The New Woman Gothic

Reconfigurations of Distress

Patricia Murphy

• Publisher: University of Missouri
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780826223548, 9780826220677
• eBook ISBN: 9780826273543
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The controversial and compelling figure of the New Woman in late Victorian fiction has garnered extensive scholarly attention, but rarely has she been investigated through the fascinating lens of the Gothic. Yet the presence of sinister Gothic elements is so widespread in the generally realisitic British novels that the term "New Woman Gothic" readily comes to mind. Drawing from and reworking Gothic conventions of Romantic and later literature, the New Woman version is marshaled during this tumultuous cultural moment of gender anxieties either to defend or revile the complex individual who sought improvements in educational, marital, and professional realms. 

Part I

The Blurred Boundary

CHAPTER ONE

Public Faces Public Spaces

The blurring of the boundary between the prostitute and the New Woman stems in large part from the very fluidity of the definition of activities constituting prostitution.¹ In his seminal and highly influential study Prostitution, written in 1857 (second edition 1870), the physician William Acton attested to the elasticity of the definition of the “prostitute” through his detailed discussion of varieties within the category. In fact, “the shades of London prostitution . . . are as numberless as those of society at large,” Acton commented, with the women “maintain[ing] their notions of caste and quality with all the pertinacity of their betters.”² Victorian prostitution can be understood as a kind of continuum, ranging from the least offensive perpetrators to the most defiled, an approach reiterated in Gissing’s The Unclassed when one prostitute ponders that in her occupation “there are, as in all professions, grades and differences.”³ As Acton explained, “many forcible divines and moralists have maintained that all illicit intercourse is prostitution”; hence, “this word is justly applicable as those of ‘fornication’ and ‘whoredom’ to the female who, whether for hire or not, voluntarily surrenders her virtue.” Thus, a woman’s “first offence is as much an act of prostitution as its repetition” and would include the respectable female who has been seduced and quickly abandoned. Discussing “Prostitution in London,” in Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor, Bracebridge Hemyng averred that “literally every woman who yields to her passions and loses her virtue is a prostitute.”⁴

At the other extreme of the continuum is the “common prostitute,” defined by one physician giving evidence during debate over the Contagious Diseases Act as “women who habitually gain their livelihoods, partly or wholly, by the proceeds of prostitution.”⁵ The term conjures up the stereotypical notion of the prostitute as the flashily dressed, ostentatiously painted, and highly aggressive streetwalker, but a range of elaborate gradations, or degradations, can be detected, such as the modestly dressed version who plies the streets, the discreet offender who lives quietly in lodgings, and the kept woman. In any case, Hemyng’s judgment seems applicable, for “a woman who has fallen like a star from heaven, may flash like a meteor in a lower sphere, but only with a transitory splendor.”⁶

Of initial interest in my discussion is the prototypical flamboyant prostitute, whom Acton considered “the loudest of the loud, in the utmost blaze of finery.” Hemyng cites the prostitute’s “craving for meretricious tawdry,” as well as her “ruinous and poisonous French compounds and destructive cosmetics.” Of course, opined Italian anthropologist Cesare Lombroso, makeup functions as “a virtual requirement of the prostitute’s sad trade.” These “rouged and whitewashed creatures, with painted lips and eyebrows[,] . . . false hair,” and other recognizable accoutrements of their class, seen “flaunting along the streets and boldly accosting the passers-by,” seem wholly incongruent with the New Woman. Her descriptions both in nonfiction and fiction characteristically suggest a conservatively garbed female who eschews facial painting and other artificial enticements. Indeed, even New Women associated with overt sexuality—Allen’s unconventional Woman Who Did and Olive Schreiner’s outspoken Lyndall, for example—dress in understated tones. Yet Phoebe Barrington in Linton’s The New Woman: In Haste and at Leisure (1895) is a striking exception to the pattern and provides a compelling example of the blurred boundary between tawdry harlot and advanced female. The inescapable inference to a Victorian reader is that the New Woman is innately a prostitute figure, degraded unremittingly and made irretrievable by her very nature in this vitriolic novel.⁷

Linton traces the infamous career of Phoebe Westmacott, a selfish and immature Londoner who begins on her path to perdition at age sixteen when she runs away with her youthful amour, Sherrard Barrington. The pair quickly marry, yet Sherrard’s parents intervene and separate the lovers by sending their son abroad for several years and returning a pregnant Phoebe to her mother. Phoebe becomes increasingly involved with a New Woman group, pawns off her child to Mrs. Westmacott, and rebuffs Sherrard’s desire to be reunited upon his return as she becomes involved in the affairs of the feminist Excelsior Club. Although the younger Barringtons do eventually cohabit, Phoebe does so unwillingly due to financial problems and proceeds to defy and embarrass her husband through her feminist work, shameless flirtation, and independent behavior. With the major part of the narrative devoted to Phoebe’s immersion in New Woman interests, this very anti–New Woman novel strives to depict Phoebe as a prostitute figure seemingly at every opportunity, even though she never performs the sexual act with anyone but Sherrard.

Phoebe’s inherent connection with prostitution emerges in the novel’s opening chapter, not only through Sherrod’s “fervid kisses and the new sensations they awoke [that] were offences to the educated conscience” but also through her irrepressible desire literally to walk the streets, as she “begged for the liberty of going about the streets alone.” Described as strong-willed, obstinate, and audacious, Phoebe lacks dignity and “that subtle and indefinite something which makes a peasant woman a lady, and without which a queen is not a gentlewoman.” A “frankly sensual” individual with an “instinctive animality,” Phoebe is so debased that an actual prostitute, “painted and dyed from brow to chin—[with] hair, lips, cheeks, eyes, all craftily manipulated” exclaims “with disdain” upon seeing Phoebe, “What a forward little hussy!” To the elder Mrs. Barrington, her daughter-in-law’s “very beauty” is “vulgar, loud, coarse, and indelicate” and provides somatic evidence of an innate corruption. Phoebe displays a “painted face and dyed hair,” recalling Linton’s famously depraved “Girl of the Period” in an 1868 Saturday Review essay, whose similar trappings were linked to those of a prostitute. Phoebe’s demeanor “counted with a woman, respectable and conventional, as sins in themselves,” and the mother-in-law cannot “believe in essential virtue when the appearance was so far wrong.” Demonstrating an “insensitiveness to shame,” Phoebe is “gifted with a physique that stirred men’s blood and brought them under her influence,” and like the successful prostitute she evinces a “generalized desire for the desire of all men alike, without crystallizing into a perpetuity in love for one.” Indeed, at one point, Phoebe’s “generalized desire” is manifested in her inability to determine which of two men she prefers, as she gazes “frankly” into the eyes of one of them. Though “in her coarse, bold way” Phoebe is considered attractive by certain males, “no nice woman” would admire her. With her “handsome” but “somewhat coarse and over-fleshy” mouth mirroring the discourse that proceeds through it, Phoebe talks “vulgarly” in a manner “unladylike and unwomanly” that would be suitable for such an “odious hussy.”⁸

In one of a trio of particularly telling incidents, Phoebe receives a visit from her mother-in-law that calls to mind the late-morning rise of a prostitute. As she consumes her breakfast at eleven o’clock, the unbathed Phoebe provides a slatternly picture, with unkempt hair, no stays, and a soiled dressing-gown. “Altogether debraillée,” Phoebe’s appearance “savored of sin.” Like the prostitute preparing for her conquests, Phoebe requires “a full hour and a half to get myself up” and apply her makeup. The episode recalls Acton’s explanation of conduct at a prostitute lodging-house, which demonstrates a “remarkable uniformity in the habits, manners, dress, and demeanour” of the inhabitants. “They are usually during the day,” Acton writes, “unless called upon by their followers, or employed in dressing, to be found, dishevelled, dirty, slipshod and dressing-gowned . . . where the mistress keeps her table d’hôte.”⁹ In the second incident, occurring after she has agreed to cohabit with her husband, the provocatively attired Phoebe complains about the presence of “stray men” in her home long after midnight, demanding of Sherrard, “What do you take me for?” In response, “his eyes wandered over her figure” as “his only answer.” In the third incident, indirect discourse conveys Sherrard’s judgment on his wife:

To sit opposite to her at table—dyed, painted, powdered . . . ; to see her unclothed to the last permissible line—that expanse of gleaming flesh offered to the contemplation of his men-servants and his male guests, while shocking all the women who could be induced to come; . . . to remember that the blood of this moral virago, this Wild Woman, ran in the veins of his daughter and that he had himself given such a mother to his child; to know that as his wife she covered his name with obloquy and gathered the world’s scorn round him as well as round herself—all this was the indigestion which followed on that wilful [sic] plucking of unripe fruit.¹⁰

In these scenes as in so many others, Phoebe is “as little respectable as any Lottie or Tottie picked up in the Haymarket,” a loaded phrase with its inclusion of common names for prostitutes along with a notorious site of their activities. Phoebe not only represents a “virago,” the derogatory term frequently applied to New Women, but also is linked synonymously as “this Wild Woman,” a designation Linton adopted in an 1891 screed that led novelist Mona Caird to reply insistently to its charges.¹¹

Linton consistently links Phoebe’s depravity to her involvement in the Excelsior Club, implying that Phoebe’s inherent baseness becomes even more pronounced through her status as New Woman.¹² Even though Phoebe’s connection with and leadership of the club—a “house of moral topsy-turvydom”—is eventually ruptured, the effects of the association seem irreversible:

She had come as a girl, disconnected and ambitious truly, but still possessed of some lingering modesties, some faint survivals of principle, which might have been educated to good. She left it as a woman from whom has fallen the last remnant of restraining fear—the last consciousness or dread of shame. . . . Modesty was as far removed from her as dread of ghosts. . . . She had retained the thing called, broadly, virtue, but all that goes to make up that quality—she had lost; and between her and the confessed outsiders the line of demarcation was simply one of fact, not of essence. This was what the leadership of the Excelsiorites had done for Phoebe Barrington.¹³

The agenda of the Excelsior Club reflects Victorian perceptions of the New Woman’s objectives, with a slight twist that places special emphasis on an alluring physical appearance. Members believe, for example, that marriage constitutes a degradation; they advocate the opportunity to conduct their lives as men would and pride themselves as existing on a higher moral plane than do men. All members, of course, must be “‘sound’ on the woman question.” With a mostly youthful constituency, the Excelsior Club embodies a kind of second-generation New Woman’s group, “utterly unlike the earlier type of the strong-minded female” who rejected “beauty, softness, and every kind of feminine grace, creating opposition by her very appearance.” As opposed to “that Shrieking Sisterhood,” the Excelsiorites “were wild women who had seen the errors committed by their predecessors” and deployed their beauty as weaponry. Though most of the members were married, albeit with “uncongenial husbands,” the women were “protesting wives and reluctant mothers, holding marriage and domestic life in horror” and seeking “to free themselves from their trammels.” Few members had more than one child, “as maternity was their especial aversion.” Although the Excelsiorites “prided themselves on being especially ‘womanly women’—so far as appearance went,” their behavior frequently could be regarded the “most revolutionary in ethics and unfeminine in action.” Despite “this purely feminine outside,” however, the Excelsiorites “cultivated masculine tastes and habits,” such as drinking, smoking, and participating in athletic activities, “which might have made their great-grandmothers turn in their graves.”¹⁴

Obscured Identities

Although Linton’s novel vigorously endeavors not simply to occlude but to erase the boundary between prostitute and New Woman with the provocatively dressed and indelicately spoken Phoebe Barrington, other fin-de-siècle writings point to a more understated connection between the two female characterizations. As Acton noted, “Prostitution diffuses itself through the social fabric,” evidenced in part by the fact that the more conservatively dressed and reserved prostitutes blended in seamlessly with respectable females in London’s public spaces. Thus, the kinds of corporeal clues that the blatant prostitute provided could not be depended upon to make reliable judgments distinguishing the unsavory woman from the New Woman.¹⁵

Acton spoke, for example, of groups of prostitutes for whom “pretty and quiet dressing was almost universal, and painted cheeks a rarity.” Although he recalled observing at one gathering of prostitutes “an etiolated eye and blanched chlorotic complexion, due to want of sun and air,” Acton explained that such qualities were “not more noticeable” among these women “than in Mayfair” with its aristocratic backgrounds and expensive tastes. At another event, Acton encountered an array of attractive prostitutes, “quietly, though expensively dressed.” Boasting “delicate complexions, unaccompanied by the pallor of ill health,” though the effect “is doubtless due in many cases to the artistic manner of the make-up by powder and cosmetics, on . . . which extreme care is bestowed,” the prostitutes were remarkable for their restrained conduct, with “all the outward proprieties of demeanour and gesture . . . strictly observed.” Elsewhere, Acton watched “passing crowds of well-dressed women,” a mixture of prostitutes and respectable females, which he termed a “curious amalgamation—this elbowing of vice and virtue.” Discounting as a typical type “the dirty, intoxicated slattern, in tawdry finery and an inch thick in paint” who had “long [been] a conventional symbol of prostitution,” Acton warned instead of “the Gorgon of the present day . . . [who] is generally pretty and elegant,” more frequently “painted by Nature than by art.” The “milder” prostitute, Acton stated, “feels disgust at brazen impudence, and all the pomps and vanities”; instead, she is “sober, genteelly dressed, well ordered, often elegant.” Many kept women, “more or less of education and refinement,” eschew “vulgarity, evil company, and the attentions of strange men.”¹⁶

An unsigned essay, “Prostitution in Relation to the National Health” (1869) agreed with such findings. “Clandestine” prostitutes, the Westminster Review piece remarked, who remain indoors “at unseemly hours . . . are reserved in manners, quiet and unobtrusive,” and would escape the scrutiny of “the most vigilant of constables.” Like Acton, the Westminster Review assumed the number of clandestine prostitutes far outweighed their more flagrant counterparts. The periodical reported that “this superior and already large class is increasing.”¹⁷

The assimilation of the prostitute into the larger Victorian society is replicated in late-century novels, as in Gissing’s revised version of The Unclassed. After Osmond Waymark is accosted by a stereotypical prostitute with “the sham gaiety of the voice,” he is approached by a markedly different prostitute, “well-dressed” with a veil that cannot quite conceal her attractive face and whose “voice was remarkably full, clear, and sweet.” Intrigued by still another prostitute, though a reluctant one, Waymark observes of Ida Starr a “sweet face, the eyes and lips with their contained mirth, the light, perfect form, the graceful carriage.” Ida is “so blessed with rare beauty and endless charms” that she might “be rescued by marriage.” Though Waymark cannot determine if Ida colors her face, “the perfect clearness of her complexion, the lustre of her eyes, appeared to indicate complete health” rather than the revelatory facial signs of a debauched life. In Annie Holdsworth’s Joanna Traill, Spinster (1894), former prostitute Christine Dow, a “daring, ambitious little schemer,” metamorphoses into “a sweet and modest girl, full of right impulses and deeds.” Conversely, the upright and unfashionable philanthropist Joanna Traill is mistaken for a prostitute when she visits the office of another philanthropist dedicated to helping fallen women. One clerk “threw a comprehensive smile at his fellow [clerk]” while “patronisingly” denying her access. The clerk is soon joined by a young woman “who stared insolently at Joanna” and comments to the clerk “in an audible aside” the demeaning phrase, “Another of them.”¹⁸

With prostitutes like the seemingly demure Ida Starr and the reformed Christine Dow mingling throughout London with other women, an observer would find it baffling to distinguish between the fallen and the unfallen. Adding to the difficulty is the New Woman’s desire for independence of movement and the opportunity to move freely throughout London streets and locales, for vocational pursuits and reputable amusements. Acton’s reference to the “elbowing of vice and virtue” is especially pertinent in that many London areas were shared spaces, populated by the New Woman as well as the prostitute.¹⁹ The risk of mistaken identity was not a rare misstep, as advice to rescue workers demonstrates. In an 1885 text, a clergyman offered this recommendation: “Best commence with an apology. ‘I beg your pardon for speaking to you, but do you happen to know any young woman who is ill or in trouble whom I could be a friend to?’ . . . This is far better than walking straight up to one of these women and asking her ‘If she does not wish to quit her present sinful life?’ and being told, in reply, to mind your own business.”²⁰

For many New Women, the act of walking the streets conveyed freedom rather than debauchery, of course, and they traveled the avenues in search of experience, adventure, and discovery. Cosima Chudleigh, the eponomyous character in George Paston’s A Writer of Books (1898), frequents London’s byways in her first visit to ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction - Origins before Departures
• Part I - The Blurred Boundary
• Part II - Reimagined Conventions
• Part III - Villainous Characters
• Conclusion - Looking Back and Looking Forward
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index