Women of the Late 19th and Early 20th Century

1
Godeys Ladies Book, March, 1857
2
Feminist Gothic Short StoriesA Challenge to
19th Century Women See Rather Than Simply Be
Seen

• Alison Goss
• Politics of Horror
• April 17, 2001

3
Introduction

• Women and Gothic Fiction
• Short Stories
• Often left out
• Much more profuse
• Magazines
• Godeys Ladies Book (1830-1898)
• The Dial (1840-1844)
• Harpers Monthly (1850-today)

4
Outline

• Introduction to the story
• Cultural contexts
• The Status of 19th century women
• The role of this feminist text as a challenge to
  women

5
What did Miss Darrington See?

• Emma B. Cobb
• Frequent contributor to periodicals in the 1870s
• Four short stories contributed to Harpers
  Monthly
• What did Miss Darrington See?
• December 1870 edition of Harpers
• Perfect example of conscious feminism

6
The Plot

• Elizabeth Darrington, a New England 24-year- old,
  is a Governess in Kentucky
• A part of the intellectual community
• A gentlewoman (not a lady or girl)
• Refuses to fall in love or flirt
• Meets a very charming man

• Resists sentimental affections, standing up to
  his affectionate gaze
• His wild and adventurous nature forces him to
  leave
• Gives her a locket
• Years later he dies and appears before her as a
  ghost shortly thereafter
• She admits to herself that she was in love

7
What Miss Darrington is NOT

• Sugary Sweet
• the glance of her eye was cool and steady
• Modest
• Proud, certainly
• In need of a husband
• Dependent on anyone
• self-reliant

Godeys Ladies Book, March, 1857
8
What She Is...
Do I look like I need a man?

• Intelligent
• one of those women
• in whom brain is the uppermost
• Self-Confident
• a fine, well-bred
• self-assertion
• Educated
• breathed an atmosphere
• of intellect and culture
• from her infancy

http//locutus.ucr.edu/cathy/wwport.html
(Actually Elizabeth Inchbald, one of Cobbs
contemporaries)
9
A Womans Thoughts About Women (1858) by Dinah
Maria Mulock Craik

• Married women have cast their lot for good or
  ill, have realized in greater or less degree the
  natural destiny of our sexIt is the single women
  who most need thinking about.
• They have so much in their possessionyouth,
  bloom, and health, giving them temporary
  influence over the other sex.

10
The Real Story

• Bless them the girls, pretty dears, how sweet
  they are! Papas nosegay of beauty to adorn his
  drawing-room.
• Given everything they need
• Time
• But nothing to do
• Money
• But nothing to spend it on
• The only escapeLove!
• Oh but that is too idle.Miss Darrington

11
How to be the Model Woman

• The Frugal Housewife (1829) by Lydia Maria Child,
  went through 33 editions before its last printing
  in 1870
• Man is daring and confident, woman is diffident
  and unassuming man is great in action, woman in
  suffering man shines abroad, woman at home man
  talks to convince, woman to persuade and please
  man has a rugged heart, woman a soft and tender
  one man prevents misery, woman relieves it man
  has science, woman taste mans has judgement,
  woman sensibility man is a being of justice,
  woman of mercy.

12
What I Think

• Female gothic writers, like Emma B. Cobb,
  encouraged womens self-esteem, denied female
  inferiority outright, and challenged womens
  subservience to mens whims.
• Through the short stories that appeared in
  magazines throughout the nineteenth and early
  twentieth centuries, this ideology was widely
  dispersed giving women a greater sense of
  independence and encouraged them to be involved,
  not just be seen.

13
The Perfect Woman Redefined

• One does not need to be married to be content.
• If she were to marry him she would lose the
  freedom she prizes beyond everything, and gain,
  not a mute, but merely an adorer. And such an
  adorer! A woman might as well trust herself to a
  typhoon!
• Woman is desirable not for how she is viewed by
  others, but for what she has seen herself.
• A woman with brains was a new revelation to him.
  The spell if intellect and culture he found
  irresistible.

14
The Look

• Whoever controls the look controls the woman.
• Sexual subjugation by men
• Mental control
• If a woman can return the male gaze as Miss
  Darrington does, she has the control over how
  she is seen and how she sees herself.
• The female perception
• Not necessarily rational to male psycheGhosts
  and other Supernatural elements
• Challenging male dominance and the patriarchal
  system as a whole

15
A Challenge to All Women

• Young ladies, 'tis worth a grave thought--what,
  if called away at eighteen, twenty, or thirty,
  the most of you would leave behind you when you
  die? Much embroidery, doubtless Various
  pleasant, kindly, illegible, letters A moderate
  store of good deeds And a cart-load of good
  intentions. Nothing else--save your name on a
  tombstone, or lingering for a few more years in
  family or friendly memory.
• -Dinah Craik.