Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860-1900

Representations of Music, Science and Gender in the Leisured Home

Phyllis Weliver

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351744485
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Literature

This title was first publushed in 2000. Phyllis Weliver investigates representations of female musicians in British novels from 1860 to 1900 with regard to changing gender roles, musical practices and scientific discourses. During this time women were portrayed in complex and nuanced ways as they played and sang in family drawing rooms. Women in the 19th century were judged on their manners, appearance, language and other accomplishments such as sewing or painting, but music stood out as an area where women were encouraged to take centre stage and demonstrate their genteel education, graceful movements and self-expression. However within the novels of the Victorian were begining to move away from portraying the musical accomplishments of middle- and upper-class women as feminine and worthwhile towards depicting musical women as truly dangerous. This book explores the reasons for this reaction and the way labels and images were constructed to show extremes of behaviour, and it looks at whether the fiction was depicting the real trends in music at the time.

Chapter 1
Musical Women in England, 1860-1900

To understand more fully fictional representations of female musicians, it is necessary first to examine how music was situated in late nineteenth-century England in terms of gender, class and national identity. Music occupied a contradictory position at this time. It was considered an emasculating or debasing activity for men of the aspiring middle classes and nobility to practice, yet an acceptable means for the working classes to alleviate the stresses and strains of their lives in a rapidly developing industrial state.¹ An article entitled "Music in England" in Macmillan's Magazine (1872) by choral conductor Henry Leslie articulately addresses these issues. Leslie wrote, "If there exists any rational mental employment that can be given to the masses after their hours of daily work, no one will deny that a humanizing, elevating, and refining influence will be obtained, that must be productive of increased strength to the ties of social and family life, and consequently of powerful good to the national life."² The "mental employment" that Leslie proposes is "the study and cultivation of music" (245). An important point in his statement, which is echoed in Victorian fiction, is the belief that music made by the people in their homes and communities would influence family, social and national life. In this case, Leslie argues for music's civilizing effects, although others suggested its dangers.

Despite England's label as Das Land ohne Musik, a contended term among musicologists of nineteenth-century Britain, there is no doubt that professional and domestic music-making was an important part of daily life, so much so that whether it was beneficial or detrimental for the nation was hotly debated within popular periodicals and novels.³ If England was not in practice Das Land ohne Musik, then the term must be an ideological construct, or a way that most Englishmen chose to see themselves. After all, prominent men like Gladstone, Tennyson, Charles Lamb and the Archbishop of Canterbury all declared with pride during this century that they knew nothing of music.⁴ The British were musical and not musical, depending on the speaker, and therefore Das Land ohne Musik is a gender-packed, class-based, nationalistic idea since many women, foreigners, industrial workers and professional musicians were regularly practicing, teaching and performing music.

The idea of a "non-musical" nation fascinates me, especially given Edward Said's sense in Culture and Imperialism of nineteenth-century British cultural production as associated with the state, with nationalism, or being one aspect of what "differentiates 'us' from 'them', almost always with some degree of xenophobia. Culture in this sense is a source of identity, and a rather combative one at that" (xiii). Why did England proudly assert its superiority through literature, yet not acknowledge its music-making (another form of cultural production) as one of the grounds of difference between itself and other nations, especially given that musical nationalism was a major movement in other European countries at the end of the century? I propose that the answer can be found by taking another of Said's statements, "The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism," (xiii) and suggesting that this sort of imperialism occurred at home, in Britain. In other words, while cultural imperialism generally means to assert the cultural production of one nation over that of another, in Victorian Britain a different type of imperialism was asserted through music. The means of differentiating between "us" and "them" lay in those who produced music. Instead of English music forming a discourse which blocked foreign productions, it was one of the few cultural forms in Britain which was associated with marginal figures.⁵ Indeed, since at least the eighteenth century, music was the only field dominated by foreigners, and was one of the few careers open to women.⁶

If we look at how music was practiced in nineteenth-century Britain, we see one means to read the changing constructs of power and fears regarding marginal figures during the period. If the English, male elite did not practice music, then one way of maintaining a separation from lower classes, foreigners and even women was to encourage them to play and sing while they watched Problems occurred, however, when these marginal figures began to join the spheres of middle- and upper-class English males precisely through this "un-English" art. For instance, many female singers rose from their often denigrated social position when they were given huge salaries and married into wealth and titles, and all female music professionals participated in the contemporaneous women's movement simply by being visibly successful women. Thus the marginalized artisan gained admission to the protected nobility, and middle- and upper-class ladies often found music-making, which was originally promoted as a domestic activity, a viable source of income. Women's music-making therefore acted across the public/private divide, and the activity was largely gender specific since music was one of the few fields in which most middle- and upper-class girls were educated, and boys were not. Therefore, arguments for and against female performers generally centered on whether they were assisting the placement of their families within the aspiring middle or upper classes by practicing appropriate domestic activities, or whether they were asserting themselves independently, thereby stepping outside the existing class ideals which determined women's social role.

This chapter traces music's association with marginalized figures, explores how musical women were affected by an increasingly flexible class structure and greater access to public life, and examines what specifically connoted angelic and demonic musical display. My primary sources are the popular periodicals read by average middle- and upper-class British families, like The Cornhill Magazine and Macmillan's Magazine, because these periodicals contain articles and short stories dealing with music, and because many of the novels that I examine first appeared in periodicals.⁷ I will also make brief references to novels, keeping in mind that while novels and magazines do not always reflect reality, they often do portray contemporary ideals. Examining gender division in real music-making and in fictional portrayals of musicians highlights women's ideological place in Victorian society, and traces how music became a powerful, public tool in the hands of many nineteenth-century women.

Music's Association with Femininity and Foreignness

One indication that music performance was deemed an activity for marginal figures in Victorian England was the large amount of energy expended in advocating music study for gentlemen, thereby suggesting that they did not normally practice music. Arguments abounded that music education would not undermine upper- and middle-class men's masculinity or social status. For instance, Henry Leslie wrote in Macmillan's Magazine, "Are our schoolboys any the worse during the holidays for a knowledge of crotchets and quavers? Are they less manly, or less gentlemanlike?" (251). If gentlemen feared being emasculated by music, then this art seems to have been associated with femininity and, equally, with men who were outside the British upper class.⁸

Although both men and women attended musical events, musical skill was associated with femininity, foreigners or "artist-musicians," which I define in terms expressed by Nancy B. Reich as being:

members of an artist-musician class, a category which includes actors, artists, artisans, dancers, writers, and practitioners of allied professions. They had in common an artistic output and a low economic level. Above all, they depended on their work for a livelihood.⁹

The association between music and "others" is especially relevant given that musical nationalism was a recognized movement in other European countries in the late nineteenth century. As Czechs, Germans, Hungarians, Norwegians, Poles, Russians and Spaniards infused distinctive rhythms, scales and folk elements into their compositions, music fuelled political independence movements within these countries. There were some nationalistic efforts made in British music, mostly in collecting folk songs, but it was left until the turn of the century to become a movement of any note, and even then it lacked the political motivation of its neighbors.¹⁰ Nicholas Temperley persuasively argues that the reason for Britain's representation as Das Land ohne Musik within music histories of the nineteenth century has to do with Britain's perceptions of itself as an imperial power: "So long as Britain was clearly the world leader among nations, we welcomed foreign imports, including music." ("Xenophiiia" 8). He asserts that Victorian Britain never actually lacked its own music, but while it was an imperial power, secure in its supremacy, it simply prioritized foreign music, partly because patronage of foreign arts like Italian opera had demonstrated social elitism in England since the early eighteenth century ("Xenophiiia" 11-16).

Yet many novels reveal unease about foreigners being invited into English homes to give concerts and music lessons. As I will discuss in detail later, some novels like Dracula and Trilby portray this as an invasion which especially threatens the daughters of the house, while others emphasize foreign musicians as simply different and separate from English high culture. For instance, when a composer attends an aristocrat's archery match in George Eliot's Daniel Deronda (1876), he is so far out of his normal sphere as to cause remarks:

Fancy an assemblage where the men had all that ordinary stamp of the well-bred Englishman, watching the entrance of Herr Klesmer - his mane of hair floating backward in massive inconsistency with the chimney-pot hat, which had the look of having been put on for a joke [...].

Many present knew Klesmer, or knew of him; but they had only seen him on candle-light occasions when he appeared simply as a musician, and he had not yet that supreme, world-wide celebrity which makes an artist great to the most ordinary people by the knowledge of his great expensiveness. It was literally a new light for them to see him in - presented unexpectedly on this July afternoon in an exclusive society: some were inclined to laugh, others felt a little disgust at the want of judgement shown by the Arrowpoints in this use of an introductory card.¹¹

The "well-bred" English recognize Klesmer as an artist-musician whose appearance at evening entertainments is considered normal, but otherwise they watch from a distance, ridiculing his Beethoven-like mane and foreign appearance almost as if he were still performing. Were he a "world-wide celebrity," they would view him differently - as an expensive commodity to be included in any venue. However, commodification would again serve as a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• 1 Musical Women in England, 1860-1900
• 2 Harmony and Discord in the Self: Music, Mesmerism and Mental Science
• 3 Female Power in Sensation Fiction
• 4 Dissonance and Fugue in The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• 5 George Eliot: Melody, Evolution and Aesthetics
• 6 Recapitulation and Natural Selection in The Mill on the Floss
• 7 Sexual Selection and Music: Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda
• Conclusion: Trilby
• Appendix A: Source Readings
• Appendix B: Glossary of Musical Terms
• Bibliography
• Index