Geraldine Jewsbury

Abigail Burnham Bloom

• Publisher: Edward Everett Root
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781912224890
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Feminist Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This innovative new work presents a critical, aesthetic and historical approach to the significant novelist and critic Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury (1812-1880). / Jewsbury was a truly accomplished Victorian woman of letters. She wrote six novels, two novels for children, articles and short stories as well as innumerable book reviews and influential reports for publishers. Her work is being newly recovered by a new generation. / Her first two novels, Zoe: A History of Two Lives(1845) andThe Half Sisters(1848), were best sellers, and considered scandalous when published. They, like all of her novels, concern the difficulties of women in traditional roles – the problems of careers for women, the deficiencies of education for women, women's unrealistic expectations of marriage, and their lack of satisfaction with their lives. / Active in London literary society, Jewsbury developed friendships with Charles Dickens, George Lewes, Thomas Henry Huxley, W. E. Forster, George Bentley, James Anthony Froude, Frances Power Cobbe, and John Ruskin, among others. Throughout her lifeJewsbury carried on extensive correspondences with a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, most famously with Jane Carlyle. Always an advocate for women's rights, she influenced the lives of women through her works and her personal and professional guidance, ultimately shaping the reading and thinking of women in her own and another generation. / Contents: Ch. 1: Introduction: Rediscovering Geraldine Jewsbury;Ch. 2: Early Influences: Becoming Geraldine Jewsbury; Ch.3: The Carlyles andZoe: Discovering the World; Ch.4: Jewsbury's Career in Fiction: Educating Readers; Ch.5: Jane Carlyle, Walter Mantell, and Other Friendships: Developing Intimacies;Ch. 6: Jewsbury as a Reviewer and Editor: Forwarding the Cause of Women;Ch.7: Jewsbury as a Publisher's Reader: Reading for Women;Ch. 8: Jewsbury's Legacy: Jewsbury Today.

chapter 1

Early Influences: Becoming Geraldine Jewsbury

There is something hard, not natural, in all women who have had no mother!

—Geraldine Jewsbury to Jane Welsh Carlyle ([23 February 1846], Ireland, 1892: 189)

Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury was well aware of the difficulties of women who had no mothers. She believed that women without mothers were “not treated kindly” and “driven within” themselves ([23 February 1846], Ireland, 1892: 189). In many ways Jewsbury’s life was a struggle to find a mentor from whom she could receive kindness, and a community in which she felt supported. She treated others sympathetically, especially women and servants, as she was always aware of their difficulties. She was the fourth child of Thomas and Maria Smith Jewsbury, born in Measham, Derbyshire (now Leicestershire) on 22 August 1812. The family moved to Manchester in 1816 where their father, formerly an independent cotton mill owner, became a cotton merchant and insurance agent. The youngest child, Francis (known as Frank), was born in 1819 and their mother died a month later. Jewsbury wrote to her friend Walter Mantell when she was forty-five: “I envy everybody who has a mother – Mine died when I was 6 years old & I feel to miss her more every year I live, one wd have been so different” (Dunn, vol. 2, 22 March 1857). Rather than sympathy and love, Jewsbury felt her childhood had been filled with unkindness and made her “hard”.

Upon the death of their mother, Jewsbury’s older sister, Maria Jane, then nineteen years old, was called upon to keep house for their father and to be a substitute mother for the children. Maria Jane had received a limited education but had the desire to write from the time she was young. Expected to perform the chores of a wife and mother without any compensating elevation of status in a home not of her own making, Maria Jane ordered dinners, supervised the servants, and attended to the children. She described the situation to a friend soon after she took over the household, always thinking of her desire for writing along with her duties: “Three dear children are catechizing me at the rate of ten questions in every five minutes. I am within hearing of one servant stoning a kitchen floor; and of another practising a hymn; and of a very turbulent child and unsympathetic nurse next door. I think I could make a decent paper descriptive of the miseries of combining literary tastes with domestic duties” (Gillette, 1932: xvii-xviii). In addition to her sister and the infant Frank, Maria Jane was responsible for Thomas then seventeen, Henry then sixteen, and Arthur then three. Despite the distractions of the household, Maria Jane persisted in literary pursuits and in 1821 contributed to the Manchester Gazette and the Manchester Courier. Eventually she published many poems, as well as prose pieces, in local as well as London periodicals, and gift annuals, all written while tending to the Jewsbury family. She was also employed as a book reviewer for the Athenaeum, as Jewsbury was to be later. Maria Jane trained Jewsbury in housekeeping and cooking skills that enabled her to entertain with ease as an adult, showed her how to manage a household with little money, and patterned a process of becoming a productive writer while finding support from other women.

Little information is available about the particulars of Jewsbury’s childhood and youth. Certainly the death of her mother had a major impact on her life. She rarely mentions her father in her letters and she does not describe her sister with affection. Never indulged, Jewsbury was brought up to put her own desires aside, to be “sensible” and to expect little from life. On being taken to the opera, she was told “in all likelihood you will never go again”. Recollecting this event later in life, she wrote to Walter Mantell that what was so painful was “not the passing away of the pleasure but the wooden horizon that was set up” (Dunn, vol. 2, 4 August 1857). At another time she wrote to Mantell: “You don’t know how cruel people were to me when I was living at home as a young girl who might for every reason to have shown me kindness & help”. Since Maria Jane was besieged by so many other children and chores, Jewsbury may have been often left to the care of servants. In the same letter to Mantell, Jewsbury describes making a petticoat for a servant “who used to snub me when I was ten years old and then lived with me as my mistress for seven long years scolding me & tyrannizing over me dreadfully except when I chanced to be ill” (Dunn, vol. 6, 8 January 1857). Although made miserable when she was a child by the servant, as an adult Jewsbury forgave her tormenter and helped her. A sensitive and emotional child, Jewsbury must have felt short-changed in her need for attention and affection. Yet this neglect forced her to be independent and “hard”. As an adult, Jewsbury wrote to a friend: “I used to cry to be carried, indeed I have had a great taste for it all my life, but I have been made to find my own feet” (Howe, 1935: 19). During the Victorian era, women were taught to be soft and malleable. Both Jewsbury and Maria Jane were hard in that they were determined and independent, and both disliked this tendency in themselves.

While Jewsbury turned in to herself, her sister laboured to become known in the world. In 1825 Maria Jane published a book of poems and essays, Phantasmagoria, and dedicated them to William Wordsworth. She sent a copy to the famous poet asking for his advice. He responded, inviting her to visit him and his family, which she did. This event transformed her life. She became a welcomed member of the Wordsworth household and developed a close friendship with Dora Wordsworth, the poet’s daughter. She was not treated as an “equal” by Wordsworth; the women in his household buttressed the poet and Maria Jane comments on Wordsworth’s ideas of the “pains & penalties of female authorship” in a letter addressed to Dora (Wordsworth Trust, 20 January 1829). In a similar vein to Wordsworth, the Poet Laureate, Robert Southey, pointed out the inadvisability of female authorship to Charlotte Brontë in a letter from 1837:

The day dreams in which you habitually indulge are likely to induce a distempered state of mind; and, in proportion as all the ordinary uses of the world seem to you flat and unprofitable, you will be unfitted for them without becoming fitted for anything else. Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation. (Barker, 1994: 262)

People in nineteenth-century England generally believed that women were ordained by God, since Eve was created from Adam’s rib, to be the helpmates of men. Societal beliefs of women as passive and unintellectual melded into the ideal that became known as the “Angel in the House” after Coventry Patmore’s 1854 poem, which celebrated woman’s traditional spiritual role. A young woman was to take care of her husband or her family, to guide the religious beliefs and education of her family, and to present a moral example to all in her activities and statements; in return she would be cared for financially and physically by her father until she married and then by her husband. Writing, with its involvement with publishers and audiences, was a masculine activity that was believed to harden the female. Both Maria Jane and Jewsbury were to suffer from the difficulties of being blue stockings and female writers; although they rebelled against such stereotypical beliefs, they also fell victim to them.

Described by contemporaries in almost masculine terms, Maria Jane had a decisive temperament and firm ideas. She wrote and sought publication, but she at times doubted herself and desired to submit to God’s plan for her. Comparing herself with Wordsworth, she worried that she might not be a good enough writer to make a successful career possible. Renown, the support of other creative women, and financial independence were not enough. Although Maria Jane and Jewsbury were to sound and behave like feminists at times, they were too much indoctrinated by their societies to actively support female emancipation. Jewsbury had an advantage over her sister in that she began publishing almost twenty years later than Maria Jane, when opinions were starting to change. Both women lived independently and productively while claiming to be opposed to the ideas of women who openly supported female emancipation and equality.

Writing under the difficulties of supervising a home and children while entertaining high ambition, Maria Jane and Jewsbury were both to suffer from exhaustion and mental crises. Maria Jane wrote to Dora Wordsworth in 1825 sending her a poem, “A Farewell to the Muse”, and stating that she was “tired of writing pretty verses”. Aware of her lack of formal education, Maria Jane intended to continue her own education with independent reading. She complains that “Hitherto my life has been a series of sacrifices” (8 October 1825, Wordsworth Trust). In November of 1826 Maria Jane became ill and left Manchester to be nursed back to health by friends. Being ill allowed Maria Jane a chance to rest and to ease her burden of care for others. Since Jewsbury’s education could no longer be supervised by Maria Jane, Jewsbury was placed in the Miss Darby’s boarding school in Tamworth, Staffordshire.

While at school Jewsbury wrote one letter a week to different members of her family but these letters have not survived. However, peripheral information about Jewsbury can be gathered from Maria Jane’s letters to her. Maria Jane wanted Jewsbury to be prepared to support herself. As a middle-class Victorian woman, there were only three choices available for Jewsbury’s adult life: she could marry and be supported by a husband, she could become a teacher or governess or seamstress, or she could continue to be supported by her father or brothers. Maria Jane was adamant that Jewsbury should work hard and excel at her studies in order to secure employment as a governess because Jewsbury did not want to be a teacher. In her letters to her sister, Maria Jane emphasizes the importance of religion, the need for Jewsbury to submit to the will of God and to renunciate any earthly desires she might indulge. Maria Jane must have thought that by limiting Jewsbury’s horizon, she was being realistic about her future.

In every letter to Jewsbury, Maria Jane shows concern for her education, for a correct frame of mind, but never unconditional love. Although Maria Jane praises Jewsbury for making progress, she advises her sister that the more she improves, the more she will love her. Worried that Jewsbury is too pleased with herself for doing well at school, Maria Jane criticizes her in a moralistic manner: “to pass your companions, to be acknowledged clever, to win prizes, no matter for what so it do but include competition, and procure triumph; this is the little Babylon you are now building …” (qtd. Jump, 1999a: 70). Even though Jewsbury won prizes at school, Maria Jane’s concern was with her attitude – she should do well so that she can get employment not so as to show herself superior to others.

While Maria Jane compliments Jewsbury’s affection and good nature, she criticizes Jewsbury’s writing “& occasional spelling”. Harriet Devine Jump has pointed out the frequency with which Maria Jane commented on Jewsbury’s poor penmanship. In one of Maria Jane’s letters to Jewsbury she encloses an older girl’s letter: “to read, if it were only that you might admire the handwriting & resolve to mend your own! … I am uneasy to receive such pothooks and hangers as your letters comprise” (qtd. Jump, 1999a: 66); and “Do not in your letters underline so many words – scarcely any” (qtd. Jump, 1999a: 66). Jewsbury’s handwriting, including her spelling and means of expression, would be the first obstacle to her finding employment as a governess. Her punctuation and use of emphasis never improved, but Jewsbury’s writing would later become the means of her creativity and the expression of her individual self.

In her criticisms of Jewsbury, Maria Jane most frequently points out her need for self-control. She fears that Jewsbury lacks the requisite character for teaching: “patience & temper!” Attempting to correct Jewsbury’s attitude, she wishes above all that Jewsbury “speak of [her] faults with less flippancy” (September 1827, John Rylands Library). Maria Jane complains that Jewsbury is “not good at conveying facts” and notices that Jewsbury is in a “feverish disquieted state” and has an “ardent ambitious temper” that needs to be conquered (September 1827, John Rylands Library). Maria Jane praises a young lady who has gone out as a governess at seventeen and turns the lesson pointedly to Jewsbury while describing Miss Dale who has “made the most of her advantages”:

Independent of being personally provided for, she will be enabled to assist her family. I tell you all this my dear child, that you maybe encouraged to exert yourself – since you see here the pleasing consequences of exertion & painstaking. I do not mean to say that every girl, educated – provided for herself, will meet with equal success – by no means – but as an axiom, industry will almost invariably obtain a portion. (28 March 1827, John Rylands Library)

Writing about Jewsbury to Dora Wordsworth, Maria Jane expresses her “ambition” for her sister:

[She] has now Miss D.[Darby] tells me capacity of gaining a salary, & is fitted for one or two little girls – This is my ambition for her – in a genteel, kind, good, family – she draws now in a masterly style – dances – is a tolerable Italian & an excellent French scholar … let me know if in your travels you hear of any family of the kind I mean … for many places she is too pretty – & young. I must have a sober minded family – & if they would be kind to her – & if under their roof and influence & example she would be silently maturing & deriving moral benefit, salary should not be the great object. (Wordsworth Trust, 3 February 1831)

Maria Jane seeks a family who will take care of Jewsbury and improve her morals. She might have praised Jewsbury’s spirit, personality, intelligence, and imagination, her unusual qualities, but Maria Jane believed her duty was to prepare Jewsbury to support herself and to make sure her soul was ready for heaven. That Maria Jane’s ambition for her sister was restricted to making a small amount of money in an insecure job reveals the limited possibilities available for women in the nineteenth century. Jewsbury herself was to address this issue and the problems of education for women in her writing career. Recognizing that her own aspirations needed to be tamped down, but directing her words to her sister, Maria Jane wrote birthday wishes to Jewsbury in 1827 on her fifteenth birthday: “The wreath of Fame is often a fiery crown, burning the brows that...

Table of contents

• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Series Editors
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• A Note on the Text / List of Abbreviations
• Introduction. Rediscovering Geraldine Jewsbury
• Chapter 1. Early Influences: Becoming Geraldine Jewsbury
• Chapter 2. The Carlyles and Zoe: Discovering the World
• Chapter 3. Fiction and Short Pieces: Educating Readers
• Chapter 4. Letters: Jane Welsh Carlyle, Walter Mantell, and Other Friendships
• Chapter 5. Jewsbury as a Reviewer and Editor: Forwarding the Cause of Women
• Chapter 6. Jewsbury as a Publisher’s Reader: Reading for Women
• Conclusion. Jewsbury’s Legacy: Jewsbury Today
• Notes
• Bibliography