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Xerox University Microfilms
300 North Zoob Road
Ann Arbor, Michigan 40106
LD3907 S
.07 Landis, Joseph C . , 1 9 1 /-
1951 Ladies and gentlemen in kid-Vic-
• I2$ torian fiction*
v ii^j-O /p *
Thesis (ih.L*) - If.Y.tJ,, Graduate
School, 1951a
Bibliography: p *lj.0J4.-ij.o9 .
07^852
Shett Utt
Xerox University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106
THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED.
! **Y 0?
. T ""T " TTY
SEW iu.!.
DSIV^RSITI HElfWi^
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
IN
MID-VICTOHIAN FICTION
By
Joseph C• Landis
Submitted in p a rtial fulfillm ent of the requirements
for the degree of dootor o f philosophy a t New York
University*
My* unbar ^ 1999*
fv J L \ A S V
PREFACE
The conventions regulating the social and domestic behavior o f
men and women, far from constituting merely a manual of politeness,
can provide a significant insight into the world in which these con
ventions are nurtured* They indicate not merely the standards of good
manners; ultim ately, they reveal the nature of the happiness that a
society promises and the price that i t exacts in exchange* They in
dicate the roles that are assigned to men .and women and suggest the
cost to the individual personality o f playing his rolei the lim its
on the freedom with which he may develop h is capacities and the effect
of such lim itation on his attitudes to himself and bo others*
Conventions are thus a society*s ideal self-portrait* As an
ideal they are at once a frame for understanding the behavior of the
individual and a powerful force in m otivating it* As he strives to
approximate the ideal p o rtra it, he absorbs the particular drives
that convention approves, drives that are shared by most persons within
the society* These drives persist as long as the conditions of life
render attainable the happiness promised by convention* But when the
conventionally approved role ceases to be widely attainable or ceases
to provide the promised satisfactions because the conditions of life
have changed, the resulting human suffering brings about the a lte ra
tion, not only o f the conventions, but of the motive forces that they
have planted within the individual, and new oharacter structures emerge*
This study is an analysis of some of the basic psychological ten
dencies that arose in the character of mid-Victorian ladies and
genblemen as they strove to adjust th eir lives to the demands of
convention and the pressures of life* The conventions regulating the
relations between the sexes established ideals of m asculinity and
fem ininity and assigned roles to men and women that placed severe re
stric tio n s, not only on the development of women, but on that of men
as well* These conventional ideals, moreover, fostered the growth of
emotional drives which further intensified the constriction of person
a lity demanded by the ideals and which, in varying degrees, are to be
found in the great m ajority of mid-Victorian men and women* Behind
the m ultiplicity o f m id-^iotorian behavior lie s a unifying principle,
a set of tendencies in behavior and attitu d e that despite surface
differences springs from the same source and re fle c ts the same motiv
ating forces* At the same time i t is nevertheless apparent that on
the one hand the forces of a changing world and on the other the suf
fering w ithin conventional relationships were rendering convention
obsolete and creating men and women whose psychological components
form a new character structure in which different drives and attitud es
predominate, a oharacter structure that permits a far greater freedom
for the development of the individual* Although the social conven
tions which the mid-Victorians inherited seem hardly impaired during
the prosperous years from 1855 to 1880, an analysis of the mid-Vic
torians themselves revealb great underlying tensions, men and women
paying a heavy price in human p o ten tiality as they struggle to come
^This study uses men and women interchangeably with ladies and
genblemen but oonfines its e lf to those men and women, largely of the
upper classes, who lived w ithin upper-olass conventions.
bo berms with bheir roles and reap their rewards in fe lic ity . The
p artial rejection of convention by many, the to tal rejection by a few
are signs of the changes that were to come with the la te r years of the
century.
For this study o f the mid-Victorian oharacter, the novels of
Trollope, E liot, and Meredith have provided the m aterials. If doubt
arises whether these novelists who reached their a rtis tic m aturity
during the period, re a lists though they were, provide an undistorted
view of th eir contemporaries, it is soon dispelled by their unanimity
in describing, vd th varying degrees of insight and subtlety, the same
2
fundamental drives and needs. Despite bheir differing attitu d es to
their world and to the obligations of a human being to himself and
to others, these three a rtis ts created fictio n al characters which
have too much in common to be other than faith fu l reflections of
bheir contemporaries. Coming from a rtis ts of statu re, such wholly
unpremeditated and unintentional sim ilarity would of its e lf be sound
reason for accepting the fictio n al characters as recreations of the
living mid-Vi o to ri an s. Vthen to the agreement of these keen and
sensitive observers w o added the corroborating testimony of other
students of the mid-Victorians among th eir contemporaries and among
ours, and the force of social pressures and conventions, there can
be littl e doubt that the fictio n al beings of these masters of
2
Meredith*s la st novels, with the exception of One of Our
Conquerors, are laid w ell before the l&be-Vioborian period, and a ll
reveal the same psychological tendencies apparent in his e a rlie r
work and in the work of Trollope and E liot.
characterization are in. their essen tial psychological elements real
3
mid-Victorians*
This study follows the current tendency among psychologists to
be concerned with the influence of cultural pressures on the individual
and from such psychologists as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Clara
Thompson, i t derives the classificatio n and interpretation o f the
eiojtional forces with which i t deals* The study is not concerned with
the specific theories of neurosis propounded by these psychologists,
nor is i t , in fa c t, at a ll concerned with diagnosing neurosis* I t is
prim arily concerned with what the mid-Victorians regarded as normal
behavior and normal tendencies* That some of the characters described
were not normal w ill be apparent* Making the diagnosis, however, is
irrelevant to the problem of the study; its concern is with revealing
the extent to which, normal or abnormal, they were driven by needs
common to their contemporaries end fostered by their society*
^Araong recent scholars who have attested to the accuracy of the
mid-Victorian novel as a reflection of the mid-Victorians themselves
and have relied on its accuracy in th eir own work are Ldbnie V illard,
Wanda Neff, Michael Sadleir, and Esm^ W ingfield-Stratford* Indeed,
for a study of the domestic relations of typical m id-Victorians, the
novels are a far more reliab le source than biogrqhies — eith er de
bunking or o ffic ia l — which are w ritten about the exceptional rather
than about the average* The form ality of le tte rs and memoirs also
presents formidable obstacles* "The m ajority of diaries and published
le tte rs of that period are largely concerned with politics o r notion,
not with the sim plicity of domBstio life * ” ("An American in London,”
Times L iterary Supplement, June 30, 1950*) H* L* Beales points to
the novel as one of the preferable records containing "unconscious
evidence” about human relatio n s, since "The fam ily as it was in th is
Viotorian Age before either biology or psychology had begun to throw
a generally accessible light upon its re a litie s leaves necessarily
indirect rather than direct records of its true qualities*" (rhe
Viotorian Family," Ideas and B eliefs of the V ictorians (London, 19U9),
P* 3J+6*)
■v.
These needs which the mid-Victorians shared were nourished by
the conventional ideals of masculine and feminine behavior and by the
social changes at'.endant upon the industrial revolution. Analysis of
the social convent .on inherited by the mid-Victorians and of the im
plications of tha' convention shows that the conventionally approved
drives to domination in men and to submissiveness in women — founded
upon the economic dependence of women — are in essence what contemporary
psychologists like Fromm and Horney designate as sado—masochist tenden
cies. (Chapter I.) The re strictio n s imposed upon a woman's life and
the constriction of her character by the conventional ideals and by
her social position as a lady raise the question "What was the mid-
Victorian woman re a lly like?" ~ a question to which some recent
scholars have rep lied "Meek," while others have cried "Mightyl"
(Chapter I I .) There is, however, no re a l contradiction between these
two opinions, both feminine submissiveness and feminine domination
being the resu lts o f the sado-masochist tendencies in the mid-Viotorian
character. These tendencies to masochion and sadism,moreover, find a
great variety of expression in the behavior of mid-Victorian woman.
(Chapter I I I .) In her sexual lif e as w ell, these tendencies, though
various in form, are clear. (Chapter IV .) Analysis of the behavior
and attitu d es of men, ostensibly the favored sex in a man's world,
reveals the s a me sado-masochist tendencies in their social relations
with women (Chapter V), and in bheir sexual lif e (Chapter V I), and
shows that th eir personalities suffered quite as mioh as did those of
their less favored wives and daughters. Release from such a constric
tion of personality came bo some few men and women from two sources.
F irst, a changing economy began to undermine the convention with its
double social and sexual standards by undermining its economic foun
dation* The new economy began to find place for those redundant
women who were unable or unwilling to attain the conventional feminine
career of wife and mother, and in so doing, i t removed their economic
dependency* The fem inist movement, in demanding equal rig h ts, was
in effect also demanding the abolition of the sado-masochist conven
tion* Although this movement which aided the social liberation of
women received scant notice in the novels of Trollope, E lio t, or
M eredith, their works do reveal with great c la rity a second force,
whioh aided the psychological liberation of both men and women — the
force of the suffering w ithin the conventional fam ily relationship*
As a resu lt of th eir tria l by fire , a small but significant number
of m id-Victorians broke through the bonds of sado-masoehist tendencies
and emerged with a new, equalitarian outlook and a new kind of char
acter, freed from the need either to submit or to dominate* It is
one of the great achievements of Trollope, E liot, and Aieredith that
they rev eal, with varying acuity, both the sado-masochist tendencies
of the mid-Victorian oharacter and its growth towards liberation and
democratization*
I wish to express my gratitude to Professors Karl J* Holzknecht
and Robert B* Dow for th e ir encouragement and suggestions; to my col
league Professor James R* Kreuzer, to Mrs* A lice Kreuzer, and especially
to my wife* My heaviest debt of gratitude is to Professor Edwin Berry
Burgum* To say that he was the sponsor of th is dissertation is to in
dicate the extent of my indebtedness to him, from his in itia l in terest
vii*
in the subject and his supervision of its progress to its completion*
I wish also to express the high regard for him as a teacher and c ritic
of V ictorian lite ra tu re which those who have studied under him can
best appreciate*
J • C • L •
