understand to what extent these
novels represent roles available to women at the time. The reconstruction of the social
history helps to discover which social norms would have been considered relevant in both
reality and the fictional text. It may also contextualize the perspective or point of view
adopted by the authors, and it can suggest hypotheses about functions of the texts. Finally,
the socio-historical investigation is necessary for an understanding of which groups of
readers from the historical period were involved, especially with regard to their social
knowledge and their attitudes towards the education of girls and the roles allotted to
women.

1
Mary Wollstonecraft, Authors Introduction, originally from 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman (New York: The Modern Library, 2001) xxi-xxii.

43

Overall, I would like to stress that the following chapter does not claim to be a complete
social history of the period involved. I will mainly highlight points that are relevant to the
context of this investigation, such as education, labor, franchise and politics, especially as
they relate to women.
2

2.1: THE SOCIALIZATION PROCESS OF GIRLS
This subsection examines the general characteristics of the socialization process. An
interesting perspective on the socialization of girls against the background of which I
examine these novels is George Herbert Meads study Mind, Self, and Society.
3
His study
has become a classic in its field, and it examines and relates to a period that is close to the
time-span investigated here.
According to Mead a human being is not a member of society by birth; (s)he only carries a
social position, but still has to become a member of the community. By socialization is
meant the process through which the human being learns that sense of community, and how
(s)he comes to belong to a society. Mead argues that the basic mechanism of socialization
is a process of interaction and identification with others, that is to say, socialization happens
in face-to-face situations with other individuals. A few people occupy a special place
amongst the interaction and socialization examples of the child. With its parents and
siblings and possibly also with other near relatives and friends of the family, the child has
the most immediate contact and the strongest emotional relationship. They constitute the
important others. The child learns to imitate and internalize their attitudes and roles as
coherent and returning structured successions of actions. During the socialization process,
the child learns that these attitudes and roles, just like the norms and values connected with
them, are not only represented by these nearest others, but also exist in a much larger social
reality than the family. And the child discovers the generalized other, the representative
of society (Mead, xxiv, 154-155). The behavioral patterns and attitudes of the important
other, now become absolute social norms. Once the child has learned to accept the attitudes
and roles of the important other, and later on of the generalized other, as something that
goes without saying, something natural, and identifies itself with them, then one can
speak of internalization. Through its identification with these others, the child is able to
develop its own identity.
The construction and maintenance of identity require both self-identification, and
identification with others. During the primary socialization, the child identifies itself with
the norms, roles, attitudes, and values represented by the others. This phase is concluded

2
I realize that such an approach may seem limited, but so much emphasis has always been placed in
the study of history on the history of men, that a somewhat biased approach and a focus on her story
now seems justified to underline the effects of the developments in society on the lives of individual
women. For a nuanced approach to the study of history from the perspective of women, see Peter G.
Filenes article Integrating Womens History and Regular History, The History Teacher 13:4
(August 1980): 483-492.
3
George Herbert Mead Mind, Self, and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934). Mead
(1863-1931) was an American philosopher, sociologist and psychologist, primarily affiliated with the
University of Chicago, where he was one of several distinguished pragmatists. He is regarded as one
of the founders of social psychology.

44

THE MIRROR IMAGE

when the child has internalized the generalized other as bearer of absolute norms (Mead,
155-156; 369-370).
Secondary socialization is the acquisition of role-specific knowledge. Whereas primary
socialization presents a particular fragment of social reality to the child, depending on its
personal and social environment, the socialization process in the wider social context is
related to its connection with the cultural context, to social manners, and to social class.
The educational system, the contents of the education, and the presentation of the gender-
and class-specific division influence the knowledge, the competencies and the skills of the
girl and the young woman.
In more recent research on the process of socialization, Bourdieu and Passeron concentrate
more specifically on these aspects.
4
Their theory mostly concerns France in the 1960s, but
their findings and conclusions are generalized to such an extent that I would like to examine
in how far they help to shed light on the context of this study. Bourdieu and Passeron focus
on the socialization process in schools. Schools play an essential role in social and cultural
reproduction. They are engaged in a constant process of transmitting ideologies, values and
attitudes in such a way that dominant social relations between classes, sexes, and ethnic
groups are perpetuated.
5
Research into the working of these processes as far as gender is
concerned suggests that schools teach girls that their main objective in life is to fit
themselves to a caring role inside the home - primarily as wives, housewives and mothers -
but also within the occupational world and within society in general.
6
This role is a
secondary, servicing one by definition, and in adapting to the role girls learn to regard
themselves as secondary to men in terms of ability, capacity to lead, and social importance.
In essence, Bourdieu and Passerons study Reproduction deals with power, and in particular
with the question of how the unequally distributed positions of power in society are
maintained throughout the generations. Amongst the devices that contribute to this process,
education is, according to Bourdieu and Passeron, one of the most important factors
(Bourdieu & Passeron 1977, 102). This has a special reason which the authors relate to the
way in which education is organized in society, and the way in which education functions.
Overall, their main question is: how is it possible that power relations between groups
remain relatively constant from one generation to the next, and that this situation is usually

4
Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron Reproduction in Education, Culture and Society, trans.
R. Nice (1977; London: Sage Publications, 2000) and Pierre Bourdieu, Cultural Reproduction and
Social Reproduction, in R. Brown (ed.) Knowledge, Education and Cultural Change (London:
Tavistock, 1973). The reason I chose French studies in this context is that their works have become
key studies in the development of a social scientific analysis of culture. Their investigations connect
reproductive phenomena firmly to the structural characteristics of a society, and they show how the
culture produced by this structure in turn helps to maintain it.
5
See for similar conclusions: M. MacDonald, Schooling and the reproduction of class and gender
relations, Schooling, Ideology and the Curriculum, Eds. L. Barton, R Meighan and S. Walker
(Sussex, Lewes: The Falmer Press, 1980); R. Deem, Gender, patriarchy and class in the popular
education of women, Gender Class and Education, Eds. S. Walker and L. Barton (New York: IPS,
The Falmer Press, 1983).
6
It is useful to notice that both Bourdieu and Passeron mention this in relation to their examination of
the situation in France in the 1960s, and that Felicity Hunt states something similar with regard to the
schooling of girls in Britain in a much earlier period: Divided Aims: The Schooling of Girls and
Women, 1850-1950 Lessons for Life (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1987) 9-11.

45

experienced as more or less inevitable by most people. According to the authors this is
possible because inequality of power is basically regarded as differences in culture, in
which culture is interpreted as the link between the system of power relations and the
results of school and professional careers. Education is very important in this context,
because the process of maintenance and reproduction of these cultural differences mainly
takes place at school, and in a more or less concealed, though matter-of-fact way.
(Bourdieu & Passeron 1977, 158, 192).
Apparently, the school functions as an institution that builds on the cultural capital received
by birth and during the socialization at home. The extent to which this happens varies
according to social class. In general, the cultural inheritance or the interest in cultural
expressions (books, music, theatre, but also etiquette, nutrition, home furnishing, etc.) is
more developed in the higher layers of society, and in this respect children arrive unequally
equipped at school. Education contributes a special kind of cultural capital, namely, school
capital.
7
School capital consists of a certain level of education that people reach, and the
competencies and capacities that people acquire through education. But school capital
contains more than just the curriculum that is being transmitted; pupils also acquire certain
cultural practices. The extent to which the capital obtained at school becomes profitable,
depends on several factors, like the current market value of the diploma, the personality
factors of the owner of the school capital, and the entrance to the market where people can
stake their cultural capital. To be able to be succesful people very often also require social
capital.
8

In any social context, a child inherits a system of signification, style, behavior, dispositions,
and ways of dealing with the social reality that surrounds him or her, which Bourdieu and
Passeron call habitus.
9
Their definition of habitus is as follows: a system of durably
acquired schemes of perception, thought, and action, engendered by objective conditions
but tending to persist even after an alteration of those conditions. The relative autonomy of
the educational system is an important condition for the reproductive task of the school. It
is this level of independence from the economy and other external authorities that allow the
school to function according to its own principles for the transfer of knowledge, the
selection, and the evaluation procedures. In this way, the relative autonomy of the school
functions as a kind of cover-up for its selective and reproductive functioning (Bourdieu &
Passeron 1977, 167, 178).
Selection in education is often a confirmation of a process of self-selection by pupils from
the lower (and also other) social classes. An important cause is the absence of the habitus
required to succeed. But the style of the pedagogical practice in schools is also important.
By presenting the language and culture of the dominant classes in society as the generally
accepted culture, a process of exclusion and (self-)selection takes place which leaves the
social stratification of society intact. Noteworthy in this context is the resignation with
which this process is accepted by those concerned, and by all other parties, also by those

7
Bourdieu and Passeron originally called this le capital scolaire. In the translation used here, it is
referred to as both school capital and scholastic capital, 93.
8
Social capital represents connections, for example, membership of a prestigious society or a club.
9
Bourdieu & Passeron 1977, 31-32, 54-55, 72, 117, 134, 161, 203, 205. Bourdieu and Passerons
study The Inheritors contains the quoted definition of habitus (Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 1979) 156.

46

THE MIRROR IMAGE

who are a victim of it. This is the legitimization function of the school, which becomes
possible through the acceptance of the inherent logic and the internal functions of the
educational system. And this is also, according to Bourdieu and Passeron, how the
symbolic violence in and by means of education works.
In this critical perspective, education becomes the imposition of specific meanings,
categories, and concepts on the thinking and interaction by dominant groups. The selection
process in schools is in essence a process of transformation of social inequality into an
educational inequality that is again transferred into social inequality which completes the
circle. Hence the reproduction Bourdieu and Passeron refer to so prominently (Bourdieu
& Passeron 1979, 158). Such a process of transformation is possible, because its relative
autonomy permits the school to transfer the external demands (of the labor market, for
example) into system-internal demands, rules, criteria and procedures (concluding exams,
for example).
A more precise examination of the education and the socialization of the bourgeois girl in
Great Britain and the United States during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth
century will now follow, in which I will refer to the just mentioned socialization models.
The overview contains an examination of class-specific and gender-specific socialization; a
study of the curriculum that is used to pass on the knowledge and skills that are necessary
for the fulfilment of the role expectations; and an inquiry into the socialization examples,
both family and school, that are entrusted with the socialization of girls.
2.2: CONTEMPORARY THOUGHTS ON THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS
Nobody, she went on nobody in particular is to blame, that I can see,
for the state in which things are; and I cannot tell, however much I puzzle
over it, how they are to be altered for the better; but I feel there is
something wrong somewhere. I believe single women should have more
to do better chances of interesting and profitable occupation than they
possess now. And when I speak thus, I have no impression that I
displease God by my words; that I am either impious or impatient,
irreligious or sacrilegious. My consolation is, indeed, that God hears
many a groan, and compassionates much grief which man stops his ears
against, or frowns on with impotent contempt.
This passage is from Charlotte Bronts novel Shirley (1849).
10
It is the character Caroline
Helstone who thinks these thoughts. Caroline is a young woman, almost nineteen years old,
and though she is clever, one distinctly gets the impression as reader that it is not only
Caroline who is philosophizing here (the entire passage is almost four pages long). The
views of the character, in fact, echo those of Bront in her letters.
11
Even though the story
in the novel is supposed to take place in 1811-12, during the Luddite revolts, the situation
for women did not change considerably during the intervening period, and Bronts

10
Charlotte Bront, Shirley (1849; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 390-391. Further citations
from this novel will be indicated with S, followed by the page number(s) of this edition.
11
Some of these ideas can be traced in her letters: The Letters by Charlotte Bront Volume Two
1848-1851; ed. Margaret Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000); e.g the letters: To W. S. Williams
12 May 1848 (on governesses) 63-68, and To W. S. Williams 15 June 1848, 72-75.

47

remarks would still be valid in 1849, too. They therefore seem an appropriate introduction
to a subchapter on the socialization of girls, especially because they so fittingly concern the
beginning of the period under investigation.
Because the education of girls was quite different in Great Britain and the United States, a
brief historical analysis of both traditions will be necessary in the context of the socio-
historic framework we are here concerned with. It will provide a background against which
the novels to be discussed in the next chapters can be read. That the upbringing of the main
female characters depicted in the novels was not exceptional but part of a standard tradition
of contemporary society is something that I will attempt to substantiate here.
The process that is termed socialization by modern sociological theories is expressed in the
English language by concepts like education, breeding, and upbringing. Of the various
concepts, education has the largest semantic range. Firstly, this concept indicates the
desired development of the physical and intellectual talents of the child. And secondly, in a
more limited sense, education means the acquirement of social knowledge that contains
attitudes and values, feelings, and knowledge about social norms and roles. On closer
examination it can be stated that in the nineteenth century the socialization of the middle
class girl is mainly characterized by three aspects, namely: the disregard of the
institutional, school, and professional aspect, which has not been explicitly included in the
curriculum; the combination of the transmission of knowledge with the passing on of
emotions, attitudes, and values in the shape of morals; and an emphasis on social manners
and accomplishments.
12

That the education of girls maintained these characteristics during the nineteenth century is
perhaps not very surprising if we take the opinions of some of the most important
contemporary educational theorists into account. One of the writers Wollstonecraft
mentions in her book is Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78).
13
She mainly comments on
some passages from his book mile (1762). Very briefly, mile lays down the principles
for a new scheme of education in which the child is to be allowed full scope for individual
development in natural surroundings, shielded from the harmful influences of civilization,
in order to form an independent judgment and stable character.
14
But these prerogatives are
destined for the male child only. And the twenty pages Wollstonecraft dedicates to a critical
review of Rousseaus work consist for a large part of rather derogatory quotations on girls
and women by Rousseau. I will repeat a few of Wollstonecrafts citations here, to give an
impressionistic idea of his attitude, as highlighted by her:
Whether I consider the peculiar destination of the sex, observe their
inclinations, or remark their duties, all things equally concur to point out
the peculiar method of education best adapted to them. Woman and man
were made for each other, but their mutual dependence is not the same.

12
Joan N. Burstyn, Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood (Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble
Books, 1980) 22-28.
13
Wollstonecraft, Animadversions on Some of the Writers Who Have Rendered Women Objects of
Pity, Bordering on Contempt, A Vindication, 74-112. The quotations cited here are based on the
selection by Wollstonecraft.
14
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, mile (1762; London: Everyman, 1993) transl. from the French by Barbara
Foxley.

48

THE MIRROR IMAGE

The men depend on the women only on account of their desires; the
women on the men both on account of their desires and their necessities.
We could subsist better without them than they without us
For this reason the education of the woman should be always relative to
the men. To please, to be useful to us, to make us love and esteem them,
to educate us when young, and take care of us when grown up, to advise,
to console us, to render our lives easy and agreeable these are the duties
of women at all times, and what they should be taught in their infancy.
(Rousseau quoted by Wollstonecraft, 76)
Rousseaus observations were made halfway through the eighteenth century. Yet,
considering the influence his innovatory work later had on educationalists worldwide,
Wollstonecraft is quite understandably amazed at some of the things he states, including:
Girls ought to be active and diligent; nor is that all; they should be early
subjected to restraint. This misfortune, if it really be one, is inseparable
from their sex; nor do they ever throw it off but to suffer more cruel evils.
They must be subject, all their lives, to the most constant and severe
restraint, which is that of decorum: it is, therefore, necessary to accustom
them early to such confinement, that it may not afterwards cost them too
dear; and to the suppression of their caprices, that they may the more
readily submit to the will of others. (Rousseau quoted by Wollstonecraft,
78-79)
Modesty, temperance, self-denial, submission, sensibility and little liberty seem to be the
keywords advocated by Rousseau, but heavily criticized by Wollstonecraft.
Wollstonecrafts own ideas are aptly summed up in the following passage. With this
quotation, I will therefore give her the last word in the discussion, for now.
Let us, my dear contemporaries, arise above such narrow prejudices. If
wisdom be desirable on its own account, if virtue, to deserve the name,
must be founded on knowledge, let us endeavour to strengthen our minds
by reflection till our heads become a balance for our hearts; let us not
confine all our thoughts to the petty occurrences of the day, or our
knowledge to an acquaintance with our lovers or husbands hearts, but
let the practice of every duty be subordinate to the grand one of
improving our minds, and preparing our affections for a more exalted
state. (Wollstonecraft, 89)
Both the sections 2.3 and 2.4 will further examine whether any changes or improvements
occur in the education of girls during the period 1849-1930.
2.3: CLASS-SPECIFIC AND GENDER-SPECIFIC SOCIALIZATION
Class-specific socialization:
One of the most important factors in the socialization of the child is, in addition to its
gender, the social class the childs family belongs to. British and American society of the
second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century can, roughly, be
divided into three separate classes. The aristocracy, the upper class, and the upper middle

49

class constitute the top layer of society; the intermediate layer consists of the middle class;
and the bottom layer, finally, is made up of farmers and the (industrial) working class.
15

From about 1846 onwards both England and the United States experience a rapid economic
growth that is characterized by exceptional prosperity. This growth not only allows the
accumulation of huge individual fortunes, but also brings prosperity to a majority of the
bourgeoisie. This improving economic situation has two side effects. In the first place, the
economic developments make it possible to exempt the middle-class woman from the
economic process, in which she used to participate. Secondly, they create the wish in the
rising bourgeoisie to display their newly begotten status and wealth, and to distinguish
themselves from the next social layer. Because the bourgeoisie cannot claim a position by
birth, the main opportunities that it has for simultaneously showing distance and distinction
are income and wealth. The exemption from work, and the need to display wealth and
status, develop into new rules and regulations of behavior which, as role norms, develop
into a new social role for the middle-class woman. Yet, rather than encouraging intellectual
or professional talents to develop, the middle class woman now assumes the role of the
lady. This role was mainly reserved for the aristocratic woman in the eighteenth century,
but it now becomes an accepted social role for middle class women, too.
16

For the daughters of the bourgeoisie, the duty of representation begins with their education,
in which the norm concerning outward appearance, with which the parents have to comply,
is clearly reflected. Because the girl represents (the status of) her parents, a very expensive -
and consequently status-proving - education creates advantageous marriage opportunities.
Goals of this class-specific socialization are both the financially advantageous marriage,
and the competence of the girl to represent the status of her future husband in an
appropriate way in the role of the lady.
17

To show her social status, the lady can use two accepted modes of expression, namely,
demonstrative idleness and the consumption of luxury goods.
18
Within the bourgeoisie both
aspects have different meanings, however. In the middle and lower middle class, for
example, idleness is only practiced in the shape of artistic and creative activities, which
indicate the idle moment, but avoid at the same time the (for the bourgeoisie) still strange
concept of totally inactive spare time, and are not too expensive either. Characteristic for
the use of leisure of the lady is the high level of standardization. It mainly focuses on
activities such as handiwork and sewing, instrumental music-making, singing, party-
dancing, amateur-painting, and possibly a sport like horse-riding, all aspects that can also
be found back in the study program of the girl (Pedersen 1975, 143).

15
Christopher Hibbert, Chapter 54, Middle Classes and Class Distinctions, The English: A Social
History 1066-1945 (London: Harper Collins, 1994) 601 620.
16
Gage Blair, Chapter 13: Great Britain International Handbook of Womens Education. Ed. Gail
P. Kelly (New York, London: Greenwood Press, 1989) 286.
17
Joyce S. Pedersen Schoolmistresses and Headmistresses: Elites and Education in Nineteenth-
Century England The Journal of British Studies 15: 1 (November, 1975): 144.
18
Thorstein Veblens study, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899; New York: The Modern Library,
1961) is an interesting contemporary study in this context. In the chapters III (Conspicuous Leisure,
28-52) and IV (Conspicuous Consumption, 52-77) he expounds exactly what the ideas of the 1890s
on these points were.

50

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Though demonstrative consumption as a way to realize the duty of representation used to
be typical for upper-class women, middle-class women now also begin to develop this
habit. Charlotte Perkins Gilman stated in her book Women and Economics that woman
became the priestess of the temple of consumption.
19
A more recent cultural historian
even describes the Victorian middle-class woman as a consuming angel.
20
Characteristic
for this lifestyle is the use of various exquisite goods, in a strongly standardized way. A
central position in this competitive consumption by the lady is taken up by fashion, because
fashion excellently represents the symbiosis between illustrative idleness and demonstrative
consumption.
21

While the upper middle-class man dresses functionally and unobtrusively, as he should
according to conventions, upper middle-class women show off their wealth and status by
wearing expensive clothes made of valuable materials and with elaborate workmanship.
22

At the same time, women can, by means of the curtailment of their freedom of movement
(caused by the still impractical tailoring of the clothing) and the standardized aesthetic
ideals, affirm their exemption from any kind of work. Fashion items like the crinoline, the
lace corset, the train, shoes of cloth, sophisticated hairstyles, and the pale complexion are
good examples in this context.
23

Fashion is also a means of expression that meets the demands of the various social layers
and groups in times of fast economic growth, and high vertical mobility, in another way.
The rising (upper) middle class in the second half of the nineteenth century seems to have
two goals. First of all, they want to show the distance between them and the next social
class below them, but they also want to present themselves as belonging to a specific class
that is characterized by distinction. Fashion is extremely suitable to realize this dual
function of expression of social conformity, and class distinction.
24

At the same time, however, fashion is not only a means to distinguish oneself or to
demonstrate ones conformity, but also a very good means to adapt to the next social class
to which an individual would like to belong, without being part of it yet. This characteristic

19
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men
and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution (1898; Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press,
1998) 170, 257. This again contemporary study offers detailed information about the actual situation
during the period of investigation.
20
Lori Ann Loeb, Consuming Angels: Advertising and Victorian Women (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1994).
21
Veblen, Chapter VII: Dress as an expression of the Pecuniary Culture, 125 141.
22
It should be pointed out that fashion never just allowed the lady to represent the status of her
husband. Fashion has also always been a means of expressing a womans own individuality.
Alexander Liberman indicates this in his Introduction, to the Vogue Book of Fashion Photography:
the First Sixty Years (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1979). In the Introduction Liberman
states: Fashion is a signal and a symbol of class, of education, of taste, of imagination, and
sometimes of daring and revolt. It is a visual exhibition of the character of the wearer and the
evolution of clothes from status symbol to personal statement is the measure of womans growth as a
person, 7. N.B.: the first issue of Vogue appeared in 1892.
23
Christopher Hibbert, The English: A Social History 1066 1945, Chapter 49: Dressing, Smoking
and Social Rank, 549-551.
24
Herbert Blumer, Fashion: From Class Differentiation to Collective Selection Sociological
Quarterly 10:3 (Summer 1969): 276.

51

of fashion becomes obvious in times of rapid economic growth and facilitated social
promotion (both aspects that are typical of the nineteenth, and the beginning of the
twentieth century). The wish for fashionable adaptation is (at least partly) within the reach
of the financially feasible, and upwards orientation is not socially discriminated from the
beginning, as it used to be in earlier, more traditional societies. A consequence of the wish
to participate in the fashion of the next class up is the increasing speed with which fashion
changes, especially if it wants to keep the characteristic of creating social distance.
In the nineteenth century, this continuous change of fashion is not solely initiated by
fashion itself. The start of a new fashion is usually still left to examples from social fringe
groups, like the dandy, the snob, the actor, or the lady of the demi-monde. It is only from
the 1900s onwards that the famous designers from Paris begin to play an important role
worldwide. For the middle-class woman, the moment of adopting a new fashion is
determined by a complex of rules and regulations of wealth. She only accepts a new fashion
when it still satisfies the demand of discrimination but is no longer conspicuous. People
want to be distinguished, but not extravagant.
25

The middle-class girl who is being prepared for the class-specific role of the lady, should
therefore internalize two rules whilst using fashion as the central concept of representation
of wealth and idleness. First of all, she must develop an accurate sense of all of the accepted
and new fashion trends. Secondly, the ability to recognize distinguished and eccentric
behaviors becomes one of the most important accomplishments that a young girl should
master. The correct assessment of observance or violation of the canon of rules and
regulations of wealth belongs to the central socialization contents that the girl has to
internalize. This issue is important in all of the novels that will be examined, but it is
especially noteworthy in Edith Whartons The Age of Innocence (1920), where even the
wrong color of a dress can ruin a girls reputation for life; or, as Mrs. Archer sums up Ellen
Olenska, What can you expect of a girl who was allowed to wear black satin at her
coming-out ball?
26

Gender-specific socialization
Whereas the aforementioned behavioral demands to the lady concern a limited social role
within the range of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, the gender-specific role of the
woman is more complicated. With reference to the natural essence of the woman, the
roles of wife, housewife, and mother are legitimized as universal roles. The different role-
norms and the gender-specific socialization passed on to the woman support the idea of the
male and female as two separate categories. Men and women seem to have different
characteristics. Men are typified as autonomous, independent, focusing on the self and they
are related to the public sphere. Women are considered to be more caring, nurturant,
focusing on reproduction, intimacy, bonding, and they are mostly connected with the
domestic sphere.
In the nineteenth century, this difference was explained by physiology through the bigger
size of the male brain and the more delicate and flexible organization of the female body.

25
Mrs. Humphry, Ethics of Dress, Manners for Women (London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1897) 64.
26
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920; London: Penguin, 1993) 37. Further citations from
this novel will be indicated with AOI, followed by the page number(s) of this edition.

52

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Later on it was related by psychology to the strong-willed, hot-tempered disposition of the
man, and the more sensitive and lively temperament of the woman. In accordance with
these traits, the man was characterized by firmness, and believed to be future oriented,
whereas the woman developed such qualities as intellectual liveliness, and the orientation
towards the present time.
27

The socialization of the girl during the period 1849-1930 seemed to consist of an opening
up and developing of an essence of identity supplied by nature, which contained the
following traits: frailty, need of protection, tenderness, patience, understanding, good-
naturedness, kindness, unselfishness, beauty, gracefulness, tendency to like the fantastic,
intellectual liveliness, and virtue. The catalogue of characteristics that has only been
partially reproduced here has been copied from a conduct book by Sara Ellis.
28
Such a list
was an essential part of the social value catalogue that had to be internalized, and it was
not only passed on to the middle-class girl by means of the socialization examples of family
and school, but also by various girls magazines, and - as we will see - even by the novels
under discussion here.
To give just one example, Charlotte Bronts main character in Shirley, Shirley Keeldar, is
a financially and emotionally independent woman. Throughout the novel she is mirrored by
her friend Caroline Helstone who conforms to these accepted social norms and roles, is less
of a rebel, and basically shows Shirley and the readers what women were supposed to be
like. Many of the adjectives and phrases that are used to characterize Caroline coincide
exactly with the terms used in the conduct book (S, 75, 175, 294-295).
29
Caroline thus
almost becomes a type rather than an individual, and the image of the Angel in the House
immediately comes to mind here.
As female essence was conceived as an anthropological constant, the related social roles of
the woman in the shape of the wife, housewife, and mother not only carried the aura of
socially and functionally necessary patterns of behavior, but also became acting and
orientation examples, of a natural and unvarying destiny. In general, they predetermined
that the woman had to please the man, to run the household, to take care of and to raise the
children, to maintain the social contacts, to preserve virtue and morality, and to learn to
pass on humane and aesthetic values as well.
30
It was the future role of wife that led to the
necessity of an intellectual education which should enable the girl to be a sensible
companion to her husband, and to have an indirect, moral and political influence on him.
This expectation remained part of the norm- and value-system of the twentieth century.
Because the education of girls focused on the pre-determined role(s), the transmission of

27
For an elaborate discussion of nineteenth century ideas on medical, physiological and
psychoanalytic theory in relation to women, see Kate Flints study The Woman Reader 1837-1914
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). The whole of Chapter 4 is devoted to these preconceptions, 53-70.
28
Sara Ellis, The Women of England, their Social Duties and Domestic Habits, 2
nd
ed. (London,
1839). Sara Ellis wrote etiquette manuals for women, teaching women and girls how to behave in the
private and the public sphere. In spite of the rather conservative ideas expounded in these books, they
were very popular in both Great Britain and The United States throughout the nineteenth century.
29
The expressions used in Shirley are: happy, good, beautiful, diligent, fair, delicately pleasing, she
has sweetness of tint, purity of air, and grace of mien, she is modest, gentle, harmonious, and has a
look of simplicity and softness. For further discussion, see Chapter 3.
30
Routledge Etiquette for Ladies (London: Routledge, 1864).

53

more masculine learning, such as theoretical knowledge and independent, practically-
oriented skills was considered unnecessary. In this way, the opportunities for socialization
that could have given the girl the theoretical and practical knowledge necessary for her own
autonomy were excluded and thus also any possible release from role norms.
If the gender-specific role of the woman was traced back to the essence of the female being,
then it should, by implication, be equally valid as a universal role for all women. This,
however, was by no means the case at that time. The central role norms of the gender
specific role of the woman had no validity for a large part of the female population in Great
Britain and the United States. The women from the proletariat were not in the position to
fulfil the demands connected with their gender roles because of economic necessity.
31
The
contradiction is obvious; either the bourgeoisie consciously tolerated the unnatural
development and way of life of these female workers, or the working woman apparently did
not have a disposition for the universal womans role. In this last case, however, the idea of
female essence is undermined. The universal role apparently only concerned a partial role
that was constituted by and for the middle class. Presentation and maintenance of social
knowledge concerning such gender-roles thus became central elements of a middle-class,
patriarchal ideology.
In this way, patriarchy both ensured itself against infringements of the middle-class woman
into the male domain of functions and work, and, at the same time, retained a potential
source of workers of proletarian women, who, because they did not count as natural keepers
of manners and morals, could also easily be brought into sexual dependency. This process
guaranteed the typical way of life of the middle-class which was characterized by
prosperity and double standards.
32

The role of the lady and the role of wife, housewife and mother constitute two (partial)
female middle class roles of the nineteenth century, that all middle class women had to
fulfil (Hegenbarth-Rsgen, 73-74). The complexity of this situation becomes clear when in
real-life situations demands of behavior for both one and the other role are bindingly valid.
Both roles may coincide with each other in a twilight zone of shared and corresponding
norms. This means that in addition to similar role-norms, a succession of rules of behavior
applies which can belong to either the one or the other role. Instances of this may, for
example, occur in the following contexts: the area of hospitality, social manners, and the
keeping up of social contacts, handiwork, fashion, and some artistic-aesthetic occupations.
It therefore often remains dependent on the individual case, to which role a norm can be
assigned.
2.4: DAILY PRACTICE
Parents and siblings as well as the next of kin and friends of the family enable the primary
socialization of the child. As stable contact-persons for the young bourgeois child in the

31
Deborah Gorham, The Ideology of Femininity and Reading for Girls, 1850-1914, Lessons for
Life, ed. Felicity Hunt (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) 45-47.
32
In their study, Female Revolt: Womens Movements in World and Historical Perspective, Janet
Chafetz and Anthony Dworkin point out that the system of sexual double standards was one of the
main issues that was addressed by the womens movements in both the United States and Great
Britain from around 1850 onwards (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allanheld, 1986) 107.

54

THE MIRROR IMAGE

nineteenth century, the nanny and the domestic staff also become important (Mead, xxiv,
152-163). The main authorities of secondary socialization are the institutions concerned
with the education of children and youngsters: primary schools, secondary schools, private
teachers, religious institutions, schools for higher education, and universities (Mead, 256-
257). Nowadays the order of the secondary socialization is to a large extent arranged
institutionally, and only a few individual variations are possible. The time of starting
school, and the length of school attendance have been standardized by means of the rules
and regulations concerning compulsory school attendance. In the nineteenth century,
however, the secondary socialization of the bourgeois girl is still for a large part left to the
initiative of the parents. The girls education could be arranged through various means: the
girl received her education either solely within the family circle, or she attended a convent
or a boarding school, or she participated in a regular form of education in a private,
religious, or state institution.
33

2.4.1: The socialization of the girl in the family
If the secondary socialization of the girl took place in the family too, then the location and
the most important instances within the socialization process remained the same as with the
primary socialization; only new people with new functions as bearer of the socialization
process were added. With a typical upper-class education a private teacher taught reading
and writing, arithmetic, history, and possibly handiwork; special private teachers educated
the girl in playing the piano and drawing, in dancing and singing, and often a foreign
governess was appointed for the teaching of foreign languages.
34
This curriculum, which
was implemented with various levels of intensity and difficulty, depending on the habitus,
social status, and income of the family, was used during the entire nineteenth century.
Responsible for the socialization process, and therefore also often the most important
example of socialization was, in the middle-class family, the mother. It was her task to
prepare her daughter for both her future roles as wife, housewife, and mother, and for the
more class specific role of the lady. One of the most important opportunities for influencing
the socialization within the family was therefore the example of the mother; she had to be
the ideal role-model for her daughter. However, the influence of the mother, and the
restriction of the interaction frame through the prior selection of the tutors and the
collective circle of friends, were not the only strategies for influencing the education of
girls within the family. An important role was also played by the rigid reduction of
information.
35
This did not only concern unfeminine, theoretical or scientific knowledge,

33
Felicity Hunt points out in her introduction to Lessons for Life that most middle- and upper-class
girls were taught at home; some went to private day and boarding schools. For almost all, their
education was superficial and non-academic with much time and effort spent on accomplishments
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) xvi.
34
Joan B. Burstyn, Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood, 36-41.
35
Deborah Gorham points out in her article The Ideology of Femininity and Reading for Girls,
1850-1914, that: While it is true that Victorian and Edwardian children were less free than adults to
make their own choices many Victorian and Edwardian girls read widely. There were some, for
example, who read literature designed for boys. And for the minority of bookish girls for whom
literature was a primary means of interpreting experience, there was the wealth of material provided
by the adult Victorian novel. Jane Eyre may have been banned at L.T. Meades fictional school
Lavender House, but many Victorian and Edwardian girls, who in adulthood refused to accept the

55

but also such areas of knowledge of which the command was, in fact, necessary for the
girl.
36
Explaining the biological functions of her body to the girl (and so also those
concerning reproduction) was something that was quite unusual in those days. It was not
dealt with in the magazines especially meant for girls.
37
In fact, even most mothers did not
give their daughters any instruction concerning sexual education either.
38

In both the contents and the strategies, the socialization instance family focuses on the
traditional roles of the bourgeois woman in the nineteenth century. In how far the public
socialization authority school functions in a supportive, or corrective mode here will be
investigated in the next sub-section.
2.4.2: The education of the girl in school
Until far into the second half of the nineteenth century, the structure, the curricula, the
teaching methods, the aims of the study programs, and the certificates of girls schools had
not been generally agreed on. During this time a good education for girls was mainly
reserved for the daughters of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. A division of the
educational system into primary school and secondary school had not taken place yet. The
schools were convent schools or were organized by other, private, organizations, and had
not been placed under state control. Overall, education focused on the traditional roles of
the woman.
With the onset of the twentieth century, however, three tendencies set in. The focus is now
transferred from the private to the public (state, or municipal) school, from the religious to
the secular school, and from the organization of the educational system with a view to the
traditional womans role, to a more public role of the woman, and the possibility of a
profession.
39
This development does not take place in a regular fashion, though, and it is

limitations of conventional femininity, gained the strength that prepared them for their adult choices
through reading in girlhood the works of Charlotte Bront, George Eliot and other writers who
presented an analysis of femininity that was far more complex than that to be found in conventional
literature for girls. All girls were to some extent influenced by the images of girlhood presented in
popular literature, but for those who strayed beyond those limits, reading could be an experience with
radical implications. It helped to encourage a small but significant minority of girls to reject the
conventional definition of Victorian womanhood. (Hunt, 58).
36
Aspects of this strategy are thematized by Herbert Spencer in his study Education, Intellectual,
Moral, and Physical. Spencer supports the idea that the parents, and especially the mother, should
have the necessary knowledge of psychology and physiology to be able to explain to her children the
laws of nature concerning the mind and the body (1861; London: Watts & Co., reprint 1945) 23-30.
37
Penny Tinkler points this out in her article Learning Through Leisure: Feminine Ideology in Girls
Magazines, 1920-50 in Lessons for Life. In her article Tinkler states: Presentations of femininity
and feminine beauty in magazines were quite separate from female physical maturity and sexuality.
While beauty was feminine and readers were encouraged to foster it, sexuality and physical maturity
were labelled as unfeminine. Biological femaleness was either ignored, diminished or treated as
abnormal, in its place magazines presented a socially constructed female as the norm 71.
38
Carol Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (London: Routlegde
& Kegan Paul, 1981) 20-21. She draws information from R. Hall (ed.), Dear Dr Stopes: Sex In the
1920s (London: Deutsch, 1978).
39
Felicity Hunt discusses this development in Chapter 1 of Lessons for Life. This chapter is called
Divided Aims: the Educational Implications of Opposing Ideologies in Girls Secondary Schooling,

56

THE MIRROR IMAGE

quite different for Great Britain and the United States. It undergoes various interruptions
and setbacks, and also takes place with varied intensity and different chronological
development.
Great Britain:
The second half of the nineteenth century more or less coincides with the reign of Queen
Victoria, an era of economic, social, and intellectual changes brought about by new
industrial developments that connected rural and urban life. As families grew wealthier, had
fewer children, and could afford servants, middle-class womens household tasks became
less burdensome. The feminine ideal of the lady became very popular and many women
strived for an education that would equip them with refined skills and allow them to be
elegant wives and charming hostesses.
But an educational revolution took place in Britain from 1846 to 1895 which changed the
provision of education for middle- and upper-class girls.
40
Several groups of reformers
argued in favor of an intellectual rather than a social education for women. One (minor)
group, the feminists, such as Emily Davis, wanted to expand womens roles in society,
41

but they were opposed by medical professionals and religious organisations.
42
A second
group, academics and teachers, supported the broadening of womens educational
institutions. For their part, a lot of the parents liked an intellectual education for girls,
because it was socially and financially advantageous.
43
Not all women married and
although society did not expect all women to work, some needed employment in order to
avoid poverty. To be able to get jobs, professional education became necessary. The
government took on most of the costs of training school teachers, although the training
colleges remained denominational. In 1846 a pupil-teacher system was adopted whereby, in
schools approved by an inspector, children aged 13 years could be apprenticed to a teacher
for five years and, after passing an examination, could attend a training college for three
years.
In the second part of the nineteenth century, endowed and private schools for women were
established, together with the earliest colleges for women in London, Cambridge and
Oxford Universities (Pedersen 1979, 73). The new schools differed from the earlier private

1850-1940, 3-22. She focuses on the situation in Great Britain, but many of the developments she
mentions are also pointed out by Maxine Seller in her discussion of the situation in the United States:
Chapter 23: The United States International Handbook of Womens Education. Ed. Gail P. Kelly
(New York, London: Greenwood Press, 1989) 516-544.
40
Gage Blair, Chapter 13: Great Britain, 285-323.
41
Susan Raven and Alison Weir, eds., Women in History: Thirty-Five Centuries of Feminine
Achievement (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981) 65, 68. Emily Davies pioneered womens
higher education. She was the first principal of Girton College, Cambridge, one of the first womens
colleges in Britain, founded in 1873. Other well-known educators of the period were Frances Buss
and Dorothy Beale, headmistresses of secondary schools for girls.
42
Joan Burstyn, Victorian Education, Chapter 8. Religious arguments against higher education for
girls were basically that women were not ordained by God to speak in public. The argument of the
scientific professions was that education would endanger the health of women.
43
Joyce Senders Pedersen, The Reform of Womens Secondary and Higher Education: Institutional
Change and Social Values in Mid and Late Victorian England, History of Education Quarterly
(Spring 1979): 61-93.

57

schools in that they required entrance examinations, admitted students from varied social
backgrounds, and emphasized educational achievement. The curriculum was broad and
focused on solid subjects rather than showy accomplishments.
44
There was an
emphasis on cultural and intellectual achievements. However, the new institutions did not
challenge the sexual division of labor or promote any other kind of social radicalism.
Around 1870, universal primary education was instituted in Britain, and between 1870 and
1890 school attendance on average increased from 1.2 million to 4.5 million.
45
The
provision of secondary education for the lower classes, however, was still insufficient; only
the brightest children were able to receive education beyond the primary level. Middle-class
ideas about gender added to class inequalities. Only the curriculum of working-class girls
actually included training in domestic science that would prepare them for a career as
household servants and housewives.
46

Margaret Bryant has called the first half of the twentieth century a time that might have
been one of feminist advance, but was not (Bryant, 121). This is remarkable when we
think of the feminist movement led by the Suffragettes, which seemed to keep womens
issues at the forefront in the early 1900s and won women the vote in 1918. But radical
feminists were a minority group, and throughout this period women were still confronted
with assumptions about the proper social roles for women.
47
At the turn of the century, it
was the eugenics movement that made the curriculum an issue again.
48
The debates of the
1920s and 1930s differed from those of the late nineteenth century: now the belief becomes
current that womens education should not have a dual function but a role-oriented
function, focusing on the roles of wife, housewife and mother (Hunt, 20).
Changes in educational organization also contributed to this development. The 1902
Education Act, for example, gave Great Britain a secondary education system that was
organized centrally through a Board of Education. This board promoted the idea that
women have proper and distinct social roles; in the 1920s and 1930s, it justified a solely
female curriculum. Girls, it was believed, needed a different education that would enable
them to work in the home, and to a lesser extent outside it, because once they married they
would give up work and become homemakers (Hunt, 16-20).
Overall, the 1914 -1918 war period increased womens work participation because women
replaced male workers in large numbers, and in many of the jobs they had been previously
thought unqualified to perform.
49
And by 1921, there were large increases in womens

44
Margaret Bryant, The Unexpected Revolution: A Study in the History of the Education of Women
and Girls in the Nineteenth Century (London: University of London, Institute of Education, 1979) 94.
45
G. M. Trevelyan, English Social History (London: Pelican, 1964) 594.
46
Carol Dyhouse, Towards a Feminine Curriculum for English Schoolgirls: The Demands of
Ideology, 1870-1963, Womens Studies International Quarterly 1 (1978): 297-309, 300.
47
Bryant suggest that not only old attitudes hindered the womens movement, but also new ones, for
example, the impact of scientific and technical advances, 114.
48
Felicity Hunt, Divided Aims: The Schooling of Girls and Women, 1850-1950, Lessons for Life
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1987) 9-11. According to the eugenics movement of the late 1890s,
womans proper function was to be a mother, and training should prepare her for this role.
49
Dyhouse, Towards a Feminine Curriculum; Trevor Lloyd, Suffragettes International: The
World-wide Campaign for Womens Rights (New York: American Hermitage Press, 1971); Gladys

58

THE MIRROR IMAGE

activities in teaching, communications, transport, construction, commerce and finance,
whereas womens participation in the agriculture, manufacturing, and service sectors
remained stable.
50
The post-World War I back-to-the-home movement, however,
supported the aforementioned educational reforms. And, though the number of female
teachers in elementary and secondary schools increased, female educators still felt
threatened by the 1902 Education Act, which also gave local authorities the power to
establish coeducational secondary schools.
51
The Association of Head Mistresses was
afraid that in a coeducational school women would be deprived of their positions of
authority.
52
The National Union of Women Teachers not only defended its own
opportunities in schools, but also believed that girls received more attention and careful
treatment when they were educated in a single-sex environment.
53

Statistics for enrollment in the early 1900s showed progress for girls at the primary and
secondary levels, and the total percentage of female students at institutions of higher
education varied between 20 and 30 percent from 1919 to 1939. Oxford University began
granting degrees to women in 1920, but Cambridge did not do so until 1948. Polytechnics
were open to women from the time these institutions were founded. The gains which
women made in the nineteenth century were consolidated in the twentieth. Enrollment,
especially at the university level, continued to rise; however, the old debates over the
purposes of coeducation, the educational needs of girls, and the curriculum were
continued.
54

The United States
Womens education in the United States was shaped both by ideologies about gender, and
by the social and economic roles women had to fulfil. Because these preconceptions and
gender roles usually referred women to a separate and inferior sphere in a male-dominated
society, womens education was different in nature from and inferior to that of men.
55
Yet,
women did try to broaden their access to education, and to shape it to their needs and
purposes. Between 1849 and 1930, the United States grew from a row of pre-industrial

Cudderford, Women and Society: From Victorian Times to the Present Day (London: Hamish
Hamilton, 1967).
50
European Historical Statistics.
51
According to Bryant in 1919, 224 of 1,080 secondary schools were coeducational, 107.
52
Carol Dyhouse, Miss Buss and Miss Beale: Gender and Authority in the History of Education,
Lessons for Life, ed. Hunt, 37.
53
Alison Oram, Inequalities in the Teaching Profession: The Effect on Teachers and Pupils, 1910-
1939, Lessons for Life, ed. Hunt, 101-124. These ideas are also supported by: J. Shaw Education
and the Individual. Schooling for Girls, or Mixed Schooling a Mixed Blessing Schooling for
Womens Work. Ed. R. Deem (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980); D. Spender and E. Sarah
Learning to Lose, Sexism and Education (London: The Womens Press, 1980).
54
Within the British educational system, segregation between schools for boys and schools for girls
has been standard. This division turns out to have been quite positive for girls. Penny Summerfield
indicates that feminists already concluded that single sex education, either within a mixed school or
separately, is the answer for girls (if not for boys), because it protects girls from the subjugation
which boys training in masculinity requires of them, and maximizes their opportunities in terms of
choice of subject and access to resources; in: Cultural Reproduction in the Education of Girls: a
Study of Girls Secondary Schooling in Two Lancashire Towns, 1900-50 Lessons for Life, 149.
55
Maxine S. Seller, Chapter 23: The United States, 516-544.

59

states on the Atlantic coast to an urban, industrial giant with colonies of its own. As the
country underwent first a commercial and then an industrial revolution, men left the
household for the shop, the factory, or the office. Poverty forced lower-class, Afro-
American, and immigrant women to leave home, too, to enter the paid workforce as
domestics or factory hands. Most Anglo-American women remained at home, which was
defined by society as the only proper sphere for the woman. Here middle-class women were
expected to exemplify the piety, sexual purity, submissiveness, and domesticity of the
Angel in the House, as well as to raise children with minimal assistance from men
preoccupied with making money, and to provide emotional and logistical support for their
husbands entry into the competitive capitalist economy.
56

In spite of the idea of separate spheres or segregation in education - indeed, as in Great
Britain, partly because of it - womens education made rapid progress in the nineteenth
century, both in absolute numbers and relative to the education of men. In the early
nineteenth century, many formerly all-male academies opened their doors to women, and so
did the district schools of New England. Academies for women were opened, often by
women with funding and support from other women. Academies supplied secondary, even
college education and a first experience of living away from home for thousands of women.
Many of the women who attended Academies later established schools of their own or
became teachers in the new public schools.
57
While Academies served upper- and upper
middle-class women, the creation of public primary schools provided education on a more
general basis. Around 1850, 90 percent of all American schoolchildren, boys and girls,
were registered in the new state-supported common, or public, schools.
58

Public secondary schools were established as well, and they gradually replaced most private
academies. Although a small percentage of all children, perhaps 5 percent, finished high
school in the late nineteenth century, two-thirds of those who did were girls. Because of the
predominance of girls in the high schools, women had a higher mean educational
attainment than men in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
59
Unless they
intended to go to college and move into a profession, middle-class boys left school for
work, where they could advance through on-the-job training.
Some parents sent daughters to high school, not just to keep them busy in the years between
childhood and marriage, but because secondary school education trained them for jobs as
teachers or office workers. By the 1850s teacher training also became available in a new,
largely female institution, the normal school. College and professional education then also

56
Barbara Welter, The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-1860, American Quarterly 18 (Summer
1966): 151-175; Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: Womens Sphere in New England, 1780-
1833 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977).
57
Anne Firor Scott, The Ever Widening Circle: The Diffusion of Feminist Values from Troy Female
Seminary 1822-1872, History of Education Quarterly 19 (Spring 1979); Joan N. Burstyn, Catherine
Beecher and the Education of American Women, in Esther Katz and Anita Rapone, eds. Womens
Experience in America: A Historical Anthology (New York: Transaction Books, 1980) 219-234.
58
Maris Vinovskis and Richard M. Bernard, Beyond Catherine Beecher: Female Education in the
Antebellum Period, Signs 3.4 (Summer 1978): 856-869.
59
James P. Smith and Michael P. Ward, Womens Wages and Work in the Twentieth Century (Santa
Monica, Calif.: Rand, Prepared for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development,
October 1984) 35.

60

THE MIRROR IMAGE

became generally available. A small number of women attended elite womens colleges;
many more, however, (over 70 percent) attended coeducational colleges and universities,
especially the inexpensive state land grant institutions.
Economic and social change as well as ideology contributed to educational improvement.
Later marriages also left more time for higher education. Besides, as men moved west
leaving large numbers of women unmarried, and as recurring economic crises reduced even
married women to sudden poverty, women pursued education as insurance against
dependency.
Finally, advances in nineteenth-century womens education can be linked to the growth of
the womens rights movement. Officially launched at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848,
first wave feminism was partly encouraged by the anger of educated middle-class women
at being excluded from the political enfranchisement extended even to uneducated white
males. Elizabeth Cady Stantons pioneering Declaration of Sentiments demanded not
only suffrage and property rights for women, but also access to higher and professional
education. Many people did not yet support the egalitarian political and economic demands
of The Declaration of Sentiments, but almost all women, and many men as well,
supported its ideas concerning education.
60

According to Seller, in the United States, the relationship between feminism and the
expansion of womens education was symbiotic:
Educated women, often former teachers or physicians, fought for
expanded rights for women, winning first property rights and then
suffrage, and feminists fought for, and won, expanded educational
opportunity. Feminists lobbied, petitioned, and propagandized in
speeches and in the press, and when all else failed, even bought their way
into male educational institutions - Johns Hopkins Medical College, for
example, in 1889. A broad-based coalition of physiological societies,
missionary societies, womens clubs, and other womens organizations
endowed womens academies, built womens medical schools and
hospitals, and provided scholarships and moral support to women seeking
higher and professional education. (Seller, 521)
61

Although the nineteenth-century movement for womens education was broadly based, the
benefits were not distributed equally. By the 1850s, the literacy gap between men and

60
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Declaration of Sentiments (New York, Seneca Falls, 1848). In her
text Stanton begins with stating that all men and women are created equal. Yet, she admits that
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward
woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. She therefore
requests among other things: elective franchise, right in property, and a right to a good
education, 1. She ends her petition with: Now, in view of this entire disenfranchisement of one-
half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation in view of the unjust laws
above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently
deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and
privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States, 2.
61
Her main source for this paragraph is Mary Roth Walshs, Doctors Wanted, No Women Need
Apply; Sexual Barriers in the Medical Profession, 1835-1975 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 1977) 76-89, 176-177.

61

women was almost eliminated in the North and Midwest, but illiteracy remained high
among southern women, frontier women, and immigrant women. Educational opportunities
for Afro-American women remained scarce in both the South and the North.
In general, nineteenth-century education still supported traditional class and gender role
divisions. However, though many aspects of womens school experience in the nineteenth
century confirmed female separateness and inferiority, other aspects subtly undermined it.
Schools responded not only to the separate spheres philosophy, but also to considerations of
convenience and tradition. Because it was easier and cheaper to teach both sexes together at
public primary schools, girls had the same chance as boys to win a spelling bee or read a
prize-winning essay to a gathering of teachers, pupils, parents and neighbors. Since
womens academies were organized like male academies, female students could show their
academic achievements at public examinations at a time when it was not considered proper
for women to speak in public.
Like academic culture, academic content also tended to undermine traditional ideas.
Because academic work was seen as mental discipline rather than preparation for vocation,
boys and girls studied an identical curriculum. Better education did not produce political
and economic equality, but it did improve womens control over their lives in many ways.
Connections between education and participation in the work force were not strong in the
nineteenth century. Middle-class educated women had only a few possibilities for paid
employment that were considered respectable. Economic realities and ideology still
expected them to stay at home, where many used their education to help their husbands and
children. Yet, gradually, new job opportunities for educated women emerged. The most
important of these were teaching, editing and writing, shop-keeping, office or clerical work,
nursing, and, for a small group of highly educated women, the more traditionally male
professions such as pharmacy, dentistry and the law.
The beginning of the twentieth century seemed to promise even more rapid advances. High
school attendance became the norm rather than the exception, and girls began to outnumber
boys as both high school students and graduates. The number of women gainfully
employed rose as did the number of professional women.
62
And by 1920, a quarter of all
women were in the labor force. But the period 1890-1920 also showed a strong male
opposition against these developments. Although their resistance did not end the rise in
womens educational achievement, it had checked womens progress in higher education in
relation to mens by the mid-1920s. Equally important, it had controlled and directed
womens educational and occupational aspirations into areas that did not threaten male
dominance.
The ideas of these conservative critics were realized in the schools and colleges in an
increasingly sex-differentiated curriculum. This growing gender differentiation was not
only a response to male fears and conservative ideology, but also to new pedagogical ideas
and new economic needs. The notion that schools had to prepare children for life rather
than for college made the introduction of gender-specific curricula easier. Similarly
important was the demand for educated but inexpensive female labor in the growing

62
Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women ( New Haven, Conn: Yale
University Press, 1985) 63-64; and Thomas Woody, A History of Womens Education in the United
States. 2 Vols. (New York / Lancaster Pa.: Science Press, 1929) Vol.1, 124-268.

62

THE MIRROR IMAGE

clerical and service sectors. New vocational curricula reflected these ideas and high school
courses in typing, shorthand, and home economics began to form a womans curriculum.
In higher and professional education, the beginning of the twentieth century showed a
similar tendency. Worried that women would feminize collegiate education and lower the
prestige of their institutions, universities limited the admission of women or segregated
them in separate or parallel womens colleges.
Educational institutions thus helped to introduce a compromise on the woman question.
Womens occupational roles were expanded but kept subordinate to those of men. Women
were allowed to increase their educational achievement, but they would be educated for
homemaking or for work that was compatible with traditional class and gender roles.
63

Most women accepted this compromise because the clerical work and womens professions
opened to them by high school and college education were more attractive than factory or
domestic work, because psychologists and peers assured them that womens occupations
were appropriate to their nature, and because discrimination in education and employment
blocked their access to predominantly male occupations.
64
Some educated women also
accepted the lower status, lower paid jobs offered to them, because they expected to leave
the workforce for marriage after a few years.
These developments have a demoralizing effect on both the educational progress of women
compared to men and on womens uses of education in the decades that follow. In the first
half of the twentieth century, as in the nineteenth, links between education and the labor
market were weak. In spite of rising levels of educational achievement and the expansion of
clerical work and the semi-professions, the proportion of all women employed increased
by only 0.5 percent between 1910 and 1940. Womens inferior status in the work force
compared to that of mens was reflected in low wages, the result of occupational
segregation by gender and the undervaluing of jobs usually held by women. The Great
Depression of the 1930s and the aftermath of World War II worsened the negative
influence of ideology and institutional change. The development of womens emancipation
was effectively curtailed until the 1960s.
2.5: WOMENS PARTICIPATION IN THE WORKFORCE AND IN
POLITICS
The passages on the educational systems in Great Britain and the United States show both a
positive and a negative picture concerning the possible achievement of gender equality in

63
Rosalind Rosenberg, Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982) 48-51.
64
To give an impression of the type of job women would have, Seller gives the following statistics:
Women in Selected Professional Occupations, as a Percentage of All Workers in Those Fields, 1910-
1930:
Occupation 1910 1920 1930
Lawyer 1.0 1.4 2.1
Physicians 6.0 5.0 4.0
Nurses 93.0 96.0 98.0
Social Workers 52.0 62.0 68.0
Librarians 79.0 88.0 91.0
Seller, International Handbook of Womens Education, 531.

63

school and society. It gradually seems to become possible for women to gain more equal
access to education. During the period 1849-1930 there is a tendency towards an
equalization of primary school attendance in both countries. And, as the middle classes in
both countries become richer, the trend towards more equal school participation for girls
and boys begins to extend to secondary education. In both Great Britain and the United
States even enrollments in higher education become more equal.
Yet, although equality in access to schools sometimes seems possible, this equality does not
continue in life after school. The growth of education has sometimes increased womens
participation in the paid labor force, but this change does not necessarily lead to an
increased participation of women in better jobs or more equal pay for women. Especially
during the last decades under investigation, educational opportunities for women increased,
but their participation in paid work stagnated or declined. The increasing levels of female
education meant changes in the work that women could do, but not necessarily in the wages
for that work. More equality in education had little influence on the workforce outcomes of
womens schooling relative to mens. And even more limited than the labor force results of
educational expansion were the effects of increasing womens education on the political
system. Women have only had limited access to political power, and in those cases where
they have made gains through their organized presence in, for example, womens
movements, they progressively lost what little power they had after the issue at hand (for
example, womens suffrage) had been dealt with and therefore the immediate necessity for
action declined (Chafetz & Dworkin, 116).
Besides, the introduction of more and more women in the workforce also presented women
with the problem of the double shift: one job in the family and one for money in the labor
market. As a result of such developments women also simply did not seem to have the time
for things like politics. In spite of the increasing levels of education, women still failed to
achieve equality in the public spheres of work and politics.
A possible explanation might be the following: equality in access to education seemed to be
only part of the issue. To be able to achieve equality for women one should also be more
concerned about the educational processes: what did the various schools teach to whom and
with what effect? Women, for example, were provided with access to some, but not to all,
sciences.
65
School book texts in both countries still ignored women, or portrayed them in
the traditional gender roles of wives, housewives, and mothers. And the history presented is
still the history of men. Gender segregation was prevalent in secondary and higher
education in both countries.
66
Teaching, nursing, social work, secretarial studies, literature,
and the arts were the fields of study which were typically for women. Engineering, the
hard sciences, and technical subjects remained male domains to which few women gained
access. More equal access to education basically meant access to gendered subjects.
Increasing the number of women in education did not seem to change what women were

65
The question is inspired by Bourdieu and Passerons Reproduction as a whole. The remark
concerning the access to only some male knowledge can be linked with page 96 of their study. The
situation described by Bourdieu and Passeron concerns the situation in France in the 1960s, but the
resemblances are striking, and in his Preface to the 1990 edition Bourdieu indicates that the overall
situation in American society is and was not very different from the situation in France, xi.
66
The effect of this is not necessarily negative for women, as has already been indicated in the
discussion of the educational system in Great Britain.

64

THE MIRROR IMAGE

educated to do.
67
Scholars in both sociology and womens studies gradually began to
question and challenge these selective, exclusive, and male-centered educational processes.
The focus on access to education ensured inequality in educational outcomes simply
because educational processes were left relatively intact. However, gender-based
inequalities in education (access and process) were not the only reason why gender-based
inequalities seemed to persist or widen in the workforce, in income, and in the political
systems of both countries, too.
The idea of education as a possible means towards equality was based on the belief that
gender inequality in society was the rational result of womens lack of talents or abilities. It
was also assumed that women had little power or authority because they were not engaged
as much as men were in earning wages, and therefore, in being productive. With an income,
after all, seemed to come autonomy, authority, and power. But the effects of the still
stereotypical gender-roles were ignored, and their practical outcome for women in the form
of marriage, childbearing, and child-rearing was not considered either. Education was seen
as integrating women into male-dominated social structures on male terms. The gender-role
division of labor in the family was not considered or questioned. Education was seen as a
means of enabling women to work like men at a job for a salary and, unlike men, also to
work at home bearing and rearing children. Gilman indicated that few efforts were made to
change the whole social context, to change expectations of womens roles in the household,
to change the structure of occupations, workforce segregation, discrimination against
women in employment and in pay, or to challenge the lack of opportunities for women to
advance in the workplace and in the political structure (Gilman, 122, 271). Education could
provide knowledge, skills, and certificates, but the extent to which these could be
transformed into equality in society also depended on whether the structures that kept
women subservient to men were changed. If these basic structures were not transformed,
education remained simply another means in the reproduction-system of existing values, as
Bourdieu and Passeron indicate.
2.6: THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN
WOMENS RIGHTS MOVEMENTS
I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of
law, would be that I acted in self-defence. Had I not killed her she would
have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing. For,
as I found, directly I put pen to paper, you cannot review even a novel
without having a mind of your own, without expressing what you think to
be the truth about human relations, morality, sex. And all these questions,
according to the Angel of the House, cannot be dealt with freely and
openly by women; they must charm, they must conciliate, they must to
put it bluntly tell lies if they are to succeed. Thus, whenever I felt the

67
Bourdieu and Passeron explain these processes, with hindsight, for the situation in France.
However, their analysis concerns education in its broadest sense and the results of their research are
accepted and approved of worldwide; Reproduction, 182.

65

shadow of her wing or the radiance of her halo upon my page, I took up
the inkpot and flung it at her. She died hard.
68

Virginia Woolf wrote this dramatic passage, on killing the residual Angel of the House
within her, in her essay Professions for Women, a talk given to the National Society for
Womens Service on 21 January 1931. This fascinating discussion focuses on the mental
aspects of the struggle of the woman to secure a place for herself. The entire essay, in fact,
deals more with the prevalent norm and value system, and how it pervades the lives of
individual girls and women, than with the practical obstacles, which might be easier to
locate and less difficult to do battle with.
Woolf was not the only woman writer struggling with the patriarchal society in which she
lived. Both in their lives and in the literature that they wrote, Bront, Chopin, Wharton and
Rhys tackled related problems. Women in general were becoming more and more
conscious of the still limited roles that they were allowed to fulfil. Especially middle-class
women began to organize in womens (rights) movements. In their struggle with the
contemporary norm and value system both British and American womens rights
movements developed a variety of approaches. Some challenged the full range of social
institutions and definitions. They were usually described as feminist. Others challenged
only a limited range of institutions and tended not to question the basic societal definitions
of appropriate gender roles. These will here be referred to as ameliorative.
69

One aspect of the theory of Bourdieu and Passeron that seems inconsistent with the actions
of the womens movements and their interest in the education and socialization of girls and
women is the resignation Bourdieu and Passeron mention in relation to the working of
symbolic violence in education. Women did not accept the process of exclusion and
selection that takes place in order to leave the social stratification of society intact. As the
passages on the educational system in Great Britain and the United States indicate, as soon
as women notice inequalities in both access to and even the process of education, and they
are able to do something about it, they do so. Interference in existing power-relations and
discriminatory practices in education or society is not easy. But in their study, Female
Revolt, Janet Chafetz and Anthony Dworkin point out that throughout history women have
always revolted against the injustices done to them (Chafetz & Dworkin, 47). This revolt
has varied in shape from the more individual-level resistance on the one hand, to shared
activities such as witchcraft, dissident religious movements, moral reform movements, food
riots, movements for human equality and/or liberation, and womens movements on the
other (Chafetz & Dworkin, 1-50).
In their examination of the emergence of womens movements, Chafetz and Dworkin note
a few factors that, according to them, stimulate the appearance of these movements. The
intertwined processes of industrialization and urbanization result in increased education for
women and their role expansion in the public sphere. In turn, role expansion helps to
increase the creation and spread of gender consciousness and the gathering of personal and
collective resources necessary for women to organize such a movement. The higher the
levels of aspects like industrialization, urbanization, size of the middle class, female

68
Virginia Woolf, Professions for Women, (1931) in The Crowded Dance of Modern Life
(London: Penguin, 1993) 103.
69
This distinction is introduced by Janet Chafetz and Anthony Dworkin in Female Revolt, 2, 65.

66

THE MIRROR IMAGE

education, and role expansion, the larger the pool of women potentially available for
mobilization, and the larger the womens movement, in the absence of political obstacles.
Womens movements in Great Britain and the United States during the period 1849-1930
were, overall, mass movements that seemed to be overwhelmingly ameliorative in
ideology. In the few cases where they existed, ideologically more radical feminist
movements never grew beyond the incipient stage.
There is a remarkable similarity in the development of the movements in both countries.
The first issue to surface concerning womens rights is education. In the United States and
Great Britain, where literacy rates were quite high, women organized mainly to fight for
higher educational opportunities. And, as a cadre of educated women developed (about a
generation later), they organized to fight for basic legal reforms. In both countries, legalized
prostitution and polygamy were publicly questioned, as was the informal sexual double
standard. Reform in inheritance and property rights and divorce law, as well as employment
opportunities for women (especially access to the professions), were part of the agenda of
almost all womens movements. And suffrage arose as an issue, too, eventually, but later
than the other issues, and often because women came to believe that other reforms could
only be won, if they themselves were first enfranchised. While female suffrage thus became
an issue as a means to other reforms, movements often focused so much attention on this
issue that the reasons for wanting the vote were obscured. The means seemed to become an
end in itself, and with success on that issue, the movement often ended (Chafetz &
Dworkin, 93).
Overall, womens demands were related to the basis of inherent sexual differences. Most
women activists did not challenge the fact that their primary social roles were those of wife,
housewife, and mother. In both countries it was assumed that role differentiation was
related to superior morality, compassion, and pacifism among women, including special
concern for children and the needy.
70
The various reforms demanded were based on one or
both of two goals: women would be better wives and mothers, and the family would be
strengthened; and national policy could be enriched by the inclusion of womens special
virtues and concerns (van Drenth & van Essen, 155). If demands for employment
opportunities were made, this was usually done in recognition of the fact that some women
would never marry and that others would be widowed; such women needed to be able to
live independently. Only a few activists explicitly proposed and supported the views that
married women should have careers if they chose, or that women should be free to prefer
the single life without stigmatization.
Incipient and intermediate womens movements sometimes failed to grow, for a variety of
reasons. The most important was the absence of a large enough pool of women with the
appropriate characteristics from which to recruit. Sometimes, however, governmental
repression was very effective. The focus in this discussion is on independent womens
movements; those that are organizationally independent of control by male-dominated
parties, movements, and/or governments. Such movements were mostly middle class.
Working-class women often organized in unions and in socialist parties during this period.
Their basic needs for decent pay and working conditions, and for protection from

70
Annemieke van Drenth and Mineke van Essen, The Position of Dutch and American Women in
Early Twentieth-Century Educational Sciences: Different Roots but Similar Outcomes Scholarly
Environments, eds. Alasdair A. MacDonald and Arend H. Huussen (Leuven: Peeters, 2004) 154.

67

exploitation, motivated them to place priority on their class, rather than on their sexual
disadvantages. Overall, the middle-class womens rights movements fought for issues that
were considered irrelevant by the masses of women in both countries. Therefore, where
both working-class and middle-class women were organized, they only rarely co-operated.
The interests of the different classes of women, in fact, were quite often opposed. Middle-
class women fought for equality in the work force, meaning for them equal access to
prestigious employment. Working-class women might want special protective legislation
which, by its very nature, distinguished them from men. Sometimes middle-class women
wanted womens suffrage for literate women only, in fear of lower-class radicalism. Left-
wing and radical women sometimes opposed female enfranchisement, in fear of the pro-
religious and conservative nature of the masses of women in their society (Chafetz &
Dworkin, 109-116).
In general, the most important ameliorative changes pursued by women activists of the
period 1849-1930 were realized around the 1930s. But the legal and political equality did
not result in social and economic equality. Because women accepted the traditional division
of labor and failed to challenge the traditional gender role divisions, real equality could not
yet follow from the formal equality sought by these first wave womens activists. Social
equality would be based on the relative economic resources of the sexes. It was left to a
later generation of women activists (beginning in the 1960s) to discover this fact and to
begin anew womens movements in both countries (Chafetz & Dworkin, 162).
The position of women during the entire timespan investigated in this study remained
firmly subordinate to that of men. And, even though more and more women did get jobs,
familiar problems revealed themselves such as the relations between men and women, the
rearing of children, and the arrangement of household work. All of these developments led
to the organization of women in womens movements. In addition, some women expressed
their thoughts and ideologies in different ways. The cultural expressions of these initiatives
included feminist plays, poetry, painting, and music. They also included feminist novels,
and among these was a flourishing new genre of feminist utopias.
71

A more general development that also had great influence was the appearance of more and
more working and independent women in the public sphere. The traditional ideas about
womens roles were beginning to be refuted by the counterexample of real women

71
One of the earliest feminist utopiawriters was Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who wrote several utopian
novels, such as Moving the Mountain (1911), Herland (1915), and With Her in Ourland (1916).
These novels offer vivid dramatizations of the social ills (and their potential remedies) that result
from a competitive economic system in which women are subordinate to men. Herland is, in fact, a
response to the portrayal of women in Edward Bellamys Looking Backward. Gilman, apparently
herself a member of the Nationalist movement inspired by Bellamys book, still feels the need to
redress the balance as far as women are concerned. Drawing upon L. H. Morgans work on primitive
societies, her utopia Herland pictures a gentle matriarchal society in which men are absent, and
women give birth in an ecstatic act of parthenogenesis. For more extensive discussions of the feminist
utopia, see C. Pearson, Womens Fantasies and Feminist Utopias, Frontiers: A Journal of Womens
Studies 2 (1977): 50-61; A. Mellor, On Feminist Utopias, Womens Studies 9 (1982): 241-262; T.
Moylan, Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination (New York and
London: Methuen, 1986); F. Bartkowski, Feminist Utopias (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1989); special issue, Women and the Future, Alternative Futures 4 (1981).

68

THE MIRROR IMAGE

performing different roles. This indirect influence of feminism on the social knowledge of
contemporaries helped to make easier the introduction of new social roles.
2.7: RAISING AN AWARENESS THROUGH NOVELS
Alice looked round her in great surprise. Why, I do believe weve been
under this tree the whole time! Everythings just as it was!
Of course it is, said the Queen. What would you have it?
Well, in our country, said Alice, still panting a little, youd generally
get to somewhere else if you ran very fast for a long time as weve been
doing.
A slow sort of country! said the Queen. Now, here, you see, it takes
all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get
somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!
72

A last point of investigation, before focusing more specifically on the novels, will be a brief
look at the reading and writing habits of women during the period 1849 1930. Women
read widely during the nineteenth and early twentieth century; amongst their reading would
be biblical and religious works, conduct books, informative reading such as history and
geography, voyage and travel books, scientific works, or translations, philosophical and
metaphysical books but also imaginative literature in the form of poetry and drama, and,
above all, novels.
73
It was only novels, on the whole, that were considered problematic
reading at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
74
It was preferable for women to read
the Bible, or moral essays. Literacy rates were not as high as they are today and Pearson
points out that the ability to read is not the same as the habit of reading, or the ability to
procure books (Pearson, 11).
75
This last aspect was made a lot easier when circulating
libraries were established at the beginning of the nineteenth century. These libraries also
made it easier to trace later on what exactly women read at the time, as not many individual
women readers kept detailed accounts of recreational reading.
76

72
Lewis Carroll, Alices Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1872;
London: Penguin Classics, 1998) 143.
73
Jacqueline Pearson, Womens Reading in Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Chapter 2, 42-87.
74
According to Pearson, people were afraid that novels might encourage romance, or sexual desire
and unrealistic expectations of ordinary life, 82-86.
75
It is quite difficult to make general statements about literacy rates at a certain place in a certain
historical time. Not only were such rates not always measured on a regular basis, but the
understanding of the concept varied greatly (what exactly is literacy?) and it was highly dependent
on the level of schooling, the question of gender and socio-economic factors. On the whole, however,
if we understand literacy as reading ability, overviews from the 1860s indicate that this was quite
high: 90%. If we add writing ability as being a part of literacy, the number drops to 26 %. With a
school attendance of 65% in the following years, the level that could be reached for both reading and
writing together could be 50%. Anders Nilsson, What do Literacy Rates in the Nineteenth Century
Really Signify? Paedagogica Historica 35:2 (1999): 275-296.
76
Flint indicates that, until after the First World War, public libraries primarily served the skilled
working classes and tradespeople, while the middle classes mainly patronized circulating and

69

Now, the woman reader does not exist, of course; class, nationality, age, and gender make a
complex map of reading (Pearson, 14). This presents such a complicated picture of the
actual reader of the historical time, that it seems to be close to impossible to make
generalizations about reading habits. What is known, is that during the period 1849-1930
reading became a more generally accepted activity for women, than in the century before.
So much so, that the assumption that the average contemporary British and American
female reader of the novels under discussion would be middle-class, white and quite well
educated seems reasonable (Pearson, 10).
77

Female reading in the second half of the nineteenth century was also no longer considered
problematic. Access to literature or to any other kind of information was still curbed, but
women had by now developed a wide range of strategies to evade such prohibitions, and
they might even pretend to accept them, while covertly resisting them (Pearson, 16). While
women would read all types of literature, it was especially novels that were considered
feminine reading. Interesting in relation to my own research is Elizabeth Bergen Brophys
indication that novels were frequently alluded to in womens journals and letters of the
period, and that women not only read but discussed [novels] as models for conduct to a
much greater degree than other genres.
78
This is similar to what Hegenbarth-Rsgen points
out in her discussion of this genre: that novels fed into the establishment and questioning
of social norms and values.
Male writers looked at these novels in a different way. They did not read them as
examples, and, overall, they were not too impressed by the literary works of their female
colleagues, though they did realize that women readers presented a growing market for
their work. They were anxious about the apparent appropriation of the novel by women and
they were worried that the novel was in danger of becoming the preserve of the woman
writer and the woman reader. A consequence of this was that the novel as an art form was
beginning to be taken less seriously than the more traditionally male literary art forms like
the epic, tragedy, or even poetry. Yet, as the novel seemed to develop into an art form on
the fringes, the fact that more and more women wrote and read novels was no longer as
critically condemned though it did remain closely monitored.
79

This made it easier for women to use and adopt novels by women for their own purposes.
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar point out in their study of nineteenth century literature
that this is exactly what women did. They indicate that most womens writing contained a
hidden story. Pearson observes that all types of literature could, in fact, be read
rebelliously and resistingly rather than compliantly, and that a great many genres, even

subscription libraries. She adds that most libraries kept individual records, usually found in their
annual reports. Such records would include lists which classify borrowers by occupations or trace the
borrowing records of certain chosen books throughout the year. The Woman Reader 1837-1914, 173-
174.
77
Of course, other women would read as well. African-American women in the United States read
widely, and servants in Great Britain formed reader groups who would read and discuss contemporary
novels and other types of literature quite seriously. Servants had the advantage over other laborers
both in time to read and access to books. Pearson also discusses the reading habits of farmers and the
urban working class (Pearson, 185-195).
78
Elizabeth Bergen Brophy, Womens Lives and the 18-th century English Novel (Tampa: University
of South Florida Press, 1991) 40.
79
Kate Flint, The Woman Reader 1837-1914, 14, 32.

70

THE MIRROR IMAGE

biblical and devotional reading, had not always been considered safe for female readers
at earlier times (Pearson, 42-43). Yet, my hypothesis is that the novels by some women
writers of the nineteenth century were consciously written in this way and provided a
double voiced discourse on purpose.
80

Pearson also indicates that women liked to read what women had written (Pearson, 97).
This fostered a sense of community and, though reading pleasures ranged from escapism to
solace or the discovery of ones true identity, and from domesticity to revolutionary
alternatives, it is especially this last point that seems to be the goal of the women writers
who will be investigated in the next chapters. Hegenbarth-Rsgens theoretical framework
provides one means to explain this process; my introduction of the concept of the mirror
image presents another.
The mirror image corresponds to some extent with Gilbert and Gubars theory about
womens rewriting of the traditional images of women in male literature. These traditional
images represent the most ideal Victorian woman, and her opposite. In the novels under
discussion, Caroline Helstone, Adle Ratignolle, May Welland and Norah Martin are the
characters that resemble the Angel in the House, though each in a very different way. The
opposite image of the angel is the monster (Gilbert & Gubar, 28). This monster-woman
is more of a rebel and she embodies female autonomy, independence and intellect. In the
four novels these characters are Shirley Keeldar, Edna Pontellier, Ellen Olenska and Julia
Martin. All four protagonists do indeed strive for autonomy and have great willpower. But
in the course of each novel, the women writers manage to rewrite and change the monstrous
image to such an extent that as a reader (both contemporary and present-day) one begins to
wonder which character really portrays the more monstrous traits.
Each of the female authors whose work will be investigated in the next chapters is unique,
and theoretical frameworks cannot fully describe or explain the subtle application of the
narrative strategies that these women writers used. Yet, a close examination of each text,
reading with the aid of the theories and socio-historical knowledge expounded in Chapters
1 and 2, helps to provide insights and discoveries that can assist us in understanding
whether and how these women writers have attempted to contribute to the changing social
structures through their novels. In order to get a clear view of how the four writers have
used the mirror image to represent the various social roles for women and the still
repressive tendencies of society, I will examine each novel with regard to the gender
specific socialization depicted in them, the class specific socialization portrayed, and the
more general behavior of both protagonists as sketched by each author.
In the context of the gender specific socialization, it is especially the schooling of both
female protagonists on which my discussion will focus. What aspects seem important in the
education they receive? Is there a difference between the types of education both females
receive? Is there a focus on skills or knowledge? Or do they not seem to get any education
at all? The examination of the class specific socialization concentrates more on what one
would call breeding. To what class do both women belong? How is this depicted by the
authors through the use of role attributes such as clothes or make-up? Do these role-
attributes confirm or undermine the stereotypic images of angel and monster? And what

80
Elaine Showalter, Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness, in The New Feminist Criticism (London:
Virago Press, 1986) 266.

71

is the role of the mirroring technique in this context? In the investigation of the more
general behavior of both protagonists, the interaction with the immediate social context and
with men becomes important. How are both female protagonists portrayed? Do they fit the
stereotypes or do they have more individual behavioral patterns? Do they develop and, if
so, how? And what does the mirroring technique seem to achieve here? Similar questions
will receive attention in the discussion of each novel.
As a last point of investigation, the individual responses from contemporary readers to the
novels and their narrative techniques will become a point of attention. Did contemporary
female readers notice the use of the stereotypic images of the angel and the monster?
Did they comment on the mirroring technique? Did they pay attention to the emancipatory
intent of the novel? These questions and others will be extensively dealt with in the
following chapters. Throughout these discussions the focus will be on the text of the novels
and on their reception by contemporary readers.

72

Chapter 3

Shirley or the condition of women in the
English middle-class
3.0: INTRODUCTION
The first novel under investigation here is Shirley by Charlotte Bront. This novel was
published under her pseudonym Currer Bell in 1849. It never became as famous as Jane
Eyre, and it is only quite recently that critics began to appreciate the novel more, either
examining it as a condition-of-England novel, or reading it from a feminist perspective.
With her sisters Emily and Anne and her brother Patrick Branwell, Charlotte Bront spent
her youth at Haworth, a lonely village in Yorkshire, where her father was vicar. The
children were left to themselves very much and this isolation led to extensive reading. They
started writing stories and poems at a very early age, and later Charlotte, Emily and Anne
all published novels. What is particularly noteworthy about all of Charlotte Bronts work
is the fierceness and passion with which she, as one of the first important women writers of
English literature, demands the right of the woman to emotional and sexual independence.
This tendency can be traced in Jane Eyre, but it is
also present in Shirley.
Within Shirley this struggle is depicted through
two main characters. The female protagonists of
the novel are Caroline Helstone and Shirley
Keeldar. Overall, the opposite traits of passionate
feeling and excitement, of individual freedom
and fulfilment, on the one side, and those of self-
transcending or self-denying duty and moral
responsibility, on the other, are distributed over
two separate characters in this novel.
1
Shirley
Keeldar embodies hope, love, feeling, and high
spirits, devotion to personal satisfaction and
freedom, and total rejection of social
conventionality. Caroline Helstone, on the other
hand, conscientiously adheres to the rules
belonging to her social role; she is the typical
Angel in the House. She tries to suppress her
feelings, and represents endurance, moral and
social duty and a sense of responsibility. Shirley is
brilliant and extrovert, whereas her mirror image
Caroline is much more subdued and introvert. The term mirror does not mean exactly the

1
Andrew and Judith Hook, Introduction (1974) to Shirley by Charlotte Bront (1849;
Harmondsworth, [etc.]: Penguin, 1985) 11.

Bront by George Richmond (1850)

73

Shirley or the condition of women in the English middle-class
same; very often, in fact, it stresses the differences between both women. Shirley, however,
is not a dependent member of the family, a housekeeper, or a housewife. She is a wealthy
heiress who owns her own house, the ancestral mansion usually reserved for the hero. And
she clearly enjoys her status as lord of the manor as well as its ambiguous effect on her
role in society. In general, she is the rebel character in the story. However, it would really
be going too far to call her a monster, since her looks and her behavior are both far from
monstrous.
The setting of Shirley is Yorkshire, and the period the latter part of the Napoleonic wars,
the time of the Luddite riots (1811-1812), when the wool industry was suffering from the
almost complete stop of exports. In spite of these circumstances, Robert Grard Moore, half
English, half Belgian by birth, a mill-owner of stubborn character, persists in introducing
the latest labor-saving machinery. He seems unafraid of the opposition of the workers,
which results in an attempt first to destroy his mill, and finally to take his life. To overcome
his financial difficulties he proposes to Shirley Keeldar, an heiress of independent spirit,
while under the mistaken impression that she is in love with him. He himself is not in love
with her, but with his gentle and quiet cousin Caroline Helstone. Caroline is pining away
for love of him and through enforced idleness in the oppressive atmosphere of her uncles
rectory. Robert is angrily rejected by Shirley, who is in love with his brother Louis, a tutor
in her family, who is also of proud and independent spirit. The misunderstandings are
gradually resolved, and the two couples united.
The style of this novel can be referred to as social realism.
2
It is written in the third person
and we are mostly told about the events by an omniscient narrator. A notable aspect of this
novel is how it represents the standardized socialization of young women at the beginning
of the nineteenth century, in accordance with the practices adhered to during this time.
The title of the book is a sign of the importance that Shirley is meant to assume in spite of
the infrequency of her appearances in the plot. The title was in fact decided upon only days
before the completion of the manuscript. In March 1849, the novel had been tentatively
referred to as Shirley, but other titles were also considered. On August 21 Bront wrote
to her publisher W. S. Williams:
If I remember rightly my Cornhill critics object to Hollows Mill, nor do
I now find it appropriate. It might rather be called Fieldhead though, I
think Shirley would perhaps be the best title: Shirley, I fancy, has
turned out the most prominent and peculiar character in the work.
3

2
The style of Bronts earlier novel Jane Eyre was often referred to as Gothic realism. Shirley, on the
other hand, is more regularly described as reflecting social realism. The story is very much
concerned with the plight of the workers and the woman question. The problems of these ordinary
people are rendered with close attention to the physical setting and to the complexities of social life,
hence the term social realism. Judith and Andrew Hook even go so far as to call it a condition of
England novel: Introduction, Shirley, 10.
3
Herbert Rosengarten and Margaret Smith, Introduction to Shirley by Charlotte Bront (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1979) xxi. This passage originally appeared in The Bronts; Their Lives,
Friendships and Correspondence: In Four Volumes. Eds. T. J. Wise and J. A Symington. Volume iii.
12 (Oxford: Brotherton Collection, 1932).

74

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Bronts observation is revealing, because in spite of the novels title, Caroline Helstone is
more often the center of attention than Shirley is. Shirley does not come into the novel until
it is one-third over but she is prominent and peculiar. With her appearance in the novel,
Shirley seems to give support to Caroline, and Caroline hopes that in Shirley she has found
a woman free from the constraints which threaten to destroy her own life. It is no
coincidence that Shirley appears when Caroline has been completely immobilized through
her own sensitivity and self-restraint. Her feeling of despondency seems to bring about the
emergence of a free and uninhibited double. That Shirley is indeed Carolines mirror
image becomes clear from a structural comparison of both girls throughout the novel.
In the description of the socialization of both Shirley and Caroline, the three aspects
indicated in the previous chapter express how both women are set up as mirror images.
Their education as part of the gender specific socialization is especially noteworthy. The
role of the lady as class specific goal of the socialization offers another useable point of
departure for comparison, namely the employment of role attributes, such as clothes.
Noteworthy, too, is the overall behavior of both protagonists. A comparison of their
behavior reveals that, the further on we get into the story, the more similarities we can
observe. This is remarkable, because up to the middle of the book, their behavioral patterns
seem to be complete opposites. The influence of contemporary patriarchal society seems to
be such that no woman can escape it, and that even such opposite characters as Shirley and
Caroline are brought into line with the prevailing norm and value system.
3.1: THE PARISH SCHOOL OR THE PRIVATE SCHOOLROOM
Bront depicts the upbringing of both girls as mostly taking place in the home, and it is
only the Sunday school and the Parish school of Briarfield that are actually mentioned as
institutions. Yet, at the Sunday school Caroline is a teacher who instructs the village girls,
and Shirley merely attends the annual feast for Whitsuntide. A glimpse of Shirleys own
socialization and education is given at the beginning of Volume III. It becomes clear that
Shirley had a governess, Mrs. Pryor, and that she was educated by the tutor Louis Moore in
the Sympson household when she was a little older. French and drawing are mentioned as
subjects, but there is no indication of a rigorous study program, or a preparation for higher
education. In itself the level of education Shirley received may have been quite high. Louis
Moore is presented as a good tutor, and the surroundings of a private schoolroom may have
been more stimulating than an actual schoolroom, thus encouraging genuine learning.
Both Shirley and Carolines schooling is portrayed against a background of opposing
educational discourses thematized through the two schoolrooms. As Elizabeth Gargano
observes in her article on education in Shirley:
The parish school is a nexus of boundaries, hierarchies, and divisions, the
prop of church and state. The private schoolroom, in contrast, is staged as
a privileged site of intellectual and emotional exploration, a sanctuary for
both childhoods anarchic impulses and adulthoods hard-earned and
private liberties of the spirit.
4

4
Elizabeth Gargano, The Education of Bronts New Nouvelle Hlose in Shirley, Studies in
English Literature, 1500-1900 44.4 (Baltimore: Autumn 2004): 781.

75

Gargano sees in Shirley a rewriting of Rousseaus Julie, ou La nouvelle Hloise (Julie, or
the New Heloise) (1760) and she points out the similarity between Rousseaus story about
an eroticized relation between tutor and pupil and the relationship between Louis Moore
and Shirley.
5
More important in the context that is investigated here is that she links many
aspects of Shirleys education to the more liberated ideas about education by both Jean-
Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Johann Pestalozzi (1746-1827) (Gargano, 783).
6
In this
context, Caroline is linked to the village school and her mirror image Shirley considered
symbolic for the private schoolroom. Caroline is educated to a large extent in a homely
context, too, but she is most regularly associated with the village or parish school; the
opposites represented by the parish school and the private schoolroom where Shirley
receives her education depict exactly the contrast that can be observed in the behavior of
both girls and in the discourse that is going on about education in the mid-nineteenth
century.
Aspects of Garganos interpretation are illuminating, especially because traditional
criticism has so far given a completely different interpretation to these different
schoolrooms. Many critics view Moores schoolroom as an unqualified site of patriarchy
and oppression. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, for example, believe that Shirleys
final return to the rhetoric of the classroom only confirms and completes her fall (Gilbert
& Gubar, 393). Yet this interpretation impoverishes the varied meanings Moores private
schoolroom may have, and it also fails to explain the dynamic that draws Shirley to the
room and to Moore. Furthermore, halfway through the nineteenth century there is a debate
going on on education. This debate considers education in itself as a comment on norms,
values, and power relations. Seeing Louis schoolroom as a symbol of Victorian social
authoritarianism limits our understanding of it. A close look at the private schoolroom
reveals that it was often experienced as a nice and quiet study environment encouraging
genuine learning. The parish schoolroom, on the other hand, is an exponent of the church
and of under-privileged education.
A contemporary study and one of the authoritative voices within the debate on the
educational context is Herbert Spencers book Social Statics (1850). In this study Spencer
contrasts the coercive and authoritarian physical-force system of education with a
non-coercive treatment that appeals to the higher feelings and fosters the culture of the
sympathies.
7
He attacks coercion, which he considers vicious, and prefers equity, which
teaches a child to be a law to himself (Spencer 1892, 84-85). Spencer refines this
distinction in the study Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (1861) (discussed in

5
In the novel Julie, ou la Nouvelle Hloise (1760), Rousseaus greatest popular success, a critical
account of contemporary manners and ideas is interwoven with the story of the passionate love of the
tutor St. Preux and his pupil Julie, their separation, Julies marriage to the Baron Wolmar and the
dutiful, virtuous life shared by all three on the Barons country estate.
6
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827) was a Swiss pedagogue, but he was also famous as
philanthropist and social reformer. It was his goal den Menschen zu strken (to make people
stronger) and to teach them sich selbst helfen zu knnen (to be able to help themselves). He focused
especially on primary education, usually starting in the home, even before children went to school.
His teaching method was all-round, dealing with intellectual aspects, moral and religious aspects and
handicraft or needlework in a harmonious way. He expounded his pedagogical ideas in Wie Gertrud
ihre Kinder lehrt (1801; Breslau: Schriften hervorragender Pdagogen Heft 13, 1917).
7
Herbert Spencer, Social Statics (1850; London: Williams and Norgate, 1892) 81-88.

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

Chapter 2 of this dissertation). In this book he argues for a pedagogy which is in
accordance with the method of nature following the suggestions which the unfolding mind
itself gives.
8
Spencer believed that the main obstacle to the right conduct of education lies
rather in the parent than in the child (Spencer 1892, 87). Widening this idea to broader
social terms, the problem can be considered to lie in society, because it does not seem to
respect the natural law of human development. In that perspective, the non-coercive
schoolroom can even be seen as corrective to the prevalent social norms.
At the same time, however, educations traditional aim is to accustom the child to those
activities which will in future life be required of it in a world that is necessarily social
(Spencer 1892, 86-87). And so, as non-coercive education strives to realize the natural
inclinations, it conflicts with the limitations imposed by contemporary society. Even when
the ideal schoolroom would like to remain separated from society, because it can thus allow
the individual to develop according to his or her internal and natural laws, it is still
influenced by the restraints and deformations which society imposes on the individual. In
his theory of education, Spencer reveals ideas that are also part of the Victorian belief that
education is the great panacea for human troubles.
9

Spencers argument is interesting because it supports elements of the Rousseauian tradition
which, adapted by the writings of Johann Pestalozzi, had a great influence on the
nineteenth-century English debate on education. In his novel mile, Rousseau formulated
the opposition as follows: [f]orced to combat nature or the social institutions, one must
choose between making a man or a citizen, for one cannot make both at the same time.
10

Yet, the choice generally made is a mixture of both, which according to Rousseau is
unsatisfactory.
Spencers studies repeat the Rousseauian opposition. He confirms that, whereas the
coercive schoolroom produces a debased version of the citizen, a creature shaped for and
controlled by social institutions, the non-coercive schoolroom attempts to educate a free
individual, an ideal human being, whose Utopian harmony with natural moral laws may
ultimately make him or her unfit for society. The introduction of more liberal educational
programs allowed for Victorian optimism about the progress of education, as well as the
belief that the prevalent abuses of the educational system could be mended. The contrasting
of coercive and non-coercive pedagogies also encouraged the mid-century ideal of
individualism. Thus the non-coercive schoolroom is marked out as the free territory where
the deadening conformity of coercive education, representative of traditional social
pressures, can be evaded or transformed.
These contrasting opinions, as explained by the theories of Rousseau and Spencer, can be
traced in the personalities of the two main characters of Shirley. That the contrast is present

8
Herbert Spencer, Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (1861; London: Routledge, 1993) 65-
66. Spencer advocated the more liberal side in the debate. The articles in this collection had
previously been published in magazines in which he criticized standard methods of teaching Latin and
Greek, which crushed the spirit of individual enquiry, and advocated the teaching of the sciences,
including social sciences, because they were concerned with the problem of survival. Art, although it
had no problem-solving power, he considered important because it yielded immediate good.
9
Thomas Henry Huxley, A Liberal Education and Where to Find it, Lay Sermons, Adresses, and
Reviews (New York: D. Appleton, 1870) 27.
10
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, mile (1762; London: Everyman. 1993) 39.

77

in Bronts novel is quite remarkable, since both protagonists are girls. Girls would, in
general, receive a more coercive type of education. Carolines upbringing and resultant
behavior is wholly in accordance with the traditional education she would receive in real
life as a girl. She is educated to become the perfect wife, housewife, and mother. Shirleys
education, however, has liberal and intellectual aspects that can only be explained by the
fact that she has such a high social status. She is an esquire and is occasionally viewed as
and treated like a man.
Carolines education partly takes place in a homely context, too, but, overall, her
socialization is depicted both in relation to her humble background and the traditional
contents. Being the niece of the Rev. Helstone, with a father who is dead and a mother who
has disappeared, she is brought up in a modest way by her uncle. Mr. Helstone does not
think an elaborate or liberating education necessary for Caroline (S, 76, 93, 98-99). He
considers it enough if she gets some lessons from Hortense Moore, and helps at the Parish
school. College or university is not considered necessary. Caroline is quite disappointed
about this, and she states:
Look at the numerous families of girls in this neighbourhood The
brothers of these girls are every one in business or in professions; they
have something to do: their sisters have no earthly employment, but
household work and sewing, no earthly pleasure, but an unprofitable
visiting; and no hope, in all their life to come, of anything better. This
stagnant state of things makes them decline in health: they are never well;
and their minds and views shrink to wondrous narrowness. (S, 391)
The uncle does not even consider it necessary to give Caroline a more stimulating or
thorough education to encourage vertical social mobility in the form of an advantageous
marriage, an argument that is the most generally accepted motivation for a girls education
at the time.
Alongside her connection with the parish school, the homely upbringing Caroline receives
is her instruction by Hortense Moore (S, 76). In this context, her subjects are limited to
French, drawing, needlework, and other accomplishments. These subjects properly relate to
both the gender specific role of the woman and the class specific role of the lady. Caroline
is not exactly brought up in the tradition of conspicuous consumption or idleness that
Thorstein Veblen is so contemptuous about, but she is not taught for a profession, or to earn
money, either.
Shirley is not a so-called Bildungsroman. In fact, Shirley depicts Bildung in reverse, first
introducing the adult heroines and later on allowing the reader glimpses of the schooling
that helped to form them. In Shirley, Bront aptly depicts the contemporary opposing ideas
about education by linking the novels two female protagonists with these contrasting
opinions. One opens new perspectives of individualistic freedom, whereas the other
represents the mechanisms of authoritarian control. Bronts depiction of this dualism,
however, also reveals that each approach incorporates elements of the other. Both types of
education encourage young people to move from the sheltered domesticity of childhood
into a wider realm of adult experience. Both serve as the breeding grounds of individual
growth from private desires to public responsibilities (Spencer 1850, 86).

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

Two scenes in the novel illustrate the clash between such private wishes and public
responsibilities. The first scene concerns the day of the feast at the Parish school. Caroline
goes to fetch Shirley, because she is afraid that Shirley might otherwise be too late. She is
right; when she reaches Fieldhead, Shirley is still lying on the couch, reading a book.
It was well she had come, or Shirley would have been too late. Instead of
making ready with all speed, she lay stretched on a couch, absorbed in
reading: Mrs. Pryor stood near, vainly urging her to rise and dress.
Caroline wasted no words: she immediately took the book from her, and,
with her own hands, commenced the business of disrobing and re-robing
her. Shirley, indolent with the heat, and gay with her youth and
pleasurable nature, wanted to talk, laugh, and linger; but Caroline, intent
on being in time, persevered in dressing her as fast as fingers could fasten
strings or insert pins. At length, as she united a final row of hooks and
eyes, she found leisure to chide her, saying, she was very naughty to be
so unpunctual; that she looked even now the picture of incorrigible
carelessness: and so Shirley did but a very lovely picture of that
tiresome quality. (S, 295)
It is Caroline, with her traditional and coercive upbringing, who realizes that Shirley with
her position and responsibility has the duty to appear on time. She coaxes Shirley into sense
and functions as her corrective, thus stabilizing the accepted norms and roles.
The other scene takes place in the Fieldhead schoolroom. During the little gathering in that
room, other guests appear; and Shirley has to leave the company, and attend to the family
from De Walden Hall in the expected way, but she does not really want to. Caroline tells
her to go, and so do Louis Moore and Mr. Hall. Yet, Shirley is not really convinced, and
she asks those who want her to leave to raise their hands. The reflection in the mirror above
the fire place reveals a unanimous vote against her, and she gives in and goes (S 466-469).
In this context, too, she is corrected by a mirror image; now it is an actual reflection in a
mirror that advocates her compliance with a norm, but the effect is the same.
A liberating and freedom stimulating education may seem ideal, but it has aspects that do
not coincide with Shirleys social position. It is interesting to see that in addition to
Caroline, her mirror image, it is both Louis Moore and Mr. Hall who point out to Shirley
that she has to fulfil her duty. Louis Moore and Mr. Hall have more liberal and humanistic
views and they understand and respect women, yet it is exactly their more nuanced ideas
that make them realize how important it is to fulfil the duties connected with ones social
position, if one wants to be accepted by the immediate social context. The private
schoolroom thus becomes a transitional site, mediating between the two oppositions,
depicting that each approach relates to both the civilized Angel in the House and to more
rebellious behavior, to both the private and the public sphere, and to the domestic as well as
the worldly context. Bronts social and historical realism gives a very accurate portrayal of
the educational possibilities for women at the time. Her interest in better opportunities for
women stretches the depiction of possible chances for women in the 1810s to the limits,
whilst her historical precision prevents it from being too extreme.

79

3.2: BIRD OF PARADISE VS SNOW-WHITE DOVE
Throughout Shirley the two main characters Shirley and Caroline are also contrasted and
compared as far as their use of the role-attribute clothing and their overall appearance is
concerned:
[Shirley] presented quite a contrast to Caroline: there was style in every
fold of her dress and every line of her figure: the rich silk suited her better
than a simpler costume; the deep-embroidered scarf became her; she
wore it negligently, but gracefully; the wreath on her bonnet crowned her
well: the attention to fashion, the tasteful appliance of ornament in each
portion of her dress, were quite in place with her: all this suited her, like
the frank light in her eyes, the raillying smile about her lips, like her
shaftstraight carriage and lightsome step. Caroline took her hand when
she was dressed, hurried her down-stairs, out of doors, and thus they sped
through the fields, laughing as they went, and looking very much like a
snow-white dove and gem-tinted bird-of-paradise joined in social flight.
(S, 295)
This contrast is sustained by Bront throughout the novel and the difference in appearances
between both girls is at least as telling about their personalities and their social position as
their more general behavior or the education they receive. Here follows a typical
description of Caroline, the Angel in the House:
To her had not been denied the gift of beauty; she was fair enough to
please, even at the first view. Her shape suited her age; it was girlish,
light, and pliant; every curve was neat, every limb proportionate: her face
was expressive and gentle; her eyes were handsome Her mouth was
very pretty; she had a delicate skin, and a fine flow of brown hair, which
she knew how to arrange with taste; curls became her, and she possessed
them in picturesque profusion. Her style of dress announced taste in the
wearer; very unobtrusive in fashion, far from costly in material, but
suitable in colour to the fair complexion with which it contrasted, and in
make to the slight form which it draped. Her present winter garb was of
merino, the same soft shade of brown as her hair; the little collar round
her neck lay over a pink ribbon, and was fastened with a pink knot: she
wore no other decoration. (S, 75)
In both her appearance and use of fashion, Caroline depicts quiet modesty, gracefulness and
simplicity. Mrs. Humphry would have been thrilled about Carolines appearance. In her
book Manners for Women, she states in a chapter called the Ethics of Dress:
The object of a fashionable woman in dressing, is to make herself
distinctive without becoming conspicuous to excel by her union of
graceful outline and fidelity to the fashion of the moment (no easy task),
and, while offering no striking contrast to those around her, so to

80

THE MIRROR IMAGE

individualise herself that she is one of the few who remain in the
memory.
11

Mrs. Humphry is very much aware of the intricacies of dress and she stresses:
As things are, many fail in such trifles as fastening on a veil, adjusting the
collar or the ribbons at neck and waist, or in achieving the necessary
harmony between costume and coiffure. (Humphry, 64-65)
Caroline is depicted as having the right instinct for the correct wear of fashion. Shirley
dresses more extravagantly, but this suits her personality. The use of clothing and jewelry
by both women is more an indication of their identities, rather than proof of extravagant
spending behavior. Shirley is quite rich, though not the richest person in the neighborhood
and her position brings with it certain responsibilities as well as certain expectations.
People would consider it odd, if she were to dress or behave more modestly, or live as a
recluse. Here follows Robert Moores impression of her:
Shirleys clear cheek was tinted yet with the colour which had risen into
it a few minutes since: the dark lashes of her eyes looking down as she
read, the dusk yet delicate line of her eyebrows, the almost sable gloss of
her curls, made her heightened complexion look fine as the bloom of a
red wild-flower, by contrast. There was natural grace in her attitude, and
there was artistic effect in the ample and shining folds of her silk dress
an attire simply fashioned, but almost splendid from the shifting
brightness of its dye, warp and woof being of tints deep and changing as
the hue on a pheasants neck. A glancing bracelet on her arm produced
the contrast of gold and ivory: there was something brilliant in the whole
picture. (S, 249)
In contrast to the brilliant dress of Shirley, Caroline, being the Rectors niece and of a
more humble background, was expected to dress less flamboyantly, and behave in a more
modest and conventional way:
In Miss Helstone, neither he nor any one else could discover brilliancy.
Sitting in the shade, without flowers or ornaments, her attire the modest
muslin dress, colourless but for its narrow stripe of pale azure, her
complexion unflushed, unexcited, the very brownness of her hair and
eyes invisible by this faint light, she was, compared with the heiress, as a
graceful pencil-sketch compared with a vivid painting. (S, 249-250)
The two girls are compared like this throughout the novel. The interwovenness of their
appearances and their behavior with their social status is undeniable. Shirleys outgoingness
is confirmed by the bright colors that she wears (S, 249, 312). Her social status is reflected
in the costly material of her dresses, which are usually of silk or satin, and in the jewelry
she always wears.
12
Caroline only has one ring and a trinket or two (259). And her dresses

11
Madge Humphry, Manners for Women (1897; Kent: Pryor Publications, 1993) 61-67.
12
To be specific, in S: dresses: 249, 295, 306; jewelry: 234, 249, 254, 295, 479.

81

are of more subdued colors (brown, merino, grey, azure, white), of less costly material
(muslin), and she occasionally makes them herself.
13

Bronts intertwining of their appearances, their
behavior and their social status is not as
limiting to the characters individual identities
as it may seem. Caroline, for example, values
and appreciates the right fashion and, in spite of
her limited upbringing, she knows exactly what
suits her and Shirleys status - probably better
than Shirley does, who seems to be more
unconcerned about these things. Caroline is the
one with the better taste, and she knows what is
proper. The other characters in the novel also
notice and appreciate this, and Caroline is the
one who is most often referred to as the lady
(S, 323, 437, 568).
Shirley is depicted as having been a tomboy,
and is even now, at the age of twenty-one, more
nonchalant about her clothing, and does not
seem to notice other peoples shortcomings in
this context. During all the years that Mrs.
Pryor takes care of her, Shirley does not
perceive that she dresses in an old-fashioned
way (S, 195, 223). Caroline immediately
notices this, and she considers it a pity that Mrs.
Pryor looks older and more unattractive than
she needs to look. She therefore makes her a
new wardrobe and corrects her style (599).
Carolines understanding of the right style in
fashion also becomes apparent in her contacts
with Hortense Moore. During her visits to the
cottage, as soon as dinner is over,
Caroline coaxed her governess-cousin upstairs to dress: this manoeuvre
required management. To have hinted that the jupon, camisole, and curl-
papers were odious objects, or indeed other than quite meritorious points,
would have been a felony. Any premature attempt to urge their
disappearance was therefore unwise, and would be likely to issue in the
persevering wear of them during the whole day. Carefully avoiding rocks
and quicksands, however, the pupil, on pretence of requiring a change of
scene, contrived to get the teacher aloft, and, once in the bed-room, she
persuaded her that it was not worth while returning thither, and that she
might as well make her toilette now; and while Mademoiselle delivered a

13
Detailed information about both the colors and the material can be found on the following pages in
S: 176, 240, 249-250, 294, 306, 312, 637.

Day Dress 1840s
Collection of the Kyoto Costume Institute
Inv. AC 946 78-25-57

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

solemn homily on her own surpassing merit in disregarding all frivolities
of fashion, Caroline denuded her of the camisole, invested her with a
decent gown, arranged her collar, hair, &c. and made her quite
presentable. But Hortense would put the finishing touches herself, and
these finishing touches consisted in a thick handkerchief tied round the
throat, and a large, servant-like black apron, which spoiled everything. (S,
80)
The other Yorkshire people also notice Hortenses unusual fashion items; they laugh at her
black sabots, for example (S, 66). Caroline is too intelligent and too gentle a person to do
that, but when Hortense offers her a few copies of some traditional Belgian items of
clothing, Caroline refuses them (80). The subsequent quarrel that they have is not
characteristic for Caroline, but it does support the idea that she has a better sense of style
than Hortense does. Both the fichu and the apron are depicted as unflattering fashion items.
Caroline also helps Shirley to dress in the correct way, and she eventually even assists her
with her wedding dress and her future ward-robe (S, 295, 637). On these occasions,
Caroline the Angel in the House and Shirleys mirror image, again acts as her corrective.
The issue of the correct use of fashion is thematized by making it such a conscious process.
At the same time, the appropriate style is stabilized by the corrective example of Caroline.
She knows exactly what is proper and suitable for every occasion, and she helps and
corrects Shirley through her influence.
At the same time, fashion is for Caroline also a means of anticipation. It is a way for her to
indicate that she would like to belong to the next social layer. She does have a decent
enough middle-class background, but she is not rich, and she certainly does not belong to
the aristocracy. Traditionally, ladies came from the aristocracy. The anticipatory
adaptation shown by Caroline here, and her acceptance of the norms, attitudes, values, and
fashion of a social group that is still above her, indicate that she would like to become a
member of this (reference) group. For Caroline this leads to a type of behavior that is even
more ladylike and perfect than the behavior of some of the other, established ladies in the
novel. Mrs. Yorkes appearance, for example, when she visits Hortense Moore is described
as follows:
And opening the door, she made visible an ample spread of crimson skirts
overflowing the elbow-chair at the fireside, and above them, presiding
with dignity, a cap more awful than a crown. That cap had never come to
the cottage under a bonnet: no, it had been brought in a vast bag, or rather
a middle-sized balloon of black silk, held wide with whalebone. The
screed, or frill of the cap, stood a quarter of a yard broad round the face
of the wearer: the ribbon, flourishing in puffs and bows about the head,
was of the sort called love-ribbon: there was a good deal of it, - I may
say, a very great deal. Mrs. Yorke wore the cap it became her: she wore
the gown also it suited her no less. (S, 396)
That great lady, as she is referred to, is firmly established as lady in the neighborhood -
so much so, that a little extravagance cannot harm her reputation. Similarly, Shirleys
nonchalance is not too heavily criticized either. On the contrary, people find her charming
and they appreciate her social nature. The way she dresses reveals that the heiress is rich,

83

very rich; she possesses a clear thousand a year. Caroline does not have a penny. Yet even
though their financial situation is so different, there is a sense of equality between both girls
that the other gentry of Briarfield and Whinbury do not show towards Caroline. The reason
was, the narrator explains, that
Shirleys head ran on other things than money and position. She was glad
to be independent as to property: by fits she was even elated at the notion
of being lady of the manor, and having tenants and an estate: she was
especially tickled with an agreeable complacency when reminded of all
that property down in the hollow, comprising an excellent cloth-mill,
dyehouse, warehouse, together with the messuage, gardens, and
outbuildings, termed Hollows cottage; but her exultation being quite
undisguised was singularly inoffensive; and, for her serious thoughts,
they tended elsewhere. To admire the great, reverence the good, and be
joyous with the genial, was very much the bent of Shirleys soul; she
mused therefore on the means of following this bent far oftener than she
pondered on her social superiority. (S, 224)
Shirley likes her possessions, but she honors and respects different things than property.
Shirleys is a very luxurious position to be in, but Caroline can also learn a little from her in
this context. The narrator seems to suggest that Caroline might relax a bit more. This would
make her less anxious or timid, and save her quite a few sleepless nights. All this worrying
does not do her any good:
Caroline looked at the little mirror before her, and she thought there were
some signs [of an old maid]. She could see that she was altered within the
last month; that the hues of her complexion were paler, her eyes changed
a wan shade seemed to circle them, her countenance was dejected: she
was not, in short, so pretty or so fresh as she used to be. She distantly
hinted this to Fanny, from whom she got no direct answer, only a remark
that people did vary in their looks; but that at her age a little falling away
signified nothing, - she would soon come round again, and be plumper
and rosier than ever. Having given this assurance, Fanny showed singular
zeal in wrapping her up in warm shawls and handkerchiefs, till Caroline,
nearly smothered with the weight, was fain to resist further additions. (S,
176-177)
The use of clothing seems to mediate between the two oppositions, too. A good
understanding of and adherence to the right code of fashion may facilitate social mobility or
ensure acceptance by the social context. Yet a more nonchalant attitude may result in a
more relaxed look and a more relaxed mind. Bront seems to want to stress that each
approach has positive and negative sides, and the main characters learn from one another
without one approach really seeming to be preferred, though it has to be admitted that the
more nonchalant use of role-attributes seems to be reserved for the rich only.

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

3.3: WHEREIN MATTERS MAKE SOME PROGRESS, BUT NOT
MUCH
14

In Shirley, Charlotte Bront is also concerned with the opposition between the more general
behavior of both protagonists, and she links this with the contrast between the opposite
traits of passionate feeling and excitement, of individual freedom and fulfilment, and those
of self-transcending or self-denying duty and moral responsibility. Rather than presenting
this kind of divided approach in one character, as she does in Jane Eyre, she splits the
behavior into two parts, assigning that of the timid and dutiful young girl to Caroline, and
that of the tougher and more independent woman to Shirley.
15
That Shirley is indeed
Carolines mirror image also becomes clear from a structural comparison of both girls
throughout the novel in the following contexts.

General behavior
We have already had a look at their education and the use of clothes by both girls, but their
overall appearance, their interests, and their behavior are also compared in a broader
context. Caroline is Bronts first beautiful heroine.
16
Yet, a great part of the overall
praise of Caroline in the novel is in conventional terms of mere prettiness, and the narrator
finishes Carolines introduction to the reader in words that seem ambiguous: So much for
Caroline Helstones appearance; as to her character or intellect, if she had any, they must
speak for themselves in due time (S, 75).
Reader reports show that Caroline appealed greatly to contemporary readers, but perhaps
this is not so surprising as she is the perfect example of the popular idea of the Victorian
heroine: pretty, sweet, gentle, retiring, trembling at a frown, and with no particular gifts of
genius. Throughout the story she depicts the typical Angel in the House and with a change
of clothes and name, she might double for any of the heroines in less important novels of
the period. Yet, Caroline is also portrayed as a woman condemned by circumstance to have
neither an all-round education nor the chance of a stimulating development of her intellect.
This makes her a timid girl, less intellectual and more sentimental than she might have
been, if she had received better schooling. That women can thus be molded into a shape
that they may not naturally have, because of the mistaken ideas that society has about them,
is pointed out by Shirley. In the novel, she states:
If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but
the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion about women:
they do not read them in a true light; they misapprehend them, both for
good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel;
their bad woman almost always a fiend. Then to hear them fall into

14
This is the title of Chapter XII, Vol. III, in the original version of Shirley (S, 594).
15
Robert Bernard Martin, The Accents of Persuasion: Charlotte Bronts Novels (London: Faber &
Faber, 1966) 122.
16
Robert Martin postulates this in The Accents of Persuasion. He briefly compares Caroline to
Rosamund Oliver in Jane Eyre, but considers the depiction of Caroline as most closely resembling the
ideal of the Victorian heroine, 123.

85

extasies with each others creations, worshipping the heroine of such a
poem - novel - drama, thinking it fine - divine! Fine and divine it may be,
but often quite artificial - false as the rose in my best bonnet there. If I
spoke all I think on this point; if I gave my real opinion of some first-rate
female characters in first-rate works, where should I be? Dead under a
cairn of avenging stones in half an hour. (S, 352)
It is interesting to see that Shirley refers to the exact opposition of the traditional images
used of women in literature by men that I also refer to in my introduction and that Gilbert
and Gubar discuss in The Madwoman in the Attic. Shirley (and Bront) recognize that the
images are artificial and the opposition is identified as untrue, confirming my sense that
the relationship is a more complex doubling or mirroring rather than a fixed contrast.
In the novel, Caroline is portrayed as shy. Her timidity is illustrated by Yorkes comparison
of her pale quietness to one of the marbles of Canova (S, 539). She is, Shirley tells Moore,
quite feminine, nor of what they call the spirited order of women a girl whose rare
outbursts have no manly fire, but only a short, vivid, trembling glow, that shot up,
shone, vanished and almost left her scared at her own daring (363). Yet, at the same
time, as Shirley also points out, Caroline though gentle, tractable, and candid enough, is
still perfectly capable of defying even Mr. Moores penetration (363).
Carolines depicted attitude seems to originate from the represented social context. It is not
that she does not understand things or does not want to be a more spirited or liberated
person. She is poor, she is a dependent member of the family, and though she may
eventually inherit something from her uncle, she does not have the money or property that
Shirley has. Consequently she cannot afford to be as independent, manly or single-minded
as Shirley can. Shirleys independent behavior is tolerated because of her social position
and her financial situation. Being an esquire allows her certain liberties that Caroline does
not have.
Shirley is quite beautiful, too; but she is less angelic or perfect than Caroline. She is
described as pale; and though she wears expensive clothes, she wears them with a
nonchalance that betrays that her appearance is not Shirleys main concern (S, 335). The
other characters in the novel refer to her behavior or manner more often than to her
appearance or beauty. Helstone, for example, when mentioning Shirley for the first time to
Caroline, comments that she is rather a fine girl; she will teach you what it is to have a
sprightly spirit: nothing lackadaisical about her (193). The narrative confirms this:
Shirley Keeldar was no ugly heiress: she was agreeable to the eye. Her
height and shape were not unlike Miss Helstones: perhaps in stature she
might have the advantage by an inch or two; she was gracefully made,
and her face, too, possessed a charm as well described by the word grace
as any other. It was pale naturally, but intelligent, and of varied
expression. She was not a blond, like Caroline: clear and dark were the
characteristics of her aspect as to colour: her face and brow were clear,
her eyes of the darkest gray: no green lights in them, - transparent, pure,
neutral gray; and her hair of the darkest brown. Her features were
distinguished; by which I do not mean that they were high, bony, and
Roman, being indeed rather small and slightly marked than otherwise, but

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only that they were, to use a few French words, fins, gracieux,
spirituels: mobile they were and speaking; but their changes were not to
be understood, nor their language interpreted all at once. (S, 198)
In connection with the impression the appearances of both girls make on others, it is
Carolines prettiness that is accentuated whereas Shirley is depicted as being intelligent and
distinguished. This is very much in accordance with the general opposition of passivity and
sensitivity, and independence and rationality.
The opposition between independence and rationality, on the one hand, and timidity and
sensitivity, on the other, can also be traced in the interests that Shirley and Caroline have.
Their literary tastes are frequently mentioned, for example. Unlike Shirley, an omnivorous
reader, Caroline rejects the more intellectual pleasures of Racine and Corneille, whom
Hortense Moore admires so much, and prefers the romantic poetry of Chnier in French,
and the poetry of the sensitive and hypochondriac Cowper in English. It is only when she is
stimulated by the presence of Robert that she reads Shakespeares comic scenes with a
spirit no one could have expected of her, with a pithy expression with which she seemed
gifted on the spot, and for that brief moment only (S, 91). The narrator thus seems to
suggest that she has more potential in this context, than she is in the habit of expressing.
By means of characterization by literary taste, the quality and state of Carolines mind are
also illustrated when she sits alone, still as a garden statue, reading old books provided
by her uncles library (Martin, 126):
[T]he Greek and Latin were of no use to her; and its collection of light
literature was chiefly contained on a shelf which had belonged to her aunt
Mary: some venerable Ladys Magazines, that had once performed a sea-
voyage with their owner, and undergone a storm, and whose pages were
stained with salt water; some mad Methodist Magazines, full of miracles
and apparitions, of preternatural warnings, ominous dreams, and frenzied
fanaticism; the equally mad Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe from the
Dead to the Living; a few old English Classics: - from these faded
flowers Caroline had in her childhood extracted the honey, - they were
tasteless to her now. (S, 389)
It seems remarkable that Caroline could have enjoyed them in childhood, and that they
were tasteless to her now seems to suggest that her taste has improved with age.
Shirleys taste is depicted as more mature and better developed, but she has a large library
at Fieldhead. All of the books are her own, and she can buy any other books she might like.
Again, the habitus and the financial position of both girls are as formative of their
characters and the social roles they (have to) play, as their personalities are. Ignoring the
differences between them, Shirley formulates the similarities she notices as follows:
Her predilection increased greatly when she discovered that her own way
of thinking and talking was understood and responded to by this new
acquaintance. She had hardly expected it. Miss Helstone, she fancied, had
too pretty a face, manners and voice too soft, to be anything out of the
common way in mind and attainments; and she very much wondered to
see the gentle features light up archly to the reveill of a dry sally or two

87

risked by herself; and more did she wonder to discover the self-won
knowledge treasured, and the untaught speculations working in that
girlish, curl-veiled head. Carolines instinct of taste, too, was like her
own: such books as Miss Keeldar had read with the most pleasure, were
Miss Helstones delight also. They held many aversions too in common,
and could have the comfort of laughing together over works of false
sentimentality and pompous pretension. (S, 225)
Shirley and Caroline share many basic values related to sincerity, honesty and uprightness.
Again Carolines potential talents are stressed. It is the likeness, the similarity between both
girls that makes the contrasting and comparing by means of the mirror image acceptable,
too. In this way, it becomes possible to compare or contrast an individual aspect, while the
other factors remain constant. The compared aspect can thus be raised to a higher level of
consciousness in the reader.
The behavior of both girls offers another interesting context for comparison. Shirley seems
to be a projection of Carolines more repressed feelings, and she sometimes almost seems
to perform certain acts for Caroline.
17
Caroline indicates in volume 1 that she wishes she
could understand the trading customs of men, while Shirley is actively engaged in business
with Robert Grard Moore, sees a newspaper every day, and two of a Sunday and reads
the letters of the civic leaders (S, 200, 327, 539). Shirleys own comment on this is:
Business! Really the word makes me conscious I am indeed no longer a
girl, but quite a woman, and something more. I am an esquire: Shirley
Keeldar, Esquire, ought to be my style and title. They gave me a mans
name; I hold a mans position: it is enough to inspire me with a touch of
manhood; and when I see such people as that stately Anglo-Belgian that
Grard Moore before me, gravely talking to me of business, really I feel
quite gentlemanlike. (S, 200)
Part of this is pleasantry, because Shirley is speaking to someone who is ambivalent about
her independence and some of her activities, Mr. Helstone. But it is noteworthy that work
and independence seem so closely associated with masculinity that it appears to limit
Shirley to a kind of male-mimicry (Gubar, 11).
The contrast between the two girls is again suggested by Shirleys first interest in Caroline
because she was quiet, retiring, looked delicate, and seemed as if she needed some one to
take care of her (S, 224). Given a boys name at birth, Shirley has grown into mans estate
as lord of the manor, supervisor of her own farm, owner of the mill. And, as Mr. Sympson
finds out to his embarrassment, head of the family. I am indeed no longer a girl, but quite
a woman, and something more, she says in triumph to the Rector:
I am an esquire You must choose me for your churchwarden, Mr.
Helstone, the next time you elect new ones: they ought to make me a
magistrate and a captain of yeomanry: Tony Lumpkins mother was a

17
Susan Gubar, The Genesis of Hunger, According to Shirley Feminist Studies 3 : 3/4
(Spring/Summer 1976) 5-21, 11.

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

colonel, and his aunt a justice of the peace why shouldnt I be?
(S, 200)
18

Shirley loves to talk business, she stands at her fire with her hands held behind her back,
she rides alone across the moors, taking the descents as fast as her horse will go, she sings
with unladylike expression, and she whistles, to the dismay of Mrs. Pryor, who criticizes
her about some of her habits: [m]y dear, do not allow that habit of alluding to yourself as a
gentleman to be confirmed: it is a strange one. Those who do not know you, hearing you
speak thus, would think you affected masculine manners (S, 209-210).
Shirley is also depicted as having a martial spirit that inflames with any hint of resistance.
Bad manners! she says of the dissenters who are pushed into the ditch when they obstruct
the school procession, and I hate bad manners. Of course, they must have a lesson (S,
304). And at the threat of danger to her property, she becomes as dangerous as her hero,
Wellington:
19

For, after all, if political incendiaries come here to kindle conflagration in
the neighbourhood, and my property is attacked, I shall defend it like a
tigress I know I shall. Let me listen to Mercy as long as she is near me:
her voice once drowned by the shout of ruffian defiance, and I shall be
full of impulses to resist and quell. If once the poor gather and rise in the
form of the mob, I shall turn against them as an aristocrat: if they bully
me, I must defy; if they attack, I must resist, - and I will. (S, 267)
The influence of Shirleys habitus becomes visible here. In spite of her open and kind
nature, she is capable of seeing the poor as the mob. Caroline (and some of the spinsters
in the novel) have quite a different attitude. They see the suffering of the poor and try to
help them.
Though Caroline does not talk business in the way Shirley does, she is quite an active
person with a few tasks that can be considered work. From the age of twelve onwards she
has been a teacher at the Sunday school (S, 284). It is not mentioned whether she receives a
salary for this task; no doubt it is regarded as an honorary activity, as Caroline is the Rev.
Helstones niece. Caroline also runs Helstones household, and she is the one who receives
guests, and organizes lunches or tea for visitors (111-112). Such tasks are usually reserved
for the women of a household and are mostly unpaid. Helstone does not exploit Caroline,
though; on the contrary, he is quite protective of her. And when Caroline, after having been
disappointed by Robert, suggests that she would like to take a job as governess, Helstone
will not hear of it. He tells her that if she wants a change of scene she may take a holiday
and go to a watering-place with Fanny. He also indicates that he means to provide for her,
later on, and eventually he introduces her to Shirley. Both Shirley and Mrs. Pryor will not
support Carolines plan either. Shirley considers it degrading, and Mrs. Pryor was quite
unhappy when she was a governess herself in the Hardman household (196, 375-376).
Caroline does not have her own mansion or cloth-mill and her work does not immediately

18
Tony Lumpkin is a character in a comedy by Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774). He is the hilarious
problem-child of Mrs. Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer (1773).
19
Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1769-1852). Wellesley was granted the title of Duke of
Wellington in 1814. He was then put in command of the forces which defeated Napoleon at Waterloo
in June 1815.

89

contribute to her own business profits. But she does work, and even Shirley admits that she
has never seen anyone as active as Caroline.
It is interesting to note that even such a timid character as Mrs. Pryor works, first as a
governess, and later on as a companion. Even the spinsters, Miss Ainley and Miss Mann do
volunteer work. They help the poor, and they assist in any project that may alleviate the
suffering of the unemployed workers. All of these women are portrayed as performing
social roles in society that are valuable and necessary. Yet, most of their activities are
unpaid and taken for granted. The one who is woken up in this context is the reader. By
making it such a conscious process, by thematizing work and business and by linking them
so obviously to gender roles, Bront makes the reader notice the still restrictive norm and
value system of patriarchy.
The emancipation of women is a topic that pre-occupies Bront in all of her novels, but
nowhere else seems it as important as in Shirley.
20
The contrast between the two genders
and also between the modern woman and the womanly woman is made continuously
throughout the story (Martin, 129). In this novel, both Shirley and Caroline seem to be
annoyed by the curates (Mr. Donne, Mr. Malone and Mr. Sweeting; S,6) most of the time.
Shirley as a novel has been criticized for its lack of a coherent plot or a logical story line.
21

On the whole these curates seem out of place in the novel - they do not really contribute to
the development of the story - but there is one thing that they do add. They provide
interesting pictures of what type of social roles young men could fulfil at the time. These
curates receive the best education, they have the interesting jobs, and they have all the
chances in the world to use their talents to do good. And they bungle it. They are
egotistical, they only care about money and material things, and they are derogatory to
women and ordinary Yorkshire people. Shirley is very forward-looking in its presentation
of independent pictures of gender roles. The women in the novel, rich and poor, at least try
their best. And limited as they are by their sex in patriarchal society, they seem to achieve
more than the curates.
Bronts views and ideas on gender roles are not only depicted through such oppositions,
they are also explicitly described. In the chapter called Two Lives, the first scene is of
Shirley at Fieldhead. The narrator states:
How does she look? Like a lovelorn maiden, pale and pining for a
neglectful swain? Does she sit the day long bent over some sedentary
task? Has she for ever a book in her hand, or sewing on her knee, and

20
Various studies have stressed Bronts examination of this theme in Shirley. Some of these are:
Terry Eagleton, Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Bronts (London: Macmillan, 1975) 58;
Susan Gubar, The Genesis of Hunger, According to Shirley 5; Asa Briggs, Private and Social
Themes in Shirley The Collected Essays of Asa Briggs Vol. II (Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1985)
84; Margaret Kirkham, Chapter 3: Reading The Bronts Women Reading Womens Writing, ed.
Sue Roe (Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1987) 65, 74.
21
One argument that has often been introduced to explain this is the circumstances under which
Bront wrote the novel. It took Bront two years to write Shirley. The first two volumes went well
until the bleak months from September 1848 to May 1849 when she saw first her brother and then her
two sisters die one after another. She commenced slowly with the third volume during the summer of
1849, dispatched the manuscript in early September and saw the novel published on 26 October 1849.
See The Bronts: The Critical Heritage, ed. Miriam Allott, 12-13.

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

eyes only for that, and words for nothing, and thoughts unspoken? By no
means. Shirley is all right. (S, 385)
Instead of working for the hated Jew-basket, Shirley occupies herself happily around the
house and farm, then throws herself on the floor to read single-mindedly.
22
While Shirley is
so occupied, Caroline moons about the Rectory garden, unhappy and wondering how Miss
Ainley managed to be so equably serene in her solitude (S, 390). But at the end of the
chapter it is Caroline who has a long interior monologue on the condition of women in
nineteenth-century England. It is an interesting paragraph, and the narrator creates a
balance in it between the obvious truth of Carolines complaints and the ironic contrast of
her musings to the more active lives of Shirley and Miss Ainley:
The brothers of these girls are every one in business or in professions
their sisters have no earthly employment, but household work and
sewing; no earthly pleasure, but an unprofitable visiting; and no hope, in
all their life to come, of anything better. The great wish the sole aim
of every one of them is to be married, but the majority will never marry:
they will die as they now live. They scheme, they plot, they dress to
ensnare husbands. The gentlemen turn them into ridicule: they dont want
them; they hold them very cheap Fathers are angry with their
daughters when they observe their manoeuvres: they order them to stay at
home. What do they expect them to do at home? If you ask, - they would
answer, sew and cook. They expect them to do this, and this only
contentedly, regularly, uncomplainingly all their lives long, as if they had
no germs of faculties for anything else Could men live so themselves?
Would they not be very weary? Men of England! look at your poor
girls, many of them fading round you, dropping off in consumption or
decline; or what is worse, degenerating to sour old maids, - envious,
backbiting, wretched, because life is a desert to them; or, what is worst of
all, reduced to strive, by scarce modest coquetry and debasing artifice, to
gain that position and consideration by marriage, which to celibacy is
denied. Fathers! cannot you alter these things? Keep your girls minds
narrow and fettered they will still be a plague and a care, sometimes a
disgrace to you: cultivate them give then scope and work they will be
your gayest companions in health; your tenderest nurses in sickness; your
most faithful prop in age. (S, 391-393)
Both Bronts description of more liberated behavior for women and the quoted monologue
ensure that the reader is confronted again and again with more liberated views on the
possibilities for women. In the monologue, the words are Carolines, but the ideas are
clearly Bronts. In the rest of the novel there are a few other occasions where Caroline
utters such liberated and extended thoughts. Yet, this is remarkable, because overall, one
gets the impression that it is Shirley who has the more complex ideas. It is therefore

22
Bront elaborately explains in Shirley what a Jew-basket is. Briefly it can be described as a basket
with pin cushions, needlebooks, articles of infant-wear etc. made by the women in a community and
sold to the men. The basket moved around from house to house and its goal was the conversion of
Jews and colored people to Christianity (S, 112).

91

noteworthy that Bront gives these thoughts to Caroline, as she is basically the one who
needs to be converted.
Shirley is already a step ahead, but perhaps her ideas are too high-flown. The difference
between Carolines overall more conventional attitude towards a womans place and
Shirleys vision of her sex as exalted creatures of infinite capability, comes out most clearly
in the scene after the school-feast. The two girls descend the hill to the church, which
Shirley cannot bear to enter because of its heat and the dreary, conventional sermons she
knows the clergy will be preaching. Caroline is nervous at missing the service, but Shirley
has her own pantheistic devotions to make: Nature is now at her evening prayers: she is
kneeling before those red hills. Caroline, I see her! and I will tell you what she is like:
she is like what Eve was when she and Adam stood alone on earth (S, 319). Caroline
suggests that the vision is unlike Miltons Eve.
23
Miltons Eve! Shirley exclaims:
Miltons Eve! I repeat. No, by the pure Mother of God, she is not!
Milton tried to see the first woman; but, Cary, he saw her not. It was
his cook that he saw; or it was Mrs. Gill, as I have seen her, making
custards in the heat of summer, in the cool dairy. I would beg to
remind him that the first men of the earth were Titans, and that Eve was
their mother: from her sprang Saturn, Hyperion, Oceanus; she bore
Prometheus - I saw I now see a woman Titan: her robe of blue
air spreads to the outskirts of the heath. So kneeling, face to face she
speaks with God. That Eve is Jehovahs daughter, as Adam was His son.
(S, 320-321)
Shirleys comment on Miltons Eve again stresses the limited view patriarchy has of
women and represents a much more exalted view . But Caroline retreats into religious and
social orthodoxy and objects that this Eve is pagan. She is very vague and visionary!
Come, Shirley, we ought to go into church. Shirley, in the grip of a larger perception,
refuses: Caroline, I will not: I will stay out here with my mother Eve, in these days called
Nature (S, 321).
Throughout the novel the reader is thus not only confronted with the different behavioral
patterns of both protagonists, but also with monologues, comments and refutations that
underline the preference for different and better options for women. The repetition of these
ideas and the simplicity with which they are interwoven with the rest of the quite traditional
love story ensure a natural blending in with the rest of the plot. Taken apart, however, some
of Bronts ideas are indeed revolutionary.
Even though the comparison between Shirley and Caroline seems quite straightforward,
there is an extremity in the ideas expounded in the following context, too. Throughout the
novel, Shirley is always Carolines leader; she climbs walls, jumps hedges, restraining
Carolines emotions during the siege of the mill and preventing her from rushing headlong
among the fighting to be with Robert and, as Shirley points out, to be nothing but a
nuisance to him. Without a second thought, Shirley orders bedding, clothing, and wine to
be sent from Fieldhead to the wounded soldiers and rioters, while Mrs. Pryor wonders
passively whether it would be proper to do so. There is a likeness suggested in the

23
John Milton (1608-74), Paradise Lost (1667), the great English epic poem about the creation and
fall of man.

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

hesitancy of Mrs. Pryor and in the nervousness with which Caroline deals with such a
simple matter as ordering a meal for visitors in her own house.
It is Shirley who shows the more masculine behavior. Many of her tasks or activities do
not seem representative of what the typical woman in contemporary society would do, or
how she should behave. Shirley becomes an intriguing instance of what might be, and with
her independence and active nature she can be a good example for anticipation for others.
But Caroline and Mrs. Pryor and many of the other women present a more realistic picture
of what was expected of and possible for women at the time.

Partner choice
Another context in which it is interesting to compare Shirley and Carolines behavior is the
way Bront depicts each in the selection of a partner. Shirley seems to like men, and she
tells Caroline,
[man] is a noble being. I tell you when they are good, they are the lords
of creation, - they are the sons of God. Moulded in their Makers image,
the minutest spark of His spirit lifts them almost above mortality.
Indisputably, a great, good, handsome man is the first of created things.
Nothing ever charms me more than when I meet my superior one
who makes me sincerely feel that he is my superior. (S, 219)
Bronts depiction of Shirley here is noteworthy. In spite of the very liberated ideas that are
consistently expounded throughout the novel, Shirleys behavior in this context is quite
nave and seems more like idolatry than an objective interpretation of the role of men in
society. Shirley is still quite a young woman and is portrayed as a product of her time. She
likes her own liberty, but she is also very impressionable. It takes a while before Shirley
really discovers her superior in the story, though. She has many suitors; quite a few men
in the neighborhood are interested in Shirley. Except for Sweeting, all of the curates are
intrigued by her. Both Malone and Donne consider her a suitable marriage partner, but
solely because she is rich. Bront stresses the economic and social motivations in the
selection of a partner in the contemporary social context. The men completely ignore the
fact that Shirley is an individual and that she has her own personality. But Shirley makes
fun of them, [h]ere comes a diversion. I never told you of a superb conquest I have made
lately made at those parties to which I can never persuade you to accompany me; and the
thing has been done without effort or intention on my part: that I aver (S, 276). In this case
Shirley refers to Malone. Peter Augustus Malone had first been interested in Caroline, but
on finding out Shirleys wealth he redirects his attention to Shirley:
Miss Helstone, indeed, was amused by more than one point in Peters
demeanor: she was edified at the complete though abrupt diversion of his
homage from herself to the heiress: the 5,000l. he supposed her likely one
day to inherit, were not to be weighed in the balance against Miss
Keeldars estate and hall. He took no pains to conceal his calculations and
tactics: he pretended to no gradual change of views; he wheeled about at
once: the pursuit of the lesser fortune was openly relinquished for that of

93

the greater. On what grounds he expected to succeed in his chase, himself
best knew: certainly not by skilful management. (S, 279)
Mr. Donne, arrogant, conceited, and egotistical has a similarly insensitive approach:
He knew no more, however, how to set about the business than if he had
been an image carved in wood: he had no idea of a taste to be pleased, a
heart to be reached in courtship: his notion was, when he should have
formally visited her a few times, to write a letter proposing marriage: then
he calculated she would accept him for love of his office, then they would
be married, then he should be master of Fieldhead, and he should live
very comfortably, have servants at his command, eat and drink of the
best, and be a great man. (S, 280)
Both Malone and Donne do not seem to realize that Shirley is a real human being, that she
is intelligent, and that she likes making up her own mind about things. But Shirley can
laugh at the behavior of Malone, and when Donne starts insulting her Yorkshire neighbors,
she throws him off her property. Still, Bronts representation of such courtships is quite
revealing about the lack of real communication between the two genders that seems to be
part of everyday life.
There are also other young men in the neighborhood who would like to marry Shirley, but
she refuses them, to the great dismay of her guardian, Mr. Sympson. Shirley honestly
admits that she scorns Mr. Sam Wynne (S, 555). She quite likes Sir Philip Nunnely, but
only as a friend. She can esteem him, but she thinks he is too young, and she knows that his
family would not approve, because they do not consider Shirley to be his equal in rank and
position; and she also points out that she could never marry him, because he is not her
better. Again Shirley mentions that a man should be her superior. This focus on the fact that
a partner should hold her in check seems to be engrained in the contemporary norm and
value system to such an extent that Shirley is depicted as being unable to escape it either.
Throughout the whole selection process, however, Shirley is the one who tends to make the
choices. She has a serious argument with Mr. Sympson about her refusal of Sir Philip, but
the only marriage offer that really worries Shirley herself is Robert Moores proposal. His
request to Shirley to marry him comes out of the blue, and it is solely motivated by
financial reasons. Robert is hurt by Shirleys answer, but he also knows she is right:
God bless me! she pitilessly repeated, in that shocked, indignant, yet
saddened accent. You have made a strange proposal strange from you:
and if you knew how strangely you worded it, and looked it, you would
be startled at yourself. You spoke like a brigand who demanded my
purse, rather than like a lover who asked my heart. (S, 534-535)
Robert realizes his mistake, [a] queer sentence, was it not, Yorke? and I knew, as she
uttered it, it was true as queer. Her words were a mirror in which I saw myself (S, 534).
Again Bront uses the term mirror whilst correcting a characters behavior. The notion of
reflection in relation to the adherence to a norm is present in the novel at various levels.
The only man depicted in the story with whom Shirley seems to be able to communicate on
an equal basis is Louis Moore, her former tutor. Shirley will not allow her pride and self-
respect to be humbled by easy mastery, and when she finally admits her love for Louis, she

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

warns him that she will preserve her independent nature, that she can be mastered but
never tamed. She battles to the last in defense of a freedom that she is anxious to lose, and
finally consents to dwindle by slow degrees into a woman and wife. Convinced at last that
she and Louis are completely equal, she refuses to acknowledge that money has any power
where real love is concerned, and asks only to stay in the loving relationship of pupil to
Louis as master:
Mr. Moore, said she, looking up with a sweet, open, earnest
countenance, teach me and help me to be good. I do not ask you to take
off my shoulders all the cares and duties of property; but I ask you to
share the burden, and to show me how to sustain my part well. Your
judgement is well-balanced; your heart is kind; your principles are sound.
I know you are wise; I feel you are benevolent; I believe you are
conscientious. Be my companion through life; be my guide where I am
ignorant; be my master where I am faulty; be my friend always! (S, 624)
Shirley finds it quite hard to give up her independence, and at the prospect of losing her
total freedom, she gnaws at her chain, like the leopardess to which Louis compares her, and
tries to escape the impending marriage until Louis forces her to name a date. But in
Bronts representation she selects Louis, she admits that she loves him, and keeping in
mind the fact that all this was supposed to have taken place during the period of the Luddite
revolts, 1811-1812, her behavior seems very modern. Yet, the extract also seems to reveal
that the character Shirley is not yet able to become fully emancipated. The social context is
portrayed as still too conservative to allow her total freedom. Shirley would need a man to
guide and protect her, and the phrase be my master where I am faulty sounds quite
submissive to modern ears.
Carolines behavior in the selection of a partner is portrayed as more subdued, and more in
accordance with the norms and values usually adhered to during this time. Caroline is very
much in love with Robert Grard Moore. She cherishes the time she spends at the cottage,
but when it seems that Robert is shifting his attention to Shirley or seems in any case no
longer interested in Caroline, she withdraws into herself and becomes ill. Caroline has no
other suitors. Malone is mentioned briefly, but he was only interested in the money that he
supposed her to have (S, 120, 279). She does have a good friend in Mr. Hall, but he would
be far too old for her, and he seems to function more as friend and guardian angel (284).
Unlike Shirley, Caroline is characterized as being extremely sensitive, and when she
believes that Robert no longer loves her, she begins to decline in a physical and spiritual
way. She does not blame Robert, however, but herself:
Robert had done her no wrong: he had told her no lie; it was she that was
to blame, if any one was: what bitterness her mind distilled should and
would be poured on her own head. She had loved without being asked to
love, - a natural, sometimes an inevitable chance, but big with misery.
(S, 106-107)
In her hypochondriac state, she longs to leave the Rectory. I think I grow what is called
nervous, she tells Mrs. Pryor. I see things under a darker aspect than I used to do. I have
fears I never used to have not of ghosts, but of omens and disastrous events; and I have an
inexpressible weight on my mind which I would give the world to shake off, and I cannot

95

do it. Bronts representation here shows the normative type of behavior for women at the
time. Caroline would only be allowed to remain passive, even when for a girl in her
position marriage to a decent and hardworking man might be the only chance of an
acceptable future without poverty or too much humiliation.
Robert Grard Moores behavior does not make it easier for Caroline. In his conduct
towards her, he is very often motivated by money, as well. Unlike Malone, Robert is aware
of the fact that Caroline will not have such a large inheritance from Mr. Helstone as the rest
of the neighborhood thinks, because Helstone has invested quite a lot of his money in a new
church (S, 120). He also does not allow himself to fall in love with Caroline, or to woo her,
because he is almost bankrupt. It is only when trade is made possible again that he
reconsiders marriage (640). He then acts in a decent enough way, first asking Mrs. Pryor
and Mr. Helstone for permission, and then proposing to Caroline.
Overall, Shirley is portrayed as showing the more active, and, towards the end, even more
troublesome behavior. She proposes to Louis, rather than the other way round, and when
she has to name a date, she keeps postponing the marriage, and she lets others organize
everything. Caroline shows the more traditional behavior, answering Roberts proposal in a
modest way and stating that she will be his caretaker in future. Still, Shirleys emphasis
on the fact that her spouse needs to be her superior presents proof that times are not yet as
liberated as they would need to be to make real emancipation possible.
As Martin points out: If Shirley has courage, dignity, and pride, Caroline has boundless
sympathy with those whom she loves, and a great feeling of responsibility. Feminine
characteristics seem as important in the world as the masculine, and either can become
limiting if they exclude the other (Martin, 134). Caroline, towards the end of the book, is
portrayed as having learned partially to control her emotions and to be more active, and she
has learned to defend her own attitudes and opinions (S, 402-406). Shirley has learned to
love and to share her duties and responsibilities. If the two women had remained as they
were at the beginning of the novel, there would be a danger of Carolines becoming the
timid woman that her mother is, afraid of life and love, and worried about the respectability
and conventionality of actions. Mrs. Yorke, on the other hand, may stand as a warning to
Shirley, the mature woman into whom she might grow without the civilizing influences of
love: hard, haughty, proud, scornful of beauty, and sparse of affection.
Bronts novel presents a range of choice of social roles for both women, and Caroline and
Shirley go through a difficult process in finding their places in the world. Spinsterhood is
shown to be unattractive, but apparently marriage fails for many, too. Mr. Helstone is too
hard to make his marriage a success, Mrs. Pryor is too unfortunate in her choice to succeed
in holding together a marriage to a despotic man, and both believe that the institution itself
is little more than a purgatory. Some men, like Yorke, marry while they are still in love
with other women, and can see only financial advantage in marriage.
The description of the weddings contributes to Bronts bleak representation of gender
roles. The formal announcement of the marriages is given as follows Louis Grard Moore,
Esq. late of Antwerp, to Shirley, daughter of the late Charles Cave Keeldar, Esq. of
Fieldhead: Robert Grard Moore, Esq. of Hollows mill, to Caroline, niece of the Rev.
Matthewson Helstone, M.A. Rector of Briarfield (S, 645). But in its traditional formality
this announcement reads like a parody. Now it is Louis and Robert who are the esquires.

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

Shirley has only her first name given; she is identified through her father. Similarly,
Caroline is identified through her relation to her uncle. No detailed description of the
ceremonies or of dialogue between the male and female characters is provided. The lines
which would be said are apparently so common as to be unnecessary to repeat. The
marriages would suggest that the two women enter into communal bonds with their
husbands, yet no wedding scene is provided. Their feelings are not alluded to. Actually
describing their experiences seems of no interest to the narrator who quickly skips to the
conclusion.The ideal future that is depicted there is an ambiguous one, and it is not
surprising that some readers feel that Caroline gets worse than she deserves in marrying
Robert, whose vision of the future is less of a home than of a model community with a mill
that he runs, while Caroline looks after the feminine side of the settlement:
The copse shall be firewood ere five years elapse: the beautiful wild
ravine shall be a smooth descent; the green natural terrace shall be a
paved street: there shall be cottages in the dark ravine, and cottages on
the lonely slopes: the rough pebbled track shall be an even, firm, broad,
black, sooty road, bedded with the cinders from my mill: and my mill,
Caroline my mill shall fill its present yard. (S, 644)
The homeless, destitute, and unemployed, he tells Caroline shall come to Hollows mill
from far and near; and Joe Scott shall give them work, and Louis Moore, Esq., shall let
them a tenement, and Mrs. Gill shall mete them a portion till the first pay-day (S, 644).
Such a Sunday-school as you will have, Cary! such collections as you
will get! such a day-school as you and Shirley, and Miss Ainley, will
have to manage between you! The mill shall find salaries for a master and
mistress, and the Squire or the Clothier shall give a treat once a quarter.
(S, 644)
The men continue to assume that they are superior. Robert organizes the model community
and decides which roles the others play, while the women and the workers remain
subordinate. In fact, they depend upon him and Louis Moore, Esq. The two women are
finally described as Mrs. Louis and Mrs. Robert; their individual personalities retreat
into the background (S, 646). If this is heaven, the heart scarcely leaps at it. Man and
woman, husband and wife, remain separate in function and sympathies, not really grown
into one flesh, or one soul. The women will run both the Sunday-school and the day-school.
These roles are appointed to them. Nowhere does the novel thus seem more sober, more
disillusioned than in the conventional happy ending.
How can we interpret the social roles for women represented in this novel? I agree with
Susan Gubars notion that, in spite of her independent activity and exuberant liveliness,
Shirley seems slightly unreal and that this very unreality serves to remind us that she is
part of a fantastic wish-fulfillment, and affirmation of what ought to be possible for
women. Gubar suggests that Shirley is a projection of Carolines mind, a double that
seems to contradict her own hopeless situation, making her fate merely psychological and
therefore idiosyncratic (Gubar 1976, 11). Whereas Gubars interpretation of the doubling
process is psychological, my own reading of this technique focuses on the social,
educational and material aspects. Yet, in spite of Gubars different interpretation of the
doubling process and her focus on the mental aspects, her conclusion resembles the one I

97

trace through the mirroring process and the more social nature of the comparison between
Shirley and Caroline. Gubar states that Carolines isolation and her discontent must be
either her own fault, or otherwise the very structure of English society must be found
guilty.
If not, the source of tribulation is not merely the dependent status of
women but the very ways in which male society defines even those few
women upon whom it confers independence. When even Shirley is shown
to be incapable of escaping the confines of being born female, just such a
lesson seems implied. (Gubar 1976, 11)
Indeed, for all the seeming optimism in the mirroring process, Shirley does not represent
the release she first seems to suggest. In fact, Gilbert and Gubar believe that, instead, she
herself becomes caught in the traditional social roles for women that she learns from her
mirror image and that cause her to copy Carolines immobility. In their opinion, she
begins to resemble Caroline in the course of the novel to such an extent that she finally
yields to Carolines fate; for all her assertiveness, she is as limited by her gender, as
excluded from male society, as her friend (Gilbert & Gubar, 383). My own close reading of
the text explains this process in a different way. Shirley is corrected by her mirror image
Caroline and the immediate social context. The prevalent norm and value system is thus
stabilized but the social mechanism is also exposed. The traditional happy ending of the
two marriages made the novel acceptable reading for the contemporary reader. Yet, through
the narrative strategies she used, Bront not only stressed the limits of patriarchy on the
lives of all women; with the mirroring techniques Bront also introduces other options.
The exposure of readers to other life styles, experienced in the very personal process of
reading a novel, at least enabled Bront to initiate a consciousness raising process, and to
make the contemporary reader experience that they need not be in the same place all of
their lives.
3.4: THE MORAL
Charlotte Bront ends the story with the following:
The story is told. I think I now see the judicious reader putting on his
spectacles to look for the moral. It would be an insult to his sagacity to
offer directions. I only say, God speed him in the quest! (S, 646)
Despite the apparent irony of this passage especially in its reference to a male reader
there is indeed a moral in Shirley, especially for the woman reader. The moral that
comes to the fore in my reading of Shirley would seem to be that the contemporary society
depicted in the novel does not yet allow women to be fully liberated and the social equals
of men. Shirley is corrected by her mirror image, and shown the proper behavioral
patterns for young women in the early nineteenth century. Both Shirley and Caroline are
still debarred from many male activities. Shirley enjoys some liberties that not many female
protagonists before her had: she is allowed to inherit an estate of considerable size and
nobody seems to thwart her attempt to run the estate in a businesslike way. In the end,
nobody prevents her from marrying the man she really loves, even when he is only a
tutor. Shirley thus also functions as mirror image to Caroline. It is Shirley who is the more

98

THE MIRROR IMAGE

active, businesslike and modern woman. With her example, she shows Caroline that there is
a lot more that women can do or achieve, than Caroline might have considered possible.

99

On the one hand, Bronts use of the mirror image indicates the restricted roles available
to women. Shirley, too, is coaxed into sense, she changes her behavior and the novel even
concludes with the traditional ending, marriage. Caroline and Shirley accept social roles
which would have gratified Mrs. Ellis, the author of conduct books and conservative advice
manuals for women.
24
They yield to the power of Robert and Louis Moore, seem to be
satisfied to run a Sunday school and day-school for the children associated with the estate,
and they are expected to have a humanizing influence on their husbands.
25
But, on the
other hand, Bront also nicely shows her characters and readers what was and what might
have been. And, though both past and present readers could safely read such a
conventional novel, they were still also presented with an intriguing example for
anticipation. This alternative is given to the readers through the employment of the motif of
the mirror image. By means of parallels and contrasts, the mirrored protagonists could be
linked with the stereotypes of the Angel in the House and the monster, but Bronts
quite subtle use of them gives them a less extreme quality. For both contemporary and
present-day readers this mild application of a consciousness-raising technique could, at
least, give them an impression of possible alternatives to accepted female behavior without
inciting readers to revolutionary alternatives. An explicit moral is not stated in the novel,
but a judicious reader can recognize Bronts comment on the still repressive tendencies
of patriarchy and at the same time infer the suggestion for the emancipation of women.

3.5: GOD DELIVER ME FROM MY FRIENDS
26

In the authors preface to Jane Eyre, Bront praises W. M. Thackeray as a novelist
dedicated to the reformation of society.
27
Shirley, too, seems to be dedicated to this goal. In
the novel, there is a concern for both the female individual and society at large, and in this
context, it focuses on the interaction between the two. That the woman question would be
a theme in this novel was already pointed out by Charlotte Bront to her literary advisor,
W. S. Williams.
28
In a letter to him, she states, I wish to say something about the
condition of women question (Smith, 66). She admits that she finds this an awkward
subject, and seems unsure about how women can achieve equality or have the same
professions that men have. She also believes that it is especially philosophers and

24
Mrs. Ellis expounded her ideas on the duties of a wife in The Wives of England: Their Relative
Duties, Domestic Influence, and Social Obligations (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1843).
25
Linda C. Hunt, Sustenance and Balm: The Question of Female Friendship in Shirley and Villette,
Tulsa Studies in Womens Literature 1.1 (Spring, 1982): 59.
26
From a letter Charlotte Bront sent to G. H. Lewes after he had published a very negative review on
Shirley. The entire letter states: I can be on my guard against my enemies, but God deliver me from
my friends! (10 January 1850) The Letters of Charlotte Bront, ed. Margaret Smith (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2000) 330.
27
Charlotte Bront, Jane Eyre (1847; Harmondsworth, [etc.]: Penguin Classics, 1987) Preface, 36.
28
W.S. Williams (1800-1875) is Smith and Elders sympathetic literary advisor, George Smith
(1824-1901) is the publisher. Bront had good contacts with both and they exchanged quite a few
letters. Both Smith and Williams also sent Bront many parcels with new books and magazines
(Allott, 14-15).

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

legislators who should ponder over the better ordering of the Social System. But she
admits that:
At the same time, I conceive that when Patience has done its utmost and
Industry its best, whether in the case of Women or Operatives, and when
both are baffled and Pain and Want <both> triumphant the Sufferer is
free is entitled at last to send up to Heaven any piercing cry for relief
if by that cry he can hope to obtain succour. (Smith, 66)
Throughout the novel, Bront shows how the patterns of womens lives (and those of the
workers) are shaped by social attitudes and forces over which they have no control. That
the woman question is one of the main themes in the novel is recognized by both readers
and critics of the time. When Shirley appeared in October 1849, it was positively received
by reviewers and readers alike, and most of them were intrigued by Bronts attempt to
represent the still restricted social roles for women in society.
Bronts novel Shirley was extensively reviewed in daily and weekly newspapers and in
almost all of the monthly and quarterly periodicals of any standing.
29
It is interesting to see
that so much space was used in the reviewing of this novel. Most articles included a
summary of the story together with a few extracts that could illustrate Bronts style,
characterization and powers of description. Many reviews were quite long, perceptive and
well-documented.
In my discussion of the reviews, I will concentrate on the articles and comments that were
published immediately after the appearance of the book in 1849. Many reviews and studies
have been written in later years, and even today new interpretations come out regularly, but
as it is my intention to focus on the narrative techniques used in each novel and to study the
subsequent impression each novel made on contemporary readers, I will limit my approach
accordingly. With my examination, therefore, I do not mean to present a conclusive
interpretation of the reviews of Shirley; rather, I want to see whether contemporary readers
noticed the use of narrative strategies, particularly the mirroring technique and the use of
stereotypes, or the emancipatory allusions in the novel.

Characterization
It is interesting to notice that most of the comments on Shirley by contemporary critics
praised the main female characters. An unsigned review in the Daily News points out:
Shirley is the anatomy of the female heart. By Shirley we mean the book,
and not the personage; for the true heroine is the rectors niece, the
history of whose heart is one of the most beautiful chronicles ever set
down by a female pen. The merit of the work lies in the variety,
beauty, and truth of its female character. Not one of its men are genuine.
There are no such men. The women, however, are all divine.
30

29
For a complete list of all of the reviews I collected at Colindale, the Newspaper section of the
British Library, see the Appendix.
30
This was originally an unsigned review in the Daily News (31 October, 1849): 2.

101

This review in the Daily News was the first one that appeared. It angered Bront and she
mentions it in quite a few letters. Writing to W. S. Williams, she asks: Are there no such
men as the Helstones and Yorkes? Yes there are. Is the first chapter disgusting or vulgar? It
is not: it is real. She adds that she scorns the praise of this critic and points out Were my
Sisters now alive they and I would laugh over this notice (Smith, 272). On the whole the
article is not negative; indeed, it was used to promote Shirley in America.
31
It seems to be
mostly the quality of the analysis that Bront objects to. In another letter she refers to the
critic as incompetent, ignorant, and flippant (Smith, 278). Compared to the more
sophisticated methods of present-day academic criticism, some early Victorian reviews do
seem quite long-winded and most neglect to pay close attention to narrative strategies or
techniques.
Many critics and readers did, however, notice and consider the mirroring techniques and the
woman question; clearly, the novel had impact on individual readers. Most of the major
reviews are represented here, together with many of those on which Bront herself
commented in her letters.
Bront herself considers the article in the literary review the Athenaeum too severe.
32
In
relation to the characterization of both women it nevertheless states:
Her main purpose has been, to trace the fortunes and feelings of two girls.
The one, Caroline Helstone, is a clergymans daughter, neglected not
maltreated by her unobservant father [sic], a harsh courageous man,
whose right place would have been the army and not the church. The
other is Shirley Keeldar, heiress and lady paramount of the district. The
one is tender, the other is sparkling: both suffer from the malady of unrest
and dissatisfaction, - on the prevalence of which among women of the
nineteenth century so many protests have been issued, so many theories
of emancipation have been set forth.
33

The overall tone of this review is indeed less positive than in the previous one mentioned,
but this passage clearly shows that the writer did notice the representation of the stereotypic
images of the female main characters, the comparison between them and the plight of
women in contemporary society. These points also gain far more attention than the points
that are criticized. It is a pity that so many of the reviews are unsigned or anonymous, it
therefore remains difficult to ascertain whether there is a difference in evaluation between
male and female critics, if there were indeed any women submitting reviews to these
journals.
34

31
The Barre Patriot from Massachusetts quotes a third of the review in its section on literature; 6: 20
(30 November 1849): 2.
32
Bront states this in a letter to W. S. Williams (19 November 1849) Smith 290-91.
33
This article was originally published as an unsigned review in the Athenaeum ( 3 November 1849):
1107-1109; cited in Allott, 122-124.
34
In a letter to Laetitia Wheelwright (17 December 1849) Bront writes that she had dinner at the
Smiths: There were only seven gentlemen at dinner besides Mr. Smith but of these five were critics
a formidable band including the literary Rhadamanthi of the Times, the Athenaeum the
Examiner, the Spectator and the Atlas: Men more dreaded in the world of letters than you can
conceive. (Smith 309-310). In her study, Smith adds: C.B. met Henry Fothergill Chorley (1808-72),

102

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Whatever the political or religious leanings of individual reviewers, there was general
enthusiasm about Bronts realistic depiction of her central female characters. Bronts
lively descriptive gifts, her robust English style and her truthful delineation of character are
praised by the reviewer of the Weekly Chronicle. This review focuses on the contrast in the
representation of the two female protagonists, and states:
[Caroline] is the most charming character in the book gentle, patient,
firm, her quiet influence gradually works a change in the haughty nature
of Robert Moore. The author embodies in her one form of womanly
strength the power of endurance. The heiress, Miss Shirley Keeldar,
impulsive, almost masculine like her Christian name, strong in will and
action, forms a contrast to Caroline Helstone; while the same feminine
refinement, and a certain sympathy in the best traits of their disposition,
draw them together and unite them. Shirley has the beauty of the rose
Carolines emblem is the violet. The first compares herself to the
leopardess the second is more lamb-like in her every-day life, but with
a store of dormant courage.
This reviewer highlights both the differences and the resemblances between the girls. The
issue of emancipation is not explicily mentioned, but the reviewer concludes:
There is intrinsic evidence in the book in favour of the rumour that the
author is a woman. The female characters are all drawn with care,
minuteness, and truth to nature, ; and the philosophy and opinions are
such as we might expect from a woman.
35

In this review, as well as in most of the other articles, reference is made to the fact that
Currer Bell must be a woman. It irritated Charlotte Bront that so many critics kept
stressing this issue; she preferred straightforward discussions of the novel(s), rather than
this almost gossip-like concern about the gender of the author.
36
One of the few articles that
did not mention this issue was an anonymous review in the Britannia. The writer of this
review again mainly focuses on the depiction of both heroines, but keeps referring to Mr.
Bell. In the discussion of both heroines, it is especially the contrast between both heroines
that is again stressed:

chief music and literary critic of the Athenaeum, John Forster (1812-76), critic and editor of the
Examiner, and perhaps Robert Stephen Rintoul (1828-58), founder and owner of the Spectator. The
name of the critic of the Altas is not known. [Bront] would hardly have been pleased to meet the
critic of The Times, Samuel Philips (1814-54) but she commented on the perfect good-breeding even
from antagonists (Smith, 310). Most of the critics seem to be men, even the anonymous ones.
35
This unsigned review was originally published in the Weekly Chronicle (10 November 1849): 3.
36
In 1850, Charlotte Bronts Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell put a stop to all
speculation on the sex of the Bells. The wording of the passage where she explained the adoption of
their noms de guerre is noteworthy: Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under
those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious
scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves
women, because without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what
is called feminine we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with
prejudice Quoted from the Norton edition of Wuthering Heights, 41.

103

Shirley Keeldar is a young lady, a Yorkshire heiress, with very
independent notions, and a somewhat masculine style of thought, though
her face and figure are delicate in the extreme. She has been named
Shirley from the failure of male issue, and it is her whim sometimes to
assume mannish airs. Mr. Bell has exerted all his ability to render this
character at once original and attractive, and he has perfectly succeeded.
She is like no other heroine of romance ever drawn. Wilful, obstinate,
proud, pettish, provoking, she has a soul capable of the purest and deepest
passion, and all her singularities of manner and expression only serve to
set off her genius. In contrast is another young girl, Caroline, of a
softer and gentler nature.
37

Many critics seem to be pleased with the portrayal of both girls, even when one of them is
quite a liberated spirit. Rather than criticizing Bronts way of characterization, they like it
and, overall, these reviews are noteworthy for their discernment and tolerance rather than
for any narrow moralistic judgment.
Not all of the articles dealt with here are actual reviews; some are extracts from letters or
more personal reader reports, but they were all responses from the contemporary reading
public. Most of the reactions show an intense engagement of the readers with the events in
the novel. Such involvement seems to become even stronger with ordinary woman readers.
Quite a few women read Shirley. As Smith mentions in the Introduction to The Letters,
By the end of August the novel was finished, and on 26 October it was
published by Smith, Elder and Company. Copies were sent to Harriet
Martineau and Mrs Gaskell, and Charlotte was relieved and encouraged
by their praise. (Smith, xx)
Martineau and Gaskell apparently did not write any reviews, but other female readers do
compliment Shirley, though their comment is, on the whole, less thorough and well-thought
through than the comment from many (male) critics. Catherine Winkworth praises the
aesthetic aspects of Shirley, and she focuses on the characters again:
The book is infinitely more original and full of character than the
ordinary run of novels it belongs quite to a higher class -
Caroline and Mr Helstone are thoroughly good characters. Shirley and
Mrs. Pryor are good ideas, but badly worked out the rest seem to me all
exaggerated Oh, Hortense Moore should be excepted, she is good,
too.
38

In spite of the almost nave approach in this extract it is interesting to see that the writer
discussed the novel in a letter to her friend Eliza Paterson. Even in such a personal account,
the writer does not hesitate to add a few comments on the novel.

37
The unsigned review originally appeared in the Britannia (10 November ,1849): 714-715; cited in
Allott, 138-139.
38
This extract originally appeared in a letter to Eliza Paterson. It was published in Memorials of Two
Sisters, Susanna and Catherine Winkworth, ed. Margaret J. Shaen (1908); cited in Allott, 147; cited in
Smith, 303.

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

Emancipation
Bronts friend Mary Taylor was equally thrilled. She mentions Shirley in several of her
letters to Bront. When she first makes mention of the novel, she has not read the whole
book, yet. She has then only seen extracts of it in the Manchester Examiner of 7 November
1849.
39
But in this first reaction she does mention the woman question and comments on
the position of women especially in relation to work. But she seems quite stern and states
you seem to think that some women may indulge in [work] (Smith, 392). Taylor herself
believed all women should work.
40
In the second letter in which she refers to Shirley she
has read the whole book and is very enthusiastic about it. She states:
Shirley is much more interesting than J. Eyre who indeed never
interests you at all until she has something to suffer. All through this last
novel there is so much more life & stir that it leaves you far more to
remember than the other. (Smith, 439)
41

Yet, even though the reactions by all these ordinary female readers were quite positive
and intense, there is no thorough analysis of the aesthetic, ethical or moral aspects of the
novel, no real analysis of the depiction of the female protagonists and only the occasional
reference to the woman question. Within the comment on the woman question, the focus
is on the issue of more useful occupations for women only. The issues of education or equal
rights within marriage are not discussed.
In spite of the tendency by many professional reviewers to disregard larger structural
devices at work in the fiction of the time, too, there was no mistaking that some of Bronts
innovations lay, as the Globe emphasized, in her observation of everyday reality for
women. The review in the Globe also discusses Bronts points raised about the position of
women in society and again focuses on the issue of more useful occupations for women. It
indicates that:
The rights of women generally, or at least their natural interests are
asserted by our authoress with justifiable warmth of feeling in several
passages of these volumes.
42

The review inserts an extract from Shirley on the general rights of women and quotes the
discussion between Shirley and Caroline about professions for women (S, 391-392); it
concludes,

39
Manchester Examiner (7 November 1849) Columns 1-2; Smith, 394.
40
This duty of work was preached in Mary Taylors own novel Miss Miles, or A Tale of Yorkshire
Life Sixty Years Ago (1890), along with womens obligation to help each other if they could; but
ultimately, if women suffering in solitude had instead met together to make their wants known, and
asked for help, no advice could have been given them, except to win a living for themselves, and not
beg for it (Miss Miles, end of Ch. 28); Smith, 394.
41
Mary Taylors letter is dated 13 August 1850. Her reaction came rather late, but she wrote her letter
from Wellington, New Zealand, and Smith adds in a note: the Constantinople arrived in Wellington
on Saturday 27 July 1850. It was only then that she had received Bronts book; Smith, 441.
42
Anonymous, Shirley in a section called Literature The Globe (Friday Evening 9 November
1849): 1.

105

we are really and seriously desirous to see [women] succeed in whatever
other objects they choose to aim at. Of general intellectual cultivation,
women have often as much as, often more than, the men they associate
with. The question is whether that cultivation can be turned to any or
what untried uses! If any such uses really remain undiscovered, the
discovery must, we suspect, be made by the ladies themselves. Men
cannot, our authoress would perhaps say, will not help them. But not less
certainly, men cannot hinder them from fulfilling their own mission,
whatever it really is.
This reviewer does not mention the contrast or opposition between Shirley and Caroline,
but Bronts preoccupation with the plight of women is clearly understood.
Aspects of rebellion
The range of contemporary opinion about Bront is especially reflected in the periodicals
whose particular religious or political bias may influence their literary reviews. The radical
Examiner always approved of Bront. Albany Fonblanque praises especially the depiction
of the characters in an unsigned review in the Literary Examiner; though he sometimes
considers them too intellectual:
The personages to whom Currer Bell introduces us are created by
intellect, and are creatures of intellect. Habits, actions, conduct are
attributed to them, such as we really witness in human beings; but the
reflections and language which accompany these actions, are those of
intelligence fully developed, and entirely self-conscious. Now in real men
and women such clear knowledge of self is rarely developed at all, and
then only after long trials. We see it rarely in the very young seldom or
ever on the mere threshold of the world.
43

Most of Fonblanques article is very positive about Shirley. He does not explicitly mention
the woman question but admits that [t]he lesson intended is excellent. He points out that
[Bront] seems to be, in the main, content with the existing structure of society and
notices a rational acquiescence in the inevitable tendencies of society, but adds this
acquiescence we suspect to be reluctant. Fonblanque formulates his findings very
carefully, but he seems to have understood the gist of the novel. Bront herself was pleased
with his review. In a letter to Williams she states I am willing to be judged by the
Examiner Fonblanque has power, he has discernment I bend to his censorship (Smith,
278-279)
Bront was most enthusiastic about the review by Eugne Forcade in the Revue des deux
mondes, though. A short (translated) extract from his article is repeated here:

43
The review was probably by the radical journalist Albany William Fonblanque (1793-1872). The
Examiner was edited by him (1830-47) and by John Forster (1847-55); he continued to contribute
reviews after 1847. Bront seems to have been assured of his authorship of this review. See her letters
to Williams (5 November 1849) Smith, 278-79, and to Ellen Nussey (16 November 1849) Smith, 285.
Fonblanques article originally appeared as an unsigned review in the Literary Examiner (3
November, 1849): 692-694.

106

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Here then are three questions for Shirley to answer: Is Currer Bell a
woman? Does the quality of Shirley fulfil the promise of Jane Eyre? Is
Currer Bell really one of those bold and rebellious spirits so rightly
mistrusted by law-abiding citizens in these unquiet times?
In the first place, Currer Bell is a woman: this is definitely proved by
Shirley. The novel abounds in female characters which only a woman
could have touched in with such delicacy and variety. The cause of
women is defended throughout the book with a conviction and a skill
perfectly characteristic of those who are pleading their own cause. As a
picture of society, the novel could have been called Shirley, or the
condition of women in the English middle-class
Currer Bell has retained one of the most piquant spices that enlivened
his first book and has even increased the dose here and there: the moral
freedom, the spirit of insubordination, the impulses of revolt against
certain social conventions.
44

In a letter to her friend Ellen Nussey, Bront writes in relation to this article:
Shirley makes her way. The reviews shower in fast. The best
critique which has yet appeared is in the Revue des deux Mondes
Comparatively few reviewers, even in their praise, evince a just
comprehension of the authors meaning. Eugene Forsarde [sic]
follows Currer Bell through every winding, discerns every point,
discriminates every shade, proves himself master of the subject, and lord
of the aim. With that man I would shake hands, if I saw him. I would say,
You know me, Monsieur; I shall deem it an honour to know you.
45

Charlotte Bront never did shake hands with Forcade. But Forcades reaction clearly shows
that Bronts ideas about norms, values, and social roles for women were indeed picked up

44
Eugne Forcades article originally appeared in French in the Revue des deux mondes (15
November, 1849) in tome 4, 714-735; cited in Allott, 142-146; translation hers. In the original review
Forcade explicitly refers to the first English version of Shirley. At this point in time, the novel had not
been translated into French, yet. The quoted passage is as follows in his review: Voil donc trois
questions auxquelles Shirley a dabord rpondre: Currer Bell, est-ce une femme? Le mrite de
Shirley tient-il les promesses de Jane Eyre? Currer Bell est-il dcidment un de ces esprits rebelles et
tmraires contre lesquels les malheurs du temps inspirent aux honntes gens une si juste dfiance?
Premirement, Currer Bell est une femme: le roman de Shirley en est la preuve dfinitive. Ce livre
abonde en caractres de femmes quune femme seule a pu nuancer avec cette varit et cette finesse.
La cause des femmes y est dfendue partout avec la conviction et lart tout personnels ceux qui
plaident pour leur compte. Considr comme peinture de moeurs, ce roman pourrait sappeler Shirley,
ou de la condition des femmes dans la classe moyenne anglaise (716). Currer Bell a conserv
cependant, en augmentant la dose et l, une des plus piquantes pices de son premier livre: la
libert morale, lesprit dinsoumission, les vellits de rvolte contre certaines conventions sociales
(719).
45
Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bront (1857; London: Penguin Classics, 1997) 307-8.
This letter is als mentioned in Smiths study in Vol. II. 293-294. The punctuation and some of the
spelling is quite different there, though. The extract here cites Gaskell.

107

by readers, even across borders.
46
It is also significant that it was a male critic who read,
understood and approved of Shirley as a novel depicting the condition of women in the
English middle-class. And it is intriguing that the spirit encouraging moral freedom,
insubordination, and even the impulses of revolt are noticed and applauded.

Negative reviews
Corse and Westervelt point out that nineteenth century novels were mostly read for and
judged concerning their moral value (Corse & Westervelt, 139-161).
47
Seen in this light it
is not surprising that Shirley received some negative criticism. Yet, only eight of the thirty-
one reviews and reader-reports discussed here were quite critical. These reviews were the
ones published in Bentleys Miscellany, the Church of England Quarterly Review, the
Economist, the Edinburgh, The Athenaeum, The Spectator, The Times and the
Westminster.
48
The review in the Economist is critical throughout. It does not approve of
the abundance of characters, though the reviewer seems to like the way Bront can make a
character come alive in even a very brief passage. Yet, the article is quite thorough and,
even when the reviewer does not like Shirleys conduct, the gist of the novel is distinctly
noticed and the article concludes:
The book is not, as a whole, natural; but there are many characters in it
sketched to the life. That its impassioned and exaggerated language will
be as beneficial as it will be much admired, we are inclined to doubt,
while we warn our young readers that the wilfulness and more than
ordinary energy ascribed to Shirley is much more pleasing in books than
in actual life. Exaggeration of conduct is more likely to be pernicious

46
Another interesting example in this context is mentioned in the article The Reception of Charlotte
Bronts Work in Nineteenth-Century Russia by O. R. Demidova, The Modern Language Review
Vol. 89, No. 3 (July 1994): 689-696. Demidova asserts that: Bront became the first woman writer
since George Sand (and the first woman realistic writer) in whose work the question of the position of
women occupied such an important place; this circumstance was one of the reasons for her lengthy
period of popularity with the Russian public. The theme of the position of women was a traditional
one in Russian literature from Karamzin and Pushkin onward. Democratic journalistic and critical
writings played an active part in the struggle for the equality of women; a sympathetic attitude
towards the position of women was a general feature of the work of many Russian writers in the
1840s and 1850s. this theme acquired social resonance and, from being peripheral, was
transformed into one of the major preoccupations of Russian literature (691). Bronts work was at
first available in Tauchnitzs English-language edition, but was soon after its publication translated
into Russian, and published by the Otechestvennye zapiski press. Shirley was available as Sherli by
Korrer-Bellia from 1851 onwards in a translation by V. V. Butuzov (693).
47
Allott confirms this, stating: Early Victorian reviews differ noticeably from our own chiefly
because of the long-winded style then favored, the habit of moral explanation is closely associated
with it, and the absence of detailed attention to particular narrative procedures, though interest in the
novel as a literary form is lively and grows with the growing importance of the novel throughout the
nineteenth century; Allott,17. Other studies that support these views are: Richard Stang, The Theory
of the Novel in England 1850-1870 (1959), and Kenneth Graham, English Criticism of the Novel
1865-1900 (1965).
48
Anonymous review of Shirley in a section called Literature of the Month in Bentleys Miscellany
26 (1849): 640-643.

108

THE MIRROR IMAGE

than exaggeration of sentiment; and the more seductive is the eloquence
of Currer Bell, the more mischievous may be the influence of the very
masculine, wilful character of the heroine of the present novel.
49

The reviewer of this weekly magazine objects to some of the aesthetic aspects of the novel;
most of the commentary, however, relates to the ethical aspects like the represented spirit of
insubordination and the plea for emancipation. It does not approve of the mature
constructive dialogue that seems to be introduced and believes that a more liberal tolerance
of womens rights will endanger society in general.
Similarly negative, but much less serious, is the tone of the review in The Times. This
article is derogatory and sometimes even frivolous. Carolines illness is ridiculed, as is
Shirleys masculine behavior:
Miss Keeldar has much of the metal of the sterner sex beneath her soft
skin, and asserts intellectual independence as a womans right. There is
always danger in dealing with such delicate commodity one awkward
touch spoils the picture and yields a caricature she sees newspapers
every day, and two of a Sunday she reads the leading articles and the
foreign intelligence, and looks over the market prices; in short, she reads
just what gentlemen read; she hates needlework, but is tenacious of her
book.
50

Bront read this review when she was visiting her publisher and his family in London at the
beginning of December 1849. She was shocked and disappointed by the review and so were
many others. The whole article was disparaging in tone, especially in relation to the
depiction of both female main characters and the use of the derogatory word caricature. He
disapproved of the liberal behavior of Shirley, and condemned the novels emancipatory
intent, yet the plea for equality was quite obvious to him.
Some other reviewers were quite annoyed about the article in The Times. The review in The
Era, for example, points out:
51

Shirley, however, has the disadvantage of being a second offspring of
the brain. It has not put Jane Eyre in the shade ... The Times newspaper
has thought it worth while to devote a column of its valuable space to
the subject of those two extraordinary works, and in drawing comparisons
between them, has attempted to damage the reputation of the later
production.
The review continues to focus on the writer of Shirley and states:
And who is Currer Bell? The Times says a woman It is not easy to
believe that the works we have mentioned, with all their masculine power
all their potent passion the white heat, as it were, of the feelings all
their depth of reflection and cool acumen are the emanations of a female
mind but the sex is little known to those who would believe it incapable

49
Anonymous review in the Economist (10 November 1849): 1253.
50
This unsigned review originally appeared in The Times (7 December, 1849).
51
Anonymous review in The Era in a section called Literature (23 December 1849): 10.

109

of reaching all that has made Currer Bell celebrated. A woman does
nothing by halves; she can feel more intensely, and observe more
sagaciously than a man, and when she does think, a male philosopher is
no match for her.
This reviewer likes Bronts depiction of women and is intrigued by the character of
Shirley. The contrast between the gender-biased representation of women in general and the
portrayal of Shirley is stressed:
Shirley herself will captivate many, but there will be more in he [sic] to
admire than to love. To the majority of mankind a woman cannot be too
womanly, and we need not stop to consider what that is. Shirley is,
however, to use a slangy term, a spicey creature. Whatever be her
precise nature, she has habits calculated to frighten half the men in the
kingdom out of all thoughts of proposing for her she is too brilliant, too
profound, too self-possessed, we had almost said too gentlemanly.
This reviewer concludes:
[Bront] has the vigour of De Stael, and the pathos of Miss Landon; the
sense of Mrs. Montague and the feeling of Charlotte Young. She is in
some respects like to many, but altogether unlike any one who has
preceded her, so, is it to be wondered at, the Shirley is an extraordinary
book? It is likely to excite more than to edify; but so does all that comes
from such pens.
Reading this review, one wonders whether this reviewer was a woman. The reviewers
emotional response to both the novel and its criticism can be explained by Isers
phenomenological approach to the reading process. This reviewer is intrigued by the novel,
and empathizes with both the characters and the writer of the novel, so much so that she
publicly defends Bront against the Thunderers critique.

G.H. Lewes
The most famous, though not the most positive, review was by G. H. Lewes in the
Edinburgh. Throughout his article Lewes criticizes aspects such as the unity of the novel,
but most of his article, six pages, is devoted to a discussion of the social roles available for
women, and to an explanation of whether he considers men and women equal. His
discussion is inspired mainly by a few passages in Shirley, all of which focus on the
behavior of both Shirley and Caroline. In relation to the character Shirley, he states: The
manner and language of Shirley towards her guardian passes all permission.
52
But
Caroline is criticized as well:
Even the gentle timid, shrinking Caroline enters the lists with the odious
Mrs. York and the two ladies talk at each other, in a style which, to
southern ears, sounds both marvellous and alarming. (Lewes, 161)

52
G. H. Lewes, Edinburgh Review (January 1850) xci: 153-173; this phrase: 161. The entire article
can also be found in Critical Essays on Charlotte Bront, ed. Barbara Timm Gates (London: G.K
Hall, 1990) 217-223.

110

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Overall, Lewes considers Bronts female characters given to break out and misbehave
themselves upon very small provocation (Lewes, 161). He also does not think that
Caroline behaves like a real woman:
There are traits about this character quite charming; and we doubt not she
will be a favourite with the majority of readers. But any one examining
Shirley as a work of art, must be struck with want of keeping in making
the gentle, shy, not highly cultivated Caroline talk from time to time in
the strain of Currer Bell herself rather than in the strain of Helstones
little niece. We could cite several examples: the most striking perhaps is
that long soliloquy at pages 269-274 of the second volume, upon the
condition of women, - in which Caroline takes a leaf out of Miss
Martineaus book. The whole passage, though full both of thought and of
eloquence, is almost ludicrously out of place. (Lewes, 165-166)
Some of the things the protagonist Caroline Helstone states may seem out of character, but
this is only true if one accepts Caroline as the typical Angel in the House. Throughout the
novel, however, Caroline also shows a different side: she is very thoughtful and she has a
great sense of responsibility. In the story, Caroline has the age that a bachelor student of
today might have, and this is exactly the age at which young people would start to develop
their own ideas.
Shirleys religious unorthodoxy is criticized. It is especially her tirade about Miltons Eve
that seems unwomanly to Lewes:
as an eloquent rhapsody we can scarcely admire it too much; but to be
asked to believe that it was uttered in a quiet conversation between two
young ladies, destroys half our pleasure. (Lewes, 167)
When the female protagonists seem to rise above their average being, they are censured
most. It is only the description of the mermaid, an a-sexual and ineffective woman, that
receives some positive criticism, and Lewes ends his discussion of the novel with a quote:
Our closing word shall be one of exhortation. Schiller, writing to Goethe
about Madame de Staels Corinne, says, This person wants every thing
that is graceful in a woman; and, nevertheless, the faults of her book are
altogether womanly faults. She steps out of her sex without elevating
herself above it. (Lewes, 172-173)
After reading his review Bront wrote Lewes a number of letters. The first one was quite
brief and stated: I can be on my guard against my enemies, but God deliver me from my
friends!
53
Lewes had apparently praised Jane Eyre, and Charlotte Bront had expected an
understanding review of Shirley, especially in relation to the female characters. But, even
though Lewes led quite a modern life himself and seemed to be in favor of emancipation,
the conduct of both the angel and the more rebellious character went too far to his liking.
In another letter to Lewes, Bront is more specific about her annoyance.
54
I was hurt, she

53
Andrew and Judith Hook, Introduction, Shirley (Harmonsworth: Penguin, 1985) 10.
54
A very thorough study of the correspondence between Bront and Lewes can be found in Franklin
Garys article Charlotte Bront and George Henry Lewes, PMLA Vol. 51, No. 2 (June 1936): 518-
542.

111

wrote to Lewes, because after I had said earnestly that I wished critics would judge me as
an author, not as a woman, you so roughly I even thought so cruelly handled the
question of sex (Smith, 332). Not only her female main characters were criticized, but
Bront herself as well.
Bront did not really mind criticism in itself. She read most of the contemporary reviews
and refers to many of them in her letters. With regard to Lewes article she did in fact pay
attention to many of his remarks. The criticism which she received from him made her
more aware of the necessity of self-criticism in her writings, opened her eyes to genuine
literary problems and made her artistically more self-conscious (Gary, 540). But his
condemnation of the female main characters is prejudiced, as is his interpretation of the
woman question and womens ability to write in general.
55

Lewes seems to come close to one of those men who do not read [woman] in a true light
(S, 352). His reaction is not representative for all of the responses, however. In general,
most contemporary readers and critics liked the novel. The use of the stereotypical images
is noticed, as is the woman question and the suggestion for more liberal behavioral
patterns for women. It seems to be the balance between the sweet, docile, and acceptable
behavior of the Angel in the House, Caroline, and the more extreme behavior of Shirley
that makes readers like the novel. Readers get an impression of alternative behavioral
patterns, but Shirley adapts her conduct and the novel ends with the traditional resolution in
marriage. This realistic novel would have thus fitted in with the interpretive reading
strategies of the 1850s. The novel could, in a way, be read as moral instruction and, though
Shirley does not resemble the image of selfless nurturer, Caroline does, and the novel as a
whole becomes quite acceptable.
Overall, Shirley was recognized to be Charlotte Bronts most socially concerned novel,
intended in her own words to be unromantic as Monday morning, and one of its most
important themes - the position of women in society - is formulated in the novels pleas for
better education for girls, and more useful occupations for women who seem to be
condemned by society either to matrimony or, as old maids, to a life of self-denial and acts
of private charity (S, 5). One of the most important techniques used by Bront to represent
these issues is her use of the mirror image. The use of this technique permits Bront to be
quite outspoken in her interpretation of the social roles for women in contemporary society,
without being too controversial.
Most critics and readers understood these issues to be the main themes of the novel and
applauded its representation, even when, on the whole, narrative strategies were not yet
generally discussed in contemporary reviews. Except for the article in The Times and G. H.
Lewes negative review, most readers and critics could not really find any fault with the
novels social aspects. Bront was praised for her vigour and originality, her accurate
English and her social and historical precision. In spite of the sometimes simplistic readings
of the earliest critics, the hints of emancipation were understood without the novel gaining

55
George Eliot (Marian Evans, his wife) stated about his approach to her own writing skills [Lewes]
distrusted indeed, disbelieved in my possession of any dramatic power his prevalent
impression was, that though I could hardly write a poor novel, my effort would want the highest
quality of fiction dramatic presentation. J. W. Cross, George Eliots Life as Related in her Letters
and Journals (New York: Harper, 1885) I, 298-299.

112

THE MIRROR IMAGE

a subversive reputation and Shirley remained in print throughout the nineteenth century. It
was Leslie Stephen who first pointed out the possible explanation for the appreciation of
her work by the contemporary reader, in spite of its sometimes unorthodox aspects. He
described this as the inherent flaw in her thinking which carried her to protest against
conventionality while adhering to societys conventions.
56
It was precisely this ambiguity,
achieved by the mild application of the mirroring technique, that made Shirley acceptable
reading.
Noteworthy about the reception of this novel is the interest Bront herself shows in the
comment of her readers and critics. Bront had a reputation of living an isolated life, but
she knew and met many of the critics and readers personally. She wrote about them and to
them in her letters. The reviews and comments that seemed to strike her the most were the
articles especially dealing with her depiction of the woman question. She is grateful for
Fonblanques and Forcades thoughtful comments, but she is furious about Lewes
condemnatory review.
57
The communication frame of this novel not only seems to open up
a dialogue between the text side and the reader side, but also between the novelist and
the reader.

56
Leslie Stephen, Charlotte Bront, Cornhill Magazine 108 and 109 (December 1877); Allott, xiii,
413.
57
Thackeray was apparently also very supportive of and complimentary towards Bront, but Smith
points out in her Introduction that Charlottes correspondence with Thackeray has not yet come to
light, though rumours of its survival have circulated, and forgers have supplied unconvincing notes
from Charlotte (Smith, xxiii).

113

Chapter 4

The Awakening: Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Woman
Ah, but what is herself?
I mean what is a woman?
Virginia Woolf
1

4.0: INTRODUCTION
The second novel that will be examined is by the American writer Kate Chopin (1851-
1904). Her novel, The Awakening, was published in 1899.
2
Kate Chopin was the daughter
of a distinguished St. Louis family. Born in 1851, Kate Chopin received a strict Catholic
education at the St. Louis Academy of the Sacred Heart. She learned early to speak French
fluently, played the piano, read voraciously both the French and British classics, and
supported the Confederacy during the Civil War (1861-65). In 1868, after graduating from
the academy, she came out in society. In 1870 she married Oscar Chopin, with whom she
moved first to New Orleans and then, in 1879,
when Chopins business failed, to a plantation
near Cloutierville. Kate Chopin had six children;
she was quite fond of her husband and led a
happy and industrious life. When her husband
died of swamp fever in 1883, she returned to St.
Louis with her children. She began to write short
stories, partly to supplement her income and
partly to distract herself from her grief. Her third
novel, The Awakening, appeared in 1899, but was
not as enthusiastically received as her stories.
3

From the first both her short stories and her
novel(s) were studies of emancipation and often
specifically of female emancipation.
4

The two female characters who are mirrored in
The Awakening are Edna Pontellier and Adle
Ratignolle. The most important character in this
novel is Edna Pontellier, a twenty-eight year old
wife and mother. During a summer vacation at
Grand Isle, she falls in love with another man,
Robert Lebrun. Robert is equally intrigued by

1
Virginia Woolf, Women and Writing (London: The Womens Press, 1979) 60.
2
Kate Chopin, The Awakening and Selected Stories (1899; Harmondsworth, [etc.]: Penguin Classics,
2003). All further references to this novel will be indicated with AW, followed by the page number.
3
Chopins earlier novels were: At Fault (1890) and Young Dr. Gosse (1891; but never published).
4
Sandra M. Gilbert, Introduction, The Awakening and Selected Stories, 12.

Kate Chopin (Missouri Historical Society)

114

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Edna; but the situation confuses him and he flees to Mexico. At the end of the summer,
Edna and her children go back to New Orleans. Edna, however, now becomes aware of the
limitations of her marital and social context and she breaks with many aspects of her earlier
life. All of this frustrates her husband, Lonce, to such an extent that he goes to New York
on a business trip of several months. Raoul and Etienne, Ednas sons, go to visit Lonces
mother at Iberville during their fathers absence. Edna now begins an affair with Alce
Arobin, and moves to another house that she can pay for herself. When Robert returns from
Mexico, she tells him that she loves him. Right at this moment, a servant from her friend
Adle comes to fetch Edna to assist with Adles delivery. When Edna later returns to her
house, Robert has left, leaving a message saying Good-by because I love you (AW,
176). Edna realizes that neither Lonce, nor Alce, nor Robert take her seriously as an
individual. This knowledge disappoints her to such an extent that she goes back to Grand
Isle and drowns herself (AW, 175).
The style of this novel can be described as emotional realism.
5
The story is told by an
omniscient narrator. The book opens with a chapter recounting the point of view of Ednas
husband Lonce, but in most of The Awakening we are told about Ednas thoughts and
feelings. Adle is sometimes presented as an alternative and throughout the story there are
occasional comments by the narrator. The female main characters Edna Pontellier and her
friend Adle Ratignolle are about the same age. The protagonists in this novel are in a
different phase in life than Shirley and Caroline. Both Edna and Adle are already married;
Edna has two children and Adle three. Still, certain differences between the female
protagonists that can be observed in Shirley are also present in The Awakening, and The
Awakening will be analyzed along similar lines as the previous novel.
Edna Pontellier represents the more rebellious character. She does not stick to the accepted
norm and value system related to the gender specific roles of wife, housewife, and mother,
or the class specific role of the lady. On the contrary, Edna is beginning to realize that she
is an individual and that she may have different priorities in life than sticking to the
accepted gender and class roles. Her behavior is regarded with suspicion by the other
characters and actively corrected by her mirror image, Adle Ratignolle, who, by contrast,
is the personification of the Angel in the House. Edna Pontellier is described as more
ordinary; she does not make such an angelic impression, but then, she is not trying to be the
perfect mother, wife, or lady. She just wants to be herself. Some of the minor characters
in the novel seem to understand what Edna is going through and actively try to help.
Mademoiselle Reisz is one of them, as we shall see later on, and another one would be Dr.
Mandelet. Overall, the patriarchal society Edna lives in is unsympathetic to Ednas
behavior, though; and some contemporary readers were so shocked by Ednas conduct that
they severely criticized the novel. Literary critics did the same, with the result that The
Awakening was the last novel Kate Chopin published.
6

5
Chopins overall style in this novel is generally referred to as realistic. Throughout the story,
however, Chopin not only faithfully records an actual way of life, there is also an intense focus on the
emotional experience of the protagonist(s), hence my use of the terms emotional realism.
6
I will explain this process in detail in my discussion of the reception of The Awakening in 1899, in
Chapter 4.5 of this dissertation.

115

The Awakening: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman
4.1: PSYCHOMACHY
What is noteworthy about the gender specific socialization both protagonists experience is
that neither of them seems to have received a proper education. Both Edna and Adle are
well-bred and the socialization and education they received within the family was the
standard nineteenth-century socialization for upper middle-class girls and young women in
America. But it is not mentioned that Edna or Adle went to primary or secondary school,
or that they received any higher education.
7
This is ironic, because basically the whole
novel is about Ednas education or her growing awareness of her own position in the
world, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human
being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her
(AW, 57). Such a realization would never have been the goal of a proper education, though.
It is something within Edna herself that craves for such knowledge. It is quite remarkable
that at the age of twenty-eight, after having been married for six years and after having had
two sons, Edna begins to wonder about gender roles and her own wishes as an individual.
And though taking place much later in life, this process of awakening and subsequent
personal development has an enormous impact on Ednas life.
Throughout this process various people have different influences. Two characters are
especially important, namely Mademoiselle Reisz and Adle Ratignolle.
8
It is Mlle. Reisz
with her music and her independent spirit who presents the most explicit example of female
independence to Edna.
9
Edna is very moved by her music and intrigued by her personality.
Mlle. Reisz in turn is drawn to Edna because she is more serious and more reflective than
the others at Grand Isle. Overall, Edna and the pianist are very much alike; so much alike,
in fact, that they can almost be regarded as mirror images. That this term is not used in
relation to Mlle. Reisz is because she is not consistently compared with Edna throughout
the novel. She is a minor character, she appears in only five chapters, and Edna and Mlle.
Reisz are compared with regard to only a few traits.
10
Still, these aspects are quite
important, and Mlle. Reisz is the only teacher whom Edna respects. Edna Pontellier and
Mlle. Reisz are most similar in their reactions to the aesthetics of art, and whereas the
pianist is already an artist, Edna has the potential to become one. Edna sees herself as the
pianists protge. I am becoming an artist, Edna confesses, realizing that the pianist has
opened a door for her to a spiritual world beyond the ordinary world of social obligations
(AW, 115). As Melanie Dawson notes, Edna begins to imitate Mlle. Reisz to seek spiritual
elevation, and while they already share certain inward characteristics, Edna attempts to

7
In spite of the fact that this novel was written fifty years after Shirley, there is now no depiction of
any educational institution at all.
8
Various critics notice the influence of both Mademoiselle Reisz and Adle Ratignolle on Edna.
Some of these are: Carole Stone, The Female Artist in Kate Chopins The Awakening: Birth and
Creativity, Womens Studies 13: 1-2 (1986): 23-32; Marion Muirhead, Articulation and Artistry: A
Conversational Analysis of The Awakening Southern Literary Journal 33:1 (Fall 2000): 42-54, 48;
Jennifer B. Gray, The Escape of the Sea: Ideology and The Awakening Southern Literary Journal
37:1 (Fall 2004): 53-74, 53.
9
I have used the abbreviation Mlle. For Mademoiselle. This is not always considered to be the most
accurate form, but it is the one Chopin consistently uses in her work.
10
In The Awakening Mlle. Reisz appears in the Chapters IX, XVI, XXI, XXVI, and XXX.

116

THE MIRROR IMAGE

make her outward life resemble that of Mlle. Reisz, too.
11
First, she begins to work on her
paintings in an attic room, similar to Reisz apartments under the roof (133). Later on she
rids herself of husband and children and moves into the tiny pigeon house. She begins to
develop a disdain for materialism, admitting to herself a genuine satisfaction with the
pianists modest little room. She even seats herself at the artists piano, attempting to play a
few measures from music that belongs to the pianist. Edna assumes the physical position of
a student to her absent teacher.
In my view, Chopin uses the pianist for several purposes in addition to being an artistic role
model for Edna. While Mlle. Reisz appears in only five chapters, her artistry and ideas
permeate the entire text. In her first appearance in the novel, Mlle. Reisz functions to
provoke Ednas final awakening, her realization of the extraordinary beauty and power of
music, and, by extension, of all art. Listening to the pianist play at Grand Isle, Edna is
profoundly moved. The narrator tells the reader that Edna heard artists at the piano before,
but this was perhaps the first time she was ready, perhaps the first time her being was
tempered to take an impress of the abiding truth (AW, 71). When Mlle. Reisz sees Edna
moved to tears, she pats her on the shoulder. You are the only one worth playing for, she
replies (72). Mlle. Reisz recognizes Ednas sensitivity and intelligence. She is also the only
other character in the novel who views Ednas behavior in a positive light. Joyce Dyer
accurately calls the pianist the center of beauty and wisdom in the novel.
12
These
aspects are not always so appreciated or even understood by the other (minor) characters.
Mlle. Reisz remains an outsider both at Grand Isle and in New Orleans. The other
characters like her music, but they also seem slightly afraid of her talent, and they make fun
of her appearance.
When Mlle. Reisz appears in chapter XVI she attempts to comfort Edna, who is upset about
the departure of Robert. The pianist asks whether Edna did not greatly miss her young
friend, although she already knows the answer (AW, 97). She talks to her about music,
too, and gives Edna her address in New Orleans. She becomes Ednas lifeline, not just the
one who notices and encourages the fascination Edna and Robert possess for each other, but
the one to whom Edna turns for guidance, support and inspiration. When Edna decides to
visit her in the city in chapter XX, she goes above all, to listen while she played upon the
piano (AW, 109). It is in this scene that Edna reveals to Mlle. Reisz that she is becoming
an artist. In her response to Edna, Mlle. Reisz tells her what an artist must have: talent and a
courageous temperament.
All of these scenes are told by an omniscient narrator. The reader witnesses Ednas and
Mlle. Reisz conversations and interactions. In the narrative, the perspective quickly
changes from either the more distant point of view of the narrator to the consciousness of
Edna or the point of view of Mlle. Reisz. The perspective varies from a more general birds
eye view of the situation to a zooming into and sharing of the thoughts and feelings of an
individual character. The reader can thus closely observe and follow Ednas awakening.
The last two chapters in which the pianist appears function in part as forewarning. In
chapter XXVI, Edna confesses her love for Robert to the pianist, and Mlle. Reisz replies:

11
Melanie Dawson, Edna and the Tradition of Listening: The Role of Romantic Music in The
Awakening, Southern Studies 3.2 (1992): 87-98; 95.
12
Joyce Dyer, The Awakening: A Novel of Beginnings (New York: Twayne, 1993) 95.

117

If I were young and in love with a man ... he would have to be some grand esprit, a man
with lofty aims and ability to reach them; one who stood high enough to attract the notice
of his fellow-men I should never deem a man of ordinary caliber worthy of my
devotion (AW, 136). She says this in spite of her high regard for Robert. At the end of the
novel, the reader realizes how ordinary Robert really is in his limited understanding of
Edna and life. The final scene in which Mlle. Reisz appears is Ednas farewell dinner. Here
again, her role in the scene is cautionary, because her parting words to Edna are [b]onne
nuit, ma reine, soyez sage (145). She alone in the novel is in a position to realize how
difficult Ednas choices may prove.
Each of Mlle. Reisz appearances in the novel is a learning experience for Edna and
becomes part of the awakening process she goes through. Yet, perhaps the most important
overall lesson she wants to teach Edna is that being an artist has difficult consequences.
Mlle. Reisz accepts these consequences and she tries to teach Edna this approach, too.
To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gifts absolute
gifts which have not been acquired by ones own effort. And, moreover,
to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul The brave soul.
The soul that dares and defies. (AW, 115)
Such behavior would deviate completely from the accepted norm and value system of the
nineteenth century. After marriage women were supposed to be wives, housewives, and
mothers. Serious music (or by analogy any other form of art) was regarded by most people
to be the domain of the male.
13
Women did study music as one of the accomplishments, and
the piano was considered to be an instrument that was also suitable for the female. It
became a common adornment in the drawing room, ready for women to entertain
themselves and guests. Adle Ratignolles behavior in this context would be considered
appropriate. She performs simply for her familys entertainment, and considers the piano a
means of brightening the home and making it attractive (AW, 69). Music, for Adle, is a
kind of domestic decoration, as Kathryn Seidel aptly notes.
14
Such harmless recreation is
quite different from the way Mlle. Reisz plays the piano. She plays the piano with great
power and emotion and moves beyond the confines of traditional female achievement or
definition.
By thematizing the creation of art in this way, Chopin raises the expected type of behavior
by women in this context to a higher and more conscious level of understanding. At the
same time, she thus also questions the contemporary norms. Mlle. Reisz is apparently a
very good musician, but she lives alone in a dingy apartment, she receives only a meagre
income from teaching, and she has no material possessions of worth, except her
magnificent piano (AW, 113). These aspects refer to the sacrifices she has made, both
materially and emotionally, to live the solitary life of an artist. She is not married and she
does not have any children. Mlle. Reisz is more aware of the limitations of the accepted
gender role divisions than any of the other characters.

13
Doris Davis, The Enigma at the Keyboard: Chopins Mademoiselle Reisz The Mississippi
Quarterly 58 (Winter 2004): 89-105, 90.
14
Kathryn Lee Seidel, Picture Perfect: Painting in The Awakening, Critical Essays on Kate Chopin.
Ed. Alice Hall Perry (New York: G. K. Hall, 1996) 230.

118

THE MIRROR IMAGE

That Edna does not succeed in becoming an artist or even in fulfilling the awakening
process is sad, but not surprising. Still, the ending of the novel has evoked a range of
interpretations based on different social, psychological, or feminist critical points of view.
15

In the last paragraph, Edna is the wounded bird. Her wings have not been the wings that
Mlle. Reisz advised, strong enough to soar above the level plain of tradition and
prejudice (AW, 138). On the contrary, at the end of the novel she has lost her aspirations
and succumbs to doubts of self-worth. While Mlle. Reisz had inspired her to create beauty,
she had not been able to help her develop the strength needed in sustaining such a career,
and in the final scene, the narrator admits that [e]xhaustion was pressing upon and
overpowering her. This phrase seems applicable to more than just her struggle in the
water, because she also lacked the strength to maintain her new self in the integrity of her
work. In the last scene, we are told about Ednas thoughts and feelings. As Edna swims out
into the gulf she is preoccupied with various notions: her disappointment in Robert, her
denial of her childrens needs, and her failure as an artist. She imagines Mlle. Reisz
ridiculing her artistic pretensions (176), but here Edna seems to project her own artistic
disappointments on the resurrected image of the pianist, because just as Dr. Mandelet might
have understood if she had seen him(176), Mlle. Reisz might have offered assistance to a
struggling artist.
Wendy Martin points out that, [a]mbition, striving, overcoming odds, the focusing of
energy on a goal are habits of mind associated with masculine mastery. A woman who
wants to develop these skills has to defy a centuries-old tradition of passive femininity
(Martin, 22). Mlle. Reisz had been able to internalize such discipline, but at a tremendous
cost, her own isolation. Her protge could not. Still, Ednas attempt shows a glimpse of
the world of female possibilities, and is therefore an option for anticipation for the
contemporary reader. At the turn of the century, such options were in fact becoming
realities for some middle class women in the United States.
16

The other character who tries to educate Edna in this psychomachy-like battle for the soul is
Adle Ratignolle. Carole Stone points out that Adle Ratignolle has positive and negative
qualities that help and hinder Ednas struggle to be creative (Stone, 23-32). Overall, she has
quite a different influence on Edna, but in the context of art her influence is not altogether
negative. Adle is Ednas mirror image. Edna and Adle are consistently compared and
contrasted throughout the whole novel.
17
They are very much alike in that they have about
the same age, have children of a similar age, share the experiences of holidays at Grand
Isle, move in the same social circles, live in the same neighborhood in New Orleans, and
are friends. Yet, in spite of all of these similarities, they have quite a different approach to
life. Edna is becoming aware of her place in society as an individual; she is beginning to
take control of her life, and wants to become an artist, as we have just seen.
Stone indicates that it is Adle, a sensuous woman, who awakes Edna to the sensuality of
her own body. Adles frankness in talking about such subjects as her pregnancy helps

15
See Wendy Martins Introduction to New Essays on The Awakening (Cambridge: UP, 1988) for
an overview, 13-14.
16
See for a detailed discussion of the developments in education in the United States, Chapter 2.4 of
this dissertation, and for womens participation in the workforce Chapter 2.5.
17
Per Seyersted also points this out, calling Adle a perfect foil for Mrs. Pontellier, Kate Chopin: A
Critical Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969) 141.

119

Edna to overcome her reserve. In addition, Adle encourages her to express thoughts and
feelings she had kept hidden, even from herself. For example, at Adles urging to say what
she is thinking as they sit together by the sea, Edna recalls
a summer day in Kentucky, of a meadow that seemed as big as the ocean
to the very little girl She threw out her arms as if swimming when she
walked, beating the tall grass as one strikes out in the water. (AW, 60)
When Edna says that she feels as if this summer is like walking through that meadow again
unguided, Adle strokes her hand, and we see that in fact, though not an artist, it is she
who guides Edna towards warmth, openness, and creativity (AW, 57). Adle also inspires
Edna to paint, in a very concrete way. As she is seated on the beach, like some sensuous
Madonna, Edna feels she has to paint her (55). Similary, when she needs encouragement
later on she takes all of her sketches and paintings to the Ratignolle home where Adle
enthusiastically compliments her work. Yet Adle sees it more as a diversion and not as an
option for a career for a woman. She herself is a decent enough piano-player, but she would
never attempt to become a serious pianist.
On the contrary, overall it is Adle Ratignolle who tries to make Edna stick to the accepted
norms and values of patriarchal society, and who functions as her corrective on many
occasions. Throughout the novel Chopin contrasts and compares Edna and Adle in such a
way that it becomes clear that Adle follows the accepted norms and values of patriarchy
and manifests the accepted type of behavior, whereas Ednas conduct can be marked as
deviant.
18
Edna Pontellier, for example disregards the norm of the gender specific role of
the mother. She is not a mother-woman towards her children.
19

It would have been a difficult matter for Mr. Pontellier to define to his
own satisfaction or any one elses wherein his wife failed in her duty
toward their children. It was something which he felt rather than
perceived, and he never voiced the feeling without subsequent regret and
ample atonement.
If one of the little Pontellier boys took a tumble whilst at play, he was not
apt to rush crying to his mothers arms for comfort; he would more likely
pick himself up, wipe the water out of his eyes and the sand out of his
mouth, and go on playing. Tots as they were, they pulled together and
stood their grounds in childish battles with doubled fists and uplifted

18
However, as Edwin M. Schur points out in his study Labeling Women Deviant (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1984):
the recent guiding conception of deviance as a social construction encourages attention to
the relation between deviance and social change. If current deviance definitions have been
created and imposed, then they can also be modified or removed. Todays deviance may
be tomorrows conformity. Womens relation to deviance has been defined primarily by
men, who have monopolized the power to define. The future relation between women and
deviance will depend on whether there are changes in the distribution of such power.
Womens collective efforts to effect such changes therefore also become important factors
which the sociologist working in this area must study. 18.
19
The word mother-woman is not a regular English word. It seems to be an invention of Kate
Chopin herself. In The Awakening, she first introduces the word on page 51.

120

THE MIRROR IMAGE

voices, which usually prevailed against the other mother-tots. The
quadroon nurse was looked upon as a huge encumbrance, only good to
button up waists and panties and to brush and part hair, since it seemed to
be a law of society that hair must be parted and brushed. (AW, 50-51)
Adle Ratignolle, on the other hand, is a typical mother-woman and she is described in all
her glorious details by Chopin:
20

one of them was the embodiment of every womanly grace and charm. If
her husband did not adore her, he was a brute, deserving of death by slow
torture. Her name was Adle Ratignolle. There are no words to describe
her save the old ones that have served so often to picture the bygone
heroine of romance and the fair lady of our dreams. There was nothing
subtle or hidden about her charms; her beauty was all there, flaming and
apparent: the spun-gold hair that comb nor confining pin could restrain;
the blue eyes that were like nothing but sapphires; two lips that pouted,
that were so red one could only think of cherries or some other delicious
crimson fruit in looking at them. She was growing a little stout, but it did
not seem to detract an iota from the grace of every step, pose, gesture.
One would not have wanted her white neck a mite less full or her
beautiful arms more slender. Never were hands more exquisite than hers,
and it was a joy to look at them when she threaded her needle or adjusted
her gold thimble to her taper middle finger as she sewed away on the
little night-drawers or fashioned a bodice or a bib. (AW, 51)
This passage is not without irony, however; all of the phrases used to describe or
compliment Adle are stereotypes that are typically used to describe a beautiful woman.
We do not get a good impression of her real personality. In fact, so much praise makes the
reader doubt whether she has a personality or whether she really is that perfect. Edna seems
rather careless in her behavior towards her children. She admits that she was fond of her
children in an uneven, impulsive way. When she leaves them with the grandmother in
Iberville, she notices that [t]heir absence was a sort of relief (AW, 63). The narrator
stresses that Edna found this hard to admit, yet the overall impression that you get from the
novel, is that her two sons do not really seem to mind, that they prefer their independence,
too.
A second gender norm that Edna seems to disregard, in the world of the text, is the proper
behavior of a wife or her allegiance to Lonce (Seyersted, 135). She does not behave like
the typical, doting wife. On the contrary, she seems to be more interested in other men; and
in spite of the fact that they have had two children together, Edna is only now, at the age of
twenty-eight, becoming aware of her own sexuality. Both Arobin and Robert seem to be
able to arouse these feelings, but not her husband, whom she does not really seem to have a
real connection with. Ednas deviant behavior even goes so far that she goes to a
neighborhood island with another man, Robert, and stays away all day. During her absence
it is her mirror image Adle Ratignolle who not only supplies the image of the faithful

20
The advice manuals from Mrs. Ellis were also available in America. Her ideas about what a mother
should be like could be found in: The Mothers of England: Their Influence and Responsibility (New
York: J. & H.G. Langley, 1844).

121

and doting wife, she also actively corrects Edna, by taking care of her children during
Ednas absence.
The youngest boy, Etienne, had been very naughty, Madame Ratignolle
said, as she delivered him into the hands of his mother. He had been
unwilling to go to bed and had made a scene; whereupon she had taken
charge of him and pacified him as well as she could. Raoul had been in
bed and asleep for two hours.
The youngster was in his long white nightgown, that kept tripping him up
as Madame Ratignolle led him along by the hand. With the other chubby
fist he rubbed his eyes, which were heavy with sleep and ill humor. Edna
took him in her arms, and seating herself in the rocker, began to coddle
and caress him, calling him all manner of tender names, soothing him to
sleep. (AW, 87)
Edna really seems to love her children, and she is very tender with them. But she does not
exaggerate it in a way some of the other mothers seem to think they have to. Perhaps
reading these passages with twenty-first century eyes, one gets a different impression than
contemporary readers did. Child-care centers and crches are quite normal these days, but
in nineteenth-century Creole society (rich) children had to be pampered, pleased, and patted
on the back by their parents; and in daily practice, it was especially the mother who did
this.
Ednas neglect of her husband in this passage does not really seem to upset Lonce. He is
worried for a little while in the beginning, but after Monsieur Farivals reassurance that
Edna was only overcome with sleep, and that she was being taken care off, he goes over to
Kleins Hotel without another thought, to look up some cotton broker whom he wished to
see in regard to securities, exchanges, stocks, bonds, or something of the sort, Madame
Ratignolle did not remember what. He said he would not remain away late (AW, 87). It
seems exaggerated to blame Edna for neglect here; the feeling of neglect or disinterest
seems to be mutual.
21
Adles rushing off to her own husband for Monsieur Ratignolle
was alone, and he detested above all things to be left alone, may be intended as a
correction towards Edna, but it seems to lack conviction, because of Lonces own
uninterested attitude.
A last example concerns the gender specific role of the housewife. During her awakening
process Edna begins to disregard her housekeeping and she also ignores her regular
Tuesday afternoon gatherings and other social obligations. She prefers to spend most of her
time painting in an attic room and uses every member of the household to sit for her as a
model. As a result of this, her household goes to the dickens according to Lonce (AW,
117).

21
Daniel Rankins comment on this is: It was her husbands misfortune that he did not make the
interesting discovery himself that his wife was a human being; but he had his brokerage business to
think about, and brokers deal in stocks, not hearts. Kate Chopin And Her Creole Stories
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1932) 171.

122

THE MIRROR IMAGE

It seems to me the utmost folly for a woman at the head of a household,
and the mother of children, to spend in an atelier days which would be
better employed contriving for the comfort of her family.
I feel like painting, answered Edna. Perhaps I shant always feel like
it.
Then in Gods name paint! but dont let the family go to the devil.
Theres Madame Ratignolle; because she keeps up her music, she doesnt
let everything else go to chaos. And shes more of a musician than you
are a painter. (AW, 108)
Again Ednas behavior is mirrored with that of Adle Ratignolle. It is Lonce who
introduces Adle, here. He points out that she has creative tendencies, too; she is a
musician, but she still conducts her housekeeping as she should.
In all of the examples Ednas aberrant behavior is corrected by means of a confrontation
with her mirror image, Adle. In this way, the main character, the other characters, and the
readers get a good view of what the behavior of the woman in nineteenth-century society,
as represented in this novel, was supposed to be like. The technique of thematization and
the attempted stabilization by means of the corrective use of the mirror image reveal very
clearly how difficult it was for women to attempt to transcend cultural limitations.
The opposing influences of Mademoiselle Reisz and Adle Ratignolle are quite revealing in
relation to the kind of society that these women live in. Women do not seem to be allowed
to simply be themselves or to go for greater options, but are supposed to behave according
to the prescribed gender roles, and if they do not do this, they almost become outcasts, in
spite of the talents they may have. What is interesting about the perspective used in the
novel is that we as reader are often told about things from Ednas point of view and move
along with her thoughts and feelings. It thus also becomes easier to sympathize with her
because we know her motivations. If we had not been given this more personal information
from and about Edna, it might have been more difficult to understand or appreciate her
actions. The ease with which she leaves her children, for example, might have become
incomprehensible. The overall comment from the omniscient narrator provides the wider
perspective. This birds eye view of the events also makes it possible for the reader to
situate Ednas position in the wider social context.
4.2: TO DRESS OR NOT TO DRESS?
Annelie Hegenbarth-Rsgens technique to determine the social roles on the basis of role
attributes and/or social position is especially useful in the context of class-specific
socialization. Yet, Hegenbarth-Rsgen is not the only one who notices the importance of
role attributes such as clothes. In 1898, at the time when Kate Chopin was writing The
Awakening, the American psychologist G. Stanley Hall published one of the first studies
that investigated the reasons behind choices in clothing.
22
He believed that a certain style of
dress could supply the wearer with a way to adapt to the expectations of society at large.

22
Granville Stanley Hall (1846-1924) was a pioneering American psychologist and educator. He was
the first president of the American Psychological Association and the first president of Clark
University. Most of his studies focused on adolescence.

123

Halls study recognizes the social value of dress, suggesting that dress is linked with ones
social role and identity.
23
This symbolic representation of social self forms the basis for
Chopins use of clothing in The Awakening. From Chopins first introduction of her
protagonist Edna drawing up her lawn sleeves to Ednas final acts of changing into her
old bathing suit and then casting even these unpleasant, pricking garments from her,
clothing delineates Ednas life (AW, 45, 175). Clothing also depicts the social roles which
Edna refuses to assume like a garment with which to appear before the world (AW, 108).
Because social class and gender underlie the
choices wearers make, the clothing that Edna
rejects during the course of the novel as well as
the nakedness she embraces in the end are
heavily inscribed with socio-political meanings.
Garments within Chopins novel represent
social roles and the related marital status and
class affiliation. They also express the complex
system of appearance being worked out by
nineteenth-century American society at large,
the middle classes, who wanted to distance
themselves from those below them. By placing
Chopins descriptions of dress within their
socio-historical contexts, an important means of
signification emerges in her images of satin
gowns (AW, 145) and gauze veils (58), on the
one hand, and images of bare feet (81) or
prunella gaiters (113) on the other. Through
studying the nature of the characters dress, this
section has a close look at the organization of
nineteenth-century American power-relations,
as represented in this novel, suggesting ways in
which class determined the sort of self women
should fabricate.
Again, it is Adle, Ednas mirror image, who
has the right attributes and the characteristics
that befit the typical role of the woman. As far
as her looks are concerned, she possesses the
more feminine and matronly figure (AW, 58).
The role attributes, the characteristics of her
personality, and her social position are also
typical for the lady of nineteenth century

23
More contemporary studies that investigate the social value of dress are: Francois Bouchers 20.000
Years of Fashion: The History of Costume and Personal Adornment (New York: Abrams, 1987). His
history of costume notes that the choice of a particular form of costume reflects social factors such as
social role, personal status, aesthetics, religious beliefs and the wish to be distinguished from others
(9). Fred Davis study, Fashion, Culture, and Identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)
points out that social role, as reflected in dress, creates the direction for fashion by eliciting,
chanelling, and assimilating changes in the social context.

Walking Dress c. 1884
Inv. AC 288 77-12-5 AB

124

THE MIRROR IMAGE

American society. Adle is, for example, extremely careful of her complexion, twining a
gauze veil about her head, wearing dogskin gloves, with gauntlets that protected her
wrists (58). Her outfit is very feminine: [s]he was dressed in pure white, with a fluffiness
of ruffles that became her. The draperies and fluttering things which she wore suited her
rich, luxuriant beauty as a greater severity of line could not have done (AW, 58). Adle is
also prone to fainting, and always carries a large fan with her.
24

The attributes with which Edna is being described are the complete opposite; [t]he lines of
[Ednas] body were long, clean and symmetrical and there was no suggestion of the trim,
stereotyped fashion-plate about it (AW, 58). Her style of dress is quite sober, in fact:
[s]he wore a cool muslin that morning white with a waving vertical line of brown
running through it, also a white linen collar and the big straw hat which she had taken from
the peg outside the door (58). She is also quite nonchalant about her appearance, [t]he hat
rested any way on her yellow-brown hair, that waved a little, was heavy, and clung close to
her head (58). This same attitude is shown by her, as far as her complexion is concerned,
and one day, when she comes home from the beach, her husband even remarks, [y]ou are
burnt beyond recognition (44).
Overall, however, it is especially her clothes that are given social significance. Propriety,
the most important element of middle class constructions of identity, required that women
accumulate expansive (and expensive) wardrobes since the different hours of the day
required dress of a particular style and cut.
25
Women like Edna Pontellier bought various
outfits appropriate for morning, afternoon, and evening wear, keeping in mind that city
dress differed from country dress and that shopping demanded a simple jacketed gown that
would be unsuitable for making formal calls.
26
Like other middle-class women of the time,
Edna prepares her toilet several times a day. Wearing a white morning gown as she
contemplates speaking to the cook concerning her blunders, Edna begins her day in the
typical laced and flounced dress worn by upper middle-class women as they directed their
household staffs, made out menus, and saw to the maintenance of the house (AW, 104).
Such dresses could not be worn in public, though, so on the morning when Edna neglects
speaking to the cook, she dresses again, this time in a handsome street gown, which she
wears to make informal morning calls on Madame Ratignolle, the Lebruns, and
Mademoiselle Reisz (105, 111, 113). The tailor-made street gown of the period was made
up of three pieces, skirt, waistcoat, and coat, and was typically lined with silk; the skirt was
long enough to touch the tops of the shoes but did not drag on the pavement as women
ventured into the street shopping, going to matinees, church, travelling, [or] making

24
Examples of this occur on the following pages in AW: 56, 58, 59, 88.
25
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899; New
York: The Modern Library, 1961) Chapter VII: Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture,
125-141. As a contemporary and sociologist Veblen had a clear view of the rules and regulations of
dress at the time, but his overall attitude towards middle-class women is sometimes quite derogatory.
26
For information on nineteenth-century rules of dress, see Philippe Perrot, Fashioning the
Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century Trans. by Richard Bienvenu (Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1994) 87-123; and Penelope Byrde, Nineteenth Century Fashion (London: B.T.
Batsford, 1992) 110-129. The Womans Book, published in 1894, gives the 1890s version of rules of
propriety and helps to draw conclusions about American middle class women.

125

informal calls.
27
The narrator states that Edna looks handsome and distinguished in the
street gown, a description that underlines her tasteful choices, since women lacking in
refinement were apt, according to etiquette manuals of the 1890s, to appear in costumes
overly rich in fabric and too noticeable in color or style. Black is becoming to every
woman, but as she does not dress to be seen when walking, it would be well to wear it, even
if she thought it not becoming, one writer observed.
28
The elegant woman must be
influenced in her choice of street wear by suitableness, harmony, simplicity, and
refinement.
29
Upon returning home, if the lady were to make afternoon calls, she would
put on a formal day or visiting dress, elaborated with lace frillss or insets of rich fabric,
sashes and ribbons, but always high in the neck. Day decolletage was considered bad taste
as was too much elaboration: [d]ay dress should distinguish itself by simplicity and
restraint.
30
If, instead, she were to receive callers, she must wear a reception gown,
elaborately constructed and perhaps more rich in style than other afternoon dresses, but still
high in the neck. Layers of flouncing, scalloped frills, piping, tucks, and insets of brocade
typically trimmed these confections, and it is Ednas mistake not to be dressed in this way
that brings Mr. Pontelliers reprimand. Angry that she has apparently not kept her formal
reception day, he says, its just such seeming trifles that weve got to take seriously; such
things count. Ednas adherence to what writers of etiquette manuals call good form
supports Mr. Pontelliers position among men who could, according to him, buy and sell
us ten times over (AW, 100-101).
At the beginning of the novel, Edna Pontellier still faithfully wears her Tuesday reception
gown, house dress, street gown, white morning gown and bathing suit on the
appropriate occasions (AW, 99, 100, 104). It is interesting that it is especially in relation to
Edna that these terms with their social designations are used. Her clothing seems to define
and limit her social role and her behavior. Because dress is so much a part of middle-class
identity, which positioned wives as mere possessions of their husbands, Ednas refusal to
dress as expected symbolizes her rejection of the roles of lady, wife, housewife, and
mother. Besides the actual, literal use of clothing, it also becomes a metaphor that
reinforces Ednas wish for a different identity. Little by little we see more of Ednas real
self, both literally and psychologically, when she begins to loosen a little the mantle of
reserve that had always enveloped her (57).
In vowing never again to belong to another than herself, Edna questions her socially
prescribed roles, and places herself between the extremes of the selfless femininity
represented by Madame Ratignolle or the self-realization of Mademoiselle Reisz (AW,
135). In this middle ground, between white restrictive skirts and a batch of rusty black lace
with a bunch of artificial violets, Edna attempts to find her own individuality (71).
Instances of dress and undress symbolize her progression towards self-discovery: her body

27
Anonymous, The Womans Book: Dealing Practically with the Modern Conditions of Home-life,
Self-support, Education, Opportunities, and Every-day Problems (New York: C. Scribners Sons,
1894) 211.
28
John F. Kasson, Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1990) 121; Kasson quotes from Florence Hartleys The Ladies Book of
Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness (1860; Boston: J. S. Locke, 1876) 109.
29
The Womans Book (1894) 158.
30
This quotation from a contemporary etiquette manual is used by Perrot in Fashioning the
Bourgeoisie, 93.

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

and her identity are alternately revealed and covered again. Ednas clothes cover her body
and repress her ideas about her real self. She tries on and rejects, literally and figuratively,
costumes which confine her to a social role.
At home and during moments of reflection Edna often wears her peignoir. Unlike the white
cotton lawn dresses or the city dresses, she wears the peignoir for her own comfort, not for
the representation of herself as lady, or mother, wife, and housewife. The loose image of
the peignoir contrasts sharply with the restraining gowns of white with elbow sleeves
[and] starched skirts (AW, 44). Edna attempts to transgress this boundary between self
and social role by retiring in her peignoir to the porch in a display of individuality. Yet, the
indescribable oppression of female identity is still generated in some unfamiliar part of
her consciousness (49).
Edna finally rebels at Madame Antoines as she loosened her clothes, removing the greater
part of them (AW, 84). No longer trapped by her clothes, Edna looks past the limits of
social roles, and she sees her body as a part of her identity, not as her identity itself. Edna
examines herself for the first time away from the confines of her own home. She has a
mystical revelation and a sensual and physical awakening. In Edna, this self-exploration
arouses a desire to see past physical appearance. In examining the texture and not just the
smoothness of her body, she begins to understand the complexity of her real self beneath
the surface of her clothes and the corresponding female roles imposed by patriarchal
society. After sleeping, Edna realizes that,
her present self was in some way different from the other self. That she
was seeing with different eyes and making the acquaintance of new
conditions in herself that colored and changed her environment. (AW, 88)
She has begun consciously to perceive the mantle of reserve and has let it fall away to see
her own being revealed.
With her nakedness, and the casting off of socially prescribed garments, appears a spiritual
revelation. When Edna returns to Grand Isle, she arrives in flesh and blood and not
merely as an apparition (AW, 173). Similar to the experience at Madame Antoines, Edna
becomes aware of the needs of her body; she now realizes that she is very hungry. Edna
begins to understand her bodys requirements, which develops into a metaphor representing
the need to discover and realize her individual self.
With her growing awareness of her bodily sensations, Edna rejects the bathing suit, too;
when she was there beside the sea, absolutely alone, she cast the unpleasant, pricking
garments from her, and for the first time in her life she stood naked in the open air, at the
mercy of the sun (AW, 175). Such a representation would have required a lot of courage
from Chopin, especially because by removing the bathing suit, Edna is now also depicted as
detaching herself from the limitations of her gender. She feels like some new-born
creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known (175; italics mine).
Ednas quest into the traditionally masculine world of self-discovery reflects the image of
the naked man on the seashore. By imitating such a male-centered scene, Edna sheds her
passive female social role. Edna can only achieve the genuineness she almost finds through
Mademoiselle Reisz piano playing by moving away from social roles. In an attempt to
define herself, Edna becomes aware of more individual talents as she frees herself from the

127

general and imposed social roles of lady, wife, housewife, and mother. Swimming naked
out into the Gulf of Mexico, Edna, finally, fully sheds the mantle of reserve, empowering
her being to light out for one, brief moment (AW, 57).
31

4.3: NINE MONTHS
The context of the more general type of behavior, the selection of a partner and the
behavior in a relationship also present interesting oppositional behavioral patterns. Like the
behavior of Shirley and Caroline, the conduct of Edna and Adle is quite different here.
Adle Ratignolle, Ednas mirror image, again shows the more acceptable type of behavior.
Adles marriage is almost as perfect as her feminine beauty. The idea that her husband,
Alphonse Ratignolle, might be jealous of other men who pay attention to her causes
laughter among all who know the couple: The right hand jealous of the left! The heart
jealous of the soul! (AW, 54). Adle puts her husbands preferences above her own in all
things. She hurries home, not because she wishes to be there, but because Monsieur
Ratignolle was alone, and he detested above all things to be left alone (88). When
Alphonse talks about politics, city news, or even neighborhood gossip, [h]is wife was
keenly interested in everything he said, laying down her fork the better to listen, chiming in,
taking the words out of his mouth. In fact, [t]he Ratignolles understood each other
perfectly. If ever the fusion of two human beings into one has been accomplished on this
sphere it was surely in their union (106-107). In general, however, this perfect union
seems to result more from Adles adaptation of her personality rather than a fusion of their
two identities. Throughout the novel, it is Adle who adapts her behavior to her husbands
(and childrens) needs, but Alphonse is a thoughtful, considerate, kind, and generous man
and Adle seems perfectly happy.
Edna is a witness to their marital happiness on various occasions, but on one of them, after
having had lunch with the Ratignolles, she openly admits that,
[she] felt depressed rather than soothed after leaving them. The little
glimpse of domestic harmony which had been offered her, gave her no
regret, no longing. It was not a condition of life which fitted her, and she
could see in it but an appalling and hopeless ennui. She was moved by a
kind of commisseration for Madame Ratignolle, -- a pity for that
colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region
of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her
soul, in which she would never have the taste of lifes delirium. (AW,
107)
Chopins depiction of Ednas reaction would have been completely opposed to the norms
and values adhered to in contemporary Louisiana society. Chopin would have been very
much aware of this. Still, she chose to make Ednas reaction quite onorthodox, thus
consciously risking criticism. In the novel, Edna does not really know what she means by
lifes delirium, and she does not seem to have a clear picture of an acceptable form of

31
Per Seyersted is one of the first critics who stresses the strength of Ednas action in this context. He
states: when the apparently defeated Edna takes off her clothes ... it symbolizes a victory of self-
knowledge and authenticity as she fully becomes herself. Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography, 194.

128

THE MIRROR IMAGE

partnership, but this perfect image, and in a way correction, offered by her mirror image,
does not work for Edna.
So far, Ednas own marriage has not been represented as especially different from Adles.
Edna has been married for six years at the beginning of the novel, and she admits that the
marriage was purely an accident (AW, 62). At a time when she believed herself
hopelessly in love with a famous tragedian, she met Lonce.
He fell in love, as men are in the habit of doing, and pressed his suit with an
earnestness and an ardor which left nothing to be desired. He pleased her; his
absolute devotion flattered her. She fancied there was a sympathy of thought and
taste between them, in which fancy she was mistaken. Add to this the violent
opposition of her father and her sister Margaret to her marriage with a Catholic,
and we need seek no further for the motives which led her to accept Monsieur
Pontellier for her husband. (AW, 62)
As the daughter of a hypocritical, pious-talking Presbyterian father who had coerced his
own wife into her grave, Edna had little means to fulfil any of her basic needs for love,
place, and autonomy before she met Lonce (AW, 125). The chance to satisfy at least two
of those needs led her into the marriage: [a]s the devoted wife of a man who worshiped
her, she felt she would take her place with a certain dignity in the world of reality (AW,
63). For six years the third need - the need to be autonomous and to be respected as an
individual - has apparently not worried her.
At first, Edna accepts her marriage and her husband without question. Like many couples,
they often communicate without words. Returning from the beach, Edna reaches out her
hand and Lonce wordlessly gives her rings to her. He says he is going to Kleins hotel to
play billiards, and Edna asks if he will be back for dinner.
He felt in his vest pocket; there was a ten-dollar bill there. He did not
know; perhaps he would return for the early dinner and perhaps he would
not. It all depended upon the company which he found over at Kleins
and the size of the game. He did not say this, but she understood it and
laughed, nodding good-by to him. (AW, 45)
Lonce often sends Edna boxes filled with friandises, with luscious and toothsome bits --
the finest of fruits, pats, a rare bottle or two, delicious syrups, and bonbons in abundance
when she is away from home (AW, 50). However, Lonce shows his possessiveness, when
he looks at his sunburnt wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which
has suffered some damage (44).
32
When he returns from Kleins hotel late one night, finds
Edna asleep, but is in high spirits himself after winning at billiards, [h]e thought it very
discouraging that his wife, who was the sole object of his existence, evinced so little
interest in things which concerned him, and valued so little his conversation. He wakes her
under the pretence that one of the children has a fever. Then,
[h]e reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of the
children. If it was not a mothers place to look after children, whose on

32
For a sketch of the repressive legal condition of women under the Napoleonic Code which was
still the basis of the laws governing the marriage contract in New Orleans at the time the story was
set, see Margo Culleys note to the Norton Critical Edition, The Context of The Awakening, 118.

129

earth was it? He himself had his hands full with his brokerage business.
He could not be in two places at once; making a living for his family on
the street, and staying at home to see that no harm befell them. He talked
in a monotonous, insistent way. (AW, 48)
Edna gets up and goes into the other room to see about Raoul, whom she finds sound asleep
and quite healthy. Lonce finishes smoking his cigar, goes to bed, and in half a minute he
was fast asleep. Wide awake by now, Edna goes out, sits down in the wicker chair on the
porch and begins to cry.
She could not have told why she was crying. Such experiences as the
foregoing were not uncommon in her married life. They seemed never
before to have weighed much against the abundance of her husbands
kindness and a uniform devotion which had come to be tacit and self-
understood. (AW, 49)
On this particular night, however, Edna begins to sense the true nature of her husbands
regard for her; and, sitting there alone after midnight, she feels the first stirrings of her
individuality. She does not seem especially angry towards her husband, but
[a]n indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some
unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague
anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her souls
summer day. It was strange and unfamiliar; it was a mood. She did not sit
there inwardly upbraiding her husband, lamenting at Fate, which had
directed her footsteps to the path which they had taken. (AW, 49)
This feeling of oppression will develop into such a strong determination to seize control of
her own life that it will cause Edna to give up everything else in its pursuit. Edna does not
yet realize that she has begun to awaken, that a certain light will soon begin to
illuminate her consciousness. When this light does begin to dawn, Edna cannot stop the
process (AW, 57).
Once Ednas realization of her self as an individual has begun to develop, her relationship
with Lonce deteriorates and their marriage begins to disintegrate. Lonce is a kind and
generous man, and although he believes he loves his wife and seeks and follows the best
advice he can get in his marital confusion, Lonces Catholic and Creole background,
which idolizes the mother-woman prevents his ever understanding his wifes awakening
need for autonomy.
33

33
The whole novel is imbibed with Catholic imagery, ranging from the sensuous Madonna to the
last supper. Women in the novel are mostly associated with children. The sensuous Madonna,
Adle, is pregnant and portrays the perfect mother-woman (AW, 55, 51). Madame Lebruns retreat
is a community made up of women and children. In the society depicted in the novel, women and
children belong together and are almost considered one whole. The fact that a woman might prefer to
recover her own individuality and would like to become more autonomous does not fit into such a
world view. Ivy Schweitzer examines the opposition of motherhood and individuality in her article
Maternal Discourse and the Romance of Self-Possession in Kate Chopins The Awakening,
Boundary 2, 17:1 New Americanists: Revisionist Interventions into the Canon (Spring, 1990): 158-
186; 162. Jarlath Killeen from the University College Dublin examines the contrast focusing on

130

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Throughout Ednas awakening process Ednas mirror image, Adle Ratignolle, goes
through a different birthing process. Rather than experiencing a rebirthing herself, however,
she is pregnant with her fourth child. The process of her nine-month pregnancy exactly
corresponds with the time-span of Ednas awakening to her own individuality. Adle
behaves according to the social roles allotted to her by patriarchal society, and she has a
baby every two years. She corrects Ednas behavior especially through reminding her how
important children are.
34
These opposing patterns of behavior of both protagonists
thematize the expected type of behavior of women in nineteenth-century Creole society.
The attempt to stabilize the accepted type of behavior raises both behavioral patterns to a
more conscious level of understanding for the reader.
When the character Adle realizes that she is pregnant again, she starts mentioning her
condition, though it was in no way apparent, and no one would have known a thing
about it but for her persistence in making it the subject of conversation (AW, 52). She also
starts making clothes for the new baby and brings patterns of such clothes to Mrs.
Pontellier. Edna values her company and friendship, but is preoccupied with her own
awakening process. During a Saturday night, a night that is usually filled with a few
entertainments for all of the guests at Madame Lebruns resort on Grand Isle, Adle
Ratignolle offers to play the piano whilst the others dance: Madame Ratignolle could not,
so it was she who gaily consented to play for the others (AW, 69).
This night, the twenty-eighth of August, is also the night the Pontelliers have their second
quarrel. It is the night when Mademoiselle Reisz music first moves Edna to tears and the
night Edna learns to swim. Elated though exhausted, she sits with Robert while waiting for
Lonce to come home, and she confesses: [a] thousand emotions have swept through me
tonight. I dont comprehend half of them. I wonder if any night on earth will ever again
be like this one. While they sit there in silence, Edna begins for the first time to awaken
sexually: [n]o multitude of words could have been more significant than those moments of
silence, or more pregnant with the first-felt throbbings of desire (AW, 77). Throughout her
physical and emotional awakening process Robert has been at her side, and he is also at her
side now, when her individuality becomes strong enough to release her sexual nature.
When Lonce comes home, Robert leaves and Edna remains on the porch, although Lonce
calls to her to come inside.
She heard him moving about the room; every sound indicating
impatience and irritation. Another time she would have gone in at his
request. She would, through habit, have yielded to his desire; not with
any sense of submission or obedience to his compelling wishes, but
unthinkingly, as we walk, move, sit, stand, go through the daily treadmill
of the life which has been portioned out to us. (AW, 77-78)
Edna experiences an awareness that she has never known before. Lonce changes his tone,
this time calling her fondly, with a note of entreaty, but when his wife still refuses to

Catholicism, motherhood and realism in her article Mother and Child: Realism, Maternity, and
Catholicism in Kate Chopins The Awakening, Religion and the Arts 7:4 (2003): 413-438; 424.
34
Marion Muirhead stresses this in her article Articulation and Artistry: A Conversational Analysis
of The Awakening, 48.

131

come inside, to bed, Lonce becomes angry. Edna, however, settles down to remain
indefinitely on the porch:
her will had blazed up, stubborn and resistant. She could not at that
moment have done other than denied and resisted. She wondered if her
husband had ever spoken to her like that before, and if she had submitted
to his command. Of course she had; she remembered that she had. But
she could not realize why or how she should have yielded, feeling as she
then did. (AW, 78)
Throughout these two passages both Ednas thoughts and the narrators comments are
combined in one consonant voice of defiance. Ednas behavior digresses from the required
behavioral patterns of a wife at the time, but Chopins subtle use of perspectives suggest an
overall support for Ednas irregular behavior here. The passages emphasize that both
Ednas mind and her body are undergoing the awakening process. In the presence of
Robert, who at this point seems to regard her as an individual, her sexual feelings also begin
to stir. With his possessiveness Lonce wants to deny her the right to respond or not. He
assumes that he can possess her body and soul, while she has to repress her authentic
feelings, but Edna can no longer do that. After a while Lonce joins Edna on the porch and
lights a cigar, the symbol of his male authority. There he remains, smoking one cigar after
another, until at last he subdues his wifes body and spirit, at least for the moment.
When Edna awakens early the next morning, she decides to spend the day on a nearby
island with Robert. After coming home in the evening, she sits outside alone, again
awaiting her husbands return from Kleins hotel and trying to understand what is
happening within her: She could only realize that she herself -- her present self -- was in
some way different from the other self (AW, 88). The narrators depiction of Ednas
confusion about her own personality and the required social roles is gradually becoming
more poignant. The rest of the summer passes without the Pontelliers quarreling again,
although by the time Edna returns to New Orleans she feels consciously her passion for
Robert. She sees no conflict between this emotion and her regard for Lonce, because the
feelings she has for Robert do not resemble those she has for her husband. Her awakened
feelings and emotions concerning her individuality do not remain a secret, private, separate
part of her being any longer, though. One Tuesday a few weeks after her return from Grand
Isle, Edna decides not to stay at home to receive guests; Tuesday being the reception day
she has held during her marriage, so far. Lonce is confused and angry when Edna tells him
that she has been out all afternoon (AW, 100).
From lecturing her about this deviation, Lonce moves on to complain about the food, the
expenses, and Ednas general household management. Finally, he stalks out, saying that he
will get his dinner at the club. On earlier occasions, such quarrels made Edna miserable,
causing her to lose her appetite and to study ways to improve her household management,
but that evening Edna finished her dinner alone, with forced deliberation. Her face was
flushed and her eyes flamed with some inward fire that lighted them. After dinner, she
goes to her room and looks out the window,
upon the deep tangle of the garden below. All the mystery and witchery
of the night seemed to have gathered there amid the perfumes and the
dusky and tortuous outlines of flowers and foliage. She was seeking

132

THE MIRROR IMAGE

herself and finding herself in just such sweet half-darkness which met her
moods. (AW, 102)
That Edna is searching for all of herself, for her own answer to Virginia Woolfs question,
but what is herself? can hardly be more directly stated. Yet, the hopelessness of her
situation almost overwhelms her, and she begins walking up and down the room.
Once she stopped, and taking off her wedding ring, flung it upon the
carpet. When she saw it lying there, she stamped her heel upon it, striving
to crush it. But her small boot heel did not make an indenture, not a mark
upon the little glittering circlet. (AW, 103)
Unable to make even a mark upon the encircling traditions that imprison her, she seizes a
glass vase from the table and throws it upon the tiles of the hearth. Powerless to destroy the
restrictive social forces represented by the traditional wedding ring, she destroys the fragile
vase instead. The next morning, unusually pale and very quiet, she allows her husband to
kiss her good-bye (AW, 103).
Edna looked straight before her with a self-absorbed expression upon her
face. She felt no interest in anything about her. The street, the children,
the fruit vender, the flowers growing there under her eyes, were all part
and parcel of an alien world which had suddenly become antagonistic.
(AW, 104)
She decides to try more seriously to develop her ability to paint and to direct her own life.
When, later in the day, she has lunch with the Ratignolles, they seem more harmonious as a
couple than ever. Adle is by now obviously pregnant, and she wears a comfortable and
loose fitting peignoir when Edna visits them. To Edna the visit to them has an opposite
effect, as we have seen, and from now on Ednas determination to achieve some measure of
autonomy is becoming the most important issue in her life. The disintegration of the
Pontelliers marriage continues accordingly. The narrator explains:
Mr. Pontellier had been a rather courteous husband so long as he met a
certain tacit submissiveness in his wife. But her new and unexpected line
of conduct completely bewildered him. It shocked him. Then her absolute
disregard for her duties as a wife angered him. When Mr. Pontellier
became rude, Edna grew insolent. She had resolved never to take another
step backward. (AW, 108)
At about this stage, Lonce seeks the advice of Dr. Mandelet, who tells him to leave Edna
alone, so that she can get over this passing whim in her own due time; and so Lonce goes
off to New York on his business venture of a few months duration.
Before he leaves, Edna tries to explain to Lonce what she is going through, but the attempt
proves futile. Lonce, in fact, wonders if Edna is
not growing a little unbalanced mentally. He could see plainly that she
was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself
and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment
with which to appear before the world. (AW, 108)

133

Chopins oppositional use of perspectivity becomes apparent in this scene. The second
sentence reveals Lonces ideas about Edna, which are then subtly undermined by the
comment from the narrator in the following phrase. It is noteworthy to see that it is again
the metaphor of clothes that is used to describe what Edna is experiencing. Throughout the
process, Edna hardly ever feels angry or resentful towards Lonce. She simply decides to
do and to think as she pleases. She even cries a little when he leaves for New York and
believes that she will become lonely without him. But after all, a radiant peace settled
upon her when she at last found herself alone (AW, 125). As a matter of fact,
when Edna was at last alone, she breathed a big, genuine sigh of relief. A
feeling that was unfamiliar but very delicious came over her. She walked
all through the house, from one room to another, as if inspecting it for the
first time. And she perambulated around the outside of the house,
investigating. The flowers were like new acquaintances; she
approached them in a familiar spirit, and made herself at home among
them. (AW, 126)
Just as Edna becomes a different person when she stops belonging to Lonce, so the house
seems to take on a different character in the absence of its owner. Later Edna even decides
to move out of Lonces mansion to a small house she can finance independently.
Instinct had prompted her to put away her husbands bounty in casting off
her allegiance. She did not know how it would be when he returned.
but whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another
than herself. (AW, 135)
Edna realizes that what she wants is to escape Lonces ownership of herself, to leave
behind forever her place among his possessions. Yet, she still goes along with Lonces
cover story that she has moved so the mansion can be renovated. She seems to admire the
business instincts that motivate the story and the ingenuity that conceives it. Edna continues
to value some of her husbands qualities, but she knows that he will never respect her as an
individual, a person rather than a wife, a housewife, or a mother. The contemporary reader
can take heed of these ideas through the very private activity of reading a novel and can
thus experience the awakening process alongside with Edna. In this way, the
problematizing aspect of the text really makes the reader experience the difficulties
involved in adopting other behavioral patterns.
Influenced by her need to be recognized as an individual, Edna turns to Robert, who has
chosen her as the object of the attention he devotes to one of the married women at his
mothers resort every year. The Creole women he has honored in this way during the
previous summers have never taken his attentions seriously; but Edna, entangled in forces
beyond her comprehension, begins to depend upon his understanding presence. And at the
end of the day they spend together on Chnire Caminada, when Robert leaves Edna
waiting for her husband to return from Kleins hotel, Edna wonders why.
It did not occur to her to think he might have grown tired of being with
her the livelong day. She was not tired, and she felt that he was not. She
regretted that he had gone. It was so much more natural to have him stay.
(AW, 88)

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

Edna herself only realizes that sexual desire strongly colors her affection for Robert, when
he suddenly announces that he is going to Mexico. After he leaves, she feels that his going,
had some way taken the brightness, the color, the meaning out of
everything. The conditions of her life were in no way changed, but her
whole existence was dulled, like a faded garment which seems to be no
longer worth wearing. (AW, 95)
As her personality emerges during his absence, her passion for him grows, too. It is again
Adle Ratignolle who tries to correct Edna and who attempts to warn her concerning her
irregular behavior. Now highly pregnant, she visits Edna in the little house:
Madame Ratignolle had dragged herself over, avoiding the too public
thoroughfares, she said. She complained that Edna had neglected her
much of late. Besides, she was consumed with curiosity to see the little
house and the manner in which it was conducted. She wanted to hear all
about the dinner party; Monsieur Ratignolle had left so early. (AW, 153)
Monsieur Ratignolle had left the party at ten oclock because Madame Ratignolle was
waiting for him at home. She was bien souffrante, and she was filled with vague dread,
which only her husbands presence could allay (AW, 145). As a concerned husband
should, he had been the first to leave Ednas party to be with his wife who was now seven
months pregnant. During Adles visit to the little house, Adle and Edna talk about the
party, the pigeon house, and Ednas conduct. Adle wonders about the smallness of the
house: Where on earth was she going to put Mr. Pontellier in that little house, and the
boys? (153). Adle is also worried about Ednas staying there alone:
Well, the reason you know how evil-minded the world is some one
was talking of Alce Arobin visiting you. Of course, it wouldnt matter if
Mr. Arobin had not such a dreadful reputation. Monsieur Ratignolle was
telling me that his attentions alone are considered enough to ruin a
womans name. (AW, 153)
Adle means well in giving Edna this advice; she is a good friend and she values Ednas
company.
Adle also asks Edna to assist her during the accouchement, as her sister will not be able
to come, and she would appreciate the presence of a friend. Edna promises to come. Very
soon after Adles visit Robert returns from Mexico. Edna has freed herself from among
Lonces possessions, as we have seen, and she greets Robert with frank and open joy. He
responds, Mrs. Pontellier, you are cruel (AW, 158). The same Creole and Catholic
culture that molded Lonce also influenced Robert, and he does not understand Edna any
better than her husband does. At first Robert avoids her, but then he confesses that he
dreams of asking Lonce to set her free to marry him. Her reaction to this shocks him.
You have been a very, very foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of
impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I am
no longer one of Mr. Pontelliers possessions to dispose of or not. I give
myself where I choose. If he were to say, Here, Robert, take her and be
happy; she is yours, I should laugh at you both. His face grew a little
white. What do you mean? he asked. (AW, 167)

135

Before Edna can try to explain, a servant comes to take her to Adle. Edna rushes off to her
friend and bravely tries to assist her through the delivery. It is not an easy birth, and Edna is
shocked by the whole process. She perseveringly stays at Adles side, though, and only
leaves after the baby has been born.
Adles nine-month pregnancy and the final giving birth to a new life have developed
alongside Ednas awakening process during this period. The final step in Adles
pregnancy, the accouchement, seems to be the only correction Edna pays heed to. It
seems to stir her conscience. It makes her wonder whether the process she is going through
is right or wrong, and instead of fulfilling her own individualization process this event is
the first aspect to interfere with it.
After returning home from Adles accouchement, Edna only finds a note from Robert,
informing her that he has left, because he loves her. This is the second aspect to interfere
with Ednas awakening process. Edna realizes that it is mainly her imagination that has
endowed Robert with sympathetic understanding, but that he does not understand her need
to be recognized as an individual human being, either. She becomes conscious that, the
day would come when he, too, and the thought of him would melt out of her existence,
leaving her alone (AW, 175). Edna consciously perceives that she is stuck in a vicious
circle; she cannot go back to her husband or have more children, and dutifully perform the
social roles of wife, housewife, mother, and lady, as she should. Society will not accept her,
if she does fulfil her awakening process, becomes a painter, and has the occasional affair
with a man. The only way out of this impasse for Edna seems to give up altogether.
4.4: IN PERSPECTIVE
Chopins use of the mirror image in The Awakening gave nineteenth-century and later
readers a good idea of the behavioral patterns expected of women at that time. In both the
gender and class context upper middle-class American women had to fulfil the social roles
assigned to them. Self-realization was considered a male prerogative, though even for men
this right would be reserved for the higher social echelons. By mirroring Ednas awakening
process with Adles pregnancy it also becomes clear in a very practical way what the tasks
of a woman were.
Women had quite a few obligations; in marriage they were supposed to fulfil the
appropriate social roles and stick to their marriage vows. Lonce is astonished by Ednas
deviance from this and he visits Dr. Mandelet to ask him for advice, [s]hes got some sort
of notion in her head concerning the eternal rights of women; and you understand we
meet in the morning at the breakfast table (AW, 118). As I discussed in Chapter 2.6, in
daily life a great many women had already begun to question the rules and regulations of
patriarchal society, and in America such movements gained solid ground around the turn of
the century. In The Awakening one group is mentioned by Dr. Mandelet in his response to
Lonces question:
Has she, asked the Doctor, with a smile, has she been associating of
late with a circle of pseudo-intellectual women super-spiritual superior
beings? My wife has been telling me about them. (AW, 118)

136

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Ednas behavior is also a sign of the times. Her conduct may not be acceptable for the
patriarchal society depicted in the novel; yet, from her perspective the norms prove a
restriction to her feminine nature. Chopin thus underlines the negated possibilities for a
woman in the social context sketched in the novel. The contemporary Louisiana norm and
value system is thus thematized and begins to appear in a different light for the reader.
That the awakening process Edna goes through becomes understandable is a result of the
system of perspectivity used in this novel. The arrangement of the perspectives used
throughout the novel is similar to the oppositional arrangement mentioned by Iser.
35
The
story is told to us by an omniscient narrator, but within that account we are presented with
perspectives which consider the norm and value system of a particular class in both a
positive and a negative way. In the novel such an oppositional arrangement is sometimes
realized by means of the contrasting of the perspectives of the two female protagonists, but
occasionally it is also the perspectives of one of the protagonists and the narrator that are
compared. Most of the time, we are told about the events from Ednas point of view. The,
in fact, unacceptable and unpopular process Edna is going through is thus made
comprehensible for the reader. We see things from her perspective, we are informed about
her motivations and, even though, as readers we may not agree, the process at least
becomes understandable.
The more individual aspects of feminine nature are portrayed as being opposed to the
contemporary norm- and value system, and also begin to cast doubt upon it in proportion to
its limitations. The negation of other possibilities by the contemporary norms leads to a
new appreciation of feminine nature to the extent that the norms of the depicted Catholic
and Creole society are revealed as a constraint on Ednas individuality. By means of this
thematization the readers attention becomes fixed, not upon what the norms represent, or
how their sanction or correction through the mirror image, Adle Ratignolle, works, but
upon what their manifestation excludes. They no longer just represent the social regulators
prevalent in the thought systems of the nineteenth century, but instead, they indicate the
amount of feminine potential which they suppress, because, as rigid principles, they cannot
tolerate any different behavioral patterns.
What the narrator presents as Ednas well-intentioned authenticity seems to turn into the
incompetence of an impulsive nature, at least according to the represented contemporary
norm- and value system, and we perceive that even the best of intentions may come to
nothing, if they are not aided by changing social values. The example of aberrant behavior,
portrayed in Edna, is more outspoken than Shirleys behavior and the mirroring of both
protagonists here reveals more extreme dramatic oppositions than the earlier novel, but the
ideas Chopin conveys to her readers are a similar concern with individuality and well-being
of women.
4.5: MIXED EMOTIONS
On 22 April 1899, Herbert S. Stone & Company from Chicago officially issued The
Awakening in America. The Awakening, which sold for $1.50 a copy, was a slim volume
with a light green linen binding decorated with graceful green and wine-dark vines, printed

35
See Chapter 1.3 in this dissertation for a detailed explanation of the various types of text
perspectives.

137

on the sides and spine in red. There had been various pre-publications to promote the novel.
The first review that was printed in the St. Louis Republic was also encouraging. But most
of the local American reviews that appeared between April 30th and October were quite
concerned about the subject matter of the book. Chopins art, structure, style, language,
imagery, as well as her proficiency as a writer of local color received applause, but her
topic was condemned. Reviews in national newspapers were more positive, and in Great
Britain critics admitted that it was one of the years most significant books.
36
A Dutch poet,
Maarten Maartens, pleaded for its translation into Dutch, Scandinavian and Russian.
37
Yet,
because the novel was regarded as controversial and shocking on publication, it did not
receive very wide distribution or dissemination.
Its boldness of subject and design earned it some supporters. Many friends and
acquaintances wrote Chopin very enthusiastic letters. But the absence of an arbitrating,
moralizing voice within the narrative structure and the depravity of the plot caused some
critics to condemn the novel. In general, opinions about the novel varied greatly. It was
Chopins misfortune that it was especially the local press that seemed to take so much
offence at the novel. Quite a few local readers and critics could not appreciate Ednas
behavior, but, as I hope to show, they understood the meaning of the novel. The narrative
strategies used by Chopin worked well, but the contemporary social context of a mainly
Catholic Louisiana society was not ready for such a leap in behavioral patterns.
38

That the novels meaning was understood becomes clear from an examination of some
contemporary critical reviews.
39
I have also included several newspaper articles from minor
newspapers and journals, because Chopins early recognition was mostly regional.
Characterization
One quarter of the reviews of The Awakening that are still available describe the novel in
quite positive terms. Several of these reviews focus on Ednas awakening as an aspect of

36
The National Cyclopedia of American Biography XXV (New York: James T. White & Co., 1936)
70-71.
37
This fact is first stated in Lady Janet Scammon Youngs letter which is fully cited by Daniel Rankin
in his study Kate Chopin and Her Creole Stories, 178. Repeated by Toth, 364. In his study, Per
Seyersted adds: I am indebted to the Maartens-expert, Professor W. Van Maanen of Amsterdam, for
the information that this author was indeed in London in Oct. 1899, but that he apparently never
referred to Kate Chopin in writing, 225. Maarten Maartens (1858-1915) was a pseudonym for Jozua
Marius Willem van der Poorten-Schwartz. He was a Dutch poet and writer who wrote the first
Dutch detective novel called The Black Box Murder (1890). He wrote in English, and he was very
much esteemed in Great Britain, the United States and Germany. He received an honorary doctorate
from the University of Aberdeen and he was a member of the American Authors Club. In The
Netherlands he was not very popular, though his poetry, which he wrote in Dutch under the
pseudonym of Joan van den Heuvel, was praised.
38
Investigations of the reception of The Awakening at later points in history have shown that the
understanding of the novel did not change that much, but that its appreciation has increased
immensely. As, for example, Corse and Westervelt have shown, there is an undeniable reciprocity
between the socio-historical context and the evaluation of a literary work (Corse & Westervelt, 139-
161). In general, nineteenth century novels used to be read for and judged concerning their moral
messages. It is therefore not surprising that a book like The Awakening was not appreciated more at
the time.
39
For an overview of all the contemporary reviews examined, please see the Appendix.

138

THE MIRROR IMAGE

human nature or a desire for a fuller life. Just as with the discussion of the reception of
Shirley, I will quote from quite a few articles and reviews to give a flavor of, not only the
general interpretative strategies, but especially of the actual reactions of individual readers.
The Awakenings first notice, by Lucy Monroe in the Book News issue of March 1899, was
extremely favorable. In the article, Monroe refers to Chopins work as a remarkable
novel, one
so keen in it analysis of character, so subtle in its presentation of
emotional effects that it seems to reveal life as well as to represent it. In
reading it you have the impression of being in the very heart of things,
you feel the throb of the machinery, you see and understand the slight
transitions of thought, the momentary impulses, the quick sensations of
the hardness of life, which govern so much of our action. It is an intimate
thing, which in studying the nature of one woman reveals something
which brings her in touch with all women something larger than herself.
This it is which justifies the audacity of The Awakening and makes it
big enough to be true.
40

Chopins use of emotional realism is praised, as is her portrayal of female character. In
Monroes view, Kate Chopin is an artist in the manipulation of a complex character, and
faulty as the woman is, she has the magnetism which is essential to the charm of a novel.
It is a quality hard to analyze, for it does not seem to be in what she says
or does; it is rather, as in life, in what she is In construction, in the
management of movements and climaxes, the thing shows a very subtle
and a brilliant kind of art. (Toth, 491)
The next announcement was a pre-publication in The Book Buyer of April 1899, with a
portrait of Kate Chopin in ruffled hat and boa. Her Bayou Folk had many delighted
readers, The Book Buyer reported, and her new novel, The Awakening, is said to be
analytical and fine-spun, and of peculiar interest to women (Toth, 329).
41

The first St. Louis review, in the St. Louis Republic for March 25, 1899, was also
encouraging:
The phase of development which Mrs. Kate Chopin describes in The
Awakening is rare in fiction, but common enough in life. A woman who
has been merely quiescent, who has accepted life as it came to her,
without analysis and without question, finally awakens to the fact that she
has never lived. Mrs. Chopin tells the whole of her story, with its
inevitable consequences of joy and suffering. Quietly as the work is done,
it makes her intensely real; it brings her out with extraordinary

40
Lucy Monroe, Review of The Awakening, Book News Monthly XVII (March 1899): 387, in a
section called Chicagos New Books. The whole article is reprinted in Toth, 491. Toth adds that
Monroe was chief reader and literary editor at Stone & Company who published The Awakening
and may not have been disinterested.
41
Corse and Westervelt do not examine this review; according to them it is a prepublication
announcement rather than a review; 156, note 3.

139

distinctness and force. It is the work of an artist who can suggest more
than one side of her subject with a single line. (Toth, 329)
What is particularly interesting about this passage is that the writer indicates that the story
allows more than one reading of her subject. Conservative contemporary views
condemned Edna straightforwardly, but this seems too simple an approach to The
Awakening. The story also attempts to evoke sympathy for a character who does not
comply with the prevalent norm and value system. This critic seems to realize this, and to
approve of it. The Boston Beacon review is equally positive. It agrees that The Awakening,
by Kate Chopin, is emphatically not a book for very young people but it referred to the
novel as a cautionary tale, a criticism of marriage without real love. The Beacon had
quite a modern interpretation of Ednas lover:
The pure affection of her lover saves the heroine from irrevocable
disgrace by a very narrow margin, but it is a powerful stroke on the part
of the author to secure a strong artistic effect. In thus dealing with the
subject the author emphasizes the immorality of a marriage of
convenience. (Toth, 348)
This newspaper was also unique in not condemning Ednas sexual desires:
There is an evident effort to illustrate without prudery very much
without prudery that the normal woman is capable without sin of
experiencing a full awakening of the entire human nature. One closes the
volume, wondering what good, clever old Dr. Mandelet would have said
to justify his telling the heroine not to blame herself, whatever came.
(Toth, 348)
42

The New York Times Book Review was even more sympathetic to Edna. This reviewer
states:
Would it have been better had Mrs. Kate Chopins heroine slept on
forever and never had an awakening? Does that sudden condition of
change from sleep to consciousness bring with it happiness? Not always,
and particularly poignant is the womans awakening, as Mrs. Chopin tells
it. The author has a clever way of managing a difficult subject, and wisely
tempers the emotional elements found in the situation. Such is the
cleverness in the handling of the story that you feel pity for the most
unfortunate of her sex.
43

The Awakenings initial reception occurred in a context in which traditional, Victorian ideas
about literature as a means for sentimental, spiritual redemption and the support of a culture
of the feelings still dominated. This novels interpretation as a redemptive tale would be
quite a stretch, but the reviews in the Boston Beacon, The New York Times Book Review
and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, quoted later, managed to understand the novel in this way
and consequently evaluated it more positively than most other newspapers. Generally,
however, the nineteenth-century assumption of literatures function as an edifying and

42
The passage referred to in this quote occurs in AW, 171-172.
43
100 Books for Summer Reading, New York Times Book Review (24 June 1899): 408.

140

THE MIRROR IMAGE

morally redemptive medium worked against the possibility of considering this a more
highly regarded novel, especially because Ednas behavior seemed to question and
transgress borders, rather than to respect their limitations.
A more neutral notice in the Publishers Weekly pays attention to both female main
characters and the contrast between them:
A Kentucky girl, brought up among strict Presbyterians had married a
Creole speculator, chiefly because her family had actively opposed the
marriage because the man was a Catholic. He took her to New Orleans,
and when the story opens she is twenty-eight, the mother of two boys,
spending her summer at Grand Isle. In strong contrast is her Creole friend
devoted to husband and children. The descriptions of Creole summer
pastimes, the hotel life, the flirtations, chiefly occupy the author. This
summer Madame Montpellier [sic] awakens to the fact that her indulgent,
good-natured husband and her children and home do not satisfy her. Two
men stir her emotional nature for a short time. There is a tragical
ending.
44

Overall, the other contemporary reviews are less positive about the novel. It is not that
critics do not understand the book, but they would have preferred a more traditional moral
message. In my discussion of the reception of Shirley, I already mentioned that Corse and
Westervelt indicated that nineteenth-century novels were mostly read for and judged
concerning their ethical aspects. In relation to their own examination of The Awakening
their data show that because of Chopins failure to promote the contemporary norm and
value system, the story as a whole was not appreciated more.
We can see a similar reaction in the quotations that will now follow. Still, even these more
negative reviews contain passages that indicate that the meaning of the novel was clearly
understood. Most of the articles from which they were taken were published anonymously.
A review in the Chicago Times Herald admits that the book is strong and that Kate Chopin
has a:
keen knowledge of certain phases of feminine character But it was not
necessary for a writer of so great refinement and poetic grace to enter the
over-worked field of sex fiction This is not a pleasant story, but the
contrast between the heroine and another character who is devoted to her
husband and family saves it from utter gloom, and gives us a glimpse of
the real Mrs. Chopin.
45

The representation of a character like Adle Ratignolle provides the edifying aspect that
would have been a requirement of instructive literature of the time. It is interesting to see
that it is especially the contrast between the opposing images of the Angel in the House
and the more rebellious character that is stressed in this quotation. The comparing and
contrasting of the main characters seemed to work as a consciousness-raising technique. It
succeeded in thematizing the acceptable behavior for women, by raising it to a more

44
Weekly Record of New Publications, Publishers Weekly (13 May 1899): 772; cited in Toth, 341.
45
Originally published in the Chicago Times-Herald (1 June 1899): 9 in a section called Books of
the Day; cited in Springer, 183; cited in Culley, 149.

141

conscious level of understanding. The stabilization of the contemporary norm and value
system by means of the good example of Adle, though, in my view, hardly the main goal
of the story, also seemed successful.
Social roles
The critic Charles L. Deyo discusses Chopins novel very elaborately.
46
In his review in the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch he summarizes the plot and he criticizes Lonce Pontellier for
treating his wife as a bit of decorative furniture. He mentions Ednas interest in painting,
her friendship with Mademoiselle Reisz, and Roberts departure. Edna he consideres not
good enough for heaven, not wicked enough for hell. He notices her neglect of the
traditional tasks of a mother:
Her children did not help her, for she was not a mother woman and didnt
feel that loving babies was the whole duty of a woman. She loved them,
but said that while she was willing to die for them she couldnt give up
anything essential for them.
He also mentions her neglect of her husband: Her husband was extinct so far as she was
concerned; but he praises the books flawless art, and the delicacy of touch of rare skill
in construction, the subtle understanding of motive, the searching vision into the recesses of
the heart. He compliments the style of The Awakening, power appears, power born of
confidence In delicious English, quick with life, never a word too much, simple and
pure, the story proceeds with classic severity through a labyrinth of doubt and temptation
and dumb despair. Deyos discussion focuses on the representation of the various social
roles for women. He takes the novel much more seriously than many other critics did and
he was less negative about Ednas behavior.
47

The 1890s in America saw the sentimentalizing of middle-class womens social function as
they were displaced from the (male) productive sphere to the role of consumers, wives,
housewives, and mothers whose power lay in their domestic and religious influence over
their families.
48
Novels became a vehicle for the distribution of this desired influence.
Literary critics not only accepted but preached the conservative idea of the Angel in the
House and praised female characters who were pious, pure, domestic, and pleasing to
others. The depiction of Edna in The Awakening did not fit into this approach. On the
contrary, the reviewer of the New Orleans Times-Democrat states:
A woman of twenty-eight, a wife and twice a mother who in pondering
upon her relations to the world about her, fails to perceive that the
relation of a mother to her children is far more important than the
gratification of a passion which experience has taught her is, by its very
nature, evanescent, can hardly be said to be fully awake. In a civilized
society the right of the individual to indulge all his caprices is, and must
be, subject to many restrictive clauses, and it cannot for a moment be

46
Charles L. Deyo, The Newest Books, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (20 May 1899):4 ; cited in Kate
Chopin: The Awakening: An Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism. Edited by Margaret Culley (New
York: Norton, 1976) 147-149.
47
Toth adds that Deyo was a close friend of Chopin , 342-343.
48
Maxine S. Seller, Chapter 23: The United States, 517.

142

THE MIRROR IMAGE

admitted that a woman who has willingly accepted the love and devotion
of a man, even without an equal love on her part who has become his
wife and the mother of his children has not incurred a moral obligation
which peremptorily forbids her from wantonly severing her relations with
him, and entering openly upon the independent existence of an unmarried
woman. there is throughout the story an undercurrent of sympathy for
Edna, and nowhere a single note of censure of her totally unjustifiable
conduct.
49

I would argue that it is not quite accurate to suggest that the story shows sympathy for
Ednas conduct throughout the novel. The sometimes detached perspective of the narrator,
the mirroring of the behavior of the two female main characters, and the critical remarks
uttered by some of the minor characters construct an opinion about Ednas behavior that is
more nuanced than that. Yet, this more nuanced representation in itself seems too extreme
for 1899, as this critics reaction suggests. The reviewer of the Los Angeles Sunday Times
has a similar reaction, and states:
[t]here are sentences here and there through the book that indicate the
authors desire to hint her belief that her heroine had the right of the
matter and that if the woman had only been able to make other people
understand things as she did she would not have had to drown herself
in the blue waters of the Mexican Gulf.
This reviewer considers it a story about fool women and adds:
as the biography of one individual out of that large section of femininity
which may be classified as fool women the book is a strong and
graceful piece of work. It is like one of Aubrey Beardsleys hideous but
haunting pictures with their disfiguring leer of sensuality, but yet carrying
a distinguishing strength and grace and individuality. The book shows a
searching insight into the motives of the fool woman order of being, the
woman who learns nothing by experience and has not a large enough
circle of vision to see beyond her own immediate desires. In many ways,
it is unhealthily introspective and morbid in feeling, as the story of that
sort of woman must inevitably be.
50

Linked with the contemporary ideas about appropriate literary practice were equally strong
ideas about the social roles for women. As we have seen, in the 1890s, middle-class women
were still denied a role in the newly industrializing economy; they were positioned as the
moral guardians of families and society and as the embodiment of a certain kind of
Christian piety, thus maintaining some importance in society. This happened at high cost
leading to constructions of appropriate female behavior that denied a womans relevance,
except as she contributed to others. The cult of motherhood seemed to require that a good
woman should sacrifice herself for her family. From such an interpretive bias, it is difficult
to read Ednas character and behavior as interesting or brave or praiseworthy. After all,
Edna was fond of her children in an uneven, impulsive way. She would sometimes gather

49
First published in the New Orleans Times-Democrat (18 June 1899): 14-15; cited in Springer, 184;
cited in Culley, 150.
50
Review in the Los Angeles Sunday Times (25 June 1899): 12; in a section called Fresh Literature.

143

them passionately to her heart; she would sometimes forget them (AW, 63). Edna is not a
mother-woman and is defined in clear contrast to Adle and to such women who
idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface
themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels (51). Ednas acceptance
of sexuality outside marriage fundamentally transgresses the definition of womens roles as
moral guardians, wives, housewives, and mothers.
Literary critics kept publishing negative reviews; focusing especially on norms, values and
the (required) social roles for women. The reviewer of the Nation explains:
[w]e cannot see that literature or the criticism of life is helped by the
detailed history of the manifold and contemporary love affairs of a wife
and mother. Had she lived by Prof. William Jamess advice to do one
thing a day one does not want to do (in Creole society, two would
perhaps be better), flirted less and looked after her children more or even
assisted at more accouchements we need not have been put to the
unpleasantness of reading about her and the temptations she trumped up
for herself.
51

Again the traditional social roles required of women are stressed. In the absence of their
confirmation, this reviewer cannot approve of the novel either. All readers and critics seem
to become very much involved in the story. Isers theories about the reading process are
applicable here, too. Rather than analyzing the structure of the novel, the use of
perspectives, or the techniques of characterization, most responses focus on the ethical
aspects of the story and many reviewers indulged in fits of morality. This reviewer of the
Nation again responds emotionally, rather than analytically.
Sexual independence
The larger part of the contemporary reviews were published anonymously, but at least two
of the more negative contemporary reviews were known to have been written by women.
These were the reviews by Frances Porcher and Willa Cather. To write the St. Louis
Mirrors review of The Awakening, which appeared on 4 May 1899, Billy Reedy, the editor
in chief selected a woman who had much in common with Chopin. Frances Porcher was a
short story writer, a widow, and she attended parties that Chopin also went to. Porcher was
a Virginian by ancestry, but she attended Missouri private schools. Porcher was an active
contributer of book reviews, short stories, and dramatic criticism for the St. Louis Mirror,
while also freelancing for other newspapers. However, Porchers stories were generally
from a male point of view, and rarely sympathetic to women who were other than
conventional. She disliked women who were cynical or who wanted to control their own
lives. She disapproved of anything unpleasant that strayed from the ideal.
52
In 1899,
Frances Porcher was much more conservative than Chopin, both in her writing, and in her
thinking about the subjects Chopin portrayed in The Awakening, such as lovers outside
marriage, and a mothers obligations to her children. Porcher believed in a writers

51
It first appeared in the Nation LXIX (3 August 1899): 96; cited in Springer, 185.
52
In her Introduction to Women and Literature in Britain 1500-1700, Helen Wilcox points out that
we should avoid the assumption that patriarchal culture was upheld only by men; many of the tropes
of misogynist thinking were deeply absorbed and reproduced by women themselves. Even during the
timespan examined here, this appears to be true (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 4.

144

THE MIRROR IMAGE

responsibility to avoid morally diseased characters and adult sin. She admired Chopins
peculiar charm of style and beauty of description, but The Awakening worried her:
It is not a pleasant picture of soul-dissection, take it anyway you like;
and so, though she finally kills herself, or rather lets herself drown to
death, one feels that it is not in the desperation born of an over-burdened
heart, torn by complicating duties but rather because she realizes that
something is due to her children, that she cannot get away from, and she
is too weak to face the issue. Besides which, and this is the stronger
feeling, she has offered herself wholly to the man, who loves her too well
to take her at her word she has awakened to know the shifting,
treacherous, fickle deeps of her own soul in which lies, alert and strong
and cruel, the fiend called Passion.
In Porchers eyes, Ednas was not even a proper improper passion. It was not love, but
something sensual and devilish. She played the wanton in her soul. Porcher condemned
Edna not for her thoughts, but for her actions, for choosing sensuality over self-sacrifice.
This novel Porcher concluded is not a pleasant picture of soul-dissection. According to
her, it is better to lie down in the green waves and sink down in close embraces of old
ocean, and so she does.
53

In July The Awakening received its third known review by a female critic. The Pittsburgh
Leaders reviewer, who signed herself by her middle name (Sibbert), was the twenty-
three-year-old writer named Willa Cather.
54
Cather admired Chopins writing, but she
detested the subject of this novel. She called the novel a Creole Bovary, because of the
similar themes.
55
Both novels are about women who demand more romance out of life
than God put into it. This class of women, Cather stressed, expect
The passion of love to fill and gratify every need of life, whereas nature
only intended that it should meet one of many demands. They insist upon
making it stand for all the emotional pleasures of life and art; expecting
an individual and self-limited passion to yield infinite variety, pleasure,
and distraction, to contribute to their lives what the arts and the
pleasurable exercise of the intellect gives to less limited and less intense
idealists They have staked everything on one hand, and they lose
Edna Pontellier, fanciful and romantic to the last, chose the sea on a
summer night and went down with the sound of her first lovers spurs in
her ears, and the scent of pinks about her. And the next time I hope that

53
Frances Porcher, St. Louis Mirror IX (4 May 1899): 6; cited in Toth, 338-340.
54
Willa Sibert Cather (1873-1947); American author and teacher; considered to be one of the best
chroniclers of pioneering life in the 20
th
century; she wrote among other works My Antonia (1918).
55
Madame Bovary (1857) by Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880). This story of the adulteries and suicide
of a doctors wife in provincial Normandy, is notable for its rigorous psychological development, and
manifests the qualities that mark all of Flauberts mature work: authenticity of detail, an impersonal
narrative method, and a precise and harmonious style. Certain passages in Madame Bovary having
been judged to be offensive to public morals, Flaubert, his publisher, and his printer were tried but
acquitted.

145

Miss Chopin will devote that flexible iridescent style of hers to a better
cause.
56

Yet, her insistence on the arts and the pleasurable exercise of the intellect as being
equally and perhaps even more important sources of satisfaction to less limited and less
intense idealists is something that Chopin might have agreed with. Overall, neither
Porcher, nor Cather mention the contrasting of the female main characters, any other
narrative strategies or the woman question. For them Chopins emotional realism mainly
seems to draw attention to the sexual aspect.
In order to get as wide a perspective as possible on contemporary responses to The
Awakening, I also investigated personal comments, letters and fan-mail from around 1899.
Chopin, for example, received some fan-mail from two London readers while she was in
Wisconsin. They had been sent to her c/o Herbert S. Stone, who forwarded them to her.
57

The cover letter was from Lady Janet Scammon Young in London, an admirer of The
Awakening, Evidently like all of us you believe Edna to have been worth saving believe
her to have been too noble to go to her death as she did, and she also suggested an
alternative scenario for the novel:
But suppose her husband had been conceived on higher lines? Suppose
Dr. Mandalet had said other things to him had said, for example:
Pontellier, like most men you fancy that because you have possessed
your wife hundreds of times she necessarily long ago came to entire
womanly self knowledge that your embraces have as a matter of course
aroused whatever of passion she may be endowed with. You are
mistaken. She is just becoming conscious of sex is just finding herself
compelled to take account of masculinity as such. You cannot arrest that
process whatever you do; you should not wish to do so. Assist this birth
of your wifes deeper womanliness. Be tender, let her know that you see
how Robert, Arobin affect her. Laugh with her over the evident influence
of her womanhood over them. (Toth, 358)
Dr. Mandalet, Young wrote, should advise Lonce Pontellier to trust Edna. If Ednas
husband followed that advice, Young had Dr. Mandalet say in a year you will have a new
wife with whom you will fall in love again; & you will be a new husband, manlier, more
virile and impassioned with whom she will fall in love again. Young seemed convinced of
the didactic options of a novel and she also believed that a woman must distinguish
between passion and love and that, she said, should be the subject of Chopins next novel.
You can write it. You alone. You are free from decadency. Your mind
and heart are healthful, free, clean, sympathetic. Give us a great hearted
manly man give us a great natured woman for his wife. Give us the
awakening of her whole nature, let her go to the utmost short of actual
adultery not for the sake of scenes of passion, but that readers may be

56
This review can be found in The World and the Parish: Willa Cathers Articles and Reviews II; Ed.
William Curtin (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970) 697-699.
57
Both letters are wholly cited in Daniel Rankins study, 178-182. Per Seyersted adds in a note in his
study: These letters (and the envelope) are at the Missouri Historical Society at St. Louis, 225.

146

THE MIRROR IMAGE

helped whose self respect is shipwrecked or near it because they have
gone far and are saying I might as well go all the way. (Toth, 359)
Lady Janet also enclosed a letter from Dunrobin Thomson, whom she called the great
consulting physician of England and the soundest critic since Matthew Arnold. Dr.
Thomson had written an admiring letter about The Awakening, which he called easily the
book of the year. It reminded him, he said, of The Open Question but how vastly
superior in power, ethic and art is this newer book.
58
He also believed that Ednas case
was not exceptional. The fault lay with the accursed stupidity of men, who:
marry a girl, she becomes a mother. They imagine she has sounded the
heights and depths of womanhood. Poor fools! She is not even awakened.
She, on her part is a victim of the abominable prudishness which
masquerades as modesty or virtue. (Toth, 359)
Taught that passion is disgraceful, the doctor added, young women often become
confused about their feelings:
In so far as normally constituted womanhood must take account of
something sexual, it is called love. It was inevitable, therefore, that
Edna should call her feeling for Robert love. It was as simply & purely
passion as her feeling for Arobin. Kate Chopin would not admit that.
Being (I assume) a woman, she too would reserve the word love for
Ednas feeling for Robert. (Toth, 360)
According to him, husbands should teach their wives to distinguish between passion and
love so that any natural attraction a wife felt toward other men would not touch her wife-
life, her mother-life, her true self-hood.
59

Chopin was very pleased with her letters from London. She may not have agreed with
everything in them, as their focus is very much on the sexual aspect and there are many
more facets to the novel. The Awakening is not solely a criticism of Lonce Pontelliers
failure to understand his wife, nor is the novel only about Ednas sexual awakening. Ednas
revolt is against the institution of marriage, and the confinement of her dreams, and she
ultimately refuses everything compulsory: social calls, her husbands bounty, her
childrens demands, together with her lovers expectations that she be honorable or amoral.
Still, the letters that had been sent to Chopin throughout the year often seemed to have
much more nuanced and intelligent remarks in them than many of the negative reviews.
More nuanced views
Just after the publication of The Awakening in 1899, Chopin also received a great many
letters from friends and acquaintances. They again showed quite a different opinion than

58
By Elizabeth Robins (1862-1952), Robins was an American-born writer who campaigned for
women suffrage in England. She was president of the Women Writers Suffrage League. In the novel,
The Open Question: A Tale of Two Temperaments (London: Heinemann, 1898) which was published
under her pseudonym C. E. Raimond, the main issue is the question of the value of life or whether life
in the abstract is worth living. The subsequent question that is raised for the female protagonist is
whether women have a right to an independent career.
59
Toth tried to trace the writers of both letters, but could not find people with those names in London.
She suggests the letters may also have been invented by friends from Chopin, to cheer her, 360.

147

the contemporary negative reviews and were, in fact, more in line with the later, positive
criticism. On April 28, the poet. R. E. Lee Gibson wrote her that no story had ever affected
me so profoundly as The Awakening. The novel, he wrote, was intensely dramatic and
awfully sad, and also exceedingly clever, artistic, satisfying. He admired the novels
quiet humor, the pleasing descriptions; the dramatic situations; the analysis of character
and feeling and the consummate skill generally with which the story is constructed. The
ending made him feel bitterly grieved, and [t]he pathos of it all is overpowering; the
impression is painfully sweet and sad. It is heart-breaking. The Awakening, he said, left
him deeply stirred and strangely fascinated, and [t]here is no end to my admiration of
your undoubted genius. One sentence in Chapter XXI impressed him as a description of
Kate Chopin: To be an artist includes much, one must possess many gifts absolute gifts
which have not been acquired by ones own effort. Someone like Chopin, Gibson
believed, one capable of writing stories like yours is wonderfully gifted above the balance
of us, and is worthy of all possible praise and success (Toth, 337).
Lewis B. Ely, another friend and young St. Louis attorney, also wrote to Chopin on April
28 about The Awakening. He called the book delicate and artistic and termed it a
moral tale rather than an immoral one but I think the moral is a deep one. The book is a
sermon against un-natural-ness and Ednas marriage as I understand it -. He added, I
think there is little in it to offend anybody (Toth, 338). In May, other friends were also still
writing favorable letters. Lizzie L., a Louisville friend, wrote on 10 May that she had been,
So deeply interested, so absolutely absorbed in The Awakening that I
could not realize the denouement. It seemed so impossible that Edna
should sacrifice her life, although I understand how her nature had
become completely metamorphosed under the influence of an infatuation
she was powerless to control.
The reading process surely made this reader become part of the world evoked in the text.
Her involvement in the act of creative reading even made her misapprehend the ending of
the story; her entangled imagination probably having created a different and more liberated
one. Next to Isers explanation of the experience of the reading process, it seems to be the
emotional aspect of Chopins realistic style that stimulates the engagement of the reader.
Six days later, another friend whose signature was L. and who lived in St. Louis, wrote to
Chopin about The Awakening:
To me [this novel] is a psychological study the development of a soul
an awakening to the possibilities of life an emancipation of the whole
being from the trammels of conventionalism. But why must it ever &
always be in fiction as in fact that those brave enough to make the daring
leap are inevitably swallowed in the chasm of defeat. Why not let joy &
triumph await those who dare defy the edicts of merciless custom but
all this would be foreign to the school of Realism & you are as realistic as
Zola.
L. mentions Chopins style and she also notices the issue of emancipation as does Anna L.
Moss, a St. Louis clubwoman and book reviewer, who wrote on June 25:

148

THE MIRROR IMAGE

To make moral or immoral use of your gift is our problem, not yours. The
surety of your sense that preaching is not the province of fiction, is
delightful I wish you believed that the Ednas will somewhere,
somewhen, somehow grow into a spiritual harmony to which the splendor
of their frailty will contribute beauty that the freedom and liberty into
which your heroine went with the exultation of irrepressible life must
contribute to a result grand in the whole, as the factors she brings are
strong and compelling. (Toth, 349-351)
Moss comments on the contemporary moral approach to literature and she also refers to
the broader meaning of the novel, though she refers to freedom and liberty rather than
emancipation.
The first more generally positive reviews again started appearing from 1928 onwards.
Dorothy Anne Dondore wrote a contribution on Kate Chopin for the Dictionary of
American Biography. Her biographical sketch is accompanied by brief critical commentary.
She praises Chopin as a local colorist, and as a short story writer. Her stories are marked
according to Dondore by sympathy, delicately objective treatment, and endings poignant
in their restraint. She believes it one of the tragedies of American literature that harsh
criticism made Chopin stop writing after The Awakening, a book two decades in advance
of its time, according to her.
60

In 1932, Daniel S. Rankin published the first doctoral dissertation on Chopin: Kate Chopin
and Her Creole Stories. This was the earliest biography of Chopin and it is very valuable
for its material on how she was viewed by her immediate social context. In the same year,
Edward Larocque Tinker criticized the contemporary focus on morality. Though ostensibly
a review of Rankins biography, Tinker devotes most of his essay to critical commentary on
Chopin herself. He praises her refusal to patronize the Cajuns, and her rejection of that urge
to point a moral.
61

The National Cyclopedia of American Biography contains a brief biographical sketch plus
a short history of her work. It notes that The Awakening may have been received with
hostility in America, but adds that most English critics considered it to be one of the years
most significant books.
62
It points out that Chopin obtains her effect by accuracy of
reporting and restrained sympathy.
63
Cyrille Arnavon translated The Awakening into French
in 1953. He wrote a very appreciative introduction to the novel and helped to acquaint a
larger audience with her work. Subsequent advocates were Van Wyck Brooks, Robert
Cantwell, Carlos Baker, Lewis Leary and Joan Zlotnick who all discussed different aspects

60
This later comment was first published in the Dictionary of American Biography; ed. Allen Johnson
(New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1928) 90-91; cited in Springer, 193.
61
The article originally appeared in the New York Herald Tribune Sec. X (4 December 1932): 23; it
was called: Southern Story Teller; cited in Springer, 194.
62
From the evidence I have examined this opinion only became obvious from the letters Chopin
received from London. The novel The Awakening was not published in London at the time, because
of the initial negative responses in America. This withheld publishers from investing in it. I have not
been able to trace any British reviews at Colindale from as early as 1899 or 1900.
63
In The National Cyclopedia of American Biography XXV (New York: James T. White & Co.,
1936) 70-71; cited in Springer, 195.

149

of her work in more detail.
64
From then on, the reviews become generally more positive in
tone, and in 1966 Larzer Ziff writes:
The Awakening is a superb creative work which searchingly explores on
the very eve of the twentieth century the question of what woman was to
do with the freedom she struggled toward . The book was also the
awakening of the deepest powers of the author, but she was struck mute
by a fearful society which could not tolerate her questionings.
65

Per Seyersted published the first full length critical biography in 1969 and edited The
Complete Works of Kate Chopin published in the same year. His work made Chopins
fiction generally available for the first time and Chopin criticism now grew in scope and
appreciation (Skaggs, 6-7). Overall, late-twentieth century feminist interpretations see the
novel as a socially relevant story of the search for the female self and patriarchal limits to
womens lives that resonate powerfully with contemporary social concerns and supply rich
material for critical and pedagogical investigation. My own contribution to this discussion
is innovative in that I focus on the narrative strategies used by Chopin and examine
especially the technique of contrasting images.
The negative publicity of the novel in 1899 also led to the rumor that her book had been
banned by the local libraries. Toth examines the rumors suggesting this banning, but she
can find no evidence for it. On the contrary, The Awakening seemed to be available at both
bookstores and libraries. Officials at the Mercantile Library and the St. Louis Public
Library were critical of fiction reading. From the 1870s on, both libraries had tried to
inspire their readers with better tastes. But public library officials had als noticed that the
Mercantiles circulation soared when it stocked popular fiction. In 1871, the Public Library
created the Collection of Duplicates, consisting of popular fiction. Borrowers paid five
cents a week, so that tax money would not be used to buy such fiction. Once the books
became less popular, they would be withdrawn or sold. On 26 April 1899, the St. Louis
Public Library bought three copies of The Awakening for its Collection of Duplicates;
between 29 April and 28 June, the Mercantile Library bought four copies. Both libraries
obviously thought it an important book, worth keeping in stock. There is also no
contemporary evidence that they ever removed the novel from their shelves; though Toth
admits that, at a certain point in time, books do wear out: At the Public Library, one copy
of The Awakening was withdrawn in 1912 and another in 1914, obviously worn out; a third
copy was reported missing in 1901, but a replacement copy was bought in 1906. Toth
traces a similar process at the Mercantile Library (Toth, 368). Many contemporary readers,
then, had been able to read the novel and it was very popular at the time with the ordinary
reading public.
66

The focus of most critics and readers seemed to be on the sexual liberation requested for
women and on Ednas unusual behavior in relation to the required social roles. But the
mirroring of the main characters is noticed and Chopins style of emotional realism is

64
Peggy Skaggs, Kate Chopin (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985) 5-7.
65
It originally appeared in The American 1890s: Life and Times of a Lost Generation (New York:
The Viking Press, Inc., 1966); cited in Springer, 206.
66
Toth indicates that Chopin received $102 in royalties for The Awakening in 1899, while she earned
$3.25 for A Night in Acadie and $3.12 for Bayou Folk, 367.

150

THE MIRROR IMAGE

praised. I would therefore like to conclude with Anne Goodwyn Joness insight that the
novel does what Edna cannot, that the novel gives us a glimpse into a world beyond the
oppositions in which Edna is caught, a society where the acceptance of a different kind of
life for women opens up the possibility of recovering selfhood and womanhood in
society.
67
In spite of the limited scope still allowed to Edna, Chopins depiction of her
plight and her use of the mirror image have at least presented alternative behavioral patterns
to readers and offered options for anticipation. This quite conscious depiction of
revolutionary alternatives was indeed picked up by critics and readers, as becomes clear
from the reviews and letters referred to. Kate Chopin has thus indeed succeeded in
depicting both the restricted roles for women in contemporary society and in presenting
alternatives to the reader.
Chopin was not involved in the womens suffrage movement, in the progressive
movements for educational reform, health care reform or sanitation improvement. All
organizations in which many of the more radical female thinkers took part in the 1890s. She
was a writer of fiction and like many writers she considered that her primary responsibility
to people was to show them the truth about life as she understood it. She was not a social
reformer. Her goal was not to change the world, but to describe it accurately, to show
people the reality of the lives of women and men in the nineteenth century. She was among
the first American authors to write honestly about womens hidden lives, about womens
sexuality, and about some of the complexities and contradictions in womens relationships
with their husbands. She was a pioneer in the non-moralistic treatment of sexuality, of
divorce, and of womans urge for an existential authenticity. In many ways, she was a
modern writer, especially in her awareness of the complexities of truth and the
complications of freedom.
Bronts novel Shirley,written fifty years before Chopins novel, had received less negative
criticism. Some of the negative comments it received focused on the depiction of more
liberated patterns of behavior for women, but most of them criticized the unity of the novel
and the abundance of characters. In her request for better options for women, Bront
concentrated on education, job opportunities and equality in marriage; most contemporary
readers could not really find any fault with that. Chopin moved a step further, requesting
and depicting not only financial independence and more equal rights for women, but also
the womans sexual independence. For this last aspect, she received most of the negative
criticism. Not only did this make the novel immoral, and caused it critics to refer to the
book as sex-fiction; some critics like Willa Cather, also considered it too limited a
request. Whether one agrees with some of the criticism or not, the novel did succeed in
initiating a discussion about the proper social roles for women. Through Chopins
thematization of a womans (sexual) behavior, an intense debate on social norms and roles
for women took place amongst critics and readers. This may not have been the novels
initial goal, but the narrative strategies used in the novel do appear to develop into a real
consciousness-raising technique. This effect of the novel may not have been appreciated at
the time, the ideas represented by means of the mirror image were definitely understood.

67
Anne Goodwyn Jones, Tomorrow is Another Day: The Woman Writer in the South, 1859-1936
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981) 182.

151

Chapter 5

The Age of Innocence: Edith Whartons
Triumph
The individual is always trapped save to the extent that
he [sic] becomes aware of it within the limits of the system of
categories he owes to his upbringing and training.
Bourdieu and Wacquant
1

5.0: INTRODUCTION
The third novel that will be discussed here is by the American novelist and short story
writer Edith Wharton (1862-1937). We again move forward in time. Edith Wharton was
born in 1862 in New York, as the daughter of a distinguished and wealthy Old New York
family. She was educated privately at home and in Europe, where she traveled widely. In
1885 she married Edward Robbins Wharton, and they settled in France in 1907. The
marriage was not happy, Edith Wharton suffered from nervous illnesses, and her husbands
mental health declined in later years. They were
divorced in 1913. Edith Wharton devoted much
of her energy to a cosmopolitan social life,
which included a close friendship with Henry
James, and to a literary career, which began
with the publication of poems and stories in
Scribners Magazine.
2
Edith Wharton mostly
wrote about upper middle class New York, but
she did not idealize this milieu. Very often, in
fact, she openly criticized the emptiness and
foolishness of the lives of the rich. With a subtle
use of irony she described the differences
between the various social layers. Within these
milieux, she often focused on the conflict
between the individual and the social order. The
limitation of the space that was allowed the
individual to rebel without threatening the
structure of the community was an important
issue, and in her novel The Age of Innocence
(1920) it is again one of the main themes.
Unlike the other novels under consideration, the
most important character in this novel is a man,

1
Pierre Bourdieu and Loic J. D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1992) 126.
2
Charles Scribner (1854-1930) was the second in the line of the New York publishers bearing that
name, and the founder (in 1887) of Scribners Magazine, the outstanding literary periodical that
would last until 1930 and in which Edith Wharton published many of her short stories.

Edith Wharton ( Beinecke Library Yale)

152

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Newland Archer. Throughout the story we see things mainly from Archers perspective, but
the novel is not related through his consciousness. The reader is not allowed direct entry
into his mind; we are told what he feels and thinks.
3
Throughout the story, the narrator is
quite present and from the beginning until the end we are aware of the narrators irony, of
an intelligent and sophisticated voice developing the story and of the narrators comments
on Archers thoughts. The overall style of Whartons novel can be desrcribed as society
realism and the novel is often referred to as a novel of manners.
4

In the story, Archers existence is shaped by his interaction with the two main female
characters to such an extent, that a comparison of the influence of the heroines on his life
seems justified. The female protagonists, Ellen Olenska and May Welland, are mirror
images; they are opposites both in their behavior and in their appearances. Let me give a
summary of the novel first to sketch briefly how the two women affect Archers life.
The events described in the novel are supposed to take place in the 1870s in New York. The
plot evolves around Newland Archer, a gentleman lawyer from one of the most
distinguished families of that society. Archer is about to marry May Welland, a beautiful,
timid and innocent young woman of his habitus. At the time we enter the story, Mays
cousin, Ellen Olenska, has just returned to New York, the separated wife of an amoral
Polish count. Ellen is backed by her family, but the rest of society is quite suspicious of her.
In an attempt to support his future family, Archer assists in getting Ellen accepted by the
right social circles, and he becomes her friend and her lawyer. As the family is afraid of a
scandal, he advises her not to divorce her husband. Ellen agrees, but reluctantly, because
she does not mean to return to her husband. But Ellen is quite different from May, she is
intelligent, worldly, artistic, passionate and unconventional and Archer falls in love with
her. Becoming aware of Archers actions on her behalf, Ellen falls in love, as well, but she
insists that her regard for him depends upon their behaving honorably. Archer therefore
goes through with his marriage to May, but he is unhappy and frustrated and when he meets
Ellen again, the two plan a secret rendez-vous. Before this takes place, however, Ellen
announces her plan to return to Europe. May organizes a sumptuous farewell dinner for
Ellen. After the dinner, Archer realizes that he has underestimated his wife. May suspected
his love for Ellen, and she manipulated Ellens departure by telling her that she is pregnant,
though this is not officially confirmed at the time. Archer and May have three children and
Archer devotes much of his energy and time to politics and social service. May dies when

3
In her essay, The Ordering Style of The Age of Innocence, Viola Hopkins stresses that the point
of view is always from the outside in, rather than from the inside out The point of view is mainly
Newland Archers, but the novel is not narrated through his consciousness. His mind and perceptions
are not the filter We are not allowed free entry into his mind; we are told what he feels and thinks,
even though, remaining well behind the scene, the author never intrudes or visibly dangles the
proverbial puppet-characters. From first to last we are aware of her controlled, well-bred voice and of
her thoughts about Archers thoughts. Even though I would refer to narrator, rather than author, I
think her analysis is quite accurate. Her article can be found in American Literature 30:3 (November
1958): 345-357; 352.
4
Throughout the story Wharton describes the norm and value system of a limited social group in New
York society of the 1870s. The behavioral patterns of the members of this group were heavily
prescribed by a set of rules and regulations, hence the terms society realism and novel of manners.
Gary H. Lindberg, Edith Wharton and the Novel of Manners (Charlottesville: University Press of
Virginia, 1975).

153

The Age of Innocence: Edith Whartons Triumph
he is 57, and during a trip to Paris with his son Dallas, Archer has the chance to see Ellen
again. But he does not visit her; instead he prefers to treasure Ellen as a memory and
returns to the routine of his old-fashioned life (AOI, 289).
Previous critics, such as Cynthia Griffin Wolff, Pamela Knights and Sarah Kozloff have
elaborately substantiated that one of Edith Whartons most important themes is the contrast
between America and Europe, and they believe that throughout The Age of Innocence she
links this opposition with May and Ellen.
5
May represents innocence, America, Eden /
heaven, youth, and purity; Ellen, on the other hand, depicts experience, Europe, exile,
age, and sexuality.
6
However, Edith Wharton also wants the reader to see the
disadvantages and limitations of the restrictive codes of Old New York. To make this
possible and to allow a more nuanced interpretation of this subdivision, she also connects
the female protagonists with the following traits. She connects May with frigidity,
constraint, hypocrisy, and society; whilst Ellen is linked with the more positive traits of
passion, freedom, honesty, and art.
7
May and Ellen are consistently compared and
contrasted throughout the novel, and both the similarities (the same family; their love for
Archer; their gender, and the limitations imposed by society because of that) and
differences between them are so striking that they can be rightfully considered mirror
images.
Kozloff stresses that the main issue in Whartons novel is where to locate morality. The
Old New York sketched in the story considers itself to be the perfect example of propriety
and decorum, and prides itself on its strictness concerning form, family, and financial
probity, and its sensitivity concerning female chastity. But Kozloff indicates that
Wharton shows the readers that this society is self-deluded and hypocritical (Kozloff,
273). It is my belief that Wharton especially uses the motif of the mirror image to do this.
To examine this point further, this chapter will have a close look at the gender specific
socialization of the two women, the class specific socialization of both May and Ellen, and
their behavior in their relationship with Archer.

5.1: INNOCENCE VS EXPERIENCE
Like Caroline and Shirley, and Adle and Edna, May and Ellen have only a limited type of
education compared to present-day standards. They do not go to a regular school,
institution, or university, and the influence of the family on their socialization is all-
important. Yet, perhaps this is not so surprising as it may seem; especially if we keep Edith

5
Cynthia Griffin Wolff, Edith Wharton and the Visionary Imagination Frontiers: A Journal of
Women Studies 2:3 (Autumn 1977) 24-30, 29; Pamela Knights, Forms of Disembodiment: The
Social Subject in The Age of Innocence The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton, ed. Millicent
Bell (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995) 20-46, 31-32; Sarah Kozloff, Complicity in The Age of
Innocence Style 35:2 (Summer 2001) 271-291, 272.
6
Wolff and Knights make similar subdivisions in their study of this novel. The contrasts mentioned
here are sketched by Sarah Kozloff in her article Complicity in The Age of Innocence, 272.
7
Sarah Kozloff modifies the original opposition by introducing these more nuanced differentiations
in the aforementioned article, 272.

154

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Whartons own preferences in mind. In her autobiography, A Backward Glance, for
example, she commemorates the
ancient curriculum of house-keeping which was so soon to be swept
aside by the monstrous regiment of the emancipated: young women
taught by their elders to despise the kitchen and the linen room, and to
substitute the acquiring of University degrees for the more complex art of
civilized living Cold storage has done less harm to the home than
the Higher Education.
8

Edith Wharton understood the necessity of a better and more all-round education for
women, but she also recognized some of its drawbacks. In The Age of Innocence, it is May
Welland who receives the type of education that comes closest to the ideal of the 1870s. A
beautiful and talented young woman such as May would be entirely socially determined for
her roles as wife, housewife, and mother. She would not be allowed much opportunity for
self-realization or self-transformation. Right at the beginning of the novel, Archer already
notices the limitations of such an upbringing when he remarks that if he had been as
sheltered as May had been they would have been no more fit to find their way about than
the Babes in the Wood (AOI, 42).
9

Maxine S. Seller points out that during the 1870s womens education in the United States
was shaped both by ideologies about gender, and by the social and economic roles women
had to play (Seller, 516-544). Because such philosophies and gender roles usually refer
women to a separate and inferior sphere in patriarchal society, womens education was
different in nature from and inferior to that of men. Overall, most upper middle class
Anglo-American women would stay at home in the 1870s, which was defined by society as
the only proper sphere for the woman. Here (upper) middle-class women were expected to
exemplify the piety, sexual purity, submissiveness, and the domesticity of the Angel in the
House, to raise children with minimal assistance from men, and to provide emotional and
logistical support for their husbands. The education and socialization of girls and women
was permeated with the ideology of separate spheres that still dominated contemporary
thought and behavior.
10

May is indeed educated to become the typical Angel in the House. She not only looks like
an angel - she is blond and has big blue eyes - but she also makes this impression on others,
especially her fianc:
The darling! thought Newland Archer, his glance flitting back to the
young girl with the lilies-of-the-valley. She doesnt even guess what its
all about. And he contemplated her absorbed young face with a thrill of

8
Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance (1933; New York : Touchstone, 1998) 60.
9
It is exactly such ironic comments by characters or the narrator that make you realize that the novel
was written much later in time, namely 1920. All of the events are portrayed, with hindsight, by an
author who was very much aware of the real historical developments in the mean time. An event like
World War I (1914-1918) shattered many lives and had a great impact on people in all levels of
society; so much so that the nostalgic tone of the narrator for the society depicted becomes
understandable.
10
See Chapter 2 of this dissertation.

155

possessorship in which pride in his own masculine initiation was mingled
with a tender reverence for her abysmal purity. (AOI, 10)
Archer looks forward to having so much innocence and purity at his side, and after their
engagement has been announced at the Beauforts ball, he thinks What a new life it was
going to be; with this whiteness, radiance, goodness at ones side! (AOI, 24).
The title of the novel refers to a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds called The Age of
Innocence hanging in the National Gallery.
11
The model for the painting was a very young
girl, not a young woman. Her portrait serves as an analogue for May, whose character
Archer attempts to draw. Archers impression of his intended wife goes back to the
stereotype of the unformed virgin as an outline on a canvas, ready for her husband to fill the
image with the color of experience to create her fully mature portrait. Before their
engagement, Archer meditates on the role he would like to play in educating May: He did
not in the least wish the future Mrs Newland Archer to be a simpleton. He meant her to
develop a social tact and readiness of wit (AOI, 10). Because Archer shares the habitus
and expectations of social behavior within the narrow borders of Old New York society, he
defines May according to that contexts expectations about what a wife, housewife, and
mother should be like.
May has been thoroughly conditioned by her family and she behaves exactly as an upper
middle-class woman and wife should:
The Newland Archers, since they had set up their household, had
received a good deal of company in an informal way. Archer was fond of
having three or four friends to dine, and May welcomed them with the
beaming readiness of which her mother had set her the example in
conjugal affairs. Her husband questioned whether, if left to herself, she
would ever have asked anyone to the house; but he had long given up
trying to disengage her real self from the shape into which tradition and
training had moulded her. It was expected that well-off young couples in
New York should do a good deal of informal entertaining, and a Welland
married to an Archer was doubly pledged to the tradition. (AOI, 272-273)
Like an exact copy of her mother, May executes the tasks assigned to her to perfection.
12

Yet, it is interesting to see that, though Archer considers her behavior quite normal and in
agreement with the social role(s) expected of her, the question of the relation between the
real May and the social role(s) she has to play is also raised. Something similar happens
when May and Archer are sitting in the library one night, after dinner:
She was so placed that Archer, by merely raising his eyes, could see her
bent above her work-frame, her ruffled elbow-sleeves slipping back from

11
Cynthia Griffin Wolff suggests this in A Feast of Words:The Triumph of Edith Wharton (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1977) 312. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) was an English Rococo
Era painter. Reynolds is credited with more than 2000 portraits. He was a member of the Royal
Society of Arts and he helped found the Society of Artists.
12
May is the perfect daughter and resembles the picture sketched of daughters in Mrs. Elliss book
The Daughters of England: Their Position in Society, Character and Responsibilities (New York: D.
Appleton and Company, 1842).

156

THE MIRROR IMAGE

her firm round arms, the betrothal sapphire shining on her left hand above
her broad gold wedding-ring, and the right hand slowly and laboriously
stabbing the canvas. (AOI, 246)
Mays stabs at the embroidery canvas silently protest Archers suspected infidelity. May is
afraid Archer is having an affair with her cousin, Ellen Olenska. Marriage, however, is
surrounded with a set of double standards, and it is expected that May gives up a part of her
identity. She may not blame her husband for failing to love and respect her, and she may
not openly accuse him of being in love with Ellen.
In Europe and America, sewing had appeared for centuries in treatises on female education
as moralizing work, which taught discipline, patience, and concentration, reinforcing
womens sense of their social role and position.
13
In the nineteenth century, novelists and
poets, artists and advertisers used these older images of women with needle in hand to
reinforce the idea that sewing had always been womens work. Others feminists and
reformers, in the literature of social investigation and activism seized on womens work,
as needlework was generically termed, as a symbol of female oppression.
14
Linking these
ideas to this depiction of May illustrates Whartons attempt to both identify May with the
imposed social roles, and to depict her silent protest against some aspects of these roles.
Though prominent as a character in Book 1, May recedes into the background after her
wedding, until the farewell dinner. Her gradual removal from the plot partly reflects her
decreased individuality after marriage. This is again a type of behavior that she has learned
from her mother, who does the same in her marriage to Mr. Welland. It is part of the social
role of wife, but it is not Mays natural type of behavior. The text seems to suggest that,
given a choice, May would rather be riding or rowing, than playing the hostess or sewing.
The narrator adds, not without irony: but since other wives embroidered cushions for their
husbands she did not wish to omit this last link in her devotion (AOI, 246). Mays
imposed social roles deny her the active, physical life to which she is suited, and chain her
to fixed patterns of behavior. The narrator suggests that it is tragic that her good nature and
seeming passivity irritate Archer so much. Rather than appreciating that May is trying to
perform the roles she has learned to play to perfection, Archer only sees his own suffering.
According to Gary Lindberg, Archer feels Mays presence not simply as May but as the
incarnation of a system (Lindberg, 105). Though Archer occasionally glimpses a more

13
Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (London:
Womens Press, 1984).
14
In Common Threads, Sisters Choice: Tradition and Change in American Womens Writing,
Elaine Showalter questions needlework as a system of female communication, the common threads
of American womens culture and writing (146). Although she focuses for the most part on the
thematic use of piecing and patchwork, Showalters work sheds light on the larger significance of
needlework as both a form of female expression and a particularly moving symbolism of the
American democratic ideal (148). Showalter believes that while female cloth culture does have a
crucial meaning for American womens texts, it cannot be taken as a transhistorical and essential
form of female expression, but rather as a gendered practice that changed from one generation to the
next (147). At mid-century, many women still chose to represent sewing (and especially quilting) as
the richest functions of womens culture. For many women writing in the later nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, however, the thematics of domestic art carry only bitter associations. Sisters
Choice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

157

aggressive side of May, he usually accepts her appearance of complete innocence. Overall,
the thought of Mays upbringing oppresses him because it was supposed to be what he
wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in
smashing it like an image made of snow (AOI, 42). The representation of such violent
images seems to place Archer in an uneasy position of power, but Archers own thoughts
are depicted as more nuanced. Overall, these are the standard ideas and phrases used by
young men on the approach of their wedding-day (42). Archer himself says that he would
have gladly granted May the same freedom he has as a male. Besides, May is not really as
innocent as she seems; underneath her passive veneer, May herself knows that she must
actually be resourceful and clever to compel Archers devotion.
Margaret McDowell points out that signs of her strength appear throughout the novel:
May enjoys athletics which were at the time largely reserved for men.
15
At the archery
contest, May appears not merely athletic but god-like:
In her white dress, with a pale green ribbon about the waist and a wreath
of ivy on her hat, she had the same Diana-like aloofness as when she had
entered the Beaufort ballroom on the night of her engagement. (AOI,
177)
None of the other women Archer knows has the nymph-like ease of his wife, when, with
tense muscles and happy frown, she bent her soul upon some feat of strength (AOI, 177).
A truly weak woman would lose Archer to the charms of Ellen Olenska. May only
outwardly sticks to the accepted social roles, allowing Archer to adopt the role of the
typical patriarch. They are both forced to adapt their tactics when Ellen arrives and creates
a love triangle. May continues to display the manners of a traditional and acceptable
fiance, but she also exerts a subtle power over Archer through her manipulations to secure
his promise of loyalty, a promise that he makes in the form of wedding vows. She gains
power in her society by adapting herself to the expected social roles. In other words, she
pretends to be innocent, trusting that adhering to the traditional social roles will enable her
to win the hero, live a financially comfortable life, and raise a family according to the
values she has been taught, thus giving herself and her community a sense of continuity.
Throughout the story, May Welland is depicted as embodying the carefully preserved social
code of Old New York. The compromises that May makes to learn to comply with the
accepted social roles also shed light on Ellens situation, as the heroines are mirror images.
Mays adaptations contrast with Ellens portrayed attempt to embrace the community of her
past whilst still developing an individual identity.
16

Ellen Olenskas education was quite different from Mays upbringing. In the novel, Ellens
personality and the education she received are described as follows:
She was a fearless and familiar little thing, who asked disconcerting
questions, made precocious comments, and possessed outlandish arts,
such as dancing a Spanish shawl-dance and singing Neapolitan lovesongs
to a guitar. Under the direction of her aunt the little girl received an

15
Margaret B. McDowell, Edith Wharton (Boston: Twayne, 1976) 99.
16
Margaret B. McDowell, Viewing the Custom of her Country: Edith Whartons Feminism
Contemporary Literature 15:4 (Autumn 1974) 521.

158

THE MIRROR IMAGE

expensive but incoherent education, which included drawing from the
model, a thing never dreamed of before, and playing the piano in
quintets with professional musicians. (AOI, 53)
The social context Ellen lives in does not approve of such an education, and though people
pity the pretty little girl, they also assume that she is doomed from the start, because of this
unusual upbringing. When, as a tall bony teenager, Ellen again departs for Europe with her
aunt, people are concerned, but nobody really offers an alternative, and basically they lose
interest in her.
Ellen receives her education under the guidance of the eccentric Medora Manson. She is
raised in a European context that permits gaudy clothes, and high color and high spirits
(AOI, 53). Ellen is compared to a gipsy foundling; and, although she worries some
people with her behavior, most of her relations fall under her charm (53). Overall, the
habitus of Old New York would consider her upbringing incoherent(53). Yet, it is mainly
in the traditional community of the American lite that such subjects as drawing from the
model and playing the piano with professional musicians would be considered
problematic (53). Ellen learns about the real world of art and music, but the culture of
Old New York finds such genuine training foreign and therefore threatening.
17

Ellens education, especially the notion that she has had an education, confuses Archer:
His boyhood had been saturated with Ruskin, and he had read all the
latest books: John Addington Symonds, Vernon Lees Euphorion, the
essays of P. G. Hamerton, and a wonderful new volume called The
Renaissance by Walter Pater. He talked easily of Botticelli, and spoke of
Fra Angelico with a faint condescension. (AOI, 61-62)
But that background did not help him to understand Ellen Olenskas collection of pictures.
As an adult, he studies Herbert Spencer, Alphonse Daudet and George Eliots
Middlemarch, and he wonders what it would have been like to live in the intimacy of
drawing rooms dominated by the talk of Mrime, of Thackeray, Browning or William
Morris (AOI, 118, 88). When Archer visits Ellens house, he finds works by Paul
Bourget, Huysmans, and the Goncourt brothers in her drawing room (89). At this stage,
Archer still believes that Ellen has had an affair with M. Rivire, a French tutor who does
live in a social context where people talk to Mrime, Maupassant and the Goncourts.
18

Ellens husband used to fill their home with dramatic artists, singers, actors, musicians
(91).
19
Ellen gained her knowledge from authentic sources and her education, especially in
the arts, has been more focused and original. Archer, on the other hand, received most of

17
Katherine Joslin, Edith Wharton (London: Macmillan, 1991) 92.
18
Various of the contemporary reviews notice some anachronisms in this context. William Lyon
Phelps mentions in his review As Mrs. Wharton Sees Us, that the mention of Guy de Maupassant is
out of place in the early seventies, New York Times Book Review (17 October 1920): 1, 11; an
anonymous reviewer states: even the most advanced young people could not have been reading
books by Vernon Lee or Huysmans or M. Paul Bourget in the early seventies The Age of Innocence
Times Literary Supplement [England] (25 November 1920): 775.
19
These ennumerations of writers and artists have been inspired by Joslins lists in her monograph on
Edith Wharton, 93.

159

his learning from books and quite conservative books at that.
20
Ellens selection of art and
books underline her intelligence, autonomy and aesthetic sensibility.
21
Like Edna Pontellier
in The Awakening, Ellen is an artist. Ellen does not paint, but her whole being is very
conscious of the value, beauty and importance of art, and in The Age of Innocence, too, the
author seems to link art with emancipation. The independent and original thinking required
to become a real artist are character traits considered (and depicted as) important by both
Chopin and Wharton.
Katherine Joslin points out that Ellens education, experience, and training have all
constructed a very different woman than American culture usually produces (Joslin, 94).
Throughout the novel the distance between Ellen and her cousin May Welland becomes
more and more obvious. Ellen Olenska understands Mays behavior and her assumed
innocence, but she rejects it for a freer, and more independent way of life. Yet, it is Mays
upbringing and her resultant behavior that are approved of and viewed in a positive light by
contemporary society. With her correct upbringing and perfect behavior May shows both
Ellen and the reader what women had to be like, and she acts as Ellens corrective
throughout the story. Ellen, however, still socializes with the community she likes and
understands,
They had simply, as Mrs Welland said, let poor Ellen find her own
level- and that, mortifyingly and incomprehensibly, was in the dim
depths where the Blenkers prevailed, and people who wrote celebrated
their untidy rites. (AOI, 218)
The gipsy girl develops into a Bohemian woman (AOI, 53, 218); Ellens social self
prefers the atmosphere she knows and likes. Her habitus, with its untidy rites, as the
narrator adds ironically, lies outside the elite of Old New York society that considers itself
the norm. Yet, it consists of a genuine community of artists, thinkers and writers (Joslin,
95). The mirroring of May and Ellen in this context shows that according to the
contemporary norm and value-system, May behaves in the correct way, and carries the
approval of society. The narrator, however, seems to have different ideas and opinions. It is
the insertion of ironical remarks and phrases especially that indicate that the omniscient
narrator seems to value the outlandishness and independence of Ellen more than the
contemporary social context does. Phrases like, where people who wrote celebrated
their untidy rites underline the prejudices and limited views of the contemporary society
depicted in the novel. With such hints the narrator also influences the opinion of the reader.
Almost imperceptibly we are made to like Ellen, while May, with all her perfection, seems
to get less sympathy.
The thematization of the accepted norms and roles in the story clarifies both the standard
socialization of women at the time and also stresses the still opposed behavioral patterns of
men. Joslin points out that the different education and training of men and women during

20
Pamela Knights points this out in her article Forms of Disembodiment: The Social Subject in The
Age of Innocence, 22.
21
Archer has read widely, but his reading has been quite general relating to all contexts of society,
ranging from philosophy and psychology to poetry and etching. Ellens reading, on the other hand,
has been much more focused. Her reading has been mostly French and she has concentrated on the
arts. The works of the authors she has read study subjects ranging from aestheticism to art criticism,
to French social history. Archer and Ellens educational backgrounds and their interests differ widely.

160

THE MIRROR IMAGE

the 1870s seem to make them ill-suited companions, in reality. She adds that
relationships in the society depicted in the novel fail because women and men have not
been trained to know each other nor to live together as equals (Joslin, 101). In general, the
womans economic dependence is only the material counterpart of her social, moral,
aesthetic, and intellectual dependence on the man (Joslin, 101).
Archers difficulty is that such a creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured
by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses is the
type of woman he is supposed to want so that he can impose his superiority (AOI, 42). In
contemporary society, the womans experience, allegedly comes from the man.
22
If it
would be Archers objective to own his wife, such an approach might be understandable.
But throughout the novel Archer expounds different ideas. In fact, his own contemplation
of the required social roles for women makes him realize that what he prefers is the
complete opposite, namely an equal partner who has experienced the same freedom that he
has.
23
Various passages in the novel describe his thoughts and feelings in this context.
Archer, for example, states that Women should be free as free as we are, and that each
woman has a right to her liberty. In considering Mays innocence, he keeps stressing
that if they had both been brought up in the way May is raised, they would not be able to
cope in daily life, and he adds:
nor could he, for all his anxious cogitations, see any honest reason (any,
that is, unconnected with his own momentary pleasure, and the passion of
masculine vanity) why his bride should not have been allowed the same
freedom of experience as himself. (AOI, 42)
It is noteworthy that these thoughts and feelings come from the main male character in the
novel. They thus seem to be getting more credence, in a way. It is not only women pleading
their own cause. There appears to be a much wider section of society that supports such
ideas.

22
Cynthia Griffin Wolff, A Feast of Words, 36-37.
23
Examples of passages where Archer contemplates this can be found (AOI, 39, 40, 42, 71, 127).

161

5.2: BLUE SATIN OR RED VELVET
As in Shirley and The Awakening, the use of
clothing, shoes and accessories by Edith
Whartons protagonists is richly suggestive
of the social roles of their owners.
Hegenbarth-Rsgens analysis of the
function of role attributes can again be used
as a basis for examining the social roles and
behavior of the female protagonists Ellen
and May. Clair Hughes points out in her
study, Dressed in Fiction, that
Traditionally, aspects of dress have been
used to portray aspects of personality,
particularly when a character first enters the
story.
24
In The Age of Innocence, this is true
for both May and Ellen. May is introduced
into the story, as follows:
and slightly withdrawn behind
these brocaded matrons sat a young
girl in white with eyes ecstatically
fixed on the stage-lovers. As
Madame Nilssons Mama! thrilled out above the silent house a
warm pink mounted to the girls cheek, mantled her brow to the roots of
her fair braids, and suffused the young slope of her breast to the line
where it met a modest tulle tucker fastened with a single gardenia. She
dropped her eyes to the immense bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley on her
knee, and Newland Archer saw her white-gloved finger-tips touch the
flowers softly. (AOI, 9)
May is the perfect picture of innocence in her white dress, with her blond hair in braids, and
the modest tulle tucker. Ellen Olenska is introduced a few pages later as she enters the
Opera box May is already sitting in. Ellen, or the Countess Olenskas figure, is described as
follows,
It was that of a slim young woman, a little less tall than May Welland,
with brown hair growing in close curls about her temples and held in
place by a narrow band of diamonds. The suggestion of this head-dress,
which gave her what was then called a Josephine look, was carried out
in the cut of the dark blue velvet gown rather theatrically caught up under
her bosom by a girdle with a large old-fashioned clasp. (AOI, 12)
Ellen is wearing a dark blue velvet Empire dress, that is described as unusual (AOI, 12).
She has dark hair, and she makes a worldly impression. Her dress reveals, when she leans
forward, a little bit more shoulder and bosom than New York was accustomed to seeing

24
Clair Hughes, Dressed in Fiction (Oxford & New York: Berg, 2005) 7.

[Anonymous] Shoes 1880s French
Inv. AC 1755 78-411-159 AB

162

THE MIRROR IMAGE

(16). Instead of wearing a tulle tucker with a single gardenia to cover her breasts, Ellen
accentuates the shape of her body with a girdle with a large clasp.
25

Whereas May dresses exactly as a young woman should, and represents the perfect image
of the Angel in the House, and Archer delights in her, she remains largely unnoticed by
the others. This is quite different for Ellen Olenska. The men of society, present at the
Opera immediately consider the question of how to categorize Ellen:
Mr Sillerton Jackson had returned the opera-glass to Lawrence Lefferts.
The whole of the club turned instinctively, waiting to hear what the old
man had to say. (AOI, 9)
He does not answer the question, but merely states, I didnt think the Mingotts would have
tried it on, as though Ellen herself were a dress (AOI, 11). For days after the Opera, people
talk about her appearance and especially about her dress. Janey, Archers sister, for
example, knows exactly what Ellen wore at the Opera, even if she did not attend the event
herself, At the Opera I know she had on dark blue velvet, perfectly plain and flat like a
night-gown (36). Janeys allusion to the night-gown causes her mother to cut her short, but
her mother still extends the image of corruption that is being evoked, by saying: We must
always bear in mind what an eccentric bring-up Medora Manson gave her. What can you
expect of a girl who was allowed to wear black satin at her coming-out ball? (37).
With the first introduction of the two characters, their personalities and social roles are
clearly sketched; and throughout the rest of the story, these images remain largely the same.
Unlike Edna Pontellier, who really desires to cast off her garments to become her real self,
May and Ellen love and cherish their clothes. Throughout the story, their clothing is
especially used by the narrator to stress the differences between them. Archer is quite
surprised by their interest in clothes, but he discovers in the course of the story that next to
an expression of their personality, it also has another function,
he was struck again by the religious reverence of even the most
unworldly American women for the social advantages of dress.
Its their armour, he thought, their defence against the unknown, and
their defiance of it.And he understood for the first time the earnestness
with which May, who was incapable of tying a ribbon in her hair to
charm, had gone through the solemn rite of selecting and ordering her
extensive wardrobe. (AOI, 166-167)
During their honeymoon, Archer and May stay in Paris for a month, so that May can order
her clothes from Worth, the firm from which she had also previously ordered her wedding
dress. All of her clothes are described in great detail, from the clothing she wears at the
Opera, to the wedding dress, and the outfit at the archerys contest (AOI, 9, 156, 177).

25
The symbolism used in this context is particularly noteworthy. In the language of flowers the
gardenia means I love you in secret. Ernst and Johanna Lehner point this out in: Folklore and
Symbolism of Flowers, Plants, and Trees (New York: Tudor, 1960) 117. Mays innocence and
modesty are thus again stressed. Ellen openly wears a girdle with a large old-fashioned clasp. The
word clasp is near synonymous with hug, thus again stressing the sexual connotations.

163

The sky-blue cloak edged with swans down,
that she wears to meet their London
acquaintances, is another ensemble that
really typifies May. It is beautiful, she looks
impeccable, but it is also cold and aloof. We
keep seeing the image of the young marble
athlete, the Greek goddess, who moves
with classic grace and nymphlike ease,
and who is really more interested in sports
and clothes than intellectual conversations or
cultural holidays (AOI, 120, 159, 177).
This spotless image is ruined, however, if we
trace the chronological appearances of the
wedding dress in the story. Every dress May
owns is indicative of the social roles she
fulfils, but it is her wedding dress that
presents the ultimate picture of her socially
prescribed role of wife. The first time May
wears the wedding dress, the image is quite
vague, the vision of the cloud of tulle and
orange blossoms floating nearer (AOI,
156). The dress is covered by a cloak, and it
is also mentioned that she wears a veil (157)
but not much is added to the image here, and
quite soon after the wedding, May changes
into her traveling-clothes for the
honeymoon.
What is particularly interesting about the
customs concerning wedding dresses is that
it is normal for the bride to wear this costly
garment during the first year or two of
marriage. May does this sometimes during
important events, and to manipulate Archer. It is her way to remind him of his wedding-
vows and to correct him with regard to his unfaithful behavior,
It struck Archer that May, since their return from Europe, had seldom
worn her bridal satin, and the surprise of seeing her in it made him
compare her appearance with that of the young girl he had watched with
such blissful anticipations two years earlier.
Though Mays outline was slightly heavier, as her goddess-like build had
foretold, her athletic erectness of carriage, and the girlish transparency of
her expression, remained unchanged: but for the slight languor that
Archer had lately noticed in her she would have been the exact image of
the girl playing with the bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley on her betrothal
evening. The fact seemed an additional appeal to his pity: such innocence
was as moving as the trustful clasp of a child. (AOI, 267-268)

Charles Frederick Worth Dress c. 1888
Inv. AC 93 77 96-25 AB

164

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Archer recognizes the blue-white satin and old lace of her wedding dress, but Mays
wearing it has the opposite effect to what she hoped for. It makes Archer realize that he
cannot go on with the faade that he thinks his marriage really is, and he wants to tell May
the truth.
He pretends to have a headache and they go home, but when May exits the carriage her
skirt gets caught in the step of the carriage and she tears it. Once inside the house, Archer
attempts to confess that he loves Ellen, but instead he learns from May that Ellen plans to
return to Europe indefinitely. It will later become clear that May has suggested to Ellen that
she is pregnant, and Ellen, being the morally upright person that she is, then decides that
she cannot elope with Archer. Mays lie puts a stain on her reputation of innocence and this
stain is reflected in the now ruined wedding dress: she turned to the door, her torn and
muddy wedding-dress dragging after her across the room (AOI, 272). May successfully
corrects both her mirror images and Archers behavior, and, as she is Archers wife, she
has societys full approval in this context; but the ruined dress also remains symbolic for
their tainted marriage, and her blemished role of wife. May does have Archers loyalty, but
his love and passion remain reserved for Ellen.
Ellen shows a different picture and she also displays a different pattern of behavior. Though
her dress at the Opera is dark blue, it is made of velvet and it has a sexy cut. Ellens
dcolletage as well as the reaction to it at the Opera places for the reader dramatically
both Ellen and New York society and reveals important shades of differences in taste and
custom.
26
In the course of the novel, the type of fabric of her clothes stays the same, but
the colors become more and more bright, and especially red seems to be a favorite color:
It was usual for ladies who received in the evening to wear what were
called simple dinner dresses; a close-fitting armour of whale-boned silk,
slightly open in the neck, with lace ruffles filling in the crack, and tight
sleeves with a flounce uncovering just enough wrist to show an Etruscan
gold bracelet or a velvet band. But Madame Olenska, heedless of
tradition, was attired in a long robe of red velvet bordered about the chin
and down the front with glossy black fur. Archer remembered, on his last
visit to Paris, seeing a portrait by a new painter, Carolus Duran, whose
pictures were the sensation of the Salon, in which the lady wore one of
these bold sheath-like robes with her chin nestling in fur. There was
something perverse and provocative in the notion of fur worn in the
evening in a heated drawing-room, and in the combination of a muffled
throat and bare arms; but the effect was undeniably pleasing. (AOI, 90)
This dress from Ellen is very modern. She did not let it mellow for one or two years
before wearing it, as is the custom in Old New York (AOI, 215-216). Overall, Ellens
clothes are not dictated by the current fashions. She ignores the contemporary code of
fashion so didactically emphasized by the narrator at the beginning of this quotation. She
wears what she likes and the outfit may be old-fashioned as with the Josephine dress, or
very modern, as is the case with this one. But the narrator also keeps stressing that Ellen
has great taste and that she is always stylishly dressed, even when her clothing is not in

26
Viola Hopkins stresses this in her article The Ordering Style of The Age of Innocence American
Literature 30:3 (November 1958) 353.

165

accordance with the local fashion rules (128). The problem with this dress, as with some of
her other outfits, is that it is again too daring, and if a hint of sexual frankness comes
through the prescribed limits, the clothes are judged as perverse and provocative by
society (90). It seems a properly opaque wrapping, but it is also one that leaves every
man excited with the thought of the skin and hair that it conceals and copies.
27
Ellens
sensuousness always stirs Archer, whether it is the cut of her dress, the playful touch of her
fan, or her gay behavior,
coming down a foot-path that crossed the highway, he caught sight of a
slight figure in a red cloak, with a big dog running ahead. He hurried
forward, and Madame Olenska stopped short with a smile of welcome.
Ah, youve come! she said, and drew her hand from her muff.
The red cloak made her look gay and vivid, like the Ellen Mingott of old
days; and he laughed as he took her hand. (AOI, 111)
Archer is excited, his gaze delighted by her red-cloaked figure, a red meteor against the
snow (AOI, 112). Both the red velvet dress with fur and Ellens red coat give her a
passionate and warm image, and, in a way, these clothes also seem fit for the role of
mistress. Ellen, however, is too complex a person to be stereotyped in this way, and the
love between her and Archer is too subtle to be tainted thus.
Most of all, Archer loves the freedom she seems to represent. It is Ellens hands especially,
and the accessories she wears on them, that depict that freedom.
28
Ellens hands are
mentioned more than forty times in the course of the story.
29
This indicates their
importance, especially to Archer. Ellens hands are mentioned five times early in the novel,
and it is not until Archers first private meeting with Ellen that they become significant to
him.
30
When, during this meeting, Ellen stands by the fireplace, A flame darted from the
logs and she bent over the fire, stretching her thin hands so close to it that a faint halo shone
about the oval nails (AOI, 67). Archers concentration on her hands is equally apparent
during their next get-together. This is only the second time Ellens hands become the center
of his attention, though it is the tenth mention of them in the novel.
31

She paused for a long interval; so long that, not wishing to keep his eyes
on her shaded face he had time to imprint on his mind the exact shape of
her other hand, the one on her knee, and every detail of the three rings on
her fourth and fifth fingers; among which, he noticed a wedding ring did
not appear. (AOI, 94-95)
Later on Archer remembers twice how that hand looked (AOI, 204, 278). The second time
is during the farewell-dinner organized by May,

27
Andrew Delbanco, Missed Manners, The New Republic (25 October, 1993): 31.
28
Jim McWilliams points this out in his article Whartons The Age of Innocence Explicator 48:4
(Summer 1990) 268-270, 269.
29
Examples can be found on the following pages in AOI: 18, 30, 54, 58, 66, 67, 68, 91, 93, 94, 97
(2x), 101, 111 (2x), 113, 115 (2x), 130, 131, 138, 140, 142 (2x), 145, 193, 201, 204, 205 (3x), 206,
238 (2x), 239, 257 (2x), 258, 259, 260, 278 (4x), (283), 284; 301.
30
These instances are in AOI: 18, 30, 54, 58, 66.
31
These 10 occurrences are in AOI: 18, 30, 54, 58, 66, 67, 68, 91, 93, 94.

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

Madame Olenska put her hand on his arm, and he noticed that the hand
was ungloved, and remembered how he had kept his eyes fixed on it the
evening that he had sat with her in the little Twenty-third Street drawing-
room. All the beauty that had forsaken her face seemed to have taken
refuge in the long pale fingers and faintly dimpled knuckles on his sleeve,
and he said to himself: If it were only to see her hand again I should
have to follow her (AOI, 278)

Archer and Ellen in the cottage on the van der Luyden Estate
Illustration from: Pictorial Review September 1920: 25.

He never meets her again, though, and his final memory of Ellen is of the long thin hand
with three rings on it (AOI, 301). The symbolism of Ellens small and graceful hands
becomes even more obvious when they are compared with Mays (McWilliams, 270).
When May sits in the library embroidering cushions, it becomes clear to Archer that she
was not a clever needle-woman; her large capable hands were made for riding, rowing and
open-air activities (246). In contrast to her broad, practical and very married hands, with
the betrothal sapphire shining on her left hand above her broad gold wedding-ring,
Ellens hands, without wedding rings, seem almost ineffective (246). They are objects for

167

love and affection. Archer touches and holds her hands seventeen times.
32
Archer and
Ellens love is never consummated, and the only undressing that is mentioned in the story
happens in the following scene:
33

Her hand remained in his, and as the carriage lurched across the gang-
plank on the ferry he bent over, unbuttoned her tight brown glove, and
kissed her palm as if he had kissed a relic. (AOI, 238-239)
The contrast between the two pairs of hands reflects Archers relationship with both
women. Archer sees May as a duty, and he never really considers her beyond her social
roles of wife, housewife, and mother (AOI, 289). Ellen he associates with freedom, and he
recognizes her as the flower of life that he has missed (289). He does not push her into
the role of mistress, but appreciates and respects her individuality. Ellens own statement,
that she can only love Archer when she gives him up is proof from her side, too, that their
love is based on respect and not on passion only. Ellens role-attributes and her behavior
depict her as the typical lady. She does not stick to the accepted behavioral patterns for
women, and her conduct is highly individualized, as is her use of clothing and accessories.
The alternative social role she presents shows an interesting contrast to the accepted
patterns of behavior and social roles for women. Not only Archer, but basically the whole
of Old New York society is presented with an intriguing alternative. An alternative
criticized by the conservative members of that society, but highly valued by others, and also
an interesting option for anticipation for the next generation of characters in the novel and
the reader.

5.3: MARRIAGE
In this section, I will have a close look at the behavioral patterns of both female
protagonists in their relationship with Archer. May and Ellen are presented as having
completely different types of behavior in contexts that are heavily prescribed with rules and
regulations for women. May presents the right, modest, traditional, but also rigid type of
behavior every time. Ellens behavior is individualized, steadfast, and honest, but she
makes life difficult for herself, because she does not adhere to the accepted norm and value
system for women.
Ellen is depicted as freely ventilating her ideas and feelings and giving an honest
expression of her broad view of the world. She does not adapt her use of language except in
moments of extreme vulnerability, and she often plays with language. When Archer
questions her concerning her divorce and asks her what she should gain, she simply says
But my freedom is that nothing? (AOI, 96). Archers own philosophizing about equal
rights for women would lead one to think that he can understand this, and agree with her.
Instead he is terribly concerned about what people might think. He is still conditioned by
his habitus to such an extent that he cannot make up his own mind in this context.

32
These examples can be found on the following pages in AOI: 68, 91, 97 (2x), 111, 115, 130, 131,
142, 205, 206, 238 (2x), 257, 278 (2x), 284.
33
Andrew Delbanco mentions this in his article Missed Manners, 32.

168

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Something similar happens when Archer suggests that they should have a relationship.
Ellens answer is:
Is it your idea, then, that I should live with you as your mistress since I
cant be your wife? she asked.
The crudeness of the question startled him: the word was one that women
of his class fought shy of, even when their talk flitted closest about the
topic. He noticed that Madame Olenska pronounced it as if it had a
recognized place in her vocabulary, and he wondered if it had been used
familiarly in her presence in the horrible life she had fled from. Her
question pulled him up with a jerk, and he floundered. (AOI, 242)
Apparently women in 1870 did not use such words so straightforwardly. By doing this,
Ellen makes it very clear what the reality would be like for her if they did start an affair,
and that it would be quite different from Archers dream view of going to a place without
prejudice, Where we shall be simply two human beings who love each other (AOI, 242).
Ellen also criticizes and makes jokes about society. In discussing Medora Mansons interest
in Dr. Carvers Utopian worldviews, she states that Medora is a good convert to new ideas:
A convert to what?
To all sorts of new and crazy social schemes. But, do you know, they
interest me more than the blind conformity to tradition somebody elses
tradition that I see among our own friends. It seems stupid to have
discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country. She
smiled across the table. Do you suppose Christopher Columbus would
have taken all that trouble just to go to the Opera with the Selfridge
Merrys? (AOI, 201)
Ellen loves Old New York, but she looks straight through the underlying norm and value
system, and she is very direct in discussing it with Archer. She is also not afraid of
admitting her love for Archer. When he asks her why she does not go back to Europe, she
states: I believe its because of you. The narrator describes the effect of this statement on
Archer as follows:
It was impossible to make the confession more dispassionately, or in a
tone less encouraging to the vanity of the person addressed. Archer
reddened to the temples, but dared not move or speak: it was as if her
words had been some rare butterfly that the least motion might drive off
on startled wings, but that might gather a flock about it if it were left
undisturbed. (AOI, 202)
The critic Gary H. Lindberg notes that Ellen effectively earns Newlands respect and
directs their relationship through her use of language:
Archer learns to admire her for her honesty, her directness, and her
seemingly simple way of facing things as they are, without evasion,
sentimentality, or undue perturbation. (Lindberg, 84)

169

Ellens clarity and her irony prevent her from following illusions and reveal her actual
place in New York society. Ellen empowers herself with language.
May, Ellens mirror image, however, is portrayed as showing the more acceptable type of
behavior for a woman, she compromises in her behavior. One of the first compromises she
makes is to give up her right to express herself freely. In the first scene, Mays ability to
communicate with Newland without speech reveals both how well they pay attention to one
another and how simple their relationship is. The narrator comments:
The persons of their world lived in an atmosphere of faint implications
and pale delicacies, and the fact that he and she understood each other
without a word seemed to the young man to bring them nearer together
than any explanation would have done. (AOI, 18)
We saw a similar type of communication between Edna Pontellier and her husband Lonce
in The Awakening (AW, 45). Yet, this ability to discuss a problem by looking deep into the
eyes of a loved one is later made slightly absurd in The Age of Innocence when the van der
Luydens practice this art. The narrator describes their entire conversation with one another
as follows:
Husband and wife looked at each other again. Their pale eyes clung
together in prolonged and serious consultation; then a faint smile fluttered
over Mrs van der Luydens face. She had evidently guessed and
approved. (AOI, 51)
The words and phrases used in this passage are just a little too extreme: A prolonged and
serious consultation would seem quite difficult in this way. And the fact that throughout
the novel it appears to be their main way of communicating makes the reader doubt the
sincerity of their unanimity.
The problem for May is that she really does have more to say. Evidence of Mays
compromise can, for example, be noticed in the telegrams that she sends.
34
The telegram to
Ellen says,
Grannys telegram successful. Papa and Mamma agree marriage after
Easter. Am telegraphing Newland. Am too happy for words and love you
dearly. Your grateful May. (AOI, 147)
Her telegram to Archer simply says, Parents consent wedding Tuesday after Easter at
twelve Grace Church eight bridesmaids please see Rector so happy love May (AOI, 148).
Ellens telegram is the more expensive one, and reveals more information about Mays
habits. However innocent May may seem, she is much more aggressive than her silence
suggests; but, outwardly she compromises, giving up language to share a silent
understanding of the complex system of customs, or habitus in which she and Newland
live.
A second context in which Ellen and May can be compared is the depicted use of their
intellect. Ellen is an intelligent woman and she does not give up her intellectual life, but she

34
For a more elaborate discussion of the importance of telegrams in The Age of Innocence, see Jean
Frantz Blackalls article The Intrusive Voice: Telegrams in The House of Mirth and The Age of
Innocence Womens Studies 20 (1991) 163-168, 166.

170

THE MIRROR IMAGE

pays a price for her independence. New York society defines her as Bohemian when she
attends any exhibition of the performing arts, except for the Opera. To be artistic is to be
alien. A recent critic, Emily Orlando, argues that, in spite of the portraits Archer serves up
Ellen is in fact the artist.
35
When she was a child, her free spirit was associated with the
artistry of different cultures, such as Spain and Italy. Her sophistication also owes much to
real education in art and music, as we have seen. Throughout the novel Ellen has books
lying around her drawing room and watches performances at the homes of people who are
less acceptable, on the fringes of society, such as the Blenkers and Mrs. Lemuel Struthers.
When Ellen lives in the artistic district, away from the elite members of society, Archer
tells her the area is not fashionable. In her answer, she points out the conflict that she
faces between her desire to exert her intellectual independence and her desire to be
accepted by society:
Fashionable! Do you all think so much of that? Why not make ones own
fashions? But I suppose Ive lived too independently; at any rate, I want
to do what you all do I want to feel cared for and safe. (AOI, 65)
Ellen is portrayed as almost always choosing intellectual independence over conformity,
but she suffers from societys disapproval. It is not until the end of the novel that she has
developed her own values and ideas enough to break free of societys opinion.
May is presented to us as making compromises in relation to her intellectual autonomy. She
places her intellectual growth mainly in the hands of her husband, but Archer concludes:
There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest
notion that she was not free; and he had long since discovered that Mays
only use of the liberty she supposed herself to possess would be to lay it
on the altar of her wifely adoration. (AOI, 164-165)
Even though Archer knows that he oppresses May, he also knows that all of her education
has prepared her to live in a social context where women are indeed oppressed. Before their
engagement, Archer dreams of teaching May about the masterpieces of literature which it
would be his manly privilege to reveal to his bride (AOI, 10). Yet, their intellectual life
after marriage is not what he had hoped it would be: since he had ceased to provide her
with opinions she had begun to hazard her own, with results destructive to his enjoyment of
the works commented on (246). May has no desire to develop interests beyond her
education and upbringing. This discovery intrigues Archer:
He shivered a little, remembering some of the new ideas in his scientific
books, and the much-cited instance of the Kentucky cave-fish, which had
ceased to develop eyes because they had no use for them. What if, when
he had bidden May Welland to open hers, they could only look out
blankly at blankness? (AOI, 72)
It is interesting to see that it is again Archer, the main male character, who thinks this.
Archer is genuinely worried about the ignorance of some women in his society. Lindberg,
however, argues that May is not so innocent as Archer thinks and that she actually
possesses amazing self-control, a quality that illustrates the other major strength of Old

35
Emily J. Orlando, Rereading Whartons Poor Archer: A Mr. Might-have-been, The Age of
Innocence American Literary Realism 30.2 (1998): 56-76.

171

New Yorks manners: they sustain personal dignity while providing a delicate measure of
ones feelings and sacrifices (Lindberg, 107). May warns Archer not to think that her
dignity interferes with her intelligence. She tells him: You mustnt think that a girl knows
as little as her parents imagine. One hears and one notices one has ones own feelings and
ideas (AOI, 126). Archer should really know better, because he has seen the two faces of
his own unmarried sister: Janey knew every fold of the Beaufort mystery, but in public
Mrs Archer continued to assume that the subject was not one for the unmarried (AOI, 34).
Overall, however, Mays and Janeys intelligence is limited to social events; it does not
extend to an appreciation of art or science. Archers view of May also indicates the
limitations of Old New York. Margaret McDowell describes the narrowness of his
interpretation of his wife as follows:
He never sees that what he calls her abysmal purity is a myth largely of
his own formulation one that underestimates her intelligence and the
extent of her worldly knowledge. (McDowell, 98)
However, Archer does seem to realize that such innocence is a myth. At the beginning of
the novel, he contemplates that such frankness and innocence were only an artificial
product, and he adds: Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent, it was full of
the twists and defences of an instinctive guile (AOI, 42). Overall, Archer seems to plead
for more openness and straightforwardness, rather than the traditional codes of conduct,
which seem to deny especially women the genuine expression of themselves. Archers idea
that marriage is limiting for women echoes the complaint of many actual women in society.
Yet, the traditional norms and values of the 1870s still prescribe that the husband should
introduce the wife to whatever intellectual pursuits might be suitable for a young woman.
A third context in which Ellen and May are shown to have completely different behavioral
patterns is the degree of passion they possess.
36
Ellen is portrayed as a much more
passionate heroine than May, yet she finds passion only briefly, before the story begins.
Ellens spiritual maturation occurs after her rebellion. She does not hide her feelings and
her struggle with freedom and responsibility is especially difficult because it is emotionally
charged. She represents temptation for Archer, because she has such capacity for passion
compared to May. The simplest touch sends sparks: Then stay with me a little longer,
Madame Olenska said in a low tone, just touching his knee with her plumed fan. It was the
lightest touch, but it thrilled him like a caress (AOI, 58). This scene sounds like the
beginning of a love scene, but the two characters are sitting in the middle of a crowd at a
party. Ellen has the power both to feel strongly and to choose not to start a relationship.
Unlike May, who resists Archers advances out of modesty, suspicion, or fear, Ellen
chooses not to continue kissing Archer, because she believes it is unethical: She gave him
back all his kiss, but after a moment he felt her stiffening in his arms, and she put him aside
and stood up (144). This almost symbolic act of standing up for herself at the end of Book
1 shows that together with deep feelings, she has a great sense of responsibility.
May is again presented as adapting her behavior; now by denying the existence of passion,
even in her own relationship with Archer. When she tries to be the perfect fiance, May

36
See for an elaborate discussion of the representation of passion in relation to Archer, Lloyd M.
Daigreponts article: The Cult of Passion in The Age of Innocence, American Literary Realism 40:1
(Fall 2007): 2-15.

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

ironically seems boyish rather than feminine, because she is too innocent. When Archer
kisses her for the second time, she resists, and he saw that she was disturbed, and shaken
out of her cool boyish composure (AOI, 120). Her beauty, combined with the portrayed
boyish qualities, indicate that her strength in New York is directly related to her innocence.
Her lack of passion is most obviously clear to Archer just after their wedding, when they
are traveling to the train station. The narrator describes:
She was alone for the first time with her husband, but her husband was
only the charming comrade of yesterday. There was no one whom she
liked as much, no one whom she trusted as completely, and the
culminating lark of the whole delightful adventure of engagement and
marriage was to be off with him alone on a journey, like a grownup
person, like a married woman, in fact. (AOI, 158-159)
Previously, she had been introduced to society as a maiden debutante; and in Old New
York she has no power whatsoever until she marries. May is excited to share her new
identity with the man who has thus empowered her, but Newland has no idea why she is
more interested in the wedding journey, than in the wedding night. He does not understand
how important it is to May that her new role gives her status in their society. Possibly she
knows little about sex, but he knows even less about the woman he will wake up with the
next day; in that sense, he is as nave as May.
Mays lack of interest or curiosity is alienating. Archers first reaction is to admire her
simplicity, yet a tone of condescension undermines his amazement. He thinks to himself,
It was wonderful that as he had learned in the Mission garden at St Augustine such
depths of feeling could coexist with such absence of imagination (AOI, 159). His
interpretation of May is almost dehumanizing:
Perhaps that faculty of unawareness was what gave her eyes their
transparency, and her face the look of representing a type rather than a
person; as if she might have been chosen to pose for a Civic Virtue or a
Greek goddess. (AOI, 159)
The fish image again comes to mind here. May Welland is represented as a passionless
manifestation of the Neoclassical ideal of beauty and the Enlightenment ideal of civic duty.
She also seems to depict the nineteenth-century ideal of eternal innocence:
The blood that ran so close to her fair skin might have been a preserving
fluid rather than a ravaging element; yet her look of indestructible
youthfulness made her seem neither hard nor dull, but only primitive and
pure. (AOI, 159)
In this way, the narrator chills Mays personality until she becomes the primitive and
pure, and seems to be compared to a dead body preserved. The image of preserving fluid
in Mays veins appears to suggest that she is a museum specimen, embalmed and archaic to
the contemporary readers in the 1920s, and the ultimate example of what the Angel in the
House should be like to both Ellen and the reader.
The last context in which May and Ellen will be compared is their depicted behavior in the
public sphere. With her dubious background, Ellen is expected to stay completely out of the
public sphere, to slink back to town and gradually earn a place among her family; but she

173

finds it hard to stay out of the public eye, partly because Catherine Mingott reintroduces her
to New York by sending her to the Opera. Ellen complains about her lack of privacy in the
homes of her family and friends:
Is there nowhere in an American house where one may be by oneself?
Youre so shy, and yet youre so public. I always feel as if I were in the
convent again or on the stage, before a dreadfully polite audience that
never applauds. (AOI, 113)
A comparison of her and Mays behavior shows the degree to which Ellens actions occur
in public. May helps Ellen privately and consents to attend the Opera with her cousin only
when her family demands her to take that step. Archer is glad that his future wife should
not be restrained by false prudery from being kind (in private) to her unhappy cousin
(AOI, 14). Ellen, however, openly helps Mrs. Beaufort by comforting her after Mr.
Beaufort is financially ruined and both Beauforts are disgraced. Society, in the voice of the
van der Luydens, is shocked that Ellen makes this gesture publicly. As Mr. van der Luyden
says, to have kept her grandmothers carriage at a defaulters door! (266)
The appreciation of art by New Yorkers is so limited in the novel that even Archer, who
prides himself on his wide-ranging knowledge, mistakenly thinks that when Ellen says she
enjoys seeing artists, she means painters. She explains: But I was really thinking of
dramatic artists, singers, actors, musicians (AOI, 91). Ellen also enters the public sphere in
Washington by associating with the brilliant diplomatic society (180). Throughout the
story she achieves a level of independence that would have been almost improbable in
contemporary society.
Cynthia Wolff, however, stresses that both an understanding and appreciation of society are
very important factors in the formation of ones identity; and she adds: individual growth,
then, must proceed from an understanding of ones background a coming to terms with
ones past, not a flight from it (Wolff, 313). The psychological need for society of the
individual combined with the pressures that Old New York places on women creates an
opposition heightened by the fragility of that societys order. As limited and carefully
controlled as New York is, the slightest pressure causes this society to react strongly to
defend itself; in this case, especially against too liberal behavioral patterns and a disregard
of the separate spheres ideology.
May again makes compromises and displays the correct type of behavior for a woman by
entering the public sphere only on appropriate occasions. She moves around freely within
the family circle, but follows conventions in all of her other relations with society. The
elaborate customs for women in the public sphere are noteworthy. When May and Archer
visit their relatives during their engagement, they seem to go to an endless number of
houses. Seen through Newlands eyes, the ritual becomes almost meaningless:
Tomorrow, Mrs Welland called after him, well do the Chiverses and
the Dallases; and he perceived that she was going through their two
families alphabetically, and that they were only in the first quarter of the
alphabet. (AOI, 60)
A wedding is an acceptable meeting of public and private roles for a woman. The impact
that May has on Archer when she joins him at the altar shows a combination of satire and

174

THE MIRROR IMAGE

nostalgia for the simplicity and beauty of a womans public role. At the most personal of
occasions, his own wedding, Archer is mentally completely absent. When May walks up
the aisle of the church, Archer is in a daze, floating in and out of a reverie. Archer sees her
not as a person, but as the vision of the cloud of tulle and orange-blossoms floating nearer
and nearer (AOI, 156). Finally, she arrives at his side: Then, in a moment, May was
beside him, such radiance streaming from her that it sent a faint warmth through his
numbness, and he straightened himself and smiled into her eyes (AOI, 156). Yet, Archer
sees her as a vision, an image that complements him, and makes him feel good, but hardly
as a real person. In a way, this seems to satirize the role women apparently have in
contemporary society. They are present, but they remain largely unnoticed. The nostalgia
comes in, when we realize that the situation depicted takes place in the 1870s. When the
novel was published in 1920 women were no longer such a complete absence, and the
nostalgia becomes ironic in itself. It seems improbable that one would want such a
situation to recur.
It is interesting to see that in whichever context May and Ellen are compared, similar points
come to the fore. Mays correctness, but also her rigidity keep being stressed, whereas Ellen
is always seen as a warm, passionate, and intelligent woman. May consistently functions as
social corrective towards Ellen; but she shows a type of behavior that reaches its ultimate
correction in the lie about her pregnancy and Ellens exclusion from New York society.
Mays corrective behavior is efficient, but besides thematizing the accepted behavioral
patterns for women, the basic idea of marriage itself is also raised to a higher level of
understanding. Overall, the Archer marriage is referred to as dull, and Archer considers it a
duty (AOI, 289). The couple raises three children in a placid household, and though both
May and Archer fulfil the tasks and social roles allotted to them to perfection, the narrator
makes you wonder about their happiness, and by analogy about the possibility of achieving
happiness in marriage, in this way, at all. People seem to be performing their roles, but
there is no genuine interaction. There is no real communication between the partners; a
problem that we also saw with the Pontellier couple. It seems as if they perform a play, or
rite, rather than a real sharing of feelings, interests or ideas. The reader of the 1920s is thus
made aware of both the positive and the negative aspects of Old New York society; the
nostalgic aspects are exposed and their repressive nature is revealed.

5.4: THE WOMAN QUESTION
There are two ways of spreading light:
to be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it.

Edith Wharton
37

The hero and main focus of this novel is a man, Newland Archer, who is attracted to two
distinct and incompatible women. The two women function as Archers muses, evoking
opposed responses. In the course of the novel, Archer is challenged by his interest in both

37
This quotation is from a poem by Edith Wharton: Vesalius in Zante. The poem can be found in
the collection Artemis to Acteaon and Other Verse (London: Macmillan, 1909) 14-23, 23.

175

women to consider risky questions about the social position of women. The Age of
Innocence is a novel about womanhood, as the plot turns on the woman question, puzzled
out by a male protagonist.
Joslin indicates that the Archer honeymoon is supposed to begin a Pygmalion process;
Archer hopes to show May the best of European culture, complete with a tour of the
Italian Lakes; to give her an intellectual education, and to make her into an independent
woman. Instead, he finds out that May is as morbidly interested in clothes as his sister
Janey is (Joslin, 102). Her sportsmanship becomes obvious, as well, making
mountaineering and swimming more suitable for their holiday than Italian Lakes and
masterworks of literature (AOI, 164). In spite of his educational efforts, May does not
develop into his ideal; instead, she dutifully fulfils the expected social roles and she
discontinues some of her own tastes and talents.
If Archer had contemplated his educational approach more deeply, he might have revised
and changed his own ideas about freedom. After all his attempts to change her, May does
as she thinks best or, more precisely she continues to perform those social customs and to
hold those tribal beliefs that she inherited from her habitus and cultural background
(Joslin, 102-103). Archer may assume that he is the patriarch in his household; in reality,
his life is determined by a traditional set of norms and values and by group convention.
Mays most compromising and manipulative act is that she revealed her condition to Ellen
during their long conversation two weeks before her pregnancy was officially confirmed.
38

Both women know that this fact will make a possible union of Ellen and Archer unlikely.
Joslin explains that:
The pregnancy is proof that despite his passionate words to Ellen,
[Archer] continues to have sex with his wife. But more than that, a
pregnancy means the extension of the family, an institution jealously
protected by the larger community. (Joslin, 103)
In spite of the fact that she loves Archer, Ellen is reluctant to ignore that social custom. Her
behavior is still influenced by the fixed conventions and the standards of propriety of Old
New York society. Margaret Mc Dowell stresses that:
In Whartons work, a woman who has asked enough searching questions
about herself and her status in society is aware as is the reader that
she has settled for conformity and compromise and she knows why she
has been willing to do so. She has thought the issue through and knows
who she is, where she stands as a person, and what, if any, her
alternatives may be.
39

Archer would like to substitute one woman for another, but May and Ellen are real
women who also have to manage their own lives in the rather complicated society of the
1870s. Ellen has to find an alternative indeed. As she does not have an independent income,
she is financially dependent on her husband or her family. Joslin suggests that Ellen is able

38
Evelyn E. Fracasso, The Transparent Eyes of May Welland in Whartons The Age of Innocence
Modern Language Studies 21:4 (Autumn 1991) 43-48, 47.
39
Margaret B. McDowell, Viewing the Custom of Her Country: Edith Whartons Feminism, 521-
538, 529.

176

THE MIRROR IMAGE

to use her awkward situation to persuade her grandmother Catherine Mingott to give her
enough money to live an independent life in Paris (Joslin, 103). Both May and Ellen can
thus live a life that is not inappropriate to them. May rescues her marriage, she brings up a
family, and she dies nursing little Bill. Having given her life in the effort, she went
contentedly to her place in the Archer vault in St. Marks (AOI, 290). May has been as
perfect a wife, housewife and mother as she could. Ellen starts a new life in Paris, she finds
a pleasant apartment in the Faubourg St Germain, near the Hotel des Invalides. She does
not go back to her husband and she does not become a mistress; instead she lives an
interesting and full life in France. She surrounds herself with artists and writers, visits
museums and art galleries, and, overall, her life is presented as much more creative and
fulfilling than the lives led by some of the female protagonists of the other novels examined
in this dissertation, including Edna Pontellier and (as we shall see later on) Julia Martin.
It is interesting to see that both this American novel and The Awakening discussed earlier
present images of awakened females who seem to have more influence on their own lives
than was generally considered appropriate. Joonok Huh points out that such female
characters necessitated the reformulation of the images of male characters, as well.
According to Huh, male characters in this type of novel began to change in a variety of
ways; their dominance was lessened, and their undisputed authority was subverted.
40
In
The Awakening Robert was a less dominant male hero than was regular for the time, and
Mr. Pontelliers authority was indeed undermined. The male main character in The Age of
Innocence seems to have even less power. The influence of the male images was
increasingly limited to the domestic and social sphere, while women rebelled against these
traditions, seeking independence. Huh argues that this development seems to take place in
two stages. The first was a transitional stage which challenged the traditional male
stereotypes without radically changing patterns. This stage was exemplified by Chopins
novel. The second stage involved a more radical transformation of the fabric of society.
This development begins to take place in the society depicted in The Age of Innocence. By
the end of the gradual evolution in gender roles depicted in this book, the women are no
longer the only ones who make compromises; the male character does this as well and,
according to Huh, ultimately becomes a victim of his own refined self-consciousness.
What is particularly noteworthy in this context, is that The Age of Innocence confirms
Bourdieus ideas about habitus; that society is implicitly constrained by a whole universe
of ritual practices and also of discourses, sayings, proverbs, all structured in concordance
with the principles of the corresponding habitus, and that someones life is steered by the
strength of socialization, especially at early ages.
41
Early socialization has made Archers
tastes and behavior more consistent with Mays habitus than with Ellens. It is therefore not
too surprising that he marries May. However, as Bourdieu notes, as well, a persons habitus
also has genuine constitutive power; it is not merely a reflection of reality. Possibilities
for altering habitus do exist, especially at times affected by change: if conditions of the

40
Joonok Huh, Shifting Sexual Roles in Selected American Novels 1870-1920. Diss. Indiana U, 1983.
DAI-A 44.3 (1983): 752. All of the quotations are taken from the Abstract at the beginning of her
thesis.
41
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1972) 167.

177

social environment are different for a new generation of individuals, these conditions can
develop new dispositions and result in an altered habitus.
Wharton consciously creates a male main character who has different ideas about the
possibilities for women. Both his approach and Ellens example of more individualized and
independent behavioral patterns present options for anticipation to the other characters and
the readers. Archers children already demonstrate these more liberated behavioral patterns
still criticized in the Old New York of the 1870s. Archers son, Dallas, is introduced in the
last chapter and he is presented as being very open-minded and almost uninhibited in his
behavior; and when he wants to marry Fanny, Beauforts illegitimate daughter, the depicted
New York society of the 1900s gives its full approval. Within one generation tremendous
improvements have been made in the possibilities for individualized behavior for both men
and women.
Throughout the novel, Wharton, too, uses the opposed images of the Angel in the House
and the more rebellious character to typify the two female protagonists. May remains
angelic in her looks throughout the novel, but her behavior becomes tainted in the course of
the story. Ellen, on the other hand, at first appears to be the social monster, but it is
mainly society that (mis-)judges her in that way. In the course of the story, her true nature
is revealed. The opposite sides of the mirror image become less opposed in the course of
the novel, and it is this gradual change in the appreciation of both female protagonists and
the thoughts and feelings of the main male character that make the novel quite an eye-
opener. Wharton thus succeeds in making the reader become aware of the restricted social
roles for women through the considerations both sexes have about the woman question,
and she thus influences the reader to look critically at the society of the 1870s.
5.5: TELLING IT SLANT
It does not seem to have been Whartons initial aim to write a novel about the plight of
women.
42
On the contrary, in her autobiography A Backward Glance Wharton states that
after the first World War she had to get away from the present altogether. She found
escape in going back to my childish memories of a long-vanished
America, and wrote The Age of Innocence. I showed it chapter by
chapter to Walter Berry; and when he had finished reading it he said:
Yes, its good. But of course you and I are the only people who will ever
read it. We are the last people left who can remember New York and
Newport as they were then, and nobody else will be interested. I secretly
agreed with him as to the chances of the books success; but it had its
fate, and that was to be one of my rare best-sellers!
43

42
In her article Viewing the Custom of her Country Margaret B. McDowell stresses: Wharton
never actively campaigned for social or legal reforms that might enhance the authority of women. If
we can judge by her fiction, she remained aloof from suffragist movements, 524.
43
Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance in the reprint from 1998, 369.

178

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Wharton was paid $18,000 by the Pictorial Review for the serial rights for the novel and to
this Appleton added an advance of $15,000 against royalties.
44
The publication of the
novel did not go immaculately. In a letter to Rutger B. Jewett, her editor, Wharton wrote:
I was very much surprised to hear from my sister-in-law the other day
when she called at the Pictorial Review Office for proofs the lady
representing Mr. Vance told her that the book was evidently to be a long
one and that the editor would evidently have to cut out some passages. As
you know, it was stipulated that the novel furnished to the Pictorial
Review should not be less than 100.000 words long. I see no reason to
expect that it will exceed this length and it may even fall short by 3 or
4.000 words. In any case as I am prepared to keep my part of the
agreement I shall expect the Magazine to do the same and not to tamper
with the text of my novel I cannot consent to have my work treated as
if it were prose-by-the-yard. (Lewis, 428)
The publication in serial form of The Age of Innocence appeared in four parts from July-
October 1920 in the magazine section of the Pictorial Review.
45
Soon after, it was
published as a book by D. Appleton & Co. in both New York and London. The novel was
not only a financial success, it was also highly praised by critics. Wharton received the
Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Age of Innocence in May 1921 and there were plans to
make a stage version of the novel (Lewis, 439).
46
There was joined critical and popular
support for the novel from the day it was published. In a letter to Bernard Berenson,
Wharton indicated that,
I did so want The Age to be taken not as a costume piece but as a
simple & grave story of two people trying to live up to something that
was still felt in the blood at that time; & you, & the few other people
whose opinion I care about, have made me feel that perhaps I have.
Thank you so much for taking the trouble to tell me your impressions of
the book. (Lewis, 433)

44
Arthur Vance, the editor of the New York monthly Pictorial Review paid Wharton this amount.
Rutger Bleecker Jewett was the editor at D. Appleton and Co. who advanced $15,000 against
royalties, he also acted as Whartons agent in the securing of serial contracts. R.W.B. Lewis and
Nancy Lewis, The Letters of Edith Wharton (New York: Macmillan, 1988) 429.
45
Edith Thorntons article, Innocence consumed: packaging Edith Wharton with Kathleen Norris
in Pictorial Review Magazine, 1920-21, provides the first sustained discussion of the original
illustrations of The Age of Innocence and the first re-appearance in print since 1920. This novel first
appeared as an illustrated serial in the womens magazine Pictorial Review. In the 1920s, magazine
professionals used every strategy at their command (promotion copy, synopses, titles, and illustration)
to weave Whartons text into a consumer-oriented, visually stimulating magazine environment intent
on selling everything from Sani-Flush to Wharton. Thornton refers in this context to the novels
humble origins (Thornton, 29). Wharton, however, was thus assured a huge readership; and, next to
the commercial success, the novel also developed into a critical success. I have inserted one of the
reprinted illustrations at the end of Chapter 5.2.
46
The jury at Columbia University, which sponsored the award, consisted of Robert Morss Lovett,
Stuart Sherman, and Hamlin Garland. The Pulitzer Prize in fiction was given annually for the
American novel which shall best present the wholesome atmosphere of American life and the highest
standard of American manners and manhood (Lewis, 443).

179

Characterization
The most well-known critics of the time, Professor William Lyon Phelps from Yale, Carl
Van Doren, and Henry Seidel Canby all wrote laudatory reviews. The Age of Innocence
was regarded superior to Whartons earlier novels. In contrast to the reviews written in
relation to Shirley and The Awakening, most of the reviews of The Age of Innocence were
not anonymous. Only one-third of the articles were unsigned, while all the other reviews
were attributed to well-known and respected critics. Overall, the articles show a thorough
analysis of the text; they do contain the occasional quotations, but such extracts are usually
quite brief. The first article discussed here is by Professor Phelps, who wrote that Wharton
was a writer to bring:
glory on the name America, and [The Age of Innocence] is her best book
New York society and customs in the seventies are described with an
accuracy that is almost uncanny; to read these pages is to live again. The
absolute imprisonment in which her characters stagnate, their artificial
and false standards, the desperate monotony of trivial routine, the slow
petrifaction of generous ardours, the paralysis of emotion, the
accumulation of ice around the heart, the total loss of life in upholstered
existence are depicted with a high excellence that never falters. And in
the last few pages the younger generation comes in like fresh air. Mrs.
Wharton is all for the new and against the old; here, at all events, her
sympathies are warm.
47

Straight from the beginning there is the awareness that the novel is not only a love story but
also a social critique of the society of Old New York in the 1870s. But Phelps adds the
following comment:
The two young women of the story are contrasted in a manner that is of
the essence of drama without being in the least artificial. The radiantly
beautiful young wife might have had her way without a shadow on it,
were it not for the appearance of the Countess Olenska, who is, what the
other women are not, a personality. Newland Archer, between these two
women, and loved by both, is not at all to be envied. The love scenes
between him and Ellen are wonderful in their terrible, inarticulate
passion; it is curious how much more real they are than the unrestrained
detailed descriptions thought by so many writers to be realism.
Phelps notices the contrasting of the two female main characters and he praises the style in
which the novel was written. In the discussion of The Awakening, we did indeed notice that
Chopins emotional realism led to a depiction of a similar situation that was considered
too extreme by the critics of the time. Whartons society realism and the ironic comments
by the narrator create a different type of representation and a distance to the events in the
story that make it more acceptable reading at the time.

47
The review from Phelps, As Mrs. Wharton Sees Us, was first published in the New York Times
Book Review (17 October 1920): 1 and 11. For an overview of all of the reviews I traced and
examined in relation to this novel, please see the Appendix.

180

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Carl Van Doren, another important American critic, wrote two reviews. Both were
published in the Nation. The first appeared in 1920.
48
In this review, he is especially
intrigued by the portrayal of form and iron taboos, and he adds:
These characters who move with such precision and veracity through the
ritual of a frozen caste are here as real as their actual lives would ever
have let them be. They are stiff with ceremonial garments and heavy with
the weight of imagined responsibilities. Mrs. Whartons triumph is that
she had described these rites and surfaces and burdens as familiarly as if
she loved them and as lucidly as if she hated them.
In the second article, Van Doren comments on Whartons style in a more general way and
studies the society of Old New York as described in most of her work. He examines Lily
Bart, Undine Spragg, and Newland Archer in relation to that society.
49
He believes that
from the beginning Whartons talent has lain in being able to reproduce representative
characters of that social context. He indicates that Wharton resembles Jane Austen in her
social satire and depiction of decorum, stressing that her natural, instinctive habitat is a
true tower of irony.
50
Van Doren notices the social criticism in the novel and is appalled
by the stifling influence of the portrayed habitus of New York society on individual lives,
but he praises the characterization of both male and female characters.
Most contemporary British reviewers are quite intrigued as well, and many of them again
focus on characterization. An anonymous critic of the British Saturday Review believes,
that the book is a picture of:
Gentlemen of unbounded leisure and a taste for commercial probity
which amounts to a disease, ladies combining the angel and the bore in a
measure beyond the dreams even of a Thackeray, troops of obsequious
and efficient white domestics!
51

This critic mentions the opposition of the female main characters, and the contrast referred
to comes close to the opposition dealt with here, though his phrasing is quite derogatory.
However, there is no detailed analysis of Whartons ideas in relation to womens liberation.
Another British reviewer, Frederick Watson, even goes so far as to state:
[Wharton], unlike so many of her English contemporaries, has no religion
to teach, no grievance to air, no political betrayal to reveal. Her subjects
are people, of a period perhaps, but people whose characteristics of

48
Van Dorens review, An Elder America, was published in the Nation, 111 (3 November 1920):
510-511; cited in W. Tuttleton, Kristin O. Lauer and Margaret P. Murray, Edith Wharton: The
Contemporary Reviews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 286-287.
49
Lily Bart is the main character in Whartons novel, The House of Mirth (1905); Undine Spragg is
the female protagonist in The Custom of the Country (1913).
50
This information can be found in: Patricia Plante, The Critical Reception of Edith Whartons
Fiction in America and England. Diss. Boston University Graduate School, 1962. Ann Arbor: UMI,
1962. DA 62-5535, 162; and: Marlene Springer, Edith Wharton and Kate Chopin: A Reference Guide.
Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1976; the quotation is from Springer, 54.
51
The Innocence of New York. It appeared in the London version of the Saturday Review CXXX
(4 December 1920): 458.

181

snobbery, isolation, conservatism and humbug are not peculiar to the year
75.
Still, Watson is very positive about her novel and concludes,
It is the highest compliment to an artist to say that one never questions a
word or action of her characters as unnatural or frankly beyond belief.
When any writer can step back half a century and write as though the
people lived next door there is no more to be said.
52

It is the verisimilitude of both the male and female characters that this reviewer approves
of.
Not all of the American and British reviewers were so focused in their analysis of the
novel, nor so interested in or appreciative of Whartons characterization. The American
critic, Lillian Whiting, is quite critical of the more liberated patterns of behavior depicted in
the final chapters of The Age of Innocence, and she does not like Ellen:
Mrs. Wharton has imagination and a power of subtle insight into the
springs of action; however, the closing chapters of The Age of Innocence
do not seem to reveal her usual fine touch. And an even greater defect in
the book is that of the character of Ellen, whom her creator constantly
asserts to be charming, but who does not in the least produce that effect
on the reader.
53

Ellen is apparently too individualistic, too different, to be considered acceptable for this
critic. In spite of the fact that Whiting does not refer to emancipation directly, it is telling
that it is especially the more liberated aspects that she criticizes.
Similarly negative is the reviewer of the British newspaper The Guardian, who wrote quite
a slighting article about this American novel.
54
In a review entitled Puppets in a Period,
this reviewer states:
The book is careful, studied, temperate, but it is dull with detail which
does not create illusion. There is no illusion. The picture does not
compose, and these three hearts do not stir us because they do not beat.
They are puppets set in a period.
Wharton knew that her characterization was sometimes considered a weakness. Her own
explanation for her type of characterization was as follows. The Boston judge and novelist
Robert Grant had once written to her in a discussion of another novel that in that book she
had allowed her characters to remain little more than mere building-material. Whartons
reply to this was:
The fact is that I am beginning to see exactly where my weakest point is.
I conceive my subjects like a man that is, rather more

52
Frederick Watson, The Assurance of Art, Bookman [England] 59 (January 1921): 170-172; cited
in Tuttleton, 292-293.
53
Lillian Whiting, Novels on the Seasons List, Springfield Republican (5 December 1920) Mag.
Sec., 9-A; cited in Plante, 160.
54
Puppets in a Period, The Guardian (17 December 1920).

182

THE MIRROR IMAGE

architectonically & dramatically than most women - & then execute them
like a woman; or rather, I sacrifice, to my desire for construction &
breadth, the small incidental effects that women have always excelled in,
the episodical characterization, I mean. The worst of it is that this fault is
congenital, & not the result of an ambition to do big things. As soon as I
look at a subject from the novel-angle I see it in relation to a larger
whole, in all its remotest connotations; & I cant help trying to take them
in, at the cost of the smaller realism.
55

This letter had been written by Wharton in 1907; at that time, she was already very much
intrigued by the techniques of characterization. By 1920, one may assume that the way the
protagonists were sketched in The Age of Innocence was a very conscious decision by
Wharton.
Generally, most critics do indeed appreciate her characterization and see her characters as
real people, rather than puppets. Americans are, in fact, quite proud of Whartons talents.
The aforementioned Professor Phelps is enthusiastic about the fact that, in the 1920s, it
seemed to be mostly female authors who were doing well:
In this present year of emancipation it is pleasant to record that in the
front rank of American living novelists we find four women, who shall be
named in alphabetical order Dorothy Canfield, Zona Gale, Anne
Sedgwick, Edith Wharton.
Americans respected Wharton and, in this context, it is noteworthy that, on the whole,
Wharton was not really seen as the typical woman writer. Inez Haynes Irwin in a near-
contemporary article on Women Writers points out that, for years Edith Wharton was
considered our leading novelist not our leading woman novelist, but our leading
novelist.
56
Contemporary Americans were proud of Wharton in a more general way.
57

New York society
The last important American male critic discussed here is Henry Seidel Canby. In his
reviews, Canby focuses on the norms and values of contemporary Old New York society
and the role of the family. According to him the idea of the family is the center of the
story:
No one of [the main characters] is the center of the story, but rather the
idea of the family, this American family, which is moral according to
its lights, provincial, narrow but intensely determined that its world
shall appear upright, faithful, courageous, in despite of facts, and
regardless of how poor reality must be tortured until it conforms. And the

55
From a letter to Robert Grant (19 November 1907) as found in The Letters of Edith Wharton, eds.
R.W.B. Lewis and Nancy Lewis (New York: Macmillan, 1989) 124.
56
Inez Haynes Irwin, Women Writers, Equal Rights (1 February 1930): 411-412.
57
Wharton was officially elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1930. The Womans
Journal 15:12 (December 1930): 5.

183

family as Mrs. Wharton describes it is just the bourgeois Puritanism of
nineteenth century America.
58

In relation to the depiction of both female main characters, Canby is intrigued by both the
likeness and the contrast between the two women:
Was May right when with the might of innocence she forced Newland to
give up life for mere living? Was the Countess right when in spite of her
love for him she aided and abetted her, making him live up to the self-
restraint that belonged to his code? The story does not answer, being
concerned with the qualities of the family, not with didacticism.
In his conclusion, Canby again comes back to the basic notion of the family, and points
out that only,
a new and less trammeled generation must answer whether it was the
discipline of its parents that saved the American family from anarchy, or
the suppressions of its parents that made it rebellious.
He considers it a fine novel, beautifully written, big in the best sense and a credit to
American literature. In his focus on the concept of the family, Canby points to the
possible rebelliousness within such a society as a force for change and he is intrigued by the
representation of more general oppositions throughout the novel. Many (male) American
critics do notice the contrast between the female main characters, but the woman question
is not directly referred to. Their comments tend to focus on Whartons writing style and the
social criticism in a wider sense.
One of the British reviews also focuses on the depicted world of Old New York. An article
in the Times Literary Supplement points out that:
Changes of the same general kind we too have seen, no doubt, but
nothing to compare in extent with the change that has turned New York,
socially speaking, from a trim and substantial old family mansion to a
resounding, glittering promiscuous hotel. The old family mansion is more
than a picturesque background for a story it is also a story in itself
with the elaborately composed artificiality of the life that was led there.
Nowhere, not among the most formal refinements of the ancien rgime,
has there been seen a society more carefully and consciously organized
than that of New York a generation or so ago, when the tide of new
money, bearing new people and new standards and new manners, was
only just beginning to encroach upon the old, and when the family in
possession was making its final and unsuccessful attempt to withstand
it.
59

58
Canbys article, Our America, originally appeared in a section called The Literary Review of the
New York Evening Post (6 November 1920). It was repeated in his study Definitions: Essays in
Contemporary Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1920) in the chapter entitled Mrs.
Whartons The Age of Innocence, 114-118.
59
This article was originally published in The Times Literary Supplement (25 November 1920): 775.

184

THE MIRROR IMAGE

This reviewer again notices the social critique of Old New York society. This critic and the
ones mentioned before in relation to this novel put somewhat less stress on reading as
moral instruction. Reading strategies seem to be gradually evolving; much more attention
is paid to the socio-historical context and to the text itself.
60
Within this approach the focus
is on Whartons artistry, psychological insight, grasp of character, and the depiction of
social criticism.
At the time of the publication of the novel, Wharton was living in France. Several French
reviews were also published after the appearance of The Age of Innocence. Two articles
stand out in particular for their exhaustiveness and careful consideration, the reviews by
Andr Bellesort and F. C. Danchin.
61
Bellesorts article is very elaborate, it contains a
summary of the novel and some general remarks about the differences between Europe and
America, but Bellesort also focuses on the love-affair and in this context he is intrigued by
the restraint shown by Archer and Ellen. He always considered America such a liberated
country, but in relation to this novel he notes:
The light and charming irony in which the book is bathed, like a subtle
atmosphere born of the contrast between everything America represents
or should represent in the context of initiative, of liberty, of freedom, of
independence, of new social fashions, and that elite little world still
subjugated to worldly protocols, preoccupied with its prejudices, strict in
its adherence to the caste system, and very much a slave to public
opinion.
62

The reading of the novel leaves a curious impression on his mind, it seems to him as if the
story was told to him with an ironic laugh but at the same time with passionate, though sad
eyes. Bellesort does not mention womens liberation as a special issue dealt with and
neither does F. C. Danchin. Danchin, however, does stress the double standards depicted in
the novel:
Mrs. Wharton very carefully depicts a clan, submerged in conventions;
the men envelop themselves with the pretense of empty jobs and with

60
It is worth remembering that Wharton was writing in an era when Stephen Crane, Frank Norris,
Theodor Dreiser, and other writers began to make their mark as writers of naturalism. Both writing
and reading styles were beginning to change. Naturalism is a more deliberate kind of realism
involving a view of human beings as passive victims of natural forces and social environment.
Naturalist fiction aspired to a sociological objectivity, offering detailed and fully researched
investigations into unexplored corners of modern society. Some present-day critics even recognize
aspects of naturalism in Whartons work. See: Larry Rubin Aspects of Naturalism in Four Novels by
Edith Wharton, Twentieth Century Literature 2:4 (January 1957) 182-192.
61
Andr Bellesort, Les littratures trangres: le dernier roman de Edith Wharton. Revue Bleue 59
(20 August 1921): 524-528; and F. C. Danchin, Revue annuelle: Le Roman anglais, Revue
Germanique 13 (1922): 155-159.
62
Bellesort indicates that he read a French translation of the novel, called Au Temps de lInnocence,
published by Libraire Plon. His review is in French and the translation of this extract is mine. The
original passage is as follows: Et lironie lgre et charmante dont le livre est baign, comme dune
subtile atmosphre, nat du contraste entre tout ce que lAmrique reprsente ou devrait reprsenter
dinitiative, de libert, dindpendence, daffranchissement, de nouveaut sociale, et ce petit monde
plus soumis au protocole mondain, plus engou de ses prjugs, plus engonc dans son argueil de
caste, plus esclave du quen dira-t-on, 524-525.

185

bourgeois happiness of marital bliss and, though they allow themselves to
take part of a vulgar thing one calls adultery in the less socially superior
circles, they attempt to hide their weaknesses behind well phrased puritan
expressions.
63

Danchin is intrigued by the female main characters and in relation to Ellen, he states:
Ellen, the dark one, is not as pretty as the blond May; but she lives much
more intensely, she is very real and she is not solely determined by the
attitudes prescribed by the tribe. Her clear understanding, sharpened as
well by the long visits to various sections of the elite of New York is very
conscious of the various social rules and regulations and aware of their
truthfulness, which in all its nakedness is either ridiculous or repellant.
64

The contrasting of the female main characters is noticed, but neither Bellesort nor Danchin
mention the woman question.
It is quite remarkable that in their discussions of the contemporary social context, none of
these critics refer to the issue of emancipation. All of these reviews were written and
published in 1920-1921. Tuttleton points out that at this time feminist arguments were
gathering force, and there were many debates about whether women belonged in the
home or outside in the larger world. The suffragettes were pleading for womens right
to vote, which came in phases in both Great Britain and the United States during the
period 1918-1920 (Tuttleton, xii).
65
In spite of these developments in the surrounding social
context, most critics do not mention Ellens liberated behavior, a depicted issue like divorce
or Archers favorable comments on womens rights. Instead, they focus on Whartons
artistry, historical acumen, and the social criticism on the class system.
The love-triangle
A few women reviewed this novel, as well. Lillian Whiting has already been mentioned,
another American critic is Katherine Perry. In her article Were the Seventies Sinless?
Perry focuses on the love affair, and points out:

63
In his review Danchin explicitly states that he read the American version of the novel published by
Appleton, 156. The review was in French and both quotations mentioned here were translated into
English by me. In the original review, this extract is as follows: Mrs Wharton nous dpeint avec
beaucoup de soin une coterie, toute en conventions; les hommes sendorment dans le rien faire de
prtendues occupations et dans les flicits bourgeoises du bonheur conjugal et, lorsquils se laissent
glisser cette chose vulgaire quon appelle fort crment adultre dans les rgions sociales moins
suprieures, ils sefforcent de masquer leur faiblaisse derrire de belles dclarations puritaines, 156.
64
The original passage is as follows: Ellen la brune nest pas plus belle que la blonde May; mais elle
vit plus intensment, elle est naturelle et ne sest pas fige dans lattitude prescrite par la tribu; son
esprit clairvoyant, aiguis aussi par de longs sjours en de milieux fort dissemblables du monde select
de New York, pntre au plus pais des formules et des conventions et y dcouvre la vrit, dans sa
nudit parfois ridicule ou repoussante, 156-157.
65
See also Chapter 2.4.2 of this dissertation. N.B. France was one of the first countries in Europe to
grant suffrage rights to men (1848) but one of the last to include women in the franchise (1944). This
because France emphasized the needs of post-war reconstruction over those of womens
emancipation. Joan Tumblety, Responses to Womens enfranchisement in France, 1944-1945,
Womens Studies International Forum 26:5 (2003): 483-497.

186

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Little help in such a milieu for young Newland Archer, who, having
married a handsome white and gold dbutante of regulation inexperience,
finds himself appalingly and passionately in love with her cousin, the
dark, seductive Countess. Again and again, the apparent artlessness of the
young wife scores as if by accident; thru her, backed by the solid phalanx
of family, respectability triumphs and the smooth surface of convention is
never punctured, tho all New York relishingly infers that which never
really came to pass.
66

Perry notices the opposite traits of the female main characters, but does not refer to the
issue of emancipation.
Katherine Mansfield from New Zealand also wrote an extensive review. Today, her article
is one of the best known contemporary reviews in relation to this novel.
67
Mansfield was
living in England when she wrote her article. It is quite remarkable that a young woman
from New Zealand was in a position to write such a review in England about an American
novel. The review by Mansfield is longer than most of the other contemporary articles. It is
quite thorough in its analysis, but it again focuses entirely on the love-affair between
Archer and Ellen. Here are some extracts from the article in the Athenaeum:
These are what one might call the outer leaves of the story. Part them,
and there is within another flower, warmer, deeper, and more delicate. It
is the love-story of Newland Archer, a young man who belongs deeply to
the family tradition, and yet at the same time finds himself wishing to
rebel. The charm of Ellen is his temptation, and hard indeed he finds it
not to yield. But that very quality in her which so allures him what one
might call her highly civilized appreciation of the exquisite difficulty of
their position saves them from themselves. Not a feather of dignity is
ruffled; their parting is positively stately.
Mansfields comment continues with an interpretation of the reaction of the reader:
But what about us? What about her readers? Does Mrs Wharton expect us
to grow warm in a gallery where the temperature is so sparklingly cool?
We are looking at portraits are we not? These are human beings,
arranged for exhibition purposes, framed, glazed, and hung in the perfect
light. Is it in this world vulgar to ask for more? To ask that the
feeling shall be greater than the cause that excites it, to beg to be allowed
to share the moment of exposition to entreat a little wildness, a dark
place or two in the soul?

66
Katherine Perry, Were the Seventies Sinless? Publishers Weekly 98 (16 October 1920): 1195-
1196; cited in Tuttleton, 283.
67
This review was originally published in the Athenaeum 4728 (10 December 1920): 810-811.
Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and educated at schools in
Wellington and in London at Queens College, Harley Street. Mansfield wrote in prose and verse, but
became mainly known for her short stories. Her most important collections are: In a German Pension
(1911), Bliss and other stories (1920), and The Garden Party, and other stories (1922).

187

We appreciate fully Mrs. Whartons skill and delicate workmanship; she
has the situation in hand from the first page to the last; we realize how
savage must sound our cry of protest, and yet we cannot help but make it;
that after all we are not above suspicion even the finest of us!
68

Isers interpretation of the reading process again comes to mind here.
69
Just like the earlier,
British, critic from The Guardian who missed the aspect of illusion, Mansfield now
regrets the lack of more passion in the story.
70
Mansfields reaction, especially, indicates
that she was very much involved in the events going on in the novel and could really
sympathize with (some of) the characters. Yet, the distance created by the narrator and the
arrangement of events in such a way that they seem to conspire against the main characters
frustrates Mansfield.
It is especially by presenting the story in this way, however, that Wharton can stress the
effect of such a society on individual people. Whartons narrative techniques work very
well, if they can evoke such a strong reaction from another female author. A plight for the
individual, and the allowance of genuine feelings are some of the themes that Wharton
concentrates on; but Wharton knows how to keep herself in check. Only by writing an
acceptable story can she reach such a large audience in 1920. A more direct approach
might, at this time, still have been less effective. In fact, Wharton would have risked being
ostracized in the same way as Kate Chopin had been two decades earlier. Overall, neither
Perry nor Mansfield mention emancipation in their reviews. They do not look into the
represented issue of divorce. Ellens liberated behavior is noticed and her sophistication and
intelligence are praised, but the issue of womens liberation is not discussed by them.
The Mirror Image
The only early article that does focus on women and emancipation can be found in The
Woman Citizen.
71
This review has not been listed in previous collections of contemporary
reviews.
72
The statements of the anonymous reviewer are noteworthy, however:
What Mrs. Whartons subtle skill has evoked is a nave society where
women are supposed to know no more of the world around them than of
their own anatomy, and that is nothing at all. But in spite of her mocking
portrayal of an artificial morality; of dense unreadiness to know facts as
facts, there is a certain delicacy in human relations in 1870 without which

68
As found in: The Critical Writings of Katherine Mansfield by Clare Hanson (London: Macmillan
Press, 1987) 74-75.
69
David Holbrooks study of Edith Wharton, Edith Wharton and the Unsatisfactory Man, takes its
direction from a belief that readers are likely to understand her novels better if they adopt a
phenomenological approach to certain movements of her consciousness, in particular her dealings
with sexual themes. This is an aspect that Mansfield might not have known much about at the time.
For the rest she is very much involved with the text of the story. (New York: St. Martins Press,
1991).
70
Not all (present-day) critics agree with her that there is not enough passion in this novel, though.
Lloyd M. Daigrepont expounds quite a different view in his article The Cult of Passion in The Age of
Innocence, American Literary Realism 40.1 (Fall 2007) 1-15.
71
Anonymous, The Age of Innocence The Woman Citizen 5:23 (1920): 642; (American).
72
There is no mention of this review in Plante, Springer or Tuttleton.

188

THE MIRROR IMAGE

1920 seems a bawling, barking market place. Take, for example, Archer
Newlands beautiful wife, May, elaborately portrayed as too ingenue
even to guess at her husbands emotional states. Yet she dealt with all the
amorous twistings of his soul with an efficiency a too frank twentieth
century lady would never have achieved.
This reviewer also compliments the way Wharton contrasts the female protagonists and
adds:
The heart of the book and the foil against which New Yorks crudities
stand out is Ellen Olenska, who pervades the story like a fine fragrance.
She is what the old world has made of a finely nurtured American who
has been allowed to grow up fearless and articulate. In a New York
environment where every woman is expected to be protected from the
simplest realities, Ellen is an exotic plant, but one from which no male
eyes can turn away. Contrasting these two women, strong in their several
ways, the wife and the adored one of the correct and neutral-toned Archer
Newland, is one of the things Mrs. Wharton can do well. She is happiest
and most acrid when she is painting her women characters.
This is one of the few contemporary articles that does stress the special way in which the
women are portrayed in this novel and relates it to the still secondary position of women.
On the whole, however, only more recent studies seem to notice the issue of womens
liberation in this book.
73
Els van der Werf calls this process dismissive censorship. By
this she means:
the response to a literary work or works, which is characterized by the
refusal, either consciously or unconsciously, to acknowledge that the
artist is using his / her work to give expression to views which question
the moral, social, or religious opinions of the addressee. A readers
resistance to a writers potentially subversive views may result in the
denial that these views are expressed.
74

With regard to The Age of Innocence it seems to be mainly the class oriented criticism that
is picked up by the contemporary reader. The comments made in the context of gender
inequality appear to be largely ignored, at the time. Even in the 1920s, these ideas still seem
to be too much advanced of the traditional norm and value systems. In general, Wharton
tends to express ideological opinions rather carefully. Because of this, contemporary
readers could safely read her novel; but it is unfortunate that her challenges to New York

73
Some more modern studies dealing with this topic are: Judith H. Montgomery, The American
Galatea, College English 32.8 (May, 1971): 890-899; Margaret B. McDowell, Viewing the Custom
of Her Country: Edith Whartons Feminism Contemporary Literature 15.4 (Autumn, 1974): 521-
538; Mary Suzanne Schriber, Convention in the Fiction of Edith Wharton Studies in American
Fiction, 11:2 (1983: Autumn): 189-201; Mary E. Papke, Verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of
Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990); and Susan Goodman, Edith
Whartons Women: Friends & Rivals (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1990).
74
Els van der Werf, Brief Affairs: Narrative Strategies in Female Adultery Stories by Kate Chopin
and Edith Wharton. Dissertation University of Groningen (Groningen: GrafiMedia, 2009) 11.

189

societys moral standards in relation to the woman question were still ignored by most
contemporary readers.
This does not mean that critics or readers did not notice the issue at all; they just tended to
focus more on other aspects. The limited interpretation of the novel was also not caused
by a small readership. Wharton had a wide range of critics and readers from both genders
and various nationalities, as we have seen. More modern studies agree that Wharton deals
with the topic in a very subtle way; for example, because she presents the discussion of
this subject from the point of view of a man.
75
This ensured the novels success even for
several years after its publication.
76

However, Wharton knew very well how to assess her readers and she seemed to realize that
contemporary readers would still also look at the moral aspects of the story. Her depiction
of social manners and roles allows a questioning of the correct types of behavior which is
quite modern for the time, but not too extreme. Quite a few women had a chance to read
this story, and be introduced, not only to accepted and conformist behavior for women, but
also to the more liberated behavior of Ellen and the rise of the female self as social and
cultural constraints begin to weaken. Wharton thus attempts to raise an awareness about the
position of women without offending any contemporary readers or critics. The mirroring of
the female main characters is noticed and appreciated; but her careful depiction of the still
limited position of women did not intrigue as many contemporary readers as the love-
triangle did.

75
Present-day critics who have documented Whartons political and social arguments with the
woman question are Cythia Griffin Wolff, Susan Gubar, Sandra Gilbert and Katherine Joslin (see
Bibliography).
76
Millicent Bell points this out in her study The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton
(Cambridge University Press, 1995). In the Chronology, she states: The Age of Innocence yields
royalties of $70,000 by 1922, xii. And the novel also remained in the limelight in other ways: in
1924 a silent film version was released by Warner Brothers, directed by Wesley Ruggles, and starring
Beverley Bayne and Elliott Dexter; Margaret Ayer Barnes adapted the novel into a play, first
produced on Broadway in 1928. The novel and play were subsequently the basis for the RKO film
The Age of Innocence (1934) that starred Irene Dunne and John Boles.

190

Chapter 6

Life After Leaving Mr Mackenzie
If there is one hypocrisy I loathe more than another,
its the fiction of the good woman and the bad one.
Jean Rhys in Vienne.
1

6.0: INTRODUCTION
The last book under discussion in this study is After Leaving Mr Mackenzie by Jean Rhys
(1890-1979).
2
Jean Rhys was born in Dominica, the daughter of a doctor of Welsh descent
and a Creole mother. She came to England in 1907 and briefly attended the Perse School in
Cambridge, and later the Academy of Dramatic Art in London. But after her father died,
she discontinued her studies and went to work to support herself. She worked as a chorus
girl, and a film extra, and, during the First
World War (1914-1918), as a secretary and
volunteer cook. In 1919 she left England to
marry the first of three husbands, Jean
Lenglet, and remained abroad for many
years, living mainly in Paris, where she
began to write and where much of her early
work is set. The short story collection The
Left Bank appeared in 1927 with an
introduction by Ford Madox Ford. The novel
that will be discussed here, After Leaving Mr
Mackenzie, was published in 1930.
I began this chapter with a quotation from
one of Rhys short stories. Rhys evidently
hated the division of women into
stereotypical opposites because she was
quite often stigmatized in her own life.
However, it is clear that she found the
division useful in the writing of fiction and,
in spite of this statement, much of Jean
Rhys work is organized around those split
or mirrored images. Her novel After Leaving
Mr Mackenzie is no exception. In this novel,

1
Vienne is a short story by Jean Rhys. It was first published in the Transatlantic Review II.2
(December 1924): 639-645.
2
Some authorities give Rhys date of birth as 24 August 1894, but Diana Athill mentions in a
Foreword to Rhys posthumous autobiography Smile Please, 24 August 1890. Jean Rhys was born
in Roseau, Dominica, in the West Indies. She was named Ella Gwendolin Rees Williams. She
changed her name various times, but her novels and short stories were published under the name Jean
Rhys.

Jean Rhys (The University of Tulsa)

191

the sisters Julia Martin and Norah Griffiths are contrasted. Julia is the so-called bad
woman. She is pretty, she has style, and her marriage has enabled her to leave the drabness
of home and move to Paris. Norah has denied herself excitement to stay at home with their
ailing mother. Superficially, she is the Angel in the House and the good woman, but she
is unmarried, embittered, and imprisoned in suburban Acton by poverty and the invalid
mother.
3
The relationship between the two women is not good, and the resentment the two
sisters feel is mutual (Athill, 11-12). Norahs feelings cut deeper, though; she hates,
whereas Julia shows only dry-eyed spite.
It is especially in the middle section of the novel that the sisters are mirrored, but the
limitation of the various social roles for women is shown throughout the book, and the
comparison with Norah is important, because it shows an alternative to Julias existence
and reveals what might have happened to her, if she had behaved in a more traditional way.
A short summary may clarify the development of the story-line. In After Leaving Mr
Mackenzie, the central female protagonist is Julia Martin.
4
She lives in Paris, and we enter
the story on a Tuesday in the spring of 1929 or 1930. Since the previous October, when her
lover Mr Mackenzie left her, Julia has been living on the weekly three hundred francs
which his lawyer, Henri Legros, sends her. Her life is characterized by little freedom, and
the social and economic constraint she experiences is becoming worse. The allowance is
suddenly stopped with a final payment of fifteen hundred francs. In a fit of rage, Julia seeks
out Mr Mackenzie in his local restaurant, slaps him, and flings his money back at him. This
incident is witnessed by George Horsfield, and after she leaves the restaurant, he tracks her
down and approaches her in a nearby caf. They have a drink, go to the cinema, and talk.
When Mr Horsfield realizes that she has no money, he gives her fifteen hundred francs, and
he also advises her to return to London. Julia goes there for various reasons; to see her
family (a dying mother, a jealous sister, a selfish uncle), to seek financial help from the
wealthy older man who was her first lover (he had promised that they would always be
friends), and to continue her affair with Mr Horsfield.
5
The mother is by now an invalid;
and she dies while Julia is in London. After the cremation, Norah and her paternal Uncle
Griffiths send Julia away. Julia briefly takes George Horsfield for her lover, but then
returns to Paris. In Paris, she sticks to the same routines as before, and the novel ends with
her asking Mr Mackenzie to lend her one hundred francs.
Jean Rhys always denied being a feminist, yet her depiction of the available social roles for
women, and the unequal and unfair division of power structures leaves no doubt that she
was fully aware of the oppressive social structures of patriarchy. In After Leaving Mr
Mackenzie, we find the bleakest depiction of the contemporary social system. Instead of
being mildly ironic about society and the various social roles, as Edith Wharton would have

3
Diana Athill stresses this, calling Norah the good sister, the one who has stayed at home and
sacrificed her youth to caring for their mother. Jean Rhys: The Early Novels (London: Andr
Deutsch, 1984) 11. Many other critics mention the opposition of the good sister Norah and the bad
sister Julia, as well, though. Lorna Sage refers to it in the Introduction to the latest Penguin edition
(London: Penguin Classics, 2000) v.
4
The original title of After Leaving Mr Mackenzie does not have a period after Mr ; I have generally
followed this form.
5
Arnold E. Davidson mentions this in The Art and Economics of Destitution in Jean Rhys Studies
in the Novel 16:2 (Summer 1984) 215-227, 216.

192

THE MIRROR IMAGE

been, Jean Rhys can be downright sarcastic about the economic and social dependence of
women. Perhaps this is also a sign of the times; After Leaving Mr Mackenzie is the most
recent of all of the novels under discussion here, published in 1930.
6
By this time, women
writers could be more outspoken about the social system; and the plight of the individual,
also the female individual, had become an important issue.
What is noteworthy about Rhys writing style is that it is less realistic than the style of the
earlier women writers. Many critics, amongst them Ford Madox Ford, regarded her as a
modernist writer, because of the techniques that she uses. In general, modernist literature is
characterized by a rejection of nineteenth-century traditions. The conventions of realism are
abandoned and many modernist writers considered themselves an avant-garde upsetting
bourgeois values. They adopted new forms and styles, played with the chronological
order and attempted new ways of describing the flow of characters thoughts in their
stream-of-consciousness styles. Many writers introduced new or forbidden subject-
matters. Overall, it seemed to be their aim to shock the sensibilities of the conventional
reader and to challenge the norms and values of bourgeois culture. This modernist revolt
against traditional literary forms and subjects demonstrated itself strongly after the
catastrophy of World War I shook peoples faith in the foundations and continuity of
Western civilization and culture.
7

In her writings, Rhys experiments especially with the structuring of the story, with the
juxtaposition of characters and events and with the introduction of risky subject matters. In
After Leaving Mr Mackenzie, this sometimes leads to an almost grotesque portrayal of the
female main characters and the representation of their plight borders on the absurd. Yet, her
method to portray womens struggle with contemporary society is very illuminating, and it
is again the mirroring of the main characters that seems to develop into a consciousness-
raising technique. To examine further the method used by Jean Rhys to represent what the
text suggests as the limited options for women in contemporary society, I will first have a
look at the gender and class specific socialization of both Julia and her sister Norah, and
then examine their relationship with society.

6.1: THE REPRODUCTION OF POWER SYSTEMS
Like The Awakening, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie does not mention education in relation
to the female protagonists. Yet, like Edna Pontellier, Julia Martin is in the middle of a
learning process and, in that sense, the novel can be called a Bildungsroman. With regard
to the division of power structures and the expected social roles of both genders the novel
implies that Julia comes to fully understand the oppressive social system. She also realizes
that she cannot really change it, though.
In spite of the fact that After Leaving Mr Mackenzie is the most recent novel of my four
case studies, and contemporary society was beginning to change, it is only in relation to

6
Elgin W. Mellown, Character and Themes in the Novels of Jean Rhys, Contemporary Literature
13. 4 (Autumn, 1972): 474.
7
See: Richard Lehan, Literary Modernism and Beyond: The Extended Vision and the Realms of the
Text (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009) 16-17, 41-42, 57.

193

some of the male characters that education is mentioned. Mr Horsfield, for example, had a
good education, and both Mr Mackenzie and Mr James had a traditional upbringing. This
one-sidedness is surprising, because the period between World War I and World War II
altered the shape of life in various contexts for women in Europe. Women were gaining
more and more rights and opportunities. Soon after the end of World War I, these included
for some the right to own property, the right to vote, and the chance of a higher education.
During World War I, women from the middle classes went to work in place of men away at
war, and many refused to give up their new-found financial independence after the war.
8
In
Great Britain the Representation of the People Acts of 1918 and 1920 granted suffrage to
women over thirty and to women over twenty-one, respectively. New technologies in the
home added to the sense of freedom. Electric irons, pyrex glass which enabled food to be
cooked and served in one dish, mass-produced clothing, and vacuum cleaners were among
the many conveniences which by 1930 helped to free at least middle class women from
full-time housework.
9
In addition, new fashions cut down the time spent on personal
appearance; short hair and clothes without the corsets or petticoats of the Victorian and
Edwardian periods gave women a previously unheard-of degree of freedom in movement.
One of the most important factors in this social revolution was the opening up of higher
education to women, a development that began in the late nineteenth century. Fighting the
perception that education would render women unfit for their traditional roles as wives,
housewives, and mothers, pioneers of womens education set up colleges where women and
girls could learn in a structured environment and study what their brothers had been
studying for centuries. Many women prepared there for careers, often in teaching. Although
many others found their time at college to be a brief but welcome break before marriage,
the social conditions for women seemed definitely changed. And by the 1930s, the
traditional, unequal marriage where the woman was delegated to the private sphere and the
man to the public no longer seemed the only option available for women.
10

One would expect writing from this period, at least that by women for women, to reflect
some of these social and cultural changes. Yet, with regard to Jean Rhys work quite the
opposite is true. In After Leaving Mr Mackenzie, the quest for knowledge or self-
understanding is portrayed as a search for a partner, and is similar to the more traditional
romance plot. Julia Martin still longs for the ideal of a man in whose arms she can sacrifice
her independence for the sake of love. However, she does a bad job of choosing her men,

8
See also Chapters 2.4 and 2.5 of this dissertation for a detailed overview of these changes.
9
Elizabeth McMurray points out that the new woman absolutely freed from domestic work by
appliances was in some sense a myth, though: The time spent on domestic chores did not decrease, it
was rather that standards of cleanliness were raised (At Home in the Thirties, 1). She adds that it
was predominantly the middle classes who purchased these new labour-saving appliances in a
period of transition away from the employment of live-in domestic help. [The trade catalogues]
describing these products reflect the changing role of the housewife and elevate housework to a
profession (1-2). McMurray provides some noteworthy statistics on ownership: the high prices of
washing machines meant that by 1938 only 3% of the households possessed one, while most
continued to use a copper and portable wringer (9); by 1939 nine million households owned a radio
(in Britain), but radios were very expensive, costing on average twice the weekly wage and many
bought on hire purchase (10); Pyrex heat-resistant glassware was developed in 1915 by Corning
Glassworks in America, and it was first produced in Britain in the 1920s (14).
10
Gage Blair, Chapter 13: Great Britain, International Handbook of Womens Education, 285-323.

194

THE MIRROR IMAGE

and very often she does not seem free to choose at all, but is content merely to be chosen.
Her search for love, communication, and respect does not result in a happily-ever-after
marriage, but merely leads to alienation and depression. The overall impression given by
After Leaving Mr Mackenzie is that, in spite of all of the contemporary developments in the
1930s, the underlying power-structures have not changed at all.
The first thing Julia Martin discovers during the learning process she undergoes is that
patriarchy is still quite an oppressive social system for women. Julia mentions the
oppressive social system, already, in relation to her youth. In a chapter entitled
Childhood, she states:
When you are a child you are yourself and you know and see everything
prophetically. And then suddenly something happens and you stop being
yourself; you become what others force you to be. You lose your wisdom
and your soul.
11

As an adult, Julia longs to get in touch with her real self again. What she wants to learn is
the truth about myself and about the world and about everything that one puzzles and
pains about all the time (ALMM, 41). What she finds out is already depicted in the
childhood story about butterflies:
You were catching butterflies. You caught them by waiting until they
settled, and then creeping up silently on tiptoe and squatting near them.
Then, when they closed their wings you grabbed them quickly
When you had caught the butterfly you put it away in an empty tobacco
tin, which you had ready.
Of course, what always happened was that it broke its wings; or else it
would fray them so badly that by the time you had got it home and
opened the box and hauled it out as carefully as you could it was so
battered that you lost all interest in it.
what you had hoped had been to keep the butterfly in a comfortable
cardboard-box and to give it the things it liked to eat. And if the idiot
broke its own wings, that wasnt your fault, and the only thing to do was
to chuck it away and try again. (ALMM, 115-116)
The butterfly story represents what will happen to Julia later in life. She, too, is really only
allowed to live in a box, or straitjacket of social roles. The social role that she is finally
pushed into is the role of mistress, kept in a cheap hotel room, when she is still young and
attractive, but chucked away when she is no longer wanted. Julia is never associated with
the more acceptable social roles for women, such as wife, housewife, and mother. Rhys
shows little joy for women in their rebellion against these roles. Julia always remains on the
fringes of acceptable society, and so basically does her mirror image, her sister Norah. Both
Julia and Norah belong to the lower middle classes, unlike the female protagonists
discussed earlier; and their overall situation is less comfortable because of that.

11
Jean Rhys, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie 1930 (London: Penguin Classics, 2000): 115. Further
citations from this novel will be indicated with ALMM, followed by the page number(s) of this
edition.

195

Norah Griffiths represents the woman who sticks to the expected social roles, who accepts
her lower-middle-class life in all its drabness. She is among lifes defeated women.
Throughout the story, she represents the Angel in the House, but her depiction of this
stereotype is quite different from the impression made by the angels in the previous
novels. It is mostly her correct behavior that can be considered angelic. It is not her looks
or her temperament; in fact, beneath her grim stoicism lurks an embittered, self-pitying
woman. And the narrators opening description depicts her as follows:
Her head and arms drooped as she sat. She was pale, her colourless lips
pressed tightly together into an expression of endurance. She seemed
tired.
Her eyes were like Julias, long and soft. Fine wrinkles were already
forming in the corners. She wore a pale green dress with a red flower
fixed in the lapel of the collar. But the dress had lost its freshness, so that
the flower looked pathetic. (ALMM, 51)
We learn from her cold face that warmth and tenderness were dead in her (ALMM,
51). Norah has been beaten down in a way different from Julia, but the same social and
economic forces have worked upon her. Norah is a woman with middle-class tastes left
without the money to gratify them yet holding desperately to both her tastes and
opinions (ALMM, 53). These opinions lead her to criticize Julia for her shiftlessness, her
conduct with men, and her failure to care for their dying mother.
Norah is introduced as the incarnation of a woman who behaves in the proper way
according to the prevailing social norms. She is socialized into the stereotyped role-
expectations. There are some flaws in her character, but especially in the caring context,
and in her role as daughter she behaves quite correctly. However, she does not really
succeed in correcting Julias conduct, or in convincing the reader that the role of angel is
the preferable one. On the contrary, and Julia recognizes Norahs defeat in Norahs
coldness and self-righteous moral superiority. Overall, the mirroring of the female
protagonists in After Leaving Mr Mackenzie raises the socially acceptable and unacceptable
behavioral patterns for women to a more conscious level of understanding, but the motif
mostly helps the reader to gain a critical view of the contemporary social context.
Yet, the reader is not the only one to learn something about the social system. Julia already
discovered the oppressive tendencies of patriarchy and both Julia and Norah also learn two
important other points in their confrontation with contemporary society. The influence of
the social context is especially noticeable through the similarities between both sisters.
12

Norah, for example, is always tired. She thinks of herself as a slave, and as buried
alive; she also cries for her dying youth and beauty, and even her voice is like Julias,
they did not help. They just stood round watching her youth die, and her
soft heart grow hard and bitter. They just sat there and said: Youre
wonderful, Norah. Beasts devils For a long time, she had just lain
on her bed, thinking: Beasts and devils (ALMM, 75-76)

12
Carol Angier points out these similarities in her biographical study Jean Rhys: Life and Work
(London: Andr Deutsch, 1990) 264-265.

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

Norah comforts herself with thoughts about money and the inheritance, which is not like
Julia; but soon she sounds like Julia again:
And then she had felt very cold, and had pulled the bed-clothes over her.
And then she had felt so tired that after all nothing mattered except sleep. And
then she must have slept. (ALMM, 76)
Norah is also like Julia in another way: she is divided (Angier, 264) She experiences a
growing division between warm and cold, soft and hard. Once she was soft, she thinks,
but now she is becoming increasingly hard and insensitive. After she and Julia have a row,
she succeeds in forgetting Julia fairly quickly.
Norah lay back, with her eyes shut. She thought: My God, how hard Ive
got! Her lips trembled: Whats happened to me? For a moment she was
afraid of herself. (ALMM, 101)
Yet, this is Julias story, too. Her last remaining pride is her empathy and her tender heart;
but at the end of the story, she thinks,
And it was funny to end like that where most sensible people start,
indifferent and without any pity at all. Just saying: Its nothing to do
with me. Ive got my own troubles. Its nothing to do with me. (ALMM,
136)
And so Julia gradually acquires the habit of not caring, too.
The second thing Julia and Norah learn in their confrontation with society is that they
should not care about other people and society too much, if they want to survive as an
individual (Mellown, 466). As a reader this development makes you begin to wonder about
the norm and value system presented in the novel, especially because the male characters
have this attitude from the beginning. Right at the start of his relationship with Julia,
Horsfield already thinks, Once you started letting the instinct of pity degenerate from the
general to the particular, life became completely impossible (ALMM, 34). Overall, George
Horsfield is depicted as the kind and understanding male character, but this sentence
reveals how much he has been conditioned by the apparently harsh social context of the
1930s. At the same time, the narrator ridicules this type of thinking with such a comment,
exactly because one cannot care about the general, if one does not take heed of the
particular. The male character Mr Mackenzie gets involved with other people in only a very
limited, usually businesslike way. Women he mostly sees as objects, and in relation to Julia
he thinks: Never again never, never again will I get mixed up with this sort of woman
(25). Mr James is depicted as only having been interested in sex with Julia: I didnt know
anything about him, really. You see, he never used to talk to me much. I was for sleeping
with not for talking to (125). And even her uncle, Uncle Griffiths, thinks, Why should I
have to bother about this woman? (59). The men in patriarchy apparently find this a
normal way of dealing with other people. Both female protagonists gradually acquire this
type of behavior, but neither is really happy with it.
At the beginning of her novel, Rhys separated the soft from the hard person, and put
them into two different female characters. Yet, the more we progress into the story, the
more similar especially the plight of both women becomes. Overall, the female main
characters are in a way closer to each other, than the female protagonists of the other

197

novels, because they are introduced as sisters. With this representation technique Rhys can
show that there is a connection between them, even when there is not such a strong
emotional bond between the two women. The likeness between them seems to be the
family-background; but, for the rest, they are depicted as complete opposites. The shared
family background between the two sisters also allows Rhys to express truths about the one
through the other. At an important point in their learning process, there is even an actual
confusion between them, so that for a moment the reader does not know which sister is
referred to (Angier, 266). This happens when one of the main questions of the novel is
asked.
It occurs in Chapter 9, in Part 2. The family is traveling to Mrs Griffithss cremation. The
third section ends: Norah was silent, looking down at her hands clasped together in her
lap. Then the fourth section begins
The car stopped. Everybody walked in a short procession up to the chapel
of the Crematorium, where a clergyman with very bright blue eyes was
waiting. That was a dream, too, but a painful dream, because she was
obsessed with the feeling that she was so close to seeing the thing that
was behind all this talking and posturing
In another minute she would know. And then a dam inside her head burst,
and she leant her head on her arms and sobbed. (ALMM, 94)
She must be Julia, not Norah because Julia is the one who cries, with her arms pressed
over her eyes, while Norah watches the coffin with eyes wide open (ALMM, 94). But
when she is first mentioned, the reader cannot be sure. The experience and the question
seem like Julia, but logically it should be Norah, the last one to be named (Angier, 266).
It is noteworthy that when Rhys leads the novel to the point of asking one of the heroines
most important questions (what is behind the nothingness that her life has reached?) there
should be this mix-up: is it Norah or Julia who is asking? is it Norah or Julia whose life is
nothing? There is an instant when according to strict grammatical analysis Norah seems to
ask what is really Julias question.
13

There is not a straightforward answer to the question, What is behind all this
nothingness? It seems to lead to other questions, such as: What is the nothingness? Is the
nothingness being nothing, or having nothing? Julia already gave part of the answer to this
question herself in the chapter called Childhood. It is also indicated later on when she is
trying to get in touch with her real self again. The novel suggests that what prevents her
from getting in touch with her real self, is an oppressive social system which forces her to
accept a certain pattern of behavior. In her rebellion to this she has chosen, or been chosen,
for a social role in the fringes. Her sister Norah has acted a little wiser, but, in the context
represented in the story, she is still in the margin, too.

13
Angier believes that this confusion was an unconscious slip of the pen by Rhys; but I am not so
sure of that, as Rhys was very much concerned with and conscious of structure and experimenting
with form, 266.

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

It is too limited to say that it is only Julia herself who is behind the nothingness.
14
And
this is true for Norah, too. The contemporary social system does not really co-operate,
either. This is perhaps the most striking resemblance between Julia and Norah, in spite of
the different lives they lead. Within the bourgeois power structures sketched in the novel,
the men have all the money, and thus the power, and the women have nothing. The idea
that the main means for survival, money, belongs to men is apparent throughout the story,
and it is the third thing Julia and Norah learn. With the money, the men also have the power
in contemporary society, and perhaps the main similarity between Julia and Norah is their
powerlessness and their poverty. Women seem to be able to get money only through men,
if they are beautiful, or, more rarely, if they have something else that men want, as Uncle
Griffithss wife has docility and companionableness. If they are plain and without any other
marketable quality, they can get no power at all, only bare survival.
In After Leaving Mr Mackenzie, the idea that men can be poor or powerless is absent. There
are the unknowns, and the poor thin skeleton at the end, drooping in a doorway; but they
are hardly presented as real people, and in any case they are outnumbered by similar,
ghostlike, unnamed women. All the main male characters have money. Mr James has been
very rich ever since Julia has known him; Mr Mackenzie is comfortably off, and even Mr
Horsfield owns a business, though it is small and decaying (ALMM, 18, 31, 42). Mr
James riches sound inherited (that beautiful house, that gentlemens club); and Mackenzie
and Horsfield too have done without working hard, and do not work at all while Julia
knows them (48, 79-80). Mackenzie was helped by his father, and by a certain good luck
which had always attended him; Horsfield also inherited his business from his father, and
during the six months that Julia has been alone in her hotel he has been spending a legacy
on a holiday (18, 27-28). Uncle Griffiths, finally, has only irrational fears of poverty, and
has been the large and powerful male of the family since Julias childhood (57). In this
novel, men and money seem to belong together. The money is handed down from father to
son, so that without any of them making any visible effort generations of men form a
smooth wall of money, with no chink to let a woman in, thus perfectly reproducing the
existing power structures.
The women, accordingly, are all poor. Life says to them all the time what London says to
Julia: Get money, get money, get money, or be forever damned (ALMM, 65). The whole
novel is full of anxious, detailed, female calculations about money, most of all Julias (56).
She gets three hundred francs a week from Mr Mackenzie (10). Her hotel costs sixteen
francs a night, which means a third gone (7). The rest must pay for cafs, meals, and her
bottle every night. Mr Horsfield gives her fifteen hundred francs; she spends most of it on
clothes, and has the equivalent of thirty shillings left for London (36, 44). Her Bloomsbury
hotel costs eight shillings and six pence a night. She pays for a night, plus a shilling for the
meter and a shilling to the boy (47-48). The next day she has lunch at Lyons and goes to a
film, after which she has only a little over one pound left (49-50). A boarding house (bed
and board for a week) will cost two pounds; she gets one pound from Uncle Griffiths and
another pound from Mr Horsfield, and moves (61, 68). Then she buys her mother a bunch
of roses for six shillings and has only ten shillings left (91). This detailed account of her

14
Some critics state this in otherwise excellent studies of Rhys work. Angier points this out in Jean
Rhys: Life and Work, 266. In her comment Angier focuses on the individual, but the text of the novel
seems to stress the intertwining of the condition of the individual with the social context.

199

financial situation goes on until after her return to Paris and the novel ends with her
borrowing one hundred francs from Mr Mackenzie.
15

Norah is almost as poor. The first thing Mr Horsfield imagines about her is No money. No
bloody money, and he is right: Norah was labelled for all to see. She was labelled
Middle class. No money (ALMM, 42, 53). She has eight pounds to last a month: count
up for yourself (53). When her mother dies she cannot afford a choir at her funeral.
Norahs being so poor must mean that Uncle Griffiths does not help her; and indeed we are
told in the story that he does not. [T]he truth is, he says, that I havent got any money
(though if he had he would not give it to Julia, certainly not, but to her sister Norah,
because she was a fine girl and she deserved it) (60). Within the text, that turns out to be
not the truth, at all; but the result is that even the good sister gets no money from the safe
rich male of the family. The only money she will get will be female money, her mothers
and her Aunt Sophies (76). This is the usual female money, enough for the organist, but
not for the choir. It will be enough for Norah to do what she likes or at least to go away,
once they are dead; but it is not enough to pay for any help now, and free her from years of
slavery.
This third aspect both Julia and Norah come to realize in relation to society: that men have
the money and the power, is repeated so often by the narrator, that its depiction becomes
almost absurd. This is, of course, exactly what it is and the reader notices this, too. In the
story, the men do not deliberately oppress and crush the women with the money issue, but
they do not share their money either. They give women just enough to keep them alive,
never enough to buy pleasure or freedom. In this way, the family back their approval of
Norah, but not in any spectacular fashion; and so Mr Mackenzie gives Julia not the lump
sum she asks for, but only the carefully judged allowance, receipt of which she must
every week acknowledge and oblige (ALMM, 14, 16, 21). Men make the decisions,
which women can only accept. Julias and Norahs father similarly took their mother from
her South American home to cold grey England, then promptly died and left her to his
unhelpful brother. And, thus Julia herself is let down by all her lovers from the age of
nineteen, five or six times over (79).
With such a social structure, it is no wonder that both Julia and Norah experience a
nothingness, or that Julia finds it difficult to get in touch with her real self again. In the
bourgeois social system represented in the novel, genuine feelings are discouraged and
sensitivity is resented; and, in spite of its supposed to be around 1929, most women still do
not have access to money, freedom, or some kind of individuality. Rhys was unashamedly
straightforward in her bleak depiction of the negative aspects of contemporary society. She

15
The examples in the rest of the story are as follows: Her mother dies and Norah gives Julia a ring
worth one pound. Norah is always willing to give her a pound for it, if she needs money; this to
prevent Julia from pawning it. The precise value of the ring is not indicated (96-97); the next example
is that she gets through the following two days, because Mr Horsfield buys her suppers. Then Mr
James sends her twenty pounds; she pays her bill and goes back to Paris (125); Mr Horsfield sends
her ten pounds there, which once again she spends on clothes (130-131); at the end, she is completely
broke again, and borrows one hundred francs from Mr Mackenzie (138).

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

was also early in her emphasis on the importance of money. The feminist movements did
not make this an issue in society in general until the 1960s.
16

6.2: MAKE-UP AND CLOTHES
Make-up
The question that is thus raised by the novel is: how can women brace themselves against
such a society? In Rhys novel, the main character Julia is portrayed as using certain role-
attributes to ward off unpleasantness. As with the other novels, it is especially these
attributes that characterize the social roles of the female protagonists in relation to the class
specific context. Clothes remain the main attribute referring to the social roles and the class
divisions connected with them, but there is also another attribute that deserves mentioning
within this context, namely make-up. That make-up has not been referred to before has
historical reasons. Maggie Angelogou indicates that the cosmetic revolution only started
around 1910, with the arrival of the Russian ballet in Paris. This ballet inspired audiences
with its dancers made up faces. And in 1915 Marcus Levy invented the metal container for
lipstick. The cosmetics industry began to flourish in the 1920s and onward, and then
became one of the main growth industries in Western economies.
17

The wide availability of cosmetics in the twentieth century also introduces a change in
thought about the nature and stability of identity, especially female identity. The most
optimistic interpretation saw make-up as a sign of liberation. Kathy Peiss, for example,
points out that [s]ocial identities that had once been fundamental to womans
consciousness, fixed in parentage, class position, conventions of respectability, and sexual
codes, were now released from small swiveling cylinders.
18
Overall, Peiss opposes a too
limited feminist view which mainly stresses the fashion industrys possible oppression of
women. Instead, Peiss links the use of cosmetics with a positive development, namely the
idea that identity may result from an individual style and become a matter of performance.
New discourses of metamorphosis and self-realization emerged, as well.
19
Within this
context, cosmetics was regarded as a feature of womens liberation, part of an enlightened
and rationalized narrative of social progress.
There were also studies of cosmetic femininity that saw make-up as a mask. These
interpreters of cosmetics did not embrace the cosmetic surface as a new and subversive site
of female agency, but instead reflected on its ambivalence as a symbol of womens
modernity. The mask, namely, defines femininity as appearance, and as such it associates
femininity with the rise of an alienated individualism, a modern fall away from an earlier,

16
Virginia Woolf was another female author of the time who stressed this. Some of her works in
which this issue occurs are the essay collections Women & Writing (1925) and The Crowded Dance of
Modern Life, and her two books of feminist polemic A Room of Ones Own (1929) and Three Guineas
(1938).
17
Maggie Angelogou, A History of Make-up (New York: Macmillan, 1970) 115-125.
18
Kathy Peiss, Introduction, Hope in a Jar: The Making of Americas Beauty Culture (New York:
Henry Holt, 1998) 3-4.
19
Rishona Zimring, The Make-up of Jean Rhyss Fiction, Novel (Spring 2000): 220.

201

wholeness of experience.
20
The female mask represents both a more flexible female identity
and the womans alienation in a market economy that thrives on womens commodification
and consumption.
In After Leaving Mr Mackenzie, the cosmetic mask is used by characters to display,
question, and protect the construction of female identity. The story makes visible the
confrontation of existential and practical conditions concerning womens modern urban
existence, calling into question the make-up of women, but also considering the possible
ambiguity one might create with an interplay of natural or made-up faces. The choice
between the alternation of and the interaction between the various faces a character may
show allows a more flexible personality. Such an approach can protect and expose the
individual, be deceptive or real, and may create a less fixed character than before. It can
allow a more agile personality, who may adapt better to the more complex circumstances of
society in the 1930s.
21

In the novel, it is the female protagonist Julia Martin who most often uses make-up. Julia
herself is quite aware of the possible functions make-up may have. Early in the story, the
narrator relates:
She made herself up elaborately and carefully; yet it was clear that what
she was doing had long ceased to be a labour of love and had become
partly a mechanical process, partly a substitute for the mask she would
have liked to wear. (ALMM, 11)
The make-up items Julia most frequently uses are: rouge, powder, and make-up for the
eyes.
22
There is not a day that she goes without make-up, though she sometimes forgets to
take it off at night, with the result of looking awful in the morning. Yet, such a depiction of
Julia might also say something about Julias personality. The contrast between the mask
and Julias self seems to disappear. Very often, rather than have her moods decide how she
feels, her feelings seem to depend on her looks. If Julia believes that she looks ugly, she
immediately powders her nose, in order to look, and thus feel, better. Julia only feels
confident, when the image is immaculate.
It is noteworthy that in trying to find out the truth about [herself] and about the world and
about everything that one puzzles and pains about all the time, Julia seems to resort to a
mask (ALMM, 41). She thus seems to disconnect herself from her real self. Julias
tendency to dissociate herself whenever she is humiliated or hurt seems to develop into a
consciously used technique to protect her core being. Rishona Zimring believes that Rhys
develops this strategy to,
use the cosmetic mask in order to fashion a literary voice of sardonic
distance and wry critique and constructs a female subject who can step

20
Terry Castle Introduction Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-
Century English Culture and Fiction (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1986).
21
The theme of the mask was also present in eighteenth century literature and in prose from the
nineteenth century. I have already referred to Terry Castles study which examines literature from the
eighteenth century. An interesting study that compares the Victorian blush with its modern opposite
rouge is Mary Ann OFarrells Telling Complexions (Durham: Duke UP, 1997).
22
Examples can be found on the following pages in ALMM: 8, 11 (kohl).

202

THE MIRROR IMAGE

outside and observe the economic system in which beauty plays a part.
(Zimring, 217)
The introduction of make-up gives Julia the possibility to develop a more distanced,
critical, and independent personality. Instead of just symbolizing a certain social role, the
role attribute seems to gather another layer of meaning when it is consciously used, not
only by the narrator, but also by the protagonist.
Throughout the story, Julia struggles with the opposition between her public, role-bound,
made-up self, and her private, or real self. This real self is not explicitly mentioned or
described, but is referred to through a range of metaphors (childhood, nature, animality,
flame).
23
All of these metaphors seem to refer to the core being of Julia, a part where she is
(or was) still innocent, pure and undamaged by society. Julia is extremely sensitive
concerning her real self. To stress Julias vulnerability in this context the narrator
frequently exaggerates the importance of make-up, until it becomes slightly absurd. Whilst
talking to Mr Horsfield, her future lover, Julia powders her face, seeming to him as
completely in control, even furtive and calculating (ALMM, 31). When they drive to his
hotel in a taxi, she powders again, carefully (35). Worried and trying to get his attention,
she makes her inevitable, absent-minded gesture of powdering her face (65). Concerned
that Horsfield might think that she is ugly, she takes out her little powder box, open[s] it
and look[s] at herself in the mirror (66). Horsfield even refers to make-up in the note he
writes for Julia as he leaves her room after they made love: I kiss your lovely hands and
your lovely dark eyelids (what is the stuff you put on them?) (112). Even now Julia cannot
have a natural face.
Julias habits are already suggested in the novels first scene. This scene opens with an
panoptic impression of her room, showing the reader the mirror with its toilet things an
untidy assortment of boxes of rouge, powder, and make-up for the eyes (ALMM, 8). We
witness Julia putting on make up quite regularly and the dramatic question that is gradually
developed in the text is: will Julia become a mask or will the use of make-up set her free. In
general, this question is especially relevant in Julias connection with the men in the story.
As make-up can be used to make a woman more attractive to a man, Julias identification
with the mask might mean her surrender to the role of kept woman. A more conscious and
more subtle use of make-up might indicate her awareness of the available options make-up
offers. Make-up might also give her a means to play with her personality, to consciously
create various shapes with different functions. Such functions might range from display to
protection. In any case, there will be a selection from the available options in which the
desired, rejected, or created images may interact. This interaction may create a less
straightforward, but also a more volatile or nimble personality that can adapt better to the
complex circumstances Julia is confronted with.
The irony in relation to the portrayed use of make-up is that the narrator sometimes seems
to overrule Julias attempts to save herself by exaggerating Julias use of make-up. Rather
than make her look more beautiful, and employ make-up to create an image of wholeness,
symmetry, and idealized beauty, the narrator exaggerates Julias make up (lips too red,
powder used too often); or by portraying her as making herself up badly. Instead of being a

23
Examples of these metaphors in ALMM can be found on the following pages: 52, 57, 77, 101, 112,
115, 121 (childhood), 97 (animality), 94 (flame).

203

liberating force, the attribute then begins to limit Julia and causes her to be criticized. With
all the make-up, and the irregular clothes, Julia is linked by most other characters to the
social role of mistress, and even referred to as a tart (ALMM, 85).
It is true that Julia has had an irregular career. After her arrival in London, Norahs first
comment on seeing Julia is, She doesnt even look like a lady now. What can she have
been doing with herself? (ALMM, 53). When she visits Uncle Griffiths, he can infer from
the page-boys reaction that Julias appearance is quite the opposite of a lady (56-57). And
at the end of the story, Mr Mackenzie notices how women can lose their looks quite
suddenly:
She looked untidy. There were black specks in the corners of her eyes.
Women go phut quite suddenly, he thought. A feeling of melancholy
crept over him. (ALMM, 137)
These judgments would hurt such a sensitive character as Julia. The social role of mistress,
namely, is completely unacceptable for bourgeois society, and people around her do not
hesitate to show their disapproval. There is no longer the pretense of her surroundings or
her family to accept or tolerate Julia; a tendency that we still saw in Edith Whartons novel,
The Age of Innocence. Julias situation, of course, is quite different and she is also from
another social stratum. She belongs to the lower middle classes. It is not stated what type of
education she has had, but it is clear that she is not a member of a powerful family. On the
contrary, Julia is hated by her family, ignored by her former lovers, and left without any
social or economic protection.
What is particularly striking about the description of the use of make-up in the development
of social criticism is the way it reflects a conflict between the public and the private self.
On the one hand, we see Julia powdering herself mechanically; but on the other hand, she is
quite self-conscious about the use of make-up as a mask, and thus as a metaphor for the
public self, behind which stands the private. She reminisces about a Modigliani painting in
the studio of a woman artist,
A sort of proud body, like an utterly lovely proud animal. And a face like
a mask, a long, dark face, and very big eyes. The eyes were blank, like a
mask, but when you had looked at it a bit it was as if you were looking at
a real woman, a live woman (ALMM, 40)
Julia even identifies with the painting, when she states:
I felt as if the woman in the picture were laughing at me and saying: I
am more real than you. But at the same time I am you. Im all that
matters of you. (ALMM, 41)
It is true that in the role of mistress the mask and the lovely body are all that would matter
of Julia, but Julia does not really want that. She is pushed into that role again and again,
because she has no money. Yet, her real self seems to be protesting constantly against this
stereotyping. It is too limited to state that the role-attribute make-up fully characterizes
Julia and solely links her with a certain social role; Julia herself also consciously uses
make-up in an attempt to rebel. Throughout the story there seems to be a discrepancy
between Julias own attempt to save herself, and the narrators more objective interpretation
of her position. Julias absorbed manner of applying make-up seems to be overruled as a

204

THE MIRROR IMAGE

strategy to protect herself by the narrators interpretation of the effects of these efforts. The
narrator stresses the frequency of the use of make-up, the wrong application or the
exaggeration and the distorted image that results from that. Julias looks become more and
more grotesque. Yet, this image finally evolves into a steady voice of irony and sarcasm
which is mainly applied to criticize patriarchy.
An explanation concerning the origin of this technique is given by Cynthia Davis. Davis
studies the Caribbean influences on the work of Jean Rhys.
24
Amongst those influences are
techniques such as parody, satire, and masquerade. She examines the history of these
techniques and concerning masquerade she points out that within the Caribbean local
women had only a few options to ventilate their anger against the colonizers. One of them
was the carnival performances. Such performances were not simply entertainment, but were
modes of resistance to an unjust and exploitative system (Davis, 5). As a child, Rhys
would watch these carnival parades from the window, and she recalls that:
In the afternoon, from four to six, the singing, dancing mobs thronged the
streets. I used to hang out of an upstairs window and watch Dancing,
swaying people, dressed in every colour of the rainbow the women-
masks were powdered and scented. You could see the powder like bloom
on the dark skin of their necks and arms (the dancers) passed under the
window, singing, headed by three musicians I used to think, Imagine
being able to do that to dance along the street in the sun dressed in
red or yellow, to concertina music; and to sing and shout your defiance.
25

One of the few options the poor black population had to express its anger was in this
context. With white powdered faces and carefully chosen clothes the local women could
express their frustration. In After Leaving Mr Mackenzie, Rhys uses the trope of masking
for a similar purpose. The character Julia shows her defiance with a thick layer of make-up,
and she also shouts her defiance, as we shall see later on (in section 6.3). What is
noteworthy in the application of the technique is that Rhys also introduces a narrator who
has a different point of view concerning the effects of Julias attempts at rebellion. As
readers, we alternately zoom in to Julias desperate attempts to save herself or to the more
general depiction of her plight by the narrator. We witness Julias plunging against her fate.
Humor and parody are aspects of the masquerade technique that are used to underline the
apparent hopelessness of Julias struggle. Though the representation of the use of make-up
sometimes seems to lean towards a means to show sarcasm and aggression, the overall
depiction of Julias situation remains quite desolate.
The other female protagonists struggle with society is represented in a similarly bleak way,
and Norah, Julias mirror image, does not even use a role-attribute to protect herself. Norah
does not use any make-up, She was pale, her colourless lips pressed tightly together into
an expression of endurance. She seemed tired (ALMM, 51, 75). Throughout the story she
presents only one image, that of the hard-working and suffering daughter; a slave she
calls herself (75-76). It is not that Norah is not aware of her own appearance:

24
Cynthia Davis, Jamette Carnival and Afro-Caribbean Influences on the Work of Jean Rhys,
Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 3.2 (Fall 2005): 1-22.
25
Jean Rhys, Lost Island; cited in Davis, 10.

205

Then she had got up and looked at herself in the glass. She had let her
nightgown slip down off her shoulders, and had a look at herself. She was
tall and straight and slim and young well, fairly young. She had taken
up a strand of her hair and put her face against it and thought how she
liked the smell and the feel of it. She had laughed at herself in the glass
and her teeth were white and sound and even. Yes, she had laughed at
herself in the glass. Like an idiot.Then in the midst of her laughter she
had noticed how pale her lips were; and she had thought: My lifes like
death. Its like being buried alive. It isnt fair, it isnt fair. (ALMM, 75)
In a scene similar to Julias watching of the painting, Norah judges herself in the mirror. In
assessing her own mirror image, Norah notices the youth and the strength of it, but she also
immediately recognizes the hopeless situation she is in. Her body, her person is used in a
different way than Julias is. She is not an object of physical attraction to men, but her body
is made subservient nonetheless. She slaves to take care of their ailing mother and gives up
her freedom, youth, and happiness. Norah does not consciously use a role-attribute to
protect herself. Role-attributes do not interest her; but she does use a technique to prevent
herself from being injured. She protects herself and her status by doing the right thing.
Everybody always said to her: Youre wonderful, Norah, youre
wonderful. I dont know how you do it. It was a sort of drug, that
universal, that unvarying admiration the feeling that one was doing
what one ought to do, the approval of God and man. It made you feel
protected and safe (ALMM, 75)
Norah is aware that people assume that she should be doing this anyway; and, in practice,
nobody really helps. Yet, throughout the story Norah fulfils the social role of caring
daughter to perfection. The absence of make-up and the bleak and aging image underline
the social role of caretaker. Yet, the narrator again seems to have a different interpretation
of a characters situation. Norah perfectly sticks to the accepted social roles; but instead of
being grateful, the society depicted in the novel does not even react. It mostly ignores
women like Norah and Norah herself is unhappy and frustrated and very conscious of the
fact that she has not been able to develop her own individuality. The only real consolation
she has is Aunt Sophie and her mothers money:
And then she had begun to think in a dull, sore sort of manner about
Aunt Sophies will, and the will her mother had made. And that at long
last she would have some money of her own and be able to do what she
liked. (ALMM, 76)
Norah is thirty-one and, so far, all her life has been spent in serving others. The lack of
rouge and powder reflects her complete surrender to the caretaker role. Julia, at least, is
depicted as having had a shot at the life I wanted, she has had good times lots of good
times, and when she was married, her husband gave [her] lovely things but really
lovely things (ALMM, 60, 82). This is what Norah envies her for, but she would never
adopt such a life style herself. She does not like make-up, she refers to Julias hateful,
blackened eyelids. She herself shows the world a huge stupid face, and she is treated
without much respect, accordingly (98). Without any ironic distance, she is quite vulnerable
and basically destined to be coaxed by others indefinitely.

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

Clothes

Throughout the story, the impression made by
the role attribute of make-up is supported by the
use of clothes. The female protagonist Julia is
very interested in clothes, but she does not have
that much money, and when she buys clothes,
she goes to second hand stores or to department
stores like Galeries Lafayette (ALMM, 44,
131). The result of this is that her clothes are
either old-fashioned, or too shabby (32, 44).
Julia realizes this, and she is again very
sensitive to peoples disapproval of her. When
she visits Uncle Griffiths, she thinks:
Of all the idiotic things I ever did, the
most idiotic was selling my fur coat.
She began bitterly to remember the
coat she had once possessed. The sort
that lasts for ever, astrakhan, with a
huge skunk collar. She had sold it at
the time of her duel with Matre
Legros.
She told herself that if only she had
had the sense to keep a few things, this
return need not have been quite so
ignominious, quite so desolate. People
thought twice before they were rude to
anybody wearing a good fur coat; it
was protective colouring, as it were.
(ALMM, 57)
Again, the character Julia herself is very much
aware of what, in this case, the function of
clothes may be; but she also simply likes
clothes:

She thought of new clothes with passion, with voluptuousness. She
imagined the feeling of a new dress on her body and the scent of it, and
her hands emerging from long black sleeves. (ALMM, 15)

Gabrielle Chanel Dress c. 1927
Inv. AC 76 05 92-26-1

207

She is familiar with the current fashion and realizes that a dress she has just bought is too
short for the prevailing fashion.
26
Yet, she only has minimal resources and she still uses
clothes in a better and more conscious way than Norah does. During their first meeting,
Norah states:
And whos better dressed you or I? said Norah. A fierce expression
came into her eyes. Julia said, bursting into a loud laugh: Yes, dyou
know why that is? Just before I came over here I spent six hundred francs
on clothes, because I thought that if I was too shabby youd all be
ashamed of me and would give me the cold shoulder. Of course, I didnt
want to risk that happening, did I? (ALMM, 54)
In spite of her poor background, Julia has developed a better sense of taste, and a more
conscious use of certain mannerisms than her sister. She wears silk dresses, she is very
conscious about the correct wear of accessories such as expensive shoes, and matching
gloves; and she almost always wears a hat, when she goes out.
27
Julia thinks about the use
of clothing more than the other characters do; doubtless because of the unusual or special
way in which it affects her in her dealings with the other characters. Julia is more of an
outsider. At the same time, more than with the use of make-up, clothes make her happy:
Anything might happen. Happiness.
In her mind she was repeating over and over again, like a charm: Ill
have a black dress and hat and very dark grey stockings.
Then she thought: Ill get a pair of new shoes from that place in the
Avenue de lOpera. The last ones I got there brought me luck.
A ring with a green stone for the forefinger of her right hand. (ALMM,
131)
Julia tries to use fashion to make her look like a lady. At the same time, clothes seem to
offer her a form of consolation; and just as the use of make-up seems to acquire more
functions in the course of the novel, we can see this tendency with clothes.
The character Norah is not interested in clothes and the narrator stresses this fact by mainly
depicting her in one dress, a pale-green dress with a red flower fixed in the lapel of the
collar. But the dress had lost its freshness, so that the flower looked pathetic (ALMM, 51,
87). This phrase is repeated several times throughout the novel, and it emphasizes Norahs
shortcomings with the use of clothes. Norah does not have a sense of style, and she does
not have that much money either. Most of the money that she has is used for the medical
bills and the money that is left provides hardly enough to keep her in clean linen. She is
scrupulously, fiercely clean, but with all the daintiness and the prettiness perforce cut out
(53). Norah does not make a conscious effort to look and dress any better than she does. All
of her energy is spent on caring for her mother. The only accessory that is mentioned in
relation to her is a hat (70). But wearing the hat with her coat when she goes out is more a
habit and an attempt to keep warm, than an effort to play with clothes, or to create a certain
image.

26
ALMM, 44; Julia experiences something similar concerning a coat, 12.
27
Examples of this can be found in ALMM on: 29, 50, 86, 118, 131.

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

The only jewelry that is described in
connection with Norah is a ring. Norah gives
this ring to Julia, after their mothers
cremation; it is a thin gold ring with a red
stone in it (ALMM, 96). This seemingly
kind gesture is followed by the hateful
remark that Julia must never pawn the ring,
and that, if she does, Norah will always give
her a pound for it. The image that Norah
presents is hardly that of an angel and it is as
cold, bare, and frigid as her behavior. With
such a depiction of Norahs plight, the
narrator seems to want to stress the
uneventfulness of Norahs existence. The
monotony of her daily routines becomes
apparent and her frustration is shown, for example, in her behavior towards Julia. Yet, this
overall depiction of the situation of both women raises the representation of the
contemporary social context to a different level of understanding for the reader. The
thematization of the contemporary norm and value system makes its limitations for women
very obvious to the reader.
6.3: ANGRY YOUNG WOMEN
Julia and Norah present different types of behavior in contexts that are strictly coded.
Neither woman presents the ideal picture of feminine behavior, but Norahs behavior is
presented as less socially criticized than Julias. Both women live on the fringes of
bourgeois society. With regard to the space allotted to her, Julia always tries to transcend
and stretch the limits of it as much as possible. Julia, for example, likes men and she likes
sex.
Between the 1860s and World War I, Britain passed a number of laws linked to the
Contagious Diseases and Defence of the Realm Acts. Such legislation intended to control
prostitution and venereal disease; but in reality discouraged the presence of single women
in public. Because of such sexualized stigmatization, respectable women married and
accepted confinement in the home. According to William Harris, Assistant Commissioner
of Police in late-nineteenth century London, any woman who goes to places of public
resort, and is known to go with different men, although not a common streetwalker, should
be considered a prostitute.
28
Such branding was used freely, because female promiscuity
was supposed to be inherent. A London policeman in 1882, for example, argued that in
every large town without exception, where a woman has a chance of this course and runs no
danger of serious loss or inconvenience she will embrace it (Emery, 96-97).
As Rhys had learned from her own work experience, these laws disregarded the fact that
women barely earned subsistence wages in legitimate jobs. In 1911, women made up less
than 28% of the labor force, and of that, 66% worked in manufacturing or personal service

28
Mary Lou Emery, Jean Rhys at Worlds End; Novels of Colonial and Sexual Exile (Austin:
University of Texas, 1990) 96.

Andr Perugia Pumps 1920-30s
Inv. AC 8948 93-33 AB

209

(Emery, 92). During World War I, when clerical jobs became available, Rhys was one of
the women who earned one-third the salary paid to men in the same jobs (Emery, 92). Her
earlier jobs, as a chorus girl and artists model, were not only poorly paid, but were
considered forms of prostitution.
When Julia in After Leaving Mr Mackenzie rejects the traditional social roles for women,
but insists on the right to be out of doors in cafs, streets, taxis, and restaurants, she
threatens social stability and inspires disdain in her family, former lovers, landladies, and
strangers. She still goes her own way; and, even though she does not find a man who will
faithfully continue to fulfil her needs, a true love affair still seems to be one of her main
goals. Julias need in this context is both psychological and physical. Rhys was one of the
first women writers to express an unabashed, direct acceptance of womans desire for
sexual love.
29
Julia is not very lucky in her choice of men, and there are too many social
barriers to grant her happiness, even in Paris. Like Edna Pontellier in The Awakening, she
finds out that it is just not done for a woman to pick and choose a partner freely, or to
enjoy sex.
When she openly admits to Uncle Griffiths that she left her husband, he is astounded.
Nonsense, he says; and later on: Why didnt you make him settle something on you?
(ALMM, 59). It is the practical side of marriage that is stressed, and within that context the
social and economic aspects seem most important. If relationships are formed because of
love, or worse, lust, such behavior is considered deviant and severely judged.
However, Rhys representation stresses that the male is criticized no less in such situations.
When Mr Horsfield leaves Julias boarding house at five oclock in the morning after they
have made love, he is spotted by a policeman.
When he lifted his head he saw a policeman, who was standing on the
pavement a few paces away, staring disapprovingly at him. The
policeman stood with his legs very wide apart and his mouth pursed,
looking extremely suspicious. (ALMM, 113)
The next night something similar happens when both Julia and Mr Horsfield are discovered
on the staircase. Now it is the landlady who criticizes both of them.
Norahs behavior in relation to men is quite different. She does not have a sexual interest in
men, and the only men she meets in the course of the story are Uncle Griffiths and a
clergyman. Norah does like the company of women, though; and living in the flat in Acton
with her is a Miss Wyatt. She is described as follows:
The door on the second floor was opened by a middle-aged woman. Her
brown hair was cut very short, drawn away from a high, narrow forehead,
and brushed to lie close to her very small skull. Her nose was thin and
arched. She had small, pale-brown eyes and a determined expression. She
wore a coat and skirt of grey flannel, a shirt blouse, and a tie.

29
Mellown (1972) 464. A similar openness about sexuality has in this dissertation already been
noticed in relation to Kate Chopins novel The Awakening, Chapter 4.

210

THE MIRROR IMAGE

She rolled herself a cigarette very quickly and neatly. Her gestures were
like the gestures of a man. Her hands were small and thin but short-
fingered and without delicacy. (ALMM, 68-69)
Miss Wyatt is described as resembling a man, and seems to depict the typical lesbian. In
this context Norah can hardly be seen as a correction to Julia. Both Julia and Norah show
behavioral patterns that conflict with acceptable female behavior in the 1930s. Both women
are also potrayed as being so unhappy from the beginning that it is their victimization rather
than their deviant behavior that is stressed.
30

The mirroring of Julia and Norah in the public sphere is again quite complex. In spite of her
tendency to lock herself up occasionally, when she is unhappy, Julia usually walks around
freely in Paris and London. She likes shopping for clothes, eating out in restaurants, having
drinks in cafs, or tea at Lyons. In the 1930s, such behavior would be considered irregular.
The Assistant Commissioner of Police quoted, already hinted at this; and men in Julias
surroundings react in the same way. Twice in the story, Julia unconsciously attracts an
unknown male:
That night, coming back from her meal, a man followed her. When she
had turned from the Place St Michel to the darkness of the quay he came
up to her, muttering proposals in a low, slithery voice. She told him
sharply to go away. But he caught hold of her arm, and squeezed it as
hard as he could by way of answer. (ALMM, 45)
When she tells him that he is ignoble, he answers, Not at all. I have some money and I
am willing to give it to you (ALMM, 45). The second unknown male who approaches her
is only a boy, and after he sees her face in the light of a lamppost he walks away, mumbling
Ah, non alors (135). By now, the male thinks she is too old; but the point is that
apparently a female walking about alone at night in Paris is indeed regarded as available
commodity.
Norahs behavior in the public sphere is quite the opposite, she does not move about as
freely as Julia does. She has lived in Acton for thirty-one years, staying mostly indoors,
taking care of their ailing mother, as we have seen:
And so she had slaved. And she had gradually given up going out
because she was too tired to try to amuse herself. Besides, there wast any
money. That had gone on for six years. Three years ago her mother had
had a second stroke, and since then her life had been slavery. (ALMM,
75-76)
Norahs behavior may seem to be some kind of correction. She behaves in accordance
with the accepted norm and value system; but the monotony and poverty of her existence
make her life hardly attractive, and her jealousy of Julia is in a way a recognition of the fact
that Julias bohemian lifestyle has its attractive aspects, too.

30
Athill indicates: Norahs life has been as cruelly smashed by the pressures of conformity as
Julias has been by the buffeting she has received for breaking out. Jean Rhys: The Early Novels, 12.

211

A third context in which Julia and Norah differ in their behavior is their way of
communicating with the world and with men. Julia freely expresses her ideas and feelings.
She is filled with hatred when she is alone.
But on some days her monotonous life was made confused and
frightening by her thoughts. Then she could not stay still. She was
obliged to walk up and down the room consumed with hatred of the
world and everybody in it and especially of Mr Mackenzie. (ALMM, 9)
She also does not hesitate to show her feelings in public. It is not that she is unaware of the
division of power structures; to her the combination of Mr Mackenzie and Matre Legros
represents organized society, in which she has no place and against which she ha[s] not
a dogs chance (ALMM, 17). Yet, when Julia is finally discarded by Mr Mackenzie; she
looks him up in his favorite restaurant, argues with him, and slaps him in the face:
A cunning expression came into Julias face. She picked up her glove and
hit his cheek with it, but so lightly that he did not even blink.
I despise you, she said. (ALMM, 26)
She only hits him very lightly in the face with her gloves, as if she is challenging him to a
duel. But it is still an act of aggression, and a woman should not behave in such a way in
public. When she has an argument with her Uncle Griffiths after her mothers cremation,
she calls him an abominable old man (ALMM, 99). Rather than swallow her tears and
anger, she ventilates her anger, and does not dread a confrontation. While Norah privately
thinks Beasts. Devils (76), Julia openly judges society in a discussion with her:
People are such beasts, such mean beasts, she said. Theyll let you die
for want of a decent word, and then theyll lick the feet of anybody they
can get anything out of. And do you think Im going to cringe to a lot of
mean, stupid animals? If all good, respectable people had one face, Id
spit in it. I wish they all had one face so that I could spit in it. (ALMM,
98)
Julia is furious and she ventilates her anger without too much reflection down to the most
trivial seeming occasions. Even during a simple visit to a caf, she is sarcastic to a waiter,
when he does not bring her her brandy and the requested blotter fast enough:
She ordered a brandy and a blotter. After what seemed an interminable
time the waiter brought the brandy. And the blotter, please, she said.
After another long interval the blotter appeared. She felt that her nerves
were exposed and raw. Thank you, she said in a sarcastic voice.
Thats quickly done, isnt it? (ALMM, 134)
Overall, this is not the kind, sweet, subservient behavior that is expected of women.
Norah shows the world a different attitude, yet even she has a face that is dark and still,
with something fierce underlying the stillness (ALMM, 53); but she does not ventilate her
anger towards men, and she avoids a confrontation with them. She was trained to certain
opinions which forbid her even the relief of rebellion against her lot (53). She is jealous of
Julia and angry about the fact that Julia did not pay any attention to their invalid mother,

212

THE MIRROR IMAGE

but she does not rebel. She has Almayers Folly on her bed-table and the passage she is
quoted reading is,
The slave had no hope, and knew of no change. She knew of no other
sky, no other water, no other forest, no other world, no other life. She had
no wish, no hope, no love. The absence of pain and hunger was her
happiness, and when she felt unhappy she was tired, more than usual,
after the days labour.
31

Rebellion against her lot seems to be out of the question for Norah. She does act as a
correction for Julia in this context, but her sincerity seems doubtful. Norah has been
conditioned by patriarchal society to behave in this way, and the division between her
private, angry thoughts, Beasts.Devils and her meek behavior suggests quite a layer
of unexpressed frustration (ALMM, 76).
A last context in which Julia and Norah differ considerably is their awareness of the
oppression of women. Both in her conversations with men in the novel, and in a few
descriptive passages, it becomes obvious that Julia realizes that society treats men and
women quite differently. In her first conversation with Mr Mackenzie, Julia asks him the
general question Tell me, do you really like life? Do you think its fair? In his mind, Mr
Mackenzie admits No. Of course life isnt fair. Its damned unfair really. Everybody
knows that (ALMM, 23). In her talk with Mr James, he admits that:
Women are a different thing altogether. Because its all nonsense; the
life of a man and the life of a woman cant be compared. Theyre up
against entirely different things the whole time. Whats the use of talking
nonsense about it? Look at cocks and hens; its the same sort of thing.
(ALMM, 83)
Men and women are not only facing different problems in society. Society also reacts to
them in opposite ways. This is symbolized in a fragment of a film Julia is watching:
After the comedy she saw young men running races and some of them
collapsing exhausted. And then strange anti-climax young women ran
races and also collapsed exhausted, at which the audience rocked with
laughter. (ALMM, 85)

31
Almayers Folly is the first novel by Joseph Conrad (Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, 1857-
1924) set on the east coast of Borneo; it was published in 1895. Kaspar Almayer is a Dutch merchant
taken under the wing of the wealthy captain Lingard, whose adopted Malay child he marries, and he
runs Lingards trading post. But the trading house fails, the marriage is unhappy and Almayers only
daughter Nina marries a Malay prince and leaves. The loss of Nina and potential wealth stuns
Almayer and he spends the rest of his life in the empty trading house as his sanity slips away. The
quote mentioned appears in ALMM, 75. Norahs loss and unhappy lifestyle seem to have an equally
stunning effect on her life. Conrads bleak portrayal of the development from innocence to
experience seems to be repeated in Rhys novel. A recurring theme in Conrads work is the human
being who struggles with him-/herself. Guilt, penance, betrayal and self-deceit manifest themselves
when the main character is confronted with the impossibility of ideals, and his/her true nature is
revealed, as individual and as member of the community.

213

In the society depicted in the novel, women do not seem to be getting much respect,
especially when they age. When Julia watches Hot Stuff from Paris, the audience is
described as follows:
The girls were perky and pretty, but it was strange how many of the older
women looked drab and hopeless, with timid, hunted expressions. They
looked ashamed of themselves, as if they were begging the world in
general not to notice that they were women or to hold it against them.
(ALMM, 50)
When Julia and Mr Horsfield leave a restaurant they encounter a woman who is described
as follows: A woman in a long macintosh passed them, muttering to herself and looking
mournful and lost, like a dog without a master (ALMM, 105-106). No man in the story is
ever thus described. These images and questions expose contemporary society as being
unfairly critical of women. Women are regarded as objects, and not respected as subjects.
The exact social roles expected of the female characters are not always explicitly dealt
with; in fact, most of the time they do not seem to be playing any role of importance, at all.
In these passages the narrator stresses the disregard of women by patriarchy. The main
female characters do not seem to be accepted or appreciated as individuals by men. In the
novel, the character Julia realizes this; Norah does not. Norah does not have any intellectual
conversations with men, and in the only talk with a man reported, it is Uncle Griffiths who
holds a monologue:
Uncle Griffiths sat in the arm-chair and went on talking, eagerly, as if the
sound of his own voice laying down the law to his audience of females
reassured him. He talked and talked. He talked about life, about literature,
about Dostoievsky. (ALMM, 96)
It is only Julia who questions his opinions, but none of the other women join in the
conversation. Julia is open, outspoken, and modern in her behavioral patterns. Her quite
original behavior for the time exposes Julia to a lot of criticism, but it also shows great
courage. Norahs behavior, however, is the one that is more acceptable at the time. Norahs
passive adoption of the imposed social duties, her uneventful existence, her acceptance of
being dominated by men such as Uncle Griffiths reflect the still omnipresent oppressive
tendencies of patriarchy. Her inability to see that Uncle Griffiths is not a kind man, at all,
shows how much she is still indoctrinated by the contemporary social context. Throughout
the novel Norah at first seems intended to portray the angel, but in the course of the story
this image becomes blurred.
The writer Rhys seems to have wanted to expose, question, and to criticize the stereotypical
roles. There is nothing angelic about the role of Angel in the House, on the contrary, it
seems more like slavery, and the women in the society depicted seem to begin to realize
this. Norah is very frustrated about her own existence. So much so, that she is unkind to
Julia and mostly seems to withdraw from real life altogether. Julia, the pretty woman, is
supposed to represent the monster image. Rhys modernist portrayal of this monster
woman does show some irregular traits, but Julia is a disappointed and irritated character,
as well. What is noteworthy about Julia is that with all the apathy and passiveness she
shows, she does rebel. She is extremely angry, and she ventilates her fury. Perhaps not
always in the most clever or strategic fashion, but she no longer compromises. In spite of

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THE MIRROR IMAGE

the risk she may run, she does not hide and remain largely unnoticed. On the contrary, she
spits society in the face. It is the mirroring of the main characters that makes the reader
wonder whether either woman can be referred to as good or bad, and basically it is the
conduct of society that is really criticized.
6.4: THE MIRROR IMAGE
In After Leaving Mr Mackenzie, Jean Rhys depicts a society in which most people shun to
show their real feelings, and where men have all of the money and the power, and the
women have nothing. In her bleak depiction of contemporary society, Jean Rhys, too,
employs the images of the Angel in the House and the monster. Within the novel, the
sisters Norah Griffiths and Julia Martin portray these images. The sisters are most
consistently compared and contrasted in the middle section of the novel, but the quite
extreme portrayal of the opposed images affects the whole book.
Rhys style of writing is different from the style of the women writers discussed earlier.
This leads to a more extreme depiction of society and an almost grotesque portrayal of the
images of the angel and the monster. The immediate social context in this novel is also
quite different from the society depicted in the earlier novels.
32
Rhys describes the 1930s,
the post World War I society in which many people were disillusioned. There was a severe
financial crisis and right wing political organisations played an important role.
Contemporary society seemed to be populated by damaged and hurt people, but Rhys
notices a difference between what men and women have suffered since the war. The men in
the novel, wounded as they are, still maintain positions of power and control. They
dominate and humiliate those weaker than themselves in an attempt to satisfy their desires.
The women, both Julia and Norah, are confined to lives of giving others what they want in
a feeble attempt to have their own needs met. In this post war society, all of the characters
seem to live in conditions of unhappiness and despair. Yet, some varieties of despair are
more profound than others, and it is the women who suffer most severely because of their
powerlessness and their poverty.
Both female protagonists in After Leaving Mr Mackenzie are angry and frustrated. The
conduct of both women often seems unusual, and their lives take place outside ordinary
bourgeois society. Rhys compares and contrasts the two women to underline the unnatural
effects of contemporary patriarchial society on their lives; and she thus succeeds in
thematizing the norms and values of that society.
What is noteworthy is that the character Julia seems to be very much aware of the
oppressive forces of society, so much so that she deliberately develops strategies to deal
with the inflated hegemony presented by men. Her sister Norah is portrayed quite
differently. She accepts the imposed behavioral patterns, and she is allowed bare survival
because of it. The rebel, Julia, openly questions the norms and values of patriarchy. She is
worried about losing her feelings and her sense of empathy, a tendency that she sees,
especially, in the men in contemporary society; and she is angry about the division of
power structures. She knows that as an unmarried and ageing woman she should remain

32
See for an elaborate discussion of the influence of the First World War on the development of new
writing styles: Lehan, Literary Modernism and Beyond (2009) 38-42, 185-186, 278-279.

215

unobtrusive, realizing that she has no place in and not a dogs chance against organized
society (ALMM, 17).
Julia keeps trying and she even attempts to take more practical measures. Yet, as Julia
considers applying for a job as governess or ladys companion (and then remains inert), she
looks out from her hotel and sees:
The houses opposite had long rows of windows, and it seemed to Julia
that at each window a woman sat staring mournfully, like a prisoner,
straight into her bedroom. (ALMM, 129)
The chapter in which this happens is called Ile de la Cit, thus calling attention to Julias
isolated state and the inaccessibility of any who would offer her means of reparation.
Instead, she is alone, islanded, surrounded by women who mirror her state of
imprisonment.
The modern novelist and critic V. S. Naipaul stresses the absurdity of Julias situation,
especially of the emotional and financial dependence of a woman like her on a man like Mr
Mackenzie:
He isnt mysterious or very far away. Absurdly, he lives just around the
corner; and when he is encountered in a nearby restaurant he turns out
to be a man of fifty, middle class, correct, of medium height and
colouring, with enough nose to look important, enough stomach to look
benevolent. Almost Dickensian in that description, hardly an object of
passion, a nobody, it is the absurdity of her dependence. Julias energy
leaves her; the scene that seems to be preparing fades on a feeble climax.
She strikes Mr Mackenzie with her glove, but lightly.
33

Naipauls more recent interpretation is in accordance with the views of most present-day
critics. It offers an interesting contrast to the behavior of the men in Julias immediate
social context. In the 1930s, the position of a woman like Julia would be awkward, and the
woman herself would not have much power to change her state or to consciously steer her
own life. The character Julia seems defeated for a while, until she learns to hide her real
feelings.
The ending of the novel runs as follows,
The street was cool and full of grey shadows. Lights were beginning to
come out in the cafs. It was the hour between dog and wolf, as they say.
(ALMM, 138)
So far, this ending has mostly been explained in a negative way, as depicting Julias final
downfall or ruin. Davis, however, gives another possibility whilst referring to the
Caribbean influences on the work of Rhys. Such influences as the depiction of
dissimulation, or the use of ghosts, and shape-shifting appear frequently in Rhys work. The
female protagonists often have a double nature; and her meek and seemingly passive
protagonists are usually deeply angry women who fantasize about revenge. Throughout

33
V.S. Naipaul, Without a Dogs Chance, The New York Review of Books 18. 9 (18 May 1972): 3.
The sentences are quoted from ALMM , 17.

216

THE MIRROR IMAGE

After Leaving Mr Mackenzie, dogs are associated with the subjugated, with those who bend
to others will and suffer for it (ALMM, 105-106). Dogs are also linked with England. In
her journey to London in The First Unknown Julia remembers the lines of a popular song
that exemplify the connection between canine imagery and England England English
Our doggy page (ALMM, 46). Whereas dog functions as metaphor for the feeble
and domesticated, Julias location at the novels end between dog and wolf seems to
suggest a transitional stage. She seems ready to transform into the symbolic and aggressive
figure of the wolf; here, Rhys image of a devouring, primitive aggressor who strikes
back. In one of her other novels, Good Morning, Midnight, Rhys has the female protagonist
state: One day the fierce wolf that walks by my side will spring on you and rip your
abominable guts out.
34
Keeping in mind both the attitude and the masquerading of Julia
throughout the novel, these aspects may also suggest a future that is not as docile as Julias
present life has been. Julia has already acquired the habit of speaking her mind and of
asking for money straightforwardly. Considering Mr Mackenzies reaction to her last
request, such behavior might be equally successful. Rhys does not actually depict the
transformation, thus preserving the option that Julia may still work toward her own
destruction. Yet, bleak as it may seem, an escape from fate is not impossible, though hope,
such as it is, remains under erasure from the texts beginning to its end.
Rhys depiction of contemporary society in After Leaving Mr Mackenzie is not simply a
slice of life. It is Rhys modernist interpretation of society in the 1930s. Her depiction
shows us a bleak, brutal, and sometimes grotesque view of that society. However, with this
interpretation, she raises the understanding of the contemporary norm and value system to a
different level. Her quite original use of the images of the Angel in the House, and the
monster, and the mirroring of their good and bad aspects in the course of the story
raise both the (accepted) social roles for women, and the norms and values of contemporary
society to a more conscious level of understanding. In this way, Rhys first questions the
fiction of the good and the bad woman. In the story, both women show acceptable and
deviant traits; so much so, that a strict division between both qualifications no longer seems
possible. Rhys portrayal of contemporary society also underlines the absurdity of the fact
that women have no money and no power. And, lastly, her depiction of society may aid
readers to opt for anticipation to a future in a differently organized world, themselves.
Without overtly passing on a feminist message the novel thus seems to have a
consciousness-raising effect, because of this. Whether contemporary readers did indeed
notice the emancipatory tendencies of the novel will be examined in the next subsection.
6.5: PRAISE
The novel After Leaving Mr Mackenzie was first published in England by Jonathan Cape at
the end of 1930. Jonathan Capes edition was made of apple-green linen with dark green on
the spine. It appeared in the shops in February 1931 and cost seven shillings and six
pence.
35
The first American edition was issued in 1931 by Alfred A Knopf in New York.
This version was blue with maroon lettering and was sold from June onwards for $2.00
(Mellown, 25). The novel was not published in large numbers and Rhys did not earn that

34
Jean Rhys, Good Morning Midnight in The Early Novels (London: Andr Deutsch, 1984) 389.
35
This information is mentioned by Elgin W. Mellown in Jean Rhys: A Descriptive and Annotated
Bibliography of Works and Criticism (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1984) 23.

217

much for it, but it was well received. Jean Rhys herself had the following explanation for
her meagre income from literary texts:
I think that I have had little success because I did not want it. Not in that
way. Not really. Even now I cannot connect money or publicity with
writing, though I adore money and need it badly, very. For me, these
things are different and opposed. Bitterly. I can only write for love as it
were.
36

Unlike the earliest reviews of Bronts Shirley, the articles on After Leaving Mr Mackenzie
generally do not contain sample extracts. Some reviews summarize the novel, but most
focus on an analysis of the text and the narrative strategies used by Rhys. In general, these
early reviewers are intrigued both by the originality of her style, and by her obsession with
the more disagreeable aspects of society and womanhood. This novel about cheap hotels in
Paris and gloomy bedsitting-rooms in London is recognized by many of them as a story of
social criticism. Her female main characters are understood to be stereotypes, depicting the
opposition of the good and the bad woman.
Seven British and nine American contemporary reviews of the first publications of After
Leaving Mr Mackenzie in England and America are still available.
37
Compared to the
novels examined earlier this is a slightly smaller number. In my examination of these
articles, I wanted to learn what the reception of the novel had been like and whether readers
and critics had noticed the use of stereotypes and the feminist elements in the novel.

Artistry
A close look at the contemporary reviews reveals one of the British articles to be quite
negative in tone. Even given the fact that Rhys writing style is not straightforward realism,
but shows many structural characteristics that can be associated with modernism, and that
the portrayed characters are not real people, the contemporary Times Literary Supplement
reviewer seemed so discouraged by the subject matter that the reviewer states it is all a
waste of talent, and summarizes the novel as follows:
This book is an episode in the life of a prostitute. Julia Martin followed
her inclinations with comparative ease and pleasure until Mr Mackenzie
had finished with her. It is difficult to see why leaving so unattractive a
person as Mr Mackenzie should have broken Julias spirit. Least of all did
Julia herself seem to understand it, living as she did entirely without plan,
led by her emotions and resigned to her fate. After the break she goes
from man to man. They are sorry for her, but they no longer want her.
They give her a pound or two to go away, and she takes it and goes. The

36
Francis Wyndham and Diana Melly, Jean Rhys Letters 1931-1966 (London: Andr Deutsch, 1984)
171. She states this in a letter to Wyndham of September 14
th
1959.
37
For an overview of all of the contemporary reviews I collected at Colindale and examined, please
see the Appendix.

218

THE MIRROR IMAGE

sordid little story is written with admirable clarity and economy of
language. But it leaves one dissatisfied. It is a waste of talent.
38

This review is not only the most negative one, it is also the briefest one. It is only one
paragraph long and the reviewer does not contemplate the use of any kind of motif or
technique and seems to remain unaware of the social criticism in the novel. This article also
ignores her modernism. Ford Madox Ford, on the other hand, judges her especially
concerning her use of that style and he praises her for the singular instinct for form
possessed by singularly few writers of English and by almost no English woman writers.
39

Most of the early reviewers who examine After Leaving Mr Mackenzie do identify Rhys
with modernism, and some even compare her to the Imagist poets, to Hemingway, or to
Katherine Mansfield.
40

The reviews in the Times Literary Supplement and the Nottingham Journal & Express are
the only anonymous British reviews. With the other reviews the names of the reviewers are
clearly mentioned. The other British reviews are much more positive than the
aforementioned articles. Gerald Gould states in a review in the Observer that After Leaving
Mr Mackenzie is a hard, clean, dry, desperate book, so rigid in its economy that its
impressiveness seems almost contemptuous. He also points out that while it is not a
pleasant novel, it has more important merits. In his article he summarizes the plot and
quotes the ending of the story, and he concludes that Of its kind, and within its limits, this
book is a flawless work of art.
41

In the regular weekly review of new books, Rebecca West is equally positive in her article
in the Daily Telegraph. Parts of her review were quoted in the publishers advertisement in
the Sunday Times of February 8
th
1931, because of its positive view. In the original article,
she points out that Miss Jean Rhys has already in The Left Bank and Postures quietly
proved herself to be one of the finest writers of fiction under middle age, but she has also
proved herself to be enamoured of gloom to an incredible degree. The sadness of the book
worries West, but she also stresses the books quality: It is a terrible book about the final

38
After Leaving Mr Mackenzie, Times Literary Supplement 1518 (5 March 1931): 180. Angier
mentions that the same review was also published in The Times on the same day, but I was not able to
find any trace of it (Angier, 279). Besides, sections on New Books or Books of the Week were
usually published in The Times on Tuesdays or Fridays, not on a Thursday, the day the TLS appeared.
39
Ford Madox Ford in his Introduction to the short story collection The Left Bank and Other
Stories from Jean Rhys (London: Jonathan Cape, 1927). Ford (formerly Ford Hermann Hueffer;
1873-1939) was a British author who collaborated with Conrad on various works, including novels;
they were united by their faith in the novel as a work of Art. Ford published over 80 books, and
developed his own theory of Impressionism in the novel. He had a great influence on the
development of Modernism and did much to shape the course of twentieth-century writing. Margaret
Drabble (ed.), The Oxford Companion to English Literature (Oxford [etc.]: Oxford University Press,
1993) 359.
40
Elgin W. Mellown, Jean Rhys: A Descriptive and Annotated Bibliography of Works and Criticism
Introduction, vii-xxvi. Mellown mentions the comparison to the Imagist poets and to Hemingway,
xvii-xviii. Lorna Sage, a later critic, elaborates on the comparison with Katherine Mansfield,
Introduction to After Leaving Mr Mackenzie by Jean Rhys (London: Penguin Classics, 2000) viii.
41
Gerald Gould, All Sorts of Societies, The Observer 7289; section entitled: New Novels (8
February 1931): 6.

219

foundering to destruction of a friendless and worthless but pitiful woman. It is terrible, but
it is superb.
42

American critics were similarly impressed. The New York Bookmans critic, Geoffrey
Stone stresses that the sordid nature of the story results from Julias character, for it
seems that under any conditions Julias life would have been sordid. He is impressed by
the brilliance and economy of the novelists style and is struck by the paradox that
Julias existence and the existence of those with whom she came in contact are somehow
made meaningful by these very meaningless odds and ends of observation. In spite of the
hopeless course of Julias life, one is surprised to find that the meaning of the book as a
whole appears just as clearly, and is much the same, as in any tale with a moral. It is no
defect in the work.
43

Just like the other authors, Rhys received quite a lot of letters and fan-mail. Wyndham
remarks in this context she made a point of answering every fan letter she received.
44
Not
too many of these letters are still available, but a few are printed in Wyndhams collection
of her letters. One of the first complimentary letters Rhys received in relation to After
Leaving Mr Mackenzie was by Peggy Kirkaldy, who became a friend for life. Rhys
response to her letter was quite brief, but very grateful, I was most awfully pleased to have
your letter and to know that you like my book. It gives one a very nice feeling, you know,
to get a letter like yours.
45

Another fan letter came from Evelyn Scott.
46
In her letter, Scott states:
On our way back from London to America, my husband and I are
carrying with us, as our happiest recent impression, the pleasure we had
in reading After Leaving Mr Mackenzie. Within the circumference chosen
by the author, it seems to us a perfect book. The quiet irony kept us in
perpetual chuckles. The beautiful and exact measure of character
delighted us. The flawless ending, which so completely avoided the
sentimentalization of a situation full of poignant suggestion, was a joy
I feel so keenly that stumbling upon After Leaving Mr Mackenzie in a
Salisbury Library (Smiths) was an important discovery that I should like
to spread the good news. I want to talk about it, and I shall, and I wonder
if you would be willing to give me more data about your work it may
be that you have never essayed America. My husband and I are writers
and at least have the acquaintance which should learn (if it does not
already know) of the existence of such a rare, subtle and sensitive talent.

42
Rebecca West, The Daily Telegraph; section: Books of the Day, a weekly contribution on new
novels by West in the Friday issue; title of the article (concerning amongst other novels, After
Leaving Mr Mackenzie) The Pursuit of Misery in Some New Novels Friday Issue (30 January
1931): 7.
43
Geoffrey Stones article originally appeared in Bookman (New York) 74 (September 1931): 84;
cited in Mellown 1984, 27.
44
Wyndham & Melly, 11; in the Introduction written by Wyndham.
45
Rhys in a letter to Peggy Kirkaldy dated March 1
st
1931; cited in Wyndham & Melly, 19.
46
Evelyn Scott, letter written on board the Aquitania on 9 June 1931; cited in Wyndham & Melly, 21.

220

THE MIRROR IMAGE

It is interesting to see that Scott found the novel in a library. This shows that it was
generally available, at the time. Scott and her husband John Metcalfe were also not
average readers. They were authors themselves and Rhys highly valued their praise.
47
She
replied to it in the following way:
I had your letter about After Leaving Mr Mackenzie this morning
I like Mackenzie better than anything I have done yet, and I am hoping
that it will have some luck in America where it is to be published by
Knopf on the 26
th
of this month. Both the books I wrote before, The Left
Bank and Quartet, were published in America but neither of them
did much though they had some kind reviews.
I am always being told that until my work ceases being sordid and
depressing I havent much chance of selling. I used to find this rather
stupid but through much repetition I have come half to believe that it
must be so.
48

Most of the contemporary reactions to this novel, either in the form of reviews or letters are
positive and praiseworthy.
49
It was also just unfortunate that the second World War was
approaching. During the war there was a scarcity of paper and many books were not
reprinted. The result of this was that during the years 1940-1960, the modest reputation of
After Leaving Mr Mackenzie slipped away.
50
Between the wars Rhys novel was considered
problematic but artistic, yet in the postwar period it remained mostly unread. The twenties
and thirties turn out to be, on the whole, more appreciative of innovative literary styles than
the postwar years.
Characterization
Another aspect of Rhys work that received a lot of attention was the depiction of the main
characters. Frank Swinnerton, one of the most influential of the London critics, is again
very impressed by After Leaving Mr Mackenzie. His review appeared in the Evening News
in February 1931. Because of the enthusiastic tone of his review, it is quoted in the
publishers advertisements in other newspapers like the Times and the Observer. In the
initial review, he is especially intrigued by the characterization of Julia:

47
Scott had published a book of verse, an autobiography and six novels of which The Wave:
Narratives of the Civil War had been highly acclaimed. Born Elsie Dunn in 1883, she was brought up
in Tennessee among the Southern aristocracy. At the age of twenty, she eloped to Brazil with
Frederick Creighton Wellman. They changed their names to Cyril Kay Scott and Evelyn Scott. She
became a leading figure among the bohemian intelligentsia in Greenwhich Village throughout the
1920s, interested in every modern movement in politics, literature and art. She left Scott for the
painter Owen Merton. Since 1926 she had been living with John Metcalfe (they married in 1930).
Metcalfes best works are his tales of unease collected in The Smoking Leg (1925) and Judas
(1931). He was in poor health throughout the 1930s and his increasing depression culminated in a
nervous breakdown.
48
Letter by Rhys to Evelyn Scott (23 June 1931); cited in Wyndham & Melly, 20-21.
49
Angier mentions two other early fan letters: a letter by Ivan Bede, Fords secretary on the
Transatlantic Review who recognized himself in Mr Horsfield; and a letter by the novelist and
biographer Morchard Bishop, whose real name was Oliver Stoner, 280.
50
Elgin W. Mellown points out in his bibliography that during the 1939-1945 war Jean Rhyss
books went out of print, and the novel-reading public forgot her, Introduction, xix.

221

If the character of the heroine were to affect the critics judgement
After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie by Jean Rhys would be uniformly received
with obloquy. For Julia Martin is really quite terrifying. [She] is
what is known to the good as a trial.
But he admits that she is also something more than a trial, and he is intrigued by her
experiences:
We watch her straying vaguely from misery to misery, ignominy to
ignominy. It is a terribly sharp picture, drawn by an artist whose
ruthlessness is as great as her gift of understanding. Julias helpless state,
her indifference, the squalor and indignity amid which she lives, are
shown without the waste of a word.
51

He also mentions that the other characters are only represented with regard to their
relationship to Julia. Swinnerton is especially impressed by the narrative techniques Rhys
uses in the novel to make the characters come alive, and the manner in which this story of
social criticism is told and he adds: It is the more terrifying because it is so calm.
The writer of the last British review discussed here, Alice Herbert, also admires the
techniques used. In her article in The Yorkshire Post of February 1931, she focused on the
contrasting of the heroines. She describes the depiction of Julia as follows:
The extreme matter-of-factness of poor Julias tragedy makes it
heartrending. She has the British dislike of a scene and the British
inhibition against explaining herself. A strong touch of pride, as well,
gets in her way; so that you see her, with a story that would melt a stone,
unable to make any use of it where it would help.
She is equally worried about Norahs plight, and she recounts her situation as follows: The
envious, righteous younger sister is as tragic as Julia, in the reverse way. She stresses
Every character is as real as reality. But the reality depicted in the novel alarms her, and
she ends her article: It is difficult to class such a book, so carefully keyed down to the
drabness of life. She admits that Miss Rhys has something of her own to bring to
fiction.
52
Overall, the critics interpret her style differently, some calling it unrelenting
realism and others modernism or even impressionism. Some critics consider her work
autobiographical projections, whilst others examine her novel as a work of fiction. These
discussions continue in the reviews by American critics.
Some British reviewers seem uncomfortable with the subject matter, in spite of the fact
that they acknowledge the literary merit of the novel (Mellown, xvi). American
reviewers, who apparently have less strict notions of what could and what could not be the
subject of a novel, are not too worried about the fact that one of the female main characters
is a depiction of the monster image in its most extreme form. The anonymous reviewer of

51
Frank Swinnerton, Give me a Tale with a Real Plot, The Evening News, in a section called: A
London Bookmans Week Friday Issue (6 February 1931): 5.
52
Alice Herbert, Julias Tragedy, The Yorkshire Post Wednesday Issue (4 February 1931) in a
section called Novels of the Week: Two Original Newcomers, 6. This review has been recorded
as anonymous by most studies so far, in the original version of The Yorkshire Post Alice Herberts
name is clearly mentioned, though.

222

THE MIRROR IMAGE

the New York Times Book Review gives a detailed account of the plot of the novel, and pays
special attention to the analysis of Julias character. This reviewer points out that:
Miss Rhys tells her story sparely. She attempts by small devices to make
you see and feel with Julia to make you understand her. But she never
intrudes on the narrative or touches it up with sentimentality or bitterness.
Julia is Julia, an individual who, in a broad sense, may also stand for a
type [One] may or may not like Julia. The author has no interest in
achieving anything except a portrait of a certain woman.
The sister is also briefly mentioned but the focus throughout the article remains on the
character of Julia and the techniques used by Rhys; and the article ends with:
Miss Rhyss study, slight and certainly oversimplified as it is, contains
many of the merits of its species. It succeeds in bringing to the reader a
small fragment of a life which is in turn an infinitesimal fragment of all
life.
53

All of these reviews reveal that times and reading-strategies are changing. Novels are no
longer read largely for their moral messages, as they had been in the nineteenth century.
Critics and readers are still looking for messages, but of a different kind. They seem to
understand that the traditional way of ordering and interpreting a literary work does not
accord with the intricate situation after World War I. The contemporary social order was no
longer as coherent and stable as it had been before. Contemporary readers were part of this
panorama of futility and anarchy and their perspective was influenced by contemporary
history. Their understanding of literature evolved alongside the new emerging literary
styles. After Leaving Mr Mackenzie is consciously structured in three parts with many
events happening in Part 1 repeated in Part 3 and with an exaggerated use of the mirror
image; but it is still a logical, chronological and coherent story. Contemporary critics would
be familiar with the development and realization of new techniques. They have parallels in
the adaptation of representational conventions in painting as well as in adjustments of
standard conventions of melody, harmony and rhythm in new types of music. Critics and
readers did not take the story literally, as they had done with The Awakening; rather, they
respect what Rhys tries to express, though her almost postmodern focus on the
meaninglessness of existence and the underlying nothingness does concern them.
More general contemporary criticism on the work of Jean Rhys praises especially her use of
images and her social criticism. The American critic Herbert Gorman, whilst commenting
on her style, points out:
There is no doubt about the power of Miss Rhyss characterizations. She
knows these characters with that peculiar intimacy that always suggests
prototypes, and, because of this surprising verisimilitude, the painful
reality of the situation is raised to a higher plane than that of mere story

53
This anonymous review appeared under the heading Twice-as-Naturalism, New York Times Book
Review (28 June 1931): 6.

223

telling. Her prose is staccato and purposeful and calculated to bring out
clearly the essential note of her theme.
54

This critic recognizes the thematizing strategy of the novel. He is aware of the comment on
contemporary patriarchal society that is expressed through the representations of the main
characters.
Gladys Graham, the American reviewer of the Saturday Review of Literature is again
intrigued by the portrayal of the character Julia. In a review with the title A Bedraggled
Career, she writes an intense and appreciative study of Julias character type. She
indicates that:
There have been enough bad women, weak women, and victimized
women in novels since novels began, yet where will one turn to find so
bedraggled and impotent a creature as this Julia Martin of Miss Rhys?
Julia is the quintessentially supine, but she has the devastating
stubbornness of the will-less. [She] has become an expert at dulling
the edge of life. Feeling darkly, without ever letting herself quite face it,
that she is no match for reality, she lies in her room and dreams of places
Never able to get a foothold in the conventionally notched ways of life
that ordinary people take for granted, Julia slips little by little down the
shabby incline that leads to no kindly specific hell but to that much
hollower one nowhere.
The book is written with something of the balance and beauty of verse.
The shifting of a phrase would be a threat against the whole. Phrases
and words that are lovely and beguiling in their form but ruthless and
explicit in their content march the pages undeterred. Slight in scope,
minor in key, it perfects itself within its spherical intent.
55

Graham also sees a feminist element in the novel as, indeed, do many later critics and
readers.
56

In spite of Rhys terse style and absence of emotionalism, critics and readers get very much
involved in the events told in the story. Isers phenomenological interpretation of the
reading process is useful in the studying of the reception of this novel, too. It is noteworthy
to see that most critics and readers do feel engaged with the events going on in this novel
and are worried about Julias plight, but at the same time they do not lose track of the way
in which the story is told. The combined style of realism and modernism seems to enrich
the reading process. The modernist aspect provided extra gaps in the text, thus ensuring the
involvement from the reader and stimulating the imagination of the reader. The terse
writing style and the stance from the narrator, on the other hand, created more distance.

54
Herbert Gorman wrote this passage in a review of Ford Madox Fords work. The article is called:
Ford Madox Ford: A Portrait in Impressions. It can be found in Bookman 67 (March 1928) 56-57.
55
Gladys Graham,A Bedraggled Career, Saturday Review of Literature 8 (25 July 1931): 5.
56
Some examples of modern feminist studies of Rhys work are: Molly Hite, The Other Side of the
Story: Structures and Strategies of Contemporary Feminist Narrative (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989); and
Laura Niesen de Abruna, Jean Rhyss Feminism: Theory Against Practice World Literature Written
in English 28:2 (1988): 326-36.

224

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Rhys writing style seemed to enhance the reading process possibly even more than the
styles of the earlier authors had done.
Social criticism
Quite a few American critics focus more directly on the social aspects of After Leaving Mr
Mackenzie. In this context, too, many are again convinced that they are dealing with a
masterpiece; minor, perhaps, but still a masterpiece. Margaret Cheney Dawson declares in
an article for the New York Herald Tribune that she is impressed by the feminist element in
the novel; she writes in her review with the heading Unbearable Justice:
It is surely true art that makes this long-eyed, alcoholic woman of
consequence to us. For Miss Rhys hardly allows Julia to play the heroine
at all and yanks her out of the victim role whenever melodrama looms
(it is the only novel on this subject that I can think of that does not drag
death in by the tail to supply a strong enough climax). But she writes with
a miraculous balance between cold dry realism and the tender,
introspective vein. She never attempts to fetch our sympathies with an
overdose of grimness or a flood of intimacy. She does not make the
mistake of supposing, as so many authors have done, that a segment of
consciousness is fascinating no matter to whom it belongs or in what
manner it is exposed, and she weighs her subjective material nicely
against the stubborn physical appearances. But the effect is more
devastating than any amount of intensity; it is her balance and justice that
make the whole business seem so unbearable.
The opposition between Julia and her sister Norah is pointed out: In London she saw Nora,
a sister younger than she, but bitter with the martyrdom of nursing their sick mother, and
implicitly censorious. She ends her review with Its not much of a story. But with it Miss
Rhys has managed to give an artists definition of life and a rebels criticism of it.
57

Dawson underlines that Rhys distances herself from certain conventions of melodrama
and romance plot through which womens stories had traditionally been told. This results,
according to her, in a very straightforward and bleak depiction of the position of women in
contemporary society.
The reviewer from the New Republic refers to the representation of social criticism in a
more general way. This critic again draws attention to Julias predicament: [Julias]
subtlety of temperament and simplicity of intention were inexpressible in the code language
of organized society, especially of middle-class society. The reviewer summarizes the
events of the novel and concludes:
This faithful book, with its spare, suggestive method, is more profoundly
destructive of hypocrisies social and esthetic subterfuges than would
be volumes of diatribe less beautiful in complete restraint.
58

57
Margaret Cheney Dawson, Unbearable Justice, New York Herald Tribune Books (28 June 1931):
7.
58
This anonymous review appeared in the New Republic 68 (16 September 1931): 134; cited in
Mellown 1984, 28.

225

In focusing on the depiction of Julias state and behavior and the terse style in which the
story is told, this reviewer becomes especially conscious of the social critique implied in
the novel. Rhys thematizing strategy is again recognized as developing into a
consciousness-raising technique.
Helen Carr stresses that, even though there are some ambivalent critical responses, the
novel achieves a small audience of appreciative readers.
59
However, Rhys early work is
not taken up by literary critics who specialize in contemporary literature. It is only in later
studies that a more detailed examination of the shifting viewpoints, the mirroring of the
main characters and events, and Rhys style occur. Many later critics see After Leaving Mr
Mackenzie as a modernist novel which relates Julias sliding away from contemporary
patriarchal society by means of the characters own techniques of detachment and
alienation.
60

Francis Wyndham
After the second World War, there were still a few enthusiastsic supporters of her work and
foremost among these was Francis Wyndham. In 1950, he wrote a lengthy appreciation of
Rhys work for the Labour Partys independent weekly, the Tribune, in a series on
Neglected Books. He entitled the essay on Rhys An Inconvenient Novelist and
attempted to explain why she had not yet received the wider recognition that is her due:
She is, perhaps, too uncompromising to be a best-seller, or even
moderately popular at the lending-libraries. Most subscribers like to be
able to place a novelists characters in convenient categories, but Miss
Rhyss heroines have an equivocal position for which there is no accurate
descriptive word. Prostitute or tart over-simplify; courtesan is too
exalted, kept woman too vague. All these terms have become literary
clichs Miss Rhys writes about women who are often found in life but
seldom in books, and she describes their experiences from the inside. Her
treatment of the subject is unconventional, her understanding of it unique,
but an utter lack of vulgarity in her writing robs it of the shock-value, the
cheap sensationalism that it might easily have had. Were she either cruder
or more sentimental her novels might be more successful commercially if
in no other way.
Wyndham continues to summarize the novels, and he expresses the wish that her novels
should be reprinted.
61
After this article, Rhys did come into the public eye again. A
reprint of After Leaving Mr Mackenzie was published in England by Andr Deutsch in May
1969. Like many authors, Rhys uses parts of her life as the basic material from which she

59
Helen Carr, Jean Rhys (Plymouth: Northcote House, 1996) 2.
60
In terms of chronology Rhys is a younger member of the modernist group, but the technique of her
novels can be closely linked to the experiments made by these writers. Thomas F. Staley examines
her work in this context in Jean Rhys: A Critical Study (London: Macmillan, 1979); as do Jane Neide
Ashcom Two Modernisms: the Novels of Jean Rhys, Jean Rhys Review 2:2 (Spring 1988): 17-27;
and Marie Veronica Gregg Jean Rhys and Modernism: A Different Voice, Jean Rhys Review 1:2
(Spring 1987): 30-46.
61
Francis Wyndham, An Inconvenient Novelst, Tribune 721 (15 December 1950): 16, 18.

226

THE MIRROR IMAGE

creates her fiction. The process of transformation is a long and difficult struggle for her,
because, she believes a novel has to have a shape and life doesnt have any.
62

Overall, readers and critics continue to express strong approval for Rhys interpretation and
understanding of shape and form. But when Rhys is getting a great deal of public attention
in the 1960s the autobiographical content of her writing is sometimes seen as
confession rather than problematic starting point, and her relation to her central
characters treated very differently from that of other, especially male modernist writers
(Carr, 3). Another more recent scholar, Judith Kegan Gardiner, points out:
When a writer like Joyce or Eliot writes about an alienated man estranged
from himself, [such a figure] is read as a portrait of the diminished
possibilities of human existence in modern society. When Rhys writes
about an alienated woman estranged from herself, critics applaud her
perceptive but narrow depiction of female experience and tend to narrow
her vision even further by labelling it both pathological and
autobiographical.
63

Some critics seem to assume that when Rhys uses elements of her own life, she does so,
because that is all she ha[s] to write about, not because she ha[s] something to say about
the kind of world in which such a life could happen(Carr, 3).
64
After Leaving Mr
Mackenzie sometimes comes to be read as the retelling through stereotypical female images
of Rhys own sad story of defeat, whether this defeat was caused by society or the result of
her own incompetence. Such a focus results in a blindness to the range and intelligence of
her work. It also overlooks the social, cultural and political aspects of her fiction, and
disregards her humor (Carr, 5).
65

Whilst it is true that Rhys uses stereotypical images and writes about women who are very
conscious of their lack of power, unsure of how to act, feeling themselves silenced or
unheard, what she does in writing novels like After Leaving Mr Mackenzie is to assert the
right and power to speak on their behalf (Carr, 6). Carr is right when she stresses that

62
Jean Rhys in her autobiography, Smile Please which was published posthumously (London: Andr
Deutsch, 1979) repeated in the Foreword by Diana Athill, 10.
63
Judith Kegan Gardiner, Good Morning, Midnight; Good Night, Modernism, Boundary 2.11 (Fall-
Winter, 1982-3): 242.
64
Even Athill expounds this more limited view in her Introduction to the early novels: [Rhys]
thought or said- that she chose to use [her own experience] because it was the only thing she knew
well. Jean Rhys: The Early Novels, 8.
65
Later critical studies have indeed focused on various aspects of her work. Studies concentrating on
feminism or modernism have already been mentioned. Some investigations focusing on the Caribbean
background of her novels are: all of the articles published by Elaine Campbell in World Literature
Written in English and Kunapipi; Louis James Sun-Fire-Painted Fire: Jean Rhys as a Caribbean
Novelist, Critical Perspectives on Jean Rhys, ed. Pierette Frickey (Washington, DC: Three
Continents Press, 1990); Mona Furgeson Colonialism and Gender Relations from Mary
Wollstonecraft to Jamaica Kincaid: East Caribbean Connections (New York: Columbia UP, 1993);
Judith Raiskin Snow on the Canefields: Womens Writing and Creole Subjectivity (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Elaine Savory Jean Rhys (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998);
and Mary Lou Emery Modernism, the Visual, and Caribbean Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
2007).

227

passive victim, whether in the shape of the angel or the monster, are as inadequate a
description for her protagonists as for Rhys herself, and not only because she often depicts
the female characters as angry and as badly behaved (Carr, 6). Woman as angel or
monster have been traditional stereotypes. Rhys is aware of the power of such images, but
that does not mean that that is all the female main characters are. In fact, her emphasis on
those stereotypes makes it possible to recognize the acuteness of Rhys attack on the
injustices of contemporary patriarchal society. Her use of them implies that angelic or
monstrous are not simply characteristics of those particular female protagonists: but that
there are cultural, economic, social or historical conditions which have molded the female
main characters into those shapes.
This insight can, in fact, be stated in relation to all four novels. Bront, Chopin, Wharton
and Rhys have all deliberately used the traditional stereotypical images in their writing, but
they have used them in such a way as to achieve a certain effect. The most obvious effect
seems to be to make the (contemporary) reader more socially conscious, at least as far as
the position of women in society is concerned. Each author has a different focus in this
context ranging from educational, to economic, to sexual or to social aspects. As the
investigations of the reception of each individual novel show, most contemporary readers
clearly understood the ideas expressed in their texts by means of these representations.

228

Chapter 7

Conclusion
The most constant thing in life is change.
1

Introduction
In all of the novels examined in the previous chapters, women writers have used images
resembling the traditional female images of the Angel in the House and the more
rebellious or monstrous woman. Besides using these images in themselves, Bront,
Chopin, Wharton, and Rhys have also compared and contrasted these images and the
female protagonists representing them. Without too overtly stating that the patriarchal
society of the period 1849-1930 was still oppressive for women, these women writers show
this to the reader through the images and narrative structures they use. What all four women
writers succeed in through the use of the stereotypes and the mirroring technique is to
depict the prejudice society still has with regard to the position of the woman and the social
roles expected of her. At the same time, the comparison of the various female figures also
reveals what the reaction of women to such a treatment by society was like.
The mirror image
The mirroring used in all four novels has been shown to be one of the main ordering
structures of these novels. Not only has it shaped the structure of each story, however, it has
also influenced the contemporary readers understanding of each novel. Rather than just
accepting the storys meaning at face value, it has encouraged readers to think more
deeply about the issues represented in each novel. In this, it has succeeded to develop into a
consciousness-raising technique, without, however, becoming didactic or propagandistic.
Leaving the autonomy of literature intact, the original, complex and lively application of
the mirroring technique by each author could pass on new ideas about the possibilities for
women in an authentically artistic and socially acceptable way. Each author has been
shown to have a slightly different approach.
The style Bront uses in her novel Shirley has been described as social realism. At the
beginning of the story both female protagonists are depicted as quite different, with each
character realistically portraying the image connected with her. The third person narration
together with an omniscient narrator who is involved and interested, but not too emotional,
ensures an emphatic and concerned stance from the reader. Yet, the readers involvement is
not too intense and throughout the novel one observes the events and developments from a
certain distance. Caroline Helstone resembles the typical Angel in the House, while
Shirley Keeldar can be seen as challenging this role. Up to the middle of the novel, both
characters seem to influence each other, without one really taking the lead. Eventually,
however, Carolines influence over Shirley prevails. Her example and Yorkshire societys
expectations prove to be stronger than Shirleys search for freedom, independence, and
individuality. Shirleys final surrender to Louis is another sign of her adaptation. In

1
This is a free translation of a statement made by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (c.
535 BC 475 BC). He is reported to have said: Everything flows, nothing stands still. It is quoted
by Plato in Cratylus, and by Diogenes Laertius in Lives of the Philosophers Book IX, section 8.

229

Conclusion

Bronts novel, the more rebellious character is still successfully corrected by her mirror
image, though the reader is given a detailed impression of what both conformist and non-
conformist behavior were like. Overall, Shirley proved acceptable reading for the
contemporary reader. Bronts quite moderate application of the mirroring technique, the
traditional ending of the novel, and the represented adherence by both female protagonists
to the traditional norm and value system ensured that the book was well received and
widely read. Bront did criticize contemporary society in the novel, but the events in the
novel were supposed to take place in an earlier historical period and, overall, Bront mainly
pleaded for better schooling and more useful occupations for women. Most contemporary
readers could not really find any fault with such requests.
The second novel under examination, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, already gives a
different impression. The style of this novel is quite different from the earlier one and has
been typified as emotional realism. The mirroring of the main characters here clarifies
many aspects of Louisiana society in the 1890s. The story is again told in the third person
and has an omniscient narrator. Both women are represented as being quite happy with the
lifestyle selected by each of them. Adle Ratignolle tries to warn Edna at several points in
the novel that the contemporary social context disapproves of Ednas liberated behavior.
They remain great friends and Edna does listen to her, but she does not succumb to the
influence of her mirror image. At important points in the novel, she also gets the support
from the narrator for her unusual behavior. The social environment, on the other hand, is
realistically depicted as the conservative and Catholic society that it was. The apparent
influence of the mirror images on each other seems to be more equal here. Chopins use of
the stereotypes and the mirroring technique give a revealing impression of the repressive
nature of patriarchy. The social roles for women turn out to be clearly defined and limited
to the roles of wife, housewife, and mother. If a woman does not fit into one of those
pigeon holes, there is no place for her in society. The social criticism expounded by Chopin
in this novel mainly concerned economic inequality and a need for women to be sexually
independent; but this was interpreted as too straightforward by Louisiana literary critics.
They also condemned what they perceived as the narrators occasional siding with Edna
throughout the story. Chopins friends and acquaintances and many ordinary readers
indicated that they liked the novel. However, as the novel was heavily criticized in the local
press, it was not reprinted and because it had not been widely distributed at first anyway, it
remained quite obscure for many years. The novel was never banned, as has sometimes
been stated, but more subtle means thus ensured that Chopins ideas were not widely spread
at the time.
The society realism of The Age of Innocence again presents a different picture. This time
the Angel in the House is May Welland. May does indeed look like, and behave like an
angel for the greater part of the novel, but in the course of the story her image also
becomes slightly tainted because of her behavior. Mays mirror image, Ellen Olenska is at
first portrayed as the rebellious monster, but the more Ellen succeeds in gaining a place
for herself in Old New York society, and the more we see of her kind, upright, thoughtful,
and individualized behavior, the less applicable this image seems to be. The novel is told in
the third person with the strong presence of an omniscient narrator who comments on both
events and characters in such a way that a certain distance is created for the reader. We
witness the developments without becoming too involved, and, overall, it is mainly the
contemporary society of the 1870s and its still rigid norm and value system that is judged.

230

THE MIRROR IMAGE

Both women are portrayed as adapting to the social context and accepting the lives they can
lead, but May dies whilst nursing a sick child and Ellen returns to Paris. It is only in a
different society that Ellen can live her life as she likes best, but at least she has the
financial support of her family and the impression the reader gets from her life in Paris is
that it is quite fulfilling. Whartons intelligent handling of the mirroring process and her
adoption of a male protagonist who contemplates the woman question ensure that her
novel is considered acceptable reading in the 1920s. The fact that the novel was a best-
seller and that Wharton received the Pulitzer Prize for it also guaranteed a great many
readers. Her almost automatic assumption that women were equal and her portrayal of
thoughtful and intelligent women seemed to be a more acceptable, though sometimes
almost unnoticed, means of conveying emancipatory messages, than a more extreme use of
the mirroring technique. The criticism of society expressed in The Age of Innocence is quite
severe; but it concerns an earlier historical period and it is expressed in an ironic though
respectful way towards that older society. There is a sense of melancholy throughout the
story and the social context is criticized in a wider sense. Wharton does not specifically
plead for womens sexual liberation or economic equality. Instead, she pleads for more
respect for both the male and female individual. This made her novel acceptable and
popular reading. The contemporary reading strategies with their focus on the distribution of
moral values could not really find any fault with this novel, whereas Chopins more daring
approach had really upset a great part of the Louisiana reading public.
In the last novel under examination, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie by Jean Rhys, the
mirroring strategy is used again, but with a twist. Jean Rhys writing style is not as
realistic as the style of the earlier writers and approaches modernism. This results in a
sometimes slightly exaggerated portrayal of the images of the angel and the monster. At
the same time, her novel is also shorter than the books discussed earlier, and in spite of the
more limited space her almost grotesque treatment of the images allows her convincingly to
portray the available social roles for women, and the still repressive tendencies in both
Paris and London society. The story is again told in the third person and an omniscient
narrator alternately focuses on one or the other character in the novel. The narrator seems to
be observant, rather than emphatic, thus creating a certain distance to the characters and
events. In this way, the reader is encouraged to critically follow the depicted developments
without becoming too emotionally involved. Julia Martin depicts the monster through
most of the novel, and her sister, and mirror image Norah Griffiths seems to represent the
angel, but neither of these terms is sufficient or appropriate by now. It is only in the
middle section of the novel that they are actually compared; this is enough to reveal the still
limited spectrum of social roles available for women in Western Europe in the 1930s. It
also becomes clear from the depiction of the social context that women seemed to have no
choice but to behave in a certain way, regardless of their more personal preferences and
characteristics. This tendency is indeed present in all of the novels, but its most extreme
representation can be found in After Leaving Mr Mackenzie. It is interesting to see that in
the course of the story the good and bad aspects of both female protagonists are depicted
in such a way that in the mirroring process the distinction between them becomes blurred
even more than in The Age of Innocence. This ultimately presents a more genuine picture of
woman as an individual. At the same time, it is mainly contemporary society, the division
of power-relations within it, and the simply unfair treatment of women that are underlined
and revealed to the reader.

231

Conclusion

Rhys writing style allows her to be a good deal more outspoken about patriarchy than the
other novels were. Rhys juxtaposes characters and events in such a way that, even though
the characters sometimes become almost caricatural, the fact that she is representing a crisis
situation for women becomes quite obvious. The personal crises in the lives of these
women match the crises going on in society as a whole. The entire social order in the 1930s
was in turmoil with severe financial and political upheavels and uncertainties. Rhys
controlled handling of the story with the deliberate use of narrative techniques, but never a
word too much, allows her to be quite direct about womens need for financial, sexual, and
social independence. The period in which she wrote, and her style of writing, permit her to
be more forthright than Bront, Chopin, and Wharton could be. The contemporary socio-
historical context as a whole had changed considerably throughout the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, so much so that a woman novelist could by now openly plead her own
cause.
In general, the use of the stereotypical mirror images allowed women to write seemingly
traditional stories with acceptable female figures. It is the mirroring technique that helps
them with the process of assaulting and revising, deconstructing and reconstructing the
traditional images (Gilbert & Gubar, 76). The images of the angel and the monster and
the mirroring of them become important as a parallel for the contrast between the publicly
acceptable facades and womens private and dangerous visions (Gilbert & Gubar,
74). By thus rewriting the stereotypical image(s) of women, Bront, Chopin, Wharton and
Rhys not only give expression to their feelings of frustration and anger, they also present
alternative figures to the reader. These different and sometimes daring images and
behavioral patterns open up new possibilities for contemporary women readers. Without
compromising themselves, these women readers could get acquainted with more
emancipated behavioral patterns, and a more liberated view of society.
Hegenbarth-Rsgens concepts and her method have proved useful in discovering the
working of the narrative strategies and consciousness-raising processes applied by these
four women writers. Hegenbarth-Rsgen ends her own study with the following:
The third reaction that is theoretically possible in the fictional medium of
the novel, namely the conscious, systematic reflection that supports and
legitimizes the change of the role of the woman as an element of
modernization is not present in the literature of the nineteenth century.
2

This statement might be true in relation to the novels that she studies. She focuses on the
works of the French (male) novelists Emile Zola, the Goncourt brothers, Daudet,
Huysmans, and Prvost. Yet, the opposite is true for the writings of the women authors
discussed in this dissertation. Bront, Chopin, Wharton, and Rhys have reflected the
changes going on in society in their work, and may even have contributed to the
emancipation process with their novels. Both the concepts and the method Hegenbarth-
Rsgen expounds in her study are useful tools in discovering and describing how the
narrative strategies used by writers might work. In the novels by these women writers, the

2
In Hegenbarth-Rsgens study the passage is as follows:
Die dritte im fiktionalen Medium des Romans theoretisch mgliche Reaktion, nmlich die bewute
systematische Reflexion, die den Wandel der Frauenrolle als Element der Modernisierung bejaht und
legitimiert, bleibt in der Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts eine Leerstelle, 223-224.

232

THE MIRROR IMAGE

concepts and method have a somewhat different effect than in the works by the male
authors she examines. It is especially the mirroring of the female main characters that
achieves this effect. Rather than accepting the prevalent norm and value system at face
value, the thematization of the social context by these women writers offers and honors the
possibility for reflection on and adaptation of the contemporary system denied by the male
writers studied by Hegenbarth-Rsgen.
Bourdieu and Passerons studies concerning reproduction in education, society and culture
at first seem to deny the possibilities for social change. However, a close look at their later
work reveals that they are very much aware that change takes place, anyway, in spite of the
sometimes rigid reproductive social systems. As soon as enough people support and accept
different behavioral patterns, even conservative elements in society cannot really stop new
developments.
Practical changes in the actual social context of the time-span 1849-1930 helped women, as
well. It became easier for women to have access to books, because of the appearance of
public libraries, and they had more leisure time that they could spend to their own liking.
Western European society was still quite traditional, but everyday life seemed more lenient
towards the introduction of new ideas and more liberated patterns of behavior. This process
developed rather slowly, but these four novels clearly represent the changes that occurred.
Ranging from the introduction of new styles in fashion to the appearance of more women in
the workplace and the public sphere, the process of emancipation gradually evolved. These
women writers have not only depicted the changes taking place in the behavioral patterns
and social roles for women, they have also contributed to them through the glimpses of
more liberated patterns of behavior they have introduced. These glimpses could be picked
up in the very intense and personal experience of reading a novel. The new ideas were
introduced in a very private context and were made a part of the readers own
consciousness. Without overtly promoting the establishment of a different type of society,
these women authors may well have contributed to the emancipation process through the
narrative strategies they used, as contemporary reviews reveal.
Reading strategies
Corse and Westervelts suggested reading strategies by reader groups throughout the period
1849-1930 indicated that it was customary to read novels for their moral instruction at the
time. Shirley and The Age of Innocence fitted into this trend, but The Awakening was
considered too extreme concerning its depicted requests. Reading strategies seemed to be
changing, however, and in spite of the quite angry and extreme approach employed by
Rhys, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie was praised by both the wider critical context and the
individual reader.
Isers theories about the reading process have suggested how these fictional texts could
have influenced the consciousness of the individual reader. The effectiveness of the
techniques used in the novels in this context is realized especially through the evocation
and subsequent negation of the familiar. What at first seemed to be an affirmation of the
contemporary readers assumptions about social roles for women leads to their possible
rejection of them, thus tending to prepare readers for a re-orientation. This is what Bront,
Chopin, Wharton and Rhys have consistently done in their novels with the introduction of
the mirror image. The comparing and contrasting of both familiar and new behavioral

233

Conclusion

patterns for women, allows a rethinking of the options open to women. Iser believes that it
is only when readers have surpassed their personal preconceptions and left the shelter of the
familiar that they are in a position to gather new experiences. As the novels discussed here
involve the contemporary reader in the formation of new ideas and the simultaneous
formation of the means by which the old notions are punctured, reading reflects the process
by which these readers gained actual experience. With their novels, the female authors
discussed here did convey a new experience, and, also, an attitude towards that experience.
The identification of the reader with one or the other of the mirrored heroines in the novel
proved to be a stratagem by means of which the authors could try to stimulate new
attitudes in the contemporary reader.
Not all readers agreed with these new possibilities, and only a few female readers would
have adopted such behavioral patterns themselves. But the seed was planted. Bront,
Chopin, Wharton and Rhys had been able to pass on their ideas to individual readers in a
very private and intense way. By temporarily evoking a different world for their readers,
these readers also became part of that world.
The reception
Shirley, The Awakening, The Age of Innocence and After Leaving Mr Mackenzie represent
both conformist and more liberated behavioral patterns for women. The investigation of the
general criticism written in relation to the novels and the more individual reader reports
shows that both male and female readers were especially intrigued by the depiction of the
female main characters. The representation of conformist as well as aberrant behavior
seemed to intrigue contemporary readers without fully convincing them to stick to one side.
Behavioral patterns that show deviant behavior are also not solely shown by the monster
character. Very often it is indeed the monster that depicts this type of conduct, but
sometimes it is the angel character who shows less acceptable courses of action. It is the
norm negation [by one of the main characters, a minor character, or the plot] that strikes
readers the most. Yet, such aberrant behavior could be experienced and evaluated without
drastically influencing readers personal lives and was often reabsorbed by the plot
resolution.
Bront, Chopin, Wharton, and Rhys indicated repeatedly that they were concerned about
the position of the woman in their contemporary society. The fact that they themselves
wrote and published novels is proof that they considered the scope of behavioral patterns
available for women to be wider than was generally acknowledged. Their own more
liberated life style shows what women were indeed capable of doing, if only the social
context they lived in respected what they tried to achieve. In daily life, women were indeed
as much part of contemporary culture as men were, and, even though more conservative
ideologies would still debar women from many male activities, daily practice seemed to be
more lenient.
The examination of the reception of these novels shows that readers pick up the second
story line in all cases, but the story becomes more acceptable to contemporary readers when
the reader can also safely read the story without being confronted with behavioral patterns
that are too extreme. Too extreme depictions of alternative conventions seem to have the
opposite effect. They disconcert readers or critics, rather than intrigue them.

234

THE MIRROR IMAGE

The examination of some contemporary reviews and reader-reports written about Shirley
demonstrates that most of these readers and reviewers were quite positive about the novel.
With its mild application of the consciousness-raising technique, its plea for better
education for girls and more useful occupations for women and its traditional ending,
Shirley could certainly be read by everyone. Readers were still introduced to more liberated
behavioral patterns for women. Such behavioral patterns were sometimes criticized; but, on
the whole, the more technical aspects of the novel were criticized most severely. The lack
of unity of the novel and the abundance of characters received more negative criticism than
Shirleys deviant conduct.
The reception of The Awakening was quite different. Only a quarter of the reviewers was
positive about this novel. Kate Chopins writing style was generally praised, but the
aberrant behavior of Edna Pontellier was heavily censured by Louisiana critics in 1899 who
still read novels for their moral messages. Critics were especially upset about Ednas sexual
escapades. Quite different proved to be the reaction from the ordinary reader. More
personal reader reports and letters show that many of them liked the novel and understood
its meaning pefectly. Overall, later generations who read novels from a different
perspective, would and could appreciate this novel more.
The public reaction to Whartons The Age of Innocence was unequivocally positive. The
various layers of the story were clearly understood. The behavior of both the angel and
the more rebellious character were judged, compared and reviewed. However, Ellens
character and conduct was understood and appreciated much more than Ednas persona had
been, and the Angel in the House, May, becomes tainted. It is Whartons subtle and
intelligent use of the mirroring technique, and her clever comparison of the angel and the
monster image that blurs the distinction between good and bad behavioral patterns and
encourages respect for the individual. Overall, however, it is the love-triangle that is
especially noted by the contemporary reader; the woman question is paid much less
attention to.
The responses to Rhys After Leaving Mr Mackenzie were positive as well. It was
especially the stylistic aspect of the novel that was praised, and readers were intrigued by
the characters that were portrayed. Julia, in particular, received a lot of attention. In 1930,
Rhys was still ahead of her time with her extreme portrayal of patriarchy. Her blunt and
angry depiction of contemporary society and the limited options for women in such a brutal
context shocked some readers and critics. Yet, the contemporary reader reports and reviews
that have survived in relation to this novel were, on the whole, more nuanced and well-
thought out than some of the articles that were published in relation to the other novels. The
angry behavior of Julia, and the sometimes aberrant behavior of Norah made some readers
and critics consider it an unpleasant story, but quite a few reviewers stressed that it was
society that was most to be blamed for the plight of the female characters.
This is indeed the notion that is conveyed by all four novels that were examined and it is
especially the mirroring of both protagonists that enables this depiction of the still
restrictive forces in society for all women. Contemporary female readers benefited from the
fact that such books as Shirley, The Awakening, The Age of Innocence, and After Leaving
Mr Mackenzie were readily available, not too expensive, and could even be borrowed from
circulating libraries. However, rather than initiating female revolt, these novels allowed
readers to get acquainted with different and new behavioral patterns and social roles for

235

Conclusion

women in a more subtle way. One of the techniques used to do this was the complex use of
the mirror image to change the thematizing strategy into a real consciousness-raising
technique. Fiction thus seems to be able to develop a constructive and inspirational social
and historical function in challenging the very stereotypes on which it relies.

236

THE MIRROR IMAGE

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Wharton, Edith. Artemis to Acteaon and Other Verse. London: Macmillan, 1909.

1
This bibliography is divided into two sections: primary and secondary literature. For a list of the
reviews cited in Chapters 3-6, see the Appendix following the Bibliography.

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SECONDARY LITERATURE

Anon. Britain 1983: An Official Handbook. London: Her Majestys
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Allott, Miriam, ed. The Bronts: The Critical Heritage. London [etc.]: Routledge &
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Angelogou, Maggie. A History of Make-up. New York: Macmillan, 1970.
Angier, Carole. Jean Rhys: Life and Work. London: Andre Deutsch, 1990.
Athill, Diana. Introduction. Jean Rhys: The Early Novels. London: Andr
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Auchinloss, Louis. Edith Wharton. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
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Bal, Mieke, ed. Mensen van Papier: Over Personages in de Literatuur. Assen:
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University of Toronto Press, 1985.
Baldanza, Frank. Jean Rhys on Insult and Injury. Studies in the Literary
Imagination 11:2 (Fall 1978): 55-65.
Bartkowski, F. Feminist Utopias. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
Bartley, William. Imagining the Future in The Awakening. College English 62: 6
(July 2000): 719-746.
Baruch, E. H. A Natural and Necessary Monster: Women in Utopia.
Alternative Futures: The Journal of Utopian Studies. Vol. 26,
1979. 29-48.
Becker, Howard S. Outsiders. New York: Free Press, 1963.
Belasco Smith, Susan. A Yorkshire Burr: Language in Shirley. Studies in English
Literature 27: 4 (Autumn 1987): 637-645.
Bell, Millicent. The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Bender, Bert. The Teeth of Desire: The Awakening and The Descent of Man.
American Literature 63: 3 (September 1991): 459-473.
Bergen Brophy, Elizabeth. Womens Lives and the 18
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University of South Florida Press, 1991.
Bigelow, Marybelle S. Fashion in History: Apparel in the Western World. Minneapolis:
Burgess, 1970.
Bjork, Harriet. The Language of Truth: Charlotte Bront, the Woman Question,
and the Novel. Diss. University of Lund. Lund: AB Skanska
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Blair, Gage. Chapter 13: Great Britain. International Handbook of
Womens Education. Ed. Gail P. Kelly. New York, [etc.]:
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Blum, Joanne. Transcending Gender: The Male/Female Double in Womens
Fiction. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988.
Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction .1961. London: Penguin, 1991.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Cultural reproduction and social reproduction, Knowledge,
Education and Cultural Change. Ed. R. Brown. London:
Tavistock, 1973. 71-112.
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Passeron. Reproduction in Education, Society and
Culture. 1977. Trans. R. Nice. London: Sage, 2000.
---. The Inheritors. Chicago [etc.]: The University of Chicago Press,
1979.
Bourdieu, Pierre and Loic J. D. Wacquant. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Briggs, Asa. Private and Social Themes in Shirley. The Collected Essays of
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89.
Bryant, Margaret. The Unexpected Revolution: A Study in the History of the
Education of Women and Girls in the Nineteenth Century.
London: University of London, Institute of Education, 1979.
Burns, Tom and Elizabeth. Sociology of Literature and Drama. Harmondsworth [etc.]:
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Burstyn, Joan N. Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood. Totowa, New
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Esther Katz and Anita Rapone. New York: Transaction Books,
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Byrde, Penelope. Nineteenth Century Fashion. London: B. T. Batsford, 1992.
Carr, Helen. Jean Rhys. Plymouth: Northcote House, 1996.
Chafetz, Janet Saltzman, and Anthony Gary Dworkin. Female Revolt: Womens
Movements in World and Historical Perspective. Totowa, New
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Chamberlain, Daniel Frank. Narrative Perspective in Fiction: A Phenomenological
Mediation of Reader, Text, and World. Toronto: University of
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Chambers, Ross. Room for Maneuver: Reading (the) Oppositional (in) Narrative.
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Chodorow, Nancy. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the
Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press,
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Coates, Paul. The Double and the Other. London: Macmillan, 1988.
Coleman, Stanley M. The Phantom Double. British Journal of Medical Psychology
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Emery, Mary Lou. Jean Rhys at Worlds End; Novels of Colonial and Sexual
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Fetterley, Judith. The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American
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Forderer, Christof. Ich-Eklipsen: Doppelgnger in der Literatur seit 1800. Stuttgart,
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Foster, Shirley. Victorian Womens Fiction: Marriage, Freedom, and the
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Fracasso, Evelyn E. The Transparent Eyes of May Welland in Whartons The Age
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Freund, Elizabeth. The Return of the Reader: Reader-response Criticism. London:
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16-18.

249

Appendix

Wyndham, Francis and Diana Melly. Jean Rhys Letters, 1931-1966. London: Andr
Deutsch, 1984.
Yaeger, Patricia S. A Language Which Nobody Understood: Emancipatory
Strategies in The Awakening. Novel: A Forum on Fiction 20: 3
Twentieth Anniversary Issue: III (Spring 1987): 197-219.
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Tekstsociologie. Assen: van Gorcum, 1981.
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212-234.

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Appendix
REVIEWS
On Shirley (1849) by Charlotte Bront
British: (except when indicated otherwise)
Anonymous. The Atlas (3 November 1849): 696-7.
Anonymous. Athenaeum (3 November 1849): 1107-9.
Anonymous. The Barre Patriot Vol. 6, Issue 20 (30 November 1849): 2.
(American; Massachusetts). *
Anonymous. The Rejected Proposal, The Belfast Newsletter (Tuesday
Morning, 11 December 1849). (Irish) (extract) *
Anonymous. Literature of the Month, Bentleys Miscellany 26 (1849): 640-
643. *
Anonymous. Domestic Incidents, The Bristol Mercury, and Western
Counties Advertiser (Saturday, 10 November 1849): 6. (extract)
*
Anonymous. Britannia (10 November 1849): 714-15.
Anonymous. Church of England Quarterly Review xxvii (January 1850): 224-
5.
Anonymous. Critic (15 November 1849): 519-21.
Anonymous. The Daily News (31 October 1849): 2.
Anonymous. Shirley: A Tale by Currer Bell, The Dublin Review Vol. 28,
Issue 55 (March 1850): 209. (Irish)
Anonymous. Literature, The Economist (10 November 1849): 1251-3.
Anonymous. The Eclectic Review. No further data found.
Anonymous. Literature, The Era (23 December 1849): 10. *
Anonymous. Literature, Globe 1, Column 4 (Friday Evening, 9 November
1849): 1.
Anonymous. The Manchester Examiner, Columns 1-2 (7 November 1849).
Anonymous. The Manchester Examiner and Times (Wednesday, 28
November 1849): 3.
Anonymous. The Morning Chronicle Columns 1-2 (Tuesday, 25 December
1849): 7.
Anonymous. Morning Herald (16 November 1849).
Anonymous. Observer 7, Columns 1-2 (4 November 1849).
Anonymous. Spectator xxii (3 November 1849): 1043-5.
Anonymous. The Sun (London) 3, Columns 2-4 (Wednesday Evening, 14
November 1849).
Anonymous. The Times (Friday, 7 December 1849): 3.
Anonymous. The Weekly Chronicle (10 November 1849): 3.
Anonymous. Westminster Review lii (January 1850): 407-19.
Arnold, Tom. From a letter (15 August 1851).

251

Appendix

Clark, W. G. Frasers Magazine xl (December 1849): 691-4.
Dobell, Sidney. Review of Shirley, Palladium (September 1850).
Fonblanque, Albany. The Literary Examiner Issue 2179 (Saturday, 3 November
1849): 692-4.
Forcade, Eugene. Le Roman Contemporain en Angleterre, Revue de deux
mondes tome 4 (15 November 1849): 714-35. (French)
Howitt, William. Literature, The Standard of Freedom (10 November 1849): 11.
Lewes, G. H. Edinburgh Review xci (January 1850): 153-73.
Winkworth, Catherine. From a letter (5 December 1849).

*: not listed in previous collections of reviews

On The Awakening (1899) by Kate Chopin
American:
Anonymous. Review of The Awakening, Baltimore News (24 June 1899).
Anonymous. The Rambler, The Book Buyer (18 April 1899): 186.
Anonymous. Books and Authors, Boston Beacon 16 (24 June 1899): 4.
Anonymous. Current Literature, Boston Herald (12 August 1899): 7.
Anonymous. Books of the Day, Chicago Times-Herald (1 June 1899): 9.
Anonymous. Literature, The Congregationalist and Herald of Gospel
Liberty 84 (24 August 1899): 256.
Anonymous. The Awakening, Indianapolis Journal (14 August 1899): 4.
Anonymous. Fiction, Literature IV (23 June 1899): 570.
Anonymous. Fresh Literature, Los Angeles Sunday Times (25 June 1899):
12.
Anonymous. Review of The Awakening, Nation No. 69, 1779 (3 August
1899): 96.
Anonymous. New Publications, New Orleans Times-Democrat (18 June
1899): 14-15.
Anonymous. 100 Books for Summer Reading, New York Times Book
Review (24 June 1899): 408.
Anonymous. Novels and Tales, Outlook No. 62 (3 June 1899): 314.
Anonymous. Books of the Week, Providence Sunday Journal (4 June
1899): 15.
Anonymous. Review of The Awakening, Public Opinion No. 26-25 (22
June 1899): 794.
Anonymous. Weekly Record of New Publications, Publishers Weekly LV
(13 May 1899): 772.
Anonymous. Books Reviewed, The San Francisco Call (Sunday, 2 July
1899): 30.*
Anonymous. Notes from Bookland, St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat (13
May 1899): 5.

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Anonymous. The Newest Books, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (6 May 1899): 4.
Anonymous. News and Gossip about Forthcoming Books, St. Louis
Republic (25 March 1899).
Anonymous. Review of The Awakening St. Louis Republic. Data
incomplete; cited in Rankin, 1932, A2.
Anonymous. Kate Chopins New Book Is the Story of a Lady Most Foolish,
St. Louis Republic (30 April 1899): 11.
Anonymous. Review of The Awakening, St. Louis Republic (20 May 1899).
Breazeale, Camilla Lachs. Notice about The Awakening, Natchitoches Enterprise (11
May 1899).
Cather, Willa Sibert. Books and Magazines, Pittsburgh Leader (8 July 1899): 6.
Deyo, Charles L. The Newest Books, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (20 May 1899): 4.
G.B. Kate Chopins Novel. St. Louis Post-Dispatch (21 May 1899):
6.
Monroe, Lucy. Review of The Awakening, Book News Monthly No. 17 (June
1899): 592.
Payne, William Morton. Recent Fiction, Dial No. 27 (1 August 1899): 75.
Porcher, Frances. The Awakening: Kate Chopins Novel, St. Louis Mirror IX (4
May 1899): 6.

On The Age of Innocence (1920) by Edith Wharton
American (unless indicated otherwise)
Anonymous. American Library Association Booklist XVII (January 1921):
161.
Anonymous. The Dial (January 1921).
Anonymous. Puppets in a Period: The Age of Innocence by Edith
Wharton, The Guardian (17 December 1920). (British)
Anonymous. Mrs. Whartons Novel of Old New York, Literary Digest 68
(5 February 1921): 52.
Anonymous. The Innocence of New York, Saturday Review CXXX (4
December 1920): 458. (British)
Anonymous. Spectator CXXVI (8 January 1921): 55-56.
Anonymous. The Age of Innocence, The Times Literary Supplement (25
November 1920): 775. (British)
Anonymous. Wisconsin Library Bulletin XVI (December 1920): 239.
Anonymous. The Age of Innocence, The Woman Citizen Vol. 5, Issue 23
(1920): 642; in a section called The Book Stall. *
Bellesort, Andr. Les littratures trangres: le dernier roman de Edith Wharton,
Revue Bleue 59 (20 August 1921): 524-528. (French)
Boynton, Henry Walcott. The Hapless Middle Distance, Weekly Review III (17
November 1920): 476.
Canby, Henry Seidel. Our America, New York Evening Post (6 November 1920): 3.
Canby, Henry Seidel.. Definitions. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. 1920. 212-216.

253

Appendix

Danchin, F. C. Revue annuelle: Le Roman anglais, Revue Germanique 13
(1922): 155-159. (French)
Doren, Carl van. An Elder America, Nation CXI (3 November 1920): 510-511.
Doren, Carl van.. Contemporary American Novelists, Nation CXII (12 January
1921): 40-41.
Edgett, Edwin F. The Strange Case of Edith Wharton, Boston Evening
Transcript (23 October 1920) Part 4: 4.
Hackett, Francis. The Age of Innocence, New Republic 24 (17 November 1920):
301-302.
Loving, Pierre. When Old New York Was Young and Innocent, New York
Call (12 December 1920): 10.
Mansfield, Katherine. Family Portraits, Athenaeum 4728 (10 December 1920): 810-
811. (British)
Mason, A. E. W. The Age of Innocence, The Bookman Vol. 52, Issue 4
(December 1920): 360-361; in a section called A Shelf of
Recent Books.
Parrington, Vernon L. Our Literary Aristocrat, Pacific Review II (June 1921): 157-
160.
Perry, Katherine. Were the Seventies Sinless? Publishers Weekly XCVIII (16
October 1920): 1195-1196.
Phelps, William Lyon. As Mrs. Wharton Sees Us, New York Times Book Review (17
October 1920): 1, 11.
R. L. M. Shorter Notices, Freeman 2 (22 December 1920): 358.
Townsend, R. D. Novels Not For A Day, Outlook 126 (8 December 1920): 653.
Trueblood, Charles K. Edith Wharton, The Dial 68 (January 1920): 80-91.
Watson, Frederick. The Assurance of Art, Bookman 59 (January 1921): 170-172.
(British)
Whiting, Lillian. Novels on the Seasons List, Springfield Republican (5
December 1920) magazine section: 9a. (Massachusetts)
Wilson, Edmund Jr. Review of The Age of Innocence. Data incomplete; mentioned
in Lewis, 444.

*: not listed in previous collections of reviews

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On After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1930) by Jean Rhys
British:
Anonymous Nottingham Journal & Express (27 February 1931).
Anonymous Times Literary Supplement No. 1518 (5 March 1931): 180.
Gould, Gerald. New Novels: All Sorts of Societies, The Observer (Sunday
8 February 1931): 6.
Herbert, Alice. Novels of the Week: Two Original Newcomers, The
Yorkshire Post (4 February 1931): 6. (In previous collections
marked as Anonymous).
Hoult, Norah. Our Books of the Week: An Unfortunate Woman and a
Martyr, Yorkshire Evening Post (Friday 20 February 1931):
7.
Swinnerton, Frank. A London Bookmans Week: Give me a Tale with a Real
Plot, The Evening News (Friday 6 February 1931): 5.
West, Rebecca. Books of the Day: The Pursuit of Misery in Some of the New
Novels, The Daily Telegraph (Friday 30 January 1931): 7.

American:
Anonymous Boston Evening Transcript (29 August 1931): 1.
Anonymous New Republic No. 68 (16 September 1931): 134.
Anonymous New York Evening Post (26 June 1931).
Anonymous Twice-as-Naturalism, New York Times Book Review (28 June
1931): 6.
Cheney Dawson, Margaret. Unbearable Justice, New York Herald Tribune Books (28
June 1931): 7.
Graham, Gladys. A Bedraggled Career, Saturday Review of Literature No. 8 (25
July 1931): 6.
R.M.C. Books, Books, Books, New Yorker (4 July 1931): 53.
Stone, Geoffrey. Bookman New York, No. 74 (September 1931): 84.
Weigle, Edith. Books, Chicago Daily Tribune No. 90 (11 July 1931): 11.

255

Nederlandse samenvatting

Het Spiegelbeeld: De Representatie van Sociale Rollen voor Vrouwen in de Romans van
Charlotte Bront, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton en Jean Rhys
Het is geen geheim dat auteurs stereotype beelden gebruiken om vrouwen in hun werk weer
te geven. Belangrijke motieven die door de geschiedenis heen gebruikt zijn, zijn de
Madonna, Eva, de Maagd, de Engel, het monster en de hoer. Het gebruik van de
verschillende motieven was sterk afhankelijk van de periode. In de negentiende eeuw waren
de Madonna en de hoer de belangrijkste motieven, in het Engels meestal getypeerd als
the Angel in the House en het monster. Echter, in plaats van ze slechts als stereotypen
voor te stellen, hebben Britse en Amerikaanse schrijfsters van het eind van de negentiende
en het begin van de twintigste eeuw deze beelden gebruikt om romans te schrijven met een
emancipatoire ondertoon. Aan de ene kant lijken deze verhalen de traditionele rollen voor
vrouwen weer te geven en te bevestigen, maar aan de andere kant zetten ze ze ook te kijk
en suggereren ze mogelijkheden voor andere gedragspatronen voor vrouwen. Juist door het
spiegelen van de engel en het monster zijn deze schrijfsters erin geslaagd teksten te
schrijven die bij kunnen dragen aan een bewustwordingsproces. Door het gebruik van deze
contrastering kregen lezers een duidelijk beeld van de contemporaine normen, waarden en
sociale rollen voor vrouwen, maar tegelijkertijd kreeg men ook een goede indruk van
mechanismen van sociale druk en beperkingen.
Omdat het gebruik van deze stereotype beelden en de spiegeling en verdubbeling ervan
zulke belangrijke technieken zijn gebleken voor de literatuur van vrouwen was ik benieuwd
in hoeverre Britse en Amerikaanse schrijfsters dit motief hadden gebruikt om de nog steeds
ondergeschikte positie van de vrouw gedurende de periode 1849-1930 te thematiseren. In
deze context leken de volgende punten vooral van belang, namelijk hoe werden de
stereotype beelden gebruikt en welke aspecten werden benadrukt. Daarnaast rees de vraag
in hoeverre de schrijfsters erin slaagden om met deze strategie van thematisering ook
werkelijk een bewustwordingsproces in gang te zetten. Mijn onderzoek verdedigt de
stelling dat de techniek van verdubbeling, dat wil zeggen: het wederzijds spiegelen, in
literatuur van de traditionele figuren van de engel en het monster werd gebruikt om
sociale rollen voor vrouwen zowel weer te geven, als ze in twijfel te trekken. Ook blijkt dat
dankzij het thematiseren van de beschikbare sociale rollen voor vrouwen, de normen en
waarden van de patriarchale maatschappij werden ontmaskerd en contemporaine lezers op
die manier een ander beeld van de maatschappij kregen; dat dit proces zo werkte blijkt uit
de reacties beschreven in contemporaine artikelen en recensies.
Dit onderzoek is in verschillende opzichten van belang. In de eerste plaats verheldert het de
technieken voor bewustmaking die worden gebruikt door Bront, Chopin, Wharton en
Rhys. Het methodologische kader voor dit onderzoek is, gedeeltelijk, gebaseerd op de
methode van Annelie Hegenbarth-Rsgen. Deze aanpak biedt een combinatie van een
interpretatieve en sociologische analyse van de manier waarop literatuur een medium kan
zijn voor sociale normen. Ook bevestigt mijn onderzoek dat de techniek van de spiegeling
in de literatuur van vrouwen meer wordt gebruikt voor sociale vergelijking. Dit is ook de
reden waarom ik het motief het spiegelbeeld heb genoemd en niet de dubbelganger. In

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de laatste plaats is dit onderzoek interessant vanuit een sociaal-historisch perspectief.
Gedurende de periode 1849-1930 voltrok zich de eerste feministische golf. Er werden
vrouwenbewegingen opgericht, vrouwen kregen stemrecht en er kwamen steeds meer
mogelijkheden voor goed onderwijs voor meisjes en banen voor vrouwen. Hoe schrijfsters
deze veranderingen hebben weergegeven en soms zelfs hebben gestimuleerd zijn
belangrijke aandachtspunten in dit onderzoek.
In de bestudering van de toepassing van het spiegelbeeld wordt er eerst gekeken naar het
gebruik van de motieven van de engel, het monster en hun spiegeling in de verschillende
teksten. Mijn analyse van het gebruik van deze motieven en vervolgens de reconstructie
van de interpretatie van de contemporaine lezer laten zien dat schrijfsters er vaak in leken te
slagen de impliciete betekenis van beide motieven middels de techniek van spiegeling te
nuanceren en soms zelfs om te draaien. De verdeling van dit project in twee onderdelen,
eerst een bestudering van het gebruik van de motieven en de technieken; en daarna een
bestudering van lezersverslagen is aangehouden om te kunnen onderbouwen hoe de romans
van deze schrijfsters functioneerden in het contemporaine debat over sociale rollen voor
vrouwen.
Bij de bestudering van het spiegelingseffect is er met name aandacht besteed aan drie
aspecten, te weten de geslachtsspecifieke socialisatie van de vrouwelijke hoofdpersonen,
hun klassespecifieke socialisatie en hun meer algemene gedrag in de maatschappij en in
relatie tot mannen. In deze drie contexten is er vooral gekeken naar hun houding ten
opzichte van de traditionele vrouwenrollen van echtgenote, huisvrouw, moeder en dame.
Bij het bestuderen van het weergeven van deze rollen was het analysemodel van Annelie
Hegenbarth-Rsgen van belang. Hegenbarth-Rsgen stelt zich tot doel de analyse van de
representatie van normen, waarden en sociale rollen. In haar analysemodel onderscheidt ze
een aantal functies die de representatie van deze normen, waarden en sociale rollen kan
hebben in literatuur. De eerste functie is thematisering. Hiermee bedoelt ze het aan de orde
stellen van normen, waarden en sociale rollen in een roman. Het interessante van het
kennisnemen van normen, waarden en sociale rollen door middel van literatuur is dat lezers
er hoogte van kunnen nemen zonder zichzelf bloot te geven of bekritiseerd te worden. Dit
noemt Hegenbarth-Rsgen het simulatie potentieel van literatuur. De tweede functie die
Hegenbarth-Rsgen onderkent is stabilisatie. Een bestaand normen en waarden system kan
in stand worden gehouden door het te stabiliseren. Stabilisatie kan, bijvoorbeeld,
plaatsvinden door afwijkend gedrag te corrigeren. De acceptabele norm of sociale rol wordt
daardoor benadrukt. In de bestudeerde romans gebeurt deze correctie, onder andere, door
een confrontatie met het correcte gedrag van de goede vrouw. Problematisering is de
derde functie. Door middel van het problematiseren van incorrect gedrag kunnen zowel
afwijkend gedrag alsook de norm worden gecorrigeerd. De vierde functie, anticipatie, is het
vooruitlopen, door middel van literatuur, op mogelijk nieuwe gedragspatronen. Ook
literatuur kan nieuwe gedragspatronen aanreiken.
Behalve voor deze functies, heeft Hegenbarth-Rsgens analysemodel aandacht voor de
tekstperspectieven en de verschillende toepassingsvormen. Het laatste aspect dat wordt
belicht binnen haar methode is de tekstkant en de lezerskant als facetten van het
communicatie frame van een tekst. Deze methode, in combinatie met een bestudering van
de contemporaine sociaal-historische context, probeert de normen en waardensystemen te
traceren die bepalen of gedragspatronen van vrouwelijke hoofdpersonen acceptabel of
afwijkend zijn. Een bestudering van zowel de tekstkant als de lezerskant biedt daarnaast

257


informatie over de contemporaine waardering van de literaire teksten. Een dergelijke
aanpak biedt een goede basis voor de bestudering van literaire werken als uitingen van en
bijdragen aan het debat over de rol en de positie van de vrouw.
Een belangrijk aspect dat betrekking heeft op zowel de tekstkant als de lezerskant is het
leesproces zelf. Wolfgang Isers fenomenologisch georinteerde receptie-esthetica is hier
van belang. Receptie-esthetische interpretaties zijn erop gericht aan te geven waar en hoe de
tekst de lezer tot activiteit aanzet, wil deze zich de tekst eigen maken. Iser definieert het
lezen als een betekenisgevende activiteit die bestaat uit de elkaar aanvullende activiteiten
van selectie en organisatie, van vooruitlopen op betekenissen en een aanvullend en
corrigerend terugblikken. Van vitaal belang in dit leesproces is de betrokkenheid van de
lezer bij de gebeurtenissen in de tekst en de gedachtengang van de auteur. De
contemporaine lezers die de hier bestudeerde romans lazen, werden aldus op een zeer
persoonlijke en intieme manier deelgenoot gemaakt van de ervaringen van de verschillende
vrouwelijke hoofdpersonen. Hoewel men het niet altijd met de gedragingen van de
verschillende personages eens hoefde te zijn, kon men in ieder geval ook kennis nemen van
de beweegredenen en motieven.
Vier romans vormen de basis van deze studie. De eerste roman die wordt bestudeerd is
Shirley (1849) van Charlotte Bront. Dit wat minder bekende werk van Bront werd ook
toen het net gepubliceerd was al geprezen om zijn sociale aspecten. In deze sociaal-
realistische roman is er aandacht voor zowel de positie van de vrouw als die van de
arbeider. In mijn analyse besteed ik met name aandacht aan de manier waarop de beide
vrouwelijke hoofdpersonen, Shirley Keeldar en Caroline Helstone, worden geportretteerd
en vergeleken. Shirley verbeeldt de zogenaamde slechte vrouw. Niet alleen is haar gedrag
veel vrijpostiger dan in die tijd gangbaar was, ook haar uiterlijk en haar achtergrond zijn
anders dan die van de doorsnee-vrouw. Shirley is van adel, ze heeft een landgoed gerfd dat
ze runt als een manager en ze kiest zelf haar huwelijkspartner uit. Het verhaal vindt plaats
in 1811, al is de roman zelf iets later geschreven, namelijk in 1849. Shirleys spiegelbeeld
is Caroline Helstone. Caroline is van bescheidener komaf en verbeeldt de madonna, in het
Engels getypeerd als the Angel in the House. Caroline ziet er uit als een engel en ze
gedraagt zich ook als zodanig. Het verhaal wordt verteld door een alwetende verteller die
afwisselend het woord aan de verschillende personages geeft. Aan het begin van de roman
zijn de beide vrouwenfiguren nog heel verschillend. In de loop van het verhaal, echter,
begint Caroline steeds meer corrigerend op te treden. Ze zegt niet alleen iets van Shirleys
afwijkende gedrag (en zij is niet de enige) ze spiegelt Shirley ook het juiste gedrag voor.
Shirley bindt uiteindelijk in en het boek eindigt met het huwelijk van beide vrouwen.
Ondanks deze correctie kregen lezeressen toch een goed beeld van mogelijk alternatieve
rollenpatronen voor vrouwen en werden ze zich bewust gemaakt van het feit dat er wel
degelijk meerdere opties zijn voor vrouwen, zonder zelf het risico te lopen bekritiseerd te
worden.
In de tweede roman die wordt bestudeerd, The Awakening (De Ontnuchtering; 1899) van
Kate Chopin, worden er weer twee vrouwelijke hoofdpersonen aan elkaar gespiegeld. De
stijl van deze roman is anders dan die van Bront. Terwijl Bronts stijl sociaal-realistisch
kan worden genoemd benadert de stijl van Chopin het emotioneel realisme. In deze roman
verbeeldt Edna Pontellier de slechte vrouw en voldoet Adle Ratignolle keurig aan de
gedragspatronen die van haar verwacht worden. Ze is de perfecte moeder, huisvrouw en
echtgenote. Ze is heel erg mooi en heel erg aardig. Ze lijkt ook wel degelijk door te hebben

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dat er wellicht nog meerdere opties zijn voor vrouwen, maar is volkomen tevreden met haar
misschien wat saaie en traditionele bestaan. Ook dit verhaal wordt verteld door een
alwetende verteller. Edna en Adle worden van het begin tot het einde van de roman met
elkaar vergeleken. Gedurende de periode van negen maanden waarin Edna een periode van
persoonlijke groei en bewustwording doormaakt is Adle zwanger. Ednas persona voldoet
niet aan de normen en waarden van die tijd. Ze probeert te breken met het haar opgelegde
rollenpatroon en lijkt hier aardig in te slagen. Ze wil kunstenares worden. Ze is niet de
perfecte moeder, ze gaat twee keer vreemd en ze veronachtzaamt het huishouden. Voor
1899, het jaar waarin het boek is gepubliceerd, is dit gedrag vrij ongebruikelijk. Adle, haar
spiegelbeeld, laat zien hoe een vrouw zich behoort te gedragen en ze zegt het ook tegen
Edna als ze vindt dat iets niet kan. Maar haar corrigerende gedrag heeft geen invloed op
Edna. Wel realiseert Edna zich dat ze niet gerespecteerd wordt door de sociale context. Ze
legt zich hier uiteindelijk bij neer en het boek eindigt met haar zelfdoding door verdrinking.
Het derde boek is The Age of Innocence (De Jaren van Onschuld; 1920) van Edith
Wharton. De stijl van deze roman kan omschreven worden als society realisme. De twee
vrouwelijke hoofdpersonen in deze roman zijn weer van goede komaf. Het verhaal vindt
plaats in New York en deze keer worden May Welland en Ellen Olenska aan elkaar
gespiegeld. May lijkt de perfecte Angel in the House of madonna. Ze ziet er uit als een
engel, ze is blond met grote blauwe ogen, en verbeeldt een onschuld en naviteit waar haar
toekomstig echtgenoot, Newland Archer, eerst bijzonder van is gecharmeerd en later bijna
bang van wordt. Ellen Olenska, haar spiegelbeeld, is een vrouw van de wereld, ze is
intelligent, belezen, heeft veel gereisd en staat op het punt te scheiden van haar echtgenoot.
Ondanks het feit dat Ellen niet voldoet aan de normen en waarden van die tijd (de roman
speelt zich af rond 1870) heeft ze een grote schare vrienden en kennissen en wordt Newland
Archer verliefd op haar. De lezer beleeft de gebeurtenissen in deze roman voornamelijk
vanuit het perspectief van Archer. Daarnaast is de rol van de verteller erg belangrijk. Het is
met name haar commentaar dat er voor zorgt dat Ellen steeds meer sympathie van de
sociale context waarin ze leeft (en de lezer) krijgt. Voor May is het tegenovergestelde waar.
Ondanks haar bijna perfecte uiterlijk en gedrag verschijnen er barsten in het beeld dat wordt
voorgespiegeld. In plaats van het gedrag van de slechte vrouw te corrigeren, heeft Mays
houding het tegenovergestelde effect en de scheiding tussen goed en slecht wordt troebel.
In de laatste roman die wordt behandeld, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (Na Meneer
Mackenzie; 1930) van Jean Rhys, zijn de twee vrouwelijke hoofdpersonen de zusters Julia
Martin en Norah Griffiths. De stijl van deze roman is anders dan die van de boeken die
eerder zijn besproken. Rhys manier van schrijven is een combinatie van realisme en
modernisme. Deze stijl biedt haar nog ruimere mogelijkheden om met de weergave van de
vrouwelijke stereotypen te spelen. Julia Martin stelt de slechte vrouw voor, zij wordt
letterlijk afgeschilderd als de hoer en haar zuster Norah is the Angel in the House. Maar
Norah ziet er niet uit als een engel of een madonna en net als bij May zijn ook haar
gedragingen af en toe verre van perfect. Julia verbeeldt de slechte vrouw en hoewel haar
gedrag soms echt extreem is, heeft ze ook oprechte en onafhankelijke kanten en lijkt ze
voornamelijk slachtoffer te zijn van de patriarchale maatschappij waarin ze leeft. In de loop
van het verhaal worden de goede en slechte kanten van beide hoofdpersonen zodanig
gecontrasteerd door de verteller dat ook in deze roman de scheidslijn tussen correct en
incorrect gedrag vaag wordt. Beide vrouwelijke hoofdpersonen zitten in een underdog
positie en proberen zich zo goed en zo kwaad als het kan te redden. Maar de contemporaine

259


patriarchale context geeft ze weinig bewegingsruimte. Deze laatste roman heeft een open
einde en het blijft onduidelijk of Julia het wel of niet gaat redden. Wel slaagt de roman er
heel goed in de lezer wakker te schudden.
Dat contemporaine lezers en lezeressen zich ook daadwerkelijk bewust werden van de nog
steeds onderdrukkende werking van de directe sociale context voor vrouwen blijkt wel uit
de artikelen die er destijds over de boeken geschreven zijn. De meeste artikelen die zijn
gepubliceerd waren recensies of artikelen om de net gepubliceerde romans te promoten.
Een andere, minder omvangrijke, bron bestond uit brieven. Alle auteurs kregen (en
schreven) brieven. Ook in deze brieven werden de bestudeerde romans besproken,
bekritiseerd of geprezen. Opvallend in de verschillende beschouwingen is dat er met name
veel aandacht wordt besteed aan het gedrag van de slechte vrouw. Soms wordt ook de
schrijfster bekritiseerd om haar vrijpostige weergave van dergelijk onacceptabel gedrag.
Meer genuanceerde lezingen zien echter zowel de goede en slechte kanten van beide
personages en verwonderen zich over de onderdrukkende kanten van de contemporaine
sociale context.
Interessant in relatie tot de werkelijke bevindingen van contemporaine lezers is het
volgende. De Amerikaanse sociologen Corse en Westervelt geven aan dat gedurende
opeenvolgende historische periodes verschillende interpretatiemethoden worden
gehanteerd. Gedurende de periode 1849-1930 werden romans met name gelezen met het
oog op hun weergave van correcte normen en waarden en de mogelijke bevordering van
zedelijk gedrag. Dit betekende voor de boeken die hier bestudeerd zijn dat ze (soms) anders
werden genterpreteerd dan nu. In de praktijk betekende dit voor de verschillende romans
het volgende.
Een bestudering van de recensies die er over Charlotte Bronts roman Shirley zijn
geschreven laat zien dat ruim driekwart van de contemporaine lezers en recensenten vrij
positief over de roman was. Dankzij de voorzichtige toepassing van de
bewustmakingstechnieken met het pleidooi voor beter onderwijs voor meisjes en mogelijk
nuttiger functies voor vrouwen, maar het toch traditionele einde kon Shirley zonder
bezwaar door iedereen gelezen worden. De spiegeling van de beide vrouwelijke
hoofdpersonen werd goed opgemerkt en contemporaine lezers konden op een vrij
voorzichtige manier kennismaken met meer gemancipeerde levensstijlen voor vrouwen.
Deze gedragspatronen kregen soms kritiek, maar over het algemeen waren het andere, de
meer technische aspecten van de roman die de meeste open aanmerkingen kregen. Veel
critici vonden dat de eenheid in de roman ontbrak en men vond dat er teveel personages in
zaten. Maar deze aspecten kregen veel meer aandacht dan Shirleys vrijpostige gedrag.
De roman The Awakening van Kate Chopin werd door de contemporaine pers in Louisiana
afgekraakt. Het was met name Chopins betoog voor de sexuele bevrijding van de vrouw
waar men zich aan ergerde. Het contrast tussen Edna en Adle werd goed opgemerkt en
Adles gedrag werd alom geprezen. Er waren daarentegen ook critici die het boek
genuanceerder interpreteerden, de verschillende betekenislagen benadrukten en met name
commentaar gaven op de onderdrukkende normen en waarden van het patriarchaat. In deze
context was het interessant om te zien dat collega auteurs, vrienden en kennissen zich juist
heel positief uitlieten over de roman in de brieven die ze aan Chopin schreven. Ook waren
buitenlandse recensenten en critici die voor nationale Amerikaanse kranten schreven veel

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positiever dan recensenten van de lokale, katholieke kranten van het zuiden van de
Verenigde Staten.
De ontvangst van The Age of Innocence was over de gehele linie veel positiever. Dit boek
werd alom geprezen en in 1921 kreeg Edith Wharton er de Pulitzer-prijs voor. Iedereen,
van hoogleraren tot collega schrijfsters prezen het boek. Niet iedereen was even enthousiast
over het gedrag van Ellen, maar men vond haar wel sympathiek. Sommige lezers gaven
zelfs aan wat gefrustreerd te zijn over de tamheid van het boek. Wharton gebruikte
verschillende technieken die er voor zorgden dat de contemporaine lezer dit verhaal
acceptabel vond. Het verhaal wordt verteld vanuit het gezichtspunt van de mannelijke
hoofdpersoon. Archer is ook degene die pleit voor de economische en sociale bevrijding
van de vrouw. Daarnaast houden alle hoofdpersonen zich strikt aan het normen- en waarden
patroon van die tijd. Wharton kon door het spiegelen van de vrouwenfiguren dit
contemporaine normen- en waarden patroon echter goed thematiseren en de lezers niet
alleen aanzetten tot nadenken, maar bijna opstandig maken. Wel bleek het met name het
liefdesdrama dat de meeste aandacht kreeg van de lezer. De representatie van de positie van
de vrouw werd wel opgemerkt, maar zelden besproken in de recensies.
Ook de receptie van After Leaving Mr Mackenzie van Jean Rhys was positief. Dit boek had
een veel kleinere oplage en er zijn minder recensies over het boek geschreven; maar de
verslagen die bewaard zijn gebleven zijn bedachtzaam en genuanceerd. De meeste lezers uit
1931 vonden Rhys modernistische stijl goed, haar pleidooi voor meer financile en sociale
zekerheden voor vrouwen billijk, maar haar onderwerp morbide. Rhys geeft inderdaad de
meest extreme weergave van de stereotype beelden van de engel en het monster. Ze leek
er op deze manier echter heel goed in te slagen de lezer wakker te schudden. Sommige
contemporaine lezers waren eigenlijk nog niet klaar voor haar roman, maar over het
algemeen werd de roman door de lezers uit de jaren dertig positiever beoordeeld dan door
generaties erna. Pas aan het einde van de zestiger jaren van de vorige eeuw kwamen de
romans van Jean Rhys opnieuw in de belangstelling te staan en werden haar boeken met
name om de feministische elementen geprezen.
De romans die hier zijn bestudeerd werden door de contemporaine lezers nog niet altijd
voldoende op waarde geschat. Wel zijn de boeken er middels de spiegeling van de
vrouwelijke hoofdpersonen goed in geslaagd een bewustwordingsproces bij de
contemporaine lezer in gang te zetten. Dit blijkt duidelijk uit de nog beschikbare recensies
en artikelen. De romans hebben in ieder geval bijgedragen aan het contemporaine debat
over sociale rollen voor vrouwen en hebben, op die manier, ook een rol gespeeld in de
emancipatie van de vrouw.

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