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| CORINNENOTES | |||||||||||||||||||||
| NOVELS OF INDUSTRY | |||||||||||||||||||||
| DIVIDED TIMES: THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPHERES IN NORTH AND SOUTH AND HARD TIMES. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| In "Industrial" H Sussman states that "one of the most significant shifts created by industrialism" was that of the "separation of the workplace from the home". This "shift" created "new gender roles" with the "husband as breadwinner [and the] wife as childcare giver" and led ultimately to the "19th century ideology of the two separate spheres - the masculine public sphere of work [and] the private female sphere of domesticity". Is, however, this "shift" one which Elizabeth Gaskell in North and South and Charles Dickens in Hard Times not only reflect but one which they endorse? | |||||||||||||||||||||
| If the public sphere is masculine then the opening chapters of HardTimes immediately confronts us with this masculinity in the form of Gradgrind. The opening line of the novel, "Now what I want is facts", is assertive and authorative, the masculine manifestation of public speech. The demand for facts can be articulated by Gradgrind and responded to in the appropriate terms by Bitzer, who too, is part of this masculine world, and who can therefore clinically define a horse. Sissy Jupe however, in the face of such assertiveness is unable to react in any terms other than being inarticulate and "alarmed". Dickens however does not share Gradgrind's demands for the masculine "fact". In writing Hard Times Dickens drew heavily from the criticism of industrial society in Thomas Carlyle's essay "Signs of the Times". In this essay Carlyle condemned a society where: "Not only the external and physical alone is... managed by machinery, but the internal and spiritual also". This is the idea that the competitive, masculine, business sphere has permeated into the private sphere, specifically in Hard Times into the education system. The alternative to such a system is suggested by Dickens use of a circus. The circus suggests freedom from the constraints imposed by the public sphere and the triumph of the private sphere. In R Williams words, however, if the circus is "instinctive" it is also "anarchic". To return to such a system, whether in the public or private realm, is impossible. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Dickens other major example of the public sphere is Bounderby, a caricature of the successful factory owner, who contrasts sharply with Gaskell's Thornton. Dickens condemns Bounderby from the start of the novel with his description of him as "A man with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in his temples, and such strained skin to his face that it seemed to hold his eyes open and lift his eyebrows up". Bounderby refuses to help Stephen Blackpool to gain a divorce and responds to the threat of rebellion amongst his workers with the claim that he will transport Slackbridge and his fellow protestors. Bounderby is a totally unsympathetic character who fittingly dies in the gutter, but this is one of the major failings of Hard Times. Bounderby is nothing more than an occasionally amusing, if repulsive, caricature who the reader cannot possible relate to on any real terms. There is the possibility that a character such as Thornton could exist, and this gives Gaskell's portrayal of the public realm (and therefore her message behind it) some sense of reality but there is no such possibility of Bounderby's existence. This would not be such a failure for Dickens if it was not for the fact that there is quite obviously a message (though admittedly a different one to Gaskell) behind Hard Times, namely that, in Carlyle's words, the internal and spiritual should not be "managed by machinery". Any critique of such a philosophy (and indeed of the masculine dominated public sphere) is lost in the anti-bourgeois propaganda of Bounderby. This is not however to suggest that Dickens portrayal of the proletariat within the public sphere is any more believable - Slackbridge's "mongrel dress" and "sour expression" are exaggerated to the same extent as the features of Bounderby. They both also share the fact that they make Stephen Blackpool a martyr, and almost feminine in the extent to which he is oppressed. Dickens regards the rest of the workers gathered at the union meeting as a "mass", unindividualised and nameless. It should be noted, however, that Gaskell also treats the workers as a "mass" when they stand outside Thornton's house, so Dickens was not alone in his misunderstanding of the urban workers and the role of the unions. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| In North and South it is Thornton who is representative of the public, masculine, sphere. His initial contempt for his workers is obvious: | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "I believe that this suffering...is but the natural punishment of dishonesty - enjoyed pleasure at some former period of their lives. I do not look on self-indulgent, sensual people as worthy of my hatred; I simply look upon them with contempt for their poorness of character". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Thornton has, initially money, and therefore power in Milton. However Margaret does not consider this new industrial class which Thornton represents to be of equal social standing to her, it is Thornton whose character is "poor", something which Thornton senses in his desire to be educated by Mr Hale. Yet Thornton is more complex than Dickens's Bounderby. He initially rejects Higgins, just as Bounderby rejects Blackpool, but Thornton then hires Higgins, learning from him that "we have all of us one human heart" (this however is rather trite reaction as to a solution for the problems shown in the novel). In this respect the novel allows the "moralised space" to transcend the barriers of the home, and to enter the workplace, linking the two separate spheres. However Thornton (and indeed Higgins) are still male so the separate sphere ideology is only partly challenged. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| It is through the character of Margaret Hale that Gaskell challenges the public sphere being entirely masculine. By the end of the novel it is Margaret who has money and who owns the factory, it is "under her patronage" that Thornton must make his business work, despite the fact that other men "will shake their heads and look grave". This final assertion of Margaret's right to have influence in the public sphere, indeed to be a landlord, is a significant event to the extent that it was middle class women who were more rigidly constrained by the sphere ideology but it is not the only example of Margaret's role in the public sphere. Her appearance outside Thornton's house is, if anything, even more important in revealing Gaskell's views on the sphere ideology, which are more ambiguous than Margaret's role as landlord would originally suggest. Initially Margaret is locked in the house, along with the other women, but she refuses to stay there, instead deciding to assert her view and protect Thornton. By doing this Margaret is effectively leaving the "home" and entering into the "workplace". Margaret then proceeds to act as a "shield" for Thornton - it is her protecting him rather than the other way around. Thornton's reaction to this is to tell her that "this is no place for you", trying to reassert his masculine authority. This view is almost immediately backed up by the fact that Margaret is hit by a stone, bleeds and then faints. Bonnie G. Smith in "The Domestic Sphere in the Victorian Age" wrote: | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "Nervousness and fainting were...commonly accepted manifestations of women's weakness, in contrast to men's strength. Bad or even disagreeable news, shocking sights, or poor manners could cause fainting...a range of factors - physical, social and ideological - went towards creating the languishing woman as both an ideal and a reality". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| It is in Margaret's greatest moment of public "strength" that she faints and Gaskell thereby reasserts the "weakness" of women. It is somewhat ironic that Margaret will later joke with Edith that "I'll faint on your hands at the servants dinner time...then, what with Sholto playing with the fire, and the baby crying, you'll begin to wish for a strong-minded woman, equal to any emergency". Margaret does prove to be able to deal with emergencies in the private sphere but she still manages to faint twice in the novel, and at such moments as to limit her success in asserting her "strength". Equally the chapter in which Margaret faints into Thornton's arms is one which is pervaded by barely repressed sexual feelings. Gaskell repeatedly uses the word "passion" to describe the actions of the strikers but this reflects more on the feelings of Margaret and Thornton. The response to this "passion" however is that Margaret simply faints into Thornton's arms, helpless and totally in his control. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| If women were confined to the private sphere then Sussman concedes that this was "permeable" for working class women. Indeed in the mill at Preston which both Dickens and Gaskell used as the inspiration for the strikes in their novels it is estimated that over half the workers (though not the majority of the strike leaders) were women. Given this there is a curious absence of women workers from both novels. In Hard Times there is not a single factory worker who is female (though this is also absent from Carlyle's "Signs of the Times" in which he refers to "Man" throughout- and even evokes Adam- without mentioning women once) whilst in North and South there is the solitary Bessy Higgins, who has actually secured the right not to work through her fatal disability. As Catherine Barnes Stevenson states in her article "What must not be said: North and South and the problem of women's work" there is "an essential evasion, a silence at the heart of Gaskell's text". It would be wrong however to dismiss Bessy Higgins as merely a token woman, the "iconic figure of [a] disabled mill girl". For all her religion Bessy is essentially angry: "I could go mad and kill yo' I could" and yet is still "tossed about wi' wonder" for all the things which she will never experience. Bessy even goes as far as to state that "I've longed for to be a man" and this underlines Gaskell's view of the female worker. In Thornton's words it is "no place for [them]". Bessy's death is the result of the bad conditions at the mill and yet she is never given the opportunity to do anything about them. Equally the reader is never sees Bessy when she is at work, we are only allowed to see her in the private sphere. Gaskell, herself profoundly middle class, could not reconcile the idea of a woman's existence only in the private sphere with the reality of the working class woman. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| If there are no women in the public sphere of Hard Times then there an important representation of a woman trapped in the domestic sphere in the form of Louisa Gradgrind. When her father catches her looking at the circus she reveals a similar desire to Bessy; she "wanted to see what it was like", that is she wants to see beyond the narrow confines of the "home". However Gradgrind prevents her from doing this, instead concentrating on the masculine "fact". This effectively turns Louisa into a "machine" who can state "You may cut the piece out with your penknife... I wouldn't cry". She marries Bounderby out of misguided "duty" to her brother, who eventually betrays her trust. As Edwin P. Whipple wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in March 1877 Louisa "has no experience of life at all. Her instincts, feelings and imagination, as a woman, have been forced back into the interior recesses of her mind". Instead she is ultimately forced to kneel at her father's feet and proclaim "your philosophy and your teaching will not save me. Now, father, you have brought me to this". Repression and confinement has brought Louisa to her knees and almost destroyed her, and even when she recognises this there is not immediate salvation. She may escape her marriage to Bounderby but she is ultimately alone and isolated. Sissy Jupe, the ideal of Hard Times, also exists purely in the domestic sphere, but because she does not let her imagination be suppressed she can become a "happy" mother of "happy children". Sissy does display strength within the domestic sphere, notably in helping Tom escape and in taking control over Harthouse but she remains firmly implanted in the domestic realm. The other female character of note, Rachael, also displays quiet strength in the fact that she takes care of Blackpool's wife, even after his death. There is also pathos in her reaction to the dying Blackpool, revealing the depth of her feelings for him (this is in contrast to Louisa who is unable to experience such feelings) but again she represents emotion and the domestic. In Hard Times all of the women are confined to the private sphere. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Like Sissy and Rachael, Margaret also displays quiet strength in the private sphere. It is her father who takes on the role of passive role of femininity, he is "meek" and "gentle" and is even described as being "almost feminine" looking. It is Margaret who is forced to tell her mother of the planned move to Milton and Margaret who is forced to cope with everything following her mother's death: | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "Margaret went languidly about assisting Dixon in her task of arranging the house. Her eyes were continually blinded by tears, but she had no time to give way to crying. The father and brother depended upon her; while they were giving way to grief she must be working, planning, considering. Even the necessary arrangements for the funeral seemed to devolve upon her". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| (my italics) | |||||||||||||||||||||
| But through this strength Margaret is effectively a servant to the men in her family and she, like Bessy and Louisa, longs to "get high up...see far away...and to take a deep breath of fullness of air?. Through Dixon however Gaskell also reveals another role for women in the domestic sector, as paid servants. In this respect Margaret, for all that she is linked with Dixon by circumstances, considers herself to be her superior: | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "Dixon You forget to whom you are speaking." She stood upright and firm on her feet now, confronting the waiting-maid, and fixing her with her steady, discerning eye. "I am Mr. Hale's daughter. Go You have made a strange mistake, and one that I am sure your own good feeling will make you sorry for when you think about it." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Yet Margaret ultimately realizes that they are joined by forced servitude and acknowledges this, she "hung about Dixon for a minute or so, as if afraid and irresolute; then suddenly kissing her, she went quickly out of the room". In Hard Times the issue of female servitude is also shown through the character of Mrs Sparsit who is essentially a bitter widow. Like Bounderby, however, she lapses into caricature and it is impossible for the reader to take her, and indeed her situation, seriously. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| In North and South Christianity is a unifying factor for the characters and it is in the private sphere that this is most obviously seen. Positively it allows "Margaret the churchwoman, her father the Dissenter [and] Higgins the Infidel" to kneel down together. Negatively however it also manifests itself in the submission of women to men, as expressed in Genesis: "To the woman he said...your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you" (Genesis 3:16). This is reflected by Margaret's intended marriage to Thornton, he states that she will become "mine", despite the fact that she has previously stated that she will "take her life in her own hands". This is reflected in the unsigned review of North and South in the Examiner in 1855 when the reviewer claimed that there was "nothing... more beautiful" than the fact that it is by Thornton's "loving hand [that] her wild heart is at last tamed". Margaret does, however, sum up the problem facing all women in the domestic sphere: | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "She had learnt, in those solemn hours of thought that she herself must one day answer for her own life, and what she had done with it; and she tried to settle | |||||||||||||||||||||
| that most difficult problem for women, how much was to be utterly merged in obedience to authority, and how much might be set apart for freedom in working". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "Obedience" and "authority" are loaded words in a novel with a strike at its heart but they emphasise how the issue of gender is connected with that of the rights of the workers to assert themselves. If the workers are oppressed then so are the women. Indeed the workers are in a better position to free themselves simply because they have their union, conspicuously the women do not. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| In a highly uncomplimentary review of North and South in the Leader in 1855 the reviewer claimed that there are two classes of people who "should give trade and masters-and-men questions a wide berth" and that "those classes are clergymen and women". This view supports the masculine public sphere and the feminine private sphere, not least in its use of the "master-and-men" phrase. It is one of the best features of the novel that Gaskell attempted to challenge, all be it only partly, this ideology, and this is undoubtedly why North and South has been labelled as "protofeminism". In Hard Times Dickens does challenge the supposed "weakness" of women, but he does not allow any of them to transcend the barriers of domesticity. In both novels the public sphere is dominated by men, of varying degrees of believability. In this respect both novels are not so much pictures of hard times but reflections of deeply divided ones. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| BIBLIOGRAPHY: | |||||||||||||||||||||
| North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell, Penguin Classics (1995). | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Hard Times, Charles Dickens, Oxford World Classics (1998). | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "Signs of the Times", Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Carlyle: Selected Writings , Penguin Classics (1971) | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "Industrial", H Sussman in A Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture, ed. Herbet F. Tucker (1999). | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "The Industrial Novels", Raymond Williams in Culture and Society (1958). | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "What must not be said: North and South and the problem of women's work", Catherine Barnes Stevenson. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "The Domestic Sphere in the Victorian Age", Bonnie G. Smith in Changing Lives. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Charles Dickens: The Critical Heritage ed. Phillip Collins. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Elizabeth Gaskell: The Critical Heritage ed. Angus Fasson. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 19th Century Literature Homepage |
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