To What Extent Does
Feminist Theory Illuminate Dickens' Fiction?
The popularity of Dickens' novels, both during and after
his life, is a point that must be considered when critiquing
his novels. If he was so popular, with past and present households,
how is it we can find fault in his endearing and funny stories?
Yet it is a particular form of theory that is the subject
of this essay that has illuminated his fiction in not necessarily
a sympathetic way. And yet it is this theory that has been
the most helpful in our understanding of the Victorian world
we see in the novels, and is of particular value in the interpretation
of characters, particularly female ones, in television and
film adaptations.
Catherine Waters makes the point that women and household
in Dickens' are inseparable, so therefore when feminist theory
looks at the position of women in his novels, they are also
inevitably looking at the idea of the family within society. So it is a far-reaching
and wide subject area they are looking at, one that is social,
political and therefore important.
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For example, in Dombey and Son the relationship between Dombey
and his wife in the first scenes is drawn in painful lines.
Dombey does not seem to realise she is there, even though
she has just borne him his first male child, 'He had thought
so little of the patient, that he was not a condition to answer
it.' (53) and
it is that child that he can see, though not in an affectionate
way. Kate Flint points out that this is an example of the
objectification of women.
At this time middle class women were seen as only commodities
and this was achieved through the child-like way in which
they were encouraged to act, living only within the home,
the private sphere, and becoming the helpless angel of the
house, a figure that Dickens is accused of creating.
Yet it is limiting to see Dickens as the creator of the angel
as, if one was to look at the economic and social facts of
the day, which good feminist theory does, it can be seen that
this was the truth of the matter. Women were subjected to
a life that encouraged them to be weak and useless, doing
repetitive tasks, but only so they could save their strength
for their real purpose, which was raising the family and then
representing its goodness. As symbols of the private sphere,
the woman could not be seen to step out of it, as it would
suggest the instability within and withal. Yet this is precisely
what happens in Dombey and Son. Later on in the novel, Edith,
Dombey's second wife and also Florence run away from the household,
'She saw she had no father upon earth, and ran out, orphaned,
from the house' (757). So it can be seen that Dickens was
not only critiquing a world that depended on the uselessness
of one half of the sex, but that the system itself was not
working for any parties: it was cruel when business, in the
form of Mr Dombey's heartlessness towards Florence as she
is a girl, and Edith's 'business marriage as potential breeding
machine for another son, are brought into the house.
So it can be seen that the virtue of feminist theory is one
that can defend the seemingly useless female heroines, the
ones that seem permanently caught within a halo of goodliness
and godliness. In Great Expectations, one of Dickens later
novels, the idea of the family begins to break down even further,
and this can be seen most expressly in the character of Estella,
one of his most famous heroines.
Here Estella has been raised by Miss Havisham as a woman who
must never love. Feminist theory points out that this is typical
of the period at the time, again asserting the importance
of historical contextualising when understanding these novels.
Desire is controlled by Miss Havisham, so any real feeling
that Estella has is one that is cold manipulative and ultimately
ruled by the hope of monetary gain. In this period desire
was seen as something that must be repressed in women so that
it would eventually not exist. It was a quality that was seen
as leading to madness, and the social reality of this can
clearly be seen in the records of the numbers of women who
were put in cruel mental institutions for showing any sign
of sexual feelings.
They were seen simply as being mad. Such feminists as Elaine
Showalter have documented this very Victorian phenomenon well,
and is essential knowledge if one is to understand why Estella
is the way she is and also why Miss Havisham is like she is.
After all, she is the literary manifestation of the woman
turned mad by desire.
When Pip meets Estella it is within the cold spacious confines
of Satis House, a household that Catherine Waters points out
as being symbolic of the anti-family, a household that pretends
to be a family, but because it is controlled by hatred and
money concerns, is inherently deathlike (123). This is a helpful
interpretation of a household and its characters which in
other readings may have become simply a place reminiscent
of Gothic horror. Yet read even closer and it can be seen
that this is indeed partly true but only when feminist research
is read into the meanings behind Gothic romance. These were
stories filled with women in castles, mostly famously Ann
Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, who suppressing their
desires conversely projected it into the walls of the creepy
households they were living in, where dark men lurked waiting
to pounce (or perhaps ravish?) them.
But it remains to be seen whether Dickens would have seen
this type of literature in this way. Rather it would have
been clear to him that women of this type, ones like Estella,
who clearly has been raised to live for fashion 'Is she beautiful,
graceful, well-grown? Do you admire her?' (194)
and monetary gain, will never fulfil what he sees as the only
real fulfilling world for a woman, the domestic sphere, with
a husband and family. But it is in this novel, written at
a later date, when Dickens had himself lost his family, that
he reveals his ill-ease with the ideal. In the character of
Estella he reveals that there is no alternative. The abuse
that Estella is subject to, even when she is surrounded by
the trappings of power show how Dickens could create a sympathetic
character in a heroine with qualities that he himself did
not altogether like.
The halo against the dark that Estella is defined by seems
to show how she is to herself and to her readers and to Dickens
a strong and independent woman, but it is society and its
members that do not want her to strike out as this type of
woman because this would make the society unstable that shows
how important it is to read into the heroines of Dickens.
It is only when the halos are looked beyond that the cracks
of the private sphere can be seen.
Feminist theory also predominantly concentrates on symbols
and their meanings and this is because it contains a premise
that women have been subject to being seen as symbolic in
male eyes. For example, a woman might be seen as a commodity
for marriage for her beauty or her wealth. As she is not educated
she cannot be seen in worth for that (and in any case, who
takes any educated woman seriously?) so it is her face, her
image that is all-important. As she has no voice she instead
represents things, such as, in this case, in the Victorian
period, the household. She is a figure that can be related
to the Virgin Mary or the Whore of Babylon, just as long as
it is a male projected image. Because there are no female
projected images. In this period it is particularly important
to look at fiction using feminist theory because it is through
its analysis that you can recognise similar structures and
symbols that are used in respect to women, who symbolise social
and political facts of the time. The recording of feminine
symbols and structures in feminist theory can also show us
how much or how little a society has changed, as the traditional
images occur again and again. In this case it can finally
be seen that this was subjugation at its height. Women were
being typecast into a social role to help the image of England
as progressive and forward-thinking when in fact it was inherently
sick. As this is seen in Dickens' novels, it shows that he
was in fact forward-thinking while being traditional, which
is comforting to know when so many people read and enjoy his
novels today.
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