Comparing Rossetti's Proserpine & Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret: Challenging Victorian Vi, Study Guides, Projects, Research of Painting

Download Comparing Rossetti's Proserpine & Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret: Challenging Victorian Vi and more Study Guides, Projects, Research Painting in PDF only on Docsity! 43 Female Self-determination in Victorian Britain: Finding the parallels between Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Proserpine (1874) ___ SEZ MAXTED The gender history of nineteenth-century Britain can be seen as a gradual but determined female challenge against an overarching patriarchal model with the period witnessing changes in ideas respecting gender relations towards a more modern notion of gender equality. With male power enforcing female dependency, and parliamentary franchise withheld from women, the right to non-discrimination on the grounds of gender was far from achieved. However, there were some positive changes in both knowledge and practice. This essay will first suggest that Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Proserpine, 1874 (figure 1), and Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s novel Lady Audley’s Secret, serialised in Sixpenny Magazine, and published in three volumes in 1862, reflected the changing attitudes. It will further explore the strong parallels between Proserpine and Lady Audley, both of whom are linked through their challenge of the deeply held Victorian belief in the sanctity of the home and domestic peace, capitalising on the contemporary anxieties about femininity. n many ways, resistance to change in gender relations represented a concentrated reaction against general democratisation with the evolving patterns of patriarchal authority falling within a wider landscape of diminishing subservience for many, coupled with expanding rights.1 The role of women was the subject of intense literary and public debate with the Victorian conscience tending to focus on female weakness with the concept of home as a location of tranquillity epitomised by the middle-class wife and mother, and with the poet Coventry Patmore’s Angel in the House (1854) an enduring icon of Victorian anti-sensuality.2 1 Jan Marsh, Gender Ideology and Separate Spheres in the 19th Century, V & A (online) <http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/g/gender-ideology-and-separate-spheres-19th- century/> [accessed 7 February 2019] (para 2 of 21). 2 Coventry K. D. Patmore, The Angel in the House, London, 1858, in British Library Collection items. <https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/coventry-patmores-poem-the-angel-in-the-house> [accessed 7 February 2019]. I 44 Figure 1: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Proserpine, 1874, oil paint on canvas, 12.51 x 61 cm, Tate Britain, London. Photo © Tate; Creative Commons. CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported). <https://www.tate.org.uk/art/ artworks/rossetti-proserpine-n05064> Social philosophers such as Auguste Comte, Arthur Schopenhauer and Herbert Spencer reinforced this concept, which developed into the mid- century doctrine of separate spheres whereby women were positioned as either decorative additions or spiritual guardians of men’s immortal souls.3 John Ruskin wrote of the middle-class wife in Sesame and Lilies (1865), which centred on the differing natures of men and women and blatantly encouraged women to provide moral guidance to their husbands.4 A pseudo-scientific dimension was added to this social construct via Darwin’s The Descent of Man (1871),5 which placed men higher on the evolutionary ladder by arguing that evolution made man ‘superior’ to woman.6 Separate spheres and the domestic-public dichotomy referring to an empirical 3 Marsh, (para 9 of 21). 4 John Ruskin, John Ruskin Selected Writings, ed. by Dinah Birch (Oxford: Oxford World Classics, 2009), p. 154–174. 5 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871, 2nd edn 1879, intro. by James Moore and Adrian Desmond (London: Penguin Classics, 2004), p. 256. 6 Rebekkah Rubin, ‘The Woman Who Challenged Darwin’s Sexism’, Smithsonian (online) <https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/woman-who-tried-take-down-darwin- 180967146//> [accessed 14 February 2018] (para 4 of 20). 47 describing marriage as ‘the world’s great lottery’,26 she is simultaneously recognising that for a woman, wholly dependent on her husband, her own happiness is not within her control and by doing so is questioning the contemporary vision of domestic subservience. Her long confession to Robert Audley and Sir Michael Audley allows her to vent her rage over the men she felt had let her down: her father, her husband and even her husband’s father: I resented bitterly – I resented it by hating the man who had left me with no protector but a weak, tipsy father, and with a child to support. [ …] I recognised a separate wrong done me by George Talboys. His father was rich […]27 Similarly, with her own life directed by men who control her, Proserpine, Queen of the Underworld and daughter of Zeus, stands in a shadowed corner with only a small shaft of light penetrating the gloom. In her hand she holds a pomegranate fruit, her consumption of its seeds condemning her to stay for half of each year with her abductor (and husband) Pluto, who had promised to return her to her mother Ceres only if she hadn’t eaten in his realm.28 The only movement in the painting comes from the smoke rising from an incense-burner (the attribute of a goddess)29 and Proserpine herself looks fixed and immobile, seemingly trapped forever in the dark underworld with no hope of a permanent return to the upper world she loves. The sonnet inscribed in Italian in the top right corner of the painting and in English on the frame gives further depth to the meaning and in many ways draws Proserpine closer to Lady Audley.30 If Lady Audley is living a double life, similarly, at the beginning of the sestet, Proserpine laments: ‘Afar from mine own self I seem’, indicating a split personality, or perhaps another part of herself. The introduction of a second voice could be her unconscious mind, and as the two voices are so intertwined (‘Continually together murmuring’), they could be a single person. Reading the sonnet through this lens, perhaps this is Proserpine looking inwards towards her buried self and presenting the agony of separation due to her own actions in a similar way to Lady Audley having to live through the tragic consequences of her own behaviour. Ultimately, Lady Audley was trapped by her secret just as much as Proserpine was trapped in the underworld. In Braddon’s novel we watch as Lady Audley’s life spirals beyond her control as she desperately attempts to keep the knowledge of her first 26 Braddon, p. 298. 27 Braddon, p. 300. 28 Victoria Osbourne, ‘Secular Ministry’, in Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts and Crafts Movement, travelling exhibition, 2019-2021, ed. by Martin Ellis, Victoria Osborne and Tim Barringer (New York: American Federation of Arts, 2018), 158–212 (p. 197). 29 Terry Riggs, Proserpine (February 1998), Tate (online) https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/rossetti-proserpine-n05064 [accessed 23 February 2019]. (para 3 of 4). 30 Riggs, para 3 of 4. 48 marriage secret. There was no happy ending for either Lady Audley or Proserpine and the concluding line of Rossetti’s sonnet: ‘Woe’s me for thee, unhappy Proserpine!’ is as relevant to Lady Audley as to Proserpine herself. Both Proserpine and Lady Audley’s Secret are complex and contradictory. In the case of Proserpine, Rossetti has painted more than a simple portrait of Jane Morris and the symbolic elements along the pose of the body and the strength of the gaze build a story of a woman reacting against the undeserved actions of a man. Her only role was having a beauty so captivating that Pluto fell in love with her on sight and his actions alone took her to the underworld. The contradiction is that by eating she triggered the need to remain, and without the actions of another woman (her mother) she would be forced to stay in the underground without respite.31 Lady Audley’s beauty was also her downfall as Sir Michael Audley was unable to resist her appeal despite the significant differences in their age and social position. The plot twists give an obvious complexity to the novel, such as the presumed death of George Talboys – a man revealed to be alive too late to save Lady Audley. However, it is the contradictions which demonstrate so successfully the frustration of economic, social and sexual oppression for contemporary women. For instance, George Talboys can design a new life for himself and his wife cannot, and Robert Audley is weak and conceited but due to his gender is given power and authority to act. The ultimate contradiction is that the other female characters fail to support Lady Audley, contributing directly to her downfall. There is a sexual element to the predicament of both women. Lady Audley demonstrates an acute self-awareness of her own desirability when describing how she knowingly used her ‘bewitching’ looks to marry better than her schoolfellows.32 In the painting, it is through the model, Jane Morris. Although Rossetti had written about Jane that ‘beauty like hers is genius’, with her wiry, curly black hair and hard, angular features, her looks were far removed from the Victorian ideal.33 Rossetti has added to her eroticism by giving the viewer a focus on her carnal red lips and the fleshy pomegranate, both of which are bright and lustrous compared to the muted and dull colours around the figure. Rossetti has altered and intensified Jane’s beauty: features are accentuated (her lips), elongated (her neck) and forced (the folds in her dress). Her unnatural pose highlights this artificiality and Rossetti successfully communicates personal tragedy via her posture with the stillness of her frame and a sense of pent-up, constrained energy. Proserpine holds her left wrist with her right hand as if holding herself back, suggesting that she is capable of restraint as well as temptation. Perhaps it also demonstrates that she is cognisant of her own behaviour – her weaknesses as well 31 Osbourne, p. 197. 32 Braddon, p. 298. 33 Jan Marsh, The Pre-Raphaelite Circle (London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 2013), p. 91. 49 as her strengths, which helps to communicate a more rounded impression of an isolated and marginalised woman. Although she is not engaging directly with the viewer, the defiance of Proserpine’s gaze as she glares out from beneath her fringe lends a power to her expression and it is simultaneously defiant and alluring. This double message is echoed in the actions of Lady Audley. During her confession to Robert and Sir Michael, Lady Audley is described as hiding her countenance from the two men: ‘her face was obstinately bent towards the floor’,34 which communicates the contradictions of both subjugation and power. By denying her gaze, Lady Audley is withholding something of herself and this personal seclusion denies the men a full interpretation of her actions. The gazes of both Proserpine and Lady Audley allow them to create agency in their own portrayal. While Braddon gives clear descriptions of the material world that was so captivating and desired by Lady Audley, in a similar way, Rossetti uses the ivy in the background as a symbol for the viewer to interpret. In ancient Greece, ivy was the sacred plant of Dionysos.35 As well as being the god of wine, vegetation, pleasure and festivity, Dionysos was also the god of frenzy and madness36 – two words which are also associated with Lady Audley. The frenzy of Lady Audley’s increasingly manic attempts to protect her real identity is coupled with the additional secret of her mother’s madness and her ultimate fate to die due to a maladie de langueur in a mental institution on the Continent. The location overseas has a sense of banishment, similar to Proserpine’s removal to the underworld, so both women are separated from the familiar and moved to new (unwanted) environments. Nineteenth-century reviewers of sensation novels were united in diagnosing the genre as an expression of modernity, as noted in 1863 by H. L. Mansel, writing in the Quarterly Review that: ‘The sensation novel, be it mere trash or something worse, is usually a tale of our own times.’37 The fictional life of Lady Audley echoes the real life of Lady Rosina Wheeler, a woman unjustly incarcerated for a short period in a ‘madhouse’ after a series of highly public matrimonial battles with her husband, suggesting that the actions of a woman reacting against her predetermined fate was not an unknown in Victorian society at the time.38 Beyond the obvious reflections of contemporary life, such as the railway and telegram, both of which play a role in the plot of Lady Audley’s Secret, it could be argued that Braddon, a woman living with a married man, wanted her novel to present a more modern, self-determining woman.39 34 Braddon, p. 299. 35 Theoi Project, Dionysos Wrath 1 (online), <https://www.theoi.com/Olympios/Dionysos.html> [accessed on 8 February 2019] (para 1). 36 Ibid., (para 1). 37 Badowska, quoting H. L. Mansel, ‘Sensation Novels’, Quarterly Review, 113 (1863). 38 Tomaiuolo, pp. 1–5. 39 Braddon, introduction, p. x. 52 Patmore, Coventry K. D., The Angel in the House, London, 1858, in British Library Collection items. <https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/coventry-patmores-poem-the-angel-in-the- house> [accessed 7 February 2019] Ruskin, John, John Ruskin Selected Writings, ed. by Dinah Birch (Oxford: Oxford World Classics, 2009) SECONDARY SOURCES Auerbach, Nina, Woman and the Demon, The Life of a Victorian Myth (London: Harvard University Press, 1982) Badowska, Eva. “On the Track of Things: Sensation and Modernity in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret.” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 37, no. 1, 2009, 157– 175. 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