Calling All Bookworms

I was in the middle of writing a post on feminism, difference and women's leadership, but suddenly it all felt just a tad too deep and controversial for a rainy Friday afternoon! Plus, I've had rehearsals for the dance show I'm organising, and it's my second to last week at my current job and I'm tying up a million loose ends, so I feel I have a legitimate excuse not to be quite so 'academic' today...or tomorrow.

However, I didn't want to stop writing, so instead I have compiled mini reviews of my latest reading endeavours. Somehow I still managed 2000 words!

So without further ado...

1. Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague (2001) by Geraldine Brooks

Applicability Rating: 7.5/10

Relevant Themes: Self-actualisation, gender roles, religion, courage in crisis

Key Thoughts: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks is a gripping storyteller, and even if I didn’t think Year of Wonders was applicable to my project, I would wholeheartedly recommend this novel. Her non-fiction book (which I read for a post-colonial literature), Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women (1995), is equally fascinating, so add that to your reading list.

This particular novel is told through the eyes of Anna, a brave young women living in a plague village in 17^th century England. During the fateful year of 1666, she and her fellow villagers face the spread of this deadly disease and the burgeoning rise of superstition and witch hunts. Brooks doesn’t shy away from recounting every gory detail as she vividly explores Anna’s progression from a cautious, unremarkable wife and mother, to a strong, independent female character. As Anna struggles to survive, and one could even say ‘find herself and her place in the world,’ a year of tragedy becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders."

Anna is not only engaging and likeable, but she also learns how to take action and, ultimately, determines her own fate, standing up for what is ‘right’ and making decisions despite the expectations and beliefs of those around her. She isn’t defined solely in relation to men and isn’t limited by them (whereas Le Guin’s Lavinia is largely complicit in her fate and, subsequently, never emerges as or becomes a person in her own right). In fact, a comparison/contrast between Anna and Lavinia could bring up some very interesting questions about gender roles, female leadership and self-actualisation. For example: As women in positions of marginal ‘power’ (Anna as a healer, Lavinia as a sage), what expectations are placed on Anna & Lavinia? What similarities exist? What differences, if any? What dangers do they face due to their ‘power’? (i.e. Anna fears being accused as a witch, Lavinia is afraid her son will be forcibly taken away from her). 

 

2. Day After Night (2009) by Anita Diamant

Applicability Rating: 6/10

Relevant Themes: Friendship & solidarity, crisis situation, women's experiences

Key Thoughts: I really wish Diamant would write another novel with the same level of depth, scope and imaginative appeal as The Red Tent. I’ve now read two more of her most recent books, Day After Night and The Boston Girl, which, although well written and interesting, neither have the same complexity or narrative insight as Diamant’s dramatic re-telling of Dinah’s story.

As I’ve noted previously, while the focus is on motherhood and the bonds between women as opposed to women's leadership, The Red Tent's ‘universal’ themes and linear narrative lends itself to discussion on the 'power of women' and the importance of female bonds. How do women interact with one another when there are clear power boundaries? How does age affect leadership among women? Dinah's grandmother Rebekah is an example of a strong, perhaps almost masculine leader (see pages 147 - 166) who has to make difficult decisions which are often criticised.

Day After Night, on the other hand, is specifically concerned with Jewish women’s trauma and displacement immediately following WWII. Held in Atlit, a camp for over 270 ‘illegal’ immigrants to Israel in 1945, four young women struggle to start-over in a new country without friends, family, or, seemingly, a future. Diamant is a compassionate storyteller, and manages to thoughtfully portray the psychological struggles the women face as they are gathered in this ‘waiting’ place. While not specifically concerned with leadership, one character, Shayndel, a Polish Zionist who fought the Germans with a band of partisans, does take up the ‘leader’ mantel during an escape from Atlit. I suppose the ‘escape’ could be analysed in terms of it being a leadership moment (clear context, purpose, leader, followers) but it would require reading the entire book to make any sense of it, and there just isn’t enough in terms of 'women’s leadership' for it to be very compelling or particularly relevant. 

3. The Ten-Year Nap (2008) by Meg Wolitzer

Applicability Rating: 5/10

Relevant Themes: Working mothers vs. stay-at-home mothers, female ambition, disillusionment, money, motherhood

Key Thoughts: I was hoping that Wolitzer would be the contemporary version of Marilyn French or Mary McCarthy, especially since her bestselling novels are predominantly concerned with third-wave feminist issues. But unfortunately she lacks the finesse, insight and literary acumen to be considered their successor. (I’m still waiting to find a modern female equivalent who writes like French or even, Byatt).

The Ten-Year Nap follows a group of highly educated mothers who have left the workforce for one reason or another (not entirely convincingly) to raise their children (or child) in modern-day New York City. There is so much potential within this broad topic – the double bind of careers and motherhood – but Wolitzer conducts only a superficial analysis of the 'un-triumphant female.' And while some characters are reasonably engaging, others are simply boring stereotypes. The ‘grand narratives’ of women’s work, motherhood, and stay-at-home-mums could have been deconstructed and resituated (and then celebrated) but, alas, this was not to be. All I was left with was a feeling of superficiality and an unresolved dilemma – what is Wolitzer’s point/message? What is she even trying to say about this topic? I'd hazard a guess that even she doesn't quite know.

Furthermore, her characters are too tidy – or too much of a type, and the narrative veers incongruously between differing perspectives and irrelevant ‘moments’ from the lives of women throughout history. Perhaps as a book of short stories, linked by location or theme, this might have worked, but in novel form it is just so ‘meh,’ for lack of a better word! As Jill observes near the end of the novel: “This is the ending. It’s just not satisfying, that’s all.” How apt. 

4. The Shadow of the Sun (1964) by A. S. Byatt

Applicability Rating: 5.5/10

Key Thoughts: Byatt is a marvellous writer! I can’t believe I’ve never read anything of hers in full before (summer reading list = Possession). It was a bit of a lucky dip selecting one of her books to read for this endeavour, but somehow I ended up with her very first novel, The Shadow of the Sun. Unconventional, beautifully composed, yet incredibly frustrating, are how I would describe this book in which Byatt tells the story of a troubled, (overly) sensitive seventeen-year-old. Anna Severell is the daughter of a renowned novelist, and it is her struggle to discover and develop her own personality and to be/come someone while under the shadow of her father (the metaphorical ‘sun’) which drives most of the action (or more accurately, it is Anna’s continued refusal to act which causes things happen).

With regards to ‘women’s leadership,’ the topic is not explored in any great depth or detail. However, Anna does make a few succinct observations on what it means to be a man or a woman searching for his/her ‘place in the sun’ in a world of binary opposites and socially constructed expectations and ideas. For example, in a confrontation between Anna and her Father, Byatt writes:

Anna studied him with a gentleness that was not his, but Caroline’s. A sceptical female gentleness. She saw that he had been carried away by a picture of her, having inherited his power, advancing further along his path, and she was touched by a faith in her which she had never hoped to see. But she had thought more about it than he had, and was more aware than he was of the difference there was between his power, and whatever she had inherited from him. She feared that she lacked his bodily strength, that she was not his size, that she could not be prodigal of power as he was, but must husband her resources or be easily exhausted, even when she had found out how to use them. This was partly because she was a woman; also because she was a woman she was constantly tempted as he would never have been, to give up, to rest on someone else’s endeavour, to expend her energy ‘usefully’ at the kitchen sink. And this, she thought, made it harder to go on looking for ways to go forward, when one had to fight against the temptation – socially approved – to stay where one was. She thought, he doesn’t really know, with a certain scorn (p. 200).

5. Top Girls (1982) by Caryl Churchill

Applicability Rating: 8/10

Relevant Themes: Women at work, masculinities, agentic leadership, capitalism

Key Thoughts: For reasons which make no sense to me now, I actually hated this play when I first read it. But after watching a screen version and re-reading the text, I've developed a new appreciation for Churchill’s witty, yet ultimately tragic insights into the modern (70s/80s) workplace.

The most striking feature of the play is that all the characters in it are women and no men appear on stage for its entire duration. Act I opens with Marlene, the newly appointed Managing Director of ‘Top Girls’ Employment Agency, formally celebrating her promotion with a group of 'friends.' But these aren’t just any friends, they are a curious mix of women from the past, both fictional and real. Marlene opens the evening cheerfully, saying: “We’ve all come a long way. To our courage and the way we changed our lives and our extraordinary achievements.” (They laugh and drink a toast). (p. 14). The interplay between all these diverse characters and personalities is both clever and entertaining, as each are given a chance (albeit while constantly being interrupted) to share their [his]story with the group.

However, their individual ‘successes’ are not necessarily worth celebrating. In describing the premise for the play, Churchill writes: “I wanted to set off, with all those historical women celebrating Marlene’s achievement, to look as if it were going to be celebration of women achieving things, and then to put other perspectives on it, it show that just to achieve the same things that men had achieved in capitalist society wouldn’t be a good object.” Churchill explores this contradiction as she moves into Act II set in the office of ‘Top Girls’ Employment Agency.

In his commentary on the play, Bill Naismith observes that “the office women have achieved relative success and independence within a system created essentially by men” (p. xxxv). Within this capitalist economy and blatantly hierarchical company, it is only the fittest who survive (seemingly irrespective of their gender). Marlene and her colleagues are largely dismissive of men (‘Men are awful bullshitters’ they contend), and they are certainly clever and capable, but they fail to challenge patriarchal authority and have themselves become agentic 'Queen Bees' (determined and ruthless) in order to succeed in a ‘man’s world.’ This is no more obvious than when Angie, Marlene’s ‘niece,’ shows up at her office and Marlene takes a recognizably 'masculine' (cold, distant) stance as she is unwilling to undermine her image or professionalism by giving Angie what she desperately needs - recognition, care, and a helping hand. However, Churchill is still sensitive to the intense difficulties and criticism women like Marlene face in entering top jobs in the workforce.

So yes, while we can celebrate instances the success and achievement of individual women in the workplace, Churchill asks, at what cost? If one still has to mould oneself to fit a patriarchal/masculine model to succeed, then we still desperately need to reform the system. 

6. Calling Invisible Women (2012) by Jeanne Ray

Applicability Rating: 6.5/10

Relevant Themes: Collective action, middle-aged women, perceptions

Key Thoughts: This is a light-hearted, clever little book, easily read in one sitting. The premise is simple, but enduringly(?) relevant. Women who, after a certain age, are no longer valued for their beauty or intelligence, and have little real ‘power’ left beyond the private sphere, inevitably start to feel invisible. But what happens, Ray asks, when they actually become invisible?

While there are moments of 'leadership', such as when the protagonist, Clover, starts a collective movement to help invisible women become recognised, appreciated and, ultimately, cured of their invisibility, I would shy away from using this book as, at times, it does come across as a bit silly. The metaphor itself is powerful, but I would have preferred to see it used as the premise for a short story. Especially since in some of the chapters it felt like Ray was struggling to make up her word count and many of the characters were frustratingly one-dimensional (such as Clover’s daughter). 

New on the Reading List:

Flow Down Like Silver	Ki Longfellow	2009	Historical Fiction
White Oleander	Janet Fitch	1999	Novel
Little Black Book of Stories	A S Byatt	2005	Short Stories
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves	Karen Joy Fowler	2013	Novel
The Last Runaway	Tracy Chevalier	2013	Historical Fiction
Remarkable Creatures	Tracy Chevalier	2009	Novel
Wrong Place, Wrong Time	Tilia Klebenov	2013	Thriller

I feel that I finally have an adequate representation of novels, plays & short story collections, enough to provide a meaningful commentary on what could possibly work and what definitely won't. Almost large enough to begin ‘grouping’ into genres/themes/patterns. For example:

• Historical Literature – slavery, pre-1850, pre-1980
• Modern/Contemporary Fiction
• Feminist Fiction
• Short Stories
• Prize-winning Literature
• Dystopian + Science Fiction

I imagine that by the end of the Christmas break I'll have read (or skimmed in some cases) 40+ books (narrowed down from 100+ ). I do have some ideas on how I will utilise the myriad options in my thesis, but that's another post entirely! 

Lost & Found In Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities

It’s 4pm on a Friday afternoon. I sit alone at the dining room table. There’s a cheap, half-finished bottle of Sauvignon Blanc standing incongruously to the right of my open laptop. I stare at the laptop willing words to appear on the stark white screen. In one hand I have a book, its pages covered in highlighting with notes in the margins, in the other, an almost empty glass of wine. My hope is that I will somehow bring order to the indiscernible mass of ideas swirling in my head. Or maybe that’s just the alcohol. The names repeat endlessly – Esmeralda, Despina, Hypatia, Chloe, Clarice – 55 names, 55 places, or just one place?

The cause of my consternation is the book I hold in my left hand: Invisible Cities. A short, unusual travel novel written in 1972 by Italian author and Communist devotee, Italo Calvino (1923 – 1985).  I’ve read and reviewed literature composed of abstract philosophical ideas and complex language before – Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, Voltaire’s Candide, the complete works of William Shakespeare, to name only a few. However, none have left me with such an overwhelming sense that I have only just scratched the surface to expose the hidden gems within the text. The book is captivating, not for its plot or storyline, which are glaringly absent, but simply for its ability to touch a deeper part of the soul and arouse that magical sense of curiosity which is so often lacking in our fast-paced and information-saturated society. I realise I am a traveller, treading a unique path through the pages of Invisible Cities.  

Although Calvino’s novel is considered to be from the travel genre, my initial interest in Invisible Cities was sparked by the historical aura surrounding Marco Polo and Kublai Khan as it appealed to the history lover in me. On the surface, the book is a series of fictional interactions occurring between a 13^th century Tartar Emperor called Kublai Khan and a young Venetian explorer, Marco Polo. Khan senses that his Empire is coming to an end and is understandably troubled by it. Only through Polo’s accounts of his travels to remote provinces is Khan “able to discern, through the walls and towers destined to crumble, the tracery of a pattern so subtle it could escape the termites’ gnawing” (p. 5). The pattern the Emperor is referring to is Polo’s expeditions to 55 cities across the Empire. Narrated in lyrical prose, and framed by philosophical dialogue between Khan and Polo, descriptions of the 55 cities are divided between 11 thematic categories, including ‘Cities & Memory,’ ‘Hidden Cities,’ and ‘Cities & the Sky.’ Polo’s cities are enticing and fascinating places, where things are never quite as they seem. In the crystalline blue lagoons of the city of Hypatia, “crabs were biting the eyes of the suicides, stones tied around their necks” (p. 40).

At first it is difficult to engage with Invisible Cities as every ‘conventional’ element you would expect from a travel novel is missing. There is no clear storyline, little character development, and no signposted route or final destination to guide the reader to a tidy conclusion. Calvino also appears to be allergic to small, simple words and phrases, opting instead for rich imagery and daring use of metaphors, for example: “A voluptuous vibration stirs Chloe, the most chaste of cities,” in an unending “carousel of fantasies” and “ephemeral dreams” (p. 44). A combination of complex vocabulary, double meanings and a disorientating style of lyrical prose makes for a slow, time-consuming read. Take Marco Polo’s account of what he calls the “true essence” of Anastasia: “Such is the power, sometimes called malignant, sometimes benign, that Anastasia, the treacherous city, possesses…your labour which gives form to desire takes from desire its form, and you believe you are enjoying Anastasia wholly when you are only it slave” (p. 10). Despite the novels slim size, I found myself having to pause every two or three paragraphs to process what I had just read.

The beauty of discovery lies in persistence. At some indiscernible point, you realise that Calvino is not merely describing cities, at least not in the way we normally think of cities as physical constructs of concrete and steel. Calvino’s cities are creations formed from ideas, thoughts, and questions. Kublai Khan plays the role of a model reader within the text, guiding and shaping our own range of responses as readers of Invisible Cities. Like Khan, a reader must abandon any preconceived notions of what a travel book should be, and instead “take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours. Or the question it asks of you.” (p. 38). Only by freeing yourself “from the images which in the past had announced to me the things I sought” can you succeed in “understanding the language of Hypatia” (p. 41), and ultimately, Invisible Cities.

To me, Invisible Cities does not contain a single meaning, instead it is composed of three intertwined threads of questions and ideas. Firstly, Invisible Cities is a critique of human nature. Many of Polo’s cities reflect some aspect of human behaviour, and serve as metaphors for vanity, greed, lust, desire, etc… In Beersheba, the citizens are so “intent of piling up carats of perfection” that it is “only when [they] shit, [that they are] not miserly, calculating, greedy” (p. 101).The people within cities are so consumed by their own internal weaknesses that they are blinded to happiness. In Raissa, the “city of sadness,” beneath the surface of bad dreams characterising daily life there is “a happy city unaware of its own existence” (p.134). The question Calvino seems to be asking the reader to grapple with is a big one: How then should we live?

As well as being a study of humanity, Invisible Cities is also a set of cautionary tales which warn of what will happen if we, as humans, do not change how we act within our cities. The lines which separate past, present, and future become blurred as Khan contemplates an empire “covered with cities that weigh upon the earth and upon mankind, crammed with wealth and traffic…swollen, tense, ponderous” (p. 65).  There are clear references to capitalism, suburban development, and consumerism throughout the text. The city of Trude provides an example of the negative effects globalisation can have on culture. Globalisation has the potential to create a world without differences “covered by a sole Trude which does not begin and does not end. Only the name of the airport changes” (p. 116). As Polo reminds the Emperor: “If you want to know how much darkness is around you, you must sharpen your eyes, peering at the faint lights in the distance” (p. 51). The warnings found in Invisible Cities are both timeless and timely. Like the citizens of the spider-web city of Octavia, we must recognise that “the net will only last so long” (p. 67). The question is: How long?

Invisible Cities is however, at its core, still a travel book. Although Polo seemingly begins by describing different cities he has visited, it soon becomes clear that he is actually talking about one place: Venice. “Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice…To distinguish the other cities’ qualities, I must speak first of a city that remains implicit” (p. 78). For Polo, Esmeralda, Despina, Hypatia, Chloe, and Clarice are all aspects of a single city. The true value in Invisible Cities lies not so much in its vivid imagery or fascinating metaphors, but in the fact that the 55 cities also merge to become a single city for each individual reader. For me, that city is Auckland. My reading of Invisible Cities became implicitly based on impressions of my home city. The sprawling urban mess of Auckland is like Penthesilea which “spreads for miles around, a soupy city diluted in the plain; pale buildings back to back…rusty suburb workshops and warehouses,” where “you advance for hours and it is not clear to you whether you are already in the city’s midst or still outside it” (p. 141). And so the journey is not Marco Polo’s alone, I was also a traveller, treading a unique path through the pages of Invisible Cities.  

For the first half of Invisible Cities I was lost and bewildered, but Calvino took me on a truly remarkable and interesting journey, awakening within me an insatiable sense of curiosity about my own city. The novel is an epistemological puzzle and its beauty lies in the fact that the puzzle is constructed slightly differently every time you pick up the book. Although Calvino’s style is at first disorientating, if you are looking for something pleasingly different or incredibly thought-provoking, I strongly recommend this little gem. Calvino freely invites the collaboration of the reader – it is up to you to shape your own experience of the text, filling in the blanks, imagining and substituting your own city in the margins just as Kublai Khan is so eager to do. 

It is best, I believe, to read Invisible Cities like a traveller, slowly and luxuriously with a glass of wine in one hand, and as if you have all the time in the world. 

Copyright Lydia Martin, 2014

Margaret Hale: Angel with a Twist

 Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel, North and South, focuses on a heroine directly entangled with the predominantly masculine world of industrial and class politics (Bodenheimer 54). While Gaskell’s central character, the “very proud” Margaret Hale (10), at first only appears to be a commentator on the conflict between labour and capital, masters and men and the industrialised North and rural South, she has found a place in literary debate as a supposed challenger of the 19^th century ‘angel in the house’ stereotype. Uprooted from her home and thrust into the smoke and fog of Milton-Northern, Margaret is forced to negotiate the public sphere of an industrialised city, unconsciously testing the boundaries of ‘obedience to authority’ (416). Following a brief analysis of Margaret’s complicated characterisation as neither an obvious endorser nor challenger of Victorian notions concerning femininity and the private sphere, I consider three scenes from the novel which focus on Margaret’s most emotional and intense experiences in the areas of socialising, politics and love. These include Margaret’s highly-charged argument with Mr Thornton over masters and men, her dramatic entry into the public political sphere during the strike, and the loss of her ‘moral purity’ when she lies out of love to protect Frederick. Despite the fact that in two of these scenes Margaret openly challenges accepted notions on femininity and the private sphere, the significance of her actions are ultimately nullified as her responses endorse Victorian domestic ideology. Rather than emerging as a champion for female emancipation, Margaret only briefly transgresses into public life before retreating into the bounds of acceptable feminine behaviour. While Gaskell is promoting a slightly more enlightened view of women as indirect moral influences on the public sphere, Margaret fails to decisively challenge the place of female ‘angels’ in Victorian society.

            Even though Margaret diverges from the conventional dimensions of femininity she is also committed to the creation and maintenance of the private sphere, complicating any simple categorisation of the heroine as either a challenger or endorser of Victorian domestic ideology. Spirited, strong minded and opinionated, Margaret is far from the typical representation of a perfect Victorian lady, such as her female counterpart, Edith Lennox (née Shaw). Edith is portrayed as the picture of womanliness in her “white muslin and blue ribbons” (5), a traditional ‘angel in the house,’ exhibiting a “natural submission to authority and an innate maternal instinct” (Vicinus x). Whereas Margaret is described as a “tall, finely made figure” (9) whose mouth is “no rosebud, [formed] to let out a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and ‘an’t please you, sir” (17). Although Margaret is not shy of intruding into the masculine realm of politics and debate when she arrives in Milton-Northern, she is also committed to creating domestic comfort for her parents in the private sphere of the home, which she describes as a sort of ‘paradise’ to Henry Lennox (12). Both Mr and Mrs Hale rely completely on Margaret when they move from Helstone and arrive in Milton-Northern, leaving the “management of [household] affairs to her” (49). Furthermore, after her mother’s death, Frederick and Mr Hale are utterly dependent on Margaret’s “working, planning, [and] considering” (252) within the private sphere to make “everything look as cheerful as possible” (252) in the midst of grief. Gaskell praises Margaret’s independence but doesn’t alienate her from the private sphere, thwarting any simple pre-analytical categorisation of Margaret as either a challenger or endorser of Victorian notions on femininity and woman’s roles.

While at first it seems Margaret is overstepping the bounds of acceptable behaviour by participating in a heated debate with Mr Thornton, Gaskell is in fact presenting an enlightened view of a woman’s capability for social engagement which doesn’t challenge conventional expectations. This scene is the first time Margaret purposefully transgresses into the realm of men and political debate, separating herself from the more conventional female characters with their “querulous domestic refrains” (Bodenheimer 63), such as Edith, Aunt Shaw and Mrs Hale. Confronted with Mr Thornton’s despotic view on masters and men, Margaret argues for what she calls ‘mutual duty and dependence’ (122) between the mill owners and their workers. Her emotions running the gamut from laughter (123) to coldness (124) during the course of the conversation, Margaret gets the final word when she contradicts Mr Thornton’s claims, “I am trying to reconcile your admiration of despotism with your respect for other men’s independence of character” (124). Even though Mr Thornton is “vexed” by Margaret’s responses, her active participation in the debate serves to make him “cooler and more thoughtful” (119). A woman’s opinions expressed within the confines of the home were to be admired, as she may be “someone to whom a man can turn when he seeks to be guided by ‘abstract principles of right and wrong’” (Harman 352). Domestic apologists, such as John Ruskin, encouraged the idea of women as an “independent moral resource[s]” to be consulted (Harman 352). Margaret endorses Ruskin’s portrayal of femininity as her emotional and highly charged responses to Mr Thornton are confined within the protection of the private sphere. By having Margaret participate in a heated debate with Mr Thornton on political topics, Gaskell is presenting a more enlightened attitude towards a woman’s capacity for social engagement with men which doesn’t challenge conventional Victorian notions.

Margaret’s explicit public actions during the strike scene dramatically violate the Victorian concept of ‘separate spheres.’  Refusing to stay secure inside the Thornton’s home with the womenfolk, Margaret rushes into the public domain to defend Mr Thornton from the “demonic desire” of the “terrible wild beast” – the mob (176). In a moment of passionate conviction Margaret persuades Mr Thornton to go down to the strikers and “face them like a man” (177). It is only after he leaves that she comprehends the grave danger she has placed him in, and “with a cry…she rushed out of the room, downstairs, - she had lifted the great iron bar of the door with an imperious force…and was there, in that angry sea of men, her eyes smiting them with flaming arrows of reproach” (178). Mr Thornton, realising Margaret has over-stepped conventional boundaries tells her to leave as “this is no place for you,” but claiming that “it is!” Margaret “threw her arms around him; she made her body into a shield from the fierce people beyond” (179). In this dramatic reversal of conventional gender relations, Barbara Leah Harman suggests that Gaskell is making an unspoken claim through Margaret’s public self-display that women belong in the public realm (368). John Pikoulous describes this scene as “one of the most thrilling moments in Victorian literature, representing as it does the first time that a woman has convincingly established herself on the public stage in her own right” (cited in Harman 366). Isolated in the moment of unfolding action, Margaret’s sudden appearance and subsequent intervention in the strike scene appear to challenge long-held notions on female exclusion from the public sphere, implicitly asserting that women belong there too.

Instead of making a gesture of ‘social idealism’ as suggested by Pikoulous, the potential significance of Margaret’s foray into the public sphere is ambiguous and superseded by the heroine’s attempt to reinstate herself within the conventional framework of Victorian constraints. As Rosemarie Bodenheimer points out, while Margaret might “deliberately overrun the separation between men’s and women’s spheres” her response is moulded by “conventional domestic ideology” (62). Contemplating her actions and analysing her feelings after the strike, Margaret agonises to herself, “I, who hate scenes – I, who have despised people for showing emotion – who have thought them wanting in self-control – I went down and must needs throw myself into the melee, like a romantic fool! (190). Knowing full well that female participation in public life would compromise a woman’s virtue (Harman 357), Margaret seeks to restore her femininity by legitimising her actions as “woman’s work” (191). This “woman’s work” is guided by an innate female duty to protect rather than a desire to make a political or, as some characters misinterpret, a sexual statement. Margaret makes this clear when she rebuts Mr Thornton’s proposal, “Why, there was not a man – not a poor desperate man in all that crowd…for whom I should not have done what little I could more heartily” (195). The fact that the heroine feels a “deep sense of shame that she should be the object of universal regard” (191) illustrates Margaret’s mortification that she has left the protection of the private sphere and subjected herself to unwomanly publicity. Nonetheless, there is a danger in assuming Gaskell is advocating any one set interpretation of Margaret’s endorsement of Victorian notions concerning a woman’s place. Pearl L. Brown suggests that Gaskell may be promoting the value of extending womanly moral influence into the public world (355). However, even if this is the case, rather than emerging as a supporter for female liberation, Margaret only briefly transgresses into public life before retreating into the confines of acceptable behaviour.

Margaret is further exposed to the public realm of men when she passionately denies being at the train station and lies to a police officer in order to save Frederick from prosecution, an act which challenges femininity by compromising Margaret’s moral purity and reputation. Although said out of love and a desire to protect, Bodenheimer sees Margaret’s lie as an act “visibly and directly in the male world,” implicating Gaskell’s heroine “with the moral ambiguity of action in the public realm” (62). Conventionally a woman, “by her offer and place… is protected from all danger and temptation,” but when Margaret enters the “open world” she “must encounter all peril and trial” (Vicinus 126) and act like a man. The police officer is stunned by Margaret’s seemingly hardened and imperious nature, : “She never blenched or trembled. She fixed him with her eye… showed no emotion, no fluttering fear, no anxiety” (273). However, Gaskell does not glorify this challenge against male authority and Victorian ideology, instead presenting the action as an instinctive, though flawed move on Margaret’s part to protect her brother; “Oh, Frederick! Frederick! What have I not sacrificed for you!” (283). Like the strike scene, once Margaret has contemplated her actions and analysed her feelings, her response is directly influenced by domestic ideology. Unable to act in the public sphere without “guiltily repenting of her own violation of the [moral] law” (Harman 370), Margaret regrets how she has “stained her [feminine] whiteness by falsehood” (280). She would not disagree with Mr Thornton when he asks himself, “How could one so pure have stooped from her decorous and noble manner of bearing!” (279). Fixated on her sin, Margaret holds an “innate conviction that it was wrong” (399) to lie even though it had the potential to save Frederick. In a society which linked femininity with moral purity in the form of truthfulness and innocence (Vicinus ix), Margaret’s transgression into the public sphere through lies and deceit is denounced by both Gaskell and the heroine.

The contradictory nature of not only Margaret’s characterisation but also her most intense emotional experiences in Milton-Northern complicates any straightforward categorisation of the heroine’s actions as either direct challenges against or clear endorsements for Victorian gender ideals. While Gaskell depicts Margaret as an independent young woman, dissimilar from the stereotypically feminine Edith, she still promotes her female protagonist’s role in the private sphere as a guiding force for the Hale family. Although the ‘masters and men’ dialogue extends the nature of ‘proper’ female socialisation in debating political issues, Margaret doesn’t challenge Victorian standards as the conversation takes place within the confines of the private sphere. Instead what Gaskell seems to be endorsing is the value of a woman’s moral influence on male rationality. Nonetheless, Margaret’s explicit public actions, during the strike scene and lying scene, directly challenge the Victorian concept of ‘separate spheres.’ However, what becomes clear is that once Margaret has ‘analysed her feelings,’ particularly after the strike, she re-conceptualises her actions in an attempt to place them within the boundaries of acceptable “woman’s work” (191). Critics often see Gaskell’s portrayal of Margaret as a sign of a conservative spirit (Harman 374). It is true that Margaret is no champion for female emancipation; yet, as demonstrated by this essay, while Victorian society was still not ready for the ‘Margaret Hales’ of Great Britain to take the public stage, Gaskell’s heroine passionately demonstrates the ability of intelligent middle-class women to exert moral influence on the industrial world of the North within the confines of femininity and the private sphere.

Copyright Lydia A. Martin (2014)

Works Cited (MLA)

Bodenheimer, Rosemarie. The Politics of Story in Victorian Social Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. Print. [Excerpt 53-68]

Brown, Pearl L. “From Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton to her North and South: Progress or Decline for Women?” Victorian Literature and Culture (2000): 345-58. Print.

Gaskell, Elizabeth. North and South. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

Harman, Barbara Leah. “In Promiscuous Company: Female Public Appearance in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South.” Victorian Studies 31.3 (1988): 351-74. Humanities International Complete. Web.

Vicinus, Martha. Suffer and be Still. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1972. Print.