In my thesis, I aim to discover a new image of mothers that Wilde invents in the Victorian age: women who are brave, independent, and able to pursue what they want in life. They do not place children as the center of their life; they love their children, but they don’t rely on them. These mothers are tender and passionate to light up the spiritual education of their children, even if it means that they risk being misunderstood by their children.
There are some aspects that I discover after doing this research. First of all, I argue that Wilde does not intend to deny all the social structures; rather, he uses his characters’ unique and novel characteristics (compared to his time) to loosen up the social structure in the 19th century, as well as to raise a micro-revolution to fight against the society. In his plays, he uses satire and ridicules the moral standards of society through his characters and his witty words. Secondly, I identify the importance of relationship between mothers and children, and how this relationship influences mothers to make decisions. In the plays, the mothers all suffer because of their children; although the mothers are strong and independent individuals, when danger occurs, the mother and children’s bond allows them to have natural connection. Last but not least, I examine the new types of mother Wilde creates in his plays that extend to the next generation, or even to this century—his creation still has powerful influence today.
To sum up, I think it is important to dig out the clues that Wilde’s mother characters have a connection with the women images in our modern society today.
Thus, I believe my methods and research would allow us to gain a deeper understanding and to better situate the literary position of Wilde’s mother characters in literature.
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Chapter One
The Women Images of the Victorian Age
I. Images of the Victorian Women
In order to compare the difference between Wilde’s mother characters and the women in the Victorian age, this chapter discusses about the image of the Victorian women to reveal women’s repression in the 19th century. After observing how wives and mothers functioned in the families, we can then closely turn to know more about Wilde’s family, especially Wilde’s mother played an important role in Wilde’s life.
With the historical knowledge, we can get to know Wilde’s idea deeper. During the Victorian age, women were regarded as the subordinate to men. They were not financially independent and frequently needed to rely on the men to raise their social status. Victorian women had low status in the society and needed to fulfill the expectations of the family and the society, so that the “happy” and “wonderful” family could be sustained. Therefore, the images of the Victorian women, according to the historical documents, are basically all tender, helpful and effective in doing housework. A perfect woman is a role model for her children in the family. Generally speaking, women would be viewed as evil and irresponsible if they abandoned their children, husband or family. Some writers in the Victorian age claimed how men and women should behave in the family and in the society; for instance, one of the leading English art critics of the Victorian age, John Ruskin suggested that “women were best equipped for the private or domestic realm; and men were naturally suited to the active, aggressive and intellectual domains of public life, including commerce, government and the professions” (Moran 35). What Ruskin brought out was the gender ideology, which also complied with the expectation of the society towards both men and women. Moran indicates that in the 19th century, “[t]heories about
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women’s bodies, innocence, emotional (rather than rational) temperament and maternal, self-sacrificing instincts underpinned the concept of the Victorian female presence as spiritually inspiring” (35). The Victorian preferred women to behave as
“angel in the house8,” which was a famous and favorite metaphor being used in the Victorian age.
“Angel in the house” conveyed the message that a married woman in Victorian age should be “husband’s helpmate and inspirer, soul of the home, and mother of a family” (Basch 26), this three-in-one image was the essence of the Victorian women, and this became the only way to live out their deepest nature and dignity. However, there were some inconsistent standards in the different social classes. Although all the Victorian women suffered from some legal restraints, the social class separated two kinds life style when it came to the issue of being a woman in the Victorian age.
Generally speaking, upper-class women had the chance to enjoy more freedom than the lower class women. “At the lower levels the key role of wife and mother, and the emotional dependence of husband and children, often amounted to matriarchy within the home and sometimes beyond it” (Perkin 76). Moreover, the Victorians held two diverging perspectives towards the “gilded cage of bourgeois marriage”: it was
“approved by those who idealized its comfort and security, but hated by those who found it claustrophobic and frustrating” (76) because of the differentiated treatments towards women in the different classes. Usually, the upper-class women were protected from the harshness of the law after they were married. This assumed that
“all husbands were kind, wise, caring, responsible, hard-working and fair—and conversely, that all women were childlike or imbeciles” (76). There were also two
8 Angel in the house: According to Moran’s book Victorian Literature and Culture, it is “a phrase adopted from the poetic sequence of the name (1854-61) by Coventry Patmore (1823-96)” (36). “The Angel in the House” is a narrative poem by Coventry Patmore, first published in 1854 (the year of Wilde’s birth) and expanded until 1862.
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different ideals in the issue of “perfect wife” and “true womanhood” in the middle class. Men fantasied their wives to be perfect in the house, yet the women hoped to reveal the womanhood. As the time passed by, most of the women performed as the women that the men wished them to be; but at the same time, the women tended to develop their own identities. Men’s ideal woman was “a decoratively idle, sexually passive woman, pure of heart, religious and self-sacrificing” (Perkin 86) and it was this popular image “angel in the house” or the “ivy-like wife” which also represented a caring and responsible mother but chose to cling onto her husband dependently.
Vicinus additionally mentiones that the Victorian women were like modeling in the frame of femininity. In short, they had to be the “perfect lady.” In the beginning of the 19th century, the “perfect lady” concept extended to the “perfect wife.” The perfect wife had to be “an active participant in the family, fulfilling a number of vital tasks, the first of which was childbearing” (ix). However, the ideal demand and the standard of the women varied from class to class. If one was a woman in the lower class, she needed to contribute to the income of the family in order to maintain the family; yet, if she was from the middle-class, she needed to provide indirect economic support by taking care of her children, purchasing and preparing the food or making the clothes.
In the upper-middle-class family, the woman would be protected firstly by the father and mother when she was a young lady. She would be sexually ignorant and perfectly innocent. After the marriage, she would then be protected by the husband. She would have servants so she did not need to work. When she became a mother, times would not be too difficult for her because she could still leave her children to nannies and governesses. Her social life was only confined to the family and the close friends.
“Her status was totally dependent upon the economic position of her father and then her husband” (ix) and in her most perfect form, “the lady combined total sexual innocence, conspicuous consumption and the worship of her family hearth” (ix). In
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Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan, Lady Windermere and Lady Agatha fit this upper-class image: young, pure, tender and submissive. On the other hand, they are also innocent and ignorant. Lady Windermere is protected by her father, then by her husband Lord Windermere, while Lady Agatha is protected meticulously by her mother the Duchess of Berwick all the time.
As a result, the woman image in the Victorian age was always “sweet, passive and long-suffering, waited patiently for the return of her husband” (Roberts 48). Even in the late Victorian age, the woman image was still petty and low. As Thane points out, the late Victorian woman images were fixed images of passivity and the women as the victims in the society and family. They often appeared in series of “striking images” such as: “the ladylike ‘angel in the house,’ the overworked skivvy, the desperate prostitute, the sexually passive wife, the ‘sweated’ worker, the dependent housewife” (175). The public assumed women should be passive and dependent in the male-dominated society.